Donald Rodney and reflecting on methods of display
I was lucky enough to visit the Donald Rodney retrospective, Visceral Canker, at Nottingham Contemporary last year. an exhibition that I found profoundly affecting and inspirational.
Donald Rodney, Cataract, 1991.
Two of Rodney's works, Cataract and Self Portrait: Black Man (Public Enemy), came to mind while developing my Underwater Dogs project. Both pieces use light and projection to manipulate visibility and perception,. Cataract through the use of overlapping, flickering imagery and Self Portrait through backlit transparency that both reveals and conceals. I’m drawn to how these works use light as both a medium and a metaphor: the act of illumination becoming a kind of exposure.
My initial sketchbook development of the Underwater Dogs idea forced me to reflect further on how the “disappearing ball” mechanism could work effectively. The concept hinges on illusion and perception: I want the ball to appear present one moment and gone the next, echoing how fear or desire can distort what we see. Translating that into a tangible display, however, requires experimentation.
I need to test the heck out of it, essentially, exploring projection, lightboxes, and layered screens to see how light behaves across different materials. Could the ball be projected onto a semi-transparent glass or fabric so that it fades depending on the viewer’s position or the lighting angle? Could a mirrored or reflective surface distort or dissolve its visibility altogether? This phase will be about trial and error: playing with distance, brightness, colour saturation, and opacity to find the perfect point where disappearance feels magical, not mechanical.
