MOONLIGHT

MOONLIGHT - VANCOUVER ARTS CENTRE - KINJARLING, Western Australia

OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 2023

Supported by the City of Albany and presented in the historic Vancouver Arts Centre, MOONLIGHT was Saira's first major solo exhibition.

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The exhibition featured 6 mixed-media works on panel collectively titled Do You See What I See. Spanning 6 metres wide, this polyptych depicts the path of the full moon over a 2 1/2 hour period. The work is a commentary on the accelerated pace in which we find ourselves living in the 21st century.

Accompanying Do You See What I See were 2 additional works- See Sponge and Keep Your Friends Close [and your Anemones Closer]: aquatic-themed works making reference to the moon's influence upon tides and the unseen forces that impact human consciousness. 

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Drawing upon the ideologies of the Art Nouveau movement and 19th century Luddism, MOONLIGHT is intended as both love letter to our Moon, a celebration of the depth and complexity of Great Southern night skies (and seas!) and a lamentation of the perils of an ever-technologizing world. 

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In presenting this exhibition, artist Saira Ellen K. Spencer (Kwoorabup/Denmark WA) invites the viewer to consider the act of attention as ritual, histories as shared and contemporary technology as both a tool for the artist and a weapon we wield against ourselves.

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They signify both the act of paying attention to nature in a technologised world as well as the act of using technology to construct a state of attentiveness. I was particularly interested in exploring how attention can be manufactured or constructed, organic or spontaneous, and how my mode of attention at any given moment impacted my art-making. 

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I was also wanting to explore how technology frames and impacts how we experience the world. In particular, how it has transformed our interactions with natural spheres- so often these days we engage with nature, art and each other through a flat, expansive black rectangle.

In presenting these works, I invite the viewer to consider how modern life impacts the quality of their experience of the world;

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We all see the same moon. These works are the moon I see, that now you see.