Alex Walker & Daniel O’Toole, Anti-lens, 2023, National Photography Prize 2024, MAMA. Image Jeremy Weihrauch 5345.jpeg

ANTI-LENS

FINALIST, NATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE 2024

MURRAY ART MUSEUM ALBURY, 23 MARCH - 1 SEPTEMBER 2024

BLINDSIDE, 21 JUNE - 15 JULY 2023

COLLABORATION WITH DANIEL O’TOOLE

Alex Walker and Daniel O’Toole’s practices reside at the intersection of analogue and digital processes. Building on a common interest in natural phenomena and the properties of light, this exhibition delves into analogue modes of image manipulation and abstraction derived from the visual language of lenses.

Inspired by the Minimalist aesthetic of the 1960’s California Light Space movement and the playful kinetics of Lazslo Moholy-Nagy’s Light-Space Modulator, Anti Lens presents a series of experiments and their outcomes which re-imagine the form and function of a lens as a tool for degrading and distorting the recognisable rather than focusing and clarifying an image – an Anti-lens.

These experiments employ synthetic materials, architecture and mirrors to alter light waves and create a series of light-based phenomenological experiences within the space. Walker and O’Toole have used industrial methods of fabricating and finishing to create objects that illustrate the visual language of lenses and their antithesis. These objects harness light to create fixed and unfixed images which refract, disintegrate, and draw attention to the very act of perception.

Read the exhibition text by Karl Halliday here

MAMA documentation by Jeremy Weihrauch.

Blindside documentation by Daniel O’Toole and Sebastian Kaney