Darkness Visible

27 Mar 2025 – 13 Apr 2025

APT Gallery (Art in Perpetuity Trust), London, United Kingdom.

Curated by Lesley Bunch, Paula MacArthur & Gavin Maughfling.

Darkness Visible was first proposed by the late artist, lecturer and former Chair of Contemporary British Painting Judith Tucker. Exhibiting artists explore the potential of light and dark in painting, installation and film to examine wider social and philosophical concepts. An exhibition of painting, installation, film and performance, examining the idea of light emanating from darkness as a starting point to explore deeper themes of the unseen, the psyche, memory, otherness, loss, love, and the space between us.

Exhibiting Artists:
Marius von Brasch, Lesley Bunch, Anne-Marie Creamer, Graham Crowley, Rosalind Davis & Justin Hibbs, Sam Douglas, Natalie Dowse, Pippa Gatty, Paula MacArthur, Gavin Maughfling, Donna Mclean, Ruth Murray, Joe Packer, Hideatsu Shiba, Geraldine Swayne, Judith Tucker, Casper White, Joanna Whittle.

The site-specific sculptural installation ‘Darkness Visible’ greets you on entering the exhibition - an immersive sculptural environment composed of steel structures and folded mirror sculptures that reflect one another, fracturing the audience’s perception of space. Created with the notion of the viewer as an active protagonist, choreographing their journey through the space, navigating their fragmented reflection through portal-like openings and illusory borders. The wall-sized Dibond mirror created by Hibbs for performances by movement artist Jamal Sterett and musician Ben Lancaster has a rhythmic pattern of geometric cuts and folds across its surface, creating a compositional device that fractures and distorts Jamal’s movement as he responds to the space and to the improvised modular Synth soundscape created by Lancaster.

Included within the installation are two paintings by Graham Crowley and Paula Macarthur, which establish a link to the various forms of ‘illusionism’ in painting that unfold throughout the rest of the exhibition.

 ‘….the illusionistic installation by Justin Hibbs and Rosalind Davis is a wonderful 'introduction' or 'portal' to the experience that is painting. Not only was their installation the best use of that gallery that I'd ever seen but it acted as a transitional space between the world at large and the variety of illusion that is painting - a brilliant piece of curating’. Graham Crowley

‘Darkness Visible’ brings together artists Rosalind Davis & Justin Hibbs installation, Jamal Sterrett, movement artist, and Ben Lancaster on Modular Synths, each contributing their distinct practices to a collaboration that operates at the intersection of contemporary dance, improvised electronic music and sculptural installation. The collaboration pushes each discipline into new territory, synthesising a shared and rich history of British and Jamaican sonic, visual and dance cultures.