Adam Worrall at the entry to Virtuality Squared 2014
3 December 2014 – 8 June 2015, National Gallery of Australia
Organised in association with Los Angeles County Museum of Art
James Turrell’s career spans almost five decades, with over 140 solo exhibitions worldwide, and permanent installations in museums and private collections internationally - including one of his most beautiful, Within without 2010, the Skyspace at the National Gallery of Australia.
This exhibition was Turrell’s first in Australia and followed three highly successful shows in the USA. After a sold out season at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) it went on to be the highest attended exhibition ever held at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. The NGA’s retrospective combined works from the LACMA exhibition, with new NGA acquisitions, and included a site specific Ganzfeld, designed and purpose-built for Canberra.
(above)
James Turrell Within without 2010
This skyspace is a permanent lighting installation at the NGA
© James Turrell Photographs: John Gollings
(right)
James Turrell Virtuality squared 2014
This Ganzfeld, specially designed for Canberra, was one of the artists largest in the series to date. Visitors ascend a staircase stepping through a paper-thin aperture, becoming saturated in colour, in an endless space, with no discernible edges, corners, depth or form
James Turrell sits at his perceptual cell,
Bindu Shards 2010, NGA
The exhibition featured over 50 works, including light projection pieces, installations, holograms, drawings, prints and photographs and 10 spectacular light installations.
The detailed design, construction techniques and finishes, and the sourcing and installation of bespoke lighting all required meticulous precision for the exhibition to be a success. Its technical scale, the scope of its construction, quality control, and the contractor and budget management was unprecedented in Australia. The technical, logistic and operational challenges also involved many safety challenges for a public venue.
Adam Worrall says that 'the James Turrell exhibition was a hugely complex and difficult project, but also the most incredibly rewarding exhibition I've ever worked on.'
At the press launch, James Turrell declared the show to be 'the most beautifully made of all my exhibitions'.
