Category: Exhibition

Group show at Saint Cloche Gallery saintcloche.com

Ralph Stanton at Disorder, September – October 2021

“There’s a Crack in Everything (L. Cohen)”

What’s happening?

Good question. What is happening in the world now? Unprecedented, unstoppable global events: a dreadful, pandemic; drastic environmental and climate shocks; a major shift in our freedoms and in global power. And personal tragedies unfolding worldwide at enormous scale.

What are we to make of it all? I am intrigued by the feeling behind Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem”: “Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering; There’s a crack , a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in”.

In 2014 I was invited to join in an installation / exhibition at PSAS Fremantle with Geoff Wake and “Zweitgeist” (Tom Muller and Horst Kornberger)  The show, entitled “Dark Light” , comprised site-specific works using neon, projected images and LEDs in the darkened gallery.

My contribution – “Inner Light” – entailed a large, matte black-painted cube, 2.5m3, floating as if weightless upon a soft, gently shifting indirect LED light, which was slowly cycling through the spectrum. This created a seemingly impossible enigma, invoking “the insubstantiality of matter” and a quiet, contemplative mood which expanded into the surrounding space.