AIR: Anthony McCall

Anthony McCall
United Kingdom / United States b.1946
Crossing 2016
Two double video projections (20 minutes), haze machine and sound, ed. 1/3
Commissioned to mark the tenth anniversary of the opening of the Gallery of Modern Art. Purchased 2016 with funds from Tim Fairfax AC through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation

Anthony McCall draws our attention to the volume of air held within the gallery as a space of dramatic potential in his expansive light installation Crossing 2016.

An installation view of a visitor exploring a work made of light.

Anthony McCall’s Crossing 2016, installed at GOMA for ‘A World View: The Tim Fairfax Gift’, December 2016 / © Anthony McCall / Photograph: N Harth, QAGOMA

An architecture of light slowly unfolds within the darkness. White light is projected onto the floor in two pairs of beams: a near-full ellipse and a straight-line dance together in one pairing; an ellipse and curved line in the other. Like graphic code, the simple geometry of these ‘drawings’ can be read clearly on the dark carpet, but what is surprising is the way each long beam of light appears convincingly solid within the haze-filled gallery.

The sound of a wave moves slowly through the space, like a slow whoosh, or deep movement of breath. It is not recorded from the natural world but composed from white noise. Like the lines of light we see, what we hear is also an abstraction.