Len Lye at ACMI
Discover the art of Len Lye (1901 – 1980), one of the most radical creative minds of the modern age. This unforgettably exuberant exhibition surveys his work across film, sculpture, painting, poetry and more. Exploding with kaleidoscopic colour and pulsing with rhythmic beats, the exhibition is the largest survey of Len Lye’s work ever presented.
New Zealand-born Len Lye is a seminal figure in the history of the moving image. In his early twenties, Lye travelled throughout the South Pacific, and lived for extended periods in Australia and Samoa. Moving to London in the twenties, and then New York in the forties, Len Lye’s career unfolded amidst avant garde modernism on the international stage.
Drawing from the Len Lye Foundation Collection and Archive, the exhibition combines artworks with rarely-seen biographical ephemera, concept drawings and other working materials, many on public display for the first time.
Beginning in the 1930s, Len Lye made films without a camera, applying hand-painted imagery directly to the film strip. Combining these vibrant abstractions with rhythmic Cuban jazz, works such as A Colour Box (1935) and Rainbow Dance (1936) have become touchstones for the medium of film as an artistic expression.
Exhibition runs until Sunday 11 October 2009 Open daily 10am – 6pm Free admission
ACMI has created a workshop called Scratch it, which demonstrates how Len Lye created abstract films – called ‘direct films’ – by scratching patterns and marks directly onto celluloid.
With about 15 seconds of film stock, you’ll create a short sequence in this workshop that, when spliced together with sections created by other participants, will form a large collaborative and abstract film.
SCRATCH IT (workshop) Sun 23 Aug 2009, 1pm-4pm location: Studio 1, ACMI, Fed Square, Melbourne, Australia admission: Free
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