Observations With Dark Light

Elisabeth Lewis reviews Alexander de Cadenet’s Demi-Monde at F-ISH Gallery, Robertson Street

This is a show about the dark side of life, monde noir. The pictures are drawing us to the significant in the detritus of the ordinary, the apparently random and the almost too private. Like the death of a grandfather, who has more presence here than the young family so full of life. People flit like ghosts through what might be real streets, houses. Or lie on beds, confront each other, and are even glimpsed dying behind their lace curtains.

There is light, like sunshine and moonshine too. Light with the quality of stage lighting, brief, deliberately sparing, only just enough and quite hauntingly beautiful as in the Changeling and witty like in Intermission.
Except for Ghost, a completely black unlit picture. No photograph then? No painting with light here.

Imagine though, what could be hidden behind that veil of darkness? What other scenes of touching intimacies?

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