National Gallery of Australia | Audio Tour | Home Sweet Home

PF: Bill Culbert’s light box is interesting, because the yellow in it is a very intense yellow, which reminds me of the reflector pieces that Rosalie made so famous. It’s also three or four found objects; an old biscuit tin, a soap dispenser, and oil dispenser and a yellow cup, with two of them inverted with a light source under them. And they just glow like the sun. They have sense of light emanating from them. And it is a theme that runs through this collection; it’s the way in which the found, the discarded; the refuse of life… the detritus… There are artists out there who can turn that so simply, at just a turn, into something that is so beautiful and is so poetic, and never attempting to disguise what those objects are. And you can see a sense of age, and mark, and use in this particular piece and yet it transcends that, and creates [its] own magic, [its] own poetry, without attempting to subvert the elements therein. And that is the magic; that is artifice of art, and it’s right in front of you, and