Rebecca Baumann

Working across sculpture, installation and performance, Rebecca Baumann’s practice explores the relationships between colour, time, movement, space and materiality, and the emotive potential that exists when these elements converge in different ways. Often kinetic or ephemeral, Baumann’s work has employed a wide range of playful and experimental materials, including confetti, balloons, vinyl, streamers, smoke, and tinsel. Her work questions notions of temporality and permanence – bringing her audiences into changing, affecting and performative spaces that respond in different ways to changes in light and movement.

Commissioned in 2022, Light Interference (Spectral Transmission) carefully considers the architecture in the Gallery’s atrium and the role natural light plays within this space. Using a dichroic film, this colour-shifting material transmits and reflects a range of colours depending on the strength and direction of sunlight and the position of the viewer. Light Interference (Spectral Transmission) runs the length of the Gallery’s skylight, as well as sections of the front window panels. Depending on the time of day and the weather, the atrium can be flooded in soft washes of colour or intersected by intensely colourful beams of light. The presence of particular colours, shapes and reflections are fleeting – some lasting for only a moment. Creating an engagement with art that is both subjective and often momentary, Baumann’s work explores what it means to sculpt with intangible forms.

Rebecca Baumann (b.1983) lives and works in Boorloo / Perth, Australia. Recent solo exhibitions include Radiant Flux, Carriageworks, Sydney (2020); Window work (intersections and notations), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2018); and WA Focus: Rebecca Baumann, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth (2016). Her work has been included in a range of group exhibitions including Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning, 1301PE, Los Angeles, USA (2021); Autoluminescent, La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo, Victoria (2019); and Kaleidoscope: Abstract Aotearoa, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (2018). Baumann’s work is held in collections across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand including Art Gallery of Western Australia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki; Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; and Dunedin Public Art Gallery.