In TRANSLUCENCE, her first exhibition for HEAD ON, Jacqui Dean reveals Australia’s flora, native and introduced – in radically new ways. Dean’s vision reduces flowers to their essential, sculptural shapes, and translates them into exquisite black and white prints. Calla lilies are seen as never before – with their curved flowers resembling the shape and texture of crystal chalices Dean’s images of roses, through scanning and digital magic, reveal interlaced petals adopting textures that mimic a bridal veil.
Jacqui Dean is a talented Sydney architectural, corporate and fine-art photographer known for her rigourous sense of composition and peerless black and white print-making skills. The twenty B&W prints on display at the Danks Street Depot Gallery show an artist exploring a subject close to her heart – Nature. “I was always curious about seeing the unseen. When I was commissioned to create a large graphic visual design for a building exterior for Abet Laminati, one of my corporate clients, I thought it would be interesting to show how the inside of a nautilus shell beautifully expresses the mathematician Fibonacci’s numerical sequence. So I had the shells x-rayed and the inner chambers of the Nautilus (shell) revealed Fibonacci’s classic spiral – probably one of nature’s most pleasing shapes to the eye. I had (also) been thinking of imaging flowers in this way. I experimented first with a rose. The results were exquisite proving there can be wonders hidden inside something as common as a garden rose. I had wanted to explore my personal vision and then apply it to my commercial work. And this was the answer.”
Jacqui Dean’s TRANSLUCENCE images are available singly or in a boxed portfolio edition of twelve archival prints.
