Darkness by Day…. Shannon McGrath

Shannon McGrath is one of Australia’s most highly respected architectural and interiors photographers with her award-winning images appearing in over 200 different books, journals, magazines , blogs nationally and internationally in the past 12 years. McGrath, a graduate in fine arts and photography, is also dedicated to an artistic oeuvre. ‘Evolving Possibilities’, a solo exhibition in 2011, concentrated on external images from two Frank Gehry projects in Spain, including Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum. ‘Darkness by Day’ continues this theme of visual enquiry into surface and what may be concealed and revealed depending on each viewer’s experience.

Describing her latest exhibition “Darkness by Day” Shannon’s says . “These stacks of saw-mill timber were shot in broad daylight without any artificial lighting, in situ and without any intervention in their arrangement. I was drawn to the dark element in them that survives this ‘glare’ yet reveals it in other ways – how the light naturally hits the objects and remains in an interplay with the darkness and shadows of the grain, the individual and beautiful markings the blade has left on the natural material, and the extrusions and hollows of the layering of the wood. This gave the show its title. Even in the jewel-like, cobalt image, there is this dynamic. This is a theme that runs through my creative photography: surfaces which are also hidden, which slowly reveal aspects and possibilities, subtleties and complexities. I considered wood as an essential building material so I approached the stacks of timber and photographed it with the same sensitivity as architecture.”

Gracing the pages of countless publications here’s a snapshot of some of Shannon McGrath’s interior photography. If your in Melbourne the exhibition is open until July 14 see flyer for more details. Ps Ill be defiantly checking it out.

To see more from Shannon McGrath