25 WATT MOON

© Abigail Lane. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2023.

25 WATT MOON 1996

Abigail Lane (1967 – )

Details

Dimension
59.3 X 29 CM
Media
PHOTOLITHOGRAPH
Accession number
P6602

Summary

There is a deathly sense of impending tragedy in 25 Watt Moon, a photolithograph image derived from her film of the same name. Moths repeatedly encircle the weak light bulb, colliding with it in their delicate excitement; the seductive light which is finally of no use to them and is likely to accelerate their deaths. The low wattage implies low life, and the setting is ambiguous: is this a cheap hotel, tenement or charnel house? In the context of Lane’s previous works, this scene takes on the identity of aftermath, evidence of an event as much as portents of things to come. For her 1995 installation Bloody Wallpaper, she used the image of marks made by a murder victim with their own blood, in the last desperate flailings or an attempt at communication, as the repeated pattern on wallpaper. Actions leave evidence, and many of her works have built fragile narratives upon traces, a note here, a print there.

Multiple Choice: Prints by Young British Artists, The British Council 1997

Glossary

  • Film

    A transparent, flexible plastic material, usually of cellulose acetate or polyester, on which light-sensitive emulsion is coated, or on which an image can be formed by various transfer processes.

  • Installation

    An artwork comprised of many and various elements of miscellaneous materials (see mixed media), light and sound, which is conceived for and occupies an entire space, gallery or site. The viewer can often enter or walk around the installation. Installations may only exist as long as they are installed, but can be re-created in different sites. Installation art emerged in the 1960s out of Environmental Art (works of art which are three-dimensional environments), but it was not until the 1970s that the term came into common use and not until the late 1980s that artists started to specialise in this kind of work, creating a genre of ‘Installation Art’. The term can also be applied to the arrangement of selected art works in an exhibition.