Lightshows - 60s to NOW

Artist: Roger Foley-FOGG (Australia) 

Collaborators: Sarah Breen Lovett (Australia) / Analise Rusty Roorda (Australia) / Graham Beatty (Australia) / Francesca Emerson (Australia) / The University of Wollongong / Willem Roorda (Australia)

LIGHTSHOW – 60s to NOW is both an installation and an exhibition: it presents a series of light displays by artist Roger Foley-FOGG (aka Ellis D Fogg) and tracks the creative development of lightshow art in Australia from the 1960s to the present day. 

Roger Foley-FOGG was there from the beginning. In the 1960s the artist was an early proponent of the counterculture movement and FOGG LIGHTSHOWS became a popular phenomena. They were designed to produce a total multimedia experience that would expand audience awareness and open their senses to ‘the oneness of the world’. In the 1970s, Foley-FOGG was also a member of The Yellow House, an influential artist collective led by Martin Sharp and filmmaker Albie Thoms.

Over five decades, the artist’s impressive body of work has helped to establish and evolve the medium of lightshow art. His shows redefined the context of staging and performance through their innovative use of multimedia and have been incorporated in art ‘happenings’, theatrical and concert performances, dance parties, ceremonies, celebrations and spectacles.

LIGHTSHOW – 60s to NOW showcases the artist’s recent collection of light sculptures and also presents an exhibition that takes visitors through different eras: from sixties psychedelia and ‘liquid wet shows’ to the advent of lasers and the innovation of LEDs. 

A highlight of the artist’s collection of light displays is a work inspired by his earliest fascination with light: as a schoolboy in the 1950s he was captivated by the way in which the glass of his bathroom window would filter sunlit leaves in the gently blowing breeze outside. He describes the quality of this light as ‘mystical’ ‘enigmatic’ and ‘numinous’ (that is, suggesting the presence of divinity).
 

Country represented by installation: Australia