Blue Jay Way
Blue Jay Way
Sue Pedley
3 March - 24 June 2007
Venue: Heide II
Blue Jay Way installation detail 2006-07
Centennial Park, Sydney
Photographer:Ruby Davies
© Sue Pedley & Ruby Davies
In creating the project Blue Jay Way (2006–07), Sue Pedley responded to the people and places of two notable sites for the history of modern and contemporary Australian art: Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne, Victoria, and Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest, at Emu Plains in western Sydney, New South Wales, the former homes of patrons and artists respectively. Evoking the vistas and sounds of the homes and garden landscapes created by John and Sunday Reed here at Heide (where the Reeds lived from 1935—1981) and Gerald and Margo Lewers at Penrith (the Lewers’ family home from the 1940s—1978), Pedley’s Blue Jay Way connects past and present. Exhibited first at Heide and then subsequently at Penrith Regional Gallery, Blue Jay Way condenses these two discrete locations and their times
In the one hundred cyanotype prints and blue plastic buckets comprising Blue Jay Way, Pedley explores the effects of light, space and sound to stimulate new ways of engaging with her chosen cultural and natural contexts. Inspired by the character of the times when these two houses were built (Heide II was designed by McGlashan and Everist from 1963–64 and the Lewers’ Ancher House by Sydney Ancher in 1964), Pedley draws on the popular music of the Beatles in the texts that feature in her prints and sculptural works. Song lyrics and titles contrast with birdcalls from the natural habitats of the two gardens, perforated into the buckets or captured as shadows on the cyanotypes, representing the spirit of place across the sixties to today.
On display in Heide II is a selection of Pedley’s cyanotypes, blue prints made by exposing paper treated with light-sensitive emulsion to sunlight. These are complemented outdoors by sculptural works awaiting discovery in the Heide II courtyards and surrounding parkland. Bringing history into the present, and melding gardens and galleries of today with their past, Pedley invites you to join her magical mystery tour…
