SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA- Two of Australia's best-known contemporary artists Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley are set to exhibit one of their latest collaborative works using neon lights and sculpture. An essentially 20th-century phenomenon, neon is largely associated with advertising and the glitter of big-city retail. It's also a medium Burchill and McCamley have used together extensively in the past and they are well aware of its visual impact, particularly in Sydney.

For this exhibition Burchill and McCamley are proposing to exhibit a new neon sculpture built around a 'found' sentence. Yet in contrast to the pop, bold lights of Sydney's cityscape, the artists aim to create a fragile site sensitive experience, which communicates the visual power of language. Perhaps there is something uncanny about glass tubes flooded with a poisonous inert gas, contorted into odd shapes, shuddering with electric current.

Language and the language of art have often been central to their work. Their neon sculptures constitute part of an ongoing series and a major new strand of their collaborative activities. The language that comprises the neon is 'found', with most phrases coming from literature or film. The titles, however, do not relate to the content of the film but are chosen for their poetic attitude and ability to condense many ideas into something succinct.

About their choice of title and process, Burchill and McCamley have said: While there is often an element of homage in the choices, the pieces aren't primarily meant to invoke the original work. Titles are chosen because of the tenor and sentiment that they evoke and, in a way, our selection constitutes a new type of genealogy of art. The titles we choose have a hard poetic tenor, a tenor which is carried through in the materiality of the artworks. We aim to make our works highly condensed, both materially and conceptually.

Burchill and McCamley who live and work in Melbourne both acknowledge that while neon is an older technology than digital or video it is by no means defunct. Burchill believes neon signs have a pop element that is appealing. Jennifer McCamley says to her 'Sydney is like a neon city. It’s everywhere.'
NEON - Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley.