ambient painting

Colour filter glass, sliver, and Araldite on canvas

Ross Manning’s Ambient Paintings are a series of ongoing works that reuses the colour filters taken from outdated data projectors. The data projectors uses these filters to generate and mix coloured light in the production of a digital image. Here, the salvaged filters are attached to canvases at 90 degrees. The available ambient light from the space in which the work occupies then generates 'passive' electronic imagery, ‘projecting’ colours from the filtered ambient light onto the canvas. This hybrid of electronic image production and painting evolves throughout the day responding to artificial and natural light sources in the space—each installation and moment in time produces an ephemeral composition. In this way they contain, in Manning’s words, ‘the proposition of an image’. From 2019-onwards, Manning has incorporated larger sections of filtered glass into wall hung canvases and in exterior architectural installations.

Ambient Painting (large horizontal) 2021. Photo Carl Warner
From 2019-21, larger sections of filtered glass were incorporated into wall hung canvases and in exterior architectural installations. This installation of 'Ambient Painting' is on the external facadé of Milani Gallery, Brisbane
ambient painting, 2016—ongoing