Ambient Paintings (Public Artworks)

Ross Manning’s Ambient Paintings is an ongoing series of works that use dichroic filters to refract light into its colour wavelengths. This body of work was originally installed in the confines of gallery spaces and on white canvases—recent installations have extended into the public domain as public artworks through larger wall installations, and architectural interventions. Dichroic filters are a material used in data projectors to generate and mix coloured light in the production of a digital image. Manning’s Ambient Paintings see these filters fixed to glass and mounted at 90 degrees. Ambient light from the space in which the work occupies then catalyses 'passive' electronic imagery, ‘projecting’ colours from the filtered ambient white light across the surrounding space. Ambient ricochets of colour disperse across surrounding surfaces—encompassing all matter of objects and architecture in their path. 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’.

Ambient Painting (Blue Tower) was commissioned for Blue Tower’s Foyer  (12 Creek St, Brisbane) and Ambient Painting (Milani Gallery) is installed on the façade of Milani Gallery.