Toni Mackinnon: Never Before Shades (2011)

Toni Mackinnon takes the viewer back to “1965 when Faberge, capitalising on the desire of women to create a bold new identity released its new brand of ‘Make-op’! with its ‘never before shades’.”(1) The titles of the works explicitly acknowledge leading op art artists by variously using their first or surnames. (2)

Mackinnon uses the optical effects of hard-edged black and white patterns that appear to vibrate and change shape as the viewer watches and comes to experience them. She establishes visual illusions through a varied process involving “collaging hand-made and digital processes the photographs from a variety of sources (such as Life magazine, photographic annuals and technical manuals of the 1960s) and these photographic images are then reworked in gouache to introduce the found images from various Op Art artists.” (3)

Each work also openly acknowledges the major exhibition at MOMA, New York in 1965 entitled “The Responsive Eye”. Mackinnon’s adroit placement of eyes or lips animates each work and also humanises them, eliciting from the viewer experiences of participation and individualised identity.

Mackinnon uses white space in a radical way as a compositional device as well as a colour in itself and in these ways what at first may seem visually simple or restrained comes to achieve powerful resonances which build and reach well beyond the original op art sources.

(1) Toni Mackinnon, Artist Statement, 5 October 2011
(2) Rakuko Naito, Marina Apollonio, Edna Andrade, Elsworth Kelly, Sonia Delaunay, Hilma Klimt
(3) Toni Mackinnon, Artist Statement, 5 October 2011

Event listed by Milford Galleries

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