David Green  explores the essence of light in his art works.

We rely on light to capture images of what is around us at the back of our eyes, and our brain makes sense of those images to tell us what we are seeing. In his Emergence exhibition of four video artworks David Green explores how our minds process what we see, using light as his material. This exhibition is the culmination of three years of research for his Master of Fine Arts, which was supervised by Michele Beevors and Professor Leoni Schmidt.

In each of the works David layers moving shapes and colours, with the colours dissociated from form. We are at first simply mesmerised by the perpetual movement, as when watching flames burning. Then patterns emerge amongst the seemingly random movements, patterns that we recognise as animal or human behaviour, which David has sourced from an old film work. This movement enables us to make sense of what we are seeing – if sense is required. It's a slowed down version of the way different parts of the brain process different aspects of vision.

These works provide another dimension, with the reflection of the video images emerging from behind the videos and displaying on the wall to immerse the viewer in an experience of light. The light is bent and twisted so that the images are distorted into new shapes, alluding to the brain's neural networks. These secondary images retain the constant movement but are constrained by mathematical algorithms, defined by the curves of the glass screens onto which the videos are projected.  The overall effect is of aurora somehow contained in a room. 

David describes art as a thinking tool. "If my art makes you think about things in relation to each other that you haven't thought about before, then I'm happy."

Read more about the Emergence exhibition here.

Read more about the Master of Fine Arts programme here.