THE EYES HAVE IT

If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to visit the magnificent Eyes, Lies and Illusions exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) then you’re missing out on one of the best screen culture events of the year.

I swung by Federation Square on Sunday afternoon, assuming that I’d be able to skim through the exhibition in half an hour before getting to another show at the National Gallery of Victoria. Instead, I spent an engrossing two hours in slack-jawed, wide-eyed wonder.

Eyes, Lies and Illusions presents the pre-cinematic entertainments of the past, from the Renaissance to the Victorian era, in a seven-part exhibition drawn from the collection of German experimental film-faker, professor and curator Werner Nekes, via London’s Hayward Gallery. Exploring the history of optical trickery, and a world of wonder that pre-dates the modern moving image, this collection of magic lanterns and magic mirrors, camera obscura and praxinoscopes is truly a marvellous show.

Unlike some exhibitions, which tend towards the static and unengaging, Eyes, Lies and Illusions teases you into becoming active and alert to the possibilities of the exhibits and the entertainments they provide, whether it’s giggling at your reflection in a distorting mirror, stepping into the warping angles of the ‘Ames Room’ or peering into the viewer of a kinetoscope.

Works by several contemporary visual artists, integrated into the exhibition, demonstrate how visual trickery continues to fascinate and entertain in the modern world. Of these works, one of the most delightful is Crowd (pictured above; an interactive artwork by Melbourne-based design specialists Eness) a suspended, disembodied community of eyeballs that tracks your movements about ACMI’s screen gallery.

Eyes, Lies and Illusions runs until February 11 2007. For details go to www.acmi.net.au

For more arts news and gossip read my weekly column Art of the City every Wednesday in Beat magazine.