At Ceal Floyer’s first exhibition in the early 1990s in London, the artist presented a photograph of a light switch, projected onto the gallery wall at precisely the height you’d intuitively find it at home. When the penny drops, you realise what you’re looking at is an image – then you understand that, in fact, what you’re looking at is an idea.
Titled Light Switch, the work has since been restaged in different editions. As she explains, Light Switch, like pieces such as Overhead Projection, 2006, Auto Focus, 2010, and Fallen Star, 2018, presents the fulcrum of an object as ‘an essential, highly visible component of the work’. The equipment that creates the images is left out in the open, in the middle of the gallery space. ‘Nothing is hidden…
