
Dancing from the Dark, Looking for the Light, a new exhibition from Debra Luccio, offers an exciting new series of monotypes, drypoints and etchings.
Each artwork draws inspiration from in situ drawings and photographs made at rehearsals for The Australian Ballet’s productions of Murphy (the celebration of Graeme Murphy), Tim Harbour’s Filigree and Shadow, and Alice Topp’s award winning Aurum.
This evocative and exciting exhibition brings together fifty-two artworks showcasing the artist’s highly recognisable, powerful approach to monotypes. It is to be opened by the Artistic Director of The Australian Ballet, David McAllister AM, on Tuesday 1st October and shows until 26th October at fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne.
Of her experience, Luccio says: “It is such a privilege to sit in the studios, at times at the dancers’ feet, and watch, photograph and draw them as they rehearse. It allows their movements to sink deeper into my consciousness. More layers are formed in my memory. When I’m back in my own studio, I try to recall as much emotion and movement from the moment as I can.
I was very lucky to be in the studios with Graeme Murphy as he prepared Murphy, celebrating his 50 years with The Australian Ballet in 2018. Murphy is incredibly generous, and exciting to watch in the studios. Both he and his partner, Janet Vernon, move so beautifully. Watching choreographers communicate in movement is something that is very hard to describe in words. It lives with me.

Murphy’s performances are sensuous and evocative; Harbour’s Filigree and Shadow is raw and powerful, and Topp’s Aurum, which recently won the 2019 Helpmann Award for Best Ballet, is sensitive, beautiful, and powerful too.
Each performance evokes a different sensibility in me as I work in my studio and draw on my memories of rehearsals, and I hope each artwork can create different sensations for viewers.”

Visitors to fortyfivedownstairs can expect a transformation into the world of dance as they enter the warehouse-style space. With its wooden floors, high ceiling and beautiful light, it makes the perfect backdrop for Luccio’s images of dance. In this space Luccio’s work seems to leap off the walls. Much like the performances she portrays, Luccio’s works are filled with great emotive energy.
Her dancers are not depicted in the way one might traditionally imagine, in realistic style, but rather in a dynamic, contemporary combination of expressive abstraction with realism. Luccio has created this effect by using the inked roller to layer colours onto a copper sheet. Following this layering of colours, Luccio then wipes away the etching ink to reveal light and form, bringing to life a sculptural and fully modelled dancer, working back into the details with fine brushes on the copper plate before printing through a printmaking press onto paper. “With the strong element of chance, the abstraction of marks and the unusual textures able to be created with rich etching inks, monotype making is a technique hard to beat,” says Luccio.
Dancing from the Dark, Looking for the Light will run at fortyfivedownstairs from October 1 – 26, 2019 at 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne.