Lucem Sonos Exhibition

Year 9 students recently captivated audiences with Lucem Sonos, Wenona's third annual light and sound exhibition, a stunning showcase where Visual Arts, Design and Technology, and Science converged in unexpected ways.

The interactive exhibition invited visitors to explore the fascinating interplay between light, perception and creativity through photography, sculpture, and hands-on scientific demonstrations.

In Visual Arts, students delved into Project Inertia, creating contemporary interpretations of Vanitas, which is a 17th-century Dutch artistic tradition that reflected on time's fleeting nature.

The students had the privilege of working with renowned Australian photographer Janet Tavener, whose work is featured in Wenona's Athenaeum collection. Tavener, a finalist for prestigious awards including the Blake Prize and the National Photographic Portrait Prize, and winner of the 2017 North Sydney Art Prize, shared her expertise through workshops and demonstrations.

Inspired by Tavener's practice, students used strobe lighting to freeze moments in time, creating the appearance of ink dispersing through water, objects suspended mid-fall and light dancing across moving water and flowers. Each stunning photograph then became the foundation for a photorealistic painting, challenging students to translate their captured moment into pigment.

Design and Technology students pushed creative boundaries by transforming humble polypropylene into elegant illuminated sculptures. By applying vinyl elements to the material's surface, they created pieces that shifted and changed depending on the viewer's position, revealing different silhouettes and patterns as light passed through.

The Science installations brought centuries of optical discovery to life through hands-on exploration:

Pinhole cameras and camera obscura demonstrated how scientists first studied light, while kaleidoscopes showcased Sir David Brewster's 1816 discovery of symmetrical reflection patterns.

Visitors were mesmerised by infinity mirrors creating seemingly endless reflections, and holographic projectors using 19th-century Pepper's Ghost techniques to generate floating 3D images.

Multiple further installations revealed the complexity of colour by focusing on coloured shadows that challenged expectations, optical illusion boxes that shifted with lighting changes and CMY cubes that demonstrated colour-mixing principles.

An animation station invited participation by bringing visitors' sketches to life through projection, while light-up bracelets demonstrated how individual pixels combine to form digital images.