PETER SOLNESS EXHIBITION
Peter is a multi-award winning photographer, artist, educator and writer who specialises in the photographic method of Light Painting.
Peter Solness – Holtermann Projections, Hill End
Henry Beaufoy Merlin impersonator (Peter Solness) and assistant, Charles Bayliss (Jane Collins) participated in the 2023 Henry Lawson Festival. Peter hosted a moving projection walking tour in Gulgong over the Festival weekend, featuring Holtermann photos taken in Gulgong during 1872. This one-off night event was a huge success using photographs taken during the Goldrush era of Gulgong.
Peter opened his exhibition on Saturday 10th June 2023. His series of works created in Hill End that featured photographs from the Holtermann Collection.
It was Henry Beaufoy Merlin who took most of the earlier landscape views in the Holtermann Collection and who, over an incredible ten years between 1863 and 1873, transformed himself from a theatrical showman into a landscape photographer, acknowledged by his contemporaries as one of the most important in Australia.
To create these works Peter set out night after night with a camera, tripod and torch, and projector powered by a car battery. He set about projecting images from the collection onto a range of sites in Hill End. Some of the projections relate directly to the locations themselves whilst others are chosen for their artistic value.
Peter’s Hill End Projection work is on exhibit in the Museum theatrette, sharing a contemporary use of Hill End images from the Holtermann Collection. The Exhibition is open daily from 10am to 3pm and is included in the Museum entry fee.
