Hanako Murakami: Radiant Force

Artist Hanako Murakami has long explored photography’s origins. Returning to its earliest experimental moments, she looks back to the period before photography was fully named or stabilised as a medium.

Murakami evokes a world of multiple possibilities for image-making through film, installation, olfactory works and unique photographic objects, drawing upon the chemical experiments of scientists working over 200 years ago and excavating forgotten photographic processes through rigorous research and experimentation.

The artist’s first exhibition in Australia, Hanako Murakami: Radiant Force presents recent and new works. These include new works in Murakami’s ongoing Thermography series, featuring glowing plants selected from the gardens of French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, and a perfume conjuring the sensory experience of making photographs in the 1820s. As we approach two centuries since the world’s oldest surviving photograph was made, Hanako Murakami: Radiant Force encourages us to revisit what we think we know about photography. 

Curated by Antares Wells.