Null is Not an Object
Mary Cherry Contemporary 2025
Taking its title from a recurring error message in film editing software Adobe Premiere Pro—null is not an object—this solo exhibition meditates on the physical materiality of analogue film, and the thresholds between presence and absence in cinematic experience.
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Cage Study with Leader (blue), 2025, inkjet print, 16mm film leader.
56 x 66 cm (frame)
This diptych captures the playful and uncanny rituals of cinema-going, exploring anticipation and spectacle. Both photographs feature a figure wearing a Nic Cage mask, gifted to attendees at the Australian premiere of The Surfer (2024) at the Astor Cinema, where the entire audience participated in a moment of collective performance. The protruding 16mm blue film leader extends from the prints like a curtain, evoking both the physical mechanics of projection and the theatrical anticipation of the screen. In one work, the leader cascades across the image like a draped curtain, shrouding the masked figure and suspending this moment of cinematic spectacle.
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Mirror Mirror: Intervals in Gold, 2025, antique gold mirror acrylic, 35mm film leader (yellow)
90.5 x 120 cm (mirror)
In Mirror Mirror: Intervals in Gold, Valender transforms the peripheries of cinema into moments of reflection and reverie. Yellow 35mm film leader drapes across panels of antique gold mirror acrylic, cascading like molten gold or honey, shimmering with the opulence of old Hollywood. The works are at once minimalist and sumptuous: surfaces catch the light, inviting the viewer to see themselves within the folds of the material, to inhabit a space where anticipation, memory and reflection converge.
Empty frames of film leader hold their promise quietly, hinting at stories that never fully arrive. These luminous panels ask us to linger, to consider the poetry of pause, the material traces of cinematic spectacle and the intimate interplay between audience, object and light.
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Pink Intermissions, 2025, vintage 35mm cinema film trailers (1970s), glass panels, fringing.
39 x 31 cm (frame), 138 x 31 cm (with fringing)
This collection of collaged film works draw on the material and cultural residue of cinema. Each piece is constructed from vintage 1970s 35mm cinema advertisements, cut frame by frame and arranged between panes of glass, set within black wooden frames adorned with fringing. The use of pink-toned celluloid lends the works a spectral quality, both nostalgic and uncanny, where promotional fragments of a bygone cinema era are suspended in fragile mosaics.
Placed on the gallery’s windowsill, the works harness shifting natural light as a secondary medium. Throughout the day, the collaged frames glow and project their shadows across the gallery walls, echoing the ephemeral mechanics of projection itself. What once functioned as peripheral material—pre-show trailers, intermission ads—now occupies centre stage, transformed into sculptural light catchers that embody cinema’s ghostly architectures.
The fringed frames introduce a touch of the ornamental, aligning with the cinema advertisements they encase; both devices of allure, crafted to entice and seduce. The fringing also evokes the ceremonial sweep of cinema and stage curtains, framing each collage as a miniature theatre where light and shadow perform. Together, these elements operate as residues of spectacle, remnants lingering as ghostly traces, inviting viewers to inhabit the thresholds between memory, materiality and the fleeting drama of the cinematic experience.
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Deaf Pixels, 2021, 5min30sec, single channel projection.
Drawing on Valender’s experience as a cinema projectionist in New Zealand, where economic necessity meant working long hours and balancing multiple jobs, this work reflects on the tension between cinematic fantasy and lived reality. While projecting films that celebrated the opulence of love, adventure and promise, Valender navigated the modest possibilities of life in a rural town. Deaf Pixels transforms these experiences into a patchwork of projected imagery, where the glow of analogue film and digital pixels becomes a metaphor for longing, absence and the contrasts between aspiration and circumstance.
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September, 2025
Mary Cherry Contemporary 2025
Taking its title from a recurring error message in film editing software Adobe Premiere Pro—null is not an object—this solo exhibition meditates on the physical materiality of analogue film, and the thresholds between presence and absence in cinematic experience.
Cage Study with Leader (blue), 2025, inkjet print, 16mm film leader.
56 x 66 cm (frame)
This diptych captures the playful and uncanny rituals of cinema-going, exploring anticipation and spectacle. Both photographs feature a figure wearing a Nic Cage mask, gifted to attendees at the Australian premiere of The Surfer (2024) at the Astor Cinema, where the entire audience participated in a moment of collective performance. The protruding 16mm blue film leader extends from the prints like a curtain, evoking both the physical mechanics of projection and the theatrical anticipation of the screen. In one work, the leader cascades across the image like a draped curtain, shrouding the masked figure and suspending this moment of cinematic spectacle.
Mirror Mirror: Intervals in Gold, 2025, antique gold mirror acrylic, 35mm film leader (yellow)
90.5 x 120 cm (mirror)
In Mirror Mirror: Intervals in Gold, Valender transforms the peripheries of cinema into moments of reflection and reverie. Yellow 35mm film leader drapes across panels of antique gold mirror acrylic, cascading like molten gold or honey, shimmering with the opulence of old Hollywood. The works are at once minimalist and sumptuous: surfaces catch the light, inviting the viewer to see themselves within the folds of the material, to inhabit a space where anticipation, memory and reflection converge.
Empty frames of film leader hold their promise quietly, hinting at stories that never fully arrive. These luminous panels ask us to linger, to consider the poetry of pause, the material traces of cinematic spectacle and the intimate interplay between audience, object and light.
Pink Intermissions, 2025, vintage 35mm cinema film trailers (1970s), glass panels, fringing.
39 x 31 cm (frame), 138 x 31 cm (with fringing)
This collection of collaged film works draw on the material and cultural residue of cinema. Each piece is constructed from vintage 1970s 35mm cinema advertisements, cut frame by frame and arranged between panes of glass, set within black wooden frames adorned with fringing. The use of pink-toned celluloid lends the works a spectral quality, both nostalgic and uncanny, where promotional fragments of a bygone cinema era are suspended in fragile mosaics.
Placed on the gallery’s windowsill, the works harness shifting natural light as a secondary medium. Throughout the day, the collaged frames glow and project their shadows across the gallery walls, echoing the ephemeral mechanics of projection itself. What once functioned as peripheral material—pre-show trailers, intermission ads—now occupies centre stage, transformed into sculptural light catchers that embody cinema’s ghostly architectures.
The fringed frames introduce a touch of the ornamental, aligning with the cinema advertisements they encase; both devices of allure, crafted to entice and seduce. The fringing also evokes the ceremonial sweep of cinema and stage curtains, framing each collage as a miniature theatre where light and shadow perform. Together, these elements operate as residues of spectacle, remnants lingering as ghostly traces, inviting viewers to inhabit the thresholds between memory, materiality and the fleeting drama of the cinematic experience.
Deaf Pixels, 2021, 5min30sec, single channel projection.
Drawing on Valender’s experience as a cinema projectionist in New Zealand, where economic necessity meant working long hours and balancing multiple jobs, this work reflects on the tension between cinematic fantasy and lived reality. While projecting films that celebrated the opulence of love, adventure and promise, Valender navigated the modest possibilities of life in a rural town. Deaf Pixels transforms these experiences into a patchwork of projected imagery, where the glow of analogue film and digital pixels becomes a metaphor for longing, absence and the contrasts between aspiration and circumstance.
"I think the two things that make this show special for me are the use of the film leader
and natural light. Film leader has a poetic quality of anticipation, like an orchestra tuning
up, where the potential experience to follow it is unknown and infinite. The suspension
of this feeling in the artwork was the starting point for this show. As was implementing
natural light, where the experience of the artworks installed on the windowsill change
throughout the day and with the weather. On a brilliant sunny afternoon shades of
raspberry, from the Pink Intermissions series, are cast across the gallery walls. As I was
creating the works I kept thinking about the different definitions of “projection"—to
project light; to protrude physically; to capture a psychological projection—and how
they could be embedded in the work." Jen Valender, Lowbrow review.
and natural light. Film leader has a poetic quality of anticipation, like an orchestra tuning
up, where the potential experience to follow it is unknown and infinite. The suspension
of this feeling in the artwork was the starting point for this show. As was implementing
natural light, where the experience of the artworks installed on the windowsill change
throughout the day and with the weather. On a brilliant sunny afternoon shades of
raspberry, from the Pink Intermissions series, are cast across the gallery walls. As I was
creating the works I kept thinking about the different definitions of “projection"—to
project light; to protrude physically; to capture a psychological projection—and how
they could be embedded in the work." Jen Valender, Lowbrow review.
September, 2025