As the title suggests, Interlude is a small experimental exhibition. A liminal moment within Rosie Mudge’s career in which new motifs are emerging with undefined conclusions. They warn us of the dangers of staring into the sun.

To look to the sun, has long been the driving force for proponents of Western progress. And the dawn of a new era is indeed here as we transgress tech boundaries with AI, redefine political-economic landscapes such as the North Atlantic Treaty and take unwitting control of our climate. Sungazing, Mudge says, creates the illusion of stability: the ever present and unchanging rhythm of day and night that the sun creates on Earth is symptomatic of a much larger and continual propulsion into the unknown. By occupying the space of the crepuscular in Interlude, the artist asks: What will happen when the light changes?

Glowing orbs of light consume many of Mudge’s thoughts on canvas in this exhibition. So do colour charts of twilight and portal-like or submerged views of light. These changing positions or viewer orientations to the sun suggest a changing reference point, placing the viewer in both exterior and interior realms of perspective. This brings us to the artist’s long-standing interest in the human condition, something Mudge views from the vantage point of a shared humanity, not restricted by specific cultural or geopolitical identity politics. The sun as a symbol requires us to consider the human condition as something seen from two vantage points: the wholistic context of the human species and the personal space of psychology. Interior worlds are often accessed away from the sun’s glare. Fittingly, the first proponent of psychology as an experimental science was the German philosopher, Gustav Fechner, who went blind for three years from staring into the sun while studying afterimages. It was in part his blindness that helped him overcome cognitive bias, what later researchers have termed illusion of explanatory depth (IOED), revealing how little was understood about how the mind works. The danger of staring into the sun, in Fechner’s case, released him from the confines of a narrow worldview.

Mudge’s observations from her fixation on the sun are poetically suggested in the song lyric titles of the works on display. They are drawn from the artist’s personal playlist of emotionally charged Millennial pop songs: Linkin Park, Muse, The Killers and the Strokes, to name a few. These songs epitomize an era of disquiet and foreboding from within a social system that feels like a cage, as described by The Offspring in Staring at the Sun (1998, Americana album). Mudge’s trademark glitter and enamel surfaces sparkle but with a lachrymose heartache as the artist makes peace with an understanding of inevitable change. This poetic melancholy is communicated through the subtle shifts in forms and colour throughout the works on display. Many of the strong phrases Mudge traditionally uses in her canvases are conspicuously missing in this body of work. They appear only in fragmented materials, as bead and chain works, at the entrances to the exhibition as if to iterate the terrain within the exhibition as one of liminal uncertainty. 

The sun as a symbol holds duality in its meaning. It is both life-giving and destructive at the same time making it a power symbol of transformation. Mudge reminds us of both the beauty and gloom implicit in change by creating an Interlude characterized by twilight.