Mara Venn
Light, movement & the unreliable image
PART OF THE 2026–27 SEASON
Making space for what a photograph cannot keep.
Mara Venn is a fictional image-maker whose practice begins with the mechanics of looking. She works with staged movement, long exposures and sharply defined architectural spaces, using the camera as a way of measuring things that will not stay still.
In the imagined studio behind Afterimage, Venn builds each scene from a few elements and repeats a movement until its outline begins to loosen. Colour is treated as a physical presence: it falls across a wall, gathers on the floor and seems to outlast the person who disturbed it.
Her work at INDEX pairs expansive colour images with small studies of timing and gesture. Together they describe a practice that is patient in its making and deliberately unsettled in its results.
Ways of
working.
- A room can behave like a camera.
- Repetition changes the gesture, not only the picture.
- A missing edge is still a decision.
Afterimage
A body crosses a room. Light takes a little longer to leave. Mara Venn stretches the instant between seeing and remembering into an exhibition of colour, movement and uncertain edges.
03.09.26 — 31.01.27Explore the exhibitionA practice,
in conversation.
Venn’s gallery conversation asks why a technically imperfect photograph can feel more exact than a sharp one. Visitors are invited to bring a description of an image they remember, rather than an image on a screen.
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