Michaela Gleave
In Another Light
Dichroic and printed architectural window film
2025
In Another Light is a glass installation spanning four storeys of a stairwell at Sydney Church of England Girls’ Grammar School, Darlinghurst.
Drawing on the school’s motto “Let Your Light Shine,” the work reflects the radiance of each student’s voice and their unfolding sense of self within a connected and dynamic community.
At its core is the use of infrared photography, a technique that reveals wavelengths of light beyond human vision. Here, it operates as a metaphor for the school’s role in enabling students to recognise and develop their unique potential. As infrared imagery uncovers hidden layers within the visible world, the school fosters an environment in which individual capacities are brought into view, supported, and allowed to grow.
The installation is anchored by the image of a Moreton Bay fig tree, a motif of stability, continuity, and collective strength. Its deep roots suggest a strong foundation, while its expansive canopy evokes protection, connection, and the conditions for growth. The tree becomes a structural and symbolic framework for the school community: a network of individuals held within, and contributing to, a shared ecology.
Materially, the work is defined by the interaction of light, colour, and movement. Dichroic film produces a shifting spectrum that changes with the viewer’s position and the passage of light throughout the day. Photographic overlays and soft gradients evoke transitional states—dawn, dusk, and other thresholds—foregrounding moments of transformation and becoming. The surface operates as a responsive field, continually reconfiguring in relation to its environment.
As viewers move through the stairwell, the work unfolds across time and perspective, creating an ongoing dialogue between body, architecture, and light. The installation resists fixity, instead offering a sequence of perceptual encounters that emphasise change, relation, and emergence.
In Another Light situates education as an expanded field of perception: a space in which potential is not only recognised but activated. It reflects SCEGGS Darlinghurst as a site of growth and possibility, where each student is supported to develop and project their own distinct light into the world.