Lynette Wallworth

This summer, CarriageWorks will become home to an exhibition of three works by Lynette Wallworth, a Sydney artist who works primarily with "video response" media. Acclaimed as individual works around the world, the three installations are being shown for the first time in series for the Sydney Festival. Wallworth is excited about showing them together; this will also be the first time any of them has been seen in Sydney.

The first work, 'Invisible by Night', was originally commissioned for the open space opposite Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, to commemorate its history as the site of Melbourne's first morgue. Wallworth's decision to make the work about grief was inspired by a woman she met on the tram who had needed assistance. "Eventually it emerged that her mother had died the week before and she wasn't sleeping, she was crying all the time. She was on her way to the chemist to get sedatives. We had this very intimate conversation about grief in a very public location. She had nowhere to go to grieve. I realised that everyone around us had become very quiet, making the tram into a place where this woman could talk about her grief."

The work captures a woman whose grief takes the form of endless pacing; viewers can interact with her to briefly interrupt the video. The responsive technology works to engage the visitor in the "strange but bonding experience of grief - it is universal. It sounds sad but it's also strangely comforting in the moment of interaction with a stranger."

'The Evolution of Fearlessness', the second in the series, was commissioned in Vienna for a project marking the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth in 2006. The brief for artists was to make works about issues that seem imperative to them. Wallworth chose to respond to the culture of fear. She filmed 11 women who live in Australia but come from all over the globe, each of whom had suffered extreme trauma in their lives. Video response technology is again utilised to make a moment of connection. Wallworth says that it creates a complex experience of intimacy with a stranger, whose gestures and facial expressions are interpreted without the barrier of talk. The women, whose life experiences should lead them to a fear of strangers, in fact respond fearlessly. "Beyond being afraid," says Wallworth, "it triggers the possibilty of survival."

The free exhibition is rounded out by 'Duality of Light', in which a solo adventurer journeys through a long, cave-like corridor, meeting the final projected figure whose strangeness may be surprising, completing the narrative on a note of individual reflection.

Wallworth's art creates the possibilities of personal experiences beyond those that "passive" art can provide. She seeks the points of connection, rather than the disconnect: at the heart of Wallworth's work is the simple but revealing meditation that "we are all in this world together". Vivienne Egan