Derek Ogbourne 

Born 1964, England 

Lives and works in High Wycombe, United Kingdom 

Land of Fovea 2025 

mixed media 

Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous assistance from British Council in Sydney 

Courtesy of the artist, The British Optical Association Museum and the Chau Chak Wing Museum, the University of Sydney 

What if the last image your eyes ever saw remained imprinted on your retina, as you left this life? Optography is the study of such images, also known as optograms. Whilst popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it is no longer considered valuable as a scientific or forensic technique. 

Optography is at the core of artist Derek Ogbourne’s ever-evolving installation The Museum of Optography. First becoming interested in optography after a violent eye injury, Ogbourne has created a museum within a museum in a kind of Russian doll of ideas where trauma sits at its centre and schematically spreads out into a myriad of visual and auditory ocular connections. 

Land of Fovea (part of The Museum of Optography) takes the fine line between life and death, being and not being – as embodied by the optogram – as its primary focus. Presenting historical collections as a perfect distillation of this concept, Ogbourne reconstitutes, reanimates or invents archival objects to transform the museum into a space between life and obliteration. Neither critical nor conciliatory, objects from the Museum collection (such as Kuhne’s Artificial Eye) are revived for the moment of this exhibition with a suitably unblinking clarity.

Description of objects featured in the work: 

Kühne’s Artificial eye apparatus 

Late-19th to early-20th century 

Manufacturer unknown 

Transferred from the Discipline of Physiology, 2021 

Macleay Collections, Chau Chak Wing Museum, SC2021.21 

The artificial eye instrument was first designed by Wilhelm (Wily) Friedrich Kuhne to demonstrate refraction. In use, the tank is filled with water that has fluorescein added so that the light path can be seen in the water. This version probably made by Physiology technical officers. 

Tachistoscope 

1912–1930 

Manufacturer E Zimmermann, Germany Transferred from the School of Psychology, 2024 

Macleay Collections, Chau Chak Wing Museum, SC2024.28 

A tachistoscope is a device used to study visual perception, attention and memory. Today similar studies and tests are computer-based. 

Professor McHardy’s Perimeter 

1882–1920 

Manufacturer Pickard & Curry, England Transferred from the Discipline of Physiology, 2021 

Macleay Collections, Chau Chak Wing Museum, SC2021.17 

In order to measure a subject’s peripheral vision, their chin was positioned on the felt-covered platform and targets would be moved along the rotatable arc. When a target disappeared from view, the subject recorded the result by punching a paper chart (held by the circular frame) with the protruding pricker pin.