Judith Fegerl

Judith Fegerl has an exhibition at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Kensington. It's a strange venue, you have to ring the buzzer to get in and someone comes down to turn everything on for you and unlock the door. They were very friendly too, holding my hand to guide me into the pitch black room, hmmm. Anyway, cannodling with old Austrian women aside, the exhibition was an interesting experience. The first piece was a series of slowly flashing green LEDs which were supposed to leave after images on your retina but I didn't experience any, perhaps they needed to be brighter, or perhaps I'm just a bit blind. The next piece was alot more successful. Two lasers shone through a set of Fegerl's used contact lenses creating a beautiful slowing changing light pattern on the wall opposite. Essentially the patterns were created from all the grease and muck left on the lenses.

Read Only Memory (2005)

In the room next door is a bench to lie back on and gaze at a blue projection on the ceiling. As you stare into the projection you being to notice things floating around. These are representations of the 'floaters' which get trapped in the Vitreous Humour. They move slowly round the screen as strange blobs of grey within the bright blue background. The whole experience is quite relaxing, it shows the power in taking a simple phenomenon and amplifying it.

Teardrop floaters (2005)

Backdrop Exhibition

A few weeks ago I went to see the Backdrop exhibition which was run in tandem with the Dan Flavin Retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, London.
The first piece that greets you is a hanging ball of neon light which casts red light onto the street, inviting and warming but also a bit seedy. As you walk in through the glass doors and share the space with the light, it turns off, which is weird, funny, a bit humiliating and makes you wonder what the lights prerogative is. Jeppe Hein is the designer, and like alot of his work this direct reaction draws you into a conversation with the object. I've written some more on Hein on my website which can be found in the interaction section.

Jeppe Hein, No Presence (Red), 2005

Other works of interest included column by Leo Villareal. An array of 51 luminous tubes hung in groups of three which turned on and off and changed colour in a dazzling light show. The shifting hues transformed the mood of the space.

Leo Villareal, Column, 2004

In a large atrium space further into the gallery a glowing mass of coloured bottles is hung from the ceiling. The deep saturated colours combined with the scale of the work is stunning.

David Batchelor, Candelabra 3, 2005

The Salvation Army Chapel

I went to visit the Salvation Army HQ on Peter's Hill, close to St Paul's Cathedral a few weeks back to see the chapel designed by Carpenter Lowings.
Escorted by the security guard (they saw me coming!) I went up to the first floor in the lift and the chapel was straight ahead. This chapel is fairly conventional apart from the use of reflective louvres, angled so as to reflect an image of the sky into the room (see images below). My first impression after coming out of the lift was disappointment, it didn't have the immediate imapct I was expecting, but as I walked closer and my eyes become accustommed to the light the effect was stunning. It seems to be a running theme in working with light that the effect is subtle and takes time to appreciate.

Watching a image of the outside world pass by in realtime but being seperated from it is a wonderful experience. It allows the refuge of privacy at the same time as the affordance of view. It would make an excellent atmosphere for contemplation and meeting with God, provided a security guard isn't standing behind you!

Catching Light

One of the biggest problems in my work is the 'screen' element, what the light (be it image of efffect) is being cast onto.

The two things I want to show with the screen are the 3d qualities of light and it's immaterial nature. As soon as it is captured on a flat screen these two qualities are lost.

The latest idea is a type of flick book screen using the principle of an animation, where the eye reads a rapid succesion of images as a flowing sequence. In this way the light should appear to hover in 3d.

www.lightmodulator.org

My website should be up in the next week or so... www.lightmodulator.org watch this space... Or that one.

Albers & Moholy Nagy Exhibition

This Exhibition is currently running at the Tate Modern, London. http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/albersmoholy/ I went on Saturday 11th March along with most of London.

Moholy Nagy's Light Space Modulator could be classed as an early disco light if you were feeling particularly cynical but the effect is more than that. Moholy's intention was to create kinetic abstract images perhaps as an extension to his work with photograms and to this end he succeeds.

I found the machine mesmerising in itself and when combined with the moving light patterns cast onto the walls as well as the shadows created and the flashes caused by the mirror catching the light, the whole atmosphere is pretty inspiring.

Other pieces of note where Leda and the Swan (below) which cast a slow moving image of its reflection as well as its shadow onto the wall behind and Double Loop, another folded acrylic number this time on a stand, casting caustics and reflections from its curves and edges.


Leda and The Swan, 1946

















Double Loop, 1946













Moholy's Photos were interesting, many of them taken from elevated positions revealing shadow casts and playing with depth of field and perception.

Turell & Moholy Nagy

Turrell & Moholy Nagy

James Turrell: ‘I make spaces that apprehend light for our perception, and in some way gather it, or seem to hold it. So in that way it’s a little bit like Plato’s cave. We sit in the cave with our backs to reality, looking at the reflection of reality on the cave wall. As an analogy to how we perceive, and the imperfections of perception, I think this is very interesting.’
(http://www.conversations.org/99-1-turrell.htm, Greeting the Light. An Interview with James Turrell by Richard Whittaker, Accessed 13_03_06)

left: Turrell Skyspace, Kielder Water. Photo by Nick Rich. Right, Light Space Modulator, Moholy-Nagy