Luminous Creations 

Imagine stepping into a void, bathed in colour and entirely without edges. Or perhaps you look up at a ceiling covered in mirrors, light bouncing off in countless directions and creating a chamber of ever-changing images. Maybe neon shades of pinks and purples transform a familiar outdoor space into something entirely new. Light has been used by artists to shift, alter and question human perception for decades. The Light and Space movement, a group of West Coast artists like Larry Bell, Helen Pashgian and John McCracken operating in the 1960s and 1970s, concerned themselves with how geometric shapes and light could affect the environment and the way in which the viewer saw the world. Here are five exhibitions on display this autumn that follow in these footsteps, combining revolutionary technology with well-established ideas of light and art to create wondrous sensory experiences. 

An elaborate installation of glowing light creates the shape of a prowling tiger in the ballroom of The Holborne Museum. It is a motif that has become central to Chila Kumari Singh Burman’s (b. 1957) work. The reference originates from childhood memories of the artist’s father’s 1960s ice-cream van, which was crowned with an elaborate Bengal tiger figurine. This playful, youthful influence is seen again in one of her best-known works, Eat Me Now (2012), a giant glittery ice cream cone sculpture complete with chocolate flake on top, another affectionate reference to her father. Neon Dreams captures this same energy, drawing from popular Hindu-Punjabi festival culture, history, media and mythology to challenge stereotypes and place an alternative perspective of Britishness at the forefront of the exhibition. 

Klip Collective have a track record of animating seemingly mundane environments into immersive sensory experiences with the use of project mapping and lighting design. At Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, six immersive installations use pioneering technology to illuminate the outdoor space. The collective draw inspiration from street art, and the Situationist and Surrealist movements, making work that prompts a shared moment of wonder and a collective involvement in the piece. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to see themselves fractured across the surface of a broken time machine, marvel at the movements of the forest as it is illuminated by glowing hues of neon purple and blue and watch transfixed as the natural rhythms of the earth are brought to vibrant life. 

Ask someone to think of an artist doing incredible things with light and Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) is almost guaranteed to make an appearance. His 2003 Tate Turbine Hall installation, The Weather Project, used a semi-circular screen, a ceiling of mirrors and artificial mist to create the illusion of a sun. The work was wildly popular, with visitors spending hours lying on the gallery floor, peering up at their reflection that had been illuminated by the warm orange glow. Presented by The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Eliasson uses light to draw attention to art’s potential inconclusiveness and considers how every piece of art is open to being seen from a new perspective. In Kaleidoscope for Plural Perspectives, iridescent patterns are created with mirrored fragments, ever changing and shifting.  

“I want to make something that people direct their attention towards. It’s not that different from when I was a child in the crib, fascinated by the light I saw above me.” Since the 1960s, James Turrell (b. 1943) has focused on building a sensory experience with light, flooding galleries with colour and illuminating monochromatic structures made from geometric shapes. His early work placed him at the forefront of the Light and Space movement, which embraced psychology and technology to explore human perception. Now, two of his installations are on display. Named after the Ganzfeld Effect, which can occur when an absence of depth, shape and distance indicators cause the brain to mistake noise for tangible information, the pieces evoke the disorientating experience of skiing in whiteout conditions. 

In Izura, where the modern Japanese scholar and art critic Okakura Tenshin lived in his later years, there was a mountain along the coast that was difficult to enter. In these mountains there was a deep forest that held the remains of rain-fed rice terraces, now a marshland forgotten and covered in reeds. The immersive light project comes from a desire to turn the ruins of these terraces into an art space that is at one with the surrounding plants. Profound in its desire to show that digital technology can turn nature into art without harming it, this is an exhibition for a new age, one in which creation works in harmony with the environment, not against it. As twilight falls, the surrounding flora comes to life as twinkling orbs, swirling clouds and gently flickering lights begin to transform the space. 

Words: Emma Jacob

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