Light Show

When: Monday 4^th March

Where: Hayward Gallery

Why: … pretty!

I won’t lie to you, I left the Hayward Gallery’s latest artistic offering, the Light Show, with a bit of a headache and feeling generally queasy. I had stagger to the café to have a sit down and a coffee (they do a great mocha) to regain my steadiness before I went on my way. But I’ve always had weird eyes, and to be fair it was a great exhibit.

Favourite elements included the first piece you come upon, the humongous ‘Cylinder’ by Leo Villareal, which is a cascade of light composed of tubing and LEDs flitting about in never-ending patterns. It was mesmerising and easily the one thing in the exhibit that you’d really want to return to. I’d happily have a little version of it in my house. I also loved ‘Water One’ which was made up of bubbly fountains in a darkened room, lit up by intermittent strobe lighting to catch it in all of its various flubbery splashing shapes. I loved this and I’ve always been a big fan of a fountain, but couldn’t tolerate it for long before I started sneezing (extreme variations of light do that to me… it’s definitely a thing, ok) so had to scuttle out again. I soothed my peepers with ‘Wheeling peachblow’ by Dan Flavin, which was meant to recreate the colour of a type of blown glass and although created with fluorescent light was soft, beautiful and simple.

Everyone seemed to be loving Carlos Cruz-Diez’s ‘Chromosaturation’, which comprised of three segments of a room, saturated in red, blue or green light. You have to spend a few minutes in each room to become completely saturated in the colour, which affects every surface including all of us humans in there and apparently gives you a sense of immersion. I just felt a bit like I was standing in a red room, but maybe I didn’t give it enough of a chance…

A curtain led us into a room which contained ‘Slow arc inside a cube’, which was a lamp swirling around inside a cage projecting its shapes onto the walls and ceiling, which made me feel completely sick. Another strange offering was ‘Son et lumiere’ which looked like a cup stuck on an old camembert box, abandoned on a DJ turntable after a party.

In general though it was a unique and ingenious exhibit and an area of art I hadn’t really experienced before, and even if you only appreciate it on the ‘ooooh, twinkly lights!’ level, it’s still worth a visit.

Brixpig x