Seduced by Light
3 Video Interviews for Dazed Digital with artists working with Light presented online throughout September 2007. Interviews by Freire Barnes Films by Simon Owens
JASON BRUGES
Jason Bruges Studio’s practice is hard to categorise, neither architects firm, commercial design studio or artists collaborative, they work across a spectrum of projects from architectural interventions, urban regeneration projects, art installations and environmental awareness. Their aim: the rich enhancement of our living environments through ground breaking and imaginative interactive light works.
UVA
United Visual Artists are extremely well known for their visuals for music acts such as Massive Attack and most recently the Chemical Brothers at Beck’s Fusions in Trafalgar Square but they also produce phenomenal interactive works combining light, video and sound. The dynamic group of artists all from varying disciplines create awe inspiring sensory explorations which process human activity.
DAVID BATCHELOR
The overlooked found readymade is renewed through David Batchelor’s use of flamboyant coloured materials. It’s hard to place Batchelor within the many pigeonholes of art as he encompasses many movements from Minimalism, Conceptualism to Dadaism. Neither can his discipline be truly defined, sprung from a rejection of Painting the work often falls within a sculptural concern even though he has not being able to get away from a ‘paintings’ rectangle.
Industrial colour, the cities colour, the urbanscapes in which he has lived are all sources of inspiration. Hackney, Brick Lane and King’s Cross are referred to in title and material; with actual found elements from these places incorporated in the works. The work often stems from an accident in the studio when a discarded piece becomes more interesting than the piece he is developing. Early work bare two layers; the façade and the support, the bright colourful front Perspex supported by the found raw material of a light-box or dolly. More recently household plastic bottles have been subverted into illuminated organic formations contrasting to his linear works.
Intriguingly he has exhibited in non-gallery environments, returning his urban statement back to its environment. His involvement in the Glasgow Festival of Light placed his illuminated work that propels the overlooked into the spotlight as a trigger for the public to rediscover their city.
