Lumiere in Durham 12 - 15 Nov 2009

Last week I travelled to Durham to attend Lumiere - four magical winter evenings celebrating light, organised by arts events company Artichoke in partnership with SkyArts. It was fantastic to see so many people enjoying the artworks and apparently over 75,000 people attended the event in total. It was pouring with rain on Friday night when I was there but that didn't seem to put anyone off.

There were over 20 artworks on display around the city. The biggest that I saw was a massive light projection show on the Cathedral called Crown of Light by projection artist Ross Ashton. It was inspired the history of Christianity in the North East and based on visual material drawn from inside the Cathedral and the Lindisfarne Gospels.

There were also some great smaller installations such as Dress (for five people)by Korean artist Tae Gon Kim, a beautiful dress made of fibre optic cables on display in a vacant shop window.

Seeing the possibilities has really spurred me on to press ahead with plans for our Bath Festival of Illumination in Nov 2010.

My visit to Illuminating York 2009 Part 2

The second artwork I saw was called Vespertine - a sound and video installation themed around nocturnal wildlife, created by Bright White. The accompanying soundtrack featuring animal noises gave it a suitably eerie feel and worked really well in the enclosed courtyard space.

My visit to Illuminating York 2009 Part 1

Wall of light - live art light projections

Last week I attended the fifth Illuminating York and found it very inspiring. The festival ran for just over a week from 23 Oct-1 Nov 2009 and three unique works were commissioned for 2009. I saw two of them on the night I was there.

The first was called Wall of Light, a collaboration between arts companies GaiaNova and OMA International. Using the Tagtool - an interactive drawing board -professional artists as well as audience members were invited to see their doodles, words and pictures brought to life and projected live onto the Multangular Tower in Museum Gardens. This was accompanied by live music which really added to the event, giving it a festival feel and attracting passers by.