Lucent Lines 2010

Newport Museum and Art Gallery invited Simon Fenoulhet to create new work for a one man show in January 2010. The work was developed over the preceding eighteen months with the help of a Production Grant from the Arts Council of Wales and with the involvement of Fine Art students from the University of Wales, Newport.

The exhibition consisted of three works that collectively cam under the title of Lucent Lines as they all employ a repeated illuminated line as a motif:

Curtain – is a nine metre long suspended artwork that is made from 448 electro-luminescent wires, threaded with coloured drinking straws to create a colourful fabric of glowing threads. The wires glow with a varying brightness as patterns of light and dark move along the length of the work, giving the appearance of movement. The wires are controlled by pixel mapping software that transfers light values from video footage onto the work to create the sense of light and shade that moves across the curtain.

Hollow Promise - is a large floor work that glows with an intense red colour through a series of 180 two metre long plastic pipes. The pipes are lit at alternate ends so that the red light interlocks and overlaps in the middle of the work. The effect is one of bathing in the warmth of the colour, which washes onto the surrounding walls. As your eyes get accustomed to the colour, it seems less intense and it becomes easier to see the individual tubes and the interlocking patter of colour.

Line upon Line – consists of 126 black shoe laces nailed to the gallery wall to make a rectangle of vertical lines, which are lit by a slide projector beam. The image appears as a projected image until the viewer gets closer to the work or interrupts the projector beam to reveal that the image is a physical object. While the light form the projector flattens the image into black and white, the woven fabric of the laces becomes visible at close quarters and reveals the three dimensional quality of the laces.

Blue Swell - is a temporary light installation to accompany the exhibition at Oriel Davies in Newtown, Powys in January 2011. The lights pulse with a blue light through out the night until the gallery opens again in the morning. The idea is to make passers by curious about what's going on in there. Blue Swell uses ropelight, with a Sweetlight DMX controller and dimmer rack.