Ship of Light commissioned by Hull City Council is now on display at the Spurn Lightship

Since 2019 we have been working with the Hull Maritime Project developing work in response to their maritime collection. Working as part of the wider team with lead consultants Purcell Architects, Southern Green Landscape Architects, exhibition designers Haley Sharpe Design and art consultant Hazel Colquhoun, we have been creating new work that gives a voice to the city’s maritime past, present and future.

Part of our process has been to work with surveyors to undertake high-resolution scans of some of the artefacts held at the Hull Maritime Museum before they went into long-term storage.  The data from these scans have been used to create four new bodies of work.

The first of these is a film projection called ‘Ship of Light’ which is now on display at the Spurn Lightship. The Spurn Lightship was once a beacon of Hull’s waterways for almost 50 years. Built in 1927, it guided ships through the treacherous waters of the River Humber.

Our film takes an exploratory journey through the Spurn Lightship using animated sequences created from point cloud data captured from 3D laser scans of the vessel undertaken in 2018, before its refurbishment. These are combined with 4k film recorded during the ship’s restoration at Dunston Ship Yard and its re-launch in March 2023.

Ship of Light celebrates the beauty and the idea of the lightship in all its detail. We have used the point cloud data to create a transparency, revealing different aspects of the ship and to evoke both a ghostly and futuristic quality to this vessel of light.

Commissioned artists for b-side festival 2023

7-10 September 2023

We are delighted to working with b-side as one of the four commissioned artists for this year’s festival which takes place on the Isle of Portland in Dorset from 7-10 September 2023.

The theme for this year festival, a culmination of a two year programme called This Land, focuses on the intriguing history and heritage of Portland’s land. With land protection at the forefront, This Land focuses on two fragile and unique natural and built heritage sites identified as at risk: the last remaining area of original Portland landscape at Portland Bill and the ruins of a Tudor cottage, Brandy Row on the seafront at Chiswell.

The focus of our research and work is this row of derelict Portland stone Tudor cottages located at the southern end of Brandy Row in Chiswell.  This site, once inhabited by local fishermen and quarrymen, is now used as stores.  The future of the remains of theses cottages is uncertain as they face the possible threat of demolition and asset disposal, whilst environmental factors such as the storms and rising sea levels present a more elemental threat.

Over the coming months we will be visiting Portland to meet with local residents, the project’s researchers and undertake films and sound recordings of the site which will be used to develop the final work which will also include data captured from Lidar scans of the site.

Light Up Lancaster:  Ship of the Gods

Friday 4 – Saturday 5 November 2022

Lancaster Priory is the next port of call for our light installation Ship of the Gods showing as part of Light Up Lancaster from 4 to 5 November.  Inspired by the Norse myth of Skidbladnir, this magical shape-shifting vessel was large enough to carry all the gods and their equipment yet could be folded up small enough to fit inside a pocket.

Using 3D laser scanning technology, film and lighting effects we have drawn on artefacts of maritime culture to re-imagine Skidbladnir through the scanned forms of life-size boats and ship models to create an ephemeral vessel of light, which like the mythical ship has the ability to transform and be folded down to move to other places.

Lancaster has been a port since before the Roman times and its history has been shaped by its two waterways – the River Lune and the Lancaster Canal.  We will be adapting the installation to integrate with the Priory’s magnificent interior. Link to further information about Ship of the Gods

Ship of the Gods was originally commissioned by Absolutely Cultured for Hull Minster as part of the light festival event Urban Legends: Northern Lights.

Once a Desert – Chester Cathedral

Wednesday 9th March, 6.30-10pm (last admission 9.30pm)
Thursday 10th March, 7.30-10pm (last admission 9.30pm)
Saturday 12th March, 6.30-10pm (last admission 9.30pm)

Using a combination of high-speed film and animated point cloud imagery created from 3D laser scan of Chester Cathedral, this installation uses the Cathedral’s impressive interior as the context for experiencing the work.

The origins of Chester Cathedral date as far back as 1092 when it was founded as a Benedictine Abbey, built on a bedrock of red sandstone.  During that time the waters of the River Dee extended over the Roodee, now the site of Chester’s Racecourse, and boats could sail up the River Dee right into the city.

This red sandstone, sourced from the city’s quarries was used to gradually rebuild the cathedral up until the Victorian period when a different red sandstone was used, sourced from quarries in the Wirral and Liverpool.

The title of the work alludes to the period of time when this stone was formed, during the Triassic period over 200 million years ago.  This was a time when the earth’s climate was mostly hot and dry, with deserts spanning much of the interior of Pangaea’s, the huge land mass from which our present day continents split from.

As we face the challenges of global climate change, Once a Desert is a reflection upon the permeability and impermanence of material within the context of the cathedral and deeper time.

With thanks to OR3D for undertaking the 3D Lidar scans. and Chester Cathedral for their assistance in the development of this commission.

Once a Desert is part of the Refresh cultural recovery programme for Chester, designed to bring high-quality arts and cultural activities back to the city.

The Refresh cultural recovery programme is funded by Arts Council England and by the Government’s Additional Restrictions Grant to Cheshire West and Chester Council.

The Awakening:  Ship of the Gods

Friday 18 March & Saturday 19 March from 6.00 – 10 pm

We are excited to be bringing Ship of the Gods back to the city of Hull as part of The Awakening – a new evening event taking place in March which celebrates Hull’s maritime heritage, folklore and mythology.

Ship of the Gods was originally commissioned by Absolutely Cultured for Urban Legends: Northern Lights and was shown in the winter of 2018 at Hull Minster and Holy Trinity Square.  This time it can be experienced in the Museum Gardens in the Old Town of Hull.

Alongside this we will also be showing a series of projected animated artefacts in a number of shop windows along Whitefriargate.

These have been developed from 3D laser scans of objects drawn from the Hull Maritime Museum Collection which include a sextant from the Truelove, one of Hull’s last C19th whaling boats and a butcher’s block made from the vertebrae of Right Whale captured of Greenland.

Since 2019 we have been working as part of a team on the Hull:  Yorkshire’s Maritime City Project.  Link to more information on this.

Above: 3 D laser scan of a whale vertebra captured off Greenland.  Knife markets in the surface of the block suggest it was once used as a butcher’s block. 

This object is one of the many artefacts that we had scanned as part of our work with the Hull: Yorkshires’s Maritime City Project.

Anthro Zoo

Great North Museum, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Thursday 10 March – Sunday 13 March from 6.30 – 10 pm

Showing at the Great North Museum as part of North of the Tyne, Under the Stars produced by Pinwheel and DAT Events and commissioned by the North of Tyne Combined Authority.

Using a fusion of large-scale projection, light and sound, Anthro Zoo takes a nocturnal journey deep into the zoology stores of the Great North Museum – home to a vast and eclectic collection of taxidermy specimens.

Here resides an order of animal skins skillfully shaped by the taxidermist to capture the memory and shape of former lives. Rabbit and wolf exist peacefully together with the now extinct Great Auk and Huia birds.

Using 3D laser scanning technology, lighting and film, a selection of these creatures have been digitally captured and transformed into luminous bodies of light, ready to re-inhabit the city of Newcastle.

Scans of the museum and the city create an ethereal context for this imaginary world, whilst the façade of the Great North Museum provides a dramatic backdrop for experiencing Anthro Zoo.

With thanks to the following organisations and people for undertaking the original 3D laser scans: Or3D and Seven Three Productions:Andy Coates, Paul Green and May McConnell.

North of Tyne, Under the Stars is a free outdoor festival of projection, magic and storytelling, inspired by local stories and landscapes from across Newcastle, Northumberland and North Tyneside.

Inner Worlds

Inner Worlds is an 11 channel video and sound installation created especially for the iconic Rotunda building at Winchester School of Art.

This video has been created from imagery developed during our year-long residency at Winchester School of Art.  During this year we have spent much of our time working at the University of Southampton’s Biomedical I imaging Unit based at Southampton General Hospital where we have been introduced to a range of different imaging techniques such as confocal microscopy and scanning electron microscopy.

For this culminating public display, we have literally sampled Winchester School of Art: water from the pond; a spiders’ web; workshop dust; a flake of studio paint and other elements, examined at massive magnification the worlds contained within these tiny things.  The resulting light projection brings together all this detail, along with its architectural context, in a moving, ephemeral response to the art school building and specifically its iconic Rotunda.

 Projected to the outside world from within the Rotunda itself during hours of darkness, Inner Worlds will be readily viewable from Winchester School of Art premises and from the street, 31 January – 11 February (excluding weekends).

Duration of installation 15 mins 11 secs looped to play continuously across the 11 windows of the building.

The Crossing Place

The Crossing Place, commissioned by Right Up Our Street is a large-scale multi-media installation developed especially for this year’s DN Festival of Light which will be shown inside Doncaster Minster from the 25th to 28th November 2021.  Entry is free but ticketed. The link to book is here.

A scaled-down adaption of the work featuring a selection of the museum’s taxidermy specimens alongside the painting ‘Animals in a Landscape’ by the artist Ramsay Richard Reinagle (1775-1862), can be experienced at the Danum Gallery, Library & Museum from the 25th November to 14th January 2022.  Opening times can be found here.

The Crossing Place is inspired by Doncaster’s rich natural history collection and the town’s long-standing association with wildlife parks dating back to the 19th century when the nearby Owston Hall estate was home to a range of native and non-native creatures which included the now extinct Quagga.

A foal of the Quagga was preserved by the taxidermist Hugh Reid and was later donated to Doncaster Museum where it still remains a scientifically important specimen.  Reinagle’s painting ‘Animals in a Landscape or to give the painting its full title ‘Landscape with Animals or an African Scene, with Zebus of Three Kinds and Quaggas: The Zebras painted from the Animals’ depicts an imagined scene populated with some of the animals that lived on the Owston Hall estate including the young Quagga.

More recently in the 1950s, Beechfield Zoo which lay within the grounds of the original Doncaster Museum was home to around 400 creatures some of which came from other zoos and others that were found locally and gifted by the public.  A number of these creatures were preserved after their demise and form part of Heritage Doncaster’s taxidermy collection.

The Crossing Place re-imagines Reinagle’s fictional landscape populated by a menagerie of exotic and native creatures such as crocodile, pufferfish, leopard, penguin, snake and swan.

Using 3D laser scanning technology, digital 3D modelling, projection and lighting effects we have drawn on the museum’s rich taxidermy collection to create a landscape of fantastical creatures where predators and prey exist peacefully side by side as luminous bodies of light.

The soundscape developed specifically for the film weaves together sounds recorded at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park with musical elements composed and mixed to express the movement and potential dramas playing out between the different creatures.

With special thanks to Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council, Heritage Doncaster, Doncaster Minster, Yorkshire Wildlife Park and DLCT for all their support in the development of this work.

Commissioned by Right Up Our Street for DN Festival of Light. Right Up Our Street is an Arts Council England and DMBC funded project for Doncaster.

Work In Progress Exhibition at Winchester School of Art Gallery

We have been working within the art school and university since Autumn 2020; however our work has been largely unseen during this period because of the pandemic.

This exhibition which runs from Monday 4 October until Thursday 21 October is open to the public from 1-5 pm, Monday to Thursday. 

On specific days (7, 19, 20 & 21 October) the University of Southampton Biomedical Imaging Unit will be bringing their Microscopic Roadshow to the gallery and there will the opportunity to bring your own material to view and photograph.

We will also be at the gallery on those days and will be available to chat with visitors. 

The residency will culminate in a public event at Winchester School of Art on 6 – 10 December 2021.

Limelight at Lindisfarne Castle, Holy Island is now open

Limelight, specially commissioned for Lindisfarne Castle on Holy Island is now open to the public and on display until 31 October 2021.  Booking is essential and can be made on the Lindisfarne National Trust website.

Limelight takes an imaginative journey through Lindisfarne Castle and its digital twin using a combination of lighting, 3D laser scans, video projection and sound. The two film installations created for the Ship Room and North East Bedroom are inspired by the transient nature of the Castle, the shifting interpretation of its many stories and its elemental context.

Limelight is a Trust New Art project developed and programmed by National Trust, supported using public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England and produced with support from Arts&Heritage. With thanks to David McCreadie 3D Measuring & Modelling for their assistance with the point cloud data.

Check out some of our instagram posts for more details:  Seabed and Storm in a Teacup, Water Margin, and Limelight in the Ship Room.

Artists in Residence at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton

We are excited to begin our year long residency at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton supported by curator Sara Roberts. We are collaborating with the Biomedical Imaging Unit housed in Southampton General Hospital to explore a range of otherwise invisible forms, structures and systems that flow through our everyday world.

Check out our dedicated Inner Worlds Instagram page to see what we are up to.

Invited Speakers for Outside The Box: Public Art in Qatar

We feel honoured to have been invited to speak at Outside The Box: Public Art in Qatar, a free event held at the National Museum of Qatar and Qatar National Library, Education City, Doha, Qatar from 22 – 23 February 2020.

Outside the Box: Public Art in Qatar, is a public art forum initiating conversation about art in the public realm and its role in mediating dialogue and changing perceptions of place. Link here for further information and the full programme.

Commissioned by the British Council, curated by FutureEverything in partnership with Qatar Museums and Qatar Foundation.

Commissioned artists for b-side festival 2023

7-10 September 2023

We are delighted to working with b-side as one of the four commissioned artists for this year’s festival which takes place on the Isle of Portland in Dorset from 7-10 September 2023.

The theme for this year festival, a culmination of a two year programme called This Land, focuses on the intriguing history and heritage of Portland’s land. With land protection at the forefront, This Land focuses on two fragile and unique natural and built heritage sites identified as at risk: the last remaining area of original Portland landscape at Portland Bill and the ruins of a Tudor cottage, Brandy Row on the seafront at Chiswell.

The focus of our research and work is this row of derelict Portland stone Tudor cottages located at the southern end of Brandy Row in Chiswell.  This site, once inhabited by local fishermen and quarrymen, is now used as stores.  The future of the remains of theses cottages is uncertain as they face the possible threat of demolition and asset disposal, whilst environmental factors such as the storms and rising sea levels present a more elemental threat.

Over the coming months we will be visiting Portland to meet with local residents, the project’s researchers and undertake films and sound recordings of the site which will be used to develop the final work which will also include data captured from Lidar scans of the site.

Light Up Lancaster:  Ship of the Gods

Friday 4 – Saturday 5 November 2022

Lancaster Priory is the next port of call for our light installation Ship of the Gods showing as part of Light Up Lancaster from 4 to 5 November.  Inspired by the Norse myth of Skidbladnir, this magical shape-shifting vessel was large enough to carry all the gods and their equipment yet could be folded up small enough to fit inside a pocket.

Using 3D laser scanning technology, film and lighting effects we have drawn on artefacts of maritime culture to re-imagine Skidbladnir through the scanned forms of life-size boats and ship models to create an ephemeral vessel of light, which like the mythical ship has the ability to transform and be folded down to move to other places.

Lancaster has been a port since before the Roman times and its history has been shaped by its two waterways – the River Lune and the Lancaster Canal.  We will be adapting the installation to integrate with the Priory’s magnificent interior. Link to further information about Ship of the Gods

Ship of the Gods was originally commissioned by Absolutely Cultured for Hull Minster as part of the light festival event Urban Legends: Northern Lights.

Once a Desert – Chester Cathedral

Wednesday 9th March, 6.30-10pm (last admission 9.30pm)
Thursday 10th March, 7.30-10pm (last admission 9.30pm)
Saturday 12th March, 6.30-10pm (last admission 9.30pm)

Using a combination of high-speed film and animated point cloud imagery created from 3D laser scan of Chester Cathedral, this installation uses the Cathedral’s impressive interior as the context for experiencing the work.

The origins of Chester Cathedral date as far back as 1092 when it was founded as a Benedictine Abbey, built on a bedrock of red sandstone.  During that time the waters of the River Dee extended over the Roodee, now the site of Chester’s Racecourse, and boats could sail up the River Dee right into the city.

This red sandstone, sourced from the city’s quarries was used to gradually rebuild the cathedral up until the Victorian period when a different red sandstone was used, sourced from quarries in the Wirral and Liverpool.

The title of the work alludes to the period of time when this stone was formed, during the Triassic period over 200 million years ago.  This was a time when the earth’s climate was mostly hot and dry, with deserts spanning much of the interior of Pangaea’s, the huge land mass from which our present day continents split from.

As we face the challenges of global climate change, Once a Desert is a reflection upon the permeability and impermanence of material within the context of the cathedral and deeper time.

With thanks to OR3D for undertaking the 3D Lidar scans. and Chester Cathedral for their assistance in the development of this commission.

Once a Desert is part of the Refresh cultural recovery programme for Chester, designed to bring high-quality arts and cultural activities back to the city.

The Refresh cultural recovery programme is funded by Arts Council England and by the Government’s Additional Restrictions Grant to Cheshire West and Chester Council.

The Awakening:  Ship of the Gods

Friday 18 March & Saturday 19 March from 6.00 – 10 pm

We are excited to be bringing Ship of the Gods back to the city of Hull as part of The Awakening – a new evening event taking place in March which celebrates Hull’s maritime heritage, folklore and mythology.

Ship of the Gods was originally commissioned by Absolutely Cultured for Urban Legends: Northern Lights and was shown in the winter of 2018 at Hull Minster and Holy Trinity Square.  This time it can be experienced in the Museum Gardens in the Old Town of Hull.

Alongside this we will also be showing a series of projected animated artefacts in a number of shop windows along Whitefriargate.

These have been developed from 3D laser scans of objects drawn from the Hull Maritime Museum Collection which include a sextant from the Truelove, one of Hull’s last C19th whaling boats and a butcher’s block made from the vertebrae of Right Whale captured of Greenland.

Since 2019 we have been working as part of a team on the Hull:  Yorkshire’s Maritime City Project.  Link to more information on this.

Above: 3 D laser scan of a whale vertebra captured off Greenland.  Knife markets in the surface of the block suggest it was once used as a butcher’s block. 

This object is one of the many artefacts that we had scanned as part of our work with the Hull: Yorkshires’s Maritime City Project.

Anthro Zoo

Great North Museum, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Thursday 10 March – Sunday 13 March from 6.30 – 10 pm

Showing at the Great North Museum as part of North of the Tyne, Under the Stars produced by Pinwheel and DAT Events and commissioned by the North of Tyne Combined Authority.

Using a fusion of large-scale projection, light and sound, Anthro Zoo takes a nocturnal journey deep into the zoology stores of the Great North Museum – home to a vast and eclectic collection of taxidermy specimens.

Here resides an order of animal skins skillfully shaped by the taxidermist to capture the memory and shape of former lives. Rabbit and wolf exist peacefully together with the now extinct Great Auk and Huia birds.

Using 3D laser scanning technology, lighting and film, a selection of these creatures have been digitally captured and transformed into luminous bodies of light, ready to re-inhabit the city of Newcastle.

Scans of the museum and the city create an ethereal context for this imaginary world, whilst the façade of the Great North Museum provides a dramatic backdrop for experiencing Anthro Zoo.

With thanks to the following organisations and people for undertaking the original 3D laser scans: Or3D and Seven Three Productions:Andy Coates, Paul Green and May McConnell.

North of Tyne, Under the Stars is a free outdoor festival of projection, magic and storytelling, inspired by local stories and landscapes from across Newcastle, Northumberland and North Tyneside.

Inner Worlds

Inner Worlds is an 11 channel video and sound installation created especially for the iconic Rotunda building at Winchester School of Art.

This video has been created from imagery developed during our year-long residency at Winchester School of Art.  During this year we have spent much of our time working at the University of Southampton’s Biomedical I imaging Unit based at Southampton General Hospital where we have been introduced to a range of different imaging techniques such as confocal microscopy and scanning electron microscopy.

For this culminating public display, we have literally sampled Winchester School of Art: water from the pond; a spiders’ web; workshop dust; a flake of studio paint and other elements, examined at massive magnification the worlds contained within these tiny things.  The resulting light projection brings together all this detail, along with its architectural context, in a moving, ephemeral response to the art school building and specifically its iconic Rotunda.

 Projected to the outside world from within the Rotunda itself during hours of darkness, Inner Worlds will be readily viewable from Winchester School of Art premises and from the street, 31 January – 11 February (excluding weekends).

Duration of installation 15 mins 11 secs looped to play continuously across the 11 windows of the building.

The Crossing Place

The Crossing Place, commissioned by Right Up Our Street is a large-scale multi-media installation developed especially for this year’s DN Festival of Light which will be shown inside Doncaster Minster from the 25th to 28th November 2021.  Entry is free but ticketed. The link to book is here.

A scaled-down adaption of the work featuring a selection of the museum’s taxidermy specimens alongside the painting ‘Animals in a Landscape’ by the artist Ramsay Richard Reinagle (1775-1862), can be experienced at the Danum Gallery, Library & Museum from the 25th November to 14th January 2022.  Opening times can be found here.

The Crossing Place is inspired by Doncaster’s rich natural history collection and the town’s long-standing association with wildlife parks dating back to the 19th century when the nearby Owston Hall estate was home to a range of native and non-native creatures which included the now extinct Quagga.

A foal of the Quagga was preserved by the taxidermist Hugh Reid and was later donated to Doncaster Museum where it still remains a scientifically important specimen.  Reinagle’s painting ‘Animals in a Landscape or to give the painting its full title ‘Landscape with Animals or an African Scene, with Zebus of Three Kinds and Quaggas: The Zebras painted from the Animals’ depicts an imagined scene populated with some of the animals that lived on the Owston Hall estate including the young Quagga.

More recently in the 1950s, Beechfield Zoo which lay within the grounds of the original Doncaster Museum was home to around 400 creatures some of which came from other zoos and others that were found locally and gifted by the public.  A number of these creatures were preserved after their demise and form part of Heritage Doncaster’s taxidermy collection.

The Crossing Place re-imagines Reinagle’s fictional landscape populated by a menagerie of exotic and native creatures such as crocodile, pufferfish, leopard, penguin, snake and swan.

Using 3D laser scanning technology, digital 3D modelling, projection and lighting effects we have drawn on the museum’s rich taxidermy collection to create a landscape of fantastical creatures where predators and prey exist peacefully side by side as luminous bodies of light.

The soundscape developed specifically for the film weaves together sounds recorded at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park with musical elements composed and mixed to express the movement and potential dramas playing out between the different creatures.

With special thanks to Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council, Heritage Doncaster, Doncaster Minster, Yorkshire Wildlife Park and DLCT for all their support in the development of this work.

Commissioned by Right Up Our Street for DN Festival of Light. Right Up Our Street is an Arts Council England and DMBC funded project for Doncaster.

Work In Progress Exhibition at Winchester School of Art Gallery

We have been working within the art school and university since Autumn 2020; however our work has been largely unseen during this period because of the pandemic.

This exhibition which runs from Monday 4 October until Thursday 21 October is open to the public from 1-5 pm, Monday to Thursday. 

On specific days (7, 19, 20 & 21 October) the University of Southampton Biomedical Imaging Unit will be bringing their Microscopic Roadshow to the gallery and there will the opportunity to bring your own material to view and photograph.

We will also be at the gallery on those days and will be available to chat with visitors. 

The residency will culminate in a public event at Winchester School of Art on 6 – 10 December 2021.

Limelight at Lindisfarne Castle, Holy Island is now open

Limelight, specially commissioned for Lindisfarne Castle on Holy Island is now open to the public and on display until 31 October 2021.  Booking is essential and can be made on the Lindisfarne National Trust website.

Limelight takes an imaginative journey through Lindisfarne Castle and its digital twin using a combination of lighting, 3D laser scans, video projection and sound. The two film installations created for the Ship Room and North East Bedroom are inspired by the transient nature of the Castle, the shifting interpretation of its many stories and its elemental context.

Limelight is a Trust New Art project developed and programmed by National Trust, supported using public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England and produced with support from Arts&Heritage. With thanks to David McCreadie 3D Measuring & Modelling for their assistance with the point cloud data.

Check out some of our instagram posts for more details:  Seabed and Storm in a Teacup, Water Margin, and Limelight in the Ship Room.

Artists in Residence at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton

We are excited to begin our year long residency at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton supported by curator Sara Roberts. We are collaborating with the Biomedical Imaging Unit housed in Southampton General Hospital to explore a range of otherwise invisible forms, structures and systems that flow through our everyday world.

Check out our dedicated Inner Worlds Instagram page to see what we are up to.

Invited Speakers for Outside The Box: Public Art in Qatar

We feel honoured to have been invited to speak at Outside The Box: Public Art in Qatar, a free event held at the National Museum of Qatar and Qatar National Library, Education City, Doha, Qatar from 22 – 23 February 2020.

Outside the Box: Public Art in Qatar, is a public art forum initiating conversation about art in the public realm and its role in mediating dialogue and changing perceptions of place. Link here for further information and the full programme.

Commissioned by the British Council, curated by FutureEverything in partnership with Qatar Museums and Qatar Foundation.

Commissioned artists for b-side festival 2023

7-10 September 2023

We are delighted to working with b-side as one of the four commissioned artists for this year’s festival which takes place on the Isle of Portland in Dorset from 7-10 September 2023.

The theme for this year festival, a culmination of a two year programme called This Land, focuses on the intriguing history and heritage of Portland’s land. With land protection at the forefront, This Land focuses on two fragile and unique natural and built heritage sites identified as at risk: the last remaining area of original Portland landscape at Portland Bill and the ruins of a Tudor cottage, Brandy Row on the seafront at Chiswell.

The focus of our research and work is this row of derelict Portland stone Tudor cottages located at the southern end of Brandy Row in Chiswell.  This site, once inhabited by local fishermen and quarrymen, is now used as stores.  The future of the remains of theses cottages is uncertain as they face the possible threat of demolition and asset disposal, whilst environmental factors such as the storms and rising sea levels present a more elemental threat.

Over the coming months we will be visiting Portland to meet with local residents, the project’s researchers and undertake films and sound recordings of the site which will be used to develop the final work which will also include data captured from Lidar scans of the site.

Light Up Lancaster:  Ship of the Gods

Friday 4 – Saturday 5 November 2022

Lancaster Priory is the next port of call for our light installation Ship of the Gods showing as part of Light Up Lancaster from 4 to 5 November.  Inspired by the Norse myth of Skidbladnir, this magical shape-shifting vessel was large enough to carry all the gods and their equipment yet could be folded up small enough to fit inside a pocket.

Using 3D laser scanning technology, film and lighting effects we have drawn on artefacts of maritime culture to re-imagine Skidbladnir through the scanned forms of life-size boats and ship models to create an ephemeral vessel of light, which like the mythical ship has the ability to transform and be folded down to move to other places.

Lancaster has been a port since before the Roman times and its history has been shaped by its two waterways – the River Lune and the Lancaster Canal.  We will be adapting the installation to integrate with the Priory’s magnificent interior. Link to further information about Ship of the Gods

Ship of the Gods was originally commissioned by Absolutely Cultured for Hull Minster as part of the light festival event Urban Legends: Northern Lights.

Once a Desert – Chester Cathedral

Wednesday 9th March, 6.30-10pm (last admission 9.30pm)
Thursday 10th March, 7.30-10pm (last admission 9.30pm)
Saturday 12th March, 6.30-10pm (last admission 9.30pm)

Using a combination of high-speed film and animated point cloud imagery created from 3D laser scan of Chester Cathedral, this installation uses the Cathedral’s impressive interior as the context for experiencing the work.

The origins of Chester Cathedral date as far back as 1092 when it was founded as a Benedictine Abbey, built on a bedrock of red sandstone.  During that time the waters of the River Dee extended over the Roodee, now the site of Chester’s Racecourse, and boats could sail up the River Dee right into the city.

This red sandstone, sourced from the city’s quarries was used to gradually rebuild the cathedral up until the Victorian period when a different red sandstone was used, sourced from quarries in the Wirral and Liverpool.

The title of the work alludes to the period of time when this stone was formed, during the Triassic period over 200 million years ago.  This was a time when the earth’s climate was mostly hot and dry, with deserts spanning much of the interior of Pangaea’s, the huge land mass from which our present day continents split from.

As we face the challenges of global climate change, Once a Desert is a reflection upon the permeability and impermanence of material within the context of the cathedral and deeper time.

With thanks to OR3D for undertaking the 3D Lidar scans. and Chester Cathedral for their assistance in the development of this commission.

Once a Desert is part of the Refresh cultural recovery programme for Chester, designed to bring high-quality arts and cultural activities back to the city.

The Refresh cultural recovery programme is funded by Arts Council England and by the Government’s Additional Restrictions Grant to Cheshire West and Chester Council.

The Awakening:  Ship of the Gods

Friday 18 March & Saturday 19 March from 6.00 – 10 pm

We are excited to be bringing Ship of the Gods back to the city of Hull as part of The Awakening – a new evening event taking place in March which celebrates Hull’s maritime heritage, folklore and mythology.

Ship of the Gods was originally commissioned by Absolutely Cultured for Urban Legends: Northern Lights and was shown in the winter of 2018 at Hull Minster and Holy Trinity Square.  This time it can be experienced in the Museum Gardens in the Old Town of Hull.

Alongside this we will also be showing a series of projected animated artefacts in a number of shop windows along Whitefriargate.

These have been developed from 3D laser scans of objects drawn from the Hull Maritime Museum Collection which include a sextant from the Truelove, one of Hull’s last C19th whaling boats and a butcher’s block made from the vertebrae of Right Whale captured of Greenland.

Since 2019 we have been working as part of a team on the Hull:  Yorkshire’s Maritime City Project.  Link to more information on this.

Above: 3 D laser scan of a whale vertebra captured off Greenland.  Knife markets in the surface of the block suggest it was once used as a butcher’s block. 

This object is one of the many artefacts that we had scanned as part of our work with the Hull: Yorkshires’s Maritime City Project.

Anthro Zoo

Great North Museum, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Thursday 10 March – Sunday 13 March from 6.30 – 10 pm

Showing at the Great North Museum as part of North of the Tyne, Under the Stars produced by Pinwheel and DAT Events and commissioned by the North of Tyne Combined Authority.

Using a fusion of large-scale projection, light and sound, Anthro Zoo takes a nocturnal journey deep into the zoology stores of the Great North Museum – home to a vast and eclectic collection of taxidermy specimens.

Here resides an order of animal skins skillfully shaped by the taxidermist to capture the memory and shape of former lives. Rabbit and wolf exist peacefully together with the now extinct Great Auk and Huia birds.

Using 3D laser scanning technology, lighting and film, a selection of these creatures have been digitally captured and transformed into luminous bodies of light, ready to re-inhabit the city of Newcastle.

Scans of the museum and the city create an ethereal context for this imaginary world, whilst the façade of the Great North Museum provides a dramatic backdrop for experiencing Anthro Zoo.

With thanks to the following organisations and people for undertaking the original 3D laser scans: Or3D and Seven Three Productions:Andy Coates, Paul Green and May McConnell.

North of Tyne, Under the Stars is a free outdoor festival of projection, magic and storytelling, inspired by local stories and landscapes from across Newcastle, Northumberland and North Tyneside.

Inner Worlds

Inner Worlds is an 11 channel video and sound installation created especially for the iconic Rotunda building at Winchester School of Art.

This video has been created from imagery developed during our year-long residency at Winchester School of Art.  During this year we have spent much of our time working at the University of Southampton’s Biomedical I imaging Unit based at Southampton General Hospital where we have been introduced to a range of different imaging techniques such as confocal microscopy and scanning electron microscopy.

For this culminating public display, we have literally sampled Winchester School of Art: water from the pond; a spiders’ web; workshop dust; a flake of studio paint and other elements, examined at massive magnification the worlds contained within these tiny things.  The resulting light projection brings together all this detail, along with its architectural context, in a moving, ephemeral response to the art school building and specifically its iconic Rotunda.

 Projected to the outside world from within the Rotunda itself during hours of darkness, Inner Worlds will be readily viewable from Winchester School of Art premises and from the street, 31 January – 11 February (excluding weekends).

Duration of installation 15 mins 11 secs looped to play continuously across the 11 windows of the building.

The Crossing Place

The Crossing Place, commissioned by Right Up Our Street is a large-scale multi-media installation developed especially for this year’s DN Festival of Light which will be shown inside Doncaster Minster from the 25th to 28th November 2021.  Entry is free but ticketed. The link to book is here.

A scaled-down adaption of the work featuring a selection of the museum’s taxidermy specimens alongside the painting ‘Animals in a Landscape’ by the artist Ramsay Richard Reinagle (1775-1862), can be experienced at the Danum Gallery, Library & Museum from the 25th November to 14th January 2022.  Opening times can be found here.

The Crossing Place is inspired by Doncaster’s rich natural history collection and the town’s long-standing association with wildlife parks dating back to the 19th century when the nearby Owston Hall estate was home to a range of native and non-native creatures which included the now extinct Quagga.

A foal of the Quagga was preserved by the taxidermist Hugh Reid and was later donated to Doncaster Museum where it still remains a scientifically important specimen.  Reinagle’s painting ‘Animals in a Landscape or to give the painting its full title ‘Landscape with Animals or an African Scene, with Zebus of Three Kinds and Quaggas: The Zebras painted from the Animals’ depicts an imagined scene populated with some of the animals that lived on the Owston Hall estate including the young Quagga.

More recently in the 1950s, Beechfield Zoo which lay within the grounds of the original Doncaster Museum was home to around 400 creatures some of which came from other zoos and others that were found locally and gifted by the public.  A number of these creatures were preserved after their demise and form part of Heritage Doncaster’s taxidermy collection.

The Crossing Place re-imagines Reinagle’s fictional landscape populated by a menagerie of exotic and native creatures such as crocodile, pufferfish, leopard, penguin, snake and swan.

Using 3D laser scanning technology, digital 3D modelling, projection and lighting effects we have drawn on the museum’s rich taxidermy collection to create a landscape of fantastical creatures where predators and prey exist peacefully side by side as luminous bodies of light.

The soundscape developed specifically for the film weaves together sounds recorded at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park with musical elements composed and mixed to express the movement and potential dramas playing out between the different creatures.

With special thanks to Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council, Heritage Doncaster, Doncaster Minster, Yorkshire Wildlife Park and DLCT for all their support in the development of this work.

Commissioned by Right Up Our Street for DN Festival of Light. Right Up Our Street is an Arts Council England and DMBC funded project for Doncaster.

Work In Progress Exhibition at Winchester School of Art Gallery

We have been working within the art school and university since Autumn 2020; however our work has been largely unseen during this period because of the pandemic.

This exhibition which runs from Monday 4 October until Thursday 21 October is open to the public from 1-5 pm, Monday to Thursday. 

On specific days (7, 19, 20 & 21 October) the University of Southampton Biomedical Imaging Unit will be bringing their Microscopic Roadshow to the gallery and there will the opportunity to bring your own material to view and photograph.

We will also be at the gallery on those days and will be available to chat with visitors. 

The residency will culminate in a public event at Winchester School of Art on 6 – 10 December 2021.

Limelight at Lindisfarne Castle, Holy Island is now open

Limelight, specially commissioned for Lindisfarne Castle on Holy Island is now open to the public and on display until 31 October 2021.  Booking is essential and can be made on the Lindisfarne National Trust website.

Limelight takes an imaginative journey through Lindisfarne Castle and its digital twin using a combination of lighting, 3D laser scans, video projection and sound. The two film installations created for the Ship Room and North East Bedroom are inspired by the transient nature of the Castle, the shifting interpretation of its many stories and its elemental context.

Limelight is a Trust New Art project developed and programmed by National Trust, supported using public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England and produced with support from Arts&Heritage. With thanks to David McCreadie 3D Measuring & Modelling for their assistance with the point cloud data.

Check out some of our instagram posts for more details:  Seabed and Storm in a Teacup, Water Margin, and Limelight in the Ship Room.

Artists in Residence at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton

We are excited to begin our year long residency at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton supported by curator Sara Roberts. We are collaborating with the Biomedical Imaging Unit housed in Southampton General Hospital to explore a range of otherwise invisible forms, structures and systems that flow through our everyday world.

Check out our dedicated Inner Worlds Instagram page to see what we are up to.

Invited Speakers for Outside The Box: Public Art in Qatar

We feel honoured to have been invited to speak at Outside The Box: Public Art in Qatar, a free event held at the National Museum of Qatar and Qatar National Library, Education City, Doha, Qatar from 22 – 23 February 2020.

Outside the Box: Public Art in Qatar, is a public art forum initiating conversation about art in the public realm and its role in mediating dialogue and changing perceptions of place. Link here for further information and the full programme.

Commissioned by the British Council, curated by FutureEverything in partnership with Qatar Museums and Qatar Foundation.

Commissioned artists for b-side festival 2023

7-10 September 2023

We are delighted to working with b-side as one of the four commissioned artists for this year’s festival which takes place on the Isle of Portland in Dorset from 7-10 September 2023.

The theme for this year festival, a culmination of a two year programme called This Land, focuses on the intriguing history and heritage of Portland’s land. With land protection at the forefront, This Land focuses on two fragile and unique natural and built heritage sites identified as at risk: the last remaining area of original Portland landscape at Portland Bill and the ruins of a Tudor cottage, Brandy Row on the seafront at Chiswell.

The focus of our research and work is this row of derelict Portland stone Tudor cottages located at the southern end of Brandy Row in Chiswell.  This site, once inhabited by local fishermen and quarrymen, is now used as stores.  The future of the remains of theses cottages is uncertain as they face the possible threat of demolition and asset disposal, whilst environmental factors such as the storms and rising sea levels present a more elemental threat.

Over the coming months we will be visiting Portland to meet with local residents, the project’s researchers and undertake films and sound recordings of the site which will be used to develop the final work which will also include data captured from Lidar scans of the site.

Light Up Lancaster:  Ship of the Gods

Friday 4 – Saturday 5 November 2022

Lancaster Priory is the next port of call for our light installation Ship of the Gods showing as part of Light Up Lancaster from 4 to 5 November.  Inspired by the Norse myth of Skidbladnir, this magical shape-shifting vessel was large enough to carry all the gods and their equipment yet could be folded up small enough to fit inside a pocket.

Using 3D laser scanning technology, film and lighting effects we have drawn on artefacts of maritime culture to re-imagine Skidbladnir through the scanned forms of life-size boats and ship models to create an ephemeral vessel of light, which like the mythical ship has the ability to transform and be folded down to move to other places.

Lancaster has been a port since before the Roman times and its history has been shaped by its two waterways – the River Lune and the Lancaster Canal.  We will be adapting the installation to integrate with the Priory’s magnificent interior. Link to further information about Ship of the Gods

Ship of the Gods was originally commissioned by Absolutely Cultured for Hull Minster as part of the light festival event Urban Legends: Northern Lights.

Once a Desert – Chester Cathedral

Wednesday 9th March, 6.30-10pm (last admission 9.30pm)
Thursday 10th March, 7.30-10pm (last admission 9.30pm)
Saturday 12th March, 6.30-10pm (last admission 9.30pm)

Using a combination of high-speed film and animated point cloud imagery created from 3D laser scan of Chester Cathedral, this installation uses the Cathedral’s impressive interior as the context for experiencing the work.

The origins of Chester Cathedral date as far back as 1092 when it was founded as a Benedictine Abbey, built on a bedrock of red sandstone.  During that time the waters of the River Dee extended over the Roodee, now the site of Chester’s Racecourse, and boats could sail up the River Dee right into the city.

This red sandstone, sourced from the city’s quarries was used to gradually rebuild the cathedral up until the Victorian period when a different red sandstone was used, sourced from quarries in the Wirral and Liverpool.

The title of the work alludes to the period of time when this stone was formed, during the Triassic period over 200 million years ago.  This was a time when the earth’s climate was mostly hot and dry, with deserts spanning much of the interior of Pangaea’s, the huge land mass from which our present day continents split from.

As we face the challenges of global climate change, Once a Desert is a reflection upon the permeability and impermanence of material within the context of the cathedral and deeper time.

With thanks to OR3D for undertaking the 3D Lidar scans. and Chester Cathedral for their assistance in the development of this commission.

Once a Desert is part of the Refresh cultural recovery programme for Chester, designed to bring high-quality arts and cultural activities back to the city.

The Refresh cultural recovery programme is funded by Arts Council England and by the Government’s Additional Restrictions Grant to Cheshire West and Chester Council.

The Awakening:  Ship of the Gods

Friday 18 March & Saturday 19 March from 6.00 – 10 pm

We are excited to be bringing Ship of the Gods back to the city of Hull as part of The Awakening – a new evening event taking place in March which celebrates Hull’s maritime heritage, folklore and mythology.

Ship of the Gods was originally commissioned by Absolutely Cultured for Urban Legends: Northern Lights and was shown in the winter of 2018 at Hull Minster and Holy Trinity Square.  This time it can be experienced in the Museum Gardens in the Old Town of Hull.

Alongside this we will also be showing a series of projected animated artefacts in a number of shop windows along Whitefriargate.

These have been developed from 3D laser scans of objects drawn from the Hull Maritime Museum Collection which include a sextant from the Truelove, one of Hull’s last C19th whaling boats and a butcher’s block made from the vertebrae of Right Whale captured of Greenland.

Since 2019 we have been working as part of a team on the Hull:  Yorkshire’s Maritime City Project.  Link to more information on this.

Above: 3 D laser scan of a whale vertebra captured off Greenland.  Knife markets in the surface of the block suggest it was once used as a butcher’s block. 

This object is one of the many artefacts that we had scanned as part of our work with the Hull: Yorkshires’s Maritime City Project.

Anthro Zoo

Great North Museum, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Thursday 10 March – Sunday 13 March from 6.30 – 10 pm

Showing at the Great North Museum as part of North of the Tyne, Under the Stars produced by Pinwheel and DAT Events and commissioned by the North of Tyne Combined Authority.

Using a fusion of large-scale projection, light and sound, Anthro Zoo takes a nocturnal journey deep into the zoology stores of the Great North Museum – home to a vast and eclectic collection of taxidermy specimens.

Here resides an order of animal skins skillfully shaped by the taxidermist to capture the memory and shape of former lives. Rabbit and wolf exist peacefully together with the now extinct Great Auk and Huia birds.

Using 3D laser scanning technology, lighting and film, a selection of these creatures have been digitally captured and transformed into luminous bodies of light, ready to re-inhabit the city of Newcastle.

Scans of the museum and the city create an ethereal context for this imaginary world, whilst the façade of the Great North Museum provides a dramatic backdrop for experiencing Anthro Zoo.

With thanks to the following organisations and people for undertaking the original 3D laser scans: Or3D and Seven Three Productions:Andy Coates, Paul Green and May McConnell.

North of Tyne, Under the Stars is a free outdoor festival of projection, magic and storytelling, inspired by local stories and landscapes from across Newcastle, Northumberland and North Tyneside.

Inner Worlds

Inner Worlds is an 11 channel video and sound installation created especially for the iconic Rotunda building at Winchester School of Art.

This video has been created from imagery developed during our year-long residency at Winchester School of Art.  During this year we have spent much of our time working at the University of Southampton’s Biomedical I imaging Unit based at Southampton General Hospital where we have been introduced to a range of different imaging techniques such as confocal microscopy and scanning electron microscopy.

For this culminating public display, we have literally sampled Winchester School of Art: water from the pond; a spiders’ web; workshop dust; a flake of studio paint and other elements, examined at massive magnification the worlds contained within these tiny things.  The resulting light projection brings together all this detail, along with its architectural context, in a moving, ephemeral response to the art school building and specifically its iconic Rotunda.

 Projected to the outside world from within the Rotunda itself during hours of darkness, Inner Worlds will be readily viewable from Winchester School of Art premises and from the street, 31 January – 11 February (excluding weekends).

Duration of installation 15 mins 11 secs looped to play continuously across the 11 windows of the building.

The Crossing Place

The Crossing Place, commissioned by Right Up Our Street is a large-scale multi-media installation developed especially for this year’s DN Festival of Light which will be shown inside Doncaster Minster from the 25th to 28th November 2021.  Entry is free but ticketed. The link to book is here.

A scaled-down adaption of the work featuring a selection of the museum’s taxidermy specimens alongside the painting ‘Animals in a Landscape’ by the artist Ramsay Richard Reinagle (1775-1862), can be experienced at the Danum Gallery, Library & Museum from the 25th November to 14th January 2022.  Opening times can be found here.

The Crossing Place is inspired by Doncaster’s rich natural history collection and the town’s long-standing association with wildlife parks dating back to the 19th century when the nearby Owston Hall estate was home to a range of native and non-native creatures which included the now extinct Quagga.

A foal of the Quagga was preserved by the taxidermist Hugh Reid and was later donated to Doncaster Museum where it still remains a scientifically important specimen.  Reinagle’s painting ‘Animals in a Landscape or to give the painting its full title ‘Landscape with Animals or an African Scene, with Zebus of Three Kinds and Quaggas: The Zebras painted from the Animals’ depicts an imagined scene populated with some of the animals that lived on the Owston Hall estate including the young Quagga.

More recently in the 1950s, Beechfield Zoo which lay within the grounds of the original Doncaster Museum was home to around 400 creatures some of which came from other zoos and others that were found locally and gifted by the public.  A number of these creatures were preserved after their demise and form part of Heritage Doncaster’s taxidermy collection.

The Crossing Place re-imagines Reinagle’s fictional landscape populated by a menagerie of exotic and native creatures such as crocodile, pufferfish, leopard, penguin, snake and swan.

Using 3D laser scanning technology, digital 3D modelling, projection and lighting effects we have drawn on the museum’s rich taxidermy collection to create a landscape of fantastical creatures where predators and prey exist peacefully side by side as luminous bodies of light.

The soundscape developed specifically for the film weaves together sounds recorded at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park with musical elements composed and mixed to express the movement and potential dramas playing out between the different creatures.

With special thanks to Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council, Heritage Doncaster, Doncaster Minster, Yorkshire Wildlife Park and DLCT for all their support in the development of this work.

Commissioned by Right Up Our Street for DN Festival of Light. Right Up Our Street is an Arts Council England and DMBC funded project for Doncaster.

Work In Progress Exhibition at Winchester School of Art Gallery

We have been working within the art school and university since Autumn 2020; however our work has been largely unseen during this period because of the pandemic.

This exhibition which runs from Monday 4 October until Thursday 21 October is open to the public from 1-5 pm, Monday to Thursday. 

On specific days (7, 19, 20 & 21 October) the University of Southampton Biomedical Imaging Unit will be bringing their Microscopic Roadshow to the gallery and there will the opportunity to bring your own material to view and photograph.

We will also be at the gallery on those days and will be available to chat with visitors. 

The residency will culminate in a public event at Winchester School of Art on 6 – 10 December 2021.

Limelight at Lindisfarne Castle, Holy Island is now open

Limelight, specially commissioned for Lindisfarne Castle on Holy Island is now open to the public and on display until 31 October 2021.  Booking is essential and can be made on the Lindisfarne National Trust website.

Limelight takes an imaginative journey through Lindisfarne Castle and its digital twin using a combination of lighting, 3D laser scans, video projection and sound. The two film installations created for the Ship Room and North East Bedroom are inspired by the transient nature of the Castle, the shifting interpretation of its many stories and its elemental context.

Limelight is a Trust New Art project developed and programmed by National Trust, supported using public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England and produced with support from Arts&Heritage. With thanks to David McCreadie 3D Measuring & Modelling for their assistance with the point cloud data.

Check out some of our instagram posts for more details:  Seabed and Storm in a Teacup, Water Margin, and Limelight in the Ship Room.

Artists in Residence at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton

We are excited to begin our year long residency at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton supported by curator Sara Roberts. We are collaborating with the Biomedical Imaging Unit housed in Southampton General Hospital to explore a range of otherwise invisible forms, structures and systems that flow through our everyday world.

Check out our dedicated Inner Worlds Instagram page to see what we are up to.

Invited Speakers for Outside The Box: Public Art in Qatar

We feel honoured to have been invited to speak at Outside The Box: Public Art in Qatar, a free event held at the National Museum of Qatar and Qatar National Library, Education City, Doha, Qatar from 22 – 23 February 2020.

Outside the Box: Public Art in Qatar, is a public art forum initiating conversation about art in the public realm and its role in mediating dialogue and changing perceptions of place. Link here for further information and the full programme.

Commissioned by the British Council, curated by FutureEverything in partnership with Qatar Museums and Qatar Foundation.