Author: beth
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Nottingham Light Night Installation 2025
I am collaborating with multiple folks from my course to create an interactive light installation for Nottingham Light Night. It’s the first time we’ve run an open workshop together but I feel confident because of my background as a teacher and community arts practitioner.
We plan to collaborate with each other and the general public to create a multi media, multi layered light installation that will fill the lower gallery space of Stoney Street. We will focus on using found or recycled materials and making the activities accessible, whimsical and fun.
After a small number of us tested our initial idea successfully, we resourced a wider selection of hardware and other equipment, and met with a bigger group in the evening to make use of the early light and develop our plans.
I met with the internal coordinator for Nottingham College light night to secure us some budget and to collaborate with the health and safety aspects of our plan, including the risk assessment.
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Counter culture project reflections
Even though I deviated from my original plans, I am still really pleased with the work I made for this project. I feel like I adapted well to limits put on me, whether it be access to equipment, time or budget. And I learnt a lot about my own studio practise, developing my technical skills along the way.
My end piece is a translation on the famous Bull of Wall Street and it is a commentary on the charging blind danger and madness of late stage capitalism.I created the distorted bull image through a combination of photography, collage and digital editing. The use of collage and bitmap gives it a rebellious, visceral and punky quality. The original horns of the bull were swapped out for images of my own fingers and I think this works for two reasons. It brings humans into the dislogue of the piece very clearly. And it gives the bull a sordid disfigured quality.My choice to print on multiple layers of transparent red celophane is a comment on the multi-layered nature of the issue and draws parallels with the horrors, both current and future, of mans destruction of nature; symbolized here as bull fighting, with the cheap flowing plastic resembling a matadors cape.
I am still not 100% certain how or where I will display the whole piece as an installation. A big part of me wants to create a sturdy frame for it and drop it in the business district of Nottingham, mirroring the guerilla art aspect of the original bull sculpture. A tutor suggested I run one up a flag pole and cycle around town, making a video piece, and I like that idea too.I’ve also run off a bunch of these larger prints on newspaper print and want to use them to create street art, in relationship with the urban environment. Mainly smashed windows. Watch this space. -
Practice makes perfect
I spent hours recently just pulling through my screen, doing it until I get a perfect print everytime.
My focus on practicing and refining technique recently has definitely paid off because I am getting good results consistently now. I am chuffed to bits. -
Developing techniques
As I was testing my bull screen, I ran into some difficulties and asked the technician to advise. They encouraged me to go back to basics; like properly setting up my press frame to avoid it shifting, using fresh paint, properly flooding the screen before printing and clamping the frame in a different orientation to make my pulls easier.It was really good advice because the next run I made and was infinitely more successful. Sometimes we just have to go back to basics and practise our techniques.All that said, I liked aspects of the effect that my technically wrong print pulls generated and I am going to play with this more; the disconnected layering gives the images a dynamic chaos that suits my overall message.
It’s reminded me that I’ve had it in my head for a while to develop (pardon the pun) my photography. I’ve borrowed a DLSR camera and am going to have a play and be experimental. I’m also going to do some research and try to acquire my own equipment to that end. -
Testing different materials
I always had it in mind that this piece would be printed on fabric, or a similarly floaty medium. I had already bought some red florists cellophane to print jelly forms on, and so I tested my bull screen on that.I discovered how effective printing on fabric can be last summer, during the development of my end of year show pieces. Curating my AI children portraits on screen silk and suspending them distorted their image interestingly and invited curiosity because they were partially hidden.And I feel that the choice of fabric works for this piece but in a different way; because it references a matador cape which invokes notions of blind anger and aggression. These emotions feel appropriate when examining late stage capitalism and subverting this sculpture.My only other reflection at this point is that the piece needs to be much larger. I will create a bigger screen next week to test.
I’ve also experimented with layering the prints which creates a real sense of chaos and violence.
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Digital edit and screen-print tests for my subverted bull
Using the photocopy and collage sketch as a base, I edited my bull image in photoshop, increasing the contrast and applying a bitmap filter ready to transfer to a screen for printing. -
Wall Street bull rework: adapting my plans from 3D to 2D
Mid charge, with flared nostrils and horns ready to gore, Di Modica’s sculpture captures much of the aggression, stubbornness, largesse and unpredictability of the stock market and the wider economies it sits in. It is cleverly placed so that the general public can walk 360 degrees around it, which makes the bull, and the risk it presents, feel totally unrestricted.
It has become an iconic symbol for finance and so it feels like the ideal image to subvert when looking at counter culture and capitalism.
As mentioned earlier, I originally planned to create a 3D piece, replacing a bulls horns with my fingers; creating a more relatable image with the implication that capitalism is fucking us all. I planned to create a negative mold of my fingers using dentists alginate, then attach my finger casts to a scaled 3D printed charging bull, creating a silicon jacket mold of the combined components and then casting into that. Logistical and financial barriers prevented me from creating this piece at this time. It’s on the shelf for another day.I adapted my idea to my means and time frame, and have decided to use Adobe to create a digitised collage version of my original plan that I will then screen print. I will experiment with the print finish but my initial idea is to print on clear Perspex and then use this to project the image scaled up onto the side of a building. Ideally a bank.
