Enlightenment: Durham International Light Festival

Michael Day - Superstructures

Tourist Information Centre, Millennium Place
www.durhamtourism.co.uk

Superstructures is a split-screen video piece that presents the input and output of a bespoke computer program that responds to levels of ambient light. The input footage of a dying neon tube controls glimpses of a metal superstructure that might support a modernist piece of architecture.
Michael Day

Darshana Vora - Walks in Silence

Woolworths, 17 Market Place
www.woolworths.co.uk

Walks in Silence is a silent moving image work that forms a rhythmic, architectonic visual diary. Borrowing light from street lamps, reflections and windows these sources of illumination edit and foreground objects in the built environment and their unique hues bring strong colour to the nocturnal cityscape. Street furniture, people and traffic passing by add to the reflections in this projection.
Darshana Vora

Yaron Lapid - The New Zero

Gala Cinema & Theatre, Millennium Place
www.galadurham.co.uk

The New Zero is an artistic project, which plays on the nature of photography and its ability to assemble and disassemble layers of history. In 1999 I found on the floor of a recently demolished area in Jerusalem several envelopes, probably the leftovers of a former photographic studio. They contained hundreds of black and white negatives which date back to the 1970s and which formed the basis for The New Zero.
Gaia Tedone

Jorn Ebner - Skylauncher

Durham City Vision Offices, Millennium Place
www.durham2020.co.uk

Skylauncher is a series of software generated images of the sky which have an almost painterly quality.
The viewer is afforded a unique perspective with the sky brought down to pedestrian level.
Jorn Ebner

Espen Krukhaug - Before Dawn

Town Hall, Market Place

The project Before Dawn began in the last months of 2004. During this project, I have explored night time and the insomnia and solitary aspects that comes with it.

I have always had a natural attraction towards the quiet moments of night time. These neglected moments hold so much beauty that people take for granted during daytime. Everyday life contains a well known stress-factor that brings us from a to b. But nocturnal shades throw a different light. With so much light-pollution in the cities, it will never be fully dark. But still, these colours and shades are sources for incredible colours in my work.
Espen Krukhaug

Becca Pelly-Fry - Secret Spaces

Skin Philosophy, Skincare Boutique and Beauty Spa, 23 Elvet Bridge Tel:0191 375 7755
www.skinphilosophy.co.uk

Take a peek inside a hidden world of light and paper, where fairytales and legends might unfold in front of your very eyes. Like the invented worlds and hiding places we create for ourselves as children, these ‘Secret Spaces’ are places to escape and let the imagination run wild.
Becca Pelly-Fry

Roshni R. Belakavadi - Light and Shade

Gemcraft, 33 Saddler St Tel: 0191 3831933

Light and Shade is one in a series of visual poems. They are non-narrative visuals where light is the main character supported by the words. Perception is abstracted through movements and their close observation, while the visual aesthetics are held strongly through colour, light and their interplay.
Roshni R. Belakavadi

Colin Rennie - Reducere

The Mugwump, 37 Saddler St Tel: 0191 386 1282

The work references Victorian bell jars, specimen collections, and microscopy.  The contents are models, white and devoid of life. The frosted surface serves to visually increase the size of the contents and the lens, to reduce. The true size and detail is lost between these scales. Models do not make the invisible visible, only imaginable.
Colin Rennie

Paul Vivian - Post Office

Post Office, 33 Silver St
www.postoffice.co.uk

The work relates to destinations and departures: a series of silhouette projections contained within boxes sent through the mail and assembled by the artist. Viewed via small holes and slots these illuminated images actually originate from improvised constructions.
Paul Vivian

Nurcan Ozagi - The Light

Rumbletums, Old English Tea Rooms, 32 Silver St

Artwork simulates an invitation to the viewer to indulge in a relationship of fusion of light and darkness, black and white. An experiment with the primordial, symbolic elements of life, birth, death and wisdom creates a common link to popular religious beliefs. I aim to investigate the feeling of consciousness/unconsciousness by creating a unique space where these ideas can be perceived in a personal manner. The light shines on all of us one time or another…
Nurcan Ozagi