Light-Life Ignited! Closing show for Wac Arts Residency 25th March, 6.30-8.30 pm
Artist's talk 7pm with feedback from the young people who participated in eight workshops facilitated. Sculpture, Vision, & Concept - Lorna Carmen McNeill, Creative lighting and technical design - Geoff Blindt, Digital interactive programming – Richard Burns
Light-Life Ignited is a celebration of light and life, here and now. It fuses fine art with sustainable light and digital technologies to illuminate the invisible, inter-dimensional, inter-connected communication that permeates all things.
Light-Life Ignited! WAC ARTS PRESS RELEASE
Artist Lorna Carmen McNeill lights up Wac Arts in the Old Town Hall once more with a new inter-active inspirational, kinetic MovingLightArt installation.
The Young people at Wac Arts also exhibit their artwork created and inspired during 8 interactive art, music and movement workshops facilitated for them by Lorna alongside Wac Arts staff!
For all involved it has been a multi-sensory journey going from tactile and physical, to visual, auditory and back again – truly light and life interacting and igniting into new creations!
Join us for an experience on the 25th March between 6.30pm and 8.30pm and to hear the artist and young people talk at 7pm about the artistic and creative experiences and what the project has meant to all involved!
Don't miss this closing show of the artist's residency at Wac Arts.
Wac Arts is currently displaying a mesmerising art installation: Light-Life Ignite, created by the artist in residence, Lorna Carmen McNeill. Light-Life Ignite is a celebration of light and life, here and now. It fuses fine art with sustainable light and digital technologies to illuminatethe invisible, inter-dimensional, interconnected communication that permeates all things. The installation is about how a creative sparkis ignited and then transforms and blossoms. Light portals open a door to another dimension or to a greater good. As the sculpture rotates, it is continuously photographed and projected live onto a screen, producing infinite, non-repeating patterns. The interaction between light and life ignites new, ever-changing, unexpected rivers of flowing light and colour which radiate into the world.Lorna creates the installationsin collaboration with creative lighting expert Geoff Blindt, with the aim to uplift mood and inspire creativity. The current installations arealso a tribute to the 2015 United Nations, International Year of Light.
In January, Lorna had a successful opening of Light-life Ignite at Wac Arts, after which she received feedback from the students and the exhibition attendees. Wonder Wac Arts and Wac Interactiveprogrammesoffer a range of inclusive performing arts and media opportunities for young people with special educational needs and disabilities. The young people from these programmesgave their feedback to the artist on how the installation made them feel, what it reminded them of and how they thought the installation could be developed further. This feedback was usedto not only inform the artist and develop the initial installation but also to in a series of workshops for the young people from both these programmes, led by the artist. Lorna is working alongside the students collaboratively to facilitate an opportunity to realise their creativity, develop new skills and most of all, to have a positive and enjoyable experience in an inspired environment.
The young people are using a combination of Interactive technology with painting, sculpture and light projection to engage heart, hand and mind. Lorna’s initial installation is being offered as the trigger for the young people to create their own art pieces in a range of mediums. Their original art creations will then be used to inspire them to make music and then to make further art pieces in response to this. The workshops are designed to be a creative multi-sensory journey going from tactile to visual to auditory to movement and back again– truly light and life interacting and igniting into new creations. By the closing exhibition on the 25th March which will be newly titled Light-Life Ignited, the space will be full of the young people’s creations that have been inspired by Lorna’s concept and current installation as well as Lorna’s developed, new and more inter-activeinstallation.
About the Artist:
*Fusing fine art with light and digital technologies*
Lorna Carmen McNeill studied fine art at Camberwell College of Art, and Goldsmiths College of Art but then pursued a vocational scientific training in Nutrition and Dietetics. For over two decades, she worked as a nutritionist in clinical research on lifestyle and behaviour change in a psychology unit at University College London and then as a clinician within the NHS before graduating from the Art Academy with a first in fine art.
“I am intrigued by the properties of light, colour, energy and texture within the natural world. Consider the flow of water and the movements of the sun and the moon as they transform the sky from day to night, and how this reflects the inner journey of being human”
Lorna’s works are collected internationally and are currently on display at the Art Academy, London, Trinity United Reformed Church, St. Albans, Hospice of St Francis, Berkhamsted and were recently showcased at the International conference, Futurefest and as major public installations in collaboration with Geoff Blindt at the Barbican, Womad in summer 2014 and E-Luminate in Cambridge last month.
In addition to ongoing development of new bodies of work, Lorna is a tutor at The Art Academy, London, runs art workshops for team building in companies and charities, workshops on freeing up creativity and offers private art tutoring.
Visit www.lornacarmenmcneill.com, www.MovingLightArt.com for more information on the artwork presented by Lorna Carmen McNeill.
Photos by LucindaPrice.com and LornaCarmenMcNeill.com
To book to attend the exhibition – go to: http://light-life-ignite.eventbrite.co.uk For more information contact Hayley Butler: Hayley.Butler@WacArts.co.uk
About Wac Arts: Empowering Young People to Change Their World
Wac Arts provides a range of dynamic and cutting edge entry level and professional training in the arts for young people aged 5-26. Since 1978, Wac Arts has been home to thousands of talented young people, harnessing their extraordinary potential every year, equipping them to make positive choices for themselves and a positive contribution to society. Our work has opened countless doors for young people, creating life changing opportunities otherwise inaccessible to them.
Visit www.wacarts.co.uk for further information.