Lighting Designers London Contemporary Art Exhibition

Our lighting designers (London studios) have again been busy at the Korean Cultural Centre UK.

The Riptide exhibition of contemporary art brings together Koo Jeong A the Korean Cultural Artist of the Year with a selection of international artists. These artist would respond and exhibit alongside her existing works.

In advance of this exhibition our lighting designers London studios had been working with the exhibitions curatorial team to up upgrade their lighting equipment. Following the success of the previous exhibition it was agreed that all their London galleries would be retro fitted with new LED lamps & fittings.

The seven renowned international artists each had individual lighting requirements for their unique art installations. This provided an excellent opportunity for our lighting designers to put the new gallery lighting improvements through their paces.

"Beautiful elegant lighting, exactly how I wanted the light for my art installation!" - Koo Jeong A - Korean Cultural Center Artist of the Year 2016.

"We are truly appreciated your kindly help to get the light just perfect on our art installations" Hanqing Ma & Mona Yoo.

"Simon listened and responded to deliver great lighting results" Matthias Sohr.

The previous exhibition had provided the perfect opportunity for our designers to show the limitations of the original lighting installation. The single circuit track lighting with retail spot lights (light fixtures) were inadequate for the task. Electrical contractors with no understanding of how to light fine art, line drawings, photographs, paintings or sculptures had specified and installed the original lighting system.

This meant lighting tracks were installed in the wrong locations in 1 meter long sections with large gaps between each.  Light fixtures were for budget retail applications meaning the GU 10 halogen and LED lamps were housed at the very front of the light fixtures. The effect of of which turned the gallery ceilings into a universe of bright stars, distracting the eyes of the exhibition visitors from the art on display.

As with all cultural & heritage projects, budgets need to be acquired before these essential lighting improvements can be implemented. It was therefore agreed that our lighting design proposals would happen gradually with each new exhibition.

The dramatic lighting improvements and upgrades made on this occasion consisted of; changing all lamps to a standardised cool white 4000K with a high CRI (Colour Render Index) which provided a consistency across the galleries. Next 25% of the light fixtures had anti-glare rings fitted providing a more comfortable experience for the visitor when viewing the art on display.  The largest gallery had new light track fitted in a grid layout with each run of track individually dimmed to provide conservation lighting when required.

This will never be the ultimate lighting solution but then there is not the budget to achieve that. However on very limited budget it will provide very high quality lighting. Next time more improvements will be made including the addition of filters, additional light track & fixtures.

Those who visit the London gallery on a regular basis will see marked improvements in lighting over the coming exhibitions as the upgrades are implemented.

Click images on the right hand side of the screen to view other lighting design projects or related links.

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