LONDON.- The Barbican’s series of foyer commissions continues this autumn with new work from five innovative artists. Visitors to the Barbican can enjoy spectacular light installations, listen to two new audio works exploring the iconic interiors of the Centre, and power films by pedalling on bicycles. The new series of installations, which extends the artistic programme beyond the walls of the Barbican’s venues, is free for audiences to explore and engage with any time the Centre is open.
• 44 by Omer Arbel, an intricate light installation descending from the main foyer ceiling
• Numina by Zarah Hussain, a site-specific, sculptural installation that will accompany Transcender - the Barbican’s season of ecstatic, hypnotic and psychedelic music
• I hope this finds you well by Bedwyr Williams, an audio commission for the foyer playfully imagining the internal dialogues of the people who use the Barbican’s public spaces as their office
• let’s take a walk by non zero one, an interactive audio experience around the Barbican’s public spaces that looks at the process of decision making
• NowhereSomewhere by Rosalind Fowler, a bicycle powered film installation inviting the public to ponder ecological themes and imagine a future London
The new commissions follow those currently installed in the Centre – Approximate by David Hunter (until 30 September), Possibly Colliding by FELD (until 9 September), Cosmic Teta by Maria Nepomuceno (until 29 August) and Edgelands by Seth Scott with Hannah Bruce and Company (until 7 October).
Omer Arbel: 44
14 September 2016 – 18 April 2017
Bocci’s light installation 44 is the second site-specific commission for the Lightwell in the Barbican foyers. Designed by Omer Arbel, the light installation comprises of over 300 free-poured aluminium forms suspended from the ceiling by a matrix of thin cables. As the sculpture descends and expands, it punctuates the spaces of the foyer, engaging with notions of weightlessness and mass, craft and mass-production.
To visualise the piece, Arbel used archive photographs of the Barbican’s construction taken by Peter Bloomfield, creating collages of photos and renderings to present open-ended representations of his ideas. Having been inspired by him, Arbel has invited 85 year old Bloomfield back to the Barbican to photograph 44’s installation.
On Peter Bloomfield’s photography Omer Arbel said: The images are unique in that they document the process of building as if its unfinished state was in fact the final intent of the architecture itself. We used some of these images in our collage to communicate our intentions for the future - an idea born in the present, collaged into a document of the past, used as a tool to imagine the future.
Bocci is a Vancouver and Berlin-based design and manufacturing company founded in 2005 under the creative directorship of Omer Arbel, known for sculptural lighting and large scale light installations.
Part of London Design Festival
