Trip the light fantastic as old Allders building gets set to host Lumia
Paisley’s newest art space, The Art Department is to open its first exhibition.
Lumia: Performing Light is also the first such exhibition to take place in Scotland.
Place Partnership at One Ren commissioned the exhibition from Trent Kim of the University of West of Scotland.
The exhibition is open to the public from Wednesday, April 13 to Sunday, April 17 in the former Allders store in Causeyside Street.
In this exhibition, projection and inventive light experiments are presented for the viewer to explore.
Trent explores a deeper structure of lighting that is unfamiliar to our everyday practices with light, and situates Lumia, a long-forgotten art form of lighting, across its historical and contemporary contexts between performance and animation.
He seeks ways to connect history, theory and practice of Lumia for its continuing history.
The show also features two guest artists, George Stadnik and Joshua White – legendary figures in the field of Lumia - to form an aspect of a group show, igniting a creative dialogue within the community of contemporary Lumia artists.
Joshua was born in 1942 and raised in New York City and designed environments for the first generation of NY discos.
In 1967, he founded The Joshua Light Show – a group of artists improvising with projections in live concert venues for stars including Frank Zappa, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, The Doors, The Who, Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix.
Lumia emerged as an art form in the inter-war period in the US.
Initially, Thomas Wilfred, with like-minded artists including Claude Bragdon and Van Dearing Perrine, explored the idea of light as a sole medium of expression.
Soon Thomas pursued his vision and established Lumia as an independent art form of light.
Lumia began as an avant-garde performance practice that he called ‘recitals’, but it was also referred to as mobile colour from the perspective of visual art.
Muriel Ann MacLeod, creative producer at Place Partnership, said: “We’re thrilled to be launching this exciting exhibition in Paisley’s newest art space, The Art Department.
“Trent and his colleagues have worked incredibly hard to create this exhibition and it is really great to be able to show some exhibition pieces from major Lumia figures like George and Joshua.
“The exhibition offers a meditative and contemplative experience for the viewer as they walk through it, using colour and light to transform and inspire.”
Born in 1981, Trent is a Koreanborn, Scottish light artist based in Glasgow.
He is a full-time lecturer in New Media Art at the University of West of Scotland, training as a theatre lighting designer before expanding his creative practices onto visual music and Lumia.
We’re thrilled to be launching this exciting exhibition in Paisley’s newest art space