Dean Street in Newcastle is nothing special. It meanders briefly down the hill from Neville Street, in the direction of the river that separates Newcastle from its rival-turned-cultural-ally Gateshead.
But if you happen to find yourself on Dean Street after dark at the end of this month, you might be surprised at what you see. In each of the blank windows of No 19, a tiny light brightens and dims repeatedly, in unison with its fellows, so that the building’s empty shell appears, creepily, to be breathing.
This isn’t Ghostbusters, however, this is Something & Nothing, a lightwork by the Glasgow artists Smith/Stewart (Stephanie Smith and Edward Stewart) and part of Glow, a city-wide outdoor light art exhibition and series of events curated by the environmental arts organisation NVA. It is just one component of a scheme that will make Newcastle-Gateshead the most imaginatively lit pair of cities in the UK this winter.
Elsewhere, in London, Wavelength, the UK’s largest ever neon sculpture, designed by artists Rob and Nick Carter, has just opened on Victoria Street. Using 152 neon tubes, the sculpture is nearly twice the height of a London bus. The intensity of its lights is governed by the movement of passers-by: at busy times the lights change faster, during quieter periods they slow down. Birmingham, Sunderland and Northumberland are also marking the festive season with whizzo light installations rather than the usual flashing Santas. Simon Smith, the lighting strategy lead officer for Glasgow, which held the spectacular Radiance light festival last year, claims: “Light is very easily understood. It doesn’t require any particular deep reading. In Scotland we spend a large part of our winter season in the dark, so it has a feel-good factor.”
Ekow Eshun, creative director of the ICA, agrees. “I don’t think that you can underestimate the popular appeal of coloured light,” he says. “It’s a primal thing, isn’t it? Without wanting to be too hackneyed, it’s like cavemen looking at fire. If the purpose is to create something that can unite people in a sense of joy and wonder, then light is one of the first places that you look.”
Angus Farquhar, the creative director of NVA, cites the need for public ritual, especially at this dark time of year, and the long history of light in mass celebration. “Light is a good way of symbolising moments of change,” he says. “Whatever your religion or where you come from, light is always the metaphor for hope.”
Before lighting up Newcastle, NVA was most notably responsible for the awardwinning Storr project on the Isle of Skye last year. Visiting the project involved a 2¼-mile hike uphill and a 450-yard ascent at midnight to reach the Old Man of Storr, a basalt pinnacle on the wild Trotternish Ridge. The way was gently lit with reflective markers (each climber wore a headlamp) and shadowy figures flitted among the trees to the sounds of poetry and Gaelic songs.
It seems fitting that NVA should bring its expertise to the city that gave birth to the lightbulb. Angus Farquhar is practically jumping up and down with excitement as we walk through Newcastle’s sloping streets on a cold, bright Tuesday afternoon.
“We can bring so much quality to what it means to walk through the city,” he enthuses, dragging me up yet another set of alarmingly steep, narrow steps. “It brings narratives to the surface, by lighting a little feature here or a carving there.”
People will be able to download a festival route map and follow the Glow trail around the city, finding the artworks along the way. Alternatively, anyone can just happen across the works, enjoy them in isolation and get on with their shopping. “The city becomes both a work of art and a gallery in which you can put work that would normally only be seen in a gallery context,” Farquhar explains.
We stop in front of an absurdly ornate peach and white stucco doorway, topped by a sculpture of Newcastle’s famous vampire rabbit. The doorway faces directly on to the back end of a church, a juxtaposition, typical of this higgledy-piggledy city, that sends Farquhar into architectural raptures. “Look at it!” he says with delight. “Why is it here? It’s just amazing.”
A cynical eye might see Glow, which will run for three separate periods until New Year’s Eve, as the latest salvo in the culture wars between British cities. It was commissioned by the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative (NGI), an agency set up by the two councils to bid jointly for the title of 2008 European Capital of Culture. The twin city bid was the bookies’ favourite to win, making it all the more galling when the coveted title went to Liverpool.
Other cities are following Newcastle’s light lead. Glow is the largest component of Dazzle, a collection of winter festivals spread across the North East that includes Sunderland’s Shine, Northumberland Lights and Durham’s Silver Festival. Sonumbra, at Mowbray Park in Sunderland, is an umbrella-shaped structure of electro-luminescent fibres that emits musical sounds and changes colour in response to movement. Inner Light projects on to The Bridges shopping centre the responses of Reg Vardy Gallery visitors to the question: “What do you think your soul looks like?” The Cutter Building in Northumberland has been illuminated with lights piercing far into the sky and the wind turbines on the Blyth seafront have also been given the light touch. It’s not difficult to spot the theme.
Beyond the North East, Birmingham was one of several European cities in 2002 that founded LUCI (Lighting Urban Community International), a network of cities with a strong lighting strategy. This winter, Birmingham unveils Urban Oasis, an environmentally sustainable light installation in the form of a spiky, transparent flower. It has pods for sitting in and photovoltaic “petals” that open and close.
The splendidly titled Arts Ambassador for Birmingham, Nigel Edmondson, explained why our cities are starting to light up: “I think it’s probably about cities looking to create an active night-time environment. The perception of safety is part of it. Developers are putting more residential opportunities into city centres, and as more people move in, the more you need to do to keep them happy and provide facilities for them. Lighting, in value-for-money terms, is so effective — what it can do to change environments and mood.” Especially now that new technologies such as LED and low-energy bulbs make imaginative lighting less of a drain on resources.
So what’s the future for light art? “I think it’s to do with what’s going on in fine art as much as in the street,” says Sir Christopher Frayling, the Rector of the Royal College of Art. “There is a move towards virtual as well as actual art, to something more ephemeral.”
Architects are beginning to consider at the design stage how their buildings will be lit. The Selfridges building by FutureSystems in Birmingham has the ability to change colour with the flick of a switch — green on St Patrick’s Day, pink for Gay Pride. Edmondson believes that artist involvement can only grow.
“There’s been development in how you engage artists in the process. The move to installations, events and temporary things is an encouraging direction to be going in. People are less interested in one iconic work of public art.” The ambition, he says, is to stop focusing purely on the city centre and start to spread the light message to other parts of the city.
One NVA work, The Shadowhouse, will show in Benwell, a tough area of the city. The windows of Atkinson Road School will become a winter fairytale setting for original new animations and the building will be lit by award-winning designer David Bryant.
And so, in a controlled, small-scale, British sort of way, we are slowly but surely filling the world with light.
