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No journey's end by Kazuhiro Yamanaka



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	Twinkle, twinkle: new light from the UK


	Exhibition opens at the Barnsley Design Centre in November 2005

Twinkle, twinkle: new light from the UK is an exhibition of the best in current British lighting design. Featuring work from the biggest international names like Ron Arad and Tom Dixon to experimental pieces from Rachel Wingfield and Sam Buxton, the exhibition shows work launched at the Milan Furniture Fair in 2004 as well as some brand new pieces. The exhibition opened at Tokyo Design Week in October 2004, moved to Moscow as part of 100% Design Moscow trade show and is due to go to Istanbul in September 2005 as part of Istanbul Design Week.

You would think that for a nation that spends so much of the year in darkness, Britain would have a long tradition of lighting design to rival that of Germany, Italy or the Netherlands. Not so. Between George Cawardine’s landmark Anglepoise lamp of 1932 and Tom Dixon’s spheres, stars and Jacks of the 1990s there is a bit of a lacuna. Where was our Castiglioni, Citterio and Magistretti? Our Panton, Hennigsen or Maurer?

If our design attention has been elsewhere in the interim, since the late 1990s, lighting designed in the UK has enjoyed an renaissance. It comes as no surprise that since its launch in 2002, Swarovski’s Crystal Palace project - which commissions international designers to produce new chandeliers - has featured British designers prominently. Twinkle, twinkle includes two of the commissions from 2004, both of which combine complex technology with intimate knowledge of the qualities of crystal. Ron Arad’s ‘Lolita’ is a spiral chandelier composed of crystal and LED that displays moving text messages received by SMS. Barber Osgerby’s ‘Supernova’ is a cluster of hand-blown crystal and Murano glass pendants filled with crystals; each type of glass refracting the pure white halogen light in a slightly different way.

Perhaps because it demands mastery of both form and technology, lighting is necessarily a rich field for innovation and creativity. The really great designers elevate lighting design from the more commonplace industrial or product design, to coax the poetry from technology. There is a satisfying parallel between the spidery elegance of William Benson’s early 20th century Arts and Crafts electric chandeliers, which made a design feature of power cables, and the playful patterns formed by the connecting pathways in both Sam Buxton’s and Rachel Wingfield’s interactive electroluminescent pieces.

The metaphorical and cultural significance of light - or illumination - is harnessed by several of the designers featured in Twinkle, twinkle. Everyone recognises the lightbulb as the signifier of a bright idea. There are countless examples of lights that play with its form – from Ingo Maurer’s ‘bulb, bulb’ of 1969 to Rudi Grauman’s ‘85 lamps’. The idea continues to fascinate the current rising generation of British designers. Either by making a virtue of the naked bulb, like Joel Degermak’s ‘Multibulb light’ which is a devilishly simple socket for many different bulbs; or by subverting our expectations by playing on the lightbulb’s universally familiar outline, like Kazuhiro Yamanaka’s inverted ‘No Journey’s End’.

Lights that retain their mystery – like the haunting glow of Paul Cocksedge’s ‘Sapphire and Tonic’ - or are unashamedly beautiful – like Tord Boontje’s ‘Come Rain or Shine’ and Jessica Shaw’s ‘Cloud’ - get closest to recapturing our childhood enchantment by clustered lights. That almost primal sense of wonder and excitement that is sparked in us as children at the approach of Christmas or Chanukah or Divali and never leaves is provoked primarily by the the magic of light at the darkest time of the year.

For further information please contact Sorrel Hershberg

Twinkle, twinkle took place at Laforet Museum, Harajuku, Tokyo from 7- 11 October 2004 for the Tokyo Design Week. It then moved to Moscow as part of 100% Design Moscow . Its next port of call is Istanbul where it will be opening in September 2005 as part of the Istanbul Design Week, eventually moving on to Barnsley in the UK where it will be shown at the Design Centre from 17th November - 21st December 2005.

Find out more about the exciting and innovative products being exhibited in Twinkle Twinkle:

Twinkle twinkle product list