ARTIST PROFILES
Paige Alexander
My main motives for my Art are the wonders of colour, the visual language that is processed before we are consciously aware of it. I love to question the ability of colour and it’s impact on us. Colour allows me to focus on the ever-changing projections, colour is an element of visual language that is processed before we are consciously aware of it.
Mark Parry
Mark works with light, film and digital imagery in a wide range of contexts – public artworks, installations, cross-art collaborations, as well as in projection and design. His installations often use light and imagery, alongside sound and sculptural elements to create immersive environments where the audience is invited to explore and interact with the work and ideas behind it.
Above Bounds Theatre Collective
Above Bounds Theatre are Helen Bovey and George Boundy, two graduates from East 15 Acting School (2013) an emerging Plymouth-based collective producing innovative work for family audiences. Fishco Disco is an innovative walk-about puppet performance created for families, with interactive elements & physical comedy designed for site specific performances. Inspired by Plymouth’s coastal location and strong maritime history, the puppet will be multifaceted, lined with LED lights to illuminate it’s journey, with in-built bubble guns for the little ones, and accompanying disco music for everyone to dance to. The performance itself will be ‘walk-about’ with the characters appearing at given times throughout the weekend, making a journey around the Yard for families to enjoy.
Rachael Allain
Rachael is an artist, researcher and lecturer based in the South West of the England, UK, she exhibits her work both nationally and internationally. Rachael’s multidisciplinary practice integrates emerging and obsolescent technologies, experimental still and moving image, sound and installation. Her experiments explore phenomenology in relation to site, the temporal, alchemical properties of analogue film as well as the immediacy of the virtual, scientific and digital data technology.
Four2Three Projections
Four2Three Projections present projected imagery from outdoor cinema, film clubs and themed events to pop up installations and animated artworks. Their interactive live video projection piece for illuminate, ‘Making Waves’ invites the audience to “draw with light” using a small torch, which will be photographed by a long exposure, and videoed.
City College Plymouth Students
City College Plymouth dance students are included in the illuminate lineup, working with the Barbican Theatre they will be performing alongside other dance schools to a piece choreographed by Avant Garde Dance Company and the Fuse dance practitioners. Students from City College Plymouth’s Live Events Production programme are also heavily involved with the festival, alongside the production team they will be providing behind the scenes technical support to local and international artists exhibiting at illuminate.
Xavi Bové
Bové defines his work as a mixture of listening to images and drawing sounds, and is passionate about both tradition and innovation, the organic and also the digital, the beauty of contrasts. His audiovisual projects see art and technology go hand in hand, where the image keeps a deep and close relationship with the music.
1000 Errors
1000 Errors is primarily the work of Olly Balsom, a multidisciplinary artist with a keen interest in a wide variety of artistic disciplines. These range from video projection mapping, 3D animation, virtual reality art and content creation, laser cut geometric woodwork to vjing.
Jamie Knight
Plymouth College of Art Alumni artist, Jamie Knight is an animation, projection mapping artist with strong influences in disruptive street art and dark satire. He creates work which focuses on sardonic humour to highlight issues surrounding the absurdity of humanity and its values.
Knights piece for illuminate, Kill Your TV, is a grungy compilation of imaginative animated sequences inviting the audience to turn off their tv and enters the rabbit hole of their mind through a cardboard box.
Kaos Kollective
Kaos Kollective are a group of disabled non-disabled artists based in Plymouth, creating a rare opportunity for integrated, home grown professional work to be developed and showcased in the city. ‘Trip the Light’ is a new interactive art performance piece created for Illuminate 2018. The piece incorporates new digital art technology, light and dance and explores the rhythm and play between these elements.
Mandala Lighting Ltd
Mandala Lighting Ltd is run by Benjamin Clegg, a mixed media artist with over 30 years experience and a Masters degree level in design technology with-in the arts. Benjamin has run and owned an event lighting company for 18 years. His installation at illuminate, Rainbow in the Dark, is shone onto a canvas of smoke and water by a 7 watt laser. Visitors can walk through the rainbow under an umbrella for a totally immersive experience.
LODESTAR
‘LODESTAR’ is a collaborative piece, created by artist Caroline Mercer, technical support Anthony Barclay, textile support Basma Alazazwi, apprentice Ashley Glattback and the children who take part in the iilluminate LODESTAR workshops, which run throughout the lead up to the festival. Each participating child will make a porcelain tile, which will then be fired, glazed and stitched to power LODESTAR’s timber frame. Each tile is unique to its maker, the children can take inspiration from whatever they please – a memory, object, passion, place or memory.
University of Plymouth Students
University of Plymouth BA (Hons) Fine Art students have also leapt at the opportunity to get involved in this year’s festival. Students Eliza Newman, Jaydan Alexander and Bethany Thomas will all showcase their own individual installations, on display in Ocean Studios. When speaking about her piece for Illuminate, ‘Our Journey’, Eliza said: “Our Journey is about gaining new ideas and becoming more open to and aware of every-day experiences and how they may differ on a sensory level from person to person. Each viewer will experience the work in a unique way due to the sounds and visual elements prompting their own personal experiences, memories and imagination.”
Thomas Voillaume a.k.a APACH
Thomas Voillaume is a creative explore who signs his artistic adventures under the pseudonym APACH. He likes to mix means of expression in order to surprise his audience and to challenge himself. The guideline: exploration! Whether it is the virtual worlds, the infinite expanses of the imagination or the landscapes of our vast world. With a master degree in image art and technology, APACH likes to mix creative techniques and discover new means of expression.
Juliet Middleton-Batts
Juliet’s practice is research-led with excavated traces interwoven into experimental, creative processes. By folding the past with the present, she attempts to create a junction between personal recollection and social history, with an apposite presentation of narrative that aims to inform and delight in equal measure. Juliet’s contemporary modes of representation create a distinct visual language in a dialogue between the dualities of analogue and digital, with a multi-medial approach that includes moving image, audio and print.
Laura Frances Martin
Laura is an artist, performer and producer whose large scale illuminated commissions and visual art works have appeared in Truro City of Lights, Wadebridge BikeLights, The Fal River Fest, Festival Interceltique De Lorient, Boscastle Festival, Prideaux Angels and more. As a performer she has also worked on a range of site specific and screen based projects; she is a founder member of ARTiculate Collective; a Director of Wadebridge Creative Hub; and this year also producer for BikeLights. Martin’s piece for illuminate is a beautiful illuminated sailing ship – a replica of the Mayflower – forms a vibrant, moving element of the Illuminate Festival celebrations leading up to Mayflower 400.
Josh Small
Josh is a professional audio-visual engineer and designer with 9 years’ experience in the professional lighting design industry. His piece for illuminate, ‘Beacon – A Journey’, is a beacon of light emanating from the “Original Plymouth”, shining out to the world. Representing the hope and freedom felt by the pilgrims on their voyage to America. Watch as the light disappears into the night sky, as the pilgrims disappeared over the horizon.
Effervescent
Effervescent is a charity committed to working with children and young people. Effervescent has a long track record of producing work for indoor and outdoor venues including the National Marine Aquarium; castles; graveyards; and in the sea. Their piece for illuminate, ‘Breathe’ is an interactive light, water, heat and oxygen-based installation which invites audiences to engage playfully and to illuminate a collective meditation on what it is to be a human.
Phil Power
Phil Power is an Associate Professor in Fine Art Contextual Practice at the University of Plymouth. His illuminated cranes explore his desire to create both landmark and special places – “often landmarks can create viewing points punctuating the landscape but not places to just ‘be’ and contemplate. My constant material is light, both natural and made. The work is essentially collaborative; working with others professions to turn spaces into places. The starting point is the place; its history, geographical, social, environmental and cultural context. By working to understand all of that and carefully looking at uses and perceptions, I start to construct a ‘solution’.”
Plymouth College of Art Students
Nearly fifty BA (Hons) Animation, BA (Hons) Game Arts and BA (Hons) Digital Media Production students from Plymouth College of Art will put their video-mapping skills into action on a large scale, on the side of Royal William Yard’s Melville Building, working with additional guidance from recent BA (Hons) Animation graduate Jamie Knight. Jamie now specialises in animation and projection-mapping. Influenced by disruptive street art and dark satire, his new piece for Illuminate 2018, ‘Kill Your TV’, uses sardonic humour and absurdity in a grungy complication of imaginative animated sequences.