When I first showed my News Art to my tutor, we talked about the way I photographed the paintings in front of a window and letting the light shine through was a metaphor for ‘holding the news up to the light’.

As the saying goes, if you are ‘holding something up to the light’, you see through and understand the true nature of it more clearly; or you hold something to account. I felt it was a good metaphor and if I were to show my News Art then I would want to hold it up to the light. This way of showing also reveals the images on the reverse side of the newspaper adding more intrigue and ambiguity to the overall composition.

METHOD

To find ways of showing the News Art with light shining through – it is necessary to not rely on having a window or sunshine for an installation. So I created a mock up lampshade frame to test how it would work if the light source was a light bulb.

Then clipped the News Art to the frame with the light turned on:

Tried a few different images:

This showed the reverse side images were coming through well:

Then I considered a design for a cylindrical light tower to display the paintings in an installation:

Some ideas were found online at places like IKEA with floor standing lamps that could be used instead of a custom made frame with the latter being a potentially costly option.

As an example, for the rectangular shade in paper shown above – it can take 2 double page spread of The FT at 3-high. It has more area than the circular one so would be better. This means 6 double page spreads per lamp. For a 3 lamp installation then that would mean 18 double page spreads in total. The rice paper lampshade could be slashed or torn to represent violence that is happening at the moment.

However, the rice paper shade around the lamp might block too much of the light. Hence more tests were done with the mock up lampshade and rice paper.

There was sufficient light coming through the rice paper lampshade to reveal the images on the reverse side of the newspaper:

REFLECTIONS

The experiment was successful in demonstrating that a light bulb can illuminate the newspaper sufficiently to reveal the reverse side images, even with a layer of rice paper in between. This means the IKEA lamps could be used if I wanted a cylindrical installation.

A cylindrical installation means the viewer would have to walk around the lamp to see the whole composition. This maybe fine and could be a good way to install in the middle of a room with multiple floor standing lamps. However, if I wanted a large and flat composition like one large painting, then that would need to be hung on a wall or from the ceiling. If against a wall then I would need a light curtain of some kind to throw light onto the back of the newspaper. Ideally an enormous light panel or light box would be ideal but they tend to be very expensive. More to think about…

LEARNING

The experiments so far showed that a lamp with just one bulb was sufficient to show the reverse side images. Of course it would also depend on the distance between the light source and the newspaper. But the results were encouraging and I will continue to think about different ways to install my News Art work.

NEXT STEPS

Think of different ways to illuminate the art work in preparation for coming up with ideas for the degree show.

Also to just keep making!