The light installation ‘What Dreams May Come?’ will be located in Putney Wharf from 27th October to 12th November, with the lights on from 5pm-10pm every day. It carries our dreams, and asks the viewer to consider the role of dreams in the process of growth and renewal.
It is the first sculptural work released by G23LAB. Intriguing by day, spectacular by night, the work takes the form of a pyramid 2.5m tall with a 3.75×3.75m base, ensuring the feeling of substantial mass generated by a large sculpture. The work takes its proportions, from the mysterious Pyramid of Chephren, which incorporated a 3-4-5 Pythagorean Triangle into its cross-section over 2,000 years before Pythagoras was born, and which still sits atop the Giza Plateau, guarded by the Sphinx.
As a laser-powered spaceship, however, What Dreams May Come? sets the eternal certainty of its form against the most apparently outlandish of possible answers to these questions: aliens, using technology beyond our ken, to travel between the stars. The internal volume of the work is almost identical to that of the Apollo capsule that ferried three extremely brave people to the moon and back. What a trip that must have been!
The upper part of the work is formed from a frosted acrylic skin, illuminated from the inside by a laser lighting system that uses a large number of handmade optics to stretch and twist the light into ever-changing organic patterns. The lighting is powered by batteries that are recharged using a solar generator incorporated into the work. The lower part of the work is formed from an aluminum frame and skin that is intended to develop, as the work touches down in successive locations, a patina that resembles an Apollo re-entry capsule.
The artist Gervase Clifton-Bligh wanted to be an astronaut when he was growing up. That never happened, but he did manage to sell a data visualisation system he had patented to NASA, and thought to himself at the time “Mission accomplished.” Now he has built his very own spaceship, and the sky’s the limit once again.
