Presented at the Art Couture Painswick (ACP) Gallery in Painswick, a historic town in the picturesque Cotswolds, the six-week installation included creations from fashion icons Philip Treacy, Alexander McQueen, Selina Blow and many more, plus high profile works from sculptors, leather designer Mary Wing To and Peter Pullion (creator of the original Orville the Duck puppet) and a miscellany of other artefacts and exhibits.
When it came to lighting the space, the existing lighting wasn't suitable and a completely different approach was needed that was good looking, contemporary and portable, so organisers ACP approached Core's Phil Ion with the challenge.
Phil, who also lives locally, jumped at the chance, "It was also an ideal opportunity to showcase our products and illustrate how the excellent colour temperatures and colour rendering can bring exhibitions to life, as well as providing an exceptionally cost effective and green solution".
Eleven of Core's tiny PinPoints were used to spotlight the individual artefacts including paintings, sculptures, head pieces and gowns.
A near life-size wire pony was illuminated completely in colour with a Core StripPoint 1m LED batten, with the head highlighted by a single PinPoint unit.
Following the equestrian theme, Core ColourPoints were used to illuminate a leather horse's head, the neutral white LEDs crisply highlighting the texture and making the jet black colouring of the material zing out!
The original Orville (the duck) was illuminated with a PinPoint spotlight. More ColourPoint units were used to texture selected paintings with additional colour tone. Another great benefit of using these lights is that the high quality source is completely homogenised and not hot or harmful to the materials.
A dress designed by Adnan Bayyat made from thousands of paperclips was lit with PinPoints heightening its complex, layered metallic structure; the dress also featured at the recent London Fashion Week SS16.
The original - and somewhat prosaic - Gallery track lighting was removed prior to the exhibition and replaced with metal strips - in the same place. The PinPoints were clamped to this via their magnetic bases, which was extremely neat and tidy, and also meant they could be moved effortlessly, and easily removed for recharging.
Up in the roof, the PinPoints looked very aesthetically pleasing and blended in seamlessly with the whole environment. At a casual glance, they also resembled a fully powered spot-light system!
The whole lighting display was powered for six weeks using the products' internal battery power supplies and wireless control, with the units being recharged overnight.
As well as showing the performance of the fixtures over an extended exhibition period, Off The Wall also significantly tested the basic usability of the Core charging regime, taking under 10 minutes each morning to set up the whole lighting scheme.
(Jim Evans)
