I was taken by the idea of working with light after seeing some of the work of Yayoi Kusama (pictured) on-line. I decided to research art and light and whilst on this hunt I came across some installation work by Italian artist Carlo Bernardini. The works (pictured below) are large free standing Perspex boxes with fibre-optic lights inside them.
I started to scour the internet, firstly to find out what the materials were called. I managed to find a lot of China suppliers but only had one week before I was off on my trip to the Czech Republic and wanted to take the material with me and work with it in the abandoned prison in which we were as a group doing an artist residency.
I finally came across a firm in the UK that supplied and manufactured fibre-optics and contacted them directly (see e-mails) it transpired they sold off cuts from the factory floor on e-bay and she offered me a bag for £5 so I ordered it there and then with only a few days to go.
I set about researching on-line how to light up the fibre-optics, and came across this video on-line:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTD4xzlwiRU
I bought a selection of non-flashing white lights, and when the fibre-optics arrived I tested them and was thrilled that the idea worked. The light was very subtle, but I was confident if I could find a dark enogh space I could get it to work, however, I also had another problem as the fibre-optics were in a big sack that filled my suitcase, so I had to quickly book a hold bag!
