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A children’s guide to Light ShowHayward Gallery, 30 January – 28 April 2013

Light and EmotionKatie Paterson worked with a light bulb company to create a bulb that gives out light that has the same qualities as moonlight.

Does moonlight feel different to you than sunlight?

ViewpointsThink about the way you experience the artworks in this exhibition. Do you only look at them from one place?

Many of these works allow you to move around them and even through them. An artwork can even seem very different close up compared to when you look at it from far away.

Do you think the more time you spend with something can change how you experience it?

Find fi ve different places and ways of viewing an artwork and record what you see.

Light Show is a show about artists who share an interest in playing and experimenting with light.

Light might seem a funny material for artists to explore, as it isn’t something you can touch or pick up, but light is something that has a powerful effect on how we feel and see the world around us.

All these artists shape light in the same way as a painter might mix paint or a sculptor might create a 3D form out of clay or stone. You will see how these artists have used light to transform and shape space, creating work that you can move around and even move through.

This exhibition is a group show and contains work from 22 different artists from all over the world. Some of the work you will see is so new that it was made just for this show. One piece was made in 1963 so is 50 years old and everything else is somewhere in between. By bringing all these artists together we can give you an idea of how artists have been exploring light as an art form over the last 50 years.

This guide has been created to help you explore the exhibition and record what you have discovered on your journey through the show. Most of the activities have been designed so you can do them in any of the spaces.

You can start anywhere but you may prefer to open the guide and begin in the middle at the section titled Space and Movement.

Things to remember:• This guide is yours to keep

• Look at and explore the artworks, but please don’t touch

• Please note that some installations in the exhibition contain artifi cial mist, fl ashing or strobe lighting.

• Look, explore, talk, draw, fi nd, think, make

Light can have a very real effect on our emotions and mood. For example during winter, when there is less sunlight, people often feel sadder and less energetic.

Explore a different artwork and see if it makes you feel the same way.

Choose a work in the exhibition and record how the light in the space makes you feel by placing a mark somewhere along the line.

Scared

Romantic

Cool

Thoughtful

Calm

Curious

Energetic

Warm

Circle the words that match how you feel, and add any new ones you think of.

Close up

From the corner of your eye

Shadows

From below What did you discover about the work that you had not noticed before?

Far away

Artist Ian Crighton was invited to create this guide for the exhibition.

Produced as part of Imagine Children’s Festival, sponsored by the Book People.

Warm

Awake

Heavy

Excited

Safe

Moving

Cold

Sleepy

Light

Sad

Nervous

Still

Leo Villareal has used computer programmes and lots of LED lights to create his work Cylinder II. This work is full of patterns and rules, as every light has to be told when to turn on and off.

Walk around this sculpture and look at it from different places. As you walk around stop 3 times. At each stop do a 5 second drawing of the patterns and movement of the lights you can see.

Make a note of any rules and patterns you spotted.

Space and MovementTake a line on a journey through the exhibition.Place this paper on your chest and put your pencil on where it says start. Use your pencil to follow you around the spaces and artworks and remember to keep it moving even if you are standing still.

On your journey your pencil might discover a question or activity that you can pause and do with any of the artworks. When you reach the fi nish you should be able to follow your line all the way back to where you started.

As you map your journey, keep a note of everything you see and experience using writing and drawings. What can you see, hear, feel, and what does the artwork make you think of?

Where does the work begin and end?

Draw what you would see if we switched the art off.

What are other visitors doing?

Colour and LightDo we just see colour or do we think it too?

Artists like Carlos Cruz-Diez in his installation Chromosaturation explore the emotional and physical effects of colour on the human body.

Mixing colours in light will make different colours to those mixed in paint. This is because the colour of

paint is decided by the colours it absorbs and refl ects.

Have a look at the light mixing diagram and see how light artists have to mix colours very differently.

Spy on the other people in the show and see what happens to the colours of their clothes under different coloured lights. See how colours that are refl ected, like paint or dyes in our clothes, join with coloured light to create results you might not expect.

Colours affect us in many different ways. Keep a record, on the diagram, of what you’re thinking and experiencing when you see any of these colours. Also remember to make a note of how the colours change when you explore different spaces.

Which colour affected you the most?

Is the artwork part of the building?

Does the work always stay the same?

How would the work change if it were in a different space?

Are you in the work / outside / or just passing through?

Start

Wonder and IllusionMany artists explore our experience of light by making use of the way our eyes and brains explain the world around us.

Artists like Bill Culbert and Ceal Floyer play with everyday subjects and objects to create visual games and illusions which make us

look and think about the world in different and wondrous ways.

Using light and your body create your own illusion. Find a good place in the gallery to make shadows and use one hand, and any objects in your pocket, to make a fantastic shape. You can even do this back at home or outdoors using sunlight.

Draw around your shadow shape and transform your drawing into something surprising/unexpected. Look back at your

journey through the artwork. How did your experience change?

Finish

Image credits (l – r) Ceal Floyer, Throw, 1997. Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery, London & Esther Schipper, Berlin & 303 Gallery, New York. Photo © Carsten Eisfeld, 2008; Leo Villareal, Cylinder, 2011 © the artist / Image courtesy the artist and Gering & López Gallery, NY. Collection of The Amore Pacifi c Museum of Art, Korea. Photograph by James Ewing Photography; Carlos Cruz-Diez, Chromosaturation, 2008. © the artist. Image courtesy Atelier Cruz-Diez Paris.