title : The death of craft
medium: neon light & video installation
Central Saint Martins Degree Show 2017 London
Installation “The death of craft” consists of a hand made neon lights and a video footage shot at Neon Museum in Warsaw, Poland.
During my final year at Central Saint Martins I was interested in a process of neon making as well as neon making, a dying craft. Although the craft has been in existence for over sixty years and neon lights were an important part of a cityscape it was never fully acknowledged as an artistic medium (until recently), mainly used within electric-sign trade. The neon lights displayed during the Degree Show at Central Saint Martins were (painstakingly) created by me. It was my first time working with glass. Its slightly organic, imperfect form is a reminder that neons are in fact created by hand. It’s easy to forget and underestimate the time and skills needed to create neon signs that we are so used to seeing in the city space. During my time working and learning at Neon Workshop in Wakefield I had a chat with its founder, artist Richard Wheater (see the video above).