light art ACTIVATIONS and light art festivals
I create engaging light artworks for light art festivals, and activations for events, campaigns and music videos. The cyanotype animations that I make are rooted in a shift towards developing a sustainable creative practice and my commitment to the climate emergency.
About my light artworks
I use historical alternative photographic processes to create artworks which have light as a central component in both their creation and presentation. This includes making photograms, anthotypes and cyanotypes by using experimental light-based photographic processes. You can see examples here and below.
Cyanotype is a slow, analogue, historical artform, which creates images on paper using light. Individual hand printed cyanotype contact sheets are made, scanned, and edited before being animating using standard stop animation software (opposed to AI). My cyanotype animations don’t look polished and that’s my aim with the aesthetic – in a world of misinformation, AI and difficulty in knowing what’s real or otherwise, the intention is for audiences to know that this piece has truly been handmade (including mistakes, fogging, hairs or marks that become part of the process and final result). This approach is real, organic, low toxic and environmentally friendly.
I completed the Lightlab programme with Light up the North (LightPool, Durham Lumiere and Light Night Wigan) between September 2025 and February 2026. You can read my CV/Biography here.
Other light art projects in development
I’m working with the Cultural Institute and teaching academics at The University of Leeds to develop a new light artwork concept. Watch this space!
If you’re interested in chatting about light art or activations, contact me.
street aquarium
Street Aquarium brings a typical indoor visitor attraction onto the streets through cyanotype animation. Light is absolutely at the heart – both in making the initial hand printed cyanotype images, and in the digital projection of the final animation. Like a lot of my work, it invites audiences to pause and take notice as they discover something unexpected and captivating within a familiar urban environment. It taps into the growing trend of analogue photography and recent OFCOM data which suggests that people are moving away from instant social media gratification and craving something more real and authentic.
“Inspired by visits to the 1940s aquarium at Bolton Museum, this piece transforms familiar architecture into a magical underwater world – luminous, dreamlike and visible only after dark. It’s made from hundreds of hand-printed cyanotype frames and invites audiences to take time out, relax, and watch as ghostly fish shimmer and drift behind the windows. The animation begins life by hand: individual cyanotypes are made on paper before being brought together through stop-motion animation. It’s a purposefully slow way of making, where marks, textures and imperfections made during the process remain an authentic part of the finished work.”
Please contact me for proof of concept visuals and a technical note for this piece.
Street Aquarium was originally commissioned by Light Up Lancaster and Put Big Light On, Bolton.
music videos
I create short cyanotype animation music videos for artists. The below animation was made for Pyramid Eyes brilliant track Sunrise Over Old Earth - from his album ‘Awake In Deep Time’.
