Light Show

On a grey February morning, with summer a pale memory, the Hayward Gallery’s Light Show seemed like, well, a ray of sunshine. It’s an exhibition exploring light as art, in the hands of artists from the 1960s onwards. Sold out for that entire day, the concept clearly has wide appeal, even if, like me, many visitors might be unsure what to expect. It wasn't an exhibition that made me feel or moved me, but it played on a more instinctive, almost childlike reaction to light – 'Ooh, sparkly' was my kneejerk response to the first exhibit. This is a show that dazzles, beguiles and intrigues. And I've never seen so many young children at an art exhibition, flitting from bright light to bright light, drawn like moths to a flame, oblivious to the 'do not touch' signs, their parents running after them in a bid to stop them burning their fingers.

Cylinder II by Leo Villareal, that first exhibit, was a tall column of strands of LED lights flickering in ever-changing, never-repeating patterns. The brightness was mesmerising. Similarly, in the darkened room of Anthony McCal’s You and I, Horizontal, I was gripped by how this ‘solid-light’ creation, a projection through haze, gave the light a physical presence. Adults and children alike were trying to touch, feel, grasp the light, unable to believe it wasn't, in a tangible sense, real. 

A light splodge on the floor, like paint, and a glass spinning on a motorised cake stand were low points for me. But Katie Paterson’s recreation of moonlight with an artificial bulb was wonderfully imaginative, the light strangely soothing. And the tardis-like Reality Show (Silver) in which the gallery-goer steps into a phone booth to see an endlessly reflecting empty vortex below, but not their own reflection, cleverly played on the show's recurring theme of reality – are we even really here?

Perhaps, though, the best moment came at the end: Olafur Eliasson’s Model for a timeless garden. Stepping past a black curtain into a darkened room illuminated by strobe lighting, you could see 27 fountains along one wall. The constant flickering of the strobe seemed to freeze the individual droplets, as if the arches, spouts and curlicues of water were made out of the finest crystal. It was like stepping into some enchanted realm, where nothing is quite what it seems. Magical.

Little Hands Clapping

A few posts back I wrote about a book by the author Dan Rhodes, called This is Life. I've just finished his novel Little Hands Clapping, another first-rate read, and in some ways the yin to This is Life's yang. Stop reading now if you don't want plot spoilers: the way Rhodes deals his hand, revealing one carefully-chosen card at a time, means that it's not until a good way through the book that the nature of the game is revealed. If I don't give away some details, there'll be nothing to say.

Mesmerisingly macabre, the story centres around an unusual museum in a small German city. An old man is the caretaker, his life of silence and solitude punctuated only by clearing up the remains of the successful suicides that take place in the museum. Yes, suicides. For where This if Life was centred around a contemporary art project celebrating what it means to be alive, Little Hands Clapping takes as its theme what it means to die, what it means to choose to die. Of course, the museum isn't intended to encourage suicide, rather its good-hearted but deluded owner hopes it will offer a reason to live to those who have lost hope. It's a strange premise, but strangely not depressing thanks to the wonderfully bizarre characters, including two breathtakingly beautiful young lovers and a lovestruck baker's son, whose euphonium playing is ineffably moving. There's a fable-like quality to the stories that unfold, as if they had taken place in a realm removed from ours, as if they'd been told, repeated over the years until they were written down in Rhodes's simple, clear prose. Sometimes this lends an air of detachment to the gruesome events: as a reader I began to accept even the most unexpected, horrific twists and turns. It's certainly not a book for the squeamish. But, just as Rhodes deftly steers you to a happy ending in This is Life, Little Hands Clapping gathers pace towards a conclusion that seems to tell the truth about and celebrate the joy of being alive.