YOKO ONO joins new celebration of light art

YOKO ONO, one of the world's leading contemporary artists and social activists, has been confirmed to exhibit alongside artists including Bob & Roberta Smith, Mark Titchner and Liz West at the inaugural LightPool Festival in Blackpool from Friday 28 October to Wednesday 2 November 2016.

Marking the penultimate weekend of Blackpool Illuminations, the new six-night festival will transform the town centre, thanks to support from Arts Council England and Coastal Communities Fund. Encouraging visitors and residents to explore on foot, a spectacular walking route will feature more than 30 art works from local, national and international artists, inspired by Blackpool’s history and linking together its iconic buildings. Each night in St John’s Square, a programme of live performances will wow visitors with light and fire displays from some of the world’s leading performance artists.

Yoko Ono will exhibit two works, fifty years apart, which frame the intention behind the LightPool Festival to explore the themes of light, love and peace:

• Yoko Ono’s classic light art installation Parts of a Light House (1965) will sit in the nave of Blackpool's Sacred Heart Church, refracting light through tetrahedral prisms in kaleidoscopic shards to form, as per her original script, a dazzlingly beautiful house made from beams of light.

• IMAGINE PEACE, love yoko (2016) is an update of Ono's billboards produced for New York City in 2001 in response to the September 11th World Trade Centre tragedy. It has been reworked in film, specifically for use as a ‘moving billboard’; created in conjunction with Art Production Fund and Times Square Arts (both in New York) in several versions from 2012 onwards. The film displays the words IMAGINE PEACE in 24 languages against a background of blue sky and clouds, to the soundtrack of John Lennon’s song Imagine. The work will be shown on Blackpool’s historic North Pier, alongside a static IMAGINE PEACE billboard, similar to the design displayed in Washington DC in 2009.

Yoko Ono said, “I’m thrilled that ‘Parts of A Light House’ will be realised for the LightPool Festival, and I hope that this and the message of IMAGINE PEACE: Think Peace, Act Peace, Spread Peace, will bring hope, comfort and light to all those visiting this wonderful festival during the holiday season.”

Other highlights of the first LightPool Festival include:

• the new commission Art Is Your Human Right by Bob and Roberta Smith, which will see illuminated words hanging at eye-catching locations around the town centre including the Blackpool Council Office, The Grundy Art Gallery and Clifton Street.  Bob and Roberta Smith will also lead and convene a public discussion on the power of art to drive social change on Friday 28 October at the Blackpool Winter Gardens.

• Two new commissions from 2006 Turner prize nominee Mark Titchner. Progress is inspired by a 1930s illumination sketch by Claudegen, the father of neon, on Blackpool Town Hall. Nearby, Titchner offers his response What Use is Life Without Progress on Popworld, by Blackpool Promenade

• Liz West, recent star of the Bristol biennial and also Manchester-based, will transform the iconic dome at the Blackpool Winter Gardens with Round Gradient Remix, inspired by the principal of a spatial colour wheel and based on Isaac Newton's first circular diagram of colour in 1666. The new commission is in partnership with lighting manufacturer and innovator Lumenpulse.

• French Compagnie Bilbobasso, who will perform Polar, an explosive fable of fire and tango

• When the Red Rose from Steve Messam, a new series of temporary, site-specific installations presented by Marketing Lancashire. This rising tide of the colour red takes the county’s historic symbol and by a twist of language creates something new and surprising for each location.

• Ron Haselden's Brothers and Sisters – 34 drawings in light of children including three works newly created with young people in Blackpool – will appear in windows of the former Ocean Hotel on North Promenade. The building is has recently been purchased by local arts organisation LeftCoast with plans to convert it into an Art Bed and Breakfast (AB&B)

• performances and installations premiered at Burning Man Festival 2016, including The Musical Periscope an immersive installation by Yuli Levtov and a performance from The FireWorks Collective, the troupe which represents the UK fire performance community in the Nevada desert, USA, each year

• Blackpool-based light artist Michael Trainor will present Goodbye Coco (2004), a coffin for a fictional clown bedecked with 540 programmed fairground lights, and made precisely to fit the artist himself. Whether it is sad or funny is entirely up to the viewer. Goodbye Coco has never been seen before in public and will be on view at Blackpool’s Sacred Heart Church in the town centre

• LumiDogs – illuminated costume making workshops for dogs, and their owners, will culminate in a mass illuminated dog walk around LightPool Festival’s new art trail setting off from St John’s Square

• Captain Kronos: Return to Planet Earth by Liverpool-based Kazimier Productions with pyro from Walk the Plank. The live spectacle from outer space will launch the festival, with our hero, Captain Kronos, beaming down from his time-traveling spaceship, The Kronos, to complete his mission to spread light and love throughout the galaxy

• Two works by Elisa Artesero. The Manchester-based light and text artist uses installations to address themes of transience, the nature of happiness and hope. Alongside the new commission I Waited near North Pier, visitors can see a new realisation of The Stories Under our Feet (2015) on Victoria Street, an ephemeral light and poem artwork trimming the edges of benches to create moments of contemplation for people walking by or taking a moment to sit.

All the installations will form an illuminated trail taking visitors on a journey around the town centre to explore the LightPool Festival.  A specially designed map will be available to take people on their illuminated adventure ensuring they don’t miss any elements of the Festival.

With £48,000 of additional funding from the Arts Council’s National Lottery funded Grants for the Arts, the Festival is the climax of the two year, £2 million LightPool project, funded by the Coastal Communities Fund with partners LeftCoast and Blackpool Council.

Cllr Gillian Campbell, Deputy Leader of Blackpool Council said, “Yoko Ono is a world renowned name and I’m delighted that we’ve been able to secure her artwork as well as her endorsement for this year’s LightPool festival.

“Along with the other established international artists taking place, Blackpool is the place to be for families and culture lovers this October half term. Not only are we establishing Blackpool as a hotbed of quality art and culture, we are also providing entertainment for all ages of the family, attracting more visitors to the resort, in turn boosting the local economy and creating jobs.”

Alison Clark, Director North, Arts Council England said, “We are very pleased to support LightPool through our National Lottery funded Grants for the Arts programme. This Festival is a wonderful platform to showcase exciting and unusual work that will delight audiences. Light Festivals are growing in popularity in the UK and Europe, and it’s great to see Blackpool, with its wonderful illuminations history, as part of this growth.”

Coastal Communities Minister Andrew Percy said: “Thanks to £2 million from our Coastal Communities Fund, the festival is one of the star attractions of Blackpool’s growing tourism economy. The LightPool Festival is a fantastic way to celebrate our Great British Coast and I would encourage everyone to visit.”

Alex Rinsler, creative lead for LightPool, said: “Arts festivals turn the everyday into something extraordinary – they create magical spaces where people can come together, share experiences and explore something new. We’re thrilled to be bringing such a range of wonderful artists to Blackpool to reimagine the town with residents and visitors alike.”

LightPool Festival builds on the successes of The LightPool shows on The Blackpool Tower, launched in 2015 and running throughout the 2016 Blackpool Illuminations. Visitors this year are spoilt for choice, with three new 3-D projection shows designed specifically for LightPool. They include Chasing Stars by The Projection Studio, introduced by Tim Peake and based on the pioneering work of European Space Agency, Down the Rabbit Hole by Czech digital art collective The Macula, and Enchanted Blackpool, created by film-maker Cecile Llewelyn-Bowen, using designs by her father Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. All three of the films, along with two popular shows from last year’s LightPool events, will be available to watch for free from the Comedy Carpet several times every night, with extra performances at weekends and over the October half term.

The LightPool programme also includes a fantastic new exhibition at The Grundy Art Gallery – NEON: The Charged Line, which brings together some of the most internationally renowned neon artworks from the 1960s to the present day.

Blackpool has a long history of collaborating with light technologies. Light is synonymous with the town’s history and development since the first eight arc lamps that graced the promenade in 1879 to in excess of the 1,000,000  lamps that now feature in this year’s display. Blackpool Illuminations also has a long history of commissioning artists and collaborating with cultural partners such as the Arts Service and the Grundy Art Gallery.

For more details on this year’s LightPool, go to www.visitblackpool.com/lightpool

For more information on Blackpool Illuminations, visit www.visitblackpool.com/illuminations

Blackpool Illuminations light up until Sunday 6 November.

All the events will be free to attend and accessible for the whole family.