8x4, It Glows Light

Artists: Abhaya Rajani and Sam McNeil, Achia Anzi, Alex Beeston, Asim Waqif, Carla Wright, Clair Joy, Gigi Scaria, Hanna Dinsdale, Hot Desque (Neena Percy and Lizzy Drury), Jemma Egan, Kiran Mungekar, Mike Marshall, Mitali Sancheti, Mochu, Ole Hagen, Ritu Sood, Rutuja Siddam, Sarah Kate Wilson, Sculptors and Sailors (Donald Smith and Peter Fillingham), Sreenivas Kuruganti, Sukanya Ghosh, Susanta Mondal, Tanya Maheswari, Ted le Swer, Uzma Mohsin, Xintong Zhang.

8x4. It glows light takes place under the night sky in the roof terrace of the Maze Collective Studio; an artist run space with special interest in analogue photography. Non-digital photographic methods work by coating a surface, normally paper, with an emulsion of silver halide salts that are sensitive to light. The image results from placing an object or negative close to the prepared surface and exposing it to light. In a darkroom, this surface is then washed with chemicals that carve out an image and gradually an object may appear as if in space. Hot metals glow from incandescence but most of the inorganic materials that we associate with ‘glow in the dark’ contain inorganic phosphors that absorb light from energy visible in the ultra violet wavelength of the spectrum and re-emit it in the dark. The phosphorus of the material oxidizes or reacts with the oxygen in the air and this transforms the absorbed energy into visible light. Some living organisms such as fireflies and jellyfish, for example, are bioluminescent and they come into the world by projecting light. They contain luciferase, an enzyme that interacts with calcium and other chemicals present in their bodies resulting in light. This gives them a photographic quality that mimics the way images appear in the darkness of the photographic studio from the paper outward.

The artworks at It glows light emit light. Artists have taken existing works and leftovers from previous projects and exhibitions and readapted them for the occasion - old images are being repainted, objects that were lying around in the studio, perhaps unresolved, are taking a new turn, the sound and colour saturation of moving images has been tweaked etc. Some changes might be non-reversible.

Last few months of relating to the world largely through the screens of our computers have dramatically altered our relation with the analogue and with things that can be touched with the hands. The darkness of the night that wraps 8x4 isolates it from the outside and there seems to be no context; an allegory, perhaps, of the way we relate to one another in the virtual space of online media each glowing from within our own distant positions. It glows light challenges our relation with physicality and the stuff around us and with the processes that take place when three dimensional objects get on the way of a beam of light. 8x4 is a mobile exhibition space that uses one or more 8x4 sheets of MDF to house group exhibitions.

• https://www.mazecollectivestudio.com/