Liz West Transforms Space Using Light and Color

British artist Liz West treats art as a means to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. “I think we need to be taken out of the ordinary and put into the extraordinary,” she once remarked in an interview with Nulty+. “I’m not professing here that my work is extraordinary but it is about giving people an experience that they might not have day-to-day.”

Using light and color, she creates unique installations that do just that, provoking a heightened sensory awareness in the viewer. According to West, our understanding of color can only be realized through the presence of light. And so, by playing and adjusting the colors, she explores the engagement between materiality and a given site.

These installations also evoke a sense of nostalgia. “My most vivid memories of childhood are based on light and color, not necessarily together but sometimes,” she recalled. “These experiences would be in a car, my dad driving through Barnsley town center, which at the time was lit with incandescent and neon lights. The light was much warmer then, an enticing glow.”

“I was always very perceptive, even as a child, and I would pay attention to the reflections on the floor, particularly on the wet floor so common in the north of England,” she added. “I found it really alluring. I have a lot of memories of being driven about places and being in transit.”

Follow her fascinating explorations of light and color.