It may be a bit cold and overly scientific in places, but as Louisa Lee finds out, the Hayward's new show still has the wow factor.
The Hayward Gallery is a cold place at the moment, and it’s not because of the weather. Exploring the use of artificial light in contemporary art since the 1960s, Light Show is about as welcoming as a trip to a warehouse at 4am, with stark, uncompromising lights shining down on the miserable, grey concrete of the South Bank. But hey, that’s what we’re here to see right?
First off, Light Show is supposed to feel grand in scale. The architecture of the Hayward is utilised fully in the works, which range from constellations of LED light balls to a single lightbulb in a room creating a ‘moth-to-a-flame’ like experience. These are artworks that are designed to rely on spectacle, but in quite an understated way. This didn’t quite satisfy the part of me which wants a full interactive experience - a precedent set by previous blockbuster shows at the Hayward - instead this exhibition feels contemporary, relevant, elegant and quite beautiful.
For what is supposed to be an arts exhibition there are points during the show which feel a little like a trip to the Science Museum. Works like James Turrell’s Wedgework V require the viewer to spend time sitting in a completely blackened room whilst their eyesight adjusts. Light slowly falls across the room dividing the space diagonally, this is meant to create apparently tangible shapes.
However, after queuing for twenty-five minutes to view this work, I can’t help but feel a little bit silly when I’d spent five minutes in the room and still hadn’t seen the shapes. At this point a guard politely asked me to move on so that the next eight people could have their go. As you’ve probably guessed by now, this is a show that asks the viewer to work pretty hard to get the most out of it. At another you are asked to put on shoe covers in order to walk into an installation space. Looking a bit like the ones some people wear in swimming pool changing rooms, the only reason I can discern for their use is here is to preserve the pristine ‘whiteness’ of the space.
For all of it’s audience participation, Light Show contains three pieces that feel particularly effective to me. Conrad Shawcross’ work which consists of a moving light within a mesh box in a white room; giving the feeling that you were walking into some sort of moving ship. 
In contrast Carlos Cruz-Diez’s Chromosaturation; a series of carefully neon-lit rooms with geometric shapes scattered throughout. Walking through these rooms gives you quite an unearthly sensation, the reason for such being that the human retina is used to receiving a wide array of colours simultaneously. Therefore being subject to complete mono-saturisation is perceptually disorientating.
Also effective was Olufur Eliasson’s Model for a Timeless Garden, which similarly worked on the method of discomfort and came with a health warning – something I initially took lightly but quickly realised that even a couple of minutes in the room made you feel pretty trippy. It consists of uplit fountains in a pitch black room with strobe lighting flickering so fast that it comes on like an abuse to the senses, utterly at odds with the usual feeling of calm that a fountain is supposed to give.
This slightly contradictatory feeling of uneasy calm perfectly sums up Light Show for me. Spending a good amount of time in a space, which is largely light and dark with minimal colour or noise, is weirdly unsettling. Although I’d try not to go on a weekend – I went on a Thursday afternoon and the queues ruined the flow of the show for me slightly, a trip to the Hayward.
Light Show is on at the Hayward until the 28th April.
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