Applelec Lighting chats with Andra Munro, creative director of Andra Munro Design on her latest light art sculpture.
Featuring gentle backlighting from Auragami from Applelec Lighting, the mesmerising light art piece is created from delicate shards of porcelain with strong themes of nature, as we find out more about the inspiration and artistry behind Andra’s stunning installation…
Your light installation is very a beautiful and unique piece, we’d love to know more about where the initial design concept stemmed from?
One day I asked myself what if there is a luxury lighting fixture that could be crafted in such a way that enabled me to adjust the form, textures and light according to every project and specific concepts? What if the concept for the lighting design could go one step further and represent a story from a client's childhood, or express one of their favourite places? It was these notions that I was wanting to explore, and from this, create something both unique and functional.
How do you begin the design process to create such a meaningful and bespoke piece for your client?
If the light sculpture is for a residential project, I firstly discuss with the client their lifestyle, what it is they do, where they spend their free time, what their passions are and what inspires them on a daily basis. From there, I extract the essence and translate this into these bespoke light installations.
For this project, the textures for the light art piece were inspired by the tree barks set around the client’s house. Created from delicate shards of porcelain, each piece captures the unique textures, fissures, crevices, and layers ingrained within the wood of the tree.
What led you to working with porcelain for this light art installation?
I choose to work with porcelain because I always look at the true nature of the material used. The porcelain has plasticity, so the material can be shaped into various forms and curves. Porcelain also provides a lot of design flexibility, enabling me to create numerous intricate textures or less detailed sections to achieve beautiful and intriguing effects. Porcelain is a very interesting medium and can become quite translucent when thin and fired at top temperature, allowing light to shine through the translucent textured porcelain.
The combination of material and light is truly stunning. What were the reasons for selecting Auragami from Applelec Lighting to back-illuminate the sculpture?
I wanted a versatile light panel that I can easily work with to create various organic shapes and Auragami from Applelec Lighting was the perfect backlighting product. The light panel is extremely flexible and seamlessly follows the complex form of the light art installation, creating a sophisticated warm glow. Auragami’s adaptable properties enabled me to easily expand the solution and its lightweight form meant the light panel could be effortlessly integrated within the installation without adding any additional weight, to safely hang as a beautiful ceiling sculpture.
How integral was backlighting for this sculpture?
The inclusion of backlighting helps to elevate the sculpture further by producing focus illumination that highlights various sections of the artwork, emphasising the intricate and complex bark pattern design detailed within the porcelain. With the installation featuring layers of porcelain which overlap, the integrated lighting creates interesting shadowing and depth to the light art sculpture, achieving a stunning and almost hypnotic effect. This project is a perfect example of craftsmanship, design and lighting working in perfect harmony to create an elegant and captivating light art.