Mixed media (fluorescent light tubes, colour filters, 24V battery, electric fence energisers)
The lighting technique used in Tepees was first discovered when I was looking for a way to keep my wife Serena’s chickens safe from the foxes at our home in Wiltshire. A local farmer came to the rescue, offering a solution in the guise of a device that combined an electric fence system with spent fluorescent lighting tubes. It’s an ingenious way to produce a flash of light that scares off predators. Years later I decided that tepee structures were the best composition for the fluorescent tubes, and I liked the way they drew on my childhood film and television encounters with the American West. This piece cannot be experienced through photographs in the same way as it can in real time. The flashes of the fluorescent tubes happen so quickly that the eye doesn’t see the tepees lit all in a group, only the intermittent flashing tubes of light. But the camera lens captures the entire series of flashes so the lighted form of the whole installation is revealed.
