New Moves
20 September – 3 November 2007

The Aram Gallery presents New Moves, an exhibition where the iconic Anglepoise task lamp will be under the spotlight.

New Moves was an exhibition at The Aram Gallery from 20th September to 3rd November 2007 featuring 70 new task light prototypes designed by students from the Royal College of Art’s acclaimed Design Products department. The exhibition had as its starting point an exploration of the iconic task light – the Anglepoise and also offers the opportunity to compare new work with a selection of classics and best sellers from this uniquely independent form of lighting.

 

New Moves presents the student projects alongside classics, bestsellers and highlights of this field. This reflects the gallery’s interest in exploring the way designers think about things. The Anglepoise project is an opportunity to have a peek into the way individuals, who may be trained in the same profession, approach the same thing in a huge diversity of ways.

 

We presented these designs as an exploration into what interests the emerging generation of designers. Unsurprisingly we saw technology, materials and technique all hard at work, as are aspects of content, form and different levels of invention and innovation. This is not new, that’s how designers look for ideas, but we also see changing priorities, attitudes, opportunities and specific ideas.

 

New Moves also celebrated the continuing influence of a very particular invention and its design. The lamp that George Carwardine developed with the Terry family company is now recognised as a unique and significant type of lighting object. The suspended motion articulated task lamp has an almost independent economy that has peaked every 15 to 20 years with a new significant best-selling design. At the delivery of the brief to the design students, Artemide’s founder, art director and owner, Ernesto Gismondi, talked of the need for a new ‘anglepoise’ to take the market into its next era. Artemide is the company that produced the Tizio and the Tolomeo, two acknowledged success stories, but yet when Mr Gismondi presented his interests he held up his own Anglepoise lamp that he brought with him all the way from Milan, and asked “What’s after the Anglepoise?”

 

Photographer Shira Klasmer