A glowing lens on a wooden plinth, casting circular rays of coloured light across the surrounding gallery walls. The projected light forms a radiant halo in the space.

Your lost lighthouse 2020

River Room (Sue and Brian King River Room), GOMA

A lighthouse symbolically transmits the message: Be safe, beware, take care.

This sculpture is made from a Fresnel lens, designed to amplify light and make it visible from a great distance. This particular lens was produced around 1900 and was originally used in a lighthouse at High Peak Island on the Great Barrier Reef. To transform this lens into Your lost lighthouse 2020, the light which is projected outwards and the lamp inside have been modified: a cylinder of dichroic glass has been inserted, and rainbow bands of colour now appear within the rotating lens, spanning golden, orange, magenta and mauve tones.

The light mechanism inside sends out three short pulses, three long, and then three short again. In Morse code this is the SOS distress signal used when help is urgently required.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

Low/no vision audio description

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This installation centres on a large glass lighthouse lens mounted on a simple wooden stand at about waist height. The lens is cylindrical with a domed top, its thick glass ridged with concentric prisms designed to bend and focus light. Brass fittings frame and support the structure, giving it a sense of solidity and weight.

Inside the lens, where the original lamp once sat, is a new glass cylinder. It is made from dichroic glass, a material that shimmers with different colours depending on the angle of the light. As light passes through it, the glass glows in shifting hues of red, green, blue and gold.

A new light source has been situated within the cylinder, and pulses rhythmically. The sequence of flashes follows the pattern of the international SOS distress code – three short bursts, then three long, followed by three short again. With each pulse, bands of coloured light radiate outward through the prisms, sending luminous stripes across nearby surfaces. Whereas in the bright daylight of GOMA’s River Room, these colours scatter and glint, in low light after-hours they gather strength, becoming more defined and dramatic.

The interplay of the historic lighthouse lens, coded rhythm of its pulsing light and refracted colours transform the room into a space of signal and guidance – a contemporary echo of the lighthouse beam.

– QAGOMA

A glass lens glowing with a vertical column of rainbow light. The surrounding space is bathed in multicoloured illumination.

A side view of the illuminated lens revealing its brass fittings and clear glass structure. A vertical beam of multicoloured light runs through the centre, projecting a rainbow onto surrounding walls.

An illuminated lens in an otherwise darkened space, casting circular rays of coloured light across the gallery walls.

$A detail view of stacked, curved glass lenses, with horizontal bands of gold, pink and green, refracting colour into vivid horizontal rays.$ $An illuminated lens mounted on a wooden plinth in an otherwise darkened gallery, casting circular rays of coloured light across the gallery walls. A visitor stands nearby, arms crossed, surrounded by bands of refracted rainbow light spreading across the walls.$