Constellations
Immersive Installation
Collaborative Installation, Curation & Audience Experience Design
With artist Jade Anderson (JMC Anderson)
About the project
Constellations was a collaborative installation series with artist Jade Anderson, developed through a one-week residency at the Barber Shop (Dyad Creative) in 2017 and later reimagined as an immersive beach-hut commission for First Light Festival in 2019. Across both versions, the work explored how constellations are shaped through language, interpretation, and pattern-making, encouraging visitors to navigate the installation and discover the star systems through text, image, and projection.
Considerations
Because this project combined collaboration, concept development, and public-facing installation, key considerations included:
Creating a cohesive visual and conceptual system across two different artists’ approaches.
Designing for active audience exploration, where meaning is discovered through movement and interaction.
Balancing research and interpretation, translating astronomical content into something poetic and accessible.
Adapting the work for two environments — a gallery-like residency space and a compact public beach hut.
Maintaining legibility and impact, especially in the festival version where visitors encounter the work quickly and in high volume.
Key components & design decisions
Collaborative installation system
A shared visual framework combining Jade Anderson’s text-based practice with my visual response, translating star systems into an experiential installation that visitors could move through and interpret.Audience-led exploration
Designed to be physically navigated, encouraging visitors to discover constellations as both individual formations and as part of a wider interconnected structure.Residency output (2017)
We collaborated on a central installation of constellation names formed from individual letters arranged into star-like patterns. Alongside this, I created a series of hand-painted slides which visitors could select using a slide viewer, with one chosen slide projected at large scale in a second gallery space.Festival recreation (2019)
Commissioned to recreate the project inside a Lowestoft beach hut for First Light Festival, adapting the original concept into a compact, high-impact environment. The installation was designed to evoke the experience of stargazing on the beach at night, immersing visitors in a text-based cosmos.
Outcome
Across both iterations, Constellations translated astronomical structures into a tactile, language-driven installation that encouraged curiosity and discovery. The residency version established the conceptual framework, while the festival commission expanded it into a fully immersive public artwork — adapting the same research-led system for a new context and audience while retaining the collaborative core of the project.
