Emma Denby

CONNECTIONS

PUBLIC ART COMMISSION

As part of Salford Quays light night in 2022, I worked in collaboration with artist Gemma Wood to create Connections, a community project and light installation made for the festival, Lightwaves and GLOW. We ran a group of engagement sessions in the Blue Peter Garden at Salford Quays and RHS Bridgewater Gardens, asking what ‘avatar’ people would digitally present as themselves on social media. This project was about awareness of online presence, but represented through playful light sculptures that illustrate the concept of Dunbar’s Number, the idea that we can only maintain a limited number of meaningful connections to other people and the correlation between this and the interconnected nature we have online.

Built with acrylic rods, cast resin spheres and fibreglass domes, the installation was built to last in cold outdoor weather and featured printed acetate photos taken of the drawings and pictures that were taken from the engagement sessions by the community.