All Of This Belongs To You – Victoria & Albert Musuem
Neon Circus were commissioned by the Victoria and Albert museum to undertake the design, fabrication and installation of the title piece for their newly opened exhibition; ‘All of this belongs to you’.
Using the V&A’s visual concept, a design was created to integrate the huge neon headline with a decorative arch in the grand entrance of the Grade 1 Listed building, under the strict brief that no invasive fixings be used.
We undertook comprehensive surveys, including a 3D scan of the building to aid in the production of 3D engineering models by in our house CAD department.
“Using the V&A’s visual concept, a design was created to integrate the neon headline with a decorative arch in the grand entrance of the Grade 1 Listed building, under the strict brief that no invasive fixings be used.”
We made the individual letters by laminating an aluminium composite to high-grade birch plywood before cutting them on our 3m x 2m CNC router.
The neon outlines the letters and is bent from 4800K (white) 15mm diameter glass. To light the neon, we used lightweight high frequency electronic transformers mounted to the back of each letter.
The 21 letters span the 20m circumference of the arch, fixed to a lightweight aluminium structure which is clamped to the archway by purpose built compression fittings designed to do no harm to the fragile plasterwork.
The installation had to occur out of museum hours and so was completed by our team over 2 nights using ‘spider’ tracked mobile work platforms. First the aluminium frame was erected and clamped to the archway, before fixing the composite letters to the frame and completing the wiring circuits. The final (and fastest!) stage was to fit the neon to the letters.