Kari Kola drenches Connemara Mountains in GLP colour for Galway 2020

To celebrate Galway’s status as European Capital of Culture, celebrated Finnish light artist Kari Kola was recently commissioned to turn the beautiful Connemara Mountains into emerald green and sapphire blue. The result—a massive artwork called Savage Beauty, with the Lough Na Fuaiche in the foreground—owed its success to around 900 lighting fixtures, many from the GLP catalogue.

With the illuminated area spanning 500 hectares (measuring around 6.5km wide and 700m high), this vast canvas is believed to be the biggest light art project ever created.

Kari Kola had originally been approached by Galway 2020’s Creative Director, Helen Marriage, back in February 2019. The artist recalls, “Helen knew that I was working on really large scale projects, with light and nature, and so she called me up.”

And two months later he was in the Emerald Isle for the first time, checking potential sites, before fixing on the Connemara Mountains in October that year. “I wanted to play with scale, and also with the two colours,” he said. “There was a big valley through the mountains which I wanted to glow green, with the sides of the mountains in deep blue. Also, from the top overlooking the valley, I wanted to create a ‘roof’ of light with really strong blue beams.”

Kari had been in conversation with GLP even before that first site visit, examining the possibilities. He had worked with Ehrgeiz owner Steven Braun for many years, prior to the company’s takeover by GLP, and rebranding as Fusion. “They have provided great support for my previous projects, and I already own lots of GLP products,” hs said.

He duly specified 200 Fusion by GLP SuperNova SN70, a versatile RGBW fixture, which can function as RGBW flood, blinder, or strobe, with homogeneous, pixel-free output. To this he added 120 Chroma 40 RGBW high class washlights and a further 200 pieces of customised Chroma, along with many smaller units. All were IP65-rated to withstand the harsh weather that Ireland has to offer. “I knew exactly what was required and had no concerns about the output as I have worked extensively with GLP products previously,” he stated.

That notoriously unpredictable climate and the remote location proved his biggest challenge. But at the same time the combination of rain, winds and clouds provided all the dynamics, layered onto the static landscape itself.

“There was no road access so we needed to use helicopters to drop the gear,” he recalls. “It was really extreme, working in the mountains in this kind of weather [high winds and heavy rain], with a tight timetable and no back-ups.” The installation involved 11 generators and around 20km of cabling to link all the fixtures.

Kari Kola puts the success of the project down to the amount of pre-planning and his 15 strong team (including documentary makers). “We also had six local sheep farmers, who knew how to work in the terrains, a boat crew for logistics, a three-man helicopter team, six electrician/generator guys, a local production team and security.”

The only disappointment was that the original plan of presenting Savage Beauty over four days, leading up to St. Patrick’s Day on March 17th, with guided walks into the shimmering landscape, had to be abandoned in view of Coronavirus. Denied the chance to interact, instead the festival was able to provide a specially created video as a consolation.

Other than this disappointment, Kari Kola could scarcely have been happier. Summarising it he said it represented “one surreal picture” brought to life “by nature’s own dynamics.”

“I think it is in my top three of best works,” he concluded. And despite the disappointment of the public being denied access the amount of media coverage has reached almost 2 billion people. “I think with this project we had a major positive impact on the European Capital of Culture, on what was probably the biggest project for Galway 2020.”