Patricia Greig: Dazzling light show like attracting moths to a flame

Light Show: Rose by Ann Veronica Janssens is mesmerising. Photo / Galleria Alfonso Artiaco, Naples, Italy

Since I was small, art galleries have been a place of Zen for me. I relish the chance to explore, analyse and relate to the infinite ways in which human beings can express artistic creativity.

Auckland Art Gallery has so many areas where you can enjoy art, visual or otherwise. It's a place to return to many times over, to nestle in and see how artists have expressed themselves over the years and the decades.

AAG is all about accessibility to just about every age and taste and Light Show, from London's Hayward Gallery, is all that and more. Spread over two levels, the exhibition moves you along in blinks and flashes, inviting observers to be entertained and provoking them to think. It's akin to attracting moths to a flame.

The first installation by Francois Morellet involves thin fluorescent bulbs suspended from the ceiling in an enticing twist that leads your eyes to flicker as you walk around it, reminding the viewer of lights flickering on the brink of needing replacement.

It is an enticing reminder of how unnatural modern fluorescent light is and how often we are bathed in it, subjected to it.

When I happened upon Infinite Burden, by Ivan Navarro, with its mirrors upon mirrors reminding me of the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, I realised that Light Show is filled with tricks.

My ideas of light and light pollution were forgotten, leaving me marvelling at human cleverness and creativity. The gallery became my world while I explored the show and the lights were, at times, rather isolating, unnatural filters to see the world through.

Despite this, I found myself wandering all the way through, watching everything from ceiling to floor and wanting to be inside the displays. In fact, I did wander inside the displays, so entranced by the lights I needed to see them from every possible angle, admiring slipstream shadows through my fingers.

There's something cryptic about Light Show. Why do we find lights so fascinating?

I'd venture a guess and say it's a way we have managed to imitate nature, something we can't control but we can copy.

Adding to the opaque nature of this exhibition is a reliance on mathematics and geometry for so many of the installations. Watch out for Leo Villareal's hypnotic Cylinder II with its never-repeated light patterns and the beautiful Rose by Ann Veronica Janssens -- the shard-like angles of its composition are mesmerising.

The gallery has been keeping its doors open late on selected Tuesday evenings during the exhibition, mixing art and music to encourage a wider audience and adding to the experience. The more people exposed to art the better, a point I cannot place enough emphasis on.

The fifth and final Light Show Open Late will be on February 3 -- just days out from its end (February 8) with singer Chelsea Jade and DJ Such'n'Such.

If it has been a while since you've taken a peek inside the gallery, I suggest you venture out and visit Light Show. You'll be in for a big surprise.