SAFELIGHT

The Art House Wakefield, 2025

Safelight is a multi-sensory and site-responsive installation, built into a photographic darkroom, and drawing parallels with queer nightlife ‘darkroom’ spaces.

Through sound and light, Safelight explores and amplifies the sensory & bodily experience of darkrooms; their somatic potential as a liberatory site for intimacy reflection and grounding; and the magic of transformation involved in the developing process. It poses urgent questions about inviting risk and conflict into cultural and social justice spaces, to create generative, transformative & liberatory spaces.

First initiated at The Baltic (2023), and here shown at The Arthouse Wakefield, (2025) as part of the Patricia Sutcliffe Award. The work has been developed collaboratively with a team of disabled collaborators.

The installation consists of a four channel stereo and looping sound work, created in collaboration with Malaysian queer sound artist and DJ Sayang, writer & movement practitioner Amelia Wood and artist Oliver Getley. Alongside the sound-work are pieces of darkroom equipment like fans, lights, water and projectors, that shut on and off on timers, alongside programmed LEDs to create a layered composition of sonic textures and light. Gentle vibrations from the subwoofer vibrate periodically through seating. The composition is looping, but changes slightly each time, meaning no one visiting experience is the same.

Audience members are invited 1-2 at a time to turn on the safelight and enter the space. In the space there is a cushioned bench you can lie down on, or seating with a back, and you can walk around the space to view details or listen in different areas. Audience members have described the experience as ‘relaxing’, ‘contemplative’ ‘reflective’ and ‘sauna-like’. It invites viewers to take a quite moment out of the busy everyday, and re-connect with the body and others through gentle listening.

Find out more about The Patricia Sutcliffe Award here: https://the-arthouse.org.uk/residencies/emma-bentley-fox/