Outernet London has partnered with Los Angeles-based artist Maggie West to showcase three brand new series throughout The Now Building, Now Trending and Now Arcade, all completely free for visitors, right in central London.
The show uses time-lapse photography to explore many details of the natural world. Through West’s colorful lens, this district-wide exhibition examines the temporal shifts of everything from grains of sand to the stars in the sky.
Public art is a vital part of any urban landscape. I think it’s crucial to make art available to everyone outside of traditional gallery settings. I am so incredibly honored to have the opportunity to do three simultaneous exhibitions in such a vibrant public space
– Maggie West
In the exhibit’s first section, Terra, West explores one night on Earth across different climates. From the arid expanse of a desert to the lush depths of a tropical rainforest, these surreal digital landscapes celebrate the biodiversity of our planet. The artist created the unique video environments shown in The Now Building by photographing individual plants as they bloomed underneath multi-colored lighting. She then combined this footage with astrophotography of the stars and moon to create mesmerizing, moving digital collages.
The second section in the exhibition, Pools, takes place in Now Trending. In this space, West goes from exploring giant landscapes to finding inspiration in nature’s smallest pieces: grains of sand. While watching water absorb into sand may sound underwhelming, the artist’s innovative use of colored lighting enlivens the experience and takes the viewer on a mind-bending, kaleidoscopic journey.
In the final space of the exhibit, West illuminates Now Arcade with her series Ultraviolet. The artist’s piece for Outernet illuminates the intricate pathways through which plants absorb water by using ultraviolet light and fluorescent ink. To create the series, West photographed white flowers absorbing fluorescent ink under black lights, then combined this footage to create a glowing, magical garden. This piece serves as the perfect finale to this colorful, surreal collaboration between West and Outernet London.
The show also features an ethereal score by Los Angeles-based composer Matt Nordstrom. Each space in the exhibit combines West’s breathtaking videos with a unique, dreamlike soundscape peppered with field recordings of birds and insect sounds. The recordings are then slowed down, mirroring West’s visual explorations of temporal shifts.
While many artists create work using programs like AI and 3D animation, West’s work utilizes photography to capture magical details in the world around us. All of West’s vivid coloration effects use colored lights, rather than post-production. From the needles of a cactus to grains of sand, the artist’s work for Outernet shows planet Earth in striking detail and defines a new style of time-lapse photography.
Outernet’s spectacular screens and audio capabilities provide artists with one of the largest and most advanced canvas in the world to bring their vision to life. We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Maggie on her first UK exhibition and share her incredible work with our visitors for free.
– Alexandra Payne, Director of Creative and Content, Outernet London
About the Artist
Maggie West is a Los Angeles-based artist known for her colorful photo and video art installations. Her video work continually pushes the boundaries of traditional time-lapse photography.
In 2023, West was commissioned to create Coachella’s first photography exhibit. The piece she created, titled Eden, was one of the world’s largest three-dimensional photography installations to date and showcased her innovative approach to photographic exhibitions.
West has also contributed many large-scale architectural installations to the Los Angeles landscape. In 2020, she was commissioned to create the central artwork in the new Netflix campus located in the center of Hollywood. Her other commercial clients include Google, Coca-Cola, Adidas, and Universal.
West has also created a number of artworks and installations for notable institutions such as the California Academy of Sciences, The Smithsonian Magazine, and The City of West Hollywood. Her work has been featured in magazines such as Variety, Paper, The Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan & Newsweek. maggiewest.co
