Feature - Alex Randall Bespoke Lighting
Chandeliers made from meat hooks and rodent lamps from a London-based sculptor
by Richard Prime in Design on 1 October 2010
After graduating from Chelsea College of Art & Design with a sculpture degree, Alex Randall started making her wildly surreal one-off lamps in 2006—just a year later picking up Liberty's Most Promising Newcomer award.
Earlier this year, the sculptress caught our eye with her squirrel lamp at NYC's ICFF and more recently she took her work to Tent London as part of London's Design Festival. Against a backdrop of light, natural wooden furniture, uplifting colour and excitable young designers, Randall's beautifully provocative work stood out for its singular bleak, visceral and bloodthirsty vision.
Perhaps a subtle reference to the prominence of rodents in London (supposedly you're never further than three feet from the creatures), the Rat Swarm lamp is a thing of dark pleasure. The On a Thread chandelier (pictured here, with its dangling, rusty saw blades, continues the macabre theme. Made from a couple of wooden legs—the light shines out from within its hollows— Patience, like all Randall's work, dislocates her subject matter context.
Where past seasons have seen many designers referencing the antler as a motif, most choose to beautify the object—removing the Antler from the action of death. Unsurprisingly, Randall moves the opposite way, hanging hers from a series of meaty hooks for an effect that's still beautiful but more sympathetic to the lineage of item.
Young, intelligent and not afraid to combine the beautiful and the shocking, Randall is a truly wonderful addition to the industry.
