Adam

For most of the past 10 years I travelled constantly in Australia and around the world - designing and installing efficient and flexible LED lighting systems for museum and gallery collections. While working in Sydney, February 2020 I recall how it struck me that COVID was going to be serious. I cancelled flights to a major lighting fair in Frankfurt in March - in turn the fair was cancelled as were all my events and jobs, I knew I was going nowhere for a while.

The sudden impossibility of travel and the interactive, on site nature of my work meant I had to find a new approach. Working in such site specific and visual mediums to create fine tuned ambiance with light and levels is not possible remotely. In recent years I had identified some hardware items that could be refined with technical improvements and could hopefully be a viable new business direction and commercial venture for me. COVID lockdowns gave me time to develop ideas and make some prototypes. Over the years I have rolled out many large systems requiring vast amounts of lighting fixtures and components. Part of the flexibility in a good lighting system is storage and accessibility to the hardware, so I designed my own range of heavy duty lighting trolleys for storage, movement and access to all the required equipment. Large scale galleries and public buildings have limited storage capacity and long walks from them to gallery spaces. This created strong interest in my rolling storage solutions.

Additionally, my experience with many brands and models of lighting fixtures (the key component of a lighting system) inspired me to create my own. With time available to me during lockdowns I worked with local fabricators on my MEGS custom fixture. It’s a flexible unit with precision optics and controls to suit a variety of exhibition spaces. Hardware I developed during COVID will facilitate existing and future projects. I now have clients in Europe, Hong Kong, Cairo and around Australia for these products. I’m still mainly working online but look forward to being on site again soon.