S1_main — Lightning + Kinglyface: Penelopiad

S2_right — Lightning + Kinglyface: Penelopiad

S3_left — Lightning + Kinglyface: Penelopiad

Cn1 — Lightning + Kinglyface: Tenth Cranial Nerve

Cn2 — Lightning + Kinglyface: Tenth Cranial Nerve

Cn3 — Lightning + Kinglyface: Tenth Cranial Nerve

Cn4 — Lightning + Kinglyface: Tenth Cranial Nerve

Skin3 — Lightning + Kinglyface: Chimera

Skin6 — Lightning + Kinglyface: Chimera

Skin8 — Lightning + Kinglyface: Chimera

Sh_void_08-11_01c — Lightning + Kinglyface: Penelopiad

Shppfuryvoid--01 — Lightning + Kinglyface: Void

Work / Set Design

Lightning + Kinglyface

Words by Rob Alderson, Thursday 15 March 2012

Amazingly-named set designers Lightning + Kinglyface, aka Anna Fulmine and Victoria Shahrokh have just unveiled their brand spanking new website and my goodness it’s a thing of some beauty. The dynamic duo have a wonderfully atmospheric style, creating thoughtful, intriguing and frequently unsettling pieces (a stretched canvas of “human skin” anyone?) for a whole host of top-notch clients. Their new site not only looks good, but manages to do justice to their craft, which can sometimes get lost in translation online.

Work / Set Design Michela Natella’s hyperreal world and stand-out set designs for Toilet Paper Magazine

The hyperreal world is where Michela Natella spends her time, sifting between a colourful land that makes you question what is real and what is purely imagined. Having spent the last 10 years in set design, this area of practice is her most crafted and defined, stemming from a hugely creative background and hands-on approach.

Ayla Angelos — 06 September 2017
Features / Set Design Set designer Gary Card on the importance of being a chameleon

“This is, I think, the generation of the polymath. Everyone’s a polymath! It’s a word that’s thrown at me quite a lot.” Meet Gary Card, a multi-talented set designer, illustrator, artist, and lately, sculptor. Adaptability is part of the territory for a set designer. “Every day is completely different. It’s a great thing being a set designer: you’re constantly making new things, you’re constantly shifting. By our very nature we have to be chameleons to be able to apply a brand new set of skills to each job.”

Bryony Stone — 22 February 2017
Features / Art Isolde is a “feminine force” in Anish Kapoor's sculptural perspective of Tristan and Isolde

World renowned sculptor Anish Kapoor has joined forces with director Daniel Kramer and conductor Edward Gardner in a new production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. The ENO plays host to Kapoor’s monumental set design, which features striking colours and bold shapes. Wagner’s operatic masterpiece tells the legend of Tristan and Isolde’s ill-fated love story and Kapoor’s use of scale provides a mythic setting. Kapoor’s unique approach and aesthetic has been blended with the dramatic score of Wagner to form an extraordinary production.

Jesc Bunyard — 17 June 2016
Work / Photography Sophisticated smut: Jess Bonham and Anna Lomax create sensual still lifes about fetishes

Photographer Jess Bonham and set designer Anna Lomax’s latest project skirts around the edges of suggestion, titillation and innuendo in a series of still life images that abstractly explore taboo leisure pursuits. The idea came from an unexpected email from Anna’s neighbour: “It was posted out to the tenants of Anna’s building and was an apology about a previous ‘client’ from this woman’s sideline dominatrix business causing some havoc in the building one weekend,” explains Jess. “Anna had no idea she was a dominatrix as her day job is far more conservative!”

Rebecca Fulleylove — 06 June 2016
Features / Set Design 15 years of doing it in public: Moment Factory’s “school of infinite amazement”

“We do it in public” is the proud mission statement of Moment Factory, a Montreal-based new media and entertainment studio that creates some of the most specialised multimedia environments in the world. From transforming Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia in Barcleona into a morphing, melting son et lumiere show to providing Arcade Fire, Jay-Z and the Nine Inch Nails with jaw dropping stage shows or permanent interactive artworks for LAX airport, the studio has established a global reputation for creating memorable experiences. Moment Factory’s 160-strong team of designers, directors, illustrators, architects, programmers, engineers and developers continually push the envelope of what is possible and what can be believed. “What we strive to do is create experiences that are relevant enough that people will be moved to go to and visit them,” says founder and creative director Sakchin Bessette. “It could be a rock show, a public space or a forest. It needs to be surprising. New technologies and new types of storytelling let us create new entertainments and experiences. We want to create goosebumps and memorable experiences.”

Owen Pritchard — 26 May 2016
Work / Photography Faking It uncovers the glue, instant mash and unsavoury secrets of food photography

Photography is rarely an honest medium, particularly in the delectable yet deceitful world of food photography. To make things look delicious, photographers and art directors have many a trick up their sleeves, and set designer and art director Sandy Suffield has decided to fling open the doors and reveal the tricks of the trade. In the series Faking It, she worked with photographer Dan Matthews and food stylist Jack Sargeson to create a body of work that manages to both subvert and comply with the nuances of high-end food shots.

Emily Gosling — 15 March 2016