Jo Joelson has been a practising lighting designer for over 20 years since completing her lighting design studies at Croydon College in 1991 and is known for her work within theatre and music having created pioneering and experimental projects such as a collaboration between Panasonic Globe Theatre, Tokyo and Shakespeare’s Globe, London with leading Japanese lighting company Iwasaki Eye, to create a daylight environment throughout the Tokyo Globe for the production of As You Like It, 1998. ‘Single sun’ environments were created for a production of The Ramayana at the National Theatre and Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Joelson’s design for Howard Korder’s The Lights at the Royal Court Theatre (the final production before the building was renovated) involved a series of lighting installations throughout the auditorium recreating specific NYC locations, with the audience seated on the stage. Her lighting work has also included the Olivier Award winning production of Hip Hop musical Pied Piper, Boy Blue Entertainment, and concerts for Britpop band PULP and Icelandic band Sigur Ros. She has collaborated with a number of contemporary musicians including Andy Shepherd, Heiner Goebells, Piano Circus.
Joelson has significant experience of undertaking interdisciplinary research at the intersection of art, science and technology through her research-driven art practice London Fieldworks, co-founded in 2000 with fine artist Bruce Gilchrist. As Director of London Fieldworks Joelson has co-created numerous successful arts projects and commissions funded by Arts Council England, AHRC, Arts & Business, British Council, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Channel 4, Computer Arts Society, Henry Moore Foundation, Scottish Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts USA, and produced in partnership with leading organisations, galleries, and festivals including: Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art; Bluecoat Liverpool; Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow; The National Trust; Norfolk and Norwich Festival, Science Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Future City, Clerkenwell Design Week; Microwave International New Media Arts Festival, Hong Kong; Sprengel Museum Hannover; Dover Street Market NYC; LAB Gallery & Headlands Center for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, USA.
London Fieldworks have been engaged in a sustained enquiry into human consciousness and its relationship with natural or environmental rhythms and cues, visualised through the charting of sleep patterns, and the science of light. Art projects such as Polaria that typically engage with technology and the methodologies of science, have been far reaching both geographically and in terms of the range of collaborators and disciplines involved.