connected him with a group of artists who express their ideas openly, sharing a sense of solidarity and dedication. For him, this environment was tremendously inspirational and culminated in the metaphor of the ‘Lunar Society of Birmingham’, a historical parallel to a group of intellectuals who, in the 18th century, would meet under the full moon to secretly discuss their ideas.
Among the piles of rubble and dust at the factory site, he found stacks of photographic files containing X-Rays dating back to the 1950’s. Many of these files contained images of industrial parts and various cast forms that, at the time, were being checked for flaws and cracks using X-Ray photography. Bartlett felt that these photographic images revealed a profound organic sensibility, unearthing a glimpse into the past and thus into the souls of their makers.
It is this illumination that ultimately inspired this series of works that Bartlett calls: Lunar Imaging.
New York based Installation Artist, Wayne Bartlett, is the creative mind responsible for the X-Ray factory’s archives at Radioactive. Bartlett was on location at the inception of the ‘re:location’ project in Smethwick, West Midlands, England, and he took on the task of preserving any and all remaining evidence of this once thriving industrial site.
Wayne Bartlett is part of a new movement of multidisciplinary artists, designers and performers who create in response to ritual and nature. Fascinated by the implicit aesthetic of any situation, his work reveals and reflects underlying beauty in everyday life subjects. Though Bartlett has been a professional artist for the past 20 years, he feels his true artistic identity has only recently surfaced. He has spent years breaking down his ‘academic’ art education and all the social and historical influences encountered along the way. The ‘re:location’ project successfully
