If you commute or happen to stroll around Holborn for no particular reason you might have spotted Ron Haselden's latest piece of public art, in fact it's London's latest commissioned piece of neon public art. Yes I know London has its own little slice of Tokyo in the heart of Piccadilly, not quite Times Square maybe but nevertheless we Brits have neon signage here. Perhaps not as much as our counterparts in more glamorous cities (or at least wealthier) of the world, but then again the British are renowned for being rather difficult to impress with a smattering of advertising glitz.

It's a different story when it comes to Haselden's neon installation entitled simply 'Day and Night, Night and Day' which forms a constantly changing 40m tapestry of light and colour, suspended along a central walkway at New Street Square. Unveiled by Land Securities at their New Street Square retail and office development in Holborn, there's currently an all-out PR blitz firing on all cylinders in an attempt to get the piece as much exposure as possible. Such is the way with corporate sponsorship and art – the money men must feel they've made an 'investment'. I was contacted by Blue Rubicon PR (who really are pestering idiots – 3 phone calls and 2 emails?) to feature Haselden's latest neon sculpture. I usually I delete PR mails the moment I realise I'm being 'sold to', but I'm going to make an exception in this case simply because I find Haselden's work rather intriguing.

Take a look at his latest piece entitled Day and Night, Night and Day.

Ron Haselden, a British artist born 1944, is based in both London and France in the coastal town of Plouër-sur-Rance, in Brittany. He's known mainly for working in light, sound, film and video, mostly as part of architectural commissions. He was born in Gravesend, Kent, not far from my old grammar in Dartford, and attended the Gravesend School of Art. After teaching for a number of years at Reading University he relocated to France.

'Frère Jacques' (made in collaboration with Peter Cusack) combined a wall of light with children singing. In 1993 he went on to create a twenty feet high new moon illuminating the front of the South London Gallery. Blue Passage (1999), made for the passageway between the South Bank and the BFI IMAX cinema in London, consists of 8000 blue LEDs sunk into the walls of the underpass. The BFI IMAX is set on an island in a sea of traffic and thus only accessed by the formerly dark and foreboding tunnels. He has for this piece drilled hundreds. perhaps thousands of small holes in constellated patterns throughout the lower half of the walls in block-work at intervals matching the size of the blocks and placed along every mortar line between them. Set in each of these holes, is a tiny blue LED. The arrangement is rather like a vortex of artificial stars randomly arranged in scattered patterns.

Haselden's work offers a bridge into the mind of the architect, deeply associated with space, light and structure, his art has an ethereal quality, an impermanence which reflects a directly opposite quality of most of the architecture he works within. For instance if his work is not maintained it will die, as would a living thing, bulbs will blow, light will fade and eventually each installation would disappear. Haselden trained as a sculptor, and that is still how he views himself, his materials may not be as familiar as his contemporaries, but he still creates three-dimensional structures, shapes within spaces designed to inspire an emotional resonance within an audience. Many of whom will pass through stages of surprise, wonder, familiarity and eventually will seem, at least on an emotional level immune to their surroundings. Much like the experience of first discovering a building, or even a city.

The re-engagement of the public, through sculptural use of light and sound, interacting with the architecture, no matter what the architecture may be, essentially fires Haselden on to evolve his creative and constructive process of sculptural design to new levels of scale and ingenuity. Reinventing space within a gallery or a city, the rural country side, in fact anywhere makes no difference to him in practical terms, this is not public art, it is as he constantly reiterates, sculpture.

Perhaps my favourite piece by Haselden (which I am led to believe is also his own personal favourite) would be Echelle, which was originally installed for the Salisbury Festival and has since toured to Canterbury, Rotherhithe, and Walworth. In essence Echelle is a giant neon ladder attached to the side of a  church tower,  heading almost optimistically upwards. His surreal humour and understanding of both structural and cultural space being most evident, I'd like to see more of this playful engagement with the public in his future works.

Visit Ron Haselden at www.ronhaselden.com – there's also an in-depth review of his work (Art & Architecture no 53 1999) available at HughStoddart.co.uk and some interesting clips of his video work at Lux Online.

This post is tagged British, London, neon, Ron Hasselden, ronhasselden.com, sculpture