No. 700 Reflectors

No. 700 Reflectors was a large-scale temporary work located on a 50 meter long, 3.5 metre high wall in Lewis Cubitt Square, King’s Cross. The work was created using 30,000 plastic reflectors (made for use on large road vehicles) in three colours. It zig-zagged along the periphery of the Square, forming a striking backdrop to the public space there.

Rana Begum frequently takes industrial materials and transforms them to create new artworks – often achieving the result of heightening and enriching the experience of urban and architectural environments. Hovering between op-art and minimalism, between sculpture and painting, Begum’s work features intricate geometric patterns, frequently inspired by the traditional forms found in Islamic art and architecture. Above all her work comes out of her interest in the complexity, the transience, and the chance encounters of the city, the environment where half the world’s population now lives.

For 700 Reflectors, the artist arranged the ‘ready-made’ materials in an abstract geometric pattern along the wall. The work literally reflected the changing light levels throughout the day and night, creating a dynamic interactive experience for visitors. The work was made in response to a complex brief that required a stimulating and interesting work that would be able to tolerate all weathers over a number of years.

The work looks deceptively simple in terms of its shapes and colours, but took the skills and experience of the fabricator to ensure the work would fit properly onto the pre-existing wall perfectly.

About the artist
Born in Bangladesh in 1977, Rana Begum lives and works in London.

The work of London-based artist Rana Begum distills spatial and visual experience into ordered form. Through her refined language of Minimalist abstraction, Begum blurs the boundaries between sculpture, painting and architecture. Her visual language draws from the urban landscape as well as geometric patterns from traditional Islamic art and architecture. Light is fundamental to her process. Her works absorb and reflect varied densities of light to produce an experience for the viewer that is both temporal and sensorial.
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Begum was also recently elected an RA (2020)