Dark Side of The Moon
Created in 2021 in collaboration with Digital Content Studios, Dark Side of the Moon arrived at a moment when gathering together felt quite extraordinary.
The pandemic had interrupted live events, nightlife and much of the social rhythm people had taken for granted. As spaces began cautiously opening again, Tommy wanted to create something that felt like the complete opposite of the previous year: bold, immersive, excessive in the best possible way, and absolutely full of life.
For one night, a working film and content studio was transformed into an entirely different world. Large-scale works including Tao and See No Evil became the anchor art installation built from painting, sound, laser and changing light. Rather than hanging quietly against gallery walls, the works were given room to breathe and perform. Lights of Brentos sent lasers cutting through the darkness and across the architecture, shifting the way the paintings appeared as people moved through the space. Boombox2u supplied the soundtrack, while Contentious Character brought wine, hospitality and another layer of personality to the evening.
The result sat somewhere between an exhibition, a party and an immersive performance. Politicians, collectors, VIPs, artists and creatives came together inside a space that seemed to change constantly around them. Conversations unfolded under moving light. Paintings disappeared into darkness and then suddenly re-emerged. Lasers passed overhead while music carried through the studio. After such a long period of separation and uncertainty, there was something almost electric about simply being in the same room again.
The event carried some of the spirit of Tommy’s earlier OASIIS gatherings, where art became a reason to bring unexpected groups of people together, but Dark Side of the Moon pushed the idea considerably further. The scale was larger, the production more theatrical and the boundaries between artwork, venue and audience much less defined. Instead of presenting a collection of objects to be observed, the entire room became part of the work.
That shift was becoming increasingly important in Tommy’s practice. The question was no longer only how a painting looked, but what could happen around it. Could light alter the emotional temperature of a room? Could music change the way an artwork was encountered? Could an exhibition become something people stepped inside rather than simply walked through?
Dark Side of the Moon answered those questions with considerable flair. It was colourful, dramatic, slightly unruly and deliberately celebratory. In a period when certainty remained in short supply, the event created something immediate and magnetic: a few hours of art, light, music and human energy that reminded people what it felt like to experience something together again.
For one night, the studio became its own world. And that world was very much alive.