There’s an Invasion Coming: Meet the Company behind our Monsters
The monsters are back for our BIG Spook Halloween takeover 2024 and we want to introduce the creative geniuses behind them. Our Designs in Air is a British inflatable design company founded by artists Luke Egan and Pete Hamilton AKA Filthy Luker & Pedro Estrellas.
Designs in Air is a trail-blazing inflatable design company renowned for their unique and beautifully rendered sculptures created for “pop-up” urban installations and featured at events around the Globe. The UK company, founded in 1994 by artists Filthy Luker and Pedro Estrellas, is powered by a passionate team, adept at bringing fantastical concepts to fruition.
Their incredible eye-catching artworks include enormous Kraken tentacles erupting from skyscrapers, otherworldly flowers growing across rooftops and googly eyeballs staring out from leafy trees. Designs in Air’s oversized objects instantly transform everyday environments into exciting and surreal scenes, never failing to raise eyebrows and smiles. Over 3 decades Designs in Air has worked on incredibly diverse projects for clients such as Cirque du Soleil, the London 2012 Paralympics, the New York Aquarium, Greenpeace, Glastonbury, Fuji Rock and Lollapalooza festivals to name but a few.
Most recently Designs in Air has pioneered contemporary cultural experiences with their hilarious inflatable Monsters installed on civic rooftops over Halloween. The concept started in 2018 with what is now a traditional annual Monster Invasion in Manchester and has expanded to over 10 cities across the UK and beyond, bringing spectacular, family-friendly fun and significantly increasing footfall to city-centres year after year.
Filthy Luker and Pedro Estrellas are driven by their passion for innovative inflatable design, public art and mischievous intervention. The duo have time again proven to be pioneers in the inflatable medium as well as carving themselves a unique niche in the international Street Art movement with their larger than life site specific urban sculptures and anarchic humour. Their pop-up pieces never fail to turn heads, transforming the mundane into the surreal and often downright ridiculous with their outlandish installations.
Filthy Luker commented: "Our main motive is to make the world a more softer, surreal and colourful place, as a kind of vendetta against the mundane, grey, concrete world we live in. With the element of surprise as a shock-tactic, our giant pop-up artworks spice up the norm and disrupt skylines. They are instantly seen and enjoyed by everyone who passes by - it might not be high art, but it is high UP art!"
Come and see the monster invasion come to life across Lincoln 21st - 27th October.
