Winter Garden
Winter Garden - an installation at Elvet Bridge, Durham.
Simon Corder, November 2009.
“The fluorescent bulbs on the banks of the Wear would have dazzled even Dan Flavin, the American founding father of light art. [...] What Flavin would make of this display is another matter. Light art has come a long way since the industrial minimalism that saw syncopations of strip bulbs arranged in white gallery spaces. Contemporary artists are using low-emission technology to produce site specific work on a grand scale. Unlike the postwar modernists, their work has a social function: to transform cities. They are engineers of public space and sculptors of civic identity. [...]”
In Durham, the light installations were knitted into the fabric of the city. British artist Simon Corder stuffed the recycling bins under the historic Elvet Bridge with fluorescent white striplights and festooned the trees with hundreds of pink and purple rods to create a winter garden. Under the damp arches, neon-green light rods poked out of the muddy riverbed. [...]”
Sophie Grove, The Guardian, 16 November 2009 . here
Winter Garden was a new commission for Lumiere, a festival of light for Durham.
Produced by Artichoke, November 2009.
Photography – Matthew Andrews
