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

Lumiere Durham

Cascade – an installation and performance at The Alnwick Garden.

Simon Corder, June 2006.

Cascade was an artist commission for after dinner entertainment. It took place over three nights. The premiere was for the World Summit on Arts and Culture on 16th June 2006.

The premise of Cascade was that a local Jazz duo had been booked to play a set following dinner. This unassuming pair regularly play small gigs around the North East in hotels and bars. In an inversion of the famous Stonehenge incident in the 1984 movie cult classic Spinal Tap, the pair found themselves playing in the midst of the spectacular Alnwick Garden Cascade in Northumberland.

The audience was invited to walk around the installation and through the hornbeam pergolas, as a finale Will Todd performed a new twelve minute piece of music. There was an element of performance art as a waiter clambered through the cascade to deliver the musicians a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale while his umbrella bearers made an elegant progress balancing on the walls alongside him.

Cascade was a new commission by One North East.
The Alnwick Garden
Photography – Simon Corder
Main Photograph – Chris Henderson