Fallen Star
Gilded light bulbs, fuse wire, lava rock, 2006.
Variable dimensions
Installation shot of a site-specific work made for Site-ations, Videy, Reykjavik, Iceland.
The work on the island Videy was made after a long process of assimilation. The challenge was to make a meaningful response to a specific environment, to issues of energy, power and place.
My experience was one of openness and quietness with an overriding sense of the timeless power of nature.
I resolved to simplify and distil, to make work about the forces and elements that affect us, our need for energy, light and water. 'Fallen Star' and 'Starburst' utilise white gold leaf and light bulbs to reference harnessed power in the form of electricity.
Fallen Star employs 100 gilded light bulbs suspended above lava rocks, like rain frozen in time. The gold slowly alters as it tarnishes in the atmosphere, suggesting the Law of Conservation of Energy, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed from one form to another. In this way, Einstein proposed that energy and matter remained constant in the Universe.