Sense in Place

2006

Project/exhibition

Suspended 7.5k white gold gilded light bulbs, granite and amp wire, Videy, Iceland

A commissioned site-responsive work for the International Artist led exchange and exhibition programme Sense in Place. The brief was to focus upon Iceland’s relationship to issues of energy, place and power. Its geothermic qualities.

The experience of Videy, an island a few miles off the mainland, is one of openness and stillness with an overriding sense of the timeless power of nature. Iceland is shaped, surrounded and supported by water. A land of polarities – in temperature, and in its seasons, it is isolated, pure, complex and unforgiving as an environment, hard to draw life from. Fallen Star utilises white gold and light bulbs to reference harnessed power from geyser-heated water, converted to electricity. The bulbs hang like rain frozen in time in a former storeroom (a donkey hut) over collected granite. The gold slowly tarnishes in the atmosphere referencing the impossibility of things remaining the same, flux and cycles of nature.

Please visit Projects for more information on Philippa’s projects and commissions.