The Field of Light is a large-scale site-specific light-based installation created by British artist Bruce Munro. It has been staged in many different locations around the world.
The sculpture slowly changes colour, creating a shimmering field of light.[1]
History
Field of Light was originally conceived in 1992, when Munro took a farewell road trip through central Australia with his fiancée (now wife), prior to their return to England, camping at Uluru/Ayers Rock. To Munro, the red desert had an incredible feeling of energy, ideas seemed to radiate from it along with the heat. "There was a charge in the air that gave me a very immediate feeling which I didn't fully understand, the artist said, "It was a moment when I felt at one with the world[2]....I recorded thoughts of creating a sculpture on a landscape scale, incongruous in size and location, and experienced by the transient visitors...I saw in my mind a landscape of illuminated stems that, like dormant seeds in a dry desert, quietly wait until darkness falls, under a blazing blanket of southern stars, to bloom with gentle rhythms of light." The Field of Light installation was one idea that landed in the artist's sketch book and refused to dislodge from his mind, until finally realized for the first time in 2004.[3]'
The Field of Light exhibition at Uluru
Munro made his first prototype Field of Light for London's Harvey Nichols department store. Shortly after Field of Light was exhibited at the ''Brilliant!'' Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2004, Munro developed a larger version of the installation for Long Knoll Field in Wiltshire –a field adjacent to his studio that is bisected by a public footpath.[4] Subsequently, Munro has continued to produce site-specific iterations of the artwork in a number of places, often as one element among many within a large solo exhibition.
St Andrews Square, Edinburgh, Scotland. Commissioned by the City of Edinburgh Council. February–April 2014[9]
Parque Lincoln, Simbionte Festival, Mexico City, Mexico. April 2014
Discovery Green, Houston, Texas, United States. November. Commissioned by Discovery Green Conservancy. 2014–February 2015 and November 2015–February 2016.[10]
