Tag Archives: sun

LONDON PICCADILLY: WHERE SHOPPING TURNS SPIRITUAL

Leave a reply

London’s Piccadilly circus is heaving with shoppers, struggling with armloads of bags. It’s dark, it’s wet, it’s noisy. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to suddenly turn a corner and drift into a world of pure, white, softly-lit calm, where all the hassle has stopped and you sit in blissed-out peace.

Yesterday, that’s just what I did.

Leaving behind the crush encircling Eros, in five minutes I was floating into the Royal Academy‘s new exhibition, Rebirth. A meditation on the death and life of a star by Japanese artist Mariko Mori, it was like stepping inside a minimalist spa, minus the eucalyptus smells.

But as I took up position in front of the first exhibit, Tom Na H-iu, it became clear that this was no mere chill-out zone. Before me was a translucent glass megalith that wouldn’t have been out of place at Stonehenge except that it was pulsing with light. I discovered that it was hooked up to an observatory in Japan that detects emissions from the sun which are transmitted to the work in real time and appear as constantly shifting luminous shapes. So while meditating on the bursting patterns it was also a moment to consider time, space and how ancient peoples might once have contemplated similar forms.

Other exhibits were equally magical and challenging. In one room, a circle of nine smaller “standing stones” called to mind the planets. As I sat, each almost imperceptibly changed colour to suggest the varying tones of the planets as they move around the sun. I was also intrigued by exquisite photographs of Sun Pillar, a translucent column erected on an island off the Japanese coast. This will cast a shadow on a circular Moonstone in the sea, which, once installed, will change colour according to the lunar cycle.

The shadow of this last work will be in perfect alignment on the day of the winter solstice. So I considered it highly appropriate that I visited the show on December 21st. Maybe the auspicious timing gave the exhibition an extra glow. If so, it was one that stayed with me as I plunged back in among the Regent Street crowds.

Rebirth by Mariko Mori. At Burlington Gardens (not the main Royal Academy building) until 17 February.

ONLY THE WEIRDEST EXPERIENCES WILL DO

Leave a reply

When I asked a friend to join me for an outlandish cultural event she replied, somewhat hesitantly I thought, that she would, but only because nowadays “only the weirdest experiences will do”. Given that I’ve recently paid to have a black hood thrown over my head and be driven in a van around Shoreditch as if being arrested by government forces in Syria, I can see what she means.

On the black hood scale, this week’s art outing was rather tame. But the Rain Room at the Barbican does have its dark side. You walk into a low-lit chamber shot with streaks of lights that dazzle in the gloom. One minute you’re inside the Curve Gallery and all is normal. The next you’re stepping into a monsoon downpour, which is thoroughly strange when you know you’re inside a huge hall. Then, as you gingerly step beneath the streaming water, “knowing” you’re about to get soaking wet, the streams of rain miraculously stop and all you feel are little errant splashes. It’s truly bizarre. Moses may have felt like this when the Red Sea parted.

For all this, the show didn’t move me as much as The Weather Project in the Tate Modern turbine hall a few years back. Then, a giant sun beamed down from on high and had visitors basking under its rays. I guess it just points up the difference between sun and rain. A glowing sun has you drifting around and opening up to the people around you, whereas rain makes you recoil into yourself — even when you know you won’t get wet.