Sponsored by
Ben Kosminsky Wallace – Production Manager and Co Lighting Systems Designer. Open Format – Co – Lighting Systems Designer. Emma Bakker – Lantern Maker. Jon Hopkins – Soundtrack – Tayos Caves, Ecuador (Meditation Version)
Location: Durham Cathedral Cloister
An offering of comfort and hope during our century’s turbulent times
For centuries, Durham Cathedral has been a place of sanctuary, solace and spiritual exploration. For over a thousand years this impenetrable building has offered visitors a place of safety from where they can contemplate and come to terms with the clashing discordant world outside its walls. Only from the cloister, with its roof space open to the heavens, can the visitor glimpse the sky above, punctuated by starry constellations promising light amidst the darkness.
In the depths of winter, humans gravitate towards light, seeking to banish shadows and to create a flickering, fragile moment of illumination that guides their path through the darkness of the night. Solace is a new artwork by artist Amelia Kosminsky, commissioned by Point North, responding to the Cathedral’s extraordinary history, created as an offering of comfort and hope during our century’s turbulent times. Composed of hundreds of handmade lanterns, Solace captures a suspended moment in time, as if each lantern has been caught mid-flight. Drifting into the distance, they invite audiences to imagine the lanterns’ journey and, in turn, reflect and consider their own.
“My work is an exploration of the hidden beauty in a world that whirls and rushes us through our daily lives. I’m on the lookout for moments of stillness, shards of light that flash across a dark room as the sunlight penetrates the crack in a curtain, the reflection of a watch acting like a mirror.” – Amelia Kosminsky
View accessibility information here
Find out more about Amelia Kosminsky here
Image credit: Solace, Amelia Kosminsky. Photo by Matthew Andrews