Sky Light 1986 Serpentine Gallery London UK

Chris Welsby, Sky Light 1986 Serpentine Gallery London UK 

 

 

 

Sky Light (VHS documentation) 1986, six-screen installation, 16mm, colour, silent. First shown at The Serpentine Gallery London

("Charting Time", an exhibition curated by David Curtis.)

 

This is the third in a series of six-projector gallery installations shot between 1976 and 1986. Each piece of work requires an identical situation in terms of equipment and space. All three pieces explore the relationship between the gallery space and the perspective of the landscape. Shoreline I deals with the horizon line between sea and sky, Shoreline II with the line of breakers between land and sea, and Sky Light with the perspective of a stormy sky…
Sky Light introduces a large element of chance into the process of recording the imagery. By frequently starting and stopping the camera, a large number of flash frames were produced. The result is a six projector flicker film which not only represents a stormy cloudscape but also represents the rotation of the camera shutter and the process of recording itself…
Sky Light emphasises and beauty but also the potential violence of mechanistic structures and procedures, and combines this with the potential violence and beauty of natural phenomena. The footage was shot during the week following the Chernobyl explosion, when the sky carried messages for everyone.