Dutch/Light (for Agneta Block) (2017)
The Historic Dockyard Chatham, 8 June–6 August 2017
Turner Contemporary, Margate, 12 August–5 November 2017
Commissioned by Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust and Turner Contemporary in collaboration with Culture Kent.
Dutch/Light (for Agneta Block) marks the 350th anniversary of the Dutch Raid on the River Medway, which brought about the end of the Anglo-Dutch wars, peace between the two nations and an unlikely cultural exchange based on growing plants. At the time of the Dutch Raid, Dutch growers were pioneering early glasshouse technology, which started with the simple idea of leaning glass frames against a south-facing wall – the so-called ‘Dutch Light’ – which led to a horticultural revolution that crossed the North Sea.
In Bradley’s work, five tall ‘Dutch Lights’ made of Edge-Lit Plexiglas are turned on their side and leant against south-facing walls to create an open glasshouse structure that is activated by the sun. Audiences can walk and sit within, bathed in swathes of geometric colour: green (for Kent and the UK) and orange (for the Netherlands).
Symbolically the super structure is fabricated using wood from Chatham Dockyard; remnant timbers from an old naval building are thus transformed into a glasshouse, a signifier of the human potential to move toward light and growth.
As companion to her work Jyll Bradley commissioned Artist Fabian Peake to write a poem reflecting upon the Dutch Raid.
Dutch/Light (for Agneta Block) is engineered and fabricated by Structural Engineer Ben Godber
Click here for the Dutch/Light (for Agneta Block) publication www.issuu.com.