Dutch/Light (2017)
Light installation
Re-purposed timber from naval dockyard, Edge-Lit Plexiglas, mirrored steel, steel plate anchorage.
9m wide x 8m high x 3m depth.
Commissioned by Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust and Turner Contemporary in collaboration with Culture Kent.
Dutch/Light is a minimalist sculpture activated by light which takes its structure from early glasshouse technology. The work reconsiders the idea of ‘the glasshouse’ as a space with potential for practical and metaphysical growth. Dutch/Light was commissioned to mark 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 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. Dutch/Light reflects this simple genius of leaning.
In Bradley’s work, five tall ‘Dutch Lights’ made of Edge-Lit Plexiglas are turned on their side and lent against a wall to create an open glasshouse structure which in sunlight becomes a space of shifting geometric colour – green (for Kent and the UK) and orange (for the Netherlands).
Dutch/Light hovers between structural strength and transparency and is symbolically created through pairing old naval timbers from Chatham Dockyard with contemporary Edge-Lit Plexiglas.
As companion to her work Jyll Bradley commissioned Artist Fabian Peake to write a poem reflecting upon the Dutch Raid.
Dutch/Light is engineered and fabricated by Structural Engineer Ben Godber
Click here for the accompanying publication featuring ‘block‘ a new work of poetry by Fabian Peake www.issuu.com.
Click here for a YouTube football video by Yo Street Zone shot around Dutch Light www.youtube.com.