Shadow/Light (2011) & Shadow/Light/Reprise (2012)

Location: Deane Road Cemetery, Kensington, Liverpool

Duration: 3 hours, as night fell

A site-specific intervention of 100+ lights within a 19th Century Jewish graveyard; a location 'spliced' between three rows of terraced housing, a McDonalds, a Lidl and a busy arterial road.

Like guiding buoys within a sea of stories their intervention is subtle, yet innumerable, manifesting presence and highlighting architectural stature.

`I would know my shadow and my light, so shall I at last be whole.’

Michael Tippett*

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

In the 19th century, a community of Jewish businessmen belonging to the Liverpool Old Hebrew Congregation changed the face of Liverpool’s economy. Amongst these men and women were watchmakers, silversmiths, bankers, entrepreneurs, clerics, artists, politicians, medics and musicians, their combined resourcefulness, wealth, activities and status helped Liverpool develop into one of the most thriving cities of the Victorian age.

Light gains its cultural significance within the Jewish faith as an emblem of eternity rather than sadness, as a public re-affirmation of hope and comfort for the living as well as respect for the dead. The inspiration for the art work is borne out of the story of the original Temple lighting. Its architecture was designed not merely to illuminate the inside of the sanctuary but to spread light beyond the windows of the building out into the world. It is said that even the windows of the temple were constructed in such a way that they appeared wider on the outside than on the inside so as to project the light of the temple outwards. 

‘Wisdom excels folly as far as light excels darkness’ 

Ecclesiastes 2:13 

*See pp. 136-149 of M. TIPPETT: 'A Child of Our Time: oratorio for soli, chorus and orchestra’; 1944, London, Schott, 157 pp.