A site-specific commission by
York St John University for
Illuminating York curated by Judit Bodor
Holy Trinity Church,
Goodramgate, York, United Kingdom
Contact: [email protected]
http://www.yorksj.ac.uk/lux2008
http://www.visityork.org/illuminatingyork
http://www.rogerbourke.org.uk
http://www.yorkholytrinity.org.uk
York St. John University presents a site-specific video and sound installation by Roger Bourke as its LUX 2008 commission. LUX is the University’s contribution to Illuminating York the city’s festival of light-based, site-responsive contemporary art. LUX explores York’s historic fabric through commissioning ambitious contemporary art projects. It also represents the University’s commitment to cultural development of the city through education and the arts.
LUX provides the University’s Fine Arts graduates with opportunity to acquire professional experience. Previously this resulted in graduate commission opportunities for these artists to develop and exhibit works in response to the changing contexts LUX adopts year on year. LUX 2008 keeps faith with these aims but has set itself the revised objective of inviting curator Judit Bodor and artist Roger Bourke to produce an installation for Holy Trinity Church. This artist-curator partnership is providing current undergraduate students with professional awareness to produce next year’s commissions.
Bourke’s practice primarily concerns malleability of light as a sculptural, spatial medium. He deals with the interplay between physical, video and sonic ‘surfaces’ integrating a range of media, often in response to architectural space and place. elegia in Holy Trinity Church draws on the ‘human’ scale of the church as well as on the ‘mongrel’ quality of its architecture with its cycles of periodic neglect, repair and its current heritage context. The installation responds to both the metaphoric meaning and the unique character of the church’s box-pews and celebrates the traces of ‘ordinary intimate’ lives in the parish. The pews metaphorically operate as ‘houses’ and hold the memory of ‘layers’ of generations of ‘ordinary’ people – those that are born, live their lives generously, and pass obscurely. The work is at once celebratory and elegiac.
Roger Bourke is a British based artist, working principally with installation, video and sonic media. He is based in the South West and currently teaches at the Dartington Campus of University College Falmouth. Working mainly with installation and the play of light and sound on surface his works attempt to occupy a field of sensory experience where the visual merges with the sense of our own body: of touch, of movement, space and proximity.
Judit Bodor is a curator and lecturer. She is a Creative Fellow at York St John University where she researches the importance of art galleries and archives within higher educational institutions. She has researched and lectured on archiving contemporary art and archives in international art events, symposia and residency projects throughout Europe. She has often curated sire-related and archival commissions, exhibitions and events internationally.
Illuminating York is funded by Arts Council England, Visit York, York St John University, Yorkshire Forward and the The City of York Council.
Image above:
Roger Bourke, ‘elegia’ , 2008.
For more information go to: http://www.yorksj.ac.uk/lux2008
