With public art collections closed we are bringing the art to you, exploring highlights from across the country in partnership with Art UK. Today’s pick: Anya Gallaccio’s The Light Pours Out Of Me, in West Lothian
A decade ago, Anya Gallaccio was invited by Nicky and Robert Wilson to create the artwork of her dreams at Jupiter Artland, the Scottish outdoor gallery that is more akin to a garden for art, learning and nature than a sculpture park. The Paisley-born artist lived on site while conceiving The Light Pours Out of Me, at first inspired to work with flowers, and then turning to crystals – another natural form that grows over time, albeit geological rather than human time.
The Light Pours Out of Me, finished in 2012, takes the form of a contemporary grotto, enclosing the visitor in a crystalline cave of purple amethyst, guarded by a lake of black obsidian glass stones. Making a nod to the British landscaping tradition of the folly or grotto, Gallaccio’s cave stands as a counterpoint to the picturesque landscape that surrounds it. Instead of the idyllic, Gallaccio gives us a vision that is dazzlingly protean – even diabolic – in nature.
