Bruce Munro | Light Creations

This winter we proudly present a selection of works by British/Australian artist Bruce Munro, which explore his life-long interrogation of light and how it affects emotions and memory. The exhibition includes works influenced by Munro’s long connection to this area of Devon, and runs alongside his spectacular light installation marking the RNLI’s 200th anniversary, on show opposite Salcombe Harbour from 5th October 2024 to 10th January 2025. 

Munro is an internationally recognised artist with a practice centred on immersive light-based installations. His works are currently on long-term display in California, Japan and Australia, including his best-known work, Field of Light, at Uluru in Australia’s red centre. His association with South Devon goes back to childhood, when he would visit his father during school holidays, roaming the cliffs and sketching in the coves; Munro’s ongoing practice originates in the ideas he records in his sketchbooks, a habit that has continued from boyhood and throughout his life. 

The collection here at Velarde explores his 2-D experiments in abstraction, through lens-based wall hangings and smaller 3-D light installations. They include wall mounted pieces from Munro’s Time and Place series, which seeks to distil the emotional essence associated with specific images by taking a suite of photographs in a 360-degree arc and transforming them into a series of dots of pure colour. His C-Scales series explores binary codes and musical notation, while Silent Boogie Woogie originates in his childhood fascination with photographic transparencies. The largest of the light installations in this exhibition, Fireflies, is inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, and Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, novels which feature rivers as metaphors for the spiritual and physical journey of all living creatures. Three other works on display, Bell Chandelier, Snowball Chandelier and Light Shower are commissions which combine Munro’s experiments with lights forms and materials in a dramatic interior setting. 

View exhibition catalogue

Salcombe Field of Light