James Turrell exhibition

It's a long drive and it's £20 to get in, but this exhibition hit the centre of my world. To spend time with the work of a person who dedicates their life to learning, experimenting, contemplating, making.... for James Turrell his medium is light. "Like music or sound, light is not material" Turrell says in an interview with Lord Cholmondeley (pronounced chumly). The Lord of the manor who has collected great art works by sculptors and installation artists and has his home, Houghton Hall, open to the public. You walk amongst colonial wealth in the former home of the first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, taking in the artworks and simultaneously being in awe of the artwork and lapped by luxury and privilege, enjoying the luxury and being lefty angry about it in equal measures. It was a KlangHaus day-out, we walked first to the Water Tower to see a piece called St. Elmo's Breath. From bright sunlight to pitch black. A dark room where you allow your eyes to be played with by Turrell. For 10 minutes it's an eyeball massage, trickery and play... you see white halos in your peripheral vision, shadows, wavy lines, pulsing colours...you don't see what I see, your eye ball is your eye ball! Brilliantly disorientating even when your eyes adjust and you go for an explore on how it was done...you can put your hands into light where you imagine a screen should be. Turrell speaks of how our eyes are made for twilight, which happens twice a day. At midday if the sun is bright, we squint or wear sun glasses. At twilight our pupils are open, you can almost feel the light. He also says, we use light as food, we absorb it through our skin to get vitamin D. He speaks of the soft maritime light we have in the UK, his main working studio is Arizona, in a volcano crater. We walked to Skyspace, an impressive wooden structure with a square hole for the ceiling.....you look at the sky. We returned at dusk and watched the sky turn a deep navy blue, the lights in the room a soft yellow. When we left we were surprised to see how different the sky was outside, much paler and realised that Turrell had again been playing with our eyes, affecting what colours we saw. The series of aquatint prints of cubes of projected light was strangely emotive. The hovering triangle of red light, menacing. Sitting with this man's art was one of my favourite things. Thank you Mr.Turrell.