A person stands in a spacious dark gallery facing a tall white wall covered in sweeping bands and arcs of bright light and rainbow colours, including broad white curves and dispersing yellow and blue streaks that extend across the wall’s length.

Pluriverse assembly 2021

We need light for life, to create energy and to grow.

Pluriverse assembly 2021 splits light into different wavelengths, opening a spectrum of colour, just as sunlight is refracted when shining through water, mist or ice. Watching this revolving display, we might feel we have been taken into deep space, as if a window has opened to a distant galaxy, where planets orbit new stars.

Pluriverse assembly is created from the reflection and refraction of light. Look to the side of the screen and you will see an assembly of lights and mechanisms, which together bring a universe of possibility into being. Cycles of light weave around one another, intersecting and spiralling through space, in prism-like relays of light and darkness. A space of potential is evoked from a repeating cycle.

Are these mechanisms separate, each observing their own orbit, or interdependent, linked to work together? Through setting these different ‘actors’ in motion, Eliasson encourages us to step beyond our role as spectators and consider our own agency and potential, to actively understand the forces of light and energy which shape our world. Pluriverse assembly celebrates how the ordinary can be seen anew, sparking deeper insight.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

Low/no vision audio description

0:00

This installation extends across much of the gallery, transforming a large freestanding screen into a back-lit shifting projection of colour, light and shadow. The screen sits slightly forward from the wall, allowing visitors to move around and behind it, experiencing the work from multiple vantage points. The work fills the viewer’s entire field of vision, creating the sensation of being immersed within a moving image.

Luminous forms slowly emerge and dissolve across the screen’s surface. Bands of yellow and purple drift across it, blending with arcs of white light and areas of shadow. Shapes appear almost organic – fluid, spectral and constantly in motion. At times, the projections resemble rippling liquids, glowing veils or ghostly silhouettes. No two moments are the same, as the sequence evolves continuously.

Some of the mechanisms that create these shifting images are visible and intentionally integrated into the artwork. Three glass rings hang from above, rotating within spotlights. Nearby, a box houses two horizontal discs that revolve at different speeds. The lower disc carries an assortment of glass lenses and small objects, while the upper tray contains fragments of plants suspended in paraffin oil. A spotlight shines upward through these discs, its beam redirected by a circular mirror onto the screen.

The interplay of lenses, plants, light and motion produces an analogue film without beginning or end. Visitors can move between front and side views of the installation, experiencing both the atmospheric projection and glimpses of the intricate machinery that generates it.

– QAGOMA

$A dark room is lit with overlapping lights in bright rings, thin white arcs and blurred sheets across the walls and floor. Lights on tripod stands cast beams that refract into sweeping curves and dispersed colours, including a vivid rainbow band, while suspended circular objects create sharp halo-like outlines and scattered reflections form small glowing points.$

A dark room contains several spotlights and hanging circular objects that cast overlapping projections of bright rings, sweeping white arcs and broad yellow washes across the walls and floor. A tall black box with illuminated openings stands in the foreground beside metal poles and trailing cables, while tripod-mounted lights create additional curved bands, soft flares and shifting reflections throughout the space.

A transparent dome on a dark display surface contains coloured rings of light beneath a tilted reflective disc, set before a circular projection of soft white light.

Experience this work on the Sense Trail