Gas Light (Church, Waterloo)
Chapel Installation. St. John's Church. Waterloo. November. 2001.
The invisible made visible. Gas becomes light. Here there is a reversal. Light becomes gas, a metamorphosis of energies.
The identities of both, are metaphysically juxtaposed.
Gas is sweet, euphoric and tragic. Daylight has a cycle, it is finite and infinite, it is everchanging.
This phenomena is both beautiful and frightening. What, at first, appears to be seductive and tranquil, exposes and reveals a realisation of threat and awful dread.
- The eternal flame burns continuously above the doorway.
- Enter the chapel to the right of the blind.
- Allow time for your eyes to adjust to the low light.
- As you enter there are two windows with gas burner ring inserts.
- The large window to the right has two rings with sunlight.
- The window straight ahead has one small has ring placed directly in front of Christ's head (the brightest area of a stained glass window hidden from view by blackout board).
- The gas ring's glow varies in intensity as the sun moves and the day progresses.
