On 11 August 1999, Cornwall experienced one of those rare moments when the natural world seemed to stop everyone in their tracks. The Great Eclipse crossed the county, turning daylight into something altogether stranger as the moon passed in front of the sun. For a few extraordinary minutes, the familiar landscape was transformed and the sky became the focus of everyone’s attention. For Tremenheere, that remarkable event also marked the beginning of a lasting relationship with one of the world’s most celebrated artists of light and perception: James Turrell.
A Skyspace born from an eclipse
James Turrell came to Tremenheere in 1998 while searching for a place from which to observe the 1999 total solar eclipse. A temporary Skyspace was created here for the occasion, providing a place from which to experience the changing light and the extraordinary event taking place above Cornwall. It is a fascinating part of Tremenheere’s history: an artist whose work is so deeply concerned with our experience of light and sky arriving here at a moment when millions of people were preparing to look upwards and witness one of nature’s most spectacular phenomena. But the temporary structure was only the beginning. Turrell’s connection with Tremenheere continued, eventually resulting in the permanent Skyspace that visitors can experience today, Tewlwolow Kernow, meaning Twilight in Cornwall.
Looking at the sky
Set amongst Tremenheere’s gardens, Tewlwolow Kernow is deceptively simple. The elliptical chamber has an opening in the roof which frames a carefully chosen portion of the Cornish sky, and there is no traditional sculpture to walk around or image to decipher. Instead, Turrell asks us to sit, pause and look. The experience changes throughout the day and with the seasons: the colour of the sky shifts with the weather and the changing light, clouds pass across the aperture and, as daylight fades, the relationship between the interior and exterior light begins to change. The sky can appear almost impossibly close, sometimes taking on the appearance of a solid surface. The artwork is not simply the opening in the roof, but the experience of looking through it.
This is central to Turrell’s practice. For more than five decades, he has explored light as an artistic medium, creating works that encourage us to question what we see and, perhaps more importantly, how we see it. At Tremenheere, visitors can experience two of his works in the gardens: Tewlwolow Kernow and Aqua Oscura, a camera obscura housed within a former Victorian water tank. They offer very different experiences, but both invite us to become more aware of light, space and perception.
From the sky to the printed page
This summer, there is another opportunity to explore James Turrell’s work at Tremenheere, through our current exhibition The Mechanised Image: Forty Years of Paupers Press. Running from 1 August to 5 September 2026, the exhibition celebrates four decades of work by the highly respected fine art print and publishing studio Paupers Press, bringing together work created in collaboration with a remarkable group of contemporary artists, including Turrell.
The Turrell prints in the exhibition offer a fascinating counterpoint to the experience of his installations in the gardens. Working with Tremenheere, Paupers Press produced a series of polymer gravure etchings inspired by Aqua Oscura, using long-exposure photography of the installation. The resulting prints translate an experience of light, movement and time into another medium, allowing us to consider Turrell’s work in a completely different way. After experiencing Aqua Oscura or Tewlwolow Kernow in the gardens, seeing the prints in the gallery offers another opportunity to think about how light can be captured, interpreted and transformed.
The eclipse, remembered
There is something particularly fitting about revisiting this story now. The 1999 eclipse was a fleeting event. For a few minutes, the sky changed and millions of people looked up together, yet here at Tremenheere that moment became part of a much longer artistic story. More than 25 years later, Tewlwolow Kernow continues to encourage visitors to do something surprisingly simple: stop, sit down and look at the sky.
Perhaps that is the lasting connection between the eclipse and Turrell’s work. Both ask us to pay attention to something that is always there, but which we don’t necessarily take the time to notice. The light, the sky and the act of looking become the experience itself.
This summer, you can explore James Turrell’s work in several different ways at Tremenheere — from experiencing Tewlwolow Kernow and Aqua Oscura in the gardens to discovering his prints in The Mechanised Image: Forty Years of Paupers Press in Tremenheere Gallery. And if you remember the Great Eclipse of 1999, perhaps a visit will bring back memories of that extraordinary day when Cornwall looked up together. If you didn’t experience it, there is still plenty of reason to look up now.
After all, as James Turrell’s work so beautifully reminds us, sometimes the most extraordinary thing to look at is the sky itself.
