At Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, the Summer Solstice is more than a moment on the calendar, it’s a living experience, drawn in light and shadow across the subtropical landscape.
As the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, bathing the gardens in gold, something deeper stirs beneath the surface. Here, at the height of summer, opposites meet: day and night, seen and unseen. Nowhere is this balance more powerfully felt than in James Turrell’s two remarkable installations; Tewlwolow Kernow (Skyspace) and Aqua Oscura.
Skyspace: A Chamber of Light
Perched on the hillside, Turrell’s Skyspace is a space for stillness and looking up. Its clean, elliptical form opens to the sky, framing the shifting light in an unbroken oculus. On the evening of the Solstice, the experience here becomes almost ceremonial, watching the last light of the longest day fade through the aperture above, colours deepening as time slows.
It is a space for contemplation. The light, carefully tuned by Turrell, invites not just observation but awareness: of colour, of perception, of the moment itself. In a season of abundance, the Skyspace becomes a modern stone circle, minimalist, but resonant with ancient ritual.
Aqua Oscura: Journey into Darkness
And yet, just below the surface of the gardens lies its counterpart. Aqua Oscura, Turrell’s first ever camera obscura, offers a completely different experience. Unlike the Skyspace’s open gaze, Aqua Oscura draws us inward, into darkness. Visitors sit in silence as the hidden mechanics of light and lens quietly project the world outside into the chamber. A fern rustles. A bird darts past. The trees sway in reverse.
What begins in disorientation becomes wonder. Where the Skyspace immerses us in light, Aqua Oscura reveals light as something elusive and fragile, an echo of the world outside, fleeting and softly rendered.
The Solstice as a Threshold
To walk between these two works is to move through the full spectrum of perception, from the wide embrace of daylight to the intimate mystery of shadow. Together, they shape a dialogue between seeing and sensing, between the tangible and the ephemeral.
The longest day of the year is not just a celebration of sunlight, but a deepening into how we experience the world around us, through art, through nature, and through the subtle shifts of light and dark that define our days.
Visit Tremenheere this summer to explore and experience the garden in its fullest moments of light. The Gardens are open daily 10.30 – 5.30, last entry 4.30.