James Clar participates in Victory Over the Sun: Encounters with Light, an exhibition at The Light, Durham exploring the ways artists have used light as both a material and a subject across the past five decades.
Taking its title from the revolutionary 1913 Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun, the exhibition considers the transformative impact of artificial light and its increasingly pervasive presence in contemporary life. Bringing together 25 artists working across five decades, the exhibition explores how fluorescent tubes, neon, LEDs, projection and other illuminated media can reshape space, perception and experience.
Clar’s practice centres on light as a medium through which technological, spatial and perceptual experiences can be examined. In The Box by the Window, light becomes a sculptural and architectural presence, inviting viewers to consider the boundaries between the physical and immaterial, the natural and artificial. The work reflects Clar’s broader interest in the ways light can alter our perception of space and our relationship to the environments we inhabit.
Across the exhibition, the participating artists approach light from diverse perspectives, considering its connections to science, energy, time, memory, identity and the cosmos. Together, the works demonstrate that light is not simply a means of illumination, but a defining material and idea of modern life.
Victory Over the Sun: Encounters with Light is now on view at The Light Durham until 17 January 2027, bringing together works that explore the enduring influence of artificial light on contemporary culture and experience.
