York Castle Museum

The Temple of a Thousand Bells

by Laura Belém

25 May - 4 November, 2012

Our installation for 2012 is composed of a thousand cast glass bells and a specially composed polyphonic sound piece, creating a 3-D effect to the sound of a narrated story.

The story is a free adaptation of an ancient legend about a temple of a thousand bells that was built on an island.

Over the centuries, the island sank into the ocean, and with it, the temple. As the story unfolds, it reveals the attempts of a sailor to hear the music of those bells.

Originally commissioned for the Liverpool Biennial International 10 exhibition and housed in the Oratory, the work is being reinterpreted and rehung for York St Mary's.

The glass bells have all been individually hand-blown and will hang with nylon strings in the nave of the former church. They do not have a clapper, creating a visual metaphor that matches the narrated legend, which tells about the lost music of the bells in the depths of the ocean.

The mass of clear, translucent glass bells evoke a visual quality of water and notions of spirituality and evanescence. They also convey a sense of fragility, lyricism, dream, imagination, a sense of presence and absence, and memory and displacement.

The Temple of a Thousand Bells is part of Art in Yorkshire Goes Modern, a celebration of modern and contemporary art in 27 galleries throughout Yorkshire during 2012.

The installation is also part of the York Festival of Ideas, which runs from 14 - 30 June, 2012. This year's programme - with a theme of Metamorphoses -brings together a range of world-class speakers, exhibitions, performances and a host of stimulating and interactive experiences.

All images by Alex Wolkowicz © Laura Belém