Bill Culbert

Description

The vapour-trails made by aircraft on a fine day, which are often buffeted and altered by the wind before they fade, have an affinity with Skyline, which is also a drawing against the sky. The wavering, freely drawn lines of Bill Culbert's sculpture are akin to random doodlings. Made in tubes filled with argon gas, they glow in tones of pale blue, their intensity depending on the amount of light present. In bright sunlight they fade, but against the dark blue of a night sky they appear intense and dramatic.

Skyline is the largest light sculpture that Culbert has made to date, most of his work being of a domestic scale. However, it is close in some characteristics to Blue Cloud 1996, a sculpture commissioned for the interior of BUPA Headquarters in London, where the swirling lines drawn in argon-filled tubing hang high above the heads of both visitors and staff. Because Skyline was created for an outdoor environment and had to be free-standing, Culbert devised supports for the argon tubes that were slanting rather than vertical. These confirm the fluid drawing in the sculpture while emphasising the freedom of spirit implied.

Enabled by Sculpture at Goodwood for the Millennium Dome's North Meadow site, Skyline was sited there for the whole of 2000 before being placed at the entrance to Sculpture at Goodwood. In its urban environment the sculpture would never have appeared as intense as it does in its country setting because of the quantity of ambient light always present in a city. Andrea Shlieker, Curator of the North Meadow Sculpture Project, wrote of Skyline: 'In spite of its formal economy, this is a work of many associations and references: to writing and language but also to music. Luminous against an ever-changing background, Skyline is at once celebratory and serene.'