HeartEdge member St Cuthbert’s Church in Edinburgh (Kirk of the Castle Rock and Princes St Gardens) is currently home to an outstanding video art installation by the internationally respected American artist Bill Viola. The piece is ‘Three Women (2008)', which has most recently been on display in the Grand Palais, Paris and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and is now installed in Edinburgh until 1st September.
'Three Women (2008)' is part of the Transfigurations series by Viola, and his wife and close collaborator, Kira Perov. Transfiguration is generally defined as “an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change.” In this work, the mother and her daughters enact a transfiguration when they choose to pass through the threshold of water and briefly enter an illuminated realm. By exploring such universal human experiences as spirituality, birth, and death, Viola’s videos communicate to a wide audience, allowing viewers to engage with the work in their own personal ways.
St Cuthbert's also held the Scottish premiere of the new feature length documentary Bill Viola: The Road to St Paul's at an event last Sunday where Simon Groom, the Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, chaired a discussion with the director and producer, Gerald Fox.
Bill Viola: The Road to St Paul's is a powerful, moving portrait of the world's most influential video artist and his wife and close collaborator, Kira Perov. It is an up-close documentation of their 12-year odyssey to create two permanent video installations for St. Paul's Cathedral. Martyrs (2014) and its companion piece, Mary (2016), symbolise some of the profound mysteries of human existence. One is concerned with comfort and creation, the other with suffering and sacrifice. This film follows Viola's remarkable story of producing, filming and realising the first art commission of its kind to ever be installed in one Britain's most famous religious spaces.
The BAFTA and Grierson Award winning British director and producer Gerald Fox takes the audience on a fascinating journey through the spiritual oeuvre of this innovative, ground breaking artist. The film ranges across the deserted landscapes and deserts of California as Viola builds his epic works for St Paul's, to the streets of Paris and London as Fox looks back at the art and career of this seminal artist, who, since the early 1970s, has taken video art to a new level of acceptance in contemporary art.
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