Interview with Bruce Munro
Bringing light to death
World renowned artist, Bruce Munro, is best known for immersive large-scale light-based installations inspired largely by his interest in shared human experience.
In our latest blog, James Byron, Director of Marketing & Engagement at Dorothy House Hospice Care asks Bruce about his motivation in creating art, his methods, the therapeutic quality of art, and its relationship with death and human connection.
Watch the full interview below.
Bruce’s work
Recording ideas and images in sketchbooks has been Bruce’s practice for over 40 years. By this means he has captured his responses to stimuli such as music, literature, science, and the world around him for reference, reflection, and subject matter.
This tendency has been combined with a liking for components and an inventive urge for reuse, coupled with a career training in the manufacture of light. As a result, Bruce produces both monumental, temporary experiential artworks as well as intimate story-pieces.
One such incredible example of his work is the Field of Light, Uluru, Australia. In 2016 Bruce visited the red desert in Australia for the installation of Field of Light at Uluru, Northern Territories with a unique interpretation of his artwork comprising 50,000 spheres of light, the largest and most remote iteration of this artwork to date.
Bruce’s first solar powered Field of Light represented a spiritual homecoming for both himself and the artwork which was originally conceived during a visit to Uluru in 1992 with his fiancé and now wife, Serena. Field of Light Uluru gently illuminates a remote desert area within sight of the majestic and ancient rock.
Another example is the Trail of Light, Mildura, Australia. ‘Trail of Light’ is a meandering stream of light comprising of 12,550 illuminated ‘fireflies’, 502 ‘pods’ and projectors, and 126 solar units. It can be experienced each evening with a reflective walking journey track, with over 301,200 flickering lights guiding the way.
Bruce’s relationship with death
When Bruce’s father died, he felt the need to honour his life, marking a major turning point in his own life. His father told him:
‘You must do things in life, because life is very short.’
This milestone came at the age of 40 for Bruce, and let him to reassess the important things in life; to focus more on family and friends, to find a way to share his art, to deliver something that everyone can feel. Bruce takes comfort in the idea that love is a force that has always existed, and like energy, is eternally passed on.
‘I believe love is passed from life to life, the purest form of essence that’s passed through time. That gave me a sense of being able to cope with the idea that I will die, because in a sense you are forever.’
Bruce recently became Art Ambassador for Dorothy House Hospice Care. His relationship with Dorothy House began in 2021 with his donation of the Firefly light installation to the Hospice’s Winsley estate grounds. This relationship grew in 2023 with a doubling in size of the Firefly woods.
Each light represents the life and soul of a loved one – a light that will keep on shining. Watching the glistening Fireflies dancing in the night sky offers a connection to those who are no longer here – and to one another.
‘The reason most of us have a bad relationship with death is because for most of us, dying won’t be a pleasant thing. We need hospices to be properly funded. When are we going to wake up and say, ‘this should be for everyone!’’
