Experience the Garden in a New Light

“Bruce Munro: Sonoran Light” at Desert Botanical Garden showcases eight large-scale, light-based installations using an inventive array of materials and hundreds of miles of glowing fiber optics. Located throughout the Garden, British artist Bruce Munro’s site-specific exhibition will reflect his unique interpretation of the Sonoran Desert.

This extraordinary new exhibit includes:

• Field of Light, featuring 30,000 individual spheres of gently blooming light nestled on the hillside of the Garden Butte, cascading down onto the Sonoran Desert Nature Loop Trail.
• Saguaro, inspired by the colossal cactus, this piece stands as a marker to show what caught Munro’s imagination during his very first visit to the Garden.
• Temperate Zone, Munro’s interpretation of the ingenious cooling pots created by the indigenous population of the Southwest hundreds of years ago.
• Water-Towers, where 58 glowing towers grace the Garden among the iconic saguaro cacti.
• Chindi, suspended in elegant form from the structures of the Sybil B. Harrington Succulent Gallery.
• Beacon, Eden Blooms and Fireflies installations will further engage in dialog with visitors and the desert landscape.

Fireflies by Bruce Munro. Hermitage Museum and Gardens, Norfolk, VA, 2014. PHOTO BY MARK PICKTHALL.

British artist Bruce Munro (born 1959) is best known for large immersive light-based installations inspired primarily by his interest in shared human experience and connection. After completing a B.A. in Fine Arts 1982 Munro moved to Sydney where he took up employment in design and lighting, inspired by Australia’s natural light and landscape. Returning to England in 1992, he settled in Wiltshire, where he raised four children with his wife. Following his father’s death in 1999, Munro felt compelled to resume art-making on a personal level. His work has been shown at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Waddesdon Manor, the Rothschild Collection, Buckinghamshire; and the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Munro’s work has become the subject of an unprecedented cultural collaboration titled Desert Radiance, allowing the artist solo experimentation in scales and environments, from land mass to water, and the domestic to the panoramic. The Desert Radiance collaborators include some of the greater Phoenix area’s preeminent arts organizations including site-specific outdoor installations at the Desert Botanical Garden, a newly-commissioned indoor installation at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, a large light-based installation set in the Canal at Scottsdale Waterfront specially commissioned by Scottsdale Public Art, and Lisa Sette Gallery’s presentation of diverse video installation pieces and smaller scale light-based artworks.

Information about all of the exhibitions is available at: www.ScottsdaleDesertRadiance.com.

Beacon by Bruce Munro. Long Knoll, UK 2013. PHOTO BY MARK PICKTHALL.

Bruce Munro: Sonoran Light
Desert Botanical Garden
Nov. 22, 2015 – May 8, 2016