Making glass magic: Dawn Bendick on her colour-changing installation at Collect

Kent-based artist Dawn Bendick started her creative career in painting, textiles and animation, until her MA in Material Futures at London’s Central Saint Martins inspired her to begin working with glass and the controlled lighting that causes her dichroic glass sculptures to change hue. We asked her about her Time Rock Stack installation in the West Wing of Collect art fair (25-27 February 2022), where the artist is also showing with Joanna Bird Contemporary Collections.

What was the idea behind your Time Rock Stack installation?

I take inspiration from the shifting colours, and the textural variations of stone, that occur in natural light. There was a time when we relied on the sun, and sunlight, to track the length of our days and the cycle of the seasons.

Over the centuries, the clocks that we are now familiar with have come to represent the sun’s movement. Paradoxically, they have also mediated, and in many cases diminished, our immediate experience of the sun as an indicator of the passing of time.

The Time Rock Stack responds to its chromatic environment, thereby inviting us to heighten our awareness of the changes that occur naturally in the atmosphere, light, and weather conditions around us.

What processes were involved to create it?

To create the piece I worked collaboratively with other artists. The materials are extremely important, and I use dichroic glass combined with light.

First, the glass is created in collaboration with the glass casting studio Max Jacquard Glass Studio in Kent. We work with lost wax casting. Once we have our moulds, they go into a cool kiln, and we fill the moulds with weighted glass. Once cooled, we break the mould and start to cold-work, and polish the glass. Then Max and I work on fitting and stacking the pieces together to create the installation, modelled after cairns, man-made stacked piles of rocks that are found worldwide and date from prehistory to the present day.

The lighting design is also collaborative, and I work alongside Chris Pype Licht Studio, which is based in Gent, Belgium. We work together on a timeline to control the light sources.

How did you achieve the colour-changing effect?

The glass is dichroic – this means it shifts in colour in reaction to various chroma and light waves. There are two light sources used here and Chris has worked to control the dimmable lamps. The light is the material that triggers the magic in the glass.

How did you respond to the architecture of Somerset House?

The shape of the space where my installation is situated – a niche inside the West Wing of Somerset House – is similar to a nave of a church. I wanted the Time Rock Stack to offer a quiet space during the Collect exhibition. It forms part of a series of installations titled Unequating Time, and this work was an opportunity to create a space in which one can consider our relationship to light and time signatures.