Amelia Kosminsky

Solace,
Lumiere Durham, 2025

LOCATION: DURHAM CATHEDRAL CLOISTER

An offering of comfort and hope during our century’s turbulent times

For centuries, Durham Cathedral has been a place of sanctuary, solace and spiritual exploration. For over a thousand years this impenetrable building has offered visitors a place of safety from where they can contemplate and come to terms with the clashing discordant world outside its walls. Only from the cloister, with its roof space open to the heavens, can the visitor glimpse the sky above, punctuated by starry constellations promising light amidst the darkness.

In the depths of winter, humans gravitate towards light, seeking to banish shadows and to create a flickering, fragile moment of illumination that guides their path through the darkness of the night. Solace is a new artwork responding to the Cathedral’s extraordinary history, created as an offering of comfort and hope during our century’s turbulent times.

Composed of hundreds of handmade lanterns, Solace captures a suspended moment in time, as if each lantern has been caught mid-flight. Drifting into the distance, they invite audiences to imagine the lanterns’ journey and, in turn, reflect and consider their own.

Ben Kosminsky Wallace – Production Manager and Co Lighting Systems Designer.

Open Format – Co–Lighting Systems Designer.

Emma Bakker – Lantern Maker.

Rigging by Unusual Rigging

Exterior Lighting and Sound by IPS

Jon Hopkins – Soundtrack – Tayos Caves, Ecuador (Meditation Version)

Supported by Point North and Swinburne Maddison

With thanks to Katy Fuller, Andy Nash, Beth King and the full Artichoke team.