Experience Shangri La (Over The Hump), a monumental immersive installation by internationally acclaimed artist James Turrell, presented as part of Task Eternal, an opening exhibition at Powerhouse Parramatta exploring flight, space and human perception.

A new installation of a work from Turrell’s celebrated Ganzfeld series, it envelops audiences within a shifting atmosphere of light and colour where depth, distance and spatial boundaries dissolve. Developed from sensory perception experiments undertaken with artist Robert Irwin in the late 1960s, the installation creates an environment in which the horizon disappears and perception becomes uncertain – echoing the disorienting and transcendent conditions associated with flight and the vastness of space.

About James Turrell

James Turrell (USA) is an artist working with light and space to create artworks that engage viewers with the limits and wonder of human perception. Turrell began experimenting with light as a medium in southern California in the mid-1960s and began his series of immersive Ganzfeld works in the mid-1970s.

Turrell gained his pilot’s licence as a teenager and later undertook humanitarian flights across Asia during the Vietnam War era – experiences that profoundly shaped his understanding of atmosphere, light and spatial orientation.