In Which I Visit Mars, and the Moon

I have been aware of the work of artist Luke Jerram for a while - I've seen his Museum of the Moon before, in Lincoln Museum, and Gaia, in Salisbury Cathedral, so when I saw that he has now created a version of Mars, and that it was going to be on show in Bristol, I had to book to visit.

Mars was in the Wills Memorial Tower, which I spent a lot of time in as a student doing my post-graduate course, so it felt strange to be going there, not for an exam or lecture, but to see an art installation! 

Mars is 7m in diameter, which means that 1cm on the model represents 10km of the real planet. (Like his other astronomical works, this uses NASA images to  create the surface of the planet)

Mars: Bristol University

It's beautiful, and the Great Hall made a fantastic setting for it.  As well as the planet itself, there was a surround sound accompaniment, including music speech recordings and sounds suggestive of what it might be like on the surface.

I spent about 40 minutes just taking it all in.

It was only in Bristol for a week, and I saw it on the second to last day - it's a shame it wasn't there longer, I might have gone back to see it at a different time f day, if it had been there longer!

Then , (because I follow the artist on Facebook) I saw that the Museum of the Moon was also visiting Bristol, this time, the cathedral.

It's free to visit whenever the cathedral is normally open, but there are also various additional events - one of which was evening opening with restricted numbers, which was what I picked.

 The last time I visited Bristol Cathedral it was to see Antic Disposition's Richard III in 2017, and on that occasion there was not much opportunity to look round the cathedral itself, so I enjoyed doing that - The cathedral has a long history - for some reason, I'd thought of it as being fairly modern (perhaps assuming that, like so much of Bristol, it was built with the profits from slavery and tobacco) 

In fact, it was originally the abbey church for an Augustinian monastery, founded by the Berkley family, who are still around, and claim to be the only remaining family in England who can trace their lineage back directly, father to son so before the Norman Conquest. The one who founded the abbey was an Anglo-Saxon  who cannily supported Henry II back before it fashionable to do so, and married his son off to the previous lord Berkley's daughter, who chose poorly in that particular conflict.   Presumably they have always been either very lucky,  or very adept at changing allegiance as necessary, since they still have a stonking big castle where the family has been living for the last 850 years.   

The oldest parts of the church were built in the 12th Century, although I was right in part,  in so far as the original nave was demolished, (The monks were planning an upgrade, but due to Henry VIII never got to build the new one) and  the current one built  in the 1860s. 

There were some lovely tombs of early abbots - I do like the star-burst surroundings.  There are also some rather nice bits of early vaulted ceilings, in one of the side chapels.

The setting is a great one for the Moon.

I enjoyed playing with looking at it from different angles, and seeing the interaction between the ancient and traditional building, and the Moon.

Although I think I may need to go back to spend more time in the cathedral, in daylight, sometime soon. The Chapter House, which is apparently very good, was closed when I was there, and I should like to be able to spend some time looking at the various memorials, and sculptures (they have a fragment of an Anglo-Saxon carving showing the Harrowing of Hell, which it was too dark to see properly, by the time I got to it, for instance)

It was an interesting evening. 

I also learned that the Moon is coming to Wells cathedral, in October, so I may pop in to see it there, too.

If you're in or near Bristol, it's at the Cathedral until 30th August.