A new light event for 2025
Bringing together award-winning artists, students and residents to explore our relationships with past, present, community and our dreams
Selby Light
- Thursday 6th –
- Saturday 8th March 2025
Nestled in the Abbey’s grounds, discover the heartbeats of 30 Selby residents, a visual representation and celebration of community, hope and human spirit.
Experience Selby Abbey as never seen before. Illuminating its entire interior in huge scale, cutting edge technology, film, 3D laser scans and images of past and present meet in an immersive artwork, exploring the Abbey and our relationship with it from mesmerising perspectives.
Dotted around the inside of the Abbey and in a trail around the Abbey Quarter, talented art and design students from Selby College create light works in miniature: meditations on their dreams. Can you spot them all?
Ancient Futures
Ancient Futures is a large-scale video, light and sound installation developed in response to Selby Abbey and the local limestone from which it is built. Founded in 1069, the Abbey originates from an otherworldly vision received by St Germain to build a monastery in “Selebiae”, where three swans meet on a river bend.
Inspired by this visionary tale and the region’s geology, Ancient Futures imagines a force of nature embodied in the form of a piece of magnesian limestone sourced from the petrified shores of the Zechstein Sea. This sea formed over 250 million years ago as the continents split, its western edges creating the limestone ridge that bounds the Vale of York. This geological ‘visionary’ journeys to Selby Abbey to reveal, survey and ultimately reclaim the stone for an ancient future.
Drawing on research and conversations with local residents and the Selby Abbey community, Ancient Futures explores the abbey and aspects of its human history from the perspective of deep time whilst also considering a scenario for a distant future. It combines Lidar scans of Selby Abbey, photogrammetry, infra-red film footage and sound recordings from around the area with archival imagery of the church.
The Matter of the Heart
The Matter of The Heart is a collection of Selby hearts: local people and their real-time heart beats. Wherever they are now, together or apart, far away or near the artwork, their hearts will remain in one space, flashing together, in perfect time with their real life heartbeat.
The curation of a community, expressed purely through the live heart-beat data of local people. It is an expression of a place’s societal networks, and a demonstration of the collective power of community. As an audience member you’re invited to walk among the flashing hearts, like a graveyard of the living, to allow the interconnectivity of life to light your path.
Created by artists and designers, idontloveyouanymore, The Matter of The Heart is a celebration of the human spirit, and a reminder of the power of community.
Selby Light Trail
Drawing upon the history of Selby Abbey, students from Selby College Art & Design course have created their own miniature light installations, displayed here in the Abbey and in shopfronts around the town.
Benedict, a monk from Auxerre in France, experienced a vision by God where he was called by St Germain to start a new monastery at “Selebiae”. In his vision he was told the site would be marked by the presence of three swans. Upon Benedict’s resting at the bend of the River Ouse at Selby, three swans alighted the river and have been the Abbey Arms ever since.
Inspired by this origin story to draw upon their own dreams and visions, students have worked alongside artists Heinrich and Palmer to create their own light works, which can be spotted around the interior of the Abbey and in a specially designed light trail, taking you from the Abbey grounds, around the Abbey Quarter.
Featured
Artist
Featured
Artist
Heinrich & Palmer
Heinrich & Palmer is an artist partnership of Anna Heinrich and Leon Palmer, working together since the early 1990s creating multi-media installations and interventions in response to a wide range of sites. They are fascinated by the blurring of boundaries between real and virtual space, light, material and architecture. Heinrich & Palmer use projection, light, illusion, interactivity and sound to create immersive installations to explore the processes behind the world of appearances and facades and to reveal hidden narratives or create ambiguous meanings.
Featured
Artist
Featured
Artist
idontloveyouanymore
idontloveyouanymore is an art and performance studio based in Manchester directed by Anna West and Davi Callanan. Their work explores the intersection between technology, philosophy and human experience. They have exhibited internationally, and received many accolades including BFI London Film Festival’s inaugural Best XR/Immersive Art Award.
Selby Light is commissioned by North Yorkshire Council as part of the Now Then! Cultural Programme for Selby, Sherburn and Tadcaster.
Co-produced with Mediale.
Ancient Futures
Ancient Futures is commissioned by Now Then!
Lead artists: Anna Heinrich and Leon Palmer
Archival Imagery: Selby Abbey
Lidar scan: Red Laser Scanning
AV technical support for the event: HPSS
The artists would like to thank the following people and organisations for their support with this project:
The Now Then! team and Mediale.
The Selby Abbey team and the Heritage Group.
Oliver Waterer, Director of Music at Selby Abbey, the Choir of Selby Abbey and organist Ian Seddon for allowing us to record and use samples from their performances.
Roger Riley and the team of Selby Abbey Bell Ringers for allowing us to record and use samples from their bell ringing practice.
Selby College staff and students.
North Yorkshire Libraries Service and staff and visitors at Selby Library.
The Woodland Trust for permitting the artists to use footage filmed at Nidd Gorge, Harrogate.
The Matter of the Heart
Lead artists: Anna West and Davi Callanan
Creative Practitioner & Production Associate: Archie Grove
Initially commissioned by the Light Up Lancaster, Quays Culture, Oldham and Barnsley Bright Nights, and supported by Arts Council England.
With thanks to Selby residents who contributed their heartbeat.
Featured
Artists
Featured
Artists