Black Swan Arts Open 2022, judge profile

Visual Artist in Light

British artist Bruce Munro is best known for producing large immersive light-based installations, which often employ a massing of components by the thousands. An artistic diarist, he has spent over 30 years collecting and recording ideas and images in his sketchbooks, which he returns to over time as source material.

Language, literature, science, and music have also greatly influenced his work. Frequently, Bruce’s subject matter is his own experience of fleeting moments of rapport with the world and existence in its largest sense of being part of life’s essential pattern. His reoccurring motif is the use of light on an environmental scale in order to create an emotional response for the viewer.

Bruce completed a BA. in Fine Arts at Bristol in 1982. Shortly after he moved to Sydney where he worked in design and lighting, inspired by Australia’s natural light and landscape. Returning to England in 1992 he settled in Wiltshire, where together with his wife, Serena, he raised four children.

Bruce’s work has been shown at Museums and Botanical Gardens internationally, notably:

• Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania
• The Victoria & Albert Museum, London
• Waddesdon Manor for the Rothschild Collection, Buckinghamshire
• Beyond Limits 2016 for Sotheby’s at Chatsworth House and Messums, Wiltshire

His work Field of Light continues to be exhibited at:

• Uluru, Northern Territory, Australia
• Sensorio, California, USA
• Pinecrest Gardens, Miami as part of the 2021 Miami Art Basel

Bruce’s work is held in private and public museum collections internationally including

• Cheekwood Estate & Gardens, Nashville, Tennessee
• The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
• Montalvo Arts Centre, Saratoga, California
• Texas Tech University, Texas

• BA Fine Arts, Bristol