Artist Kirstine Roepstorff in conversation with Bea Prutton, Digital Communications & Creative Curator

In this interview with Bea Prutton, artist Kirstine Roepstorff introduces her spectacular work, Lightning Rod, to the Sainsbury Centre’s Sculpture Park.

Roepstorff (b. 1972, Denmark) works across multiple disciplines, creating sculpture, painting and installations that explore the relationship between humanity, spirituality and the natural world. Lightning Rod (2024) is a multi-part sculpture, which includes a cast elongated bronze form and natural sarsen stones sourced from the Wiltshire plains.

The work explores a shift in our understanding of energy – how it can be captured, stored, transformed and, most importantly, applied, for both destruction and creation. Exploring the speculative potential of energy transfer, Lightning Rod poses the question: if lightning hit the bronze form with enough force to crack open rocks, would revelations emerge?

Initially shown at Frieze London in October 2024, Lighting Rod is part of Roepstorff’s ongoing project ‘Earth School’, that explores humanity’s place in an expanding and shifting world. The artist describes her public works as having ‘a large element of playfulness and somatic experience, where you may be distracted, inspired or tricked to get a reminding hunch of the constant dialogue between the cosmic and the earthly.’

Find out more about the Sculpture Park here.