NEXT year is the UN’S International Year of Light and I thought perhaps the National Gallery was being pre-emptive in launching us into the light that is “James Turrell: Retrospective”, but not a mention at the opening.

If you thought you knew everything you needed about light, suspend all preconceptions and bathe in the glows that Turrell creates in this unique retrospective. It will be a deeply personal experience.

The official opening was a picture of hot pink: pink carpet, pink drinks, pink pinnies on the staff and pink lights to give us a glow in the themed-to-the-nth-degree Gandel Hall, where the new (and still glowing in his excitement) Chief Minister Andrew Barr stepped up to the podium and applause to open the retrospective and extol the Turrell “experience” he’d just enjoyed.

That was the Perceptual cell, a deep-sea diving bell akin to a Jules Verne creation of 15 minutes of intense light to slide into.

Turrell loves our southern sky and his NGA Skyspace reveals it. Now his light sculptures become an intangible, all encompassing experience for us to go where only light has gone before.