Wellington-based artist Cathryn Monro is out to challenge how we navigate space with a dazzling 80m² work installed in the National Library in Wellington (featured in Urbis issue #74) until November.

The installation hangs in an open glass room between Te Ahumairangi (the Library’s ground floor) and the smaller gallery of Te Huarewa and is made up of 250,000 light-catching translucent beads strung together on lengths of tuna line. Passage 2013, as it’s entitled, leaves the experience to the punters. Step inside, run your hands through the floating strands, lie beneath them, brush through them or simply watch from the outside as the volume of layers sway and sparkle.

“It’s not a difficult work; it’s very accessible. I guess the playfulness of the work allows people to own the work and comment,” says Monro.

Passage 2013 is an adaptation of an exhibition Monro first created in 1998. She was introduced to the newly-refurbished National Library space early this year by public programmes manager, Peter Rowlands, and jumped at the prospect of reviving her existing work for what she describes as “a great space of opportunity”.

“I liked that it looked off-limits but my work would invite people in there. Since my work makes a transparent room of its own, I thought there was an opportunity to add another layer of containment, transparency and spatial definition to the work, and see how it changed the experience and reading of it,” she said.

To install the piece, Monro had to shorten and re-crimp the threads by 40mm. It took a solid week (and many helpers) to navigate the challenges of a lower ceiling height and to level out the beaded rows ready for opening.

While Passage 2013 is due to move on in mid-November, 2013, it won’t be the end for the installation. “The plan is to shift the work and adapt it into other sites, accruing layers of resonance and history in each new iteration,” says Monro.