Film rooted in Renaissance transcends time and space

It would be difficult to imagine a more apt setting for Bill Viola’s nine-minute video artwork Three Women than the interior of St Cuthbert’s. A church dedicated to Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, has occupied the site, at the northern extremity of the kingdom of Northumbria, since AD850.

The kirk resonates atmosphere and, unusually for a Protestant building, is rich in stained glass and other artworks, such as a replica of Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges. Inside, the serenity is palpable and it’s difficult to remember that it is within a stone’s throw of Edinburgh’s busiest thoroughfare.

The American artist Viola already has links with Scotland, including participating in Richard Demarco’s Edinburgh arts summer school in 1975. In 2009 a major body of his work was shown in Orkney.

Somehow the label video artist seems inadequate when dealing with the intellectual and moral gravitas of Viola’s work. Its roots lie deep in the heart of European Renaissance sculpture and painting; the devotional aspect here is prominent but not overwhelming. In common with many of his pieces, Viola has taken a fragment of HD film footage lasting no more than a few seconds and slowed it markedly. The notion of time is central to Viola’s practice and here he makes this explicit in the ages of the three people who occupy this film space.

Under his direction, three performers (Anika, Cornelia and Helena Ballent) emerge in order of age from behind a thin cascade of water. The figures are immediately transformed from grainy monochrome into resplendent colour. They hold and release hands, gesture and then recede behind the screen of water.

It’s difficult not to be moved by this: the idea of one generation following another, the process of leaving childhood and the relinquishing of parental responsibilities are all deeply embedded in the imagery. The work has all the pathos of the Madonna and child nearby and also references works such as Antonio Canova’s The Three Graces. Viola’s pieces are often accompanied by sound but in this case the work is silent, linking it more directly to sculpture and painting.

Three Women transcends time and space and, like all high art, its purpose and intent exhibit a universality of experience that is both profound and deeply moving.

Until September 30