LONDON.- Today fundraising begins on an extraordinary project to take Bruce Munro’s iconic Field of Light installation back to its birthplace: Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) at the heart of the Australian red desert.

This will be Munro’s largest installation to date, a monumental piece consisting of a quarter of a million stems of light, covering one square kilometre of land.

Munro has just returned from Longwood Gardens, USA, where his smash-hit one-man show continues until September 29th.

Uluru is a World Heritage site, which lives in the world’s imagination as a universal symbol of man’s ancient heritage, and is primarily a place sacred to the Anangu people. For many foreigners, it’s a symbol of Australia itself, and for some a haunting memory of Peter Weir‘s film ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’.

Field of Light at Uluru will be entirely solar powered, and made of 3,290 kilometres of optic fibre and 165 kilometres of recycled 12mm acrylic tube.

Munro aims to devote considerable energy and resources to preserving and protecting the land. “We’re going to be extraordinarily careful, and we’re using 500 LED solar-powered illuminators, so that the installation doesn’t waste any power” he said.

From today, funding for the project is being sought via corporate sponsors and via a dedicated crowd-funding website at http://fieldoflight.co.uk/uluru.php. Visitors to the website click on a discrete link titled ‘Be a Part of It’ which opens a page where they can make an online donation. “We hope Bruce’s many supporters around the world will donate a stem for £12 each” said a spokeswoman from Munro’s team. Corporate sponsors are being invited to sponsor clusters of 500 steams at £5,000 each. “Over time, we hope to raise enough to make this crazy, wonderful dream come true.”

The National Park at the red centre is an area of over 311,000 acres and Uluru can be clearly seen for many miles around. Working with 30 local land-guardians, Bruce Munro and his team will take six weeks to install Field of Light in sight of the great Uluru. “I consider myself extraordinarily privileged to be invited to work here” said Munro. The desert will be left pristine when Field of Light is dismantled, in October 2012.

Uluru is made of Arkosic sandstone, and rises 348 meters above the desert floor with a circumference of 9.4 kilometres. But its presence cannot be reduced to numbers and facts alone. Field of Light will seek to illuminate gently, rather than garishly. It will be lit for four hours from dusk every evening, using that day’s supply of solar energy.

A radio interview given by Bruce Munro to Nadine Maloney at ABC Arts Alice Springs in December last year on the subject of his Australian inspiration for Field of Light, was heard by Voyages Australia, and two days later they became the first supporters of the project.

Ray Stone, Executive General Manager of Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia said, “The spirituality of this iconic location makes it unique and so appealing to people throughout the world. This, for me, is why Bruce's work fits so naturally into our destination. The Field of Light has exactly that kind of spirituality - difficult to define but powerful in its impact.”

Field of Light was first conceived in 1992 during a trip through the red desert, which seemed to radiate both energy and ideas along with the heat. Munro was transfixed by the way the desert was barren until it rained and then, as if from nowhere, dormant seeds would burst into bloom. He made a series of sketches in the notebook carried in his pocket since art college days, and the idea refused to dislodge from his mind.

For Munro, the Field of Light is a symbol of the good things in life. “My aim is to make this an event shared in every aspect with as many people in Australia as possible.”