Luke Jerram's Gaia Returns to Southwark Cathedral

For a few weeks in autumn 2024, Luke Jerram's Gaia came back to Southwark Cathedral, London's oldest gothic cathedral. A globe of the Earth, seven metres across, printed from high-resolution NASA imagery and floating in three dimensions in the nave. It hung there until 2 November 2024. The nearest thing most of us will get to the view astronauts have of the planet. (watch a video of Gaia in the cathedral)

What Was Gaia at Southwark Cathedral?

Gaia takes its name from the ancient Greek personification of the Earth. At first glance it reads as a very large balloon. It is more than that. The globe is 1.8 million times smaller than the real planet, which works out at about seven metres across, and the surface is the actual Earth: continents, oceans, cloud formations, all taken from NASA photographs.

You could walk the whole way round it and pick out the places you know. That is the difference between this and a map on a wall: it has a far side, and the Pacific is as big as it really is.

The globe was lit from inside and turned slowly. Dan Jones, a BAFTA-winning composer, wrote a soundtrack for the piece, and it played in the nave as the Earth revolved. The two together were meant to make you feel that you were the one moving, orbiting the planet, rather than standing on a stone floor underneath it.

What Is the Overview Effect?

Jerram based Gaia on the "Overview Effect", a term the author Frank White coined in 1987. It describes what astronauts report after seeing the Earth from space. Three things, usually: awe at how the planet looks, a sense that everything on it is connected, and a feeling of responsibility for keeping it intact. Gaia was built to give people on the ground a version of that view, at £5 a head rather than a seat on a rocket.

Standing under the turning globe, the point was hard to miss. The planet is small. There is a great deal of dark around it. The cathedral's height did some of the work here, because a seven-metre Earth in a room that tall looks fragile in a way it would not in a gallery. Art, science and a church, in one building.

Why Was Gaia Shown in a Cathedral?

Southwark Cathedral is a gothic building with centuries behind it, and that was part of the piece. The stone vaults and the stained-glass windows sat around the globe, and the daylight coming through the glass mixed with Gaia's own light from inside. The building became part of the installation rather than a backdrop to it. Satellite photographs of the Earth, hung in a place built for prayer.

The contrast did most of the talking. Space-age imagery inside a church that predates the idea of space travel by several hundred years. A walk around the whole planet, in a nave. The cathedral is a place people already go to sit still and think, so the installation asked nothing of visitors that the building had not been asking for centuries.

What Was Gaia Meant to Make You Think About?

The piece arrived with climate change as the background noise of 2024, and it was meant as a reminder of two things at once. How the planet looks from outside. How easily it could be damaged. Jerram's globe put those side by side, in a building set aside for reflection, and left visitors to draw their own line between the two.

As the Earth revolved and glowed in the dim nave, the message was not subtle, and it did not need to be. One planet, shared, turning slowly above a stone floor in SE1.

Visiting Gaia at Southwark Cathedral: Practical Notes

Gaia at Southwark Cathedral was on display until 2 November 2024. Daytime tickets cost £5. Evening viewings cost £7, with the cathedral darkened and the globe lit from inside. Two morning sessions were set aside for anyone who wanted a quieter, less crowded viewing.

Booking was recommended, though a limited number of tickets were sold at the door. Entry was timed, so you could turn up at any point within your slot. Nobody was let in early. Latecomers were fitted in where possible. Tickets were sold through Eventbrite.

📍 Where: Southwark Cathedral, London SE1 9DA

🚇 Getting there: Right beside London Bridge rail terminal and Underground station (Jubilee line and Northern line, Bank branch).

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All photos were taken by Ina/WithinLondon, unless stated otherwise.