Tag Archives: neon

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Winter Lights 2020 Canary Wharf London

Dark nights and biting cold make classic ingredients for some light art so off to Winter Lights at Canary Wharf, selfie heaven in the form of 26 sculptures.

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Affinity; Amigo and Amigo & S1T2Starting with our favourite, Constellation is part Dr Who theme tune vortex visual and part early 80s wire frame battlezone tank game.  The white light projected into water vapour clouds is totally immersive, absorbing and nothing like as wet as it might sound.

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Constellation; Studio Joanie Lemercier

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Constellation; Studio Joanie Lemercier

Pre visit consultation of the website suggested Absorbed By Light had compelling crowd “interaction” photograph potential but the crowds clustered around the bench means sharp elbows and abandoning your British reserve is essential, time and rumbling stomachs decreed we wouldn’t throw ourselves into that scrum.   In a desperate attempt to contrive a street art reference, this installation channeled two great pieces of art by Banksy, the Mobile Lovers in Bristol and the bench with seagulls at Dismaland.

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Constellation; Studio Joanie Lemercier

The Bra Tree fused the after effects of a Tom Jones gig in the park with a 1970s women’s lib rally, it probably looks much the same in daylight, the illuminations operate from 4pm to 10pm, as at night.  All the bras are believed to be part of the artist’s original installation, evidence suggesting otherwise gratefully received. Perhaps a more imaginative name would have inspired some more enlightened thinking about explosion in a lingerie department.

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

The Bra Tree

Everyone can take fabulous photos at Winter Lights, the Mountain of Light is particularly photogenic.

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Mountain of Light; Angus Muir Design

Shish-Ka-Buoy looks like a rather psychedelic sex toy and once that thought is planted in your mind you just can’t erase it.

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Shish-Ka-Buoy; Angus Muir Design

Sasha Trees is one installation that involves quite a bit of a schlep from the main clusters and you’ve probably seen it already so even though it looks great if time is tight, this would be the one to drop

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Sasha Trees; Adam Decolight

Sky on Earth is a genius proof of the “there’s a queue, better join it quick” herd instinct. The installation has subwoofer bass note throbs accompanying a bubble bath with intermittent light flickers, you can extract the impact, effect and visuals just as effectively from around the perimeter but everyone who didn’t have kids under the age of 10 politely queued 10 minutes for the privilege of walking down the channel in the middle.

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Sky On Earth; UAII Studio

Light festival veterans in London will find a number of the installations quite familiar.  I can’t think how many light festivals the Light benches have appeared in and some such as Liquid Sound and Bit.Fall looked identical to last year.  Some were just downright underwhelming such as Seeds Of Life located in a shopping mall.

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Squiggle; Angus Muir Design. So 2019.

Pools Of Light was also present last year and still looked like a 6th form disco light show fell into a ball pond.  This was amusing to the resigned attempts of steward to prevent people throwing the balls around in the face of what looked like about a dozen American Football matches taking place on the same pitch.

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Pools Of Light

It’s fun, it’s photogenic, it runs for a week until next Saturday 25th January and the forecast for this week is fortuitously dry.  Arriving at Canary Wharf tube station drops you right into the action so getting there isn’t too problematic, so perhaps well worth considering Winter Lights for a free thing to do in January.

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Mountain of Light; Angus Muir Design

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Lactolight by Lactolight

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Aquatics; Philipp Artus

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Ditto; Ithaca Studio

Winter Lights, Light Festival, Canary Wharf, Streetart, tourguide, neon, sculpture, urbanart

Time and Tide; Paul and Pute

All photos Dave Stuart

See Winter Lights Website for more information


London Lumiere, light, art, street art, neon, colour, illumination

The Light Fantastic

It’s not street art as we would normally look at but it is art on the streets. And in parks, and in Trafalgar Square, and it is fun. Lumiere London launched this evening and runs for the next 3 nights to Sunday night.

Les Limineoles by Porte par le vent

Les Limineoles by Porte par le vent

“Les Lumineoles” by Porte par le vent literally did dance in the breeze weaving a dreamy tapestry of colour.

Les Limineoles by Porte par le vent

Les Limineoles by Porte par le vent

I got around just over a half of the installations and loved them all.   Crowdstopper and road blocker of the lot is on the façade of 218 – 222 Regents street where Keyframes, a matrix of animated light stick figures by Groupe LAPS dance and cavort over the building to a bleeping symphony of computer game musical sound effects, quite mesmerising and the conclusion of the cycle drew a deserved round of applause from the 100s gathered to watch.

 

“Plastic Islands” by Luzinterruptus brought to mind the thought “this represents exactly what Gorillaz were signing about in “Plastic Beach”

Plastic Islands, Luz Interruptus

Plastic Islands, Luz Interruptus

Garden Of Lights, Leicester Sq by TILT

Garden Of Lights, Leicester Sq by TILT

Garden Of Lights, Leicester Sq by TILT

Garden Of Lights, Leicester Sq by TILT

Garden Of Lights, Leicester Sq by TILT

Garden Of Lights, Leicester Sq by TILT

You can’t go wrong with goldfish.

Aquarium by Benedetto Bufalino & Benoit Deseille

Aquarium by Benedetto Bufalino & Benoit Deseille

Lightbench by Bernd Spiecker for LBO LichtBankObjekte

Lightbench by Bernd Spiecker for LBO LichtBankObjekte

Sanctuary by Sarah Blood

Sanctuary by Sarah Blood

The lights which have illuminated to top of the landmark office block Centre Point towering over Tottenham Court Rd tube station have been relocated to Trafalgar Square, a far more appropriate location since this is historically where all distances from London have been measured.

Centre Point at the National Portrait Gallery

Centre Point at the National Portrait Gallery

Brothers and Sisters by Ron Haselden

Brothers and Sisters by Ron Haselden

Trafalgar Sq

Trafalgar Sq

Lightbench by Bernd Spiecker for LBO LichtBankObjekte

Lightbench by Bernd Spiecker for LBO LichtBankObjekte

I have a soft spot for Julian Opie’s Shaida Walking as an edition version of Suzanne Walking adorns our wall at home, his “RUth Walking In Jeans” has been illuminating Regents Place in Euston for years but sadly is often static or malfunctioning.

Shaida Walking by Julian Opie

Shaida Walking by Julian Opie

Elephantastic by Top'la Design/Catherine garrett

Elephantastic by Top’la Design/Catherine Garrett

“Light Graffiti” by Floating Pictures at Kings Cross is described as technology which converts a moving source of light into lights projected onto a building, I will reserve judgement on the appropriate use of the word graffiti until it proven that it is possible to paint comedy male anatomy. Await updates.

For more information, check the event website at http://www.lumiere-festival.com/ or http://www.visitlondon.com/lumiere/programme#ref=nav

All photos: Dave Stuart/NoLionsInEngland