Canary Wharf Winter Lights 2019
Canary Wharf plays host to the Winter Lights festival, showcasing immersive art, sculpture and design in a series of incredible lighting installations.
Winter Lights returns to Canary Wharf for its fifth edition this January, transforming the dark evenings and surroundings of London's iconic district into a spectacle of colour and movement for visitors and locals to enjoy. Twenty-one impressive lighting installations are on display across the estate for visitors to explore, promoting the many destinations and what they have to offer.
Twenty-one installations materialise in Canary Wharf this year as artists from across the globe share their creativity and ingenuity through and an incredible selection of works ranging from large displays that one can immerse themselves in, to stunning lighting projections that showcase modern technologies and exciting concepts.
Join me in the video above as I have the opportunity to explore the collections and explore what this year's Winter Lights has to offer. For those wishing to visit, the lights are on display between Tuesday 15th - Saturday 26th January 2019.
Submergence - Squidsoup, UK
Submergence is a large, walkthrough light experience. Comprising over 24,000 individual points of suspended light, Submergence is the largest version ever exhibited by designers Squidsoup, transforming the space into a hybrid environment where virtual and physical worlds coincide. The installation immerses the visitor in a continuously shifting ocean of thousands of coloured lights, created through a combination of digital pixels, spheres of light and the physical movement of the visitors themselves. Music and sounds transport those taking part into an entirely different world, providing a unique experience to enjoy.
Sasha Trees - Adam Decolight, Estonia / Time & Tide - Paul & Pute, UK & Thailand
Sasha Trees take over Westferry Circus, filling the space with beautifully illuminated fir trees. Creating an enchanting Winterscape, visitors can walk around the neon coloured tress, admiring the views of the twinkling lights, a wonderful contrast to the surrounding natural foliage and forest of shimmering skyscrapers.
Time & Tide exhibits an hourglass design with colours inspired by nature. The aim is to remind us of the urgency of halting the plastic pollution that currently fills our oceans. Its form is a reminder that time is ticking down before damage to the planet becomes irreversible. Time & Tide reinforces this message through the use of biodegradable alternatives to the plastic used in its construction.
Prismatica - RAW Design in collaboration with ATOMIC3, Canada
A Winter Wonderland of colourful ice - Prismatica immediately attracts the eye with its giant kaleidoscope of colour and twisting reflections. Visitors can walk amongst them to see city life in a spectrum of colours while spinning the prisms to change their presence continually. After sunset, the enormous interactive kaleidoscope’s illusory effects transform their surroundings by casting colour and patterns onto nearby walls, floors and surfaces.
Flow - Squidsoup, UK / Floating Islands - Mürüde Mehmet, UK
Flow is a series of explorations using dynamically controlled points of light to visualise the flow of energy, data and objects. The piece is inspired by the myriad of cultural references to energy and flow patterns, from Aboriginal Dreamtime paintings to Japanese wave and ripple designs. Light and technology are used to add a dynamic layer to a fixed physical space.
Working with the community - artist Mürüde Mehmet has worked with local children in Tower Hamlets to create 'Floating Islands'; colourful organic floating forms made from recycled bottles. The beautiful creations will be displayed in the water features of Jubilee Park to raise awareness of the unnecessary waste created from single-use plastics, and how many of these items will make their way into landfills or worse, our oceans.
Heofon Light Maze - Ben Busche of Brut Deluxe, UK & Spain
An installation that immediately attracts the attention of passers-by, luring them into the maze to enjoy it for themselves. Heofon is an old English word for the sky. This captivating maze centres on triangular geometry which reflect and shift light rays along with the entire colour range of a rainbow. On the outer perimeter, the panels are covered with a mirror film converting the interior into an infinity room, dazzling visitors in a unique cosmos of overlapping light patterns and continually changing colours.
Two Hearts - Stuart Langley, UK / Whale Ghost - Pitaya, France / Colour Moves - Rombout Frieling Lan, Netherlands
As the construction of one of the Wharf's newest towers continues, passersby will notice two symbolic hearts beating in the structure’s unique shaped windows, representing the life and energy the building is poised to support.
The monumentally-scaled kinetic sculpture 'Whale Ghost' echoes the marine mammal and fossil skeletons seen in natural history museums. The installation invites visitors to spend a moment thinking about the impact of humanity on our biodiversity with a preview of what could be if nothing changes.
Colour Moves is an immersive installation of pigments that react with specific wavelengths of light. As this happens, the installation’s large swirling patterns are set in motion and the bridge comes alive. What appears to be red can quickly transform to yellow in the blink of an eye, and what stands still can suddenly move into motion, representing the limited perspective in things we see and the constant changes in life.
Recyclism - Oskar Krajewski & Art of OK, Poland & UK / Bit.Fall - Julius Popp, Germany
Striving for a new chapter in art, artist Oskar Krajewski showcases ‘Recyclism', a platform for artists and like-minded people who care about our global environment. Krajewski's work is created almost entirely of recycled objects such as unwanted toys, obsolete electronics, plastic packaging or any everyday use objects. His pieces usher the viewer into illuminated, colourful and futuristic worlds.
In modern times, we produce and consume data on an unimaginable scale. The work BIT.FALL translates this abstract process into an experience for the senses as an ever-changing cascade of words is produced in water droplets from a live newsfeed on The Times website.
