Lumiere London 2016

Lumiere London, the largest light festival to hit the capital, is set to illuminate and animate four winter evenings this January. Running from 14 – 17 January, the event offers a dynamic platform for a host of international artists and will feature outdoor 3D projections, interactive installations and pioneering light works. In 2016, a selection of London-based galleries plan in a series of preview nights, bringing projects by artists such as Tim Etchells and Walter & Zoniel to their exhibition spaces.

Produced by Artichoke and supported by the Mayor of London, Lumiere London’s key sites include Piccadilly, Regent Street, St James’s, Trafalgar Square, Westminster, Mayfair and King’s Cross. Discover Janet Echelman’s 1.8 London, an enormous net sculpture named after one of the astonishing impacts of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011, at Oxford Circus; see FIELD.io’s Spectra-3, a living, sensing and moving light sculpture at King’s Cross; and experience a specially designed LED lightwall installed in King’s Boulevard’s permanent pedestrian tunnel, also at King’s Cross. Elsewhere, NOVAK’s 196 Piccadilly examines the different genres of cinema and television using images from BAFTA’s archive; Cedric Le Borgne’s ethereal figures from Les Voyageurs (The Travellers) appear on rooftops, frozen mid-air in flight; and Luzzinteruptus’s Plastic Islands fills the fountains of Trafalgar Square.

Working in conjunction with Lumiere London, Bloomberg SPACE opens UK-based artist and writer Tim Etchells’ More Noise, which features a new piece of the same name, consisting of 14 interconnecting scattered neon word elements. More Noise is presented alongside two existing neon wall works, Mirror Pieces and Let’s Pretend, which interact with Etchells’ latest explorations into the idea of sound as playing on some concerns of pattern, order, disorder, sense and nonsense.

Also affiliated with the festival is Gazelli Art House’s staging of artist duo Walter & Zoniel’s site-specific performance, Anon. Following a live performance on 13 January, Anon will be on display until the closing night of Lumiere London. The project features luminous photographs of elderly individuals projected as living sculptures onto the front of the gallery’s exterior. The interactive installation is a reflection upon the human condition and our relationship to the modern world – themes that Walter & Zoniel often explore in their work.

Lumiere London, until 17 January, various sites across London.

Find out more: www.lumiere-festival.com.

Follow us on Twitter @AestheticaMag for the latest news in contemporary art and culture.

Credits
1. Janet Echelmans 1:26, Festival of Light, Amsterdam.