Winter Light 2024, Southbank Centre

Once again this year the Southbank Centre marks the festive season with Winter Light, a free open-air exhibition of lightworks, part of its wider Winter Festival that includes special performances in all its stages. And its famous Christmas market also returns to inspire a spot of seasonal shopping.

Featuring a series of artworks by contemporary artists - some new, some returning after successful outings in previous years - the installations use light, colour and mixed media to create an immersive atmosphere sure to go some way towards dispelling the winter blues,

New this year is Nathaniel Rackowe's Desire Lines (pictured top), a site-specific installation inhabiting nine Thames side trees opposite the Royal Festival Hall. The flowing movement of these lines of light echoes that of people moving past and around them.

New this year, too, are projections by Aoife Dunne and Mat Collishaw that will be beamed high onto the walls of the Royal Festival Hall. Culture Whisper was particularly taken with Mat Collishaw's Heterosis, a collection of dynamic digital collectibles.

Mat Collishaw, Heterosis
Returning this year is Winter Windows, an inventive installation created by local children from the Oasis Academy Johanna in collaboration with the architects Squire & Partners. This work illuminates the windows of the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Winter Windows 2023, Squire & Partners 2023. Photo: © Squire & Partners
New last year and well worth a second outing is Marinella Senatore's light sculpture We Rise by Lifting Others, a massive work inspired by the southern Italian tradition of illuminated decorations. Senatore says that working with light can be a tool for narration and poetic creation. You can see this work on the Queen Elizabeth Hall Riverside Terrace.

Marinella Senatore, We Rise By Lifting Others.

Also returning is Danish light artist and designer Jakob Kvist's Dichroid Sphere.

Located on the Riverside Terrace, this is a good example of user-friendly science in action: lit by a single energy-efficient lightbulb, the Sphere is an aluminium geodesic dome attached with acrylic sheets and dichroid film. Dichroid refers to any optical device that can split a beam of light in two, and means that the Sphere changes colour depending on what angle the light comes from.

Jakob Kvist, Dichroid Sphere. Photo: Christoffer Askman

The Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Hayward Gallery again see their façades transformed into a chromatic clock, with the return of David Batchelor's Sixty Minute Spectrum. Beginning each hour as a vivid red, the pyramid roof lights move gradually through the entire spectrum.

These are just some of the works providing the riot of light and colour that animates the Southbank this festive season. For the full immersive experience you must go there in person and, of course, take the children!

Full details of the Southbank Winter Festival HERE

This year specially curated guided tours are available, to give visitors a unique insight into the works and artists – 5 and 12 December
Families have an opportunity to make their own Winter Light artwork on 19 December