Southbank Centre’s outdoor art trail is back for 2025, uniting international artists to rethink the idea of what traditional festive illuminations can look like. A highlight is David Batchelor’s Sixty Minute Spectrum (2017), which turns the roofs of the Hayward Gallery, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Royal Festival Hall into an enormous colourful clock. Pyramid-shaped lights move gradually through the entire visual spectrum – beginning the hour as a vivid red, then changing to appear orange, yellow, green, blue, purple or pink.
Also featured is Liz West, the Aesthetica Art Prize finalist whose work, Our Spectral Vision, is currently part of the immersive Future Tense show at York Art Gallery. In York, West’s piece draws primarily on mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton’s experiments with light refraction through prisms, creating a vivid indoor environment. In London, audiences can experience Hymn to the Big Wheel (2021), an octagonal rainbow structure comprised of transparent panels whose colours blend as they move around outside.
New for this year is Lee Broom’s recycled glass chandelier, Beacon. The monumental structure illuminates on the hour, as Big Ben strikes across the river. It takes inspiration from several local influences: the Queen’s Walk street lamps, surrounding Brutalist architecture, as well as the 1951 Festival of Britain – famously celebrated as a “beacon of change.” Sustainability is key here. After the exhibition, the glass shades – which have already been up-cycled from discarded fragments – will find new lives as table lamps.
Likewise, a single energy-efficient bulb sits at the centre of Jakob Kvist’s Dichroic Sphere (2022), which casts multicoloured light in every direction. Audiences will also experience bright geometric forms by Nathaniel Rackowe, who animates Thames-side trees with Desire Lines (2024), a series of glowing rectangles sitting overhead. Elsewhere, two neon works by France-Lise McGurn pay homage to fashion adverts from the 1990s, joining computer-coded contributions from creatives Samia Halaby and Rafaël Rozendaal.
Windows are sites for experimentation: local Lambeth school children have designed illustrations for the Queen Elizabeth Hall, whilst Polish artist Otecki transforms the Royal Festival Hall with nature-inspired imagery. Across the programme, these artists are using light and colour in playful ways – whilst at the same time exploring topics at the forefront of society, such as individual and collective identity, the environment and technology. Winter Light offers moments of discovery, calm and reflection as the nights draw in.
Winter Light is at Southbank Centre, London, until 18 January.
Words: Eleanor Sutherland
Image Credits:
1. David Batchelor, Sixty Minute Spectrum. Credit Pete Woodhead.
2. Liz West, Hymn to the Big Wheel, (2021). Image Credit: Sean Pollock.
3. Beacon, Lee Broom, 2025. Image Credit: Luke Haye.
4. Jakob Kvist, Dichroic Sphere (2020).
5. Nathaniel Rackowe, Desire Lines, (2024).
