Southbank Centre, Winter Light

Lightworks from 10 international artists illuminate the Centre's buildings and the riverside, not just shafts of light, but rather works that touch on current topics from nature and technology to modern cities and spirituality, by means of light, colour and experimental film.

Cars turn into light sculptures in Anne Roininen's Car Show, which the artist herself describes as 'a graveyard of cars'. This references the change in social attitudes towards the automobile, once a symbol of luxury, now increasingly seen as a major polluter.

Equally interesting is Danish light artist and designer Jakob Kvist's Dichroid Sphere.

Jakob Kvist, Dichroid Sphere. Photo: Christoffer Askman
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 into two; and that means the Sphere changes colour depending on what angle the light comes from.

The Royal Festival Hall provides the backdrop for Oskar Fischinger's Radio Dynamics, a work of avant-garde film that mixes colour and moving forms in perpetually changing patterns.

Not to be outdone, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Hayward Gallery see their façades transformed into a chromatic clock, with the return of David Batchelor's Sixty Minute Spectrum. Beginning each hour as a vivd red, the pyramid rooflights move gradually through the entire visual spectrum.

Also returning is David Ogle's dazzling Loomin (pictured top), with its brilliantly coloured neon flex creating a canopy above the Queen's Walk.

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!