River of Light is an outdoor illuminated gallery on Liverpool’s Waterfront. The trail of light exhibitions are lit daily from 5 pm – 9 pm.
There are ten artworks across a 2km loop of the Liverpool waterfront, featuring light and sound from local, national and internatonal artists. Some artworks are new to Liverpool and some are never-seen before, brand-new commissions.
River of Light 2022 Artworks
Artwork: Evanescent
Location: Exchange Flags Square
Artist: Atelier Sisu, Spain.
Inside Exchange Flags square, you’ll find Atelier Sisu’s Evanescent. “Ephemeral” or “Efímero” in Spanish, is an adjective, meaning the quality of being fleeting or vanishing quickly; impermanence.
Evanescent is a larger-than-life bubble artwork. Standing at 8m tall, the audience is invited to walk underneath the bubble structures. The material of the artwork is iridescent in the sunlight. When darkness falls, internal lights illuminate bubbles in vibrant multi colours along side an accompanying etherial soundscape.
This artwork features audio, an etherial, mystical soundscape of abstract and blended sounds. The sounds grow and shrink with the colouration of the sculpture.
Artwork: Light Looper
Location: Pier Head
Artist: The Kazimier, Michael Lill, Venya Krutikov.
A towering audio-visual experience that unites four strangers in an unforgettable game. Players must work together to accelerate a particle of light on a journey from earth to sky.
Light Looper is a very large circular sculpture made up of rings and spirals of multi coloured light. Light Looper is a multi player game. Players are able to send particles of lights all around the installation, building up speed until the piece allows them to send the fully charged particle to the very top. Upon completion of the game a beautiful soundscape is played.
Artwork: Kinetic Perspective
Location: Water Street
Artist: Juan A. Fuentes Muñoz, Spain.
Inspired by the Optical Art illusions of the 1960s, Kinetic Perspective takes a simple piece as its starting point: an ever-spinning circle moving outwards and its illusory effect.
A row of eighteen illusions, each composed of two circles spinning in sync, gives the impression of a vanishing point at the eye level of visitors. Invited to actively participate and observe, the audience must move around to uncover the patterns, glimmers and distortion, in which a hidden geometry will be revealed.
Artwork: Electric Dandelions
Location: Pier Head
Artist: Abram Santa Cruz/Liquid.
The Electric Dandelions are giant steel and acrylic sculptures that represent a dandelion flower during the day and come to life at night as an endless firework display. The 28 ft tall dandelion sculptures have a beautiful and elegant design to them. Their spherical shape is attributed to the geodesic sphere that lies at the heart of the Dandelion. Forty one light tubes crop out from the vertices. At Night, the geometric dandelion sculptures come to life at night as the LED animations take hold and mesmerize you with their bright and intense endless firework display.
Artwork: Continuum
Location: Pier Head
Artist: illumaphonium.
Continuum is a brand new installation from illumaphonium. An awe inspiring geometric matrix of mirrored and luminescent sonic monoliths open an infinite, mysterious and magical space within and around the audience. illumaphonium brings us together once again to play, create and explore as they redefine our understanding of the urban environment.
Artwork: Dancing Ribbons
Location: Mann Island
Artist: Yinka Ilori
Dancing Ribbons is the brand-new conception from London-based Yinka Ilori, a multi-disciplinary artist and designer whose bold visual language draws on his British-Nigerian heritage to convey new narratives through contemporary design.
For River of Light, Yinka Ilori presents ‘Dancing Ribbons’, his first installation using light as a medium. Ilori’s piece responds to the theme Unexpected Twist by drawing inspiration from rhythmic gymnastics.
Artwork: BEAM
Location: Graving Dock
Artist: Lucid Creates
BEAM is a 30 metre long, 9 metre high LED light installation suspended from a steel frame. BEAM was commissioned for River of Light, Liverpool 2022. To enter BEAM is to wander into a hot summer’s day. Our environment is altered, drenching us in colour and sound. There is a stillness. We are surrounded by the bucolic sounds of summer in the British countryside. A low hum of the micro activity of insects & plants overlaid by sweeping joyful strings. The Sun beams down onto us. The air is clear. For a while, everything is in peaceful balance. We feel joy. A deep, warm, joyful hum encompasses us. Slowly, incrementally over several minutes, heat, light & sound intensify and take on a subtle undercurrent of unease and suspense. The air becomes hazy, tension builds. Colours and sound become more dramatic and intense to a peak, until, suddenly a tipping point is reached and all is still once more.
Artwork: Turn The Light On. It’s Dark In Here
Location: Royal Albert Dock
Artist: Camille Walala
Camille Walala’s ‘Turn The Light On, It’s Dark In Here’ is a dynamic melange of colourful architectural forms that seem to play with depth and dimensionality like a trompe l’oeil, creating an abstracted cityscape of light.
Outlined in vibrant primary colours, curves and rounded contours collide with rigid right angles of squares and steps, semicircles jostle among grid patterns, and cuboids tower like skyscrapers.An evolution of the ‘Putting Things in Perspective’ series of 2D/3D investigations that Camille Walala has been exploring for the last two years, this explosively energetic light sculpture takes the artist into a new medium: programmed LEDs.
Artwork: Rainbow Accordion
Location: Thomas Steers Way
Artist: Amigo & Amigo
Amigo & Amigo have created six giant colourful interconnected archways inspired by the traditional accordion. The accordion is made from illuminated steel rings and bright coloured printed fabrics. At the base of each accordion archway there is an interactive pad, when people jump on the pads the accordion will sound and lights will shoot through the archway form creating different waves of music , colour and light.
Artwork: Affinity
Location: Chavasse Park
Artist: Amigo & Amigo
Affinity is an immersive interactive light and sound installation inspired by the human brain. Each light globe represented a neuron and connection in the brain. When people touch the light globe the colour changes, the more people that interact the further their light travels throughout the sculpture. Affinity features 62 different colour combinations and 45 points of interactivity.
View and download the River of Light 2022 map here.
To find out more about the River of Light visit https://www.visitliverpool.com/riveroflight
Image Credit: Visit Liverpool
