Climbing Moss

It’s the return of the Canary Wharf Winter Lights Festival, Tuesday night was the first night of this year’s Installations being turned on and we went to see what was on show. Here are our thoughts and pictures of it all.

Each year on the Isle of Dogs, in amongst the sky scraping office blocks of JP Morgan, HSBC, CitiBank and the rest a series of Art Installations is/are erected using Light to illuminate and show off the pieces and each year we go over to East London and report back to you what we find, think and feel about the collection.

So, first off we feel and think this would be better in December rather than January and February to tie in with Christmas Light around the rest of the city.

This Tuesday we set off in time for Dusk and headed from the station to start at one end in order to make a loop and see each piece. In the freezing cold of January we found the first piece (after a confusing shopping trip into the shopping centre below and then trying to get out was like being back in Tokyo all over again!)

Piece #10 ‘Portal’ is a giant rectangle arch with chrome on the front and lights in the middle, on a walkway so pedestrians can traipse through and marvel at the changing coloured portal. Except the lights are dull and the colours muted and soo slow to change. So we watched for something to happen then gave up in favour of Number 9.

‘Bird Passing By’. Is the row of neon wings which was across the road. This piece like so many others was a variant of last years installation in the same place. Maybe if they moved them around a bit it would help to make it feel different! However the wings replaced neon rings and this year’s piece was pretty and colourful and changed colour and pulsing light changed at a sensible speed, unlike its neighbour. We watched for a few minutes before moving on, passing the private First Night party in a nearby gallery and heading back to the underground entrance to find exhibit number 8 and the Sign for the exhibition. Going through Jubilee Park there are a few benches that glow and illuminate as well as the lights in the raised ponds (which are always there) and then you head down to another underground shopping mall to find the…

Fruit Machine called ‘Positive Spin’ or ‘Posi—V’ because the lights on the sign were already failing and the ‘game’ didn’t actually do anything, it was a set spin, that landed on the same thing every time. This is not worth the time to get to it, but at least we found coffee!

Number 8 is called ‘Mirage’ (such an imaginative title!) it is a circle of what look like Symbol stands with perspex symbol hats atop them, think a drum-kit that plays only rain sounds. Looking at the photo in the pamphlet it seems like it is supposed to be a school of fish swimming or fish scales. This was quite clever as the perspex is see through, but the camera on our phones caught the light in a more intense ways and the symbols shine in multicolours in the photos, however it is pretty boring.

We moved on trying to find the next piece. On the surface of the water in the dock by the exit to the tube station you will find ‘Illusion Hole’. Clearly the organisers expect people to sit and watch the slow moving light for a long time as they have set up barriers and seating on the dock side, but after 30 seconds of looking we had seen it all and moved on.

This is where you will find some older installations, the dropping water ‘bit fall’ that always draws a big crowd of people trying to read what each word will be as the water shapes to form the letters, but we have seen this enough and so we just moved on to the Red Ring Bridge aka ‘The Clew’, another permanent structure and though it’s old it’s still quite bold and pretty, so a quick photo or two and then on to the next new piece.

‘Aj Vana Be’ or as we called it, ‘Bath time’, is a tower of tubs stood on their ends and stuck together to form a tower and then lights flare out of the overflow in time with music. It’s clever and uses a much underused piece of old bathroom furniture. But that was all it was, so we moved on, a longer walk to Westferry Circus and the next set of pieces.

Again ‘Circa’ is practically the same as last years piece here, but then it was vertical bars, this year the rings that had been used instead of the wings piece we had seen at the start for ‘A Bird passing By’, they were set in a row along the handrail and flashed on and off in time with some droning sounds and was a little more successful than the bars of the previous attempt but nothing special.

We past the perspex sheets ‘Shine Your Colours’, that is another in-situ piece, where parents photograph their toddlers through the coloured plastic panels, seeing what they would have looked like if they were born green or blue (maybe wishing they had ordered the child in that different colour!) Past a few Christmas Trees and on to the crossroads and into the Circus Park for this years piece ‘Error’.

Last year’s became the iconic image of the Winter Lights 2024, the Flaming field, this year it was a version of the RKO Pictures Telegraph Mast (or it seemed), with spinning blue rings slowly rotating the central poll – not nearly as impressive!

On then to another old piece just in a new, better location, the baubles on strings ‘The Wave’, was in a courtyard of some offices and the organisers are expecting the hoards of viewers during the weekends as you have to weave through endless barricades to pass under the 100’s of glowing lights that pulse to the usual ‘Arty’ Droning noises. But in this setting it sounds better, there is less wind and there is also water to reflect off of.

Another long walk back along the road to Cabot Square and a display of some hand stitched canvases called ‘Stitching Light’ on Wren Landing these weren’t in keeping with the rest of the pieces and it was just filled with 100’s of kids so you couldn’t get near the display.

In the centre of the square a pond full of large iridescent glowing baubles ‘Evanescent Droplets’, jammed into the shallow pool. A pretty and colourful display, it would have been better to be allowed to push or kick them and make it more interactive, but maybe next year?!

Next was another trek along the roads under the giant office buildings to the last pieces of this years exhibition, ‘Artificial Humans’ or as we termed it ‘ Men hoping to hold something!’ if you get our meaning. These are a group of men standing in the planters looking for their change, phones or at a lack of cups of coffee! Two pieces that were basically the same with a number of glowing statues knee deep in the earth of the raised flower beds are looking down at their hands and quietly glowing.

Then it was just a walk back to the tube to carry the dog home – having pulled all the way around the loop – for a sit down and to reflect on the lights of this year’s display.

In all our thought are – Well another somewhat lacklustre attempt at being arty and charging a fortune to make them. It really could be much more if they were more interactive or more dynamic and even just faster.

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Have you been yet, what do you think? What is the best piece, leave comments and let us know and come back next time for another review on Climbing-Moss.com