Bristol Light Festival will once again bring a stunning combination of light, sound and colour to the heart of Bristol next month.
Three artworks never seen in the South West before will take centre stage at the event, which last year attracted 250,000 visitors.
The fourth iteration of the award-winning festival will take place between Friday 2 - Monday 11 February 2024.
It will welcome two new-to-Bristol installations by Somerset-based partnership, This is Loop, PULSE and Emergence, as well as a second immersive artwork by multidisciplinary art collective, Atelier Sisu, Elysian.
2024’s Bristol Light Festival will also see the welcome return of the festival’s popular favourite Swing Song, produced by Bristol Light Festival and Tired Industries.
The artwork will take on a new lease of life for the next edition, bringing immersive play ever further to the forefront for guests.
Katherine Jewkes, Creative Director of Bristol Light Festival, said: “We are absolutely over the moon to have some many incredible artists involved with our next edition. This programme is starting to feel really special and is reflective of Bristol’s creative spirit.
"Each year our aim is to bring new and show-stopping artworks to Bristol, creating spaces for people to play, explore and have new experiences. We can’t wait to welcome everyone to the Bristol Light Festival and once again fill the city with colour and light.”
Scroll through for photos of the installations lined up for Bristol Light Festival 2024.
1. Evanescent by Atelier Sisu
Evanescent explores the idea of transience through the visualisation of bubbles. An immersive, light and sound temporary environment, the work is the masterpiece of award-winning Sydney-based art practice Atelier Sisu, lead by Peruvian sculptor and industrial designer, Renzo B Larriviere alongside architect and artist Zara Pasfield. The pair work with a multi-disciplinary team to create experiential environments, installations and unique sculptural pieces. Their direction of work sits between the fields of art and architecture (art-chitecture), with particular focus in the realm of public art.
2. PULSE, This is Loop
PULSE is an immersive audio-visual installation that explores the perspectives of visual and auditory perception, welcoming visitors to step inside enormous rings of light made up of more that 14,000 individual LEDs as they travel through the sequence. This is Loop collaborated with audio artist Dan Bibby aka ’Weatherbrow’ to create the custom track for PULSE. The main show is a five minute high intensity, tightly choreographed and fast paced audio visual journey and is best viewed from start to finish. Accompanying this is a 20 minute long piece with a slower, more ambient feel which can be joined at any point.
3. Emergence, This is Loop
Emergence is an award-winning audio-visual art installation, created as a place of contemplation amongst the chaos of the outside world. The sculpture is a huge, mirrored structure that is completely reflective and designed to provide audiences with a new perspective of a once-familiar space. Each section is carefully constructed to create an optical illusion inside the unit creating a complete sphere of light when viewed from close by that morphs into a giant grid of light when viewed from a short distance. This enables distinct experiences for the viewer which range from collective to intimate depending on location.
4. The Nectary
A multi-sensory and immersive light artwork, The Nectary invites guests to step inside a giant flower to gain a unique perspective on nature. Created as a collaborative project between artist Alison Smith and Dr. Chris Hassall, lecturer in Animal Biology at the University of Leeds, the installation is an art/science crossover highlighting the importance of pollinating insects. The inspiration for the piece came from the work of Phd student Thomas Daily at the University of Leeds looking into bio-acoustics as a new way of monitoring insect populations by listening to them.