Viewing single post of blog Hello

Having made the walk along the docks one of my regular routes when I needed to stretch my legs and get some air, this year’s River of Light trail gave me a refreshingly colourful view to look at. The artworks that lined the waterfront and surrounding spots within the city centre were a welcome way to encourage a little outdoor adventure, and the festival is yet another thing to add to the list of fun stuff that convinces me I made a good choice moving to Liverpool.

The eleven works that featured in this year’s festival trail ranged from dancing butterflies, to a floating moon, all utilising light to bring each installation to life. My thoughts at first were that for the most part this was a purely aesthetic project, but some pieces were particularly poignant, and alongside the launch being exactly one year after England first went into lockdown gave a much-needed burst of hopefulness after the worst of a particularly dark winter.

Starting at Castle Street, Sergey Kim’s Neighbourhood was the first piece I encountered. The white clothes hung above the currently closed bars and restaurants that usually keep the street bustling, so it did feel a little isolated. Supposedly representing traditional dress from a range of cultures, this message of integration and tolerance is always relevant. However, without this background knowledge provided by the River of Light’s website, I don’t think this message would have been discernible just by looking at the washing line, which featured a bra and socks amidst its larger, generic looking items. Maybe this was the point, in the ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ sense, but when celebrating cultural differences, sometimes the beauty is in the variety that can be found.

Down closer to the river, the installations were more easily distinguishable as a collective trail. Pieces like Light A Wish, where giant dandelion seeds hovered in mid-air and a QR code encouraged you to make a wish, and Futures, which involved walking between two rows of light poles, felt more like something closer to participatory art. Once I got over the anxiety of the slightly-more-crowded-than-usual waterfront – which is definitely more of a me problem – it was an enjoyable way of bringing the audience into the conversations of hope and progress that I feel this festival aimed to create.

Impossible to ignore though, was The Rainbow Bridge. The massive sculpture danced with colours, and even when seen later in the daylight still retained a sense of joy having been painted in permanent rainbow stripes. Not just a call back to the period when windows were filled with rainbows for the NHS, its American team of creators The Looking Up Arts Foundation explain how the rainbow has historically been a symbol of “love, magic, hope, inclusivity, and wonder”[1]. The sculpture’s testament using an image that so many have used as a symbol for positivity and progress, including the LGBTQIA+ community, was a very welcome addition to Liverpool’s waterfront.

Addressing aspects of human communication and interaction were two pieces, Exponential and Absorbed by Light. The latter, which consisted of life-size sculptures of people sitting on benches staring at their illuminated phones, missed the mark for me a tad. The execution of this piece felt reminiscent of the imagery that is always used surrounding the criticism that we are addicted to our phones, when for many they’re simply a necessity for much of modern existence. At this point, that argument feels overplayed and outdated. Following a year in which we haven’t been afforded the choice to see friends and family through anything other than a screen, it personally only served as a reminder of our lives indoors when compared to the break from reality given by the other installations. By contrast, Exponential, a strange floating cube that would light up and play sounds when sensors on each of its faces was triggered, felt like more of an encouragement for its viewers to engage and interact, not just with the artwork but with each other.

Overall, I enjoyed the visual journey that the installation allowed, and the symbolism held in this pathway of light at the turn of Spring and our gradual steps towards normality alongside these shorter nights. The purpose of much of these artworks was not necessarily to make a social comment, but to create an interactive and entertaining evening, something we haven’t had in a long while, marking progress in our collective lives and giving something back to the public.

[1] Looking Up Arts (2021) Rainbow Bridge [online] Available at: https://www.lookingup.art/rainbow-bridge [Accessed 10th April 2021]


0 Comments