For my birthday this year, Harry and I spent a day in London, exploring areas of interest closer to home. One of the activities that we decided to do was to visit the 2025 Light Festival at Battersea Power Station once it was dark enough for us to properly enjoy it.

What is the Light Festival?

The light festival is a free interactive art trail featuring exhibits from various artists, making their debut in either the UK or London.

It is open every day between 8am to 11pm, although I would recommend visiting when it’s darker out because the outside lights look a lot more striking in the evening.

1)    Spin me a Yarn

This exhibit was created by Studio Vertigo to look exactly like a giant ball of yarn with the end trailing through the water and threading through nearby trees.

While on the map this is stop number one, for us it was the last one we saw as it is the furthest from the underground station, but closest to the dock for boat travellers. It makes sense for this to be the start of the trail because the lights on this exhibit seem a little brighter because of the way the frame is reflected off of the water it has been placed on.

According to the website this piece is designed to change the meaning of our relationship to ordinary objects and our environment.

2)    Parabolic Lightcloud

This exhibit by Amigo & Amigo was one of my favourites. Honestly, I could have spent a fair bit of time just staring up at those lights watching the various patterns and pulsing colours.

The Parabolic Lightcloud is strings of lights shaped in a cone that will change colours in different patterns. According to the website the patterns and colours that I found so entrancing are designed in a way to demonstrate intense emotions.

3)    In Bloom

Created by Kumquat Lab, this was the only one of the eight exhibits that we were able to actually interact with. I think it was one of Harry’s favourites, but it definitely appeared to be one of the most popular attractions with the public as it was the busiest one while we were visiting.

This piece of art not only uses colour and lights but also sound. Every time someone touches one of the spheres it will light up in a different colour and a different tone will sound.

According to the website In Bloom is based upon pollination, with each of the spheres symbolising flowers.

4)    Aurora

Aurora by James Glancy Design is, as the name might suggest, largely influenced by the Northern Lights. This could possibly be why it was another one of my favourites, as I have always loved looking at pictures from the night sky and everyone who has had the opportunity to see the Northern Lights.

The colours that were used are all blues, purples and greens that blended seamlessly, working well together. It was absolutely beautiful.

However, with its position within the shopping centre this sculpture reminded me a lot of Christmas lights. This was probably just because of the fact that Christmas has just been and a lot of shopping centres would have strips of lights hanging down from the ceiling; had it not been so close to December it may have been different.

5)    Spider

The second light sculpture to be found inside the shopping centre is Groupe LAPS’ Spider. I will admit that it took me a while to work out that it was a spider, but Harry understood it straight away.

The sculpture is made up of tube-shaped LED lights and, according to the website, 80 smaller spiders.

6)    Atlas

This was one of the light sculptures that both Harry and I immediately understood. As the title suggest, Jon Voss was influenced by the myth about Atlas.

In this interpretation Atlas has been given the appearance of a cyborg to demonstrate how technology is supporting us. You can see the metal plates and the cables hidden from plain sight.

7)    Tornado

Tornado by UxU Studio was the first working light sculpture that we came across. Upon seeing the display, you could immediately understand where the name had come from.

Instead of wind swirling in the familiar vortex shape, light moves rapidly around the frame. The light is simply a white light that flashes as it moves, there was no need to add further colours, and the further up the vortex the faster the light moved.

The artists have used this exhibit to trigger a reflection on the topic of “In the future of Anthropocene can we use our abilities as humans more clearly and wisely?”.

The missing 8^th exhibit

Just to warn visitors, as we were originally a little worried and underwhelmed when the 8^th exhibit was switch off when we arrived. This is the closest display to the underground station, so unfortunately it was the first one that a lot of visitors will come across.

It looks like a rocking horse, so our thoughts are that it would light up when someone was playing on it. However, I can’t confirm this because the information on the eighth light display does not appear to be on the website anymore either so it appears that it will be out of commission for the rest of the festival.

Conclusion

The light festival is only open until the 23^rd February, so if you are interested I would definitely recommend visiting before then. Even if you aren’t an art enthusiast (like me, it’s Harry that is into art), you will really enjoy seeing and interacting with the various light displays.

If you are hoping to have food and drink while there as well, looking at the website there are several options that have special menus related to the festival as well, although we did not visit these while we were there.