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Since the pandemic, the summer’s Greenwich + Docklands International Festival has deftly embraced spectacular public installations that are more like giant artworks than the street theatre-orientated works that have been GDIF’s bread and butter in times past.
One of them, Dave Acher’s Northern Lights-aping ‘Borealis’ was so popular when it ran in the summer of 2021 that it transferred to the City for a Christmas stint independent of GDIF.
And this month, GDIF producers Festival.Org are returning to the City with ‘Evanescent’, an artwork from Australian design studio Atelier Sisu that brought some joy to Sydney and Melbourne a couple of years back and is now enlivening the streets just outside the Leadenhall Building during the greyest months of the year.
‘Evanescent’ – the word means ‘impermanent’ – takes the form of a series of gigantic iridescent bubbles. Said bubbles are obviously not made from traditional bubble mix – that would be preposterous – but rather ‘a colour-reflecting dichroic film’ which the public can wander under and around, and generally marvel at the weird, wonderful and beautiful ways that the light of the sun affects its surface. We’re about 90 percent certain that if you poke it it won’t pop, and the bubbles will be here until next month.
‘Evanescent’ is outside the Leadenhall Building from today until February 10. It’s free to access and open noon to 10pm daily.