The festival of light has been and gone. I’m sure it’ll be back, it was delightful. Mostly. When it worked. I went with a group of friends on Saturday night and judging by how popular some of the installations were – and how completely packed the temporarily traffic-free roads were – the organisers didn’t expect such turnout.
Lack of organisation, sadly, manifested itself twice on Saturday evening. Once is Grosvenor Square where the fish-tank-in-a-telephone-box was shut due to – and this is the security guy’s quote – ‘too many people wanting to take a picture’. (The rest of the square hosted three or four other installations which you could see once you located the only entrance to the square.)
And once in Oxford Circus where the lovely Jane Echelman’s sculpture dangled lifeless (and almost colourless) without any lights or music which – as it turned out later – were switched off due to overcrowding.
In any case, I managed to enjoy a few installations in Piccaddilly, Regent St, Grosvenor Sq and King’s Cross.
