Festival Plaza, Adelaide Riverbank

Gone are the days where the harp can only be played alone. Join your fellow musicians and take your place at Amigo & Amigo’s ChronoHarp, a walk-through, multi-player instrument that reverberates with light and sound. Accessible and interactive, the more people that join in, the better the tune!

Program Partner

Government House

In Filip Roca's extraordinary visual art projection - reworked especially for Government House - time is definitely a construct. Captivating, dynamic, and ever-changing, Roca's work delves into the multi-faceted nature of perception and time, where rather than being linear, it's a rhythmic force interwoven into the fabric of existence. Imagination allows conventional boundaries between art and reality to dissolve, creating a transformative experience.

Special thanks to Her Excellency the Honourable Frances Adamson AC, Governor of South Australia.

Program Partner

Institute Building, North Terrace

Swing into winter with Spectrum of Happiness, an inclusive experience from Bangkok-based 27June Studio that creates a shared moment of lightness for people from all walks of life. With each swing tuned to its own colour, light, and musical sound, each unique swing moves together to create a perfect tune – a nod to how diversity in many forms brings brightness to all our lives.

Inside Bonython Hall, University of Adelaide

Space takes on new light in this mind-bending installation from Japanese artist Shohei Fujimoto. For the first time in Australia, intangible #form takes over The University of Adelaide’s historic Bonython Hall, using state of the art projections and lasers to create fluid, ever-changing structures that feel both real and intangible, high-tech and magical.

Warning: This installation is in a dimly lit space and contains strobe and laser lighting. 

Program Partner

Art Gallery of South Australia

Are you ready to party like its 1599? Some of Art Gallery of South Australia’s works from their Reimagining the Renaissance exhibition have escaped from the walls and made it to the front – and they’re demanding to be heard! French immersive artists INOOK have created a Renaissance choir, taking faces from the works and creating new art with AI technology. Sing and dance along to pop hits with faces new and old!

Program Partner

State Library of South Australia Forecourt

The story of Kondili, the whale who is the keeper of the spark of fire, Ngarrindjeri Ruwi is a tale that stretches from the Murray River to the sea. Created by Tjarutja Dance Theatre Collective, this unique dance and visual art work uses moving imagery and AI-generated filters to showcase the ancestral bond of dance artist Melanie Koolmatrie to her land, as told by Trevor Jamison.

Program Partner

South Australian Museum, 210 North Terrace

Inspired by the cycles of the moon, GLOW is an interactive light installation from Amigo & Amigo that explores how lunar light sources draw people in across the world. With over 40 different sounds and lighting animations, wander through and play with the interactive ‘moons’, or find a quiet spot and enjoy it at your own pace.

Program Partner 

Napier Lawns, The University of Adelaide

Light, sounds, and colour are all at your fingertips with illumaphonium, a 3.5-metre-high structure where you’re part of a fun and spontaneous immersive music-making experience. 200 illuminated bars chime at your touch, creating ever evolving light patterns and soundscapes that become more brilliant and awe-inspiring as more people join in.

Flinders City Campus

There’s a storm brewing as our digital and physical selves become more intrinsically linked. Our physical, social, and emotional worlds have begun to lean on technology to find regulation and information – but how much should we be letting the virtual seep into our everyday lives? Tim Gruchy’s STORM examines this and asks that when the physical and the digital combine, what happens to the soul?

Program Partner

Rundle Street

Scattered throughout Adelaide's iconic East End, Urban Garden displays a collection of both large-scale and light installations presented by French company TILT in collaboration with Illuminate Adelaide. Get ready to warm up under these bright and colour lights in the darkness of winter. 

Brookman Building Lawns, Corner of Frome Road and North Terrace

A ‘particip-active’ installation hailing from Quebec, gather your group and enter a fun and exciting race to turn all of the interactive ‘reeds’ of 1ToMn's Roseaux installation into one colour. Using a vibrant soundscape alongside sensor-driven beams of colourful light, Roseaux is a sensory experience set to get everyone working together.

Created in collaboration with UDO Design and Serge Maheu, produced by Init and 1ToMn, tour produced by Creos.

Adjacent Sir Walter Hughes Statue, North Terrace

It's Bailey Donovan's technicolour world, and we're just living in it! This year's Graduate Pathway Program recipient and South Australian glass artist, Bailey is taking inspiration from the colours, shapes, and sugary-sweetness of candy to create an illuminated pastel wonderland in The University of Adelaide's Fig Tree Lawns. Featuring over 40 unique hand-made works created in the heart of Adelaide at JamFactory, this is the World Premiere of Incandescent.

Program Partner

Supported By

Paxtons Walk, Adelaide

The Woven Royalty series highlights the Royal Jewels as a symbol of the monarchy and delves into the impact of colonisation and England's Royal Family. This innovative approach is a powerful act of reclamation by blakifying these jewels to confront what European settlers took from Indigenous peoples in the name of the Crown.

Vaughan Place, Adelaide

The Woven Royalty series highlights the Royal Jewels as a symbol of the monarchy and delves into the impact of colonisation and England's Royal Family. This innovative approach is a powerful act of reclamation by blakifying these jewels to confront what European settlers took from Indigenous peoples in the name of the Crown.

Liberman Close, Adelaide

Tarntanyangga Dreaming is the male red Kangaroo dreaming that is culturally significant to the Victoria Square. This work invites us to engage with cultural stories through the use of emerging technologies to learn and understand the Kaurna people's cultural and spiritual connection to country and place. Connection to country is extremely important to continue to uphold a strong and living culture, especially for future generations.

Corner of North Terrace and Paxtons Walk

How can we take better care of ourselves and our communities? Drained invites us to reflect on how we as individuals and society value and perceive our mental wellbeing.

Vaughan Place

Akurra Pila (Two Serpents) tell the story of the two Akurras, the serpents that created the landscape of Adnyamathanha Yarta, the Flinders Ranges in South Australia.

Charlick Circuit, Adelaide

Walking in two worlds: one being a culturally rich traditional world, and the other being a western world, can be extremely difficult. This work explores the importance of connecting both worlds and ensuring culture is still present in every aspect of daily life.

Opposite 175 North Terrace

This is one installation you can fully enjoy. Placed at different City Lights locations, ...please take a seat on a light bench, straight from light art studio lichtbankobjekte by M+V in Heinsberg, Germany. Join fellow City Lights travellers on a bench and positively glow at the world around you.

Lot Fourteen, North Terrace

Returning after his 2023 commission with Illuminate Adelaide for the Graduate Pathway Program, multidisciplinary artist Miles Dunne’s Proximity State finds a new home at Lot Fourteen. Walk into the grid and see how your movement affects light and sound around you. Each path you take creates something new – come along and see what you can create.

Supported By

War Memorial Lawns, North Terrace

See Earth in a new form in Tine Bech Studio’s The World Has Gone Pear Shaped. A commentary on the effects of a changing climate on Earth as we know it, The World Has Gone Pear Shaped beckons us to consider what we want our planet to be in years to come. Featuring 3D high-resolution imagery sourced from NASA, this blend of science, art, an technology begs us to reshape our view of our world.

Flinders City Campus

Enjoy a forest of a different kind in Kaktos, a field of giant, inflatable, illuminated cacti from Sydney studio Amigo and Amigo. Vibrant colours and unique designs make these famously spiky succulents look cute, cuddly, and completely huggable! Wander through the towering 'garden' as Kaktos guides you into Flinders City Campus, where there's even more to explore.

Program Partner