One month from today, Neon Lights Festival will return to Fort Canning Park and the scene is set for a weekend of diverse performances, live art, installations and roving acts. Already featuring a sensational line-up of music acts including the likes of Mumford & Sons, HALSEY, Nick Murphy fka as Chet Faker, Honne, and much more, Neon Lights is thrilled to welcome Clean Bandit to stage on Sunday 24th November.
Neon Lights 2019
The premier music and arts festival also presents Neon Nooks to illuminate the nooks and crannies of the festival. This year’s Neon Nooks features local and international artists and acts such as South African artist Francois Knoetze coming to Singapore for the first-ever time with his renowned Cape Mongo series, Leeroy New’s Aliens of Manila x Singapore (featuring Jereh Leung and Sonia Kwek), and roving bands Bloco Singapura and Mariachi Viva Mexico. The ever-popular Silent Disco Asia also returns for festival-goers to bust a move and revel into both nights of the festival with three channels of music and neon-lit headsets. And the whole festival site will feature the spectacular aesthetics enhancements of Neon Lights’ décor guru Soph O.
Clean Bandit
Joining the phenomenal line-up at Neon Lights will be Grammy award-winning British electronic band, Clean Bandit with a DJ and MC set. Known for their unique classical crossover and dance music, the band has released multiple award-winning tracks such including four UK number 1 singles with floorfillers such as ‘Rather Be’ ft. Jess Glynne, ‘Symphony’ ft. Zara Larsson and ‘Solo’ ft Demi Lovato. Having played a superb headline show at Star Theatre in Singapore last year, the band has since released a very well-received second album ‘What Is Love’ and three more hit singles.
Clean Bandit will share the stage with HALSEY, Nick Murphy fka Chet Faker, AURORA, BADBADNOTGOOD, Gus Dapperton, Cosmo’s Midnight, Fleetmac Wood, Joan and MMLD on Sunday, 24th November.
Neon Nooks
Programmed by arts and culture consultancy Hyphen, Neon Nooks explores the cycle and treatment of discarded objects – from otherworldly trash creatures to wearable sculptures made from recycled colanders and plastic tubes, festival-goers are invited to reflect upon our hyper-consumerist culture through the representation of waste, alienation, as well as the necessity of resourcefulness within an urban context.
Neon Lights 2019
Referencing the popular New York-based photography site, Aliens of Manila x Singapore explores themes of alienation and migration by injecting strangely costumed bodies into the urban landscape. Helmed by Filipino artist Leeroy New, the project was inspired by his mother’s work as an overseas Filipino worker and relied on her invaluable information about the migrant condition in the United States where she worked as a caregiver
for almost 17 years. He is collaborating with Singaporean dancers Sonia Kwek from dance company P7:1SMA, who returns to perform at Neon Lights for her third year, and Jereh Leung from Dance Nucleus. The trio will inhabit Leeroy’s fantastical costumes made from everyday objects.
Delving into consumerism and sustainability, South African multi-disciplinary artist Francois Knoetze reimagines trash objects – specifically the packaging of domestic consumables and electronic devices used to record everyday life – as remnants of activities that shaped them in his extensively presented Cape Mongo series. Cape Mongo has featured to critical acclaim in the likes of La Triennale di Milano this year and at Kunsthal KAdE in 2018. Each Mongo character sees Cape Town’s discarded waste made into mythical trash creatures which have emerged from the growing dumps of consumer culture. Two Mongo characters ‘VHS’ (2013) made from VHS tapes and a new work ‘Cable Mongo’ (2019) will be presented at Neon Lights.
In addition to the slew of sensational acts on the Main Stage, festival-goers can swing to the samba and throbbing batucada beats of Bloco Singapura, founded by the legendary multi-instrumentalist Syed Ahmed, and be transported to the streets of Guadalajara Mexico with the folkloric melodies of Mariachi Viva Mexico. All this will take place amidst the perfect backdrop of Soph O’s eclectic, extraordinary and transcendental décor creations, which make the festival ever so inviting. Since its inception, 80% of Neon Lights Festival’s décor has been made out of repurposed and upcycled materials.
Neon Lights 2019 Sponsors
Tickets to Neon Lights Festival start from S$30 for children and S$128 for adults, and are available at www.neonlights.sg and SISTIC. For this Diwali weekend, Neon Lights will be having a long weekend flash sale on Single Day (Sunday, 24th November only) and Two-Day tickets at four tickets for the price of three. The sale starts at 12pm on Friday, 25th October and ends 10pm on Tuesday, 29th October and is available via www.neonlights.sg only.
Festival-goers who are travelling in from their countries and require accommodation may look to Neon Lights Festival’s Official Hotels Capri by Fraser and Andaz for exclusive promotions. Capri by Fraser is offering a 25% off Best Flexible Rate for rooms booked through their website using the code NEON2019 while Andaz is offering 25% off selected dining outlets. Terms and conditions apply. For more information, please visit www.neonlights.sg.
