The multi-faceted glass form shimmers with intense light, each pane reflecting different saturated colours within the mirrored interior, creating a dense field of rainbow colours.

Firefly city 2025

Firefly city 2025 offers a space for quiet reflection and contemplation. A sphere is suspended at the centre of the room and turns slowly, its appearance changing as it moves. Inside, light is refracted and multiplied within a nest of geometric forms, each delineated in mirror and glass. While much of the light is held within an outer skin of purple-grey glass, light and colour shine through, playing upon our bodies and the walls of the room.

This flickering effect is particularly vivid in the spaces between the outer skin of the sphere and its supporting frame. The outer form is in fact an icosahedron, a Platonic solid made of 20 curved triangular faces. Inside, two further polyhedra rotate slowly around a central axis: a rhombic triacontahedron (30 faces) realised in semi-reflective glass; and at the core, a dodecahedron (12 faces) in dichroic glass.

Olafur Eliasson has worked with complex geometric forms such as these for many decades. He was initially inspired by the Icelandic architect and geometrician Einar Thorsteinn, whom he has since worked with on many projects. Eliasson and his Studio team still use working replicas of Thorsteinn’s models to problem-solve aspects of the design and production of sculptures, installations and buildings. These treasured original models are displayed in the studio nearby.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

Curator’s Persective

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Firefly city takes us out into a mysterious universe of shifting light and colour. It's radiant in the dark grey gallery space where, upon the walls, the geometries play out as they circle and shift.

The artwork is a sphere of nested geometric forms. The outer sphere is made up of curved triangular faces — 20 of these. Inside, two further polyhedra rotate slowly around a central axis, one nested inside the other. The second form within the sphere is a rhombic triacontahedron. It has 30 faces realised in semi-reflective glass. And right at the centre, very difficult to see, is a dodecahedron, which has 12 faces of glass. So, these two central forms slowly rotate. On the outer surface of the sphere, the frame which holds the triangular pieces of glass holds also nine small LED lights which point towards the two nested forms within. They light up the panes of different kinds of glass and bounce light within, reflecting and refracting, creating this infinite kind of effect.

The artwork also evokes the feeling of fireflies or perhaps glowworms or phosphorescence on a beach. These beautiful natural effects of, of light glimmering and shifting. For me, it also reminds me of a campfire or even watching the waters of the ocean as the light shimmers and plays upon them. There's something quite infinite about this artwork.

Olafur has titled this Firefly city, evoking a magical city occupied by fireflies. We've placed it near another artwork, in fact, two further artworks which evoke the city. In the next room, Model for a circular city, which brings together many of the tests and exploratory models produced by the different talents and minds of the team at Olafur's studio. And outside, the Cubic structural evolution project in white Lego — a city where all of us are welcome to collaborate and sit down and build our dream city.

Early on in his practice as an artist, Olafur met the architect and geometrician Einar Thorsteinsson. Einar was a great influence and inspiration upon Olafur, and he invited him to join the studio. On the large table of Model for a Circular City, you'll see examples of some of Einar's models of platonic solid forms, such as those which are used in Firefly City. The studio preserved Einar's original models, but they also have working sets of the models that they can pull apart and test how the forms might be made, what the inside and outside geometry might be.

So, this beautiful artwork of perfect forms nested one inside the other, slowly rotating, evokes both stillness as well as constant change. The surprise that can happen when one form refracts and refracts and plays against another. It offers us a space to slow down and watch the light and form as they move across the walls of the space and perhaps take us out of our everyday world into something more pure and abstract.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

Low/no vision audio description

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Firefly city, created in 2025, is a sculptural installation constructed from semi-reflective glass. Suspended above head height from the ceiling, this work takes the form of a glowing sphere one metre in diameter. The sculpture hangs in open space, emitting shifting patterns of light that scatter across the surrounding walls, floor and ceiling, extending the work beyond its physical form.

The outer shell of the sphere is constructed from grey-tinted, segmented glass, framed by a fine stainless-steel lattice. The sphere has 20 triangular faces that are slightly curved, giving the object a softened geometry.

Nested inside this outer sphere are two further circular structures. The middle layer is built from 30 diamond-shaped panels of semi-reflective glass. At the very centre rests a smaller structure made of dichroic glass, a material that reflects some wavelengths of light while allowing others to pass through, creating subtle shifts of colour.

Small LED lights are mounted at each vertex of the outer sphere. Their beams shine inward, striking the inner forms before bouncing outward again. As the internal structures rotate slowly on a central axis, the lights flicker rhythmically, scattering coloured reflections and shadows. The effect fills the room with a constantly shifting geometry of light, colour and movement. Firefly city captures a universe of potential within a single sphere, like a portable city of light.

– QAGOMA

$A close-up of a prismatic, spherical sculpture’s inner shell, showing overlapping triangular panes that refract vivid hues of green, blue, yellow, and red, framed by the ribs of a black metallic frame.$ A large, illuminated geometric sculpture with a faceted, iridescent core hangs in a darkened space, projecting kaleidoscopic patterns of coloured light onto the surrounding walls.

A large, illuminated geometric sculpture with a faceted, iridescent core hangs in a darkened space, projecting kaleidoscopic patterns of coloured light onto the surrounding walls.

A person stands in a darkened gallery facing a large, faceted spherical structure that glows with iridescent, multicoloured light, reflecting geometric patterns across the gallery walls.

Room: ‘Your presence’

Entering this gallery, it might seem we are again leaving Earth’s atmosphere and moving into space. Moving forward, we find ourselves approaching a vast ‘sun’, or perhaps it is another star.

Presence 2025 appears to move and shift with energy. Olafur Eliasson uses yellow monofrequency lights and layers of pattern to create a ‘moiré effect’ activated by our motion. Mirrors then expand the gallery beyond what seems possible, creating the impression of a complete sphere from only one-eighth of its full volume.

Evoking a circle of coloured moons, There are no bad parts 2025 contains a single glass sphere, but five more can be seen in the mirrors. Eliasson works with physics, optics, light; glass, paint and mirrors; he is also deeply interested in exploring how art might spark greater self-awareness. The artwork’s title draws upon psychotherapeutic ideas Eliasson has been exploring, inviting us to consider ourselves as a whole composed of multiple ‘parts.’ Are these parts fixed? Or, if heard and cared for, might their behaviour and roles change, just as the colours of the sphere change when we move?

In the gallery nearby, another radiant sphere is suspended, turning slowly to cast patterns of light and shadow on the walls. Firefly city 2025 offers a space for quiet reflection and contemplation: in this contained ‘city’, light is endlessly multiplied within nested geometries of mirror and glass.

The energy of our star, the sun, sustains our lives and our presence in this moment. Eliasson heightens our perception of what it means to move around – and beyond – this planet. He asks us to look within ourselves, as well as to perceive, recognise and welcome each other.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

Other works from ‘Your presence’:

Experience this work on the Sense Trail