  Light neutral meson differential invariant cross section and nuclear
modification factor measurements have been carried out with the ALICE detector
at the CERN LHC in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV and p--Pb collisions at
$\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}=8.16$ TeV. The analysis combines results from several
partially independent reconstruction techniques where the $\pi^0$ and $\eta$
meson decay photons were detected with the electromagnetic calorimeter, EMCal,
the photon spectrometer, PHOS, or via reconstruction of $e^+e^-$ pairs from
conversions in the ALICE detector material using the central tracking system.
The neutral pion measurement reaching a $p_\mathrm{T}$ of 200 GeV/$c$ poses as
the highest measured identified particle spectrum to date while the $\eta$
meson is measured to an unprecedented $p_\mathrm{T}$ of 50 GeV/$c$. The spectra
are found to be generally overestimated by NLO pQCD calculations. The nuclear
modification factors of both mesons exhibit a suppression for $p_\mathrm{T}<10$
GeV/$c$ which is stronger compared to previous measurements at
$\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}=5.02$ TeV and consistent with CGC and cold nuclear matter
energy loss calculations. For $p_\mathrm{T}>10$ GeV/$c$, $R_\mathrm{pPb}$ is
consistent with unity and theory predictions.
