RISING- Golden Square and Ancestral Memory

RISING is a new winter arts festival in Melbourne that has taken the place of the Melbourne International Arts Festival and White Night. It has a mix of ticketed and free events around the city. Tonight alongside a total lunar eclipse and rare super blood moon was the opening night. RISING has done a lot to make the festival COVID-safe with many events occurring outdoors, but unfortunately a potential snap lockdown is looming in the next couple days due to a new cluster of cases from a hotel quarantine breach in Adelaide.

 

Ebony and I met up with her friends Jenni and Tony in Chinatown and started our evening at the Golden Square car park. The works at this location were curated by Grace Herbert under the theme Inland Tides. We climbed up to the roof of the car park where we could watch projections on neighboring buildings, and then saw the different works on each level as we walked back down to street level. Some of my favorite pieces were Reko Rennie's short film Initiation OA_RR, Lu Yang's inflated head Power of will - final shooting, and Monira Al Qadiri's floating hamburger The End.

Also part of Golden Square but projected onto a neighboring car park wall was Atong Atem's short film Banksia, which tells the stories of Australia's first African settlers.

After grabbing some dinner in Chinatown we said farewell to Jenni and then headed down to Hamer Hall for the light projection piece Ancestral Memory by Maree Clarke and Mitch Mahoney. It showed the metaphor of the Spirit Eel, which connects time and place for the peoples of the Kulin Nation.

RISING runs until 6 June 2021.

White Night Reimagined 2019

White Night Melbourne has gone through a few changes this year. Now called White Night Reimagined, it is being run over three nights during the winter on 22 - 24 August 2019 from 7pm to midnight (2am on Saturday) instead of over one whole night in the summer. The footprint is also smaller, with the program mainly contained to three park precincts: Birrarung Marr, Treasury Gardens and Carlton Gardens.

I started my White Night evening tonight in Treasury Gardens, which was themed the Sensory Realm. It was one of the few sites that had large scale light projections, which were done on the building facade of 2 Treasury Place by DAE White Night and The Electric Canvas in a piece called Sensoria.

There were a few experiential pieces in the Gardens, but considering the time constraints of the night I wasn't willing to waste time waiting in line. The other pieces I liked were the audio-visual installation Cluster by Playmodes Studio and the human brain like Synapse by Jack Burton, Monica Lim, Josh McAuliffe and Patrick Telfer.

My next stop was Birrarung Marr, which was themed the Physical Realm. The absolute highlight was the Dutch street theatre company Close-Act, who had The Odd Platoon and Drummers roaming through the crowd strapped to bobbing cranes and the 40 minutes long acrobatic performance Globe, where they performed on a globe shaped scaffolding structure as well as in the crowd.

My last stop for the evening was up in Carlton Gardens, which was themed the Spiritual Realm. This precinct was pretty similar in scale and scope to last year. I really liked the Spirit Creatures by The Lanternist, which were similar to animals done at the Taronga Zoo for Vivid Sydney.

The Guardian by A Blanck Canvas was a giant roving puppet that looked like a lion. Awakened by Balooga Entertainment was another giant puppet, this time of a meditating spiritual being that had audio-visual components.

The big attraction though was the Mad Max Fury Road vehicles, light projections on the back of the Royal Exhibition Building and live performance in the Melbourne Museum forecourt. The vehicles were spread around so you could get an up close look at them, and the performance had people dressed as the characters get up onto the vehicles. However, because it was so spread out it was a bit hard to follow and see all of the performance.

My final stop on the way out was for the neon Love Triangle by Carla O'Brien and the aerial performance Loved by Acrobatica.

Overall the crowds weren't too big on the first night and I managed to cover pretty much everything in around four hours. This is not the White Night of old though, and with limited time you have to make choices about what you want to see and try to time things so you don't miss any performances. It felt more like Vivid Sydney than the all encompassing White Night experience, which I think is an unfortunate development. Who knows what will happen when it is merged with the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 2020.

Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2019

After a year hiatus, the Gertrude Street Projection Festival has returned in 2019 with artists exploring the theme of Persist. Resist. Shift. It was a quiet Tuesday evening as I walked down Gertrude Street tonight and it felt like there were a smaller number of pieces than in previous years. One of the first large scale projections I saw was Yandell Walton's Voice, which focused on images of young climate activists.

One of my favorite things in the festival each year are the projections on the Atherton Towers, and this year they were done by Atong Atem in her piece Looking On, which explored othering and the gaze that accompanies it.

Another piece that I really liked were the aerial landscapes of Taloi Havini's Habitat on the Builders Arms Hotel. This piece explored the cultural and environmental contexts of Bougainville during Papua New Guinea's independence period.

The Gertrude Street Projection Festival runs until Saturday, 3 August 2019.

Vivid Sydney 2018

This year is the 10th anniversary of Vivid Sydney and my second year attending. For the past two nights we have been walking around and checking out the light projections and installations in the Sydney CBD and along the waterfront.

Our first stop on Thursday night was the area around Customs House. The installation Chrysalis contained colorful cocoons made of fibre optic cables hanging from trees that had butterflies inside that would flutter based on sounds nearby. Synergy represented a complex superorganism of a tree surrounded by ferns that changed colors.

On Customs House itself were light projections of the May Gibbs' children's books characters Snugglepot and Cuddlepie as they journeyed through the Australian bush.

Along the waterfront towards the Sydney Opera House were a few installations, including the light sculpture Visible Dynamics and the illuminated cube Fragmented.

In the Royal Botanical Gardens there were a number of fantastic installations. At the start was The Nautilus Forest with its changing colors, the illuminated Hyperweb, inflatable versions of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, and wave inspired light bars of He'e nalu.

Light Houses were created with different designs and shapes and changed colors. One of the most moving pieces was Oasis, which paid homage to the memory of children growing up in out of home care and combined audio with illuminated lights in a pond.

Further in the Royal Botanical Gardens were the cute perched birds of Parrot Party and the interactive Aqueous where the colors would change as people stood on different sections of the pathway.

Tonight we headed to Barangaroo for dinner at the Chinese restaurant Lotus and then saw my favorite work of Vivid Sydney, which was the illuminated large scale puppet Marri Dyin (meaning 'Great Woman' in the Eora language) in the piece The Liminal Hour.

There were some good installations around The Rocks, with the different colored light tubes of Peacock, the multi-colored birds of 1000 Cranes, the flying neon kites of Luminous Flight, and the large sculpture Illuminosaurus.

Of course the main draw each year are the light projections on the Sydney Opera House. This year's installation Metamathemagical transformed the sails into a series of kinetic digital sculptures.

In the surrounds of the waterfront there were some playful pieces, including a giant inflated Earth, the rotating pufferfish sculpture Fugu, The Garden of Sweeties which was powered by renewable energy, and the cute Harmony Valley - Rainbow of Peace and Trees of Friendship.

Once again there were large scale light projections on the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia with Virtual Vibration, but they weren't as exciting or dynamic as last year's ones.

Overall I enjoyed the light projections and installations, but was surprised at how empty the streets were of people on both nights. Vivid Sydney is on until Saturday, 16 June 2018.

White Night Melbourne 2018

It's one of my favorite events of the year - White Night Melbourne! This year the crowds seemed a bit smaller than in previous years (noting that I arrived around 1am). While there were some interesting works, I didn't feel this White Night was as strong as other ones I've been to. These were my highlights from the evening:

In the Queen Victoria Gardens was the whimsical Neon Dog Park installation by Carla O'Brien. People had lots of fun interacting with these glowing dogs.

There was a bit of a space theme in the Alexandra Gardens with the inflatable installations of the solar system La Terra Al Centro Dell' Universo by Namaste Europa and the spaceman coming out of the ground Calling Occupants by Felipe Reynolds.

Floating over the Yarra River were the illuminated birds of Le Bal des Lumineoles by Christophe Martine, which added some movement to the night skyline.

The Flinders Street light projections The Secret Life of Buildings by DAE White Night and The Electric Canvas highlighted different eras of pop culture. These projections were more static than in previous years, with the ones on The Forum being the best of the three buildings.

In St Paul's Cathedral was a fantastic piece by Victoria University's Skunk Control with Altar to the Future. It appeared to change colors due to the large rotating circular portal that you viewed the work through. It was exciting to see them have a piece at White Night as I've been such a fan of their windows at the Gertrude Street Projection Festival.

At the Melbourne Town Hall were more beautiful light projections by DAE White Night and The Electric Canvas to accompany the Guerrilla Opera performances by BK Opera on the verandah. It was a nice respite to stop and listen to them sing.

One of the most innovative pieces of the evening was PlusMinusZero by Alexander Mitchell. Incorporating projections onto a large paste-up mural in a car park off Lonsdale Street, you could download the EyeJack app to see the work come to life in augmented reality.

Inside the State Library Reading Room was another work by DAE White Night and The Electric Canvas called The Secret Life of Books, which showed what might happen to the books after hours in the library.

The site at Carlton Gardens expanded to include even more works this year. Phantasmagoria by Christopher Langton was a fantasy land of giant inflatable toys and animals as you walked toward the Royal Exhibition Building.

The highlight of the light projections was What If... on the Royal Exhibition Building by Limelight Projection Mapping. The 3D video mapped projection made it look like the building was changing shape and it raised the bar from previous years.

Finally, on the Melbourne Museum Plaza were two interesting pieces. One was The Serpent Mother by Flaming Lotus Girls, which was a reptile with a moving head that had flames coming out of its spine. The other was Birdmen by Close-Act, where these Technosauruses roamed around the plaza as the puppeteers on stilts interacted with people and each other.