SYDNEY GETS VIVID
01 Jun 2016
Sydney’s annual public art festival of lights kicked off last week with an exciting array of light installations laid out across the city to the delight of over 1 million visitors.
Vivid Sydney is one of the most exciting and well attended public art festivals on the city’s social calendar. Over the course of three weeks a range of public spaces in Sydney’s famous harbour and around the city become a blank canvas for artists from around the globe in a celebration of Light, Ideas and Music.
Each year artists are invited to submit their artwork via a global expression of interest for consideration in this public event, which grows ever more popular. Visitors from far and wide travel to the city to witness it become a space in which art meets technology.
Landmarks from Sydney’s Harbour Bridge to the Opera House, the Museum of Contemporary Art to Customs House, and a variety of satellite locations are lit up with an ever more inventive series of artistic endeavours thanks to more than 150 artists from 23 countries around the globe. This year over 90 light installations are included in the festival.
Perhaps the most famous of all the city’s canvases are the ‘sails’ of the Sydney Opera House (SOH). Always a mesmerising site, this year’s SOH installation is called Songlines and celebrates the work of six renowned Indigenous artists: Karla Dickens, Djon Mundine OAM, Reko Rennie, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Donny Woolagoodja and the late Gulumbu Yunupingu. Songlines speaks directly to the spirituality and culture of Australia’s First Peoples, depicting the interconnected sharing systems and the trade routes that weave through time and distance, earth and sky.
More than just a wicked light show, Vivid Sydney also features 195 Vivid Music events and more than 500 speakers appearing at Vivid Idea talks and forums. Enterprising design ideas also appear throughout the city in a celebration of thought.
Vivid Sydney is owned, managed and produced by Destination NSW, the State Government’s tourism and major events agency. As the world’s largest festival of light, music, and ideas, Vivid is attended by over 1 million visitors each year. Vivid Sydney will run for 23 nights from May 23 - June 18.
To find the full range of light installations, music events and ideas forums visit www.sydneyvivid.com.au
Images (top to bottom): Sydney Opera House (Songlines); Customs House (Stories of Sydney); Sydney's Taronga Zoo; Museum of Contemporary Art (The Matter of Painting): Sydney Opera House (Songlines).
