Let’s do it outside
Sydney's Art & About festival takes art to the streets.
Art & About starts in Sydney today. In its seventh year it has become a fully fledged festival in its own right although, as is Sydney’s confusing habit these days, it’s also under the umbrella of the Crave festival, a label cooked up by tourism marketers to cover all the events in October.
The program is hefty, incorporating sub-festivals around Oxford Street, Kings Cross and Danks Street, Waterloo. It runs from today until 25 October, and the entire program is available online, here.
The festival opens tonight with a celebration in Hyde Park North that includes an Aboriginal smoking ceremony at 6.15pm.
In this post I’ll run through the three events which are the core of Art & About in the Sydney CBD. They’re all free and you can see them 24 hours a day for the duration festival.
The annual display of artworks reproduced as flags throughout the city, called Open Gallery, consists this year entirely of new work by Aboriginal artists living in NSW. The works were curated by Djon Mundine, formerly of the Museum of Contemporary Art and now Aboriginal Curator, Contemporary Art at the Campbelltown Arts Centre.
The flags are in the city, as well as William St, Redfern St, Taylor Square, Erskineville Rd and Glebe Point Rd.
The original artworks the flags were drawn from are being exhibited in the foyer of the AMP Building, 33 Alfred St, Circular Quay, until 25 October.
The outdoor exhibition of large-scale photos hung between the trees in Hyde Park, Sydney Life, is now one of the most hotly contended competitions in the country. This year there were 585 entries and 22 finalists are on show. One will win the Sydney Life Prize, worth $10,000, and you can vote for the People’s Choice Award – the winner will get $3,000 and one voter will win a digital camera.
There’s a talk at the Beauchamp Hotel (cnr Oxford and South Dowling Sts, Darlinghurst) with participating photographers and judges Julie Rrap, Sandy Edwards and Malcolm Smith on Saturday 3 October from 2–3.30pm.
If you want to see the exhibition and make a night of it, the Sydney International Food Festival Night Noodle Markets run from 12–23 October just north of the Archibald Fountain.
Although it’d be nice to find a small bar in each of them, eight of the city’s laneways are hosting temporary art projects that combine installation, music, architecture, sculpture, technology and more. Laneways: By George, as it’s called, is new to Art & About this year and runs from today right through until the end of the Sydney Festival. The lanes all run off George Street between Martin Place and Circular Quay.
Some are subtle, like the “skin” and heartbeat in Bridge Lane, while other will interrupt the space with large-scale furniture, plantings and lighting. Some are hi-tech marvels while others are lo-fi enhancements. The project pictured above is for Angel Place, with birdsong and birdcages livening up the lane. The project has its own website, here, where you’ll find a map and details of events.
Image details, from top:
Andrew Goldie, Sydney is dawning on me.
Open Gallery works, left to right:
Aunty May Hinch, Untitled.
Roy Kennedy, I’m Never Alone.
Adam Hill, U…R…an’ I ummmm … we are AFAILINGLAND.
Graham Davis King, Bat Kinship.
Warwick Keen, PROUD.
Gordon Syronm, Meeting Place: Spirits of the Past and Present.
Sydney Life works, in slideshow:
Gregory McBean, Beating the Heat.
Kasia Werstak, Applause.
Dean Tirkot, Self Portrait.
Alina Gozin’a, Holroyd High School.
Garry Trinh, Mr Fixit.
Janie Barrett, Bodybuilder at Coogee Beach.
Roslyn Sharp, Theresa outside her Darlinghurst home.
Diego Emilio Ibanez, A Night in the Life.
Paul Hayes 2009.