Sydney, city of lights
Gemma Nisbet finds some impressive sights at Sydney’s Vivid festival.
It’s just after six o’clock on a Saturday evening and I’m at Sydney’s Circular Quay with tens of thousands — perhaps even a hundred thousand — other people.
Everyone’s here, so it seems: young people, older ones; couples and groups of friends and many, many families trailing strollers and small people.
There are locals and tourists, emerging from the train station and disembarking from the ferries, surging down the streets towards the waterfront. Everyone looking happy and expectant, being patient despite the crowds.
And we’ve all been drawn here by one thing — the lights.
Tonight is the second Saturday of this year’s Vivid Sydney, a festival of “light, music and ideas” which incorporates live music and discussions alongside various free light installations and projections, many on a grand scale.
Highlights this year include performances by Morrissey, Daniel Johns and Grace Jones, and talks by Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner and magazine supremo Tyler Brule, along with more than 60 light installations, projections and sculptures by artists from around the world.
Vivid has been gradually building in popularity since its inception in 2009, when it was curated by Brian Eno and attracted 225,000 spectators. In contrast, this year’s opening weekend alone saw nearly 280,000 people turn out, despite less-than-perfect weather.
Tonight, though, is dry and not too cold — ideal weather for seeing the lights.
Eventually, I make my way around to the Opera House, the beginning of the Vivid Light Trail, a self-guided route I’ll be following around the quay and into the neighbouring Rocks with the help of the Vivid iPhone app. The scope and variety of what I’ll see on this route is impressive — everything from a fibre-optic trio of ghostly apparitions called The Dresses to the phenomenally popular Enchanted Sydney, where hordes of people stand entranced, phones and cameras aloft, as projections of animals and plants, including red waratahs (NSW’s floral emblem), cockatoos and dinosaurs, appear on the heritage facade of Customs House.
Then there’s Paint the Town, in which the skyline is illuminated in a neon rainbow of an interactive display (anyone can have a go at controlling it using a touch screen at the Overseas Passenger Terminal), and Mechanised Colour Assemblage, which sees the facade of the Museum of Contemporary Art lit up in spectacular fashion. I’ll also see lots of smaller installations in the area and plenty of interactive pieces, popular with the many children here.
I’ll find plenty to see in the Rocks, too, the historic area bustling with markets and the delicious smells of street food. I’ll somehow manage to miss the Life Story installation which projects footage filmed by the BBC Natural History Unit on to the underside of a bridge and looks brilliant in photos, but will spend some time admiring a piece which rapidly becomes my favourite of the whole festival — Entitle, an oversized rococo-style pig by Australian artist Amanda Parer, made using traditional Chinese lantern-making techniques.
Entitle, an oversized rococo-style pig by Amanda Parer, lights up the Rocks. Picture: Gemma Nisbet
But before I see all of that, there’s the illuminated Opera House: Vivid’s spectacular crowning glory and the subject of thousands of pictures on social media during the 18-day festival. This year’s Lighting the Sails projection is by British design collective Universal Everything and its largely abstract “living mural” is colourful and dynamic and quite mesmerising, with splashes and squiggles and swirls of colour dancing across the elegant forms of the Opera House “sails”. By the end of the evening, I’ll find the spot to view this is from the edge of Campbell’s Cove over by the Rocks, where you can look back to see the light reflecting off the water and the back and forth of brightly illuminated boats and ferries.
These installations and projections that I’ll see this evening are only a small part of the Vivid lights, however. During my weekend in Sydney I also check out the interactive installations in Martin Place and in and around the Star Casino complex where I’m staying. I head to nearby Darling Harbour to see the Vivid Laser-Fountain Water Theatre, set to a soundtrack by the Presets, and to the inner-city suburb of Chippendale to see Vivid’s newest venue, the Living Mall at Central Park, where there’s a pop-up bar, silent disco and a light show projected on to the facade of an old brewery.
And there’s still more that I won’t have time for: harbour lights cruises, light displays at the University of Sydney and Walsh Bay and at Chatswood, in the Lower North Shore. Not to mention the program of music and talks and other events.
But for now, I’m at Circular Quay, me and many thousands of others, all of us looking at the lights.
Gemma Nisbet was a guest of Destination NSW.
FACT FILE
Vivid 2015 finishes today but the festival runs each year in May/June. vividsydney.com.
For more on visiting Sydney, go to sydney.com.
ANOTHER BRIGHT IDEA AT THE MCA
Coinciding with Vivid 2015, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Circular Quay has brought Light Show — from London’s Hayward Gallery — to Sydney. The exhibition features light installations and sculptures from the 1960s to today by a range of international artists, all experimenting with the effects of light in various ways. The exhibition includes a number of pieces which invite the viewer to interact and even enter into the artwork — Anthony McCall’s You and I, Horizontal, a “solid light” installation which viewers can walk around, into and through, manipulating the work through their presence, is a particular highlight. It runs until July 5.
While you’re at the MCA, check out the cafe on the fourth floor which has fantastic views over the harbour, including of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.
Entry to the MCA’s galleries is free but tickets the Light Show exhibition are $20 for adults ($15 concession, $50 family, $10 youth, children under 12 free). mca.com.au.
