It’s too easy to complain that Sydney doesn’t have as vibrant a cultural focus on public art as other major cities (hi, Melbourne!) or to whinge about how we Sydneysiders are comparatively uncultured. But you know what’s way more fun than played-out old comparisons? Celebrating what we do have, and breeding a culture of continual improvement. And that’s exactly where Art & About comes in.
The three-week festival, produced annually by the City of Sydney Council, transforms otherwise mundane pockets of the sprawling city’s streets into public art installations. In 2008, it has a special focus on the Oxford Street precinct, a site near and dear to many Sydneysiders’ (slightly trashy) hearts.
A crowd-pleasing highlight is the Sydney Life photography installation in Hyde Park, which features 22 oversized canvases that line the central walkway of the park’s northern quarter. Featuring both established and up-and-coming photographers, Sydney Life blends portraiture and landscapes to offer glimpses of life in Sydney in a public, open-air gallery that is totally date-venue material. (Tree cover nearby for impromptu make-out sessions, yeah!)
Arguably the most visually arresting – and indeed, the most visually invasive – element of the festival is Open Gallery. The installation lines several streets in and around the city, and features the work of 18 different artists on massive banners suspended from street poles. From classic nudes, anatomical studies of pickled Tasmanian tigers, repetitive graphic prints to a hypercolour portrait of David Gulpilil, Open Gallery brings art right to the edge of traffic where even a blind dude wearing a blindfold has a decent chance of seeing it.
But my favourite bit this year is the By George! laneway project, which transforms five forgotten alleyways adjacent to bustling George Street into temporary galleries. The artworks are made for the festival by local artists, from Gaffa Gallery’s mammoth Tetris blocks in the Abercrombie Lane installation ONE MORE GO ONE MORE GO, to Adam Norton’s moveable military tanks that lumber alarmingly between Angel Place, Ash Street and Bridge Lane. They’re fun, funny and altogether charmingly placed in places that sort of just ambush you when you’re wandering about in your daily humdrum existence.
Being a city-commissioned project, it’s kinda understandable that Art & About doesn’t have the same level of street cred as other independent initiatives: it’s just too legit. But when we’re talking about exposure and appreciation for the local art community, it’s a massive step forward, and might just be too legit to quit.
Art & About runs in and around Sydney October 9-26. You can download the festival’s full program at the Sydney City Council website here.
