For 10 days from 15 July, Gertrude Street will be bathed in light, courtesy of the artists behind the Gertrude Street Projection Festival. This year, the festival will celebrate its 9th year of transforming Melbourne’s hippest street into one of the most visible large scale, illuminated, outdoor art galleries.
Bright lights, enticing video and perfectly positioned colour-scapes will adorn 38 sites on and around Gertrude Street injecting electric splashes of colour on almost anything you can imagine. Shop fronts, laneways, windows and footpaths will come alive with bold visions of award-winning projection artists, all exhibited for free.
Presented by The Gertrude Projection Association and helmed by Festival Director Nicky Pastore and Festival Curator Amanda Haskard, the festival will present a program that forges a connection between artwork and audience and will exhibit projections and new media works that explore the physical, social and metaphysical spaces we inhabit.
“We’re really excited this year to present a program that showcases the diversity of what projection art has to offer and compels our audience to reconnect to the buildings and spaces on which it’s applied,” said Nicky Pastore, Festival Director. “Many of the key sites are back again, such as the Builders Arms, The Gertrude Hotel and the Atherton Towers.”
“We also invite our audience to venture off the main street to experience a variety of installations and one-off projection performances within the Atherton Gardens Estate, Little Woods Gallery and the surrounding neighbourhood.”
Following the success of last year’s inaugural Mentorship Program, this year the Festival is presenting three new site-specific projects and explores the application of projection art through live performance, sculpture and holographic techniques.
The Mentorship Program aims to create opportunities for emerging artists in the development of new work, in collaboration with established artists, the community and local businesses. Featured artists this year include: Gestural Intent by Nadia Faragaab; In Bloom by Brianna Hudson and The Detour by Aphrodite Feros-Fooke and Chase Burns.
Uprising Youth Theatre will present their second installment of Wheel Of Fate – a choose-your-own adventure style performance which utilizes cutting edge mobile LED projector technology, allowing stories to be played out in non-traditionally used spaces. Audience members will be drawn into the narrative, recruited by the characters to follow their journeys and participate in deciding their fates.
Presenting a series of artistic encounters that create a temporary togetherness, Little Woods Gallery will host a series of pop-up artworks, performances, presentations and discussion groups that are driven by discursive experimentation around projection as a medium. This program will present artworks that take risks both aesthetically and politically and encourage debate by tapping into ideas and concepts that present alternative possibilities to the art form; presenting artists include Emile Zile, Kate Brown, Arie Glorie and Emma Hall.
Once again, the Festival Hub at The Catfish will be transformed into a late night space offering a range of free and ticketed events including live performances and projection artworks.
“The 2016 festival program embraces ideas and projects from artists and communities that take risks both aesthetically and politically and aim to create conditions for the unexpected to emerge,” said GSPF Curator Amanda Haskard.
The 2016 Gertrude Street Projection Festival runs 15 – 24 July, with artworks projected from 6.00pm until midnight every evening. For more information, and the complete program, visit: www.gspf.com.au for details.
Image: Nick Azidis projections – photo by Bernie Phelan