Posted by KB on August 9, 2010
Long has the badge of “art” been bandied around the music festival site, sometimes resulting in extraordinary experiences, other times leaving us feeling a little lack lustre… Too many inflatable gnomes, not enough excellent art… (Not that that we don’t love an inflatable gnome here or there!). With the Splendid program we see a real investment, drive and development of the possibilities of this cross-disciplinary, site-specific opportunity for art bumping right up into the music festival world.
Splendid is a creative development partnership between Splendour in the Grass, Australia Council for the Arts, Lismore Regional Gallery, NORPA, and Arts Northern Rivers. The program is developing emerging artists in creating new experiences for festival audiences. Originally, 10 artists were selected for an intensive professional development and creative brainstorming program. Over the course of a year the artists generated ideas, challenged perceptions (including their own) and worked with industry protagonists, festival producers, technical and legal restrictions, budget possibilities. From the 10 artists, three final works were developed and installed at the festival. These were Carl Scrase, The Generative Power of Opposites; Lauren Brincat and Mish Grigor, Where the Party Is; and Lauren Brincat and Dominic Finlay-Jones, The Best Time Ever.
So how did they do? I was dubious; art inside a music festival certainly has the potential to be extraordinary, but let us not forget the difficulty of the ground we are walking. The punters are buying tickets for a big line-up, not of artists, but of music acts. So how to engage them in a genuine experience of site, thought and sensation while at the festival, and without the safety parameters of the white gallery walls?
We first encountered Carl Scrase’s The Generative Power of Opposites, an impressive 14-metre-high white inflatable replica of his own hand located outside the Mix Up stage in the heart of the Splendour-Woodfordia site. The hand gestures both a “peace” sign and the “up yours” sign, depending on your location. I spoke to Carl about the driving sentiments behind this inflatable gesture. He spoke eloquently about the particular pressure on the young festival demographic to “be good”, live the right way, make the right choices, do the right thing, all the while testing the boundaries. This is positioned directly against a genuine engagement in what is important, sustainable and valuable to the artist. The installation is constructed from recycled materials (very important to Scrase), sitting directly in tension with the waste of the festival itself. Scrase retells a gorgeous story of one the technicians installing the work. As he contemplated the gesture, he commented to Scrase, “I’ve been thinking about this and it’s kind of like Yin and Yang”. The genuine and the genuine rebellion, the peace sign and the up yours sign sitting on the same site. An excellent and succinct gesture for the demographic of this festival
Next we came across Lauren Brincat and Dominic Finlay-Jones’ work The Best Time Ever at the edge of Woodfordia - up the top of the hill, nestled away, yet offering a view of most of the festival. The work itself is a giant staircase-sundial, 25m long and 14m high pointing due south at an angle of 26.5 degrees to the horizon. At the top of the suspended staircase (which is not able to be climbed despite some punters’ best efforts) sits a perfect ring, an empty circle, framing the sky beyond it. Just below the work, text sits into the grass: BEST TIME EVER. This is an elegant and poetic work, which could easily sit at any music festival or just as easily at a Biennale deep in the art world. It is quite an intimate one, despite its size, as your attention is drawn up the staircase and into the circle of sky at the top. A beautiful structure and wonderful metaphor for the sought-after festival experience. As Lauren Brincat speaks of her own Splendour festival experience inspiring the work, we relate instantly to the poetic installation through our own memory of music, community and the gorgeous moments of any good festival:
“I closed my eyes and saw a massive staircase rising up from the crowd at Splendour, as it continued to elevate and fade into the clouds it really was a stairway joining heaven and earth. It had to be made.”
Finally the collaborative performance between Lauren Brincat and Mish Grigor, Where the Party Is, delighted the Splendour audience. There was much questioning and some gentle heckling, as Lauren and Mish proceeded to inflate 10,000 black balloons hoisted onto a wooden totem like a beluga caviar cloud or giant grape cluster. After two days of inflating, the performance culminated with Lauren and Mish garbed resplendent in Alice Lang costuming preparing annihilation… With archery training under their belt, they proceeded to take out the black balloons with a couple of bows and a pile of arrows, as a crowd gathered to see two young women construct and then deconstruct their own not-so private party.
All in all, the Splendid program raises the bar for Australian festivals. The Splendour presenters and supporters of Splendid are to be commended for committing to this challenging program. We can only encourage them to continue to fund these explorations; as the doors open, we are all to benefit. As the producer of Splendid, Carli Leimbach asks, “what if we drop the word art? What happens then?”
We are poised and ready to find out.
For photo coverage of Splendid, check out the Kluster Gallery.
splendid, splendour in the grass, arts