Bleach* Festival 2018

Overview

The Gold Coast is proving quite the topic of conversation at the moment, with one of the world's biggest sporting events coming to town. That's not the only reason to head down south for the next few weeks, however. And nor is just getting a dose of surf, sun and sand. Nope, if you're keen for a beachside arts and culture fix, then you'll want to head along to this year's Bleach* Festival.

Taking place at various venues and spaces around the Goldie between March 29 and April 15, Bleach* has quite a few tricks up its 2018 sleeves: ten performances in everyday folks' living rooms, a musical inspired by the GC's first surf lifesaver, an apocalyptic dance piece on Surfers Paradise's main beach, and a 49-hour show on a sandbar in the middle of Currumbin Estuary, for example. If you've noticed that plenty of the fest's highlights take place in the great outdoors, that's because embracing everything and everywhere that the coast great is what Bleach* is all about.

Other standouts include a music-filled trek through the Palm Beach Parklands, puppets at Paradise Point and several parties — including an opening shindig in Robina, a daily street party in the Southport CBD and a welcome party at the Gold Coast Airport arrivals section. Plus, if you've always wanted to sleep on the beach, then Wave Fields is for you. Merging music, environmental recordings and live sound from the site itself, it lets sound crees in and out of your dreams while you slumber by the shore.

Image: Darcy Grant