Overview
Underbelly Arts is the festival weekend that’s a fortnight, that’s a biennial. Starting out in 2007 as an arts festival that let you get behind the scenes before you saw the shows, Underbelly Arts has gone through various incarnations and locations before settling in at Cockatoo Island to become its other resident art festival, alternating with the Biennale.
Last year, Underbelly Arts took its first year off to try to become a year-on, year-off festival. This year, it’s on. And with its program just launched, we get to see whether the wait was worth it.
The festival is divided into two crucial parts. The second part — the Festival weekend — consists of two days of performances, art and adventure for the visiting public. But the public are also invited to the first part — the Lab — where they can see the artists put their work together, workshop, test and reassess their ambitions for the festival itself. The Lab runs July 24–31 and is free. The Festival is ticketed, and early bird tickets have just popped up, on sale until July 3. The Festival sold out last time around and, all in all, it looks like a pretty promising line up for 2013.
Over one weekend in August, the Art Workers make reference to Chaplin’s Modern Times in Art Work and Abdul Abdullah and brother Abdul-Rahman explore their past Bankstown digs in Project HOME. Art Month 2013 co artistic curators Penelope Benton and Alexandra Clapham will unpack Tableau Vivant, the latest incarnation of their ongoing art dining projects, Applespiel will weave alternative takes on the idea of 'history', the adjective 'true' and the place 'Cockatoo Island', while Andrew Burrell and Chris Rodley channel Jonathan Harris for Everything is Going to Be Okay 🙂
Brixels revitalises the idea of Breakout, as well as the idea of playing Breakout on a wall, Nothing to See Here reshapes the city’s landmarks with ideas from an unbuilt Holocaust memorial, while the Lot engage with Cockatoo Island’s landmarks in Mammoth: the Anti-Artifact Project.
Not enough? Artist Warren Armstrong is also offering to print out your brain.
Read more about eight pioneering Underbelly Arts projects in our feature.
Top image by Dylan Tonkin, second image by Prudence Upton.