Overview
Sydney Festival 2020 launches this week, and with it comes one massive program of arts and culture. Redfern's multi-arts precinct Carriageworks is once again part of the city-wide festival, and, this year, it's bringing Sydneysiders four immersive and illuminating artworks — all of which are free to the public.
Installations by artists Rebecca Baumann, Daniel Boyd and Kate Mitchell all launch on Wednesday January 8, with an additional installation by Reko Rennie opening in late January. While each artist presents a distinctly different work, they all speak to a common theme — the exploration of human interconnectivity using light — and highlight the history and architecture of Carriageworks.
Rebecca Baumann, Radiant Flux, 2020, Carriageworks. Image: Zan Wimberley.
Rebecca Baumann's Radiant Flux, running until June 14, sees every glass surface and skylight of the building's exterior covered in dichroic film. The luminous film acts as a sundial and changes colours — from blue to yellow and magenta — when viewed from different angles and at different times of day. Baumann is known for her spellbinding kinetic sculptures and Radiant Flux promises to be one of her most hypnotising.
Running alongside Baumann's installation are Daniel Boyd's Video Works and All Auras Touch by Kate Mitchell, both of which will remain on displace until March 1, 2020. Boyd, a Kudjala/Gangalu artist, has brought together three large-scale video installations: A Darker Shade of Dark #1-4 (2012), History is Made at Night (2013) and Yamani (2018). These videos will be projected across the walls of the gallery with the artist's signature circular lens, which Boyd uses to "fragment and disrupt Eurocentric perspectives of history", creating a cosmos of colour and composition — and all set to a score by DJ duo Canyons (Ryan Grieve and Leo Thomson).
Kate Mitchell, All Auras Touch, 2020, Carriageworks. Image: Zan Wimberley.
Mitchell's work uses colour in a slightly different way: to "present a snapshot of contemporary Australia". The artist is photographing one representative for each of the 1023 officially recognised jobs within the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations — all in an attempt to capture the occupations' overlapping 'auras'. Colourful photos taken using the Aura Camera 6000, an electromagnetic field imaging camera invented in the 1970s, are blown up on the gallery's walls and will continually be added to throughout the exhibition — so you'll want to plan a return visit. The installation aims to understand the relationship between 'what we do' and 'who are are'.
Finally, Reko Rennie's Remember Me will launch at the end of January (with the exact date still TBC) and act as a year-long reminder of the ongoing impact of Australia's invasion. Coinciding with the 250th year since Captain James Cook's arrival at Kamay Botany Bay, the 25-metre-long and five-metre-high installation recognises frontier wars, massacres and the survival of Australia's First Nations peoples. Similarly to Rennie's other works, Remember Me references his identity as a Kamilaroi man, but it's also one of the artist's most minimal works to date.
Reko Rennie, Remember Me, 2020, Carriageworks. Image: Zan Wimberley.
Rebecca Baumann: Radiant Flux runs from January 8–June 14, Daniel Boyd: Video Works runs from January 8–March 1, Kate Mitchell: All Auras Touch runs from January 8–March 1 and Reko Rennie: Remember Me runs from late January 2020–January 2021 at Carriageworks, 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh.
Top: Daniel Boyd, Video Works, 2020, Carriageworks. Images by Zan Wimberley.