Underbelly Arts Festival 2011

Overview

If you were wondering where Sydney's underground art scene is, Underbelly Arts Festival has made it accessible for you. The Festival is unique, not just in Sydney's mainstream art scene, but in the alternative one too. Not only does it offer you a day of the complex, strange, new, and experimental, but for a week beforehand you can come in for free and check out the artists in process. And sometimes help them make their art as well. The mysterious J Dark stalks and is stalked, Complicit brings you wall-robots, Ngoc Nguyen creates a Vietnamese flower festival, the turbine hall is taken over by acrobats, and all the while five artists knit together a new society.

For the first time this year, the festival is spreading out over Cockatoo Island. The Underbelly Arts Festival has its festival proper on July 16, where you can enjoy the results of weeks of preparation. Beforehand, from July 3 to 12, the artists open their doors to strays in the Lab. You can help them do their thing, join in a tour, or sit in on a workshop (like this Toydeath-related one). Early bird tickets to the July 16 Festival are $10. Later on they go up to $15, or $20 on the day.

Image by Dave Keeshan.