Best Major Festival - who won?
The nominees are:
Art and About 2009 literally stitched up the city, with artists revitalizing Sydney’s open spaces and hidden nooks and alleys all over town. Laneways were lit up, the Cross was knitted up and Danks Street Festival got fired up. Human-esque skin got stretched over the street (replete with heartbeat) and a seven metre bar popped up on Underwood Street in the CBD. Oh, and galleries opened their doors and minds to the incredible wealth of creative talent in Sydney.
Best fest in the west, Riverbeats took in music, art, food, water, sculpture, multiculturalism and more and did it in beautiful Parramatta (beautifully accessed by Rivercat through the Harbour backwaters) with flair and panache, proving once and for all that Sydney’s art heart is shifting from the east to go west.
Winner of the inaugural SMAC of the Year was Fergus Linehan, the festival guru whose gift to Sydney was the people party that is Festival First Night. The Irish party-starter delivered an outstanding festival in January as his parting gift, with First Night of mayhem courtesy of Grace, Sharon and Santogold; floating films, All Tomorrow's Parties, a cornucopia of incredible and compelling theatre plus outdoor bars and public displays of dance and affection thrown in.
A tightened, condensed program in 2009, kept thousands of Sydney's cinephiles and film fiends firmly indoors, with a much-talked about line-up of international and local cinema ranging from gaol birds, animated auteurs, local legends and special guests thrown into a field which also saw the return of restored Aussie masterpiece Wake in Fright.
A new event this year but one we hope will continue long into Sydney’s future. The sprawling, ambitious Vivid encompassed light, music and ideas and took in thre eclectic delights of the Brian Eno-curated Luminous festival, the Smart Light walk re-imagining iconic Sydney buildings through low-energy, maximum-creative illumination and the series of symposia and idea exchanges of Creative Sydney. The finale? The re-exploding of convict ship the Three Bees in Farm Cove. Explosive stuff indeed.
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