About
Happy Birthday Art & About!
The idea was to transform our city into a canvas, to create a living gallery on our streets, with work that would make Sydneysiders stop, think, laugh or smile….
In 2002, the first Art & About Sydney did just that.
As we celebrate 10 years, we look back at so many of the wonderful, inspiring, humorous and moving moments that have occurred as both Art & About, and our city, have evolved.
2002
- Art & About begins on September 16.
- The first Sydney Life Exhibition, then called Sydney Looking Forward, shows us our city in striking large – scale photographs hung in Hyde Park. Curated by Sandy Edwards (who is a judge of this year’s Sydney Life), and features work from Paul Blackmore , Emil Goh, Trent Parke and Anne Zahalka. This exhibition continues to be a huge crowd favourite today.
- The inaugural Open Gallery, now called The Banner Gallery, features 20 works from emerging artists, selected by a curatorial panel consisting of Bronwyn Bancroft, Max Cullen, Akira Isogawa & David Lennie.
- The Ranamok Art Glass Prize is our first associated event, a partnership that has continued over our 10-year history.
- Sculpture in the City, curated by Stellla Downer, and presented by Sculpture By the Sea, transforms Martin Place with works from emerging and established artists.
2003
- US artist Kurt Perschke brings his RedBall Project to Sydney – a giant mobile red ball that appears in different locations throughout the City centre.
- Exciting new works from David Griggs, Brook Andrew, Guan Wei, Mikala Dwyer, Noel McKenna & Robyn Stacey feature on City street banners in an Open Gallery curated by Anne Loxley.
- The success of Sydney Looking Forward inspires Art in the Park, a day of talks and workshops featuring Art & About artists.
- RE_SQUARED, a structural installation and live audiovisual performance by Cicada comes to Australia Square.
2004
- Art & About presents its first performance piece, Singing For That Country. Featuring plenty of bright paint, shoes, polka dots and soundscapes, this multimedia work from Aku Kadogo & Tree Guyton appears at Sydney Park, Redfern and Waterloo.
- Lindy Lee’s banner of her 14-year-old mother features in Open Gallery, and is then installed in Beijing.
- Redfern Banner Art Project – created by an art therapy collective run by the Aboriginal Medical Service – is exhibited outside the Redfern Neighbourhood Centre at Lawson Square.
- Houses of the Future, an exhibition of six cutting edge homes built from steel, timber, clay, concrete, cardboard and glass, comes to Sydney Opera House forecourt.
2005
- More than 3000 people paint thongs as part of Thonglines, an enormous invffghgstallation presented by Philippa Playford at Customs House Square.
- The inaugural Danks Street Festival celebrates a new Sydney hub of art, design & food.
- Abandoned cars become art in Sydney Square, with CarScape bringing artists and inner city residents together to turn the shells of cars into brilliant murals.
2006
- Art & About holds its first free public launch in Customs House Square to coincide with the unveiling of The Face of Sydney, a year long project that creates digitally layered composite images from portraits of local residents. These images are projected onto the AMP Building.
- Art & About @ Customs House Square features installations by Jasper Knight, Adam Constenoble, Louisa Dawson, Amber Rowe and Mays Lane, and is curated by James Gulliver Hancock.
- Martin Sharp’s Thousand Dollar Bill & Yayoi Kusama’s Stars Infinity feature alongside Robert Macpherson’s Australia in an Open Gallery that brings local and international artists together, curated by Barbara Flynn.
- Large-scale photographs of local residents feature on billboard-sized banners along Glebe Point Road in Facing Glebe.
2007
- Our launch party in Customs House Square marks the opening of Sydney Child’s Eye 2030, a collaboration with Red Room, featuring children’s paintings of their city of the future projected onto AMP and Customs House.
- Barbara Flynn curates The Banner Gallery for the second time, with works from Louise Hearman, David Griggs, Paddy Bedford, and Del Kathryn Barton.
- The first laneway project (Live Lanes) is produced with a bar and music venue in Bulletin Place, a new outdoor gallery wall in Albion Place and an installation in Temperance Lane.
2008
- Art & About launches in Taylor Square with a focus on highlighting the cultural history of this precinct.
- Love TV comes to Taylor Square, a live, unpredictable, and frequently very funny TV studio by Rebecca Macintosh.
- Oxford Street’s history as an emerging rock n roll scene in the 60s, 70s and 80s is retold through the Rock N Roll Walk of Fame and Shame tour and podcast.
- The laneway program expands to five lanes in 2008 and is known as By George, featuring Adam Norton’s Tank Project, Firstdraft’s Downtown, Gaffa Gallery’s One More Go One More Go, Reef Knot’s The Sky is Falling and Albion Place by Peleton.
- Erskineville residents make clay horses as part of Annie Kennedy’s The Stables, Art & About’s first Village Art Project.
2009
- The Banner Gallery features the work of NSW Indigenous artists: Milton Budge, Adam Hill, Aunty May Hinch, Warwick Keen, Roy Kennedy, Gordon Syron, Harry Wedge, Graham Davis King, Frances Belle Parker and Elaine Russell. Curated by Djon Mundine, the works are presented in association with Campbelltown Arts Centre.
- The launch in Hyde Park opens with an Aboriginal Smoking Ceremony and is attended by more than 3000 people.
- The laneway program expands again, with eight laneways curated by Dr Steffan Lehmann exploring themes of collaboration, sustainability and the changing nature of public space.
- The Village Art Project takes place in Kings Cross, with Reef Knot presenting I Heart KX, a guerrilla knitting installation involving weekly knit-in workshops.
- The Live Green House comes to Taylor Square, with sustainable living workshops, demonstrations and talks.
- The final Danks Street Festival is produced by City of Sydney.
2010
- Featuring the greatest number of installations, events and exhibitions presented in the festival’s history, Art & About is bigger than ever.
- 100 portraits of Sydneysiders are on display for The Banner Gallery, with John Kaldor as artistic adviser and Louise Hawson as photographer.
- A 12-metre high Penny Farthing known as The Bike Bike is created by Alasdair Nicol in Martin Place.
- Eight of the City’s public art statues are reimagined by established and emerging artists including Ken Done, Liane Rossler, Bronwyn Bancroft and Linda Jackson, in Sydney Statues, directed by Michelle McCosker.
- ArtPark, a weekend of art in Hyde Park, includes film screenings, video art, a pop up palette gallery and Crafternoon by Object Gallery.
2011 On now – enjoy!
Art & About Sydney is produced by City of Sydney Events Unit
