Vivid Sydney ready to celebrate 10 years of creativity

The world’s largest festival of light, music and ideas, Vivid Sydney returns next month for its 10th year with a spectacular new precinct at Luna Park, the return of much-loved Customs House, and a fantastical blend of everyday objects and Australian-inspired motifs on the sails of the Sydney Opera House.

Running for 23 nights from Friday 25th May to Saturday 16th June, for the first time, Vivid Sydney’s dazzling Light Walk extends to new precinct Luna Park Sydney, where the landmark amusement park set to come alive with large-scale projection on the façade of Coney Island. The show celebrates the history, magic, creativity, engineering, fantasy and imagination that have come together to create millions of memories on this unique and special site.This year also marks the first time Luna Park’s popular Ferris Wheel will be lit for the festival following an LED refit, which has included a massive boost in the number of lights adorning the wheel.

Vivid Sydney’s bright lights will illuminate the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney again in 2018, where visitors will follow a pathway that weaves through an exciting nocturnal environment inspired by nature. Here, Parrot Party inspired by the New Zealand Kea Parrot and the Australian Rainbow Lorikeet, comes alive as people gather, breaking into song and radiating colourful light. Aqueous will dazzle with its interactive landscape of meandering pathways of light, which will flow and glow in full illuminated interactivity, engaging visitors in collaborative play. The Bloom, a giant electric, metallic flower with petals adorned with mirrors that refract and reflect light, puts you in the centre of the flower capturing the perfect photo moment, and He’e nalu gives the joyous sensation of surfing a wave.

Other famous Sydney locations that will be transformed during Vivid 2018 include Taronga Zoo; buildings in Darling Harbour, Chatswood, Barangaroo and Kings Cross; and the façade of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) with Virtual Vibration, a highly-collaborative creative work, while interactive lighting display Skylark will let visitors put their own colourful mark on the city, stretching from the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the skyscrapers of Circular Quay to the reaches of Sydney Harbour.

Vivid Music ups the ante in 2018 with an electric line-up, from noise to jazz, sonic experimentation to soul. Highlights include a one-night-only performance by Grammy award-winning rock-goddess St. Vincent, and the return of Curve Ball headlined by Alison Wonderland - a large-scale live music and art event created by the team behind Field Day, Harbourlife and Listen Out - both at Carriageworks.

The City Recital Hall returns to the program, tracking the extraordinary rise in jazz with the Innovators In Jazz series featuring the undisputed king, triple Grammy award-winner saxophonist Branford Marsalis.The world’s finest jazz vocalists including Kurt Elling and chanteuse Madeleine Peyroux, will line up alongside Orange is the New Black star Lea Delaria in her musical comedy, jazz interpretation show.

Vivid LIVE at the Sydney Opera House hosts a stellar line-up of Australian exclusives as part of Vivid Sydney, including several Opera House debuts. Highlights this year include American dream-pop icons Mazzy Star, the godfather of West Coast rap Ice Cube, acclaimed 90s indie rock singer/songwriter Cat Power, Grammy award-winning artist Solange, and the long-awaited collaboration between iconic Australian artists Daniel Johns and Luke Steele.

Vivid Ideas 2018 showcases those who are leading the way in technology, creativity and science. Game Changers and Creative Catalysts this year include film-maker, marine explorer and conservationist James Cameron. In a Vivid Sydney exclusive, Cameron will explore his passion for science and technology, and how it has influenced his work as a film director and environmentalist.

Vivid Sydney is owned, managed and produced by the NSW Government’s tourism and major events agency Destination NSW

The full 2018 Vivid Sydney media kit, program announcement and high-res imagery including 2018 Vivid Sydney light renders and broadcast quality video footage of 2017 festival highlights, are available for download at www.vividsydney.com/media-centre.

Images; Sydney Opera House illuminated during Vivid Sydney (top), Taronga Zoo highlights conservation during Vivid 2016 and illuminated trees in the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney (below). Images courtesy of Destination NSW.

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