With only a few performances left in the 2015 Adelaide Festival of Arts season, the event will have its largest attendance in 5 years. Audience numbers are still being collated but are expected to exceed 560,000.
The third festival for director, David Sefton, the signature of this year’s event was free programming on a grand scale. Blinc, Curated by Joel Cockrill and Craig Morrison, was the largest work within the festival, and turned Elder Park and surrounds into a giant spectacular outdoor digital art gallery. Since its opening on the 27th of February social media pages have henceforth been awash with photos of the giant 3D trumpeting elephant, Elephantastic!, the seemingly floating LED lights in the rotunda entitled Submergence, and A-Synchron, the series of changing projections shown on the facades of the Festival Centre and Parliament House.
Also free at this year’s festival was a showing of selected work from one of the world’s most important living artists, Bill Viola, with exhibitions stretching the entire length of festival across multiple venues including the Art Gallery of South Australia, St Peter’s Cathedral and the Queens Theatre.
Sefton’s commissioned works created specifically for the festival have been a raving success, with opinions split on the re-imagined Tommy, by Eric Mingus, and emotions overflowing for Kid Koala’s Nufonia Must Fall (follow the links to read our reviews).
Director, David Sefton says he could not be more pleased with the quality of this year’s festival, and Festival Chief Executive, Karen Bryant says “Bringing the best, never before seen work to Australia and making sure the widest possible audience have the opportunity to see that work has always been the core aim of the festival. We are delighted that audiences have turned out in their droves to enjoy the handpicked events that make this festival so special.”
Always a Festival draw card, Adelaide Writers’ Week has once again achieved capacity crowds. Robert Dessaix, Julia Gillard, Dan Barber, Helen Garner, David Marr and Roxane Gay amongst the most popular sessions. Setting new records, Writers’ Week also achieved a 17% increase in book sales across the event.
Final numbers will be collected throughout the coming week with continuing shows in Black Diggers, the stories of unsung indigenous war heroes at Her Majesty’s Theatre; The Cardinals by Stan’s Café at the Flinders Street Baptist Church; and the decidedly adults-only Beauty and the Beast featuring Julie Atlas Muz and Mat Fraser at the Dunstan Playhouse (follow the links to read our reviews).
The 2015 Adelaide Festival of Arts has seen 889 artists and writers from over 20 countries take part in 150 performances of 42 separate events. There have been 22 Australian premieres and 26 Adelaide exclusives. There were sell-out seasons of Azimut, Dylan Thomas – Return Journey, Beckett Triptych and SmallWaR, and memorable debuts it Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet and the yet to play Danny Elfman’s Music from the films of Tim Burton (follow the links to read our reviews).
Paul Rodda
When: 27 Feb to 15 Mar
Where: Various Venues
Bookings: bass.net.au
