White Night Melbourne is the city as you know it, but reimagined and transformed under the ephemeral cloak of night.
For one night only, from dusk ‘til dawn, local, national and international artists, musicians and performers will weave a spell over the city’s streets, parklands, laneways, public spaces and cultural institutions in a celebration of creativity.
Intriguing, right? As a creative person, I was immediately and intensely drawn to this festival. So much so, that I planned our entire Australian adventure around this one particular day.
Arriving to our hotel in the early afternoon, my husband and I spent the next few hours relaxing, exchanging money, and hitting up the gym for quick workouts. According to Google, it is best to attend White Night after the sun sets. We needed to kill a little bit more time and did so by eating a later dinner.
With our maps in hand, we began meandering through Melbourne still not knowing what to expect. The streets were packed and bustling with excitement. It wasn’t long before we stumbled upon our first experience and every corner we turned thereafter was taken over by art.
Light Cycles & Shadow Dancer (39-40)
This took shadow puppets to a whole new level. I should have taken video. There were light boxes with moving figurines inside projecting moving shadows onto the adjacent building. Yes, it was neat, but to be honest I wasn’t all that impressed with this installation.
Fractured Fairytales (46)
This light installation was MASSIVE, projecting across several buildings and drawing the largest crowd. The concept seemed to be fairytales written as comics and it changed every two minutes. (We timed it.) This was our favorite.
More Than 1 Nation (45)
Another fantastic light projection piece, but this one was more like a movie with sound celebrating Australia and it’s diversity.
Home Less (41)
This performance/visual art piece was disturbing. On the back wall was a video projection of what I interpreted as a homeless person dying. In front of the video was a person dressed like the grim reaper with reasons why homelessness and extinction are happening.
Universal Principle & The Reckoning at the Southern Cross Hotel (37)
We entered a church where we found a beautiful white sculpture piece rotating gracefully. As it made rotations, the piece moved in and out of light transforming the way it looked immensely.
Street Performers
While most of the art we saw was part of White Night, some people showed up and just performed! This a cappella group was fun to watch.
White Night was incredible and if we ever make it back to Melbourne, I will absolutely try to line our trip up with this festival again. We barely scratched the surface of what there was to see and do (we were soooo tired). I hope this event eventually makes its way to Chicago.
If I have any readers who attended White Night, what did you see that we missed?! Leave me a comment below.
XO, Lauren
One thought