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Lights! Music! Barbie! Vivid Sydney unveils this year’s line-up
By Nick Galvin and Linda Morris
Vivid Sydney has unveiled the program for this year’s festival, with highlights including a 40-kilometre laser rainbow projected from Sydney Tower, lighting of the Sydney Opera House sails by 2023 Archibald Prize winner Julia Gutman and a takeover of the facade of Customs House by much-loved Mambo artist Reg Mombassa.
Alongside the popular light installations, the other components of the 23-night festival, beginning May 24, are Vivid Music, Vivid Food and Vivid Ideas.
The core component of Vivid Food will be a return of the popular Vivid Fire Kitchen. Riffing on the Australian love affair with the backyard barbie, it will take over The Goods Line in Ultimo each night for a festival of “flame-seared street food from around the globe”.
An artist’s impression of Yvette Mattern’s Global Rainbow, projected from the top of Sydney Tower.
Vivid Music will feature artists including cult French duo Air, US hip-hop giant Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) and local heroes Budjerah, one of the headliners at a free 12-night series of shows at Tumbalong Park.
Despite the long list of events spread around the city, this year’s festival so far lacks a big-name drawcard in the mould of last year, when actor Jennifer Coolidge (Legally Blonde, White Lotus) attended.
However, festival director Gill Minervini hinted at “big announcements” to come. Pressed on how big they might be, her response was “stratospheric”.
Mambo artist Reg Mombassa will take over Customs House with Gumscape with Road and Creatures.
The overarching theme for this year’s event is “humanity”, which was arrived at more than six months ago.
“Little did I know that six to 12 months after that, there would never be a better time to look inward about ourselves in relation to making a better world and also how we can harness creativity, technology, innovation and human imagination and how we can really harness those,” Minervini said.
Vivid 2024 will be delivered with a smaller budget than last year, but a spokesperson for Destination NSW declined to specify a figure, claiming it was commercial-in-confidence.
Destination NSW took a $109 million hit to its revenue in Labor’s first budget as the government pulled funding for two events, Open for Lunch and the Noel Sydney Christmas festival, because they failed to attract sufficient people from interstate or overseas to justify spending.
Festival director Gill Minervini at Monday’s launch of Vivid Sydney.Credit: Nick Moir
In recent weeks, the Destination NSW board has been directed by the Minns government to adopt an “experience” tourism focus, putting arts and cultural events at the centre of a new strategy that will see the agency invest more heavily in the creative arts sector.
Vivid Sydney is Destination NSW’s signature success story, with the festival smashing attendance records last year. It drew a record 3.28 million visitors to Sydney CBD, the best figures in 13 years, despite the winter chill.
Minervini said there was no official visitor number target for 2024 but she and her staff “have a bit of a bet” on what the final figure might be, adding she believed the flagship 8km Vivid Light Walk event would be more popular than ever.
Visitors wanting to experience the Lightscape display in the Royal Botanic Garden will once again have to fork out for tickets, although the price remains steady at $128 for a family pass.
Minervini defended the decision, saying some visitors happily paid to get away from the crowds.
“What we found is last year it had an enormous audience because not everybody wants to be in the hustle and bustle of three and a half million people on the light walk,” she said.
Vivid has also attracted criticism for its management of the huge numbers of visitors it receives, in effect becoming a victim of its own success. But Minervini was confident the right plans were in place.
“Sydney is probably the leader in the world in terms of crowd control at large events,” she said. “We are always refining how we do things. We have to, we weren’t expecting nearly a million more people last year and when you look at the size of the event and the [few] incidents that happened, it’s pretty amazing. And that’s by design, not by luck.”
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