SPLENDOUR IN THE GRASS 2018
– Arts in Residence
& Splendour Arts Program
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You know Splendour in the Grass loves a good hook up! Come July, North Byron Parklands transforms into a cultural mecca, not only bringing together incredible musicians, but innovative, thought-provoking and seriously exciting artists, who join together to create a festival experience on another level.
The Splendour Arts Program and Artist in Residence of 2018 will showcase some of our most boundary-bending and content-ready artistic #collabs to date. Featuring new and evolving artworks, get ready to immerse yourself in the freshest, wildest and most jaw-dropping open-air gallery this side of NYC…
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SPLENDOUR 2018 ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Brooklyn Whelan
In the first of what will become an annual collaboration with a different artist each year, Splendour has teamed up with Australian contemporary visual artist Brooklyn Whelan to create our awesome 2018 event artwork, as well as Zero Three, a site-specific video mapping project incorporating his ethereal cloud paintings. This collection of larger-than-life moving images will be projected on the Mix Up Stage tent top. But get in quick! Like your best ever Snapchat, this artwork will expire after the three days of Splendour in the Grass – never to be seen again – like an impending storm system that shocks, awes and then vanishes forever.
“Having the opportunity to collab with Australia’s biggest music and arts festival is a huge honour. I think its really important that local music and visual art talents come together in the one space to celebrate what an amazing creative community this country has.” – Brooklyn Whelan
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SPLENDOUR ARTS PROGRAM 2018
THE WITCH HUNT and PICKLES FAMILY FUNERALS
By Andy Forbes
Sacrifices. Graveyards. Ritual burials. Just another day at The Barn with Andy Forbes!
Influenced by the realms of religious cults, fetish and socio-political taboos, get ready for some graveyard boogie with spooky DJ’s in the barn window, audience interactive comedy, and sacrifices around a large-scale wicker human sculpture in the graveyard.
Pickle’s Funeral Parlour also makes a comeback with an audience walk-through installation consisting of three connected, interactive environments. It’s presented via a Gothic family called the Pickles, who trade in death, the afterlife and all its mysteries. Pickle’s Funeral Parlour will feature theatre, video, sound, performance kinetic sculpture and installation.
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THE CLEANERS
By Shock Therapy Productions
The Cleaners is a brand-new durational performance installation by multi-award winning contemporary performance makers, Shock Therapy Productions.
A living room sits in mid-air, 7 metres above the ground. It is completely white. Two cleaners in white uniforms take great pains to maintain the room’s perfect whiteness. On the ground below sits a giant slingshot. Beside the slingshot, a large collection of mud-filled balloons. Let the games begin. Fights, meltdowns, existential crisis; who knows what will unfold. How will The Cleaners rectify the situation, and what secrets they will uncover in the process?
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GATEWAYS 2
By Sam Songailo
In Adelaide, in the front bar of the Grace Emily hotel there was a sticker that read: “DRUM MACHINES HAVE NO SOUL”. Maybe it’s gone now but that sticker really pissed Sam Songalio off. He loves techno and, at the time, creating art to embody electronic music. This sticker, an affront to his artistic purpose, got him thinking… If a drum machine without a soul, an empty collection of circuits and wires could bring us to our feet and move us to dance, was a soul so important after all.
Songailo’s work takes form in painting, installation, video, sound and sculpture. Highly immersive and realised on a monumental scale, you won’t be missing Gateways 2 at Splendour 2018!
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SNOOP DOGG HOT DOGS
By Cool Shit
The Kings of creating large scale shit that is very f*cking cool (remember Happy Kanye from 2017, or Nicholas Cage in a Cage from 2015?) are back!
Andy Warhol says rich people eat the same hot dogs as regular people. In 2016, Snoop Dog was invited onto Jimmy Kimmel Live! to take on the host’s first “Howz It Mizzade” video challenge demonstrating hot dogs being made. “This is a hot dog!? Oh cuz, I ain’t never eating a m—–f—— hot dog! Ugh!” he said. “If that’s how they make hot dogs, I don’t want one. I’m good.” Looks like Snoop’s family barbies are going to have one less person in the line for franks. Visit the garden of Snoop Dogg hot dogs at Splendour 2018, serving up American dreams all day, erryday.
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HIDE YOUR EYES
By Laith McGregor
Laith McGregor is obsessed with figures who have beards and are without eyes – their empty sockets sit in vacant faces that still manage to appear tragic, making us feel all the feels.
The focus of Hide Your Eyes is a self-portrait in the likeness of a guru/religious figure, manipulated in various ways to attempt to deface, distort and alter. Ready with permanent markers to be drawn on in situ, Laith’s banners will evolve in collaboration with the Splendour crowd. Channel your inner Banksy and draw faces, text, graffiti and ramblings of your own, directly onto the work to build an alternate communal persona. Let the fun begin.
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GRAVITY SYSTEM RESPONSE
By Ash Keating
Melbourne-born visual artist Ash Keating likes to work big. He makes enormous paintings, sometimes 20-metres tall. Like hugely physical performance art, Ash explores colour, movement, paint, water, air and gravity.
Ash has exhibited extensively in galleries and created numerous large-scale, site-responsive art projects in Australia and internationally since 2004. He painted the entrance tunnel for Splendour in the Grass in 2016 and now returns to repaint the surface with his ongoing ‘Gravity System Response’ series.
For locations and performance times, check out the website.
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