27 January, 15 February, 1 March 2024 | Choose your experience
Art Nights: Culture Alive, curated by Bankstown Arts Centre, was a three night up late program where Bankstown was transformed into a thriving festival hub of culture with music, dance, creative workshops, screenings, panel talks, arts market and exhibitions.
- Arts Alive: Art as Social Activation | Saturday 27 January
- Craft Alive: Craft for Care and Connection | Thursday 15 February
- Design Alive: Design Beyond Spatial Experience | Friday 1 March
Through concept mapping, the program was a suite of three distinct but interconnected night time events around Art, Craft, and Design. With Bankstown Arts Centre (BAC) as the thriving hub, it maps out a walking trail for night time walking to end at the Paul Keating Park and Bryan Brown Theatre. Core to the concept wasan AR artwork, Bankstown Wander, activated by mobile phones and ground/wall decals that begins at BAC and ends at the Bryan Brown Theatre, with the view to visualise, through mapping what is an extended creative hub of Bankstown city centre.
- When: Saturday 27 January, Thursday 15 February, Friday 1 March 2024
- Where: Bankstown Arts Centre, Bryan Brown Theatre, Bankstown Library and Knowledge Centre, Incubate Artists Studio, Paul Keating Park
Check out below some of the program highlights!
Hyperreal Amble was the core element of Art Nights: Culture Alive; an outdoor art walk connecting Bankstown Arts Centre, Incubate Studios and Bryan Brown Theatre/Paul Keating Park, weaving the Augmented Reality (AR) work, Bankstown Wander, with real-world site-specific installations and performance art. It focuses on walking in urban spaces as a critical means of placemaking. The project imagines Bankstown's creative precinct through a curated trail of AR and site-specific artworks that ran for the full duration of the project beyond the three specific nights in January, February and March.
Bankstown Arts Centre held two panels that covered Augmentied Reality, Walking as Practice and Placemaking throughout Art nights: Culture Alive
Panelists: Travis De Vries, Molly Wagner, Bec Gallo
Moderated by Dr Kath Fries
Panelists: April Phillips, Travis De Vires, Pandakero, Melanie Carolan
Moderated by Rachael Kiang (Arts Centre Director)
27 January-2 March 2024 | Blak Flǎneur was an experiential exhibition that invites the audience into artist Travis De Vries' world of walking as an artistic practice.
Throughout the three nights, we held two short film screenings in our theatre. See the list of films screened below!
Gillian Kayrooz, Walking Through Granville for Eleven Minutes, 2022
Insta360 ONE X video, 10:58 mins
“Hey, how are yous? I want you to wander with no intention and in good company, or to give it to you straight - take a walk with a mate.”
This video work features artist Gillian Kayrooz walking through the streets of Granville in Western Sydney. The work is part of the series Commonground, originally developed as part of Artspace's 52 Actions series and includes similar walks through the suburbs of Parramatta, Merrylands and Guildford. The Granville edition was commissioned by Granville Art Centre as part of the 2022 Good Vibes Festival. The artist grew up near these four suburbs, treading these footpaths for school, work, or to visit family and friends. The ‘tiny planet’ video was created using a 360 degree camera, and through the simple act of walking, captures an eleven-minute journey through the streets, laneways, arcades, carparks and shopping malls of Granville. While playful and meditative in its delivery, this video documentation can also be considered a critical commentary on the rapid development and gentrification of Western Sydney.
Sara Morawetz, Excerpts from Étalon, 2018
Archival footage, 09:39 minutes
Étalon was Sara Morawetz’s 112-day, 2,100km performative walk, that retraced the genesis of the metre as an Earth-bound metric — equal to 1/10,000,000th of distance from the North Pole to the Equator. Accompanied by a team of female artists, Sara traversed the length of the Paris meridian from Dunkerque to Barcelona, pausing daily to observe and measure the Earth’s characteristics, in order to derive a new ‘metre’ length borne of her physical action. This footage (documenting excerpts of day 74, 89 and 112) is part of a vast archival record of the landscape encountered in pursuit a new ‘metre’ length –– revealing the hidden phenomenological encounters embedded within our systems and standards; an unseen assemblage of time passed and distance travelled and a measuring of self against the limits of our domain.
This project was assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, the QAGOMA foundation through the Vida Lahey Memorial Travelling Scholarship, the Musée des Arts et Métiers, the Art Gallery of NSW, the Cité Internationale des Arts, the University of Sydney and Pratt institute.
Walking Companions: Boni Cairncross, Alex Pedley, Kath Fries, Laura Hindmarsh, Lucy Parakhina, Magali Duzant, Connie Anthes, Chantel Meng, Sharne Wolff, Stephanie Brotchie, Angela Lopes and Darren Engwirda. Scientific Collaborator: Darren Engwirda
Danica I. J. Knežević, Two Way Street, 2023
Performative video in collaboration with Anica Knežević,
04:00 mins
Two Way Street is a performative video work examining the dynamic between parenting and mother/daughter relationships through caregiving. For Danica I. J. Knežević having a parent with a disability is second nature; it is a mutual exchange of caregiving. “Both of us are caregivers; she is my mother, and I, her daughter. Caregiving is a two-way street.”
Design Alive
Pixel Pulse by UNSW
Pixel Pulse is a cutting-edge animation screening exploring the theme of creativity beyond spatial limits. These experimental animations span across a diverse range of design mediums such as 2D, 3D, hybrid, and live action. Welcome to this animated space; Pixel Pulse invites you to relax, dream, and connect.
When: 5-6.30, 7.30-10pm
Where: Theatre, Bankstown Arts Centre
Western Sydney based Beat Kitchen Records (BKR) is a community platform that promotes expression through music & art, whose greater vision is to contribute to the growth of Sydney's creative arts scene by uniting people.
BKR curated a lineup of emerging, experimental Sydney-based acts on each of the three nights.
- Tee8
- Mel.Wav
- D0n't Play
- BKR DJs
- Gemma Navarette
- Chelle Tamika
- ZZARNI
- BKR DJs
- Yasmina Sadiki
- Wytchings
- Hey, Love
- BKR DJs
This initiative is proudly supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW’s Culture Up Late Western Sydney program.