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Culture and creativity collide as Enlighten returns to town This year’s Enlighten festival will take place from 1 to 11 March – a week and a half where culture and creativity collide in Canberra. The national institutions will be lit up with digital art projections by night, and the National Triangle precinct will come alive with music, entertainment, and food and beverage stalls. Later in the month, 9-17 March, hot air balloons will fly over Lake Burley Griffin in the morning. People should come “to have a great night out, to see something really interesting and exciting, and see the city showcase some of its best elements”, says Ross Triffitt, executive branch manager at Events ACT. This year, Mr Triffitt says, there will be a lot of variety across the architectural projections. To celebrate the 35th birthday of Parliament House, which opened in May 1988, the façade will show projections of a Lego model of the building designed by Lego-certified
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professional and TV personality, Ryan ‘Brickman’ McNaught. “Everyone’s familiar with Lego, [so] it’ll be a great way to see this iconic building change into something that people can relate to,” Mr Triffitt says. The two galleries’ digital projections will showcase Indigenous artists. At the National Portrait Gallery, Dylan Mooney, a legally blind Indigenous and South Sea Islander artist, will draw a different portrait each night to be projected onto the building as he creates it. No two nights will be the same. The National Gallery of Australia will launch Vincent Namatjira’s Australia in colour, a commissioned projection and sound-based work. “One of the things we’re most fortunate to have in this city is the national cultural institutions that are the holders of the nation’s stories,” Mr Triffitt says. “Enlighten is the one
The Enlighten Festival will light up the National Triangle from 1 to 11 March, while the Canberra Balloon Spectacular will take to the skies from 9 to 17 March, weather permitting. Images supplied.
time that we bring everything together in an innovative and different way.” The projections on the buildings will be partnered with illuminated installations. A virtual reality experience, from Studio Go Go, is influenced by Leonardo da Vinci’s fabulous flying machines: a glider, skydiving, an ornithopter, and a helical screw. Meanwhile, dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures will roam around Civic Square, in the City Illuminations exhibition, Before Us. (continued page 6)
canberradaily.com.au