Sunday, 3 April 2016
It was opening night at the 2016 Adelaide Fringe … crowds gathered on the steps and lawns around the South Australian Museum on North Terrace… almost nightfall.
Time now for Fringe Director Heather Croall to welcome all to the traditional land of the Adelaide Plains’ Kaurna people and launch the Fringe.
So began Tangkuinyendi Yabarra – Dreaming Light …the largest Kaurna architectural art projection ever created in South Australia…developed over many significant months in a bi-cultural collaboration with Karl Telfer (Kaurna cultural adviser and co-producer), Paitya dancers and illuminart …told in a most spectacular way as one of the Fringe Illuminations projects.
See more on the project development and content here
Here on Adelaide’s boulevard of colonial culture, stories of the area’s ancient culture were being told live through the movement of indigenous dancers and within a powerful traditional fire ceremony before a crackling of sparks rose to the sky. For a moment everything went beautifully quiet … and, as if the sparks ignited the walls, the Mortlock Wing of the State Library lit up with a continuation of the live stories now to be told in the most modern ways of illuminating projection art.
Tangkuinyendi Yabarra played in rich luminous colour on the stone walls of two historic buildings for two weeks as part of Fringe Illuminations, a broader illumination of North Terrace for the Adelaide Fringe, the largest Fringe Festival in the Southern Hemisphere. Seven sites along the cultural boulevard were illuminated with cultural and graphic projections.
It was an honour for Illuminart to co-create the projection art for three of these sites and a privelege to have the time with Kaurna people and cultural leader Karl Telfer, who trusted and supported us to shed light on important stories and rituals through the medium of light and projection.
