Harbour Lights

The Sydney Opera House’s iconic sails are the annual centrepiece of its acclaimed Vivid LIVE program, a curated showcase of the world’s most exciting contemporary music, which is part of  the larger Vivid Sydney festival, the world’s largest festival of light, music and ideas. The Vivid Sydney festival is owned and operated by Destination NSW and is held across central Sydney over three weeks in May and June. Vivid Sydney features light sculptures and building projections that transform the facades of distinguished buildings and landmarks, including the Sydney Opera House, Harbour Bridge, Customs House and Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2016, the Sydney Opera House’s Head of Indigenous Programming, Rhoda Roberts, has curated the annual lighting of the sails, which will this year be transformed into a vast animated canvas by the work of six indigenous artists: Karla Dickens, Djon Mundine, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Reko Rennie, Donny Woolagoodja and the late Gulumbu Yunupingu. Titled Songlines, the work conflates time and space, weaving history lines and trade routes into a pattern of sharing systems, and marks an historic moment on the land known to the local Gadigal people for thousands of years as Tubowgule. Vivid began as Luminous, a festival curated by Roxy Music alumnus, inventor of ambient music and perpetual pioneer Brian Eno. In collaboration with lighting designer Bruce Ramus, Eno projected “Light Painting” onto both sides of the Opera House. The festival was championed by curators and directors Mary-Anne Kyriakou, Anthony Bastic, Mike Day, Davina Jackson and Barry Webb.