If you’re in Sydney from now till October 23, 2011, make sure to walk around town and take in all the art! Art & About Sydney is the city’s annual public arts festival that’s basically like one big, open-air art gallery. Projects by Australian and international artists are creatively re-imagining the streets, turning the city into a giant canvas.
This year’s artists include Rebar (San Francisco), Brook Andrew (Sydney-Melbourne), Barry McGee (San Francisco), Magda Sayeg (Austin), curated by Amanda Sharrad and Justine Topfer, with individual projects by Isidro Blasco (New York), Heidi Axelson, Hugo Moline and Adriano Pupilli (Sydney) and Sarah Langdon and Emma Pike (Sydney).
One standout is Deconstructing Ways by Isidro Blasco. It’s a crazy optical illusion that makes you think you’re looking down an actual, albeit colorful, street! City of Sydney describes it this way:
“Walking toward the intersection of Mullins Street and Market Row, you will now find yourself at a five-way crossroad. Overnight, another option to the usual route has appeared—an inverted, mirror-like image of Market Row as a new laneway. You are stopping at a place you walk through or pass by, but have never really looked at before. It takes you a moment to realize what you are seeing: a reconstruction of the space that surrounds you, distorted but strangely more real than the street you are standing on. For a second or two you will be surprised that your own image is not actually reflected in that new street…or is it? The acute perspective has a vortex-like effect. Although you cannot walk through it, your mind is guided into another way of looking at reality, where the multiple aspects and details of any living moment are broken down and represented through a layering and overlapping of surfaces to create perspective and three-dimensional volume.”
Deconstructing Ways debuted September 23 and will be at Mullins Street and Market Row until January 31, 2012.
Make sure to check it out!
