2018: Spotlight On Vivid Sydney Precinct, Royal Botanic Garden Sydney
04 May 2018
The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney has long been a favourite stage for the enchanting displays of Vivid Sydney. The vast expanse of gardens allows light artworks to be immense, intense, and seemingly endless.
During Vivid Sydney 2018, the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney will become home to some of the most impressive installations, from a party of parrots to interactive pathways of light. Check out some of the best things to do in the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney below.
Why visit?
The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney is delightful on any day of the year, but Vivid Sydney makes the space truly come alive. With activities tailored to both kids and adults, it’s a family-friendly venue that will leave everyone awestruck.
One of the best parts of seeing Vivid Sydney in the gardens is the variety. The gardens provide one of the largest expanses of space, so installations can be bigger, more interactive, and totally unrestricted. The gardens give you the chance to not only view the Vivid Sydney displays, but become a part of them, too.
What’s on display?
The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney will serve as the stage for ten artist installations, each one showcasing a unique combination of bewitching bulbs, intense illuminations, and kaleidoscope colours.
Visitors will be free to stand under a canopy of chattering, rainbow parrots, gaze upon a hovering, glowing web, and take centre stage in the middle of a brightly blooming flower. The Vivid Sydney displays will stretch across the gardens, posing in front of the iconic Sydney Harbour backdrop.
The installations scattered around the gardens will give you the chance to walk through, pass by, and become a part of the alluring presentations of light and colour.
Not to be missed
Australian artist Jen Lewin brings you an interactive landscape of light. Featuring meandering pathways, Aqueous uses platforms that react as audience participants walk and run, reflecting and shifting both colour and light.
Prepare to be hypnotised by the rippling, pulsing branches of The Nautilus Forest. Created by 24 trees and over 40,000 individual lights, the forest comes alive as visitors gaze at sweeping patterns of colour and captivating spiralling forms.
Bringing together light, movement, and shape, Oasis creates a beautiful sea of dancing bulbs. Oasis is reminiscent of fireflies and fields of flowers, with poignant points of light dancing on the surface of the water and surrounding the water’s edge. Artist James Feng and collaborator Minh Au intend for this installation to pay homage to the memory of Australia’s ‘forgotten’ children who have grown up in orphanages, children’s homes, foster care, and institutions.
Sound becomes visual in a Botanic Garden installation you won’t want to miss. More than eight metres in diameter, Hyperweb is a giant illuminated web that hovers six metres in the air and showcases spiralling patterns of light and colour. The dazzling display was crocheted by hand and is site-responsive, which means the ambient soundscape that pulses through the air will respond to variables such as movement, temperature, and humidity.
Have you ever wanted to be a piece of art? Here’s your chance. The Bloom is a giant, electric, metallic flower with reflective petals measuring almost five metres wide. At the centre of this brilliant bloom – is you. Visitors will be welcome to enter into the middle of the flower and pose for photos, framed by petals of light. The Bloom is covered in over 1000 individually controlled bulbs, used to make the flower morph into an infinite number of coloured patterns. It’s an interactive installation you won’t want to miss -- but will want to post on your Instagram feed.
Wish Happiness brings the positive energy to the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney during Vivid Sydney 2018. The colourful carousel is inspired by traditional Buddhist prayer wheels and offers peace and happiness to visitors who turn it. The act of spinning the wheel releases energy that projects an image onto the carousel, which is based on a Buddhist mandala. Rotate the wheel to hear a happy bell ring, signalling the transmission of positive thoughts out and into the universe.
When to go
You can catch the inspiring installations in the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney from 25 May through to 16 June. The lights will ignite at 6pm each evening, so come for a stroll and let the Vivid Sydney installations light up your night. The displays are free to visit, so don’t miss out on an evening of pure enjoyment.
Cost
See the ten unique Botanic Garden Sydney displays for free during Vivid Sydney 2018. There’s no cost to roam through the maze of lights, making it the perfect place for a night of family fun or a romantic walk.
