From a competition designed to celebrate switching your mind off and doing literally nothing, and a previously announced playable art installation exploringing the radical roots of mini-golf (with two more artists announced today: experimental Australian duo Soda Jerk and Hobart-based artist and photographer Pat Brassington), through to an eclectic, alternative live music program, as well as new exhibitions and performances from around Australia and across the world, RISING 2025 has much to offer the discerning arts lover, whatever your tastes or budgets.
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The third edition of Melbourne’s winter festival (created after the Victorian Government merged Melbourne Festival and the hugely popular White Night Melbourne in 2020, but then cancelled by the pandemic in both 2020 and 2021, the latter after only one night) was officially launched this morning (Wednesday 12 March).
The festival has attracted its fair share of criticism in the last 12 months, being described in The Age as having ‘an identity crisis‘ while, in an expansive feature, ArtsHub contributor Jessi Ryan noted that RISING’s future felt uncertain.
“To me, how it feels now is that RISING, in a way, is about lifestyle,” David Kemp, a Melbourne-based performing artist and former Artistic Director of Lonely Planet, told Ryan for their RISING feature. “It’s part of that image of Melbourne as a really great city to live in. You go out to a show and then to a restaurant or a bar – there is nothing wrong with that, but it makes art consumable and dilutes its impact.”
Read: Has RISING risen only to face a future fall?
The full program was released at 6am and contains a range of events designed to activate Melbourne’s unusual spaces – with criticisms of previous editions of RISING going unaddressed by RISING co-Artistic Directors Hannah Fox and Gideon Obarzanek, who perhaps hope the festival’s program will speak for itself.
“RISING is about breaking conventions – bringing wild, intimate and unexpected creativity into the heart of Melbourne,” the pair said in this morning’s media statement.
“We are a festival of art, music and performance that is proudly challenging and uncompromisingly inclusive. This year, audiences are invited to navigate a storm of lasers in the prismatic fantasy of the Capitol Theatre, swim through a composition of tactile sound in the City Baths, join in an audiovisual experiment deep under the ground of our town square or compete in the defiant act of doing nothing.”
Speaking at this morning’s media launch, Fox added: “A continuing challenge [for RISING] is the very busy cultural calendar in Melbourne and we’re very proud to be a part of it. I think part of our role is having a point of distinction and the ways that we approach that is about focusing on the new in art music and performance, and also really focusing on having that walkable footprint that’s super visible. That’s something we’re constantly building and trying to reach that level of cut-through with greater Melbourne through having that consistency and that critical mass around the Town Hall.”
Obarzanek chimed in: “Many of our shows are about people really becoming involved, literally in the show. Part of that, for instance, is Shohei Fujimoto’s show at the Capitol Theatre [Intangible #Form, 5-15 June], which fills the whole auditorium and the audience is walking through that as the experience.”
Program highlights RISING 2025
One immediate highlight of RISING 2025 that leaps from the program is the internationally-acclaimed Space-Out Competition by South Korean artist Woopsyang, developed in 2014 as a response to stress and burnout. In a world obsessed with hustle and constant achievement, Space-Out in the courtyard of QV Melbourne on 9 June will offer a refreshingly radical, free (participants must be registered) public challenge: do nothing.
The rules are simple: sit for 90 minutes and maintain a state of calm – no sleeping, no laughing, no technological distractions. The work is a test of focus and control, as participants aim to achieve the purest form of stillness, making it the perfect antidote to the constant pressures of modern life.
Other RISING events to have caught our eye include queer cult musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the Athenaeum Theatre (13-26 June), Portishead vocalist Beth Gibbons performing songs from Lives Outgrown, her 2024 debut solo album, at Hamer Hall (Saturday 1 June) in her first Australian performances since 2011 and, on the outside of Hamer Hall, Moorina Bonini’s new public artwork, Matha, an expression of cultural regeneration, drawing on the artist’s deep, ancestral connection to Yorta lands and the Dhungala/Murray River. Visions of trees, waterways and the creation of cultural belongings are intertwined with song by Bonini’s family, focusing on new ways of making ceremony and helping Language thrive in the present.
Across the road, Blockbuster (Saturday 7 June) will transform Federation Square with the sights, sounds and flavours of Punjab (presented in partnership with and co-commissioned by Fed Square and SalamFest)a day-to-night celebration of South Asian culture, including an art truck, street food and, after dark, a dynamic line-up of Pakistani R&B, Punjabi rap, Sufi melodies and deep 808 bass straight from Lahore.
A few blocks north along Swanston Street, live music hub Max Watt’s will host Chapter Music’s End of an Era party (Saturday 7 June) in honour of the staunchly independent record label‘s 33rd and final anniversary, featuring sets from bands such as Npcede, Ryan Davis, LUGs, Tenniscoats, Andras and Oscar, Sidney Phillips and Gregor, alongside a special farewell performance from co-label head and indie music champion Guy Blackman. After three more releases this year (Teether and Kuya Neil’s YEARN IV album, Npcede’s debut EP and Blackman’s new solo album Out Of Sight), Chapter will cease releasing new music by contemporary artists. The label will continue in reduced form, releasing the occasional reissue and tending to its extensive back catalogue.
End of an Era is part of a larger event, Daytripper, featuring a sprawling line-up of bands across multiple venues – Melbourne Town Hall, Night Trade, The Capitol, RMIT and Max Watt’s – on the same day. A single ticket provides access to all venues, capacity permitting. Brooklyn shoegazers DIIV, Ripple Effect Band slinging saltwater rock from Arnhem Land and Sydney’s garage-punk outfit Antenna are among the many bands on the Daytripper bill. Chapter Music is also helping stage a free celebration of Melbourne’s famous Little Bands scene in the late 1970s and early 80s, as immortalised in the 1986 film Dogs in Space (Saturday 14 June).
The arts program includes UK company Forced Entertainment’s Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare (6-15 June), in which six performers perform streamlined versions of the Bard’s famous plays with household objects playing every character – a vase for the Prince, a jar for Juliet, a Dettol bottle as the nurse, and salt and pepper shakers as the King and Queen; the Victorian premiere of Stephanie Lake Company’s The Chronicles (12-15 June), a sweeping meditation on time, change and collective resilience, brought to life through dance, choral music and electrifying soundscapes; and from Sydney’s Belvoir and playwright-director S. Shakthidharan (Counting and Cracking), a gripping mother-daughter character study that delves into the complexities of tradition, progress and self-discovery, The Wrong Gods (6 June – 12 July).
Victoria’s Minister for Creative Industries, Colin Brook, said of the 2025 program: “This winter, RISING festival is set to dazzle and surprise us, transforming Melbourne’s iconic spaces with creativity – from a mini-golf inspired exhibition in the Flinders Street Station Ballroom to laser beams in the Capitol Theatre and a massive participatory music event at Melbourne Town Hall that will get the city singing and dancing. There’s also a huge offering of music, theatre and dance, showcasing our incredible local talent alongside a big line-up of international acts. There are plenty of ways to get involved and plenty of reasons to visit Melbourne this winter.”
RISING runs from Wednesday 4 June to Sunday 15 June 2025. Visit the RISING website for full program details.
