Night Visions, an immersive after-dark journey through Adelaide Botanic Garden on Kaurna Yarta (Kaurna Country), and featuring light shows, lasers, projections and sound, will be the centrepiece of Illuminate Adelaide 2025.
The project, revealed yesterday (Wednesday 16 April), was conceived and commissioned by Illuminate Adelaide, the city’s winter festival of art, light, music and technology.
Night Visions, which is inspired by parallel dimensions and quantum theory, features a predominantly Australian line-up of artists, including South Australians Jayden Sutherland (founder of The Bakery Design Co), lighting designer Chris Petridis (an artist and Night Visions’ Associate Creative Director), internationally in-demand Melbourne-based audiovisual alchemist Robin Fox (whose sound and laser show Triptych was a highlight of Illuminate’s Unsound Adelaide program in 2023; Fox also created the score for his partner, choreographer Stephanie Lake’s Mass Movement, at this year’s Adelaide Festival), and Sydney’s site-responsive projection artist Craig Walsh, whose practice includes innovative approaches to projection mapping in unconventional sites.
British light sculpture artist Amelia Kosminsky is also featured in Night Visions.
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About the artworks
In Phantasma, Kosminsky will distort the Garden’s Bamboo Walk into a prism-like world; Walsh will work with Cultural Consultant Jack Buckskin to create Monuments, a series of evocative, site-responsive projections on trees and other Botanic Garden features, depicting a number of significant First Nations portraits; Fox will utilise the creative potential of lasers and sound in an as-yet untitled work, that will see the Bicentennial Conservatory morphing into a multifaceted jewel; Petridis will turn lighting into mesmerising spectacle in Fracture and Sunrise, and Sutherland will breathe life into the visual world, creating a fusion of movement, emotion and sonic depth in his piece, Transmission.
Petridis tells ArtsHub: “As an artist and Associate Creative Director, my focus has been on finding a cohesive narrative for Night Visions. We landed on the idea of parallel universes – it’s a broad concept that will allow us to explore a wide range of experiences.
“We’ve invited local and international artists to create some extraordinary works in the Botanic Gardens, framed by and immersed in nature. I’m really excited and can’t wait for audiences of all ages to experience these works – each one offering a unique glimpse into another world, right in the heart of the Adelaide,” he says.
An Australian-led immersive experience
Night Visions is the latest after-dark experience at Adelaide Botanic Garden – and, importantly, an Australian-led production – as part of Illuminate Adelaide, after Light Cycles and Resonate by Canadian studio Moment Factory, and last year’s Fire Gardens by France’s Compagnie Carabosse (which ArtsHub previously reviewed in Melbourne).
A specially composed soundtrack by Melbourne-based composer, musical director and sound designer Jethro Woodward will unite the multiple installations through the Gardens by providing an evocative and unifying score.
Woodward is the recipient of numerous Green Room Awards for his expansive and highly layered film, theatre and dance scores for companies such as Malthouse Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Opera Victoria, Chamber Made Opera, Back to Back, Arena, Chunky Move, Lucy Guerin Inc, Aphids, Stuck Pigs Squealing and Rawcus. He has also received award nominations for composition and sound Design from the Sydney Theatre Awards, the Helpmann Awards and the Ruby Awards.
An emotional journry into parallel worlds
Illuminate Adelaide co-Founders and Creative Directors, Lee Cumberlidge and Rachael Azzopardi say: “For our milestone fifth year, we wanted to headline the program with an after-dark adventure that not only takes visitors on an emotional and sensory journey, but transports them into parallel realms.
“We have brought together the unique talents of six visionary artists to create a series of immersive, ‘other worldly’ environments across the garden using thousands of lights, lasers, projections and sound. Tree canopies will be transformed into evocative living monuments, walkways will become atmospheric gateways pulsing with colour and sound, and the Bicentennial Conservatory will burst with an array of cutting-edge laser and sound technology,” Cumberlidge and Azzopardi say.
The full program for Illuminate Adelaide 2025 will be announced on 29 April 2025. Night Visions runs from 2-20 July 2022, with self-guided sessions available every 15 minutes at Adelaide Botanic Garden.
