VIVID VISIONS:
Megan Nicol Reed
Megan Nicol Reed sees Sydney in an entirely new light.
BY NOW half of Sydney may well have seen me naked.
It’s not that I’m trying to be an exhibitionist. Nor that I’m deliberately parading in front of my hotel window (which FYI is the swanky Four Seasons, conveniently located a stone’s throw from Circular Quay with a deliciously fresh take on the standard hotel breakfast buffet).
No, I am merely getting ready for bed. It’s just that I cannot bear to draw the curtains.
Sydney Harbour is a beautiful sight on any old day. Or night. But during Vivid, the lighting festival that overtakes the city every year, it is quite astonishing. The Harbour Bridge is lit up (this time by spectators themselves, who can choose the scene and the colour of the projection from an interactive touch screen on the Luna Park boardwalk). The Opera House is lit up (I’m not so sure that the combination of ‘‘light projection, video mapping and motion graphics’’ takes me on ‘‘a playful journey through time, exploring technological milestones’’ as the programme promises, but it sure is pretty). Heck, virtually every solid surface (and some not so solid surfaces) is lit up.
And so it is that for the three nights I’m there, I go to sleep every night in a strobe-lit nightclub.
Vivid started in 2009 as a light festival, and has now branched out into music and ideas. The 18-day programme is so jampacked with events, activities, exhibitions and performances it can be tricky to get your head around it all. Hardened festival goers could happily fill their itinerary from morning to night with cultural enrichment. Me, I’m happier mixing it up with a healthy dose of shopping and eating out.
Within an hour of checking in, I am enjoying smooth grilled eggplant with light and dark miso pastes and crispy salt and pepper tofu at contemporary Japanese restaurant Sake. The food is lovely. I am distracted, though, by the girls working front of house. They wear the highest heels and the skimpiest clothes and are so very Sydney.
I toss up whether to while away the afternoon at Zara or the Museum of Contemporary Art. Against instinct I choose culture over retail. I particularly enjoy an exhibition of Canadian Jeff Wall’s oversized photographs.
Sydney’s horrendous traffic makes Auckland’s seem positively benign. Jumping into a cab, for what I have been told is a short ride to Darling Harbour, I am