AMILTON D E S I G N G L A S S The artwork of Jeffrey Hamilton

Festival City

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I'm not sure when exactly it happened but Sydney has become a City of Creative Festivals, each one of them offering so much it's a wonder anyone has a chance to do the laundry or simply cook a meal! And if you're feeling bored or lonely you're just not paying attention.

As if the Sydney Film Festival in June was not enough, we now have the Sydney Underground Film Festival to open the month of September. Unfortunately yours truly has been beavering away in the studio and didn't get to any of the delightful films on offer.

UPDATE: Sadly this festival met its demise with COVID19.

Then Sydney Fringe Festival kicked off last week with a flurry of exhibitions and performances. I took myself over to St Peter's on Friday night to catch an outdoor bondage piece by my friend Garth Knight at the back of Tortuga Studios, just off May Street. I had no idea I would get caught up in a rambling visual feast of illuminated madness.

Following hard on the heels of the Sydney Fringe is Art and About. This is basically an outdoor art festival run by the City of Sydney which began largely as a way of decorating the city streets and parks for spring. It has evolved into a major Arts Festival with such immediacy, such relevance and artistic integrity, that it rivals the Sydney Biennale. As far as I am aware, this is the first year that international artists have been invited to participate, and what stars!

One such artist, Isidro Blasco has just had a solo show at Dominic Mersch Gallery (formerly at Dank Street Galleries, Waterloo). Blasco lives and works in New York and has wrought his transformational magic in one of our inner city laneways. I immediately fell in love with Isidro's work when I saw his 2010 exhibition at the Mersch Gallery. I wrote at the time that here is an artist who has brought photography into the realm of contemporary sculpture, adding nmuch to both disciplines.

Art and About will launch in Martin Place on Friday night, 23rd Sept. A walk through the photographic exhibition in Hyde Park is a must.

As Art and About winds up at the end of October (some of the laneway installations satay in place till end of Jan 2012), Paste Modernism 3 opens November 4th on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour, as part of the street art festival called 'THE OUTPOST'.

The island will be transformed into a month long celebration of street and urban art, featuring prominent local and international artists as well as a number of events and projects similar to Paste-Modernism. The festival continues until Dec 11th.