Stadium illuminated with art

A VIBRANT exploration of colour lit up Torquay North on Saturday night as crowds took a look at Illumination.

Supported by the Surf Coast Shire’s COVID Recovery Grants, the project explores the transformative nature of life, the land and constellations beyond, honouring the First Nations People and their ancient culture’s storytelling medium of paint.

Co-ordinated by Rebecca Hosking alongside Surf Coast artists Robert Kain, Kathryn Junor and Gwyn Wise, Illumination saw the moving paint landscapes projected at a large scale onto the northern exterior wall at the Wurdi Baierr Stadium accompanied by a soundscape.

“It was brilliant, I thought it was excellent,” Wise said.

She explained that the three painters created their contributions individually on their works before Hosking did the photography.

“We put the paint on then blew on it – I used a hair dryer, or you could use a thick straw to blow it along. You’d put it on an angle, and it’d run, and you got all these brilliant effects.

“I didn’t use lots of colours because I found if you used too many colours, you ended up with black or brown, so I just kept my colours bright, and that’s what came up.

“I was quite pleased with how it all turned out.

“I thought it was brilliant. I can visualise it could be a good backdrop with the silhouette of dancers. It could be used for lots of other things, as a backdrop for other events.

“And the wall was perfect – there’s not too many nice walls without no windows in them to display the works on.

“The lawn out the front was perfect for lookers, though we could have had a few more lookers.”

Wise said it was quite difficult to distinguish between the artists’ works when they were projected.

“It was hard to tell when it was up on the stadium – each one of us was saying ‘that’s yours, I think’; we weren’t 100 per cent sure.”