South Australia’s capital city will soon be host to a celebration of light, innovation, technology, music and art as Illuminate Adelaide descends upon the streets over two weeks and three weekends.
The festival will commence on Friday, July 16 and feature an array of installations, live performances and immersive experiences spread out over 17 days. The event is sure to give local residents a reason to be excited and will of course inject some much-needed revenue into South Australia’s economy.
For non-residents, the celebration could be the perfect excuse to snap up one of Qantas and Virgin’s half-price flights to The Festival City for some cultural fun — after all, there will be more than 150 installations, performances and events to choose from along with 41 world premieres.
According to the official website, Iluminate Adelaide will “light up the city’s streets, laneways and architecture with a program of free and ticketed events by local, national and international artists and companies”.
Kicking off the festival’s Luminary Artists in Residence program will be The Avalanches who will perform their debut album Since I Left You — which is now 20-years-old — live with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. The album performance is just one of five events the electronic act will take part in over the two and a half weeks.
Additionally, attendees can experience Van Gogh Alive — a one-of-a-kind, multi-sensory, immersive installation that has so far attracted more than six million people across 50 global cities, including Rome, Berlin, Hong Kong and, most recently, Sydney.
Adelaide Zoo will also get the light installation treatment with Light Creatures which features illuminations and large-scale lanterns inspired by the colourful and captivating characters of the zoo’s regular residents, while City Lights will see the CBD transformed into “a nocturnal playground of projections, imagination and light.”
In a statement, Adelaide Premier Steven Marshall expressed his excitement about the newly created festival calling it “a terrific addition to SA’s year-round calendar of events”.
“It will give hotels, restaurants and cafes a much-needed winter boost and more importantly, showcase that SA is back in business. We’re out there, putting on world-class events, keeping our economy strong and celebrating our creative best,” Marshall said.
“We’re going to give people plenty of reasons to get off their couches, to get out of the house in the winter months, and support our city’s arts, music, tourism and hospitality sectors — creating and sustaining local jobs in the process.”
The inaugural Illuminate Adelaide runs from July 16 to August 1. For more information and to purchase tickets, head to the official website.
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