Sydney Art Month 2016

By Niall Roeder.

Sydney Art Month is March. A citywide arty fiesta bigging-up contemporary art and artists with a gaggle of exhibits, talks, workshops, tours and good ol’ fashioned merry making. March is Sydney Art Month. Hold on to your wigs.

Art Month 2016 roars to life Tuesday, March 1, and under the tutelage of new artistic honcho we can expect some new locations and concepts to be thrown into the mix. Let’s have a gander at what’s going on…

Tours

Discover Sydney’s art-underbelly throughout March on artist led walking tours, art studio excursions and curated bus missions. Options includes Newtown Graffiti Tour with Culture Scouts, City Art Tours of Redfern, Leichhardt Open Studio Trail and Camera Essentials and heaps more.

Exhibitions

And when they say exhibitions, they mean EXHIBITIONS. Expect an huge amount of varying showcases. There’s too many to list, but the pick of the bunch for me are as follows:

Artists’ Playground | The Galeries

The Galeries precinct is being turned from a shopping zone and rat race food court into a living street art gallery. With artists like Georgia Hill, Apeseven, Bafcat, Nadia Hernandez, Vincent Buret, Genevieve Reynolds, Jess Cruikshank, Dion Horstmans, Maricor/Maricar, Gunjan Aylawdi and Numskul getting involved, this one is a no-brainer.

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Aka weavingwarpweft.women is a exhibition of contemporary woven forms and includes talks on International Women’s Day on how female artists use their work to convey social messages.

Beard

Brock Elbank has been documenting beards (someone had to do it!). This collection of portraits is rich, masculine and full of character, much like the thick facial hair that unites them. In the future, keep an eye for Elbank’s next project, Freckles.

Unite – Colouring-in for Adults

Join over 300 other already-participating entrants on Todd Fuller’s animation ‘The Unite Project’ by adding your own drawing, colouring, writing or collage work. It’s fun. It’s free. It’s being a part of something.

BDSM

Bondage, dominance, submission and sadomasochism. Do those words make you feel uneasy or embarrassed? Simon Bernhardt is challenging the notion that BDSM is somehow perverted and guilty, and attempts to the remove such stigmas. It’s the 21^st century, relax and embrace the awkwardness.

Are you going to be into all of those exhibitions? Maybe not. But if not, no doubt there’ll be heaps of others you will be into. Browse through the list, make a plan, then get out there.

Experiences

Don’t just stroll through galleries, hands linked behind your back, stroking your chin. Get involved. There are painting and sculpture workshops, animation for teens sessions, laminated stain glass window classes and 19^th century photography lessons.

Art at Night

This includes Art Month-curated DIY art trails, Art Bars by Cake Wines and opening night gallery parties. Art + drinks = fun. It also relaxes the inhibitions of that one mate on describing art… “This one speaks to me… because it conveys 60% of human emotion, 100% of the time… know what I mean?”. Yes mate, we know what you mean.

If you are in need of a place to rest your head, QT Sydney have an Art at Night package for you… because life should be easy.

Art Month runs from March 1 -20

Image: Sydney Art Month