2012 St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival at Sydney College of the Arts

Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) is proud to announce the launch of a brand new art event as part of the 2012 St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival

Laneway Festival Sydney has settled into its new home at Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney, with 2012 marking the third consecutive year at this unique location. For the first time at the Festival, SCA will present the work of cutting edge Australian visual artists through a series of site-specific installations, sculpture, video, intervention and performance works. The art event will give you the chance to experience contemporary art by students and graduates of SCA, curated in three parts by leading Australian artists and SCA lecturers; Robyn Backen, Caleb Kelly and Ryszard Dabek.

The 2012 Laneway Festival will present over 30 local and international bands on stages across the SCA Campus on Sunday 5 February from 11.30am to 10pm.

Professor Colin Rhodes, SCA Dean, said: “ Sydney College of the Arts is excited to be holding the festival once again within the sandstone ambiance of Kirkbride, and to be showcasing the work of SCA artists alongside the impressive 2012 festival line-up.”

Kirkbride was built in 1883 as a state-of-the-art mental hospital. In 1996, SCA moved into the precinct, which has for the past three years also been an exciting and interactive site for the Laneway Festival.

“It is highly appropriate that an art school is the location for a music festival that supports such a broad range of urban music, both new and old favourites," Professor Rhodes said.

The Laneway Festival, which prides itself on finding what's fresh and great in the music industry and bringing it to unique settings and surrounds to be appreciated by music lovers, will now expand its focus to what’s fresh and great to the contemporary art world, through the new festival-only SCA art event.

Caleb Kelly, the First Year Coordinator at SCA, is no stranger to producing music events locally and internationally, with a reputation for experimental projects, including impermanent.audio, High Reflections, Typhoon and What is Music? Kelly has published on the staging of experimental music in Australia and written a book on the destructive use of turntables and CD players for the generation of audio in expanded sound arts practices. His Laneway line-up will include Julian Day, Pia Van Gelder, Jonathan Hochman and Anna John, and Mark Shorter (aka Renny Kodgers).

Robyn Backen, one of Australia’s leading installation artists and the Master of Studio Art Coordinator at SCA, has curated a selection of artworks that actively engage and explore the surrounds of Callan Park and the SCA Campus grounds, located in the historic Kirkbride buildings.

The works in Backen’s program respond to the surrounding site, with the artists installing pre-existing work and new site-specific installations, performances and interventions, which act as light, movement and sound beacons. Festival-goers will first encounter these subtle interventions at the entry gates to the Laneway event. Among the artists are: Donald Briersley, Bryden Williams and Alex Pye, who have recently completed the Bachelor of Visual Arts and Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) at SCA; and artists Jason Christopher, Stevie Fieldsend and Sarah Mockford, who are all studying at the SCA Graduate School.

Ryszard Dabek’s practice, which encompasses a number of mediums, including; moving image, sound and photography, engages with the recent past and in particular the idea of a present haunted by the legacy of the 20th century. Dabek, the Master of Interactive and Digital Media Coordinator at SCA, has extended the themes from his own practice to the program of videos on display at the Laneway Festival. The compilation, representing work by current students and recent graduates, covers a range of approaches to the moving image, from stop-motion animation to performance documentation. The works not only reveal the diversity of practices that SCA fosters, but also reflect upon the distinct uneasiness of the times in which we live. Videos featured in Dabek’s program include works by Andrew Newman, Bryden Williams, Claire Schierhout, Eloise Crossman, Emma Hicks, Graham Burchett, Greer Rochford, Greg Shapley, Isabella Andronos, Julia Rochford, Katherine Berger, Lucas Davidson, Sean Lowry and William Pritchett.

For your chance to see this unique art event, featuring cutting edge work by artists from Sydney College of the Arts, and to check out the 2012 Laneway Festival line-up, including acts such as; Live Child, Austra, SBTRKT and Feist, visit the festival website at sydney.lanewayfestival.com.au

Where: Laneway Festival, Sydney College of the Arts, Balmain Road Rozelle (enter opposite Cecily Street)
How to get to SCA: sydney.edu.au/sca/about/location/how_to_get_to_sca.shtml
When: 11.30am to 10pm, Sunday 5 February 2012
Further Information: T +61 2 9351 1016 or +61 4 1331 4590 E

Images: (top to bottom) Julian Day, image courtesy Grantpirrie Gallery, photo Terry Ross; Sarah Mockford, Untitled, 2011, installation view; Jason Christopher, Sound Machine, 2011, concept drawings; and Claire Schierhout, Hair, 2011, video still.