Illuminate Adelaide 2022 set to boost visitation to our city this winter

Australia’s newest major event, Illuminate Adelaide today unveiled its program of light, music, art, innovation and immersive experiences including Istanbul-based visionaries Ouchhh Studio’s major exhibition, Wisdom of AI Light, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s ground-breaking band Gorillaz, the return of celebrated Montreal studio Moment Factory’s Light Cycles at the Botanic Gardens, the free city-wide centrepiece City Lights plus genre-defying music and visual series KLASSIK underground, and electronic music event Unsound.

Taking place from 1 – 31 July, the second iteration of Illuminate Adelaide promises to entice locals, interstate and international visitors to the city as it brings the streets of Adelaide to a bright and intriguing light this winter.

Despite wild weather and a COVID lockdown impacting the inaugural year, Illuminate Adelaide managed to attract over 500,000 attendances and bring more than $30 million to the South Australian economy. Minister for Tourism Zoe Bettison said:

“We are delighted to be supporting Illuminate Adelaide through the South Australian Tourism Commission.

"Illuminate Adelaide celebrates our commitment to the tourism, arts and technology sectors and enables South Australia to be viewed on the world stage as an innovator and leader in these fields.

“This event has art, light, music and technology at its core and brings them into the public realm and venues of the city with a highly accessible program. I encourage all South Australians to rally their family and friends this winter, come into our beautiful city over the month of July, buy a ticket to an experience and walk the free City Lights program, and immerse yourselves in Illuminate Adelaide.

“We are one of the world’s great creative cities and this event generates job opportunities for thousands South Australians across the arts, technology, hospitality and tourism sectors.”

Co-founders and creative directors, Rachael Azzopardi and Lee Cumberlidge said:

“After an overwhelming response to our inaugural program in 2021 we are delighted to announce for 2022 an expanded program of experiences, installations, and performances showcasing the very best examples of the convergence of art and technology our city and the world has to offer right now.

“We are looking forward to welcoming hundreds of thousands of South Australians and visitors to our state into our city to participate in a massive program of free and ticketed events across the month of July.”

In an Australian premiere and Illuminate Adelaide exclusive, the Istanbul-based visionaries at Ouchhh Studio feature their work with NASA and CERN as well as the work of Leonardo da Vinci in their major exhibition Wisdom of AI Light, an AI driven multisensory experience that’s putting the art in artificial intelligence.

Housed in a massive, specially designed projection pavilion constructed in the East End of the Adelaide CBD, it’s a work of extraordinary scale and vision from the pioneers of data paintings and sculptures, which takes the viewer on a journey through art and science from the Renaissance to the future.

Ouchhh Studio is Illuminate Adelaide’s 2022 Luminary Artist In Residence, and in addition to Wisdom of AI Light, the Studio will also present Ocean Data at Light Adelaide as part of the City Lights program, and Ouchhh Studio directors Ferdi Alici and Eylul Alici can be heard in conversation at an artist keynote address.

Long before online concerts and festivals became a thing, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett seamlessly meshed art, music and technology together to create the world’s greatest virtual band. Now, having turned this playful experiment into an enduring and innovative global phenomenon, 2D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel are set to perform for one night only in Adelaide.

Illuminate Adelaide’s free city-wide centrepiece City Lights returns with a new series of immersive installations, artworks and large-scale activations set to turn Adelaide’s most iconic streetscapes into a night-time adventure of colour and sound. With more than 40 free works over 17 days, it will be a brand new program of boundary-pushing local and international artists who will reimagine laneways, street-fronts and open spaces across the city in three precincts: North, East and West.

The runaway hit of Illuminate Adelaide’s inaugural program, Light Cycles, is back by popular demand, returning to Adelaide Botanic Gardens. This Australian-first production from celebrated Montreal studio Moment Factory enchants the senses in a series of installations using lights, audio, video and special effects to take audiences on a magical journey. 

In an Australian premiere, Joanna Dudley’s operatic video installation We Will Slam You With Our Wings steals from some of history’s most notoriously sexist speeches and recasts them into a feminist war cry echoing through the ages. A seven-channel video piece, each screen depicts a 19th century colonial imperialistic portrait, with one noticeable difference: instead of a lavish depiction of white powerful men, six young girls, each from a different continent, stand in their own room and own frame with Dudley in the seventh.

After a sold out 2021 world premiere season, Light Creatures is back to take audiences behind the gates of Adelaide Zoo after dark. This captivating twist on the animal kingdom is brought to life by the talents of local and interstate artists, commissioned to create lanterns and illuminations.

International series KLASSIK underground will make its Australian debut, transforming Adelaide’s Dom Polski Centre into an up-close and immersive concert series combining classical music with live visuals from leading Australian artists.

Globetrotting Australian violist, member of the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig and founder of KLASSIK underground, Tahlia Petrosian, will direct the collaboration between a star-studded ensemble of musicians and Australia’s foremost visual artists including CAPITAL WASTE (Liam Somerville), Robin Fox and Margie Medlin.

The Illuminate Adelaide 2022 music program will also feature Unsound - the international celebration of cutting edge experimental and electronic music - returning to its spiritual home in the southern hemisphere.

Program highlights include frequent collaborators and mind-bending performers Sinjin Hawke (USA) & Zora Jones (Austria) and Australian cult favourites HTRK, and Air Max ’97. who will feature at the late night Unsound Club at The Lab.

Nexus Arts will play host to a collaboration between Chinese-Australian avant-garde composer Mindy Meng Wang and Melbourne-based Tim Shiel. Having released their critically acclaimed EP ‘Nervous Energy’ in 2021 this will be one of the first chances for listeners to see the duo’s live sonic splendour and actualisation of their project.

Also at Nexus Arts, the ARIA-nominated Eishan Ensemble will perform their blend of contemporary and classical music traditions of both East and West. Led by acclaimed Persian-Australian tar player and composer Hamed Sadeghi, his psychedelic virtuosity is joined by the individual talents of Michael Avgenicos on saxophone, Adem Yilmaz on percussion, and Maximillian Alduca on double bass, to create the layered and sophisticated soundscapes that are Eishan.

At The Lab at Light, a distinctive music program will feature each weekend across four weeks. In this special co-curated program with Illuminate Adelaide, light and sound will converge to present some of the most cutting-edge new music locally and from around the globe with the full program being announced in June.

Discover the program at www.illuminateadelaide.com.