White Night...and bright lights

Not wanting to be in the cultural dark for too long, Melbourne has taken a cue from the extremely successful Nuit Blanche festival in Paris and hosted its own White Night festival...a night when art, culture and performance reign supreme from dusk 'til dawn.  With stunning light installations, edgy performances, large and small concerts, and a range of indescribable and more than often, unclassifiable happenings, White Night was everything it promised to be...and all for free. Melburnians, never wanting to miss a bargain,  took full advantage of it all...including the warm, balmy and cloudless 24 degree evening.  I have not seen Melbourne heaving, to the extent that my companion exclaimed, quite volubly, that the streets are "...hemorrhaging humanity!"  Impossible to fully explore the complete extravaganza before exhaustion took over, I nonetheless, managed to somewhat broaden my horizons before bedtime.

My White Night started in the National Gallery of Victoria with Michel Blazy's extraordinary installation, 'Bouquet Final 2'. Well known for using every day organic and live materials to give birth to a strange kind of shifting art, he kept true to past themes and created a towering, continuously flowing tower of creamy white foam under the famed stained glass ceiling of the Great Hall. While not particularly thought provoking, it did make me want to dive right in!

 Negotiating the ever increasing crowds was no mean feat, but not wanting to miss the first ever (sanctioned) live music event under the famous clocks of Flinders Street Station, I pointy-elbowed my way through the masses to find a vantage point from which to view the performances. I considered my options carefully and thought I would try my luck at yet another of Melbourne's iconic landmarks, Young and Jackson's, a pub of some repute, not least for Chloe, the famous nude portrait which has graced the walls of the Young and Jackson's Hotel since 1909. Fortune was clearly on my side for my companion and I secured two chairs at the open window of Chloe's bar, directly opposite the Flinders Street stage and, incidentally, next to the portrait of the immodest Chloe! With a cooling zephyr wafting through the window and a cold beer in hand, there could be no better seat in town...a fact that was frequently relayed to us from the punters behind, who were craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the action below.

It seemed at times that Melbourne was on fire and ablaze with the coloured lights and laser installations that graced the skyline and buildings and I marvelled at the way the grand illuminations lit up what are often drab buildings by the light of day. The oohs!, aahs! and whoops! of delight from the revellers on seeing the every changing facade of what is normally just described as 'the city', added to the ever emerging pageant.

One of my favourite installations was 'World Without Sun' by Canadian artist Christine Davis. Combining visceral sound and light-scapes projected on six satellite dishes, she explores multiple subjective environments that seem bent on destruction. Very interesting and mood inspiring and clearly a message for all of us.

Such a perfect night could not be truly perfect without a tipple to whet the whistle and quench the thirst.  An ice cold lager or three was the clear and only choice this evening...a Peroni Nastro Azzuro. Brewed in Italy, this refreshing pale lager is the perfect accompaniment to live music, light shows, installations and street performances on a balmy evening. Aaaah!