Hundreds of night owls will descend on the National Gallery of Victoria’s Great Hall to dance to the beat of their own headphones when a silent disco transforms the Gallery for White Night Melbourne.
Both NGV sites will stay open all night on Saturday 22 February where visitors can experience after-hours access to Melbourne Now which celebrates the latest art, architecture, design, performance and cultural practice to reflect the complex cultural landscape of creative Melbourne.
While the Great Hall will be taken over by a silent disco, NGV International will also entertain the crowds with DJ sets in Rory Hyde’s architecturally designed Bin dome, 2013, and a marathon 14 hour still-life drawing session in Community Hall. Visitors can also drop by between 2am–9am for live a broadcast by 3RRR featuring live acoustic performances.
The façade of NGV International will be illuminated when photographs of Melbourne’s skin art by Nicole Reed are projected onto the building as part of Tattooed City and visitors can also view the ticketed exhibition Edward Steichen & Art Deco Fashion which showcases the glamour and modernity of the Art Deco period with over 200 photographs and more than 30 fashion garments.
At The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, The Telepathy Project will participate in an endurance performance, enacting visitors’ dreams that have been submitted to the NGV as part of their project in Melbourne Now. Working with artworks from the NGV Collection that depict sleeping figures, The Telepathy Project invited visitors to the exhibition to take a postcard of these works, sleep with it under their pillow, record their dream and drop the card back into the NGV.
Special features of the night include an Audiokinetic jukebox; a single participant, immersive artwork integrating sound, movement, vibration and light into a multisensory aesthetic experience, developed by Darrin Verhagen at RMIT’s Audiokinetic Experiments (AkE) Lab.
A range of Melbourne Now artworks, including nine children’s commissions, will be activated from dawn to dusk across both NGV sites. Curator floor talks, live performances and a range of food and beverage options will also be on offer throughout the night. Melbourne Now is on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia and NGV International until 23 March 2014. 10am – 5pm. Free entry. Visit ngv.vic.gov.au or whitenightmelbourne.com.au for more details.
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