Sydney streets to come alive
Some Sydney streets will come to life for a day with the Shop yourself Stupid event on Saturday October 3.
Shops will be allowed by Council to put trestle tables outside their stores to give the streets a market-day feel, while several Art & About events will provide fun destinations for shoppers who may or may not have entered a stuporous state.
Businesses along Oxford Street from Whitlam Square to Paddington, Crown, Riley, Bourke & Flinders Streets, Hyde Park North and South, and World Square will take part. Money raised will go to the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation to assist people living with HIV. The hungry will enjoy a ‘Big BBQ’ lunch being thrown in Taylor Square, part of the Sydney International Food Festival.
During October, Art & About will focus on Oxford Street with a multitude of experiences. Visitors can take photos with a pinhole camera, step inside Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory, visit some of Australia’s most prestigious art schools, go on an art tour led by drag queens, listen to live jazz in a sunken garden, learn about war photography, watch hoardings become art, and purchase something local and unique at an art market.
Shopfronts will be transformed with art installations, roving bands will provide the acoustics, and the galleries and art schools will show off their finest. And of course the Sydney Life Photographic exhibition will be showing as usual in Hyde Park.
The full program is at artandabout.com.au. You’ll have to register to use the pinhole cameras which are made from recycled videocassette covers by artists Blu (.) Makina. Shots will be exhibited at the Tap Gallery. To participate, email the-hole-thing@snailmail.net.
by Michael Gormly
