Saturday, August 2, 2008

Pop Up Art

Pierre Huyghe, A Forest of Lines

For a short moment in time a displaced outdoor environment appeared at the opera house as part of the Biennale of Sydney. Pierre Huyghe an artist from France filled the entirety of the main concert hall with hundreds maybe thousands of trees creating misty damp and humid forest in the darkness. The forest was parted by narrow tracks that lead the audience on a winding journey through a maze up and down stairs and around in circles, immersing the viewer in an enchanted world taking the audience from the centre of the city suddenly into a fairy tale of magical wonderment or into the jungle at night.

OH&S seemingly was a problem for this installation as the dim lights for the stairs remained on showing walking track and unfortunately also exposing the power cables and the pots giving away the illusion of displacement and rushing you back to the reality of the real world showing the guts of the how the work was constructed. I absolutely loved this concept though was left wishing that the inner workings had been a concealed a little better so that I could fully experience this amazing concept completely and lose myself for an hour or so before heading back outside to commuter hell and off to work for the day.

4 comments:

Meg said...

I volunteered to help set this work up, and to be honest I think that kind of ruined the illusion for me early on, along with the bored-looking Biennale guards posted on every corner on the actual day. But I agree - it was a good concept, and most of the people I saw (who obviously weren't looking as closely at everything as you) seemed to be very taken with it.
Even if it wasn't entirely convincing as another world, it was certainly ambitious, and I don't think anything like this (in terms of its scale/location) is going to be repeated in Sydney anytime soon.

Anonymous said...

Did you go up to "the lookout"? I really lost myself up there. I felt like that was his "vision" completely.

M H said...

Hmmm unfortunatley (for me) I missed the look out, which was obviously at the highest point in the hall, which does sounds like thework would have seemed complete from that angle. I do have to say that I do agree that something of this size and scale may not appear in sydney anytime soon.

Meg said...

Was that sort of the dress circle bit? (The upper rows of seats - I'm kind of ignorant of theatre lingo.) If so, I agree with you, Anonymous, it looked so beautiful and real looking over the tops of the trees, particularly with the smoke machines. Unfortunately, I still found experiencing it at closer range not entirely convincing.