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As planners and strategists find ways to rejuvenate Oxford Street’s cultural ‘mojo’, the City of Sydney is turning Taylor Square into an interactive art installation, as part of public art festival, Art & About.
This year, the three-week festival, which runs from October 9-19, is being extended to include Oxford Street for the first time.
Love TV, which will be set up on Taylor Square north, features a mock TV studio, designed as a Darlinghurst bed-sit. For nine days, shows will be broadcast on a giant screen, presented by Melbourne-based artist, Rebecca McIntosh, performing as ‘Aphrodite’. The shows will feature interviews with invited guests and celebrities as well as locals and passers-by, who will be asked to share their experiences and their love of Oxford Street, Darlinghurst and Surry Hills.
Gillian Minervini, Creative Director of Art & About, said that as well as functioning as a work of performance art, Love TV will also serve as a way of recording an oral history of Oxford Street. Love TV has had successful seasons at Edinburgh Festival and Melbourne Festival, she said.
Art & About, now in its seventh year, is Sydney’s largest public art festival.
“Art & About is about making art accessible, putting it in venues that you wouldn’t normally see there,” Minervini said. “Nowhere is safe from Art & About.”
Other events include a public launch on Taylor Square with live entertainment and exhibitions at the Burdekin Hotel and Oxford Art Factory. The fence of the Darlinghurst Court House will also be used as public gallery space for artworks.
The Oxford Street program is just one aspect of the three-week festival, which also includes Erskineville, Circular Quay and the CBD.
For more information, visit www.artandabout.com.au
Image courtesy of City of Sydney
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