Rebus Theatre’s Project Alchemy and the East Gippsland Winter Festival presents:
Lakes Lights
A full moon, winter solstice, lantern-filled highlight of the East Gippsland Winter Festival.
Project Alchemy Artist Lee Nickless was in charge of organising the gargantuan Lakes Lights display at this years East Gippsland Winter Festival.
After weeks of community lantern-making workshops crowds gathered at dusk, at the Lakes Entrance Footbridge to begin a moonlit walk across the Cunninghame Arm towards the surf. Following a unicycling lantern-juggler audiences discovered light sculptures and projections, set among the shores of the Lake’s edge to share in East Gippsland’s love of flora and fauna in light and song – and Virtual Reality.
Here are some words from Lee on the project:
I had the task of creating the display at the surf life saving club for Lakes Lights event for the 3rd year running. Which included large sculptural lanterns, projections, lighting installations and roving performers.
I had the pleasure of working with 15 artists who learned the skills to build lanterns in a series of hands-on workshops at Iceworks Studio in Lakes entrance. The level of commitment was outstanding and the quality of work was something I was super proud of. I had a vision and theme and artists mostly adhered to it but a few wanted to get a little more adventurous. Two months of work building them almost every day, all working as a team, encouraging and supporting each other, it was extremely rewarding to be part of.
One of my favorite little side projects was “eclipse” , the moth project I worked on with Mica Mahani to choreograph a journey of the bogong moth. 4 young people designed costumes and created and learned the routine in a series of workshops and it was performed in front of a giant moon installation that I worked on with Pip Moore. Although the moon did get quite crowded as it became a selfie hotspot.
I was so grateful to be supported by REBUS theatre company as a Project Alchemy artist in this little venture. It allowed me to expand the experience to so many more artists and the result speaks for itself. A huge thankyou to the artists, such an amazing, fun and supportive crew.
Project Alchemy is made possible thanks to funding from the Australian Government for the Black Summer Bushfire Grant Program.
Rebus is also supported by Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centres and the ACT Government.
More about Rebus here:
More about Project Alchemy here: https://rebustheatre.com/projectalchemy/