Meanjin/Brisbane will be transformed into an outdoor gallery of brightly coloured inflatables and sculptures this September, in a citywide takeover as part of Brisbane festival. Internationally renowned Australian artists and designers Craig Redman and Karl Maier – AKA Craig & Karl – will create colourful, inflatable installations on three of the Queensland capital’s central walking bridges, and present a public art trail of sculptures, inflatable installations, projections and animations through the city.
“It really will feel like the city is completely alive with this explosion of extraordinary colour,” said the Brisbane festival director, Louise Bezzina.
Redman and Maier, who met studying graphic design in Brisbane and currently collaborate remotely from London and New York, have previously created playful public art installations in cities including London, Hong Kong, Seoul and Taiwan, but the Brisbane city takeover will be their most ambitious project to date.
Griffith University Art Museum, the duo’s alma mater, will also host an exhibition of their work, which ranges from art projects to magazine covers and commercial collaborations with the likes of Chanel, Adidas and Apple. Bezzina called it a “beautiful homecoming”.
She said this year’s festival will focus on “grand public spectacles and engagement and joy” and is “very much about looking toward Brisbane 2032, the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and the journey that we have from now till then and then”.
“This is a real once-in-a-lifetime opportunity [for Brisbane] and I wanted to jump straight in and demonstrate the capacity [and] the ambition [of our artists], and really use the city as a stage to bring arts and culture to the forefront,” she added.
The ambitious centrepiece of the festival is large-scale remounting of Stephen Page’s outdoor performance Baleen Moondjan, which premiered at Adelaide festival in 2024 and will “return home” to Queensland, the home state of director and choreographer Page and the show’s designer, Jacob Nash.
Baleen Moondjan is inspired by a story from Page’s grandmother, a member of the Ngugi/Nunukul/Moondjan people of Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island) and celebrates First Nations’ connections between baleen whales and community totemic systems.
In Brisbane, the show will take place on a barge in Maiwar/the Brisbane River, with the audience seated in a purpose-built outdoor theatre at Queens Wharf. With the central location and Nash’s dramatic set design featuring giant whale bones, audiences walking across Neville Bonner Bridge won’t be able to miss it.
“Celebrating local First Nations stories is vital to our community and as we share who we are with the world. Baleen does this magnificently,” said Bezzina.
The First Nations-designed drone show Skylore, which debuted in 2023, will return this year, as will the popular opening weekend event Riverfire.
Queensland stories in this year’s program include Back to Bilo, a play co-presented by Queensland Theatre that will tell the story of the Nadesalingam family: the Tamil Sri Lankan asylum seekers who in 2018 were forcibly removed from the regional community of Biloela, where they had been living for four years, and imprisoned in immigration detention.
Back to Bilo, which draws on hundreds of hours of interviews in order to present people in their own words, also tells the story of the local women who fought for four years to bring Priya, Nades and their daughters Kopika and Tharnicaa back home.
“It’s a tremendous celebration of community,” says Bezzina. “I’m really thrilled that we can present the world premiere of this incredibly important story.”
A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen, inspired by the story of the family behind the much-loved Brisbane restaurant of the same name, will see singer-songwriter Josh Hinton cook his grandmother’s chicken curry while sharing stories of family, community, culture and food.
Neglected Brisbane theatre Twelfth Night, in Bowen Hills, will be transformed for the festival’s cabaret club offering, Gatsby at the Green Light, inspired by F Scott Fitzgerald’s jazz-age novel The Great Gatsby.
“[Twelfth Night theatre] was always known as a beloved place to see theatre in Brisbane,” says Bezzina. “It’s full of old-world charm, and when I walked in, I saw this beautiful potential – not just for a show, but for something bigger. I’m excited to introduce Brisbane audiences to the space in a new way, and I have no doubt the city will embrace it all over again.”
International highlights of Bezzina’s program include the Australian premiere of LA Dance Project’s Gems, choreographed by Benjamin Millepied, former principal with the New York City Ballet and choreographer of Oscar-winner Black Swan; and the world premiere of Bad Nature, a collaboration between the Brisbane-based Australasian Dance Collective and Dutch company Club Guy & Roni.
This will be Bezzina’s sixth and final program before she takes up the role of CEO and artistic director of Brisbane Powerhouse.
Brisbane festival runs 5-27 September
