Harvest Arts

“You can tell how beautiful a city is by looking up” – this is a quote stored from travelling days past. Harvest is only a two-day pop-up city, but looking up and around is a constant delight, with the abundance of installation pieces within the lush Werribee Park grounds on this sunny Sunday.

Arts adventure ahoy. Bubble Up is an installation piece within the inviting Secret Garden (“that will look great at night” is said more than once). A woman with her front tooth blacked out greets and welcomes us into The Derital Wonderland tent. We duck. It's hot inside this space, which is lined with diroramas of found objects.

Cue. Happy Land™ is a sideshow that seems to contain bored, satirical Maccas employees. Heads are put into holes for photo ops. Rings are thrown onto a carny's erect pole. A token is won which results in fairy floss and a fact: “One-quarter of the bones in your body are in your feet”. As we leave, pleas from the attendants follow us out: “Enjoy your day. Please help me get out of here!”

A tree up ahead is covered in colour that from a distant looks like a yarn bomb explosion. But it's not. It's crêpe paper. The poor man's bomb? We spot comedian Felicity Ward loving Liars at the Red Tractor Tent before her Comedy Picnic slot.

The Le Boudoir tent has been flirting with us all day and it succeeds in its seduction (Nah, we were gagging for it!). The vibe inside is that of escapism. It no longer feels like you are at a music festival – punters are vegging out and it satisfies fantasies of running away to the circus with sparkly costumes, gold nipple tassels and talented performers.

English duo Bourgeois & Maurice are sweating like crazy before they hit the stage after MC Shep Huntly. From the moment Bourgeois opens his full lips to sing, it's clear this man is a star. The dynamics between supposed siblings are very complementary. The flamboyant and garish Bourgeois lifts up his heavy eye make-up-wearing, deadpanning sidekick Maurice. It's like Batman and Robin (but Robin has a beehive).

The duo are very political in their subject matter. Maurice confesses to having a lust for tax. The song the duo performs is aptly named Tax Me. Standout lyric: “I know you love it when I shoot my load into your benefits.” Bourgeois and Maurice make politics, poetic and damn sexy.

New Yorkers Trixie Little and Evil Hate Monkey explode onto the Le Boudoir stage with the same level of acidity that would be in the mouth of a child who has just downed ten sour warheads. To open, Evil Hate Monkey peels Trixie Little's banana dress while eating the duo's signature phallic prop… the banana.

“Love the monkey,” shouts a front row punter. Monkey has been let out of the cage and we love it; he leaps into the crowd, throws bananas at us, climbs the tent poles. Trixie Little then levels with us about the difficulties of loving a Monkey (the two are actually married – Monkey proposed on stage in LA in 2011).

Trixie believes in marriage rights for all – after all, “I'm in love with a monkey,” she proclaims. The duo now burst into a rendition of Total Eclipse Of The Heart that sees our eyes widen and smiles fill the tent. As Trixie Little and Evil Hate Monkey ass-shake off, our abdominals have had a veracious workout and we feel rejuvenated.

Postscript: There is something undeniably sexy about a carny.

Sunday 11 November, Werribee Park