Carriageworks Director Lisa Havilah Invites You To Nick Cave's Technicolour Dreamworld

Has 2016 been the worst year ever? It certainly feels that way. Terrorism, xenophobia, intolerance and hate have packed headlines on an almost daily basis. The dangerously influential drivel of political buffoons and reality TV airheads have saturated the airwaves and clogged social media. And to top it all, Bowie, Rickman and Prince are dead. Sometimes, all this misery can have a silver lining – the grim realities of the zeitgeist can be a potent muse for great art. But if the daily barrage of doom and gloom has left you scared, cynical and in need of some escapism, the technicolour dreamworld of American installationist Nick Cave could be the tonic you’re looking for.

Unlike his musical namesake (no relation), Cave’s creative universe is one of vibrant colour and whimsical form. His work exists at the intersection between sculpture, fashion and performance art, featuring wildly weird garments that simultaneously exist as elaborate extensions or distortions of the human body and as a means for the wearer to affect a dynamic change in their surroundings, through sound or movement.

Nick Cave

One of Cave’s most celebrated large-scale art-performances, Heard, will be taking to the streets of Sydney this week in its Australian premiere. With a Willy Wonka-esque eccentricity, this piece is Cave’s invitation to a “dream state” that seeks to transport the viewer away from the humdrum drudgery of the everyday, to a place of pure imagination. With a driving accompaniment of live percussion, 30 fantastical horses (created by 60 Sydney-based dancers) will descend on the Pitt Street Mall and the extensive footprint of the Carriageworks in Redfern, performing original choreography by U.S. dancemaker Will Gill.

By combining influences from ceremonial African garb, Tibetan textiles, South American shapes and contemporary pop-culture, Cave’s horses connect to a vivid multicultural aesthetic. “There’s something quite magical about this piece,” Carriageworks director Lisa Havilah explains. “It gives people the chance to immerse themselves in something beautiful and surreal. The way these horses move and perform is almost hypnotic and that effect is cross-generational. Whether you’re very old, very young, or wherever you are in your life, this work will touch you. And that’s something that transcends nationality as well.”

"We aren’t led by trying to figure out what an audience might want and simply catering to that assumption. We believe our audience has the intelligence to be open-minded and receptive."

It’s a coup for Havilah and her curatorial team at Carriageworks to present such a celebrated living artist in Australia, but even when importing work from overseas, she has a weather eye on how an international piece can reflect local interests. “The work we do has to have relevance for the community around us and engage with the people around us, otherwise, why do it? On one level, Nick Cave’s work is incredibly accessible, but for those who want to explore those additional layers, it’s also intellectually rigorous in its concepts. It relates to a larger body of work by this artist, which in turn reveals his broader creative interests. We want people to be excited by the immediate experience, but also excited to discover more of his work.”

Cave may well be an unknown quantity for most Australians, but Sydneysiders will no doubt welcome the American’s work. The city’s art lovers seem to have an almost insatiable appetite for contemporary art, both from it’s thriving gallery scene and during the hugely popular Biennale, that transforms Cockatoo Island into a modern art theme park every two years. From next year, Carriageworks, along with the MCA and the Art Gallery of NSW, will play host to The National, a major new festival celebrating Australian artists. That Carriageworks should stand shoulder to shoulder with the city's two flagship galleries, to launch this new addition to Sydney's crowded festival circuit, is a telling endorsement of its stature as a major Australian arts hub.

During her tenure, Havilah has made Carriageworks one of the major game changers of the cultural landscape, consistently pushing boundaries, testing limits and reporting record-setting attendances year on year. However, the artistic bravery of Carriageworks’ programming bucks the trends being set by some Australian art institutions, as instabilities caused by slashed Government funding have led to an increased conservatism among anxious curators. Havilah, on the other hand, is taking a more fearless approach.

“We aren’t led by trying to figure out what an audience might want and simply catering to that assumption. We believe our audience has the intelligence to be open-minded and receptive. We’ve established a really strong level of trust with the public, who have confidence that when they come to something at Carriageworks it’s going to be of a very high calibre,” she reveals. “That in turn offers a really important opportunity for programmers and curators not to feel held back or self-conscious, because when you’re driven by great art and great ideas, instead of presumptions about what people want to see, you reinforce the fact that it is a curator’s job to show audiences what is at the forefront of creative thinking in the present moment.”

Crucially, Havilah believes bold, unapologetic programming not only benefits audiences, it’s also essential to the long-term health of Australia’s cultural landscape. “Contemporary practice progresses by giving artists opportunities, even outside of their capacity, to push them and stress them and provoke them, because that’s how you agitate and disrupt the status quo and give rise to the next important idea,” she observes. “It helps them grow as artists and helps us grow as an institution, to be alongside them in that process. But also, we love giving audiences the opportunity to be the first people to see something that has been made within the context of the now, not something that is years or even decades old.”

Carriageworks presents Nick Cave's Heard.SYD, 10 Nov, Pitt St Mall and 12 Nov, Carriageworks.