Sugar Mountain

Sugar Mountain is trying its best to make its art and music components equal, and judging from the festival’s most recent edition, they’re on their way to doing just that.

Abby Portner’s inflatable sculptures adorned the edge of the Dodds Street stage, adding a welcomed splash of colour and eccentricity. Confetti System’s shiny streamer decorations and ornaments filled the Car Park stage, blowing about in the wind to great effect and glinting in the sun.

Ash Keating’s extinguisher painting on the wall of a building adjacent to the Car Park stage was a highlight, the streaks of pink, purple, orange red and blue all colliding on the edges and pooling into swirls on the ground. Sean Morris and Ghost Patrol’s charming flag drawings blended right in with the venue’s surroundings and architecture – not street art, but definitely festival art suited to a takeover of a university campus. When all the décor – both the obvious and the unassuming – is art, it significantly boosts the vibe of the festival. The attention to detail is not lost on punters.

Leif Podhajsky and Hisham Bharoocha occupied one of the galleries, filling it with digital, moving 2D pieces of melting colours, lava-like in movement; technicolour and monochrome prints and paintings; a video of digital gloopy paint on spinning vinyl; collages focusing on pattern and shape, at times seemingly alluding to modern sexuality and consumerism; and self-playing bass drums arranged in a circle, powered by an electronic contraption in the middle. The works complemented the festival’s aesthetic and proved to be a popular visiting spot.  
In the other gallery, Keith Deverell’s Grace Note video work was comparatively underwhelming, less suited to a warehouse prone to noise pollution from a neighbouring stage and more to a dark gallery room.

The Warehouse hosted AV duo Nonotak’s stunning projection work across three front screens, each with a handful of screen behind them, resulting in a warped, hypnotic 3D effect. Squares, lines and circles pulsated and danced across the screens, choreographed and cut in time to a Space Odyssey-reminiscent soundtrack of sparse booms, building hums, tinny chimes and tense thuds. It was truly mesmerising and compelled many to sit cross-legged, watching doe-eyed or slack-jawed in awe, for an extended period of time. Nonotak performed live in The Theatre as well, with a screen placed between them and the audience. This would serve as the backdrop for a slightly different projection composition, which flashed to reveal and conceal sections of the two performers as they bashed away at their synths. Nonotak’s work is innovative, entertaining, thrilling and the standout of the art line-up.

Hopefully as Sugar Mountain continues to grow and settle into its new location, so too will its art component. It’s been steadily expanding year after year but there are more spaces at VCA which could be used for art. Having said that, Sugar Mountain is one festival leading the way in terms of art incorporation and that makes a real effort to curate artists who take the festival’s themes and character and combines it with their own unique styles. Can’t wait to see what they’ve got planned for 2016!