Winter Blast of art comes to City campus

Set to take off from Wednesday 24 August, the Winter Blast showcases 30 commissioned RMIT artists and their works - including performance, 13-storey high light projections, 3D installations and billboard artworks - all using the New Academic Street (NAS) construction site as a canvas.

In a first for the University, artist and alumnus Shuichi Kori’s work, Notice, includes a 24-hour performance installation.

Kori will sit at a table and invite guests to join him on Swanston Street.

The festival is brought to you by NAS, a campus redevelopment project revitalising key student facilities and creating laneways and arcades which will connect RMIT with the surrounding city streets.

Winter Blast curator and College of Design and Social Context teacher, Grace Leone, said it was a great opportunity for RMIT’s established and emerging artists to get involved in a real-world project under the banner of The Urban Animators: Living Laboratory Public Art Program.

Leone, who is also a member of the RMIT Centre for Art, Society and Transformation (CAST), said: “The Urban Animators: Living Laboratory Public Art Program has been designed to weave and harness the talent of RMIT into the New Academic Street construction project by using its own site footprint as a canvas to nurture and present new and established creative practitioners.”

The Winter Blast launch is on at 6pm, Wednesday 24 August, at the foyer of Swanston Academic Building (Building 80), Swanston Street, Melbourne.

The Winter Blast festival runs until 31 August. 

Story: Jane Kenrick