Splendour in the Grass announces arts program

Splendour in the Grass is epic, we know it, but it’s not all just about the music. Come July, North Byron Parklands transforms into a cultural mecca, not only bringing together incredible musicians, but innovative, thought-provoking and seriously exciting artists, who join together to create a festival experience on another level.
The Splendour Arts Program and Artist in Residence of 2018 will showcase some of the most boundary-bending and content-ready artistic #collabs to date.
Featuring new and evolving artworks, get ready to immerse yourself in the freshest, wildest and most jaw-dropping open-air gallery this side of NYC.
First off for the Splendour 2018 Artist in Residence (a new annual collab), Splendour has teamed up with Australian contemporary visual artist Brooklyn Whelan to create our awesome 2018 event artwork, as well as Zero Three, a site-specific video mapping project incorporating his ethereal cloud paintings.we have Brooklyn Whelan. This collection of larger-than-life moving images will be projected on the Mix Up Stage tent top. But get in quick! Like your best ever Snapchat, this artwork will expire after the three days of Splendour in the Grass – never to be seen again – like an impending storm system that shocks, awes and then vanishes forever.
As for the Splendour Arts Program, well you’re all in for a treat! First up, they’ve got ‘The Witch Hunt and Pickles Family Funerals by Andy Forbes, which is influenced by the realms of religious cults, fetish and socio-political taboos. Get ready for some graveyard boogie with spooky DJ’s in the barn window, audience interactive comedy, and sacrifices around a large-scale wicker human sculpture in the graveyard.
Next we have The Cleaners, a brand-new durational performance installation by multi-award winning contemporary performance makers, Shock Therapy Productions. There’s a completely white living room sitting in mid-air, a giant mud-filled slingshot on the ground and two cleaners in white uniforms who take great pains to maintain the room’s perfect whiteness. Let the games begin.

Sam Songailo work takes form in painting, installation, video, sound and sculpture. This time he’s got Gateways 2 that’s ponders the question, if a drum machine without a soul, an empty collection of circuits and wires could bring us to our feet and move us to dance, was a soul so important after all? It’s highly immersive and realised on a monumental scale… you won’t be missing Gateways 2 at Splendour 2018!
Always a fave of ours, the Kings of creating large scale shit that is very f*cking cool (remember Happy Kanye from 2017, or Nicholas Cage in a Cage from 2015?) are back, this time with Snoop Dogg Hot Dogs. We already love it. This one comes from when Andy Warhol said rich people eat the same hot dogs as regular people. In 2016, Snoop Dog was invited onto Jimmy Kimmel Live! to take on the host’s first “Howz It Mizzade” video challenge demonstrating hot dogs being made. “This is a hot dog!? Oh cuz, I ain’t never eating a m—–f—— hot dog! Ugh!” he said. “If that’s how they make hot dogs, I don’t want one. I’m good.” Looks like Snoop’s family barbies are going to have one less person in the line for franks. Visit the garden of Snoop Dogg hot dogs at Splendour 2018, serving up American dreams all day, erryday.
Laith McGregor is obsessed with figures who have beards and are without eyes – their empty sockets sit in vacant faces that still manage to appear tragic, making us feel all the feels. In 2018, McGregor brings Hide Your Eyes, which is a self-portrait in the likeness of a guru/religious figure, manipulated in various ways to attempt to deface, distort and alter. Ready with permanent markers to be drawn on in situ, Laith’s banners will evolve in collaboration with the Splendour crowd. Channel your inner Banksy and draw faces, text, graffiti and ramblings of your own, directly onto the work to build an alternate communal persona. Let the fun begin.
Last but not least, we’ve got Melbourne-born visual artist Ash Keating. As one who likes to work big, he makes enormous paintings, sometimes 20-metres tall. Like hugely physical performance art, Ash explores colour, movement, paint, water, air and gravity. He painted the entrance tunnel for Splendour in the Grass in 2016 and now returns to repaint the surface with his ongoing ‘Gravity System Response’ series.
It’s all happening this year. For locations and performance times, check out the website.