FLASHBACK
Vivid
2010, 2011, 2012
May 23, 2026
“Vivid Sydney made its debut in 2009. The festival was originally established by Destination NSW to draw visitors to the city during the winter months and has since grown into the largest multi-artform festival of light, music, ideas, and food in the Southern Hemisphere.” – Vivid Sydney
LISTEN TO ARTICLE-
UPDATED May 25 2026
Vivid Sydney cancels shows after 83 drones plunge into Darling Harbour … so now it’s “LIVID” Sydney
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Despite being a Sydneysider I haven’t been to Vivid since 2016 (which was just the other day, right?), so I don’t feel equipped to compliment nor critique the 2026 event. This is what 2026 festival-goers are saying according to The King of search engines:
“The Positives
1. The Spectacular Sights: The animated light projections on iconic landmarks like the Sydney Opera House and the custom light walks remain major crowd-pleasers.
2. Great for Families & Visitors: The drone shows and free city-wide walking tours provide a fantastic, free outing for families and first-time attendees.
The Gripes
1. Heavy Crowds: Attendees frequently complain of dangerous bottlenecks and crushing mobs, particularly around Circular Quay and the Opera House.
2. Commercialization: Many locals feel the festival lacks the artistic, conceptual depth it once had. There are recurring complaints about inflated food truck prices and excessive reliance on paid exhibits.
3. Logistics: Navigating the massive footprint of the event can be tiring, with some attendees citing a lack of promised extra public transport.”
…and then there’s Instagram.
Gosh, Sydney people are never happy.
Sydney was electric in the 90s till about 2018, now it’s just bright, loud and expensive, Vivid now just reflects the times. Then again, this is what I wrote in 2012:
“The major highlight of Vivid is the Lighting of The Sails. Is it supposed to be soporific?
I think someone somewhere has run out of ideas because this year’s Vivid was a bit… dull. I acknowledge it’s not easy coming up with new ways to live up to the promise of the show’s name, but you know, if the name of the show was Roses, you wouldn’t come out with Carnations.”
– The Dusk Zone [my old life and style blog]
I meant it was very ‘eurodimensional,’ but I was being polite for the sake of multicultural diplomacy. It is perplexing that an event whose purpose is “to draw visitors to SYDNEY city during the winter months“, insists on Northern Hemisphere artists as the highlight of its “Southern Hemisphere” festival.
There have been some white Australian artists featured in recent times
…and back in in 2016 when Diversity The Musical the buzzword started trending, Vivid made the brave decision to feature six First Nations artists in “a historic collaborative projection”, celebrating the ancient dreaming tracks of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
The artists featured were Karla Dickens, Djon Mundine, Reko Rennie, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, the late Yornadaiyn (Donny) Woolagoodja, featuring also the works of the iconic trailblazing late Gulumbu Yunipingu.
That was 10 years ago. There aren’t any more First Nations artists around? No other artists in the “Southern Hemisphere”? Vivid. How absolutely colourless of you.
From the archives, VIVID SYDNEY 2010, 2011 and 2012, images by TS publisher for her life and style blog The Dusk Zone.
1. 2010. Vivid Fire & Water.
Our Flamenco troupe performed during the June long weekend for VIVID SYDNEY, which was a highlight and part of the main FIRE & WATER show.
It was a Eurostralian tale of our Indians-in-the-Pacific cultural heritage, told through the eyes of an Indian-Australian girl, a descendent of a sailor, featuring light and smoke shows, acrobats, Aboriginal performers, Indian classical dancers, tall ships and lost lives. I didn’t actually get to see it but when I found out the story I was intrigued.
The tall ship that lost lives was the English merchant vessel, the Sydney Cove, which set sail from Kolkata, India in 1796, bound for Port Jackson, Sydney.
Heavily laden with cargo including Chinese ceramics, tea, tobacco and 700 gallons of Indian rum, the ship ran into trouble. So its 80-year-old captain, Guy Hamilton, intentionally beached the vessel on what they named Preservation Island (in palawa kani – Waytakupana)
…. and got his mostly Indian crew (Lascars) to store the rum on a neighbouring, smaller island. Thus Rum Island came to be. Both names indicative of priorities.
To seek help Hamilton sent out a party of 17 in a longboat, recorded as 5 British sailors and 12 Lascars (some thought to be as young as 10). The intention was to sail directly to Sydney but the boat wrecked on the Victorian coast. Tragically, extreme hunger, exhaustion, and hostile encounters took their toll and only 3 survived, 2 British crew members and a Bengali man, recorded only as a “manservant”.
READ: Lascars and The Sydney Cove
So that was the water…our Flamenco troupe provided the fire, … we were ‘busking gypsies’ in the night markets. If you’re wondering what an Indian theme and Flamenco have in common, a lot.
READ: Library Day
2. 2011
SOH was illuminated by a 3D projection titled “La Macula,” created by the French creative agency Superbien.
3. 2012
German design collective Urban Screen made the Opera House’s sails move, as an “architectural homage” to the building’s creator, Danish architect Jørn Utzon.
[SONGLINES]
Vivid, originally called “Smart Light City”, was a concept developed by [Greek Australian] MaryAnne Kyriakou, who was inspired by the Glow Light Festival held in Eindhoven, the Netherlands (which was inspired by the Fête des Lumières) and was initially developed as alow energy light festival. Credited as co-founders are Anthony Bastic, Carolyn Grant, Joe Snell and Davina Jackson. The original name “Smart Light Sydney” was replaced with Vivid Sydney to ‘better represent the streams of Light, Music and Ideas” [Wikipedia].
“In 2007 Kyriakou founded the ecological digital light art festival company Smart Light Sydney as the anchor for the Vivid Light festival supported and largely funded by Events NSW. This event is held annually attracting millions of visitors to Sydney. The event is no longer a sustainable light festival.”
Read Vivid Sydney’s sustainability report here, in case you were wondering about its footprint. Despite being “highly committed to sustainability” with renewable energy and waste-reduction initiatives, it fact it is quite a resource draining festival… so whatever it is it should be ABOUT Australian, especially First Nations artistry, and Southern Hemisphere artists including Pacific. Why is an icon of the Southern Hemisphere being used as a European talent billboard? Again.
“Renowned French multimedia artist Yann Nguema, known for his mesmerising projections onto significant buildings around the world, brings his unique fusion of science, music, and computer programming to the Sydney Opera House sails in the major new work, Opera Mundi.
Produced by Nguema’s animation studio Anima Lux and scored by Romanian classical and electronic composer Mischa Blanos, this breathtaking original commission is a powerful ode to transformations in nature and the landscape, land, sea, and sky, that inspired Opera House architect Jørn Utzon.” – Vivid Sydney
Australia is Europe’s Preservation Island.