Brett Sheehy AO
Artistic Director
art collective AES+F’s first Australian foray into
outdoor sculpture.
Hello and welcome to the fourth and final
Melbourne Festival I will have the privilege
to direct, and the tenth festival I’ve directed
in Australia.
And I am immensely proud of our four years of
sustained growth; our increasing attendances
despite pushing the boundaries of artforms,
sometimes radically; our securing for the past
three years the Festival’s first principal partner
in eight years with Foxtel; and the dramatically
increased economic impact of the Festival on
Melbourne, proving its potential as a major
event for this city.
The predominant threads in this year’s Festival
are explorations of ‘identity’ and ‘place’, and
we have also sought to showcase the newest
works from some of the finest artists I’ve been
honoured to work with over the past ten years,
continuing Australian audiences’ relationships
with these visionary women and men, among
them William Forsythe, Thomas Ostermeier,
Kate Champion, Antony, Akram Khan, Lucy
Guerin and Luke Wright.
And I am thrilled that I conclude my tenure
with the Festival presenting, for the first time
in a program I’ve directed, the works of Lee
Ranaldo, Gregory Crewdson, Young Jean Lee,
Michel van der Aa, Thurston Moore, Santiago
Sierra, Tim Fain, Chris Kohn and dozens of
other national and international artists.
It’s my hope that the events you experience
in this year’s Festival join the dozens of
extraordinary premieres by Australian
artists over the past four years, as well as the
international highlights, among them Hedda
Gabler, London Philharmonic, Vertical Road,
Angels-Demons. Parade, Transe Express, Körper,
Leonardo’s Last Supper, the collaborative Bowl
concerts, the artist-in-residency of Thomas
Adès, Michael Clark Company, Kronos Quartet,
Boredoms’ and Mono’s astonishing musicmaking, The Manganiyar Seduction and the
operas Medea and Tomorrow in a Year, Opening
Night and Stifters Dinge, to name just a few.
Quite simply, every one of these events could
only happen in our city because your Festival
presented them, and only then because of
your support.
In looking back I am especially proud that on
our Festival stages we debuted for the nation the
work of Ivo van Hove, Sasha Waltz, Emmanuel
Jal, Sebastian Nübling, Calder Quartet,
Fischerspooner, Pan Pan Theatre, Caroline Stein,
Hofesh Shechter Company, Beans, Peeping
Tom Collective, Maxim Rysanov, the National
Theatre of China, Ramallah Underground,
Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra and the Russian
4
These past four years have seen us undertake an
expansive and exciting vision for this Festival.
If we’ve ever reached a little further than our
grasp, we make no apologies for that, and don’t
resile one iota from our mission to ensure this
Festival - perhaps alone in the country – is a
celebration of every artform, no matter how
thinly our resources sometimes demanded
that be.
We did this for one reason – to keep Melbourne
Festival connected and open for the future,
so that as it continues to grow, it has the
possibility of speaking to all audiences of this
great city, through the best art on the planet.
In leaving Melbourne Festival I want to
thank the many colleagues, board members,
government stakeholders, individual donors
and corporate partners who have contributed
to the Festival’s success. But most importantly
I want to thank the artists and audiences of
Melbourne and beyond. You have been our
raison d’être from day one, since we only exist
to be the bridge between the artists’ visions
and the audiences to whom they communicate
those visions.
In looking forward, I’m personally excited to be
continuing to engage with Melbourne audiences
in my new role at Melbourne Theatre Company,
and I very much look forward to being an eager
and passionate attendee of the 2013 Festival
under the direction of my great frie