Peninsula’s inaugural Drift Arts Festival is coming soon
Published on 24 March 2022
Drift is a new annual festival of art, music and celebration on the Mornington Peninsula.
For 11 days in autumn, Drift will bring the Peninsula’s venues, places and spaces to life with performances, music, visual arts, film, public art installations, multimedia and projections, writing and literature and local food and wine, offering exciting new opportunities to experience the best of the region.
Drift honours our local creative community while also bringing fresh new talent into our region to inspire creative and artistic practices and broaden our perspectives.
The arts festival is anchored by a number of lovingly curated keynote projects, presented alongside a host of community-led creative activations and events in venues and public spaces around the Peninsula.
O_C_E_A_N, a multidisciplinary arts project encompassing contemporary art, story and spiritual practice across a series of iconic, unique and hidden locations around the Peninsula. Developed by Shoreham based artist and curator Janenne Willis, O_C_E_A_N explores and pays homage to the transformative nature of our water environments.
Explore a floating gallery offshore at Flinders; soak in a host of projection and video works such as Patricia Piccinini’s Swell; trek across wetlands and clifftops in search of sculptural installations; even learn to paint while surfing.
O_C_E_A_N also brings Matthias Schack-Arnott’s new work Groundswell* to Victoria for the first time; a beautiful installation that combines auditory, sculptural and interactive elements to prompt a meditation on our relationships with the earth, ocean and one another. Audiences are invited to climb atop a six metre circular platform that tilts as you walk, causing a sea of some 40,000 ball bearings to cascade and summon a complex oceanic soundscape.
O_C_E_A_N features works from Patricia Piccinini, Abdul Abdullah, Brett Whiteley, Rebecca Jensen, Yandell Walton, Matthias Schack-Arnott, Sean Gladwell, Todd McMillan, Henry Jock Walker, Shanai Kellet, Leyla Bulmer, Hayden O’Neil and more.
Drift also presents Into the Wilderness**, a family-friendly day of live music, performance, participatory workshops and activities at Balnarring’s Emu Plains Reserve. Fun, free and immersive, this event will feature music from Pierce Brothers, The Grogans, Hayley Mary, Andy Golledge, Bumpy, Nicky Bomba, Stiff Richards, Time Machine, Polarize, Hayden Calnin, President Roots, NinchFest DJs and more across two music stages.
Into the Wilderness also features the Little Palais Circus tent, filled with circus, physical theatre and comedy, and a makers’ market lovingly curated by the good folks at Emu Plains Market / Untold Events Co showcasing the best in local art, craft and design. Mornington Peninsula has long been known as a destination for gourmet food and wine, and this event aims to showcase some of the best of the region’s food and beverage offerings.
As dusk falls, Emu Plains will light up with colourful light installations from Playable Streets and Lantasia Lights, blending traditional lantern design, sculpture and illustration to create luminous pieces of art, courtesy of The Lanternist.
Don’t miss Falling Into Place, a creative reflection on Hastings and Western Port, known to Traditional Owners as Warn Marrung or Murambik, through live art, performance and cultural experiences.
Falling Into Place features workshops led by First Nations groups designed to bring understanding, acceptance, connection to self, Indigenous culture, Country and each other, as well as site-specific performances around the jetty and foreshore sites, and discussions and walks led by environmental experts.
Mornington Peninsula Shire’s famed Police Point Artist in Residence program is also subject to a significant retrospective exhibition, featuring many of the 90+ participating artists from its six-year history. Artists will host a range of workshops for the community for the duration of the festival.
The Police Point Shire Park will play host to 262 - Our Stories So Far, the participatory arts project that has collected our community’s stories from 262 days in lockdown, and transformed them into a documentary, live music and projection event.
The festival program also features incredible works from famed locals including Dreamhouse Theatre Company, Living Culture, MP Music Network, Peninsula Studio Trail, Peninsula Writers Club, Spark Productions, The Pig & Whistle Tavern, Mount Eliza Chamber of Commerce, Manyung Gallery and plenty more.
Come and immerse yourself in this continuity of history. Come and drift with us. Thursday 21 April – Sunday 1 May.
Drift is brought to you by Mornington Peninsula Shire.
Driftartsfestival.com.au
* Groundswell is presented in association with Melbourne Fringe, commissioned by Melbourne Fringe, Sydney Festival and the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, and supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, City of Melbourne, the Besen Family Foundation and the Playking Foundation
** Into the Wilderness is supported by the Australian Government’s Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications, through the Building Better Regions Fund.