Lighting of the Sails: Echo by Julia Gutman and Pleasant Company

Sydney — Wednesday 8 May 2024

Sydney – Wednesday 8 May, 2024. Multidisciplinary Australian artist and 2023 Archibald Prize winner Julia Gutman, with technologists Pleasant Company, have created Echo, a new animated opus of Gutman’s signature patchwork art illuminating the Sydney Opera House’s sails during Vivid Sydney from 24 May – 15 June 2024. 

Lighting of the Sails: Echo, scored by Australian composer and sound designer Angus Mills, digitises centuries-old fabric making techniques, transforming humble textiles donated to Julia by her community into an animated epic that reaches deep into literature and art history, aligning with Vivid Sydney’s creative direction, Humanity.

“My first ever animation, Echo is a digital translation of patchworks I’ve made to date alongside a suite of imagery created specifically from the work. The work is about the paradox of self-consciousness, the limitations of our own capacity to truly see ourselves, and the way our own unconscious wounds spill out into our perceptions of one another. It’s a story about confronting your shadow. Echo brings together my interests in narrative, materiality and the psychological in a story that I hope can be simultaneously personal and universal,” Julia Gutman.

Remaking Roman poet Ovid’s myth of Narcissus for our contemporary age, Echo follows the journey of the central protagonist, a girl with a striped t-shirt, with hair made from her mother’s scarf and a face sewn from an old hessian sack. Lured by her reflection, she finds herself transported into the unfamiliar, navigating rocky subsoils of satin and dangerous rivers of denim. Telling a story of wonder, vulnerability and strength, Echo crackles with possibility through a fantasia of fabric. 

NSW Minister for the Arts, Minister for Music and the Night-time Economy, the Hon. John Graham MLC says “The Lighting of the Sails this year highlights the exceptional talent of Julia Gutman, the youngest Archibald Prize winner in 85 years. Julia’s striking artworks will come to life in her first ever animation. Every year the process of Lighting the Sails is a wonderful showcase of creativity and collaboration, and this year is no different. I encourage everyone to come into the city to witness and enjoy Echo”. 

A special, one-off in conversation with Julia Gutman will take place in the Concert Hall Northern Foyer on Monday 27 May. Hosted by the Sydney Opera House’s Contemporary Art Curator, Micheal Do, Gutman will discuss her artistic career and the process of creating Echo, her most ambitious work to date. Free talk, registrations essential. 

"Julia is one of Australia’s most exciting artists, and we can’t wait to share what her and the Pleasant Company team have created for this year’s Vivid Sydney. Her work with textiles is equally captivating as it is unique and the Sydney Opera House will appear to be wrapped in fabric as Julia’s personal story of self-reflection unfolds in front of our eyes revealing its universality. Echo is a fitting and beautiful reflection on Vivid Sydney 2024’s theme of humanity.” Vivid Sydney Festival Director, Gill Minervini

“It’s an honour to be featuring the fiercely talented 2023 Archibald Prize winner Julia Gutman in this year’s Lighting of the Sails. Julia’s stunning fabric-based work, ambitiously animated by the ingenious Pleasant Company, will ignite the iconic sails, and the city, with this epic animated journey of self-discovery. The animation will be beautifully soundtracked with a composition by musician Angus Mills,” Sydney Opera House’s Head of Contemporary Music and Vivid LIVE curator, Ben Marshall. 

“The talented team at Pleasant Company are delighted to be producing a ground breaking collaboration with Julia Gutman. The work projected on the iconic sails of the Sydney Opera House for Vivid Sydney 2024 will see a departure from previous years in its use of narrative and the feature of a central protagonist. The work is born from traditional theatrical principles in honour of the Opera House itself.” Pleasant Company.

Visitors who are blind or have low vision and their companions are invited to listen to a live audio description of the sails lighting, with sessions on the 4th and 6th June at 6pm. Registrations are free and essential. For more audio description videos of Vivid Sydney, please visit the Vivid Sydney website.