2024
Under Artistic Director Ruth Mackenzie CBE, the 2024 Adelaide Festival (1 - 17 March) featured a myriad of exclusive free and ticketed events, with performances from festival giants to emerging stars of tomorrow, surprising spectacles in indoor and outdoor settings, the 2024 Festival evoked awe, contemplation and thunderous applause.
The 2024 Adelaide Festival opened with the world premiere of Baleen Moondjan, a contemporary ceremony from creative visionary Stephen Page set amongst giant whale bones on the sandy beaches of Glenelg. Later, an unannounced 15m sperm whale, positioned under the cover of darkness, appeared beached in Glenelg. Spotted by early beach-goers and quickly gaining attention through news outlets and social media, Whale by Captain Boomer Collective is a gigantic metaphor of the disruption of our ecological system, embodying the feeling of disconnection between humans and nature.
Festival highlights included Barrie Kosky's captivating The Threepenny Opera at Her Majesty's Theatre, The Nightingale and Other Fables directed by Robert Lepage featuring Vietnamese water puppetry performed from the flooded orchestra pit, Goodbye Lindita directed by Mario Banushi, Elizabeth Strebb’s Time Machine performed by ‘Action Heroes’ and the Marina Abramović Institute: Takeover featuring artists, Collective Absentia, Li Binyuan, Yingmei Duan, Mike Parr and more.
The music program included pianist Víkingur Ólafsson performing the Goldberg Variations, the Daylight Express concert series at Elder Hall, the electric Angélique Kidjo in concert and the Chamber Landscapes program at UKARIA Cultural Centre curated by Richard Tognetti AO.
Little Amal, the 3.5 metre puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee, visited Adelaide Festival 2024 for it’s final weekend. Her first visit to Australia included a procession from Elder Park to Festival Plaza, a walk down Rundle Mall and visits to Semaphore Beach and the Riverbank Pedestrian Bridge, drawing huge crowds.
The 2024 Festival showcased AGSA’s beautiful Biennial of Australian Art, Inner Sanctum, Create4Adelaide in the Bicentennial Conservatory displaying artworks created by South Australian young people in response to climate change, Yucky at ACE Gallery featured perspectives from artists who are disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent and Bruce Nuske and Khai Liew’s ceramics and furniture design at Samstag Museum of Art.
Record-breaking crowds flocked to AF24, immersing themselves in sessions in the shady gardens of Adelaide Writers’ Week; audiences were transfixed by the opening event, and by art practices pushing human endurance and boundaries to the limit. In its 39th edition, Adelaide Festival has done what it set out to do: provide a two-week festival packed with extraordinary, accessible events for everyone.
