Monet & Friends: Life, Light and Colour
Royal Hall of Industries, Moore Park
Sydney, Australia
April 17, 2021
After first incarnating with a multi-sensory ode to the Dutch master van Gogh, 2021 sees the Royal Hall of Industries hosting Melbourne-based Grande Experiences’ homage to the French impressionists, with an array of artist flanking luminary Claude Monet, e.g. Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley, Gustave Caillebotte, Armand Guillaumin, Paul Signac and Georges Seurat amongst others.
As the name of the exhibition suggests, it is not merely limited to a visual feast based on the backbone of huge choreographed projections, but an immersive tour de force as it also incorporates carefully calibrated lighting and sonic arrangements to shed light on both the artistic emissions and the lives of the protagonists on display as well as olfactory facets, through aromas which are subtly injected to permeate and enhance the exhibitions, thereby giving it another level of depth enhancing the experience and engaging all senses.
Employing state-of-the-art projection technology based on Grande Experiences’ dynamic SENSORY4 multichannel motion graphics, and serenaded by a classical score delivered in saturating surround sound, one finds oneself mesmerized and transported into a world of nineteenth hundred artistic excellence.
Not unlike Grande Exhibitions did with Van Gogh Alive, they have created another captivating and enthralling experience, which is not only bound to excite the inducted but is suited perfectly for families and the uninitiated to gain access to the world of not only what Monet has accomplished with his plein air landscape painting style but to the realm of art at large through a fun and engaging way – a way that despite all technology involved still feels organic and not gimmicky.
Hope to be able to witness Grande Experiences’ other travelling exhibitions soon and visit their Museo Leonardo da Vinci in Rome once travel restrictions are lifted.
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image from exhibition website
