Celebrated French-Albanian artist Anri Sala has created an innovative new installation of sculpture and sound for the 33rd Kaldor Public Art Project, which has been developed over three years ahead of its world-premiere in Sydney. The Last Resort is co-presented with Art & About Sydney, and will open on 13 October 2017.

Sala’s project will transform the Observatory Hill Rotunda, a site with expansive views from the most elevated point in the city. Audiences will be invited to step beneath a gravity-defying ensemble of custom-built drums, to experience their rhythmic, live response to a contemporary interpretation of a Mozart Concerto. Set against the sights and sounds of the harbour below, this musical dialogue animates the relationship between sound, place, time and history on this evocative site.

For Kaldor Public Art Project 32, Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones presented barrangal dyara (skin and bones), a vast sculptural installation stretching across 20,000 square-metres of the Royal Botanic Garden. The project recalled the 19th century Garden Palace building where it once stood in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden, before it devastatingly burnt to the ground along with countless Aboriginal objects collected along the colonial frontier. The project was Jones’ response to the immense loss felt throughout Australia due to the destruction of these culturally significant items. It represented an effort to commence a healing process and a celebration of the survival of the world’s oldest living culture despite this traumatic event.