THE show won't go on but the art behind it certainly certainly will.
Create a free account to read this article
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Theatre deviser/director/designer Kim Carpenter will exhibit 26 major artworks in October response to Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince, the classic story of The Prince and The Little Swallow.
Carpenter recently adapted The Happy Prince for The Australian Ballet in collaboration with choreographer Graeme Murphy, also designing the stage sets and costumes.
The production premiered in Brisbane in February and was to open in Melbourne in March and Sydney in November. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 outbreak made this impossible and the future is uncertain.
Nevertheless, the immortal tale of love and sacrifice, tenderness and joy inspired Carpenter to create this series of watercolour paintings.
The images are imaginative and whimsical, playful and atmospheric, reflecting Wilde's wit, poetry and social commentary. Indeed, Wilde's observations of struggle and survival, the disparity between the rich and the poor, are relevant today as when he wrote the story in 1888.
Carpenter said: "It has been a joy to harness all my visual references from Wilde's book and the process of creating and designing the ballet in order to reinvent them so as to tell the story in a purely visual form to be experienced in an art gallery. So the lockdown has allowed me an absorbing, driven, creative period."
Kim Carpenter, The Happy Prince: An exhibition in celebration of Oscar Wilde's most famous story in collaboration with The Australian Ballet Company, October 13-25, ARO Gallery, 51 William Street, Sydney. For a virtual tour, click here.
For a YouTube video with all of the 26 artworks set to the original score by Christopher Gordon for The Australian Ballet production of The Happy Prince, click here.
READ MORE: Maticevski fashions drama for grand show
READ MORE: Dance icon Margaret Scott remembered
