With White Night Geelong only weeks away, digital projection artist Matt Bonner is in full production mode.
“I’m putting a lot of work into this at the moment, burning the midnight oil trying to get it done,” Mr Bonner said.
“I can’t wait till it’s done, but it’s coming along and I’m really looking forward to showing it on City Hall. I think it’ll be great.”
The 45-year-old Mount Duneed local is currently preparing his work ‘Alignment’, which will transform the facade of Geelong City Hall into an “interstellar machine that transforms day into night and night into day”.
Mr Bonner, who is collaborating on the project with proud Wadawurrung cultural narrator and advisor Corrina Eccles and renowned local indigenous artist Nathan Patterson, said the event’s theme, ‘Everything on the land is reflected in the sky’, had inspired him to learn explore indigenous constellations and the stories that explained them.
“It’s been a great project to work on because it’s been so interesting for me to learn about what First People call the night sky country,” he said.
“I had no idea that First Nations had their own star constellations. For instance, the Milky Way, that’s actually the emu. And knowing that, when you look at it you can actually see it as being the emu.
“Corrina has been great to work with on this, she was able to help me find the stories that are linked to the stars. And she narrates it, she’s done a fantastic job on that.
“And I love Nathan’s work, so I reached out to him to see if he was interested in collaborating with me on this project and he said yes. The animals you’ll see have all been created by Nathan, they’re from paintings he’s done in the past and I’m animating them to tell the stories.”
Mr Bonner, who has worked on a number of projects projecting on to City Hall over the years, said working with the building had become second nature to him.
“The thing I really love about projections is doing something that’s mapped to a building, rather than just throwing a piece on top of a building,” he said.
“I really enjoy doing the pieces where I can transform the building into something else. And with City Hall, I’ve built up my own templates, so when I create stuff for it I can just fit it to those templates.
“So I’ve mapped gum trees to the columns, we’ll have a waterfall flowing down the face of the building. We’ve kept it short, it’ll go for about five minutes, there’s going to be a lot to see at White Night, so you don’t want to hold people up for too long.”
Bonart Multimedia, Mr Bonner’s business, has received multiple awards for projects working with and for the City of Greater Geelong, the local indigenous community, and inmates at Barwon Prison and Marngoneet Correctional Centre through the Torch Project.
Mr Bonnart said he enjoyed the way projection art allowed him to explore many facets of his creative pursuits in one medium.
“I have a passion for filmmaking, and I love doing animation and stuff, so it’s the best of both worlds,” he said.
“Doing projections allows me to do filmmaking, animating, and I also like doing sound projection and I’m a musician as well. So it gives me an outlet to do everything that I really love doing and bring it all together.”
White Night will transform Geelong on Saturday, October 8.
