Installation brings the Northern Lights to southern NSW

Swiss artist Dan Acher’s large-scale art installations are not just beautiful. They are loaded with meaning. His spellbinding light show, Borealis, for instance, is designed to bring the experience of the Northern Lights to locations around the world and has dazzled audiences aplenty since its debut. But beneath the beauty, Borealis, from the creator’s point of view, “is about our ancestral communion with nature and our more recent compulsion to control it”.

Thanks to a grant from the NSW government’s Regional Events Acceleration Fund, it’s the NSW Southern Highlands’ turn to experience the show – at Centennial Vineyards in Bowral.

This is the fourth time Borealis has travelled to Australia since it launched in 2016 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. It’s appeared in Adelaide, Sydney, Perth and last year, Daylesford in Victoria.

It’s also played in international locations such as London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Dublin.

However, each showing is different. Touted as a technical achievement as much as it is an artistic performance, variations in movement, colour, and density of the light beams combine with changing weather conditions to give infinite variations.

Local co-producer Andrew Kay says the darkness of the Southern Highlands sky will make this event truly special.

“The magic and awe of Borealis is elevated in darkness and [when] surrounded by nature. With its own unique natural beauty, the Southern Highlands is the ideal location,” he says.

Southern Highlands hospitality will also play its part – 90 minutes from Sydney and two hours from Canberra, beautiful Bowral is accustomed to visitors to its grand gardens and homes, boutique shopping and fine eateries. For Borealis, the locals are throwing the Bowral Winterfest, offering a collection of wooden stalls set up at Centennial Vineyards, serving snacks and mulled wine.

With music from French-born composer, Guillaume Desbois, Borealis is on every Thursday to Sunday from May 25-June 30 with tickets through Ticketek.

See borealisau.com