“It was a privilege to get back to doing a few shows at the end of 2020,” said Rachael Johnston, visual designer. “I believe the Bernard Fanning show at Qudos Arena was one of the first shows in the world operating under strict Covid protocols since the pandemic restrictions started. For this show, we decided to use some ‘best of’ visuals from past tours. I spent some time in the archives, repurposing and remixing some earlier visual favourites. I then designed a couple of new songs specifically to highlight Jeff Pavey’s use of Robe PATT 2017 retro-style lighting in his lighting design.”
A few years ago, Bernard and Rachael sat down to brainstorm his upcoming Splendour in the Grass show visuals. Rachael enjoyed his Civil Dusk album covers, designed by analogue collage artist Karen Lynch, and loved the idea of following a similar aesthetic thread through the Civil Dusk shows. Karen was generous in collaborating on a few pieces for the show.
“I’ve always worked with video collages but it was nice to see static scenes through someone else’s eyes and then add a subtle ‘slow video’ animation and reinterpretation,” added Rachael.
Rachael generally prefers to use visuals sprinkled throughout a music set, incorporating a decent amount of ‘lighting only’ scenes and falling back to textures or colours at other times to achieve some sense of balance to any big statement video. However, she decided, along with Jeff Pavey, to do the inverse with this show, starting visuals and lights slowly but constant, building the show along with the set. Every song had visuals – some were static, some more dynamic until they got to the song Blue Toowong Skies, near the end of the show.
“We completely stripped away the visuals to black, Jeff had some strong statement lighting, and this along with Bernard’s gut-wrenching solo performance provided a poignant pause, almost a complete mesmerising stop to the show with the audience completely absorbed in the performance in silence,” commented Rachael. “Bernard’s wife Andrea contributed some avant-garde geometric video she had been playing around with at art school and we used this to great effect during the song Change of Pace, layered with some live-action camera, directed beautifully by David Horscroft.”
Rachael admits she was secretly pleased to pull out some favourite Powderfinger visuals for Bernard’s rendition of Sail during the set. Long ago she had invited etchings artist Alex Gillies to make her some black and white etching scenes with an ancient maritime feel which was then animated in a simple ‘cut out’ style, almost like a puppet show backdrop. All of these choices were beautifully supported and enhanced by Jeff Pavey’s lighting design and colour palette.
