PRESS RELEASE: Apollo Bay’s boundary pushing arts, food and music festival, WinterWild returns this August in a celebration of dark winter energy.

Apollo Bay’s boundary-pushing arts, food and music festival, WinterWild returns this August in a celebration of dark winter energy.

WinterWild is known for its nocturnal program of extravagant fireside performances, epic feasts and music, but 2021 presents a side of Apollo Bay you don’t often see. No longer just a beautiful coastal town, WinterWild asks you to see the town as the locals see it when all the visitors have left in winter: dark, wild and raw.

Among this year’s offerings is the festival’s flagship event, a free outdoor performance in two parts across both weekends. Highlighting some of Apollo Bay’s most iconic locations and the town’s past myths and current legends. This year The Dogwatch story re-visits those mythical creatures ending, as always, with a huge bonfire in the festival’s legendary brazier.

The first weekend is about music and comedy. WinterWild keeps the fire burning with a program of powerful, unfettered live music in the oldest venue in Apollo Bay, The Mech Hall. Headlined by a reunion of Apollo Bay hometown heroes The Vasco Era, returning after 10 years, supported by coastal afro-beat rhythm kings Bananagun, female psych queens Parsnip, Melbourne-based garage quartet Bad Bangs and homegrown heavy hitters The Refuge. The Murlocs head up another band night with doom-fuzz label mates ORB, support sets from lo-fi garage rockers Sledgehammer, local favourites The Fillmores and a rare solo set from Sid O’Neil.

We’re introducing comedy on Friday 13th, extracting 3 rising stars of Melbourne stand-up, including Charlie Zangel, winner of Best Newcomer in the 2021 Melbourne Comedy Festival.

The second weekend is about food, theatre and surf. The town will brace for a visitation from Moira Finucane, another force of nature, and one of the world’s great live performance artistes. Her brand of dark, erotic and provocative burlesque has set theatres alight all over the globe. Along with her troupe of dancers, chanteuses and irresistible temptresses, she will fill the Mech Hall with two shows over two nights.

Up in the hills, Ivan Masic & Lee Ramseyer-Bache of Little Projector Company present All We Can Practice Is Humility and Looking at The Projects Quarry, Beech Forest. The project is a week-long, experimental field trip exploring and amplifying the hidden, microscopic and mycorrhizal aspects of The Quarry and its surrounds via large-format projection, an outdoor cinema and a series of intimate audio-visual installations.

Back in town we present an homage to the Otway Coast in Whispers from the Sea, photography, film, surf, art and live film score performances will be curated by nature photographer Katey Shearer, local surfboard shaper Samaia McAllester.
Outdoors at The Wild Feast, great fires will be lit to char, smoke and sizzle a wild banquet of local produce to be eaten under the southern skies. Walk among the dead with the Apollo Bay Cemetery tours, learn about the lives, shipwrecks and trials of these pioneers with a world-class view. Sunday afternoons you can wind down your weekend with beachside Hatha Yoga accompanied by local ambient experimental duo YEP.

WinterWild lights a fire under winter with a multi-artform fusillade to rip through the darkness. Don’t look away.

Full program at www.winterwild.com.au
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