Crowd Control: Visitors Flock To Sydney Contemporary
By Michael Young
More than 28,000 visitors flocked to the inaugural Sydney Contemporary art fair (September 19–22) at Carriageworks, an inner-city art space housed in a historic railway carriage workshop. On the opening night alone, 14,000 crowded into the venue, causing acute crowd control problems and nearly exceeding the overall number of visitors projected to visit the harbor city’s first major international art fair throughout its duration.
Tim Etchell’s, the fair’s founder, who is also credited with leading Art HK from a standing start in 2008 to becoming the “region’s third biggest Asian art fair,” had anticipated no more than 3,000 attendees. With the proliferation of freebie VIP passes, however, numbers quickly ballooned to 10,000 causing traffic gridlock and even the shutting down of the local Redfern railway station due to overcrowded platforms.
