ART

Enveloping your senses at The Wilds is a new world on the boundaries of art and science—an evolving ecosystem of sculpture, soundscapes and digital movement-responsive art. Plants, humans, architecture and technology take on otherworldly forms in a multicellular meadow.

Exploring the dimension between nature and technology, the New York City-based Australian artists and creative technologists Tin & Ed have nurtured a glowing biosphere driven by their deep curiosity for the natural world. Playful, technicolour bursts of newly imagined life forms inhabit a new world built from inflatable 3D sculptures and gaming technology.

Meanwhile, mythic architectural organisms will populate The Wilds care of the Filipino contemporary fine artist Leeroy New. Using the recycled bamboo bones of The Wilds 2021, New has constructed sprawling structures across the verdant amphitheatre. It’s a tangled, abundant landscape blurring the lines between the organic and constructed.

FOOD

Life needs sustenance, a little fertiliser to keep cells multiplying and limbs limber. The Wilds has the nutrients you need to keep your beans sprouting—cult snacks, charcoal spits, plant-based morsels and layer upon layer of good times pasta.

Melbourne’s rock and roll vege boss, Shannon Martinez, brings her celebrated, plant-based, Fitzroy diner Smith & Daughters to the Bowl. Find new twists on Smith & Daughters’ greatest hits and beloved B-Sides—faux-meat and three veg this is not.

Barrelling in from Thornbury is 1800 Lasagne's Joey Kellock—the big-hearted host with the most, responsible for the best slab of lasagne in town. The jazz-obsessed Kellock will bring his irrepressible party spirit, rich ragu and migliori melanzane.

Rolling down the grass from their glowing bistro at The Lighthouse, are acclaimed chefs David Moyle (The Saturday Paper Food Editor; formerly Franklin, Longsong), Jo Barrett and Matt Stone (futurefoodsystem, formerly Oakridge Wines).

Take it easy on the Up High Bar's heated deck with bespoke food and small plates by The Ligthouse chefs. It's the number one spot to take in a view of The Wilds from on high.

Then there’s the elemental forces of fire and ice. Smoke and spice waft from Hoy Pinoy’s charcoal-fired skewers—Filipino barbeque handed down through generations, to Culinary Curator and Chef power couple Regina and James Meehan, .

Also keeping the fires roaring is Melbourne’s reigning masters of Argentinian barbeque, The San Telmo Group. Their team have exceptional cuts of meat and in-season vegetables flying off their woodfired grill.

And to cool you down when things heat up, Piccolina Gelateria’s scoop saviour Sandra Foti has three dessert collaborations with Smith & Daughters, 1800 Lasagne and The Lighthouse.

PERFORMANCE

Life is anything but static. Chaos reigns in The Wilds’ performance petri dish.

Observe performance group Discordia busy themselves throughout The Wilds' terrain. Gleaning, preening and convening amongst makeshift habitats, these meandering mascots will keep things weird, as they artfully engage in acts of mindful mindlessness.

Beached on the shores of our primordial swamp are Melbourne’s least professional water ballerinas, The Clams. Lured from the shallows of suburban pools, they’ve emerged from their shells as The Siphonophores—a deeper, darker and drier evolutionary state. A shapeshifting bioluminescent collective drifting through the Bowl.

MUSIC

DECON MASS is a cleansing sonic shower, preparing you for entry to The Wilds. Sound artists Mark Mitchell and Pascal Babare utilise multiple speaker arrays and physics-based algorithms over four sites of condensed natural energy. The pair deploy synthesised and processed sounds to create an atmosphere that's both organic and otherworldly. Nature concentrated and digitally digested into waves and surges of cascading sound, all radiating from a grand old tree.

Soundtracking your snacking is a crew of 1800 Lasagne DJs, coming in hot from the Thornbury pasta palace. Music is an essential element of 1800 Lasagne, an extra layer on top of the bechamel. Every weekend, the city's best DJs decamp from nightclubs to spin vinyl from behind the bar. They'll bring their extensive record colleections and even bigger vibes to The Wilds each night. Jazz licks, wordlwide funk obscurities and house music party starters are on the menu. (Read the full line-up in the sidebar at the top of the page.)

Rising above it all like bats in flight is the screeching RISING Night Chorus—our nocturnal choir, belting out reconstructed ‘80s and ‘90s hits over the ice of Rinky Dink. Big voices and even bigger hearts, rising into the night when the moment takes them.

Glass Paintings is a piece custom made for The Wilds, to play at Rinky Dink. Composed as a quadraphonic sound environment by Nick Huggins and Ben Talbot Dunn, Glass Paintings conjures a delicate sonic environment. Synthesizers vocalise like insects, an ancient piano dissolves like light on the water, and post-industrial fragments scatter. Naturally occurring rhythms form and release as resonating glass hums.