The Central West is thriving.

For close to 75 years, but in particular the last 25, this region has been the site of countless innovations in contemporary art practice. It started here in regional New South Wales, and the VISION 20/50 program stands as testament to the creative power of those artists back in 2024 that saw a pathway to the future through their artmaking.

Through site-specific/transformative practice, collaborations with non-human partners, travel through psychic/temporal/cosmic landscapes and safe, sexy civic celebrations, VISION 20/50 offers a space to reflect, imagine and commune. This year’s program pays homage to that time and where we came from, helps articulate who we are now and who we could be.

This Festival reminds us of where we come from Kris Kennedy’s Connection to Country: Revival sends us back in time to experience first-hand Aboriginal Culture, while Isabel Fox’s Freedom 2050 reminds us of how far we’ve come in creating safe, inclusive spaces of celebration. Rosalie Burns also helps us remember the sports cessation crisis of 2024 and how we turned that into something beautiful and communal with the Myee Maze.

This Festival tells us who we are together At The Cœur is Cindy Fox’s multi-disciplinary, musical call to remind us that we are each musicians and artists everyday. Jennifer Roberts and Wendy Murphy offer a sympathetic musical call, with performance using the world-famous Bathurst Carillon, made physical and material with cutting edge technology at Sonorous Refractions. The natural world is our community also, and Leanne Wick’s Swatch the Flock lends us the companionship of feathered friends from The Flockery, a library of DNA knitted avian avatars.

This Festival imagines who we might become Gus Armstrong continues his collaboration with the newly discovered hyper-sentient mulch in deathbed5000, allowing participants to see one possible end of their life, and the PSA from Bryan Cutts smashes open our minds in an experience fed straight to our senses. And at the limits of the void where time and space melt away, Steven Cavanagh invites you to submerge yourself and float away with the stars with Celestial Bodies.

We hope you join us in celebrating the VISION 20/50 Festival program. The work of these nine regional artists is a powerful image of a world engineered by creativity, and one worth living and celebrating in.