From live art experiences on city streets to a contemporary opera performed in a corporate office tower, public artworks on bridges and river banks and the transformation of East Perth Power Station into a hub for contemporary music and art, Perth Festival is inventive when responding to the Western Australian capital’s lack of cultural infrastructure.
‘We definitely don’t have as much as our friends on the east coast by way of multiple theatres or major arts and cultural precincts,’ Perth Festival’s Artistic Director Anna Reece acknowledges.
‘We are lacking that kind of iconic Carriageworks or [Brisbane] Powerhouse or Substation that other states have so successfully transformed,’ she continues. ‘But I think a festival changes how we feel about our city because it can temporarily rewire our sense of place. Suddenly the familiar becomes extraordinary, and streets that you wander down every morning or dance through at night, and buildings you’ve never looked twice at, can become stages.’
Perth Festival 2026 – quick links
Creating temporary venues
The Perth Festival team – and Perth’s arts sector more widely – are currently working around the temporary loss of Perth Concert Hall, which is closed for redevelopment until early 2028.
Simultaneously, the Perth Cultural Centre – which is home to the Blue Room Theatre, State Theatre Centre WA, Art Gallery WA and other key institutions – is currently a construction site, with landscaping and rejuvenation underway until early 2026.
Reece believes Perth Festival can play an active role in championing the importance of new arts and cultural spaces in the city. One such space is the previously derelict East Perth Power Station, which, for the second year running, is becoming a live music venue and a large-scale canvas for visual arts projects.
‘It takes the Festival a huge amount of energy and resources and time and imagination to deliver the venue the way that we do,’ she tells ArtsHub. ‘But I suppose what the festival does naturally through activating the East Perth Power Station is remind everyone it’s there.’
It’s not just about reminding community. It’s also about reminding ‘possible investors or ambitious philanthropists or government visionaries’ about the potential of ‘transforming spaces and places like that into something permanent for our city,’ she says.
In the 2026 festival program, the East Perth Power Station hosts a range of local and international bands, artists and events, including British alt-rock band Black Country, New Road, the London-based techno producer Max Cooper, and UK trip-hop trio Morcheeba, as well as Australian bands and artists like rock supergroup Bleak Squad, Yolngu rapper Baker Boy and Perth Symphony Orchestra and guest vocalists performing the music of David Bowie.
‘You know a festival is working when your community gathers together without a ticket in hand just to be part of something, just to be part of the city – to come together for these shared moments. Festivals are magical because they are just for a moment in time. And for me, the East Coast Power Station was really emblematic of that [last year],’ Reece says. ‘I just love how Perth really showed up and embraced this piece of their history, this wild industrial building, you know?’
Also returning for a second year, Boorloo Contemporary animates the Power Station’s façade with new commissions alongside solo exhibitions from First Nations artists. This includes work by Bibbulmun Noongar/Budimia Yamatji artist Lance Chadd Tjyllyungoo, whose artworks weave Noongar spiritual beliefs and stories into images of physical landforms.
‘This year we’re really committed to adding more and more art experiences into [the Power Station], be it the projections on the front, on the riverside of the building, which is part of our Boorloo Contemporary commissioning program, or [more music and events],’ Reece says. ‘That precinct should feel like it is for everyone.’
Perth Festival 2026: art on the streets
The 2026 program brings major international works to Perth, including solo dance performance Songs of the Bulbul by UK choreographer and dancer Aakash Odedra; LACRIMA, a French theatrical epic set in the cut-throat world of haute couture; and South Korean theatre-maker Jaha Koo’s Haribo Kimchi, an exploration of migration, home and the healing power of food. The Festival also transforms existing spaces – including St Mary’s Cathedral, the city’s bridges and riverbanks, and a familiar corporate office building – into performance spaces, galleries and stages.
Established local artists pvi collective will present a new work on the streets of Perth in 2026. Entitled the booster protocol, Reece describes it as ‘pvi collective at their best’ and points to the subversive, playful nature of their interventions.
She adds, ‘What they’ve created is a work that ultimately is here to boost your own individual hope levels.’
Read: The Unconformity review: a festival that finds its own way
Visiting British visual artist Joe Bloom’s A View From A Bridge explores connection in a distracted age by utilising Perth’s bridges and the voices and experiences of its residents; open-air sound and light installation Karla Bidi (‘Fire Trail’) brings the stories of the stars to earth along the banks of the Derbarl Yerrigan/Swan River and Djarlgarro/Canning River; and local company Lost and Found Opera will stage the Australian premiere of Philip Glass’ 2014 opera The Trial, based on Franz Kafka’s novel, in a CBD office tower.
Reece says she loves the concept of performing the opera in ‘a bleak office environment. That’s what festivals do, especially Perth Festival. No, we don’t yet have the kind of cultural infrastructure that other states take for granted, and we don’t have that established arts precinct. But the flip side of that is really part of our freedom, so that a festival like ours can take over the city and reimagine the spaces that people pass every day, and remind them that culture doesn’t need a building to belong.’
Shaping the future of Perth
‘Festivals remind us that a city isn’t just infrastructure or commerce, it’s people and imagination and shared experience,’ Reece continues. ‘Festivals make us feel connected to one another and to the landscape beneath our feet. And to come back to infrastructure, I think for a few weeks, a festival can show us not only what our city is right now but really, what it could be.
‘I think we’re still a city finding its cultural language, where Perth Festival can [temporarily] take over. We’re taking over the power stations and the river banks and cathedrals and town halls and streetscapes. I think that really can and does give us a glimpse of Perth’s future – one that could be really confident and creative and deeply proud of its place,’ she concludes.
