The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia’s Foundation Hall is an impressive ballroom with 7-metre-high ceilings and a terrace overlooking Sydney Harbour. Once the original reception hall of the former Maritime Services Board, this 450-square-foot space features traditional materials, including scagliola stone pillars and terrazzo flooring.
AV1 has been the in-house AV company for 18 years now, recently lending its audiovisual and technology expertise to an upgrade of the lighting equipment.
The Foundation Hall has always been an event space; however, it previously had a restaurant that operated there every lunchtime. Consequently, events could not take place until after 4pm, or the client would have to buy out the restaurant for the day. As the venue lacked a permanent lighting installation, everything for the event had to be set up from scratch each time.
Last year, fine dining moved to another level, leaving the Foundation Hall ready to transform into a permanent event space. With that move, the venue now boasts a permanent lighting rig designed to allow the room to face different directions.
“Making the space functional from all orientations east, south, and west was important,” commented Nigel Mintern, Managing Director of AV1. “We also had to keep it minimal because, being a museum, they may want to utilise the space, for example, for exhibitions.”
Making a huge difference to the room’s ambience is the ShowPRO MOONLITE 80 HEX and MOONLITE 150 HEX, creative house lights with a highly efficient optical system and HSIC colour mixing system.
“Previously, if someone wanted pillar lighting, there would be a labour charge to do so,” said Nigel. “Now, we’ve got complete control with 28 MOONLITE HEX 80 for the pillars and nine MOONLITE 150 HEX replacing the old oyster lights. They also look great, as they tie in with the building’s material.”
There are four trusses in the space: a south truss at the back of the room with six ShowPRO R3 Wash fixtures for backlighting or beam lighting from the stage. The east and west trusses essentially have a projector on each, as well as two Ayrton Diablos and two ShowPRO R3 Washes. The remaining truss houses four Ayrton Diablos and four ShowPRO R3 washes, along with a projector. In the bar area, there are five dropper bars, four with a ShowPRO R3 on it and one with two Diablos on it.
“We have ten Ayrton Diablos, chosen for their excellent light output and because they’re capable of covering two bases. Firstly, as a stage wash, their shutter capability allows us to ‘shutter in’ and perform stage washes. Their versatility also allows them to act as beam lights in the space. They’re evenly distributed in the room so that there’s some on each truss so that we can do stage wash east, west, and south, but then we can use them for beam lighting throughout.”
With eighteen ShowPRO R3 Washes added to the ten Ayrton Diablo, AV1 has complete versatility for most event setups in that space. From weddings to conferences, they know they are covered.
“We did a launch event with very subdued lighting, and then they had a performance that was fully time-coded and had a full light show with all the pillar lighting, the oysters going, beam movement, the whole shebang,” remarked Nigel. “Then, as soon as that finished, it just went back to a lovely, demure dinner setting.”
One of the essential requests in the brief given to AV1 by the MCA was they didn’t want the lighting fixtures to look too overwhelming. As a result, the Ayrton Diablos and ShowPRO R3 Wash were chosen as well for their form factor.
“In particular, The ShowPRO R3’s form factor makes a real difference in terms of the aesthetic of the space if nothing’s in use,” added Nigel.
An MA Lighting MA3 compact XT is in control, and again, the form factor was crucial as it resides in a small space with the audio console. For the majority of events to come through that space, the MA3 compact XT is more than suited. Additionally, four Luminex GigiCore switches provide a networking backbone, and a Luminex LumiNode 12 Ethernet/DMX processor converts, routs, and merges DMX/RDM data.
Nigel reports that their clients love walking into the space now and seeing the versatility of the room. Whereas before, they walked into an empty and uninspiring space.
“Now they can picture how it would work for their events,” he remarked. “They love the versatility and options provided to them to be able to deliver events in any orientation and, lighting-wise as well; it offers a variation of options depending on budget and what they’re trying to achieve.”
Nigel adds that the service from Show Technology, particularly Janis Auzins, was excellent.
“Once we talked through what we were trying to achieve, they came on site, and we did a shootout between multiple lights to see what was best suited in the space to accomplish all of the goals that I mentioned,” he said. “And then, from timely delivery of the product and support getting things up and running, it was flawless from start to finish.”
Photos: Oneill Photographics
