When Eggpicnic designers Camila De Gregorio and Christopher Macaluso one night this week walked out to the forecourt of Parliament House and looked up, it was an emotional moment.
There, on the 10-metre-high walls of the iconic building, their birds were flying. And their butterflies were fluttering. And their beetles were scuttling up gum trees.
They could hear their magpies chortling.
Animals and birds from their work that usually remained on paper, were suddenly "alive",
"I turned around and I saw it and I was tearing up," Camila said.
"I guess we've never seen our work in motion.
"It's amazing to have the animals take the stage like this."
The Eggpicnic designers have a six-minute animation on a constant loop on the walls of Parliament House as part of Enlighten, Canberra's festival of light which starts on Friday night.
Buildings will be illuminated in the Parliamentary Triangle and across the lake in City Walk, Ainslie Place and Civic Square every night until 11pm right up to March 13.
Life-size puppets will also roam around the city centre every night between 6.30pm and 9.30pmas part of Before Us: A Night Walk Through Time.
A host of other events are part of the festival, including a galaxy of giant space-themed inflatable characters at the Canberra Centre.
The buildings were lit up on Wednesday night for a preview, including at Parliament House.
For Eggpicnic's Chris and Camila, the symbolism of having their work shone on to the seat of government is powerful, given their efforts to draw attention to threated and endangered wildlife and the campaigns underway to save them.
"I think it's just amazing to be given this opportunity to do this within the public space," he said.
"For us, public art is really important in terms of communicating those messages about conservation and the importance of birdlife as well.
"Having this platform just allows us to communicate those ideas."
Camila agreed.
"And also to bring our work in front of people who hold so much responsibility in their hands in a world that needs repair, is incredibly significant for us," she said.
All the animals and birds in the Eggpicnic animation can be found in the gardens around Parliament House. During the loop, the trunks of the brittle gums change colour through the season as Christmas beetles scuttle up them. Gang-gangs and magpies and superb parrots fly past. Butterflies flutter in a mesmerising loop.
The couple did the work in consultation with ecologist Dr Michael Mulvaney. The accompanying soundscape by Dr Ann Jones and Corey Hague creates an immersive experience. And a thought-provoking one.
"We're really hoping this will start an important conversation not only among Canberrans, but also inside Parliament House," Camila said.
Melbourne artists and mother and son Kate and Rali Beynon were in Canberra on Wednesday night to see their work, Spirits Shapeshifting, 2023, projected on to the National Portrait Gallery. Kate's husband and Raili's dad, Michael Pablo, also composed the music for the work.
"It's been the most epic project we've worked on to date," Kate said.
"We've had a little taste of seeing it over Zoom, just the initial testing, but then to see it in real life, to be there, was just incredible.
"The scale was amazing, it was so panoramic and the colour was really intense which is what we wanted. We were just totally wrapped."
Raili was similarly moved.
"It was very surreal," he said. "I animated it and I have a fairly big monitor for editing video but I wasn't fully prepared to see what that looks like at its full-scale of 65-metres long."
Their work for Enlighten is a colourful, supernatural-inspired animation of themselves and other family members, including their pets. It was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery and draws inspiration from their blend of diverse cultural backgrounds, including Cantonese-Malaysian, Afro-Caribbean, First Nations Pima-Mexican, Welsh/Celtic and Nordic ancestries.
Spirits Shapeshifting, 2023 features Kate and Michael and Raili, Raili's partner Hesper, their cats and dog and Kate's step-son Soul McKenzie and his partner Isabel Buck, who are also both contemporary artists, and their dog.
The family will return to Canberra next week to see their work amongst the Enlighten crowds and also for the opening on March 10 of Portrait23: Identity, a major exhibition of new work from contemporary Australian artists, including Kate who has created a separate piece for that.
Raili will celebrate his 24th birthday in Canberra on March 11 when they will be doing some interactive activities at the gallery.
"We have quite a few extended family and friends coming, so can't wait," Kate said.
The lights of Enlighten will be officially turned on at 7.45 on Friday night at the National Portrait Gallery.
Events ACT executive branch manager Ross Triffitt said Enlighten last year attracted more than 338,000 people, which generated more than $20 million in the local economy.
"We're really hoping to achieve those kinds of numbers," he said.
Enlighten had become embedded as an event that Canberrans loved - and which Events ACT wanted to share with more people from interstate and overseas. Some campaigning this year had focused on people already visiting from overseas and interstate for WorldPride.
"We had a slight increase in interstate visitation last year in terms of the percentage of the audience," he said.
"But it is still really a Canberra community-supported event. Our visitation numbers aren't significant in terms of Floriade.
"We do hope that interstate audience does build over time."
