Perth Festival Artistic Director Anna Reece On 2026 Instalment: ‘We Have Art In All Different Kinds Of Places & Spaces’

Some say that the West is best, and for Perth Festival Artistic Director Anna Reece, that’s certainly the case. Raised in Boorloo her whole life and having balanced numerous festival production roles over the years, Reece is jumping into her second year as Artistic Director of the esteemed Perth Festival.

Perth Festival is the lifeblood of the world’s most isolated city – a month-long celebration of all forms of art that the Western Australian state has to offer. Be it visual art, performance art, dance, theatre, design, film, or music – the festival has it all, and every piece of it values audience immersion.

With the program kicking off today, The Music caught up with Reece amid her busy schedule prepping the city for the creative chaos to come.

This year’s annual celebration of all things Perth is Reece’s second year behind the reins. Introduced to the role in late 2024, Reece took over from the previous head, Iain Grandage, and is the festival’s first WA-raised artistic director. Reece balances her local insight into the city with a diverse arts career, having led Darwin Festival and the Fremantle Arts Centre for several years.

While she’s a pro at production, Reece reflects on her first year directing for 2025’s Perth Festival as a nerve-wracking one.

“It was really terrifying at the beginning. It’s kind of like having a party and just being worried that people won’t come,” Reece admits.

“Perth really did show up, and I think one of the most important things about a festival is that opportunity for people just to get together, not necessarily see a show, but just be around art and culture, be together, be talking about things.

“And yeah, I mean, just having over 80,000 people head to the Power Station and then right across the city, it was really, really special.

“And I think I suppose I just felt a bit of extra pressure as the first WA Artistic Director. This is my hometown. And I just really, I really want to show it off for the people here, but also to the rest of the world. I feel very passionate about that.“

Last year’s show lit up all sorts of nooks and crannies around the western city, from the Riverside Gardens and the riverbanks, to the long-abandoned East Perth Power Station and revamped Embassy Ballroom. Prominent music artists included Peter Garret & The Alter Egos, Emily Wurramarra and Electric Fields – and from across the ocean – PJ Harvey, Fontaines D.C., and Röyksopp.

“Röyksopp at the power station was definitely a highlight,” Reece says of her own Perth Festival experience last year.

“Just seeing the venue sold out for the first time with that amazing electronic music duo was really kind of where I was hoping the Power Station would get to.”

Other personal favourites included Casa Musica, which is back again after popular demand, as well as Christos Papadopoulos’ choreographic work Larsen C. But amongst all, Reece takes an anthropological view of the festival experience.

“The thing that is always the highlight for me is just watching the audience take something away from it.

“Like, if you ever tried to spot me at a festival, I’d always be at the back of the venue or right at the back of the lawn because I really just love to watch how people interact with spaces and places and artists.”

So, what spaces and places and artists have Reece and her team curated this year? 

In terms of places, we can definitely expect to see the Power Station kicked into full gear again following the reintroduction last year. The venue was such a hit that it even won Best Cultural, Arts or Music Event for WA at the recent 2025 Australian Event Awards.

“I mean, it sounds cheesy to say, but it was totally electric,” Reece shares. “I felt incredibly proud, really excited, really overwhelmed, actually, like almost a bit teary. They pushed so hard to get that venue ready in the very first year.

“So, it was just so amazing to see everyone grinning, you know, we were kind of all just quite beside ourselves, but yeah, it was, it was a very, very special event.”

At the Power Station this year, there will be a series of ticketed and free events, including free events featuring Casa Musica sets from Selve, Ngaiire, and Beoga.

As for the ticketed music? We eagerly await performances from Bleak Squad (made up of members from some of Australia’s most iconic bands), UK trip-hop duo Morcheeba, the soul-tinged Nilüfer Yanya, as well as other favourites Black Country, New Road, Sudan Archives, and newly added act King Stingray.

Meanwhile, another Power Station ticketed event might be both Reece’s and this writer’s most anticipated gigs. The arching industrial skeleton of a venue will play host to Rebel Rebel – a celebration of artist David Bowie from the Perth Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with some of the city’s brightest stars.

“I love David Bowie. And yeah, January this year is 10 years since he passed away and since the Black Star album was released,” Reece says.

“And yeah, I was thinking for a really long time about different ways that we could really respectfully mark his contribution to the world and to music. And anyway, Fiona Campbell, who is the artistic director of the Symphony Orchestra, is amazing. And she says yes to the wildest ideas.

“I was there at a gig, and I was thinking about programming for 2026. And I was just thinking, ‘Oh my God, imagine all this iconic imagery.’ I think people will rock up and frock up and have a really, really great night, kind of celebrating him.

“So, it’s not so much a tribute, a bit of celebration, just in terms of we won’t have a tribute band. But I think having people like Meow Meow, Noah Dillon, our local sweetheart, Abbe May, and Katy Steele, who was from Little Birdy, popping back up on stage. She’s kind of West Coast music royalty.

“So yeah, it’s a pretty eclectic mix of people who are really going to bring their own. And yeah, I cannot wait for that gig.”

But it’s not all just music being celebrated at Perth Fest; there’s also the plethora of interactive, performative, and representative works of art that will inspire patrons across the city.

One of those programs is Boorloo Contemporary.

“Borloo is the Noongar word for Perth. And Boorloo Contemporary is a big First Nations commissioning program,” Reece notes.

“So, we commission extraordinary First Nations artists to create new work. And one of the big commissions is the East Perth Power Station Commission. So, every year we invite, be it a group of artists, or this year we invited a senior Noongar artist, Lance Chadd, to create just the most phenomenal landscapes of actually that country, the country that the power station was built on.”

Chadd, better known as Tjyllyungoo, is a renowned Noongar landscape painter whose works are in collections at major galleries worldwide. As part of Boorloo Contemporary 2026, Tjyllyungoo has created brilliant works of imagery to be projected onto the relic walls of the Power Station. As a symbolic taking back of the land to the way it once was, the brute intensity of brick and concrete softening to the similarity of the swampy frog-decorated marshes surrounding.

“When you go down at different times of year, you can hear the frog song. And all of that has been brought to life,” Reece tells.

“We just were testing it the other night, actually. It just looks so beautiful with just these huge frogs and these swamplands and these incredible colours coming to life. And the facade of the power station just disappears.”

Kait James is another First Nations artist who features in this year’s Boorloo Contemporary series, bringing her outsider perspective from Naarm (Melbourne) to highlight the beauty that Perth locals may overlook.

“When she came over, we had these, as everyone does, like big light posts, you know, along the roads,” Reece says. “She thought that the colour of the light post was really beautiful. And she said, ‘Oh, I really love that brown-yellow kind of gradient that you’ve created on these light poles.’ And it [the light pole design] wasn’t anything done from an artistic point of view by an artist. It’s literally the bore water of the Perth underground water system staining the metal.”

James is a natural at observation, be it aesthetically or politically. Her upcoming Perth Fest exhibition, Blak Flags, takes the imperialist motif of giant flags and offers a First Nations perspective on home pride. According to Reece, James worked with local elders throughout Perth’s traditional nations, such as the Whadjuk people, to incorporate their unique lens of country.

While Perth Festival will feature art from the perspective of the city’s earliest horizons, the exhibitions also drift forward in time to the Australia of today: a rich and complex melting pot of multiple cultures, religions, and ethnicities.

This is demonstrated through Thania Peterson’s work. “She’s an amazing South African artist whose ancestors were Sufi people,” Reece says, before speaking on Peterson’s immersive new and recent projects hosted at John Curtin Gallery this year. One project, which involves the filling of thousands of small organza bags with various cut greens and essential oils, is an ode to love and the land of Indonesia.

While Peterson’s work involves the occasional audience immersion to create pieces, so too does the work of esteemed French choreographer Boris Charmatz. As part of Perth Moves by Strut Dance, Charmatz will be debuting a huge piece of participatory work: a performance of 150+ dancers across Perth.

And these won’t just be trained dancers, but a combination of the untrained, the wannabes, the pros, and those looking to bring a bit of whimsy into their daily movement. Anyone is welcome to join! But if you’re not quite ready for a crowd, there’s also a series of free dance classes throughout the festival’s run,

If acting is more your scene, Reece recommends you check out POV, an improvised experience where unrehearsed actors take the lead from an 11-year-old director.

“Every night two actors walk on stage for the very first time, and they’re given a script, and one plays mum, and one plays dad, and they’re directed by this amazing, really confident 11-year-old girl,” Reece shares. “She’s behind the camera, and I really think it’s, you know, you never want to have favourites, but I think with this, it’s a real festival show.

“Like, it’s that proper gem that once you see it, you’ll tell everyone to see it. I had that experience. I saw it at Rising Festival in Melbourne and was like, ‘That’s it, that’s the one for me.’ I invited them to Perth Festival immediately, but just the word on the street, it’s quite a tricky show to kind of explain, but it’s so precious and quirky and surprising and brilliant.”

It’s also one of the many events that kids can be inspired by at the festival.

“What we try and do at the festival as well is also look at ways across the program how kids can also engage with it,” Reece says, before name-dropping several kid and teen-friendly events such as the Artwalk for Teenagers, the Cinewonders film program, and the eye-spy-like wonder that will come from spotting Perth Festivals’ numerous staff in frog hats.

“I know this sounds hilarious, but it’s in kind of support of the frog theme of the artwork,” she admits, referencing the Power Station’s projective displays.

But there’s one part of the kid-based curating in particular that fell into the palm of Reece’s hand, and that she might be most keen on all to see come to fruition.

“We had this young, 15-year-old Oscar, and he was part of our back of house. We have an amazing, big, creative learning programme. So, lots of kids get to come to dress rehearsals and tech rehearsals or work with lighting designers or, you know, do master classes.

“But this kid, Oscar, came, and, after the festival, he wrote to me directly. He was really, really passionate, and his big thing is that he’s part of a band. He’s part of a band with his two brothers; he’s an identical triplet. You’ve got to check these guys out; the band’s called Birdland.

“Oscar wrote to me really passionately about the fact that as an emerging artist with his brothers and his band, he’s been watching the Bricks and Mortar independent music venues in Perth close, and there’s just no or not enough opportunities for under 18s to see live music and hardly any opportunities for them to play live music,” Reece says.

“So, he pitched this whole idea to us about putting on a big event at Perth Festival specifically to tackle that and to give emerging artists underage an opportunity to play and see live music.

“And so for one night, at the stage outside the Power Station called Casa Musica, Oscar and a group of young people, his cohort, have been working with our team over the last few months to plan and then deliver this entirely youth-initiated, youth-programmed and delivered event, and it’s called Powerhouse.”

It’s this kind of youth-focused vision, be it 11-year-old directors, 15-year-old musicians and event organisers, or the crowd members who visualise themselves as the next person to get on stage, that exemplifies what makes Perth Festival so uniquely inclusive.

If you weren’t already convinced that Perth Festival has something in store for you, then the 128-event program begs to differ. Whether you’re a local or a tourist, a First Nations person or an immigrant, a dancer or an artist, an observer or simply an enjoyer of all things beautiful, Perth Festival promises to have you see yourself throughout its winding rivers and beguiling dance halls.

“We have art in all different kinds of places and spaces, you know? And we have some really, really special, brand new West Australian work that’s premiering in the festival,” Reece summarises.

“So it’s just that kind of- to look under the rug, you know, and find the festival gems, because they’re all there.”

Perth Festival takes place this year from February 6th to March 1st, with a massive line-up across the city. The line-up features both free and ticketed events. For more information on the Perth Festival program, visit the event website.