It was more like dining in a fine restaurant than in a convention centre.
The Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre hosted 80 guests for their second Unconventional dinner on Tuesday night. (See the media release from SCEC for their details).
Pre-dinner drinks were held in front of Tim Storrier’s Point to Point, the huge painting that dominates the open area outside the Bayside Terrace.
The Bayside Terrace is essentially a plain room – but with the best view from SCEC back over to the Sydney CBD. Long tables were arranged with a centrepiece of 20 or so black candles sitting in a tray of water. The placemats for each setting featured a print of Point to Point.
Each course was presented to each table by a phalanx of waiters and then lots of photos taken (on the inevitable phones as well as proper cameras) before being admired then consumed.
The Centre’s manager of Technical Production and Design, Paul Davision devised the table setting and with the Centre’s in-house technical team built a 13 metre screen to cover the length of the function space onto which he projected an animated version of the Storrier painting, Landscape (over the night road). This then morphed into an animated version of Point to Point.
Paul told me that he was uncertain as to how Storrier would react to his works being interpreted in such a way. As it was Storrier’s wife was particularly impressed with the result and so the artist just accepted it as well.
The food and the presentation were all quite stunning along with interviews by Lyndey Milan with the Centre’s CEO Ton van Amerongen, Executive Chef Uwe Habermehl and sommelier William Wilson and with the food and wine suppliers. All these people gave a great background to the dinner.
Also worth noting was the band – superb musicians led by Kieran Tart, who provided a subtle accompaniment to the dinner. Funky but not too loud.
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