Rhianna Pezzaniti

You won’t see Rhianna Pezzaniti’s name on any of the dazzlingly colourful hand-blown glass artworks currently drawing huge crowds to the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. But without her, it would be impossible to enjoy one of the biggest visual arts spectacles South Australia has ever seen.

As a project manager and event producer, Pezzaniti has helped to turn a range of ambitious artistic visions into reality. For a decade she helped to develop large-scale outdoor art projects in Western Australia, including Bruce Munro’s Field of Light, the PUBLIC Street Art Festival and the Silo Trail that transformed grain silos into the world’s largest outdoor art gallery.

So when she returned to Adelaide, stepping into the role of Producer for Chihuly in the Botanic Gardens was a natural fit. “I really enjoy the opportunity to work with creative people and figure out how to achieve the things they want to do,” she says. “Working on large-scale outdoor works in public spaces is quite complex. But by using a soft touch and combining our skills, we’re able to steer that vision together.”

It’s no surprise that Pezzaniti is a natural collaborator, and since coming home she’s been struck by the willingness of Adelaideans to work together.

“A massive part of this job was figuring out how to bring all these different teams and priorities together and move everyone towards achieving a single goal. And through it all, the generosity of the groups we’ve worked with has been over and above what I’ve experienced anywhere else.”

“Because Adelaide is quite compact, it seems like everyone knows each other and the arts community is very collaborative. When I go to openings, I see so many people from different mediums coming out and supporting each other.”

But it’s not just creatives displaying this sense of community. “It’s all the arms and legs that make festivals and big events happen as well; activation partners, printing partners, lighting specialists, even the people doing IT or security.”

When all those elements combine, they can achieve great things.

After shipping dozens of fragile glass works and installing them around the site, Chihuly in the Botanic Garden welcomed more than 330,000 visitors in its first five weeks – about double the Garden’s usual visitation.

Like many of Pezzaniti’s projects, the exhibition entices audiences into areas they may not have explored, while adding layers of meaning to those that are already well-known. This time, that was an experience shared by the producer.

Pezzaniti’s family is full of amateur botanists and her grandparents often celebrated their combined birthday party in a corner of the Botanic Garden.

“So I have a lot of memories of coming here as a kid and I know that area of the Garden really well,” she says. “But there’s so much more to it. Until I started working here, I never knew about the Sunken Garden where Ethereal Spring Persians is installed. Now the next generation of kids can see something quite spectacular there, and hopefully that’s just the start of their journey with this place.”

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This article is part of the Festival City Stories series, a collection of reflections about Adelaide made by the people who make this a festival place. The project was funded through the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Arts South Australia, Arts Recovery Fund, and delivered in partnership with the State Library of South Australia. 

Written by: Alexis Buxton-Collins

Photography by: Jack Fenby