State Library Unplugged

  • Vivid Sydney
  • Special event
  • Free
  • On Site

Switch off, reconnect and take the time to dream at the Library this Vivid Sydney.

Event Information

Fri, 13 June 2025, 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
General Admission:  
Free
Kids (12 or under):  
Free
On Site
Mitchell Building, Entry via Shakespeare Place

1 Shakespeare Place
Sydney NSW 2000
Australia
+61 2 9273 1414

A young girl reads peacefully in the Shakespeare Room at the Library, a room with large windows and light streaming through on one side, and lined with full bookshelves on the other.
 
Libraries have long been sanctuaries of reflection, where people of all ages can find themselves in quiet company, surrounded by books. In our hurried world of digital distractions, the unplugged movement calls us back to this timeless experience.
 

In the historic Mitchell Library Reading Room, time slows and the hum fades. Bring a book, a sketchpad, your curiosity — or take time to simply be. Sketch a pondering, a doodle or anything in between on our Dream Scroll, an interactive collective experience. See some of the Library’s most dreamy items on display in the Special Collections Area, open until 7.30 pm each week.

In our heritage Paintings Galleries explore puzzles, art materials and hands-on analogue activities inviting creativity and shared experiences. See engaging live art by local makers, and enjoy DJs spinning vinyl through the evening.

In the stunning Shakespeare Room, have a chat with a librarian and let them guide you to the ‘book of your dreams’.

Share the joy of discovery in the Library’s magical spaces. Come by yourself, with your family or friends, and reconnect with yourself, others and the physical world.

 

This event is held in partnership with Vivid Sydney.

If you have any accessibility requirements in attending this event, please contact us at bookings@sl.nsw.gov.au. You can find more information about accessibility to our events here.

 

Friday May 30:

  • Live artist: Lew Keilar
  • DJ: Mazzacles
  • Find the book of your dreams with: Jenn Martin

Friday June 6:

  • Live artist: Barbara Dias
  • DJ: Setwun
  • Find the book of your dreams with: Yasmin Greenhalgh

Friday June 13:

  • Live artist: Andrew Yee
  • DJ: Reenie
  • Find the book of your dreams with: Jenn Martin

Featuring...

A man looks directly into the camera. He has straight, medium length black hair, wears a cap and glasses.

Andrew Yee

Andrew Yee is a multidisciplinary artist who works in illustration, video, and installation. Yee's disconnection from his suburban surroundings led him to consume 2000s manga, pro wrestling, K-pop, and more. These muses would influence his sense of self, leading to a visual practice offering a wild glimpse into his meditations on his identity. His work crafts imaginative narratives in an idiosyncratic, surreal, and comic-inspired style.

A girl with short hair paints a blue painting in a bar.

Barbara Dias

Barbara Dias is a Sydney based contemporary artist that fuses the everyday with echoes of pop culture. Working with acrylics, drawing and mixed media, her works reimagine familiar objects, and people through a lens of vivid colour, layered textures and detail. Blurring the lines between traditional master painting techniques and the contemporary, her practice invites a fresh look at how we experience nostalgia, beauty and cultural memories. With a background in fine arts and education, Barbara is driven by storytelling through art making - creating work that sparks connection, and a sense of the familiar.

A smiling woman, wearing glasses, sits in a book-lined room in front of a desk scattered with books.

Jenn Martin

Jenn Martin is a librarian and reading specialist who loves helping people work out what to read next. As well as her day job as Library Experience Coordinator at Woollahra Libraries, Jenn is resident bibliotherapist at Mudgee Readers’ Festival, literary trivia maven for the State Library of NSW’s monthly Trivia at the Library Bar, and was a judge for the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction at the 2025 NSW Literary Awards.

A man smiles at the camera looking directly into the camera.

Lew Keilar

Lew Keilar is a Sydney-based artist with over thirty years of full-time experience in commercial illustration, animation, and live drawing events. His career has spanned a broad range of styles and mediums — from photo-realistic airbrush work to expressive sketches in pen, ink, charcoal, and pastel, as well as whiteboard animation and graphic recording. Today, he favours an observational, minimalist style using pen and ink to convey spontaneity and economy of line. Originally trained as a primary school teacher before studying graphic design in Sydney, Lew brings both technical skill and a passion for learning to his practice. He works from a collaborative studio with filmmakers, designers, architects, and fellow artists, participating in regular life-drawing and observational sessions that celebrate creative diversity in a relaxed, supportive setting. Lew believes “drawing isn’t about perfection — it’s about observation, experimentation, and expression. I aim to create a space where people feel encouraged to play, take risks, and trust that the ability to capture what they see is already within them.”

A faded, washed out photo. A girl with short brown hair DJs.

Mazzacles

Mazzacles is an Eora based radio host/producer and resident DJ of the Sydney clubbing institution Club 77. Her musical style ranges from the obscure and funky to the deep and wicked.

A girl with long, blonde and red curly hair looks directly at the camera. She stands in front of a colourful mural.

Reenie

Reenie is a DJ based in Eora/Sydney. You may have caught her on the airwaves hosting ‘Sunset with Motorik’ on fbi.radio as well at ‘Crossing the Streams’ on 2SER, behind a drum kit being a human 808 in Sydney band Good Pash or behind the decks, mixing records at local venues from Club 77 to Pleasure Club. Having brought her classical percussion skills to music curation, Reenie has a talent for blending the eccentric and eclectic into a cosmic journey through sound. She has an expansive passion for body-moving music, with the record collection to match. She is a dedicated contributor to the Sydney music scene with her deep-seated appreciation of music leaving an imprint on any audience. Reenie has released an EP, Amirite/Zero Sum with Tunnel Signs on Motorik! Records, and her solo debut Space Cadet EP on Airsigns. Most recently, Reenie’s edit of Prince’s ‘Baby I’m A Star’ was released on Rollover Milano’s sublabel Anything Goes. Reenie’s DJ sets are uniquely blended, often doused with expansive percussion, cosmic synths and a sharp drive. Reenie’s energy and passion are contagious. She's ready to keep you on the dancefloor and subtly opening Shazam.

A man looks down, away from the camera. He wears a blue mesh shirt over a white singlet, and a gold chain.

Setwun

Setwun is the musical brainchild of singer-songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and DJ Josh Panakera-Molony. His music is the aperture for his own self-exploration - a quality that breathes through anything he touches. Shapeshifting through sound yet instinctively soulful, his brand of futurist fusion weaves through the purview of contemporary jazz, beats, sound system lineages and electronica with permeable feeling. Whether psychedelic neo-soul, off-kilter broken grooves or wobbly rhythmic experimentation, Setwun makes affecting music, no matter the twist. The Eora (Sydney) based Melanesian-Australian is as versatile as he is prolific. A much-respected figure within Australia’s ever-fertile music scene, the hype for those on the outside has been bubbling with every small offering and tip-off from some of the world’s most revered.

A woman with short hair and glasses smiles at the camera, in front of shelves of colourful books.

Yasmin Greenhalgh

Yasmin Greenhalgh hails from a family of librarians and has spent a lifetime in libraries being overexcited by the curious and delightful items they can hold. As Collection Development Librarian at Stanton Library in North Sydney, Yasmin loves curating diverse resources for the community, and helping people find reading that can connect us, expand our horizons and comfort our hearts.