tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/arts-review-8011/articles
Arts review – The Conversation
2024-02-05T02:34:03Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/221595
2024-02-05T02:34:03Z
2024-02-05T02:34:03Z
Campy, playful and funny: Opera Australia finds the joy in The Magic Flute, Mozart’s most-performed opera
<p>The sheer familiarity of The Magic Flute, Mozart’s most-performed opera, can blind one to its inherent oddness. It draws on a range of influences, from ancient Egyptian symbolism and freemasonry to European politics (the character of the Queen of the Night has <a href="https://www.eno.org/discover-opera/operas-greatest-soprano-roles/">been read as</a> a covert allusion to former Austrian Empress Maria Theresa). </p>
<p>Librettist Emanuel Schikaneder has created something that is part allegory, part dream and part fairy tale. That this mish-mash elicited some of Mozart’s greatest and most popular music should shake up ingrained notions of classical music as something po-faced and humourless. </p>
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<h2>Embracing silliness</h2>
<p>Unlike the three Italian <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_buffa">opere buffe</a></em> that Mozart composed to the libretti of Lorenzo da Ponte, The Magic Flute avoids <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recitative">recitative</a> – sung speech – in favour of spoken German dialogue. In the recording I first got to know, <a href="https://www.classicstoday.com/review/the-deluxe-magic-flute-standard/">Klemperer’s legendary version</a> from 1964, only the sung portions were included. This tilted the work’s balance away from the silly and towards the sublime. </p>
<p>A new production by Kate Gaul for Opera Australia does not shy away from pantomime silliness from the start. The monster threatening Tamino (Michael Smallwood) is rendered as a silhouette projected by a child with a torch, and Papageno (Ben Mingay) is first seen in the stalls engaging with audience members before making his way to the stage. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Michael Smallwood and the Opera Australia Chorus perform onstage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573333/original/file-20240205-27-h2z18r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Michael Smallwood has a pleasing light lyrical tenor as Tamino.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Saunders/Opera Australia</span></span>
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<p>Key to bringing out the humour is presenting the opera in English. The translation by Gaul and Michael Gow has some chortle-worthy lines. “Am I hard of hearing, or is no one volunteering?” sings Papageno as he vainly seeks a woman – any woman – to satisfy his romantic urges. This character is given a decidedly ocker makeover, complete with an esky and allusions to beers and barbies. </p>
<p>Thankfully, more serious moments for other characters – including Sarastro’s arias (sung with gravitas by David Parkin) and Pamina’s lament (heart-rendingly performed by Stacey Alleaume) – are allowed to unfold without forcing the comedy.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Ben Mingay and Stacey Alleaume are on stage, playing the characters of Papageno and Pamina." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573325/original/file-20240205-15-wkdls6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ben Mingay and Stacey Alleaume are cast as Papageno and Pamina.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Saunders/Opera Australia</span></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/barrie-koskys-the-magic-flute-is-a-contemporary-spectacle-despite-the-operas-outdated-attitudes-112284">Barrie Kosky's The Magic Flute is a contemporary spectacle, despite the opera's outdated attitudes</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Campy costumes and an ornamental set</h2>
<p>Opera Australia’s previous Magic Flute by Julie Taymor reduced the overture to its opening three chords. It is a relief to hear it in full in this production, directed with sureness of touch by Teresa Riveiro Böhm. The orchestra provides a fulsome sound and crisp articulation over the evening, with just a handful of uncoordinated moments between the pit and stage.</p>
<p>Special commendations are due to the flautist and glockenspiel player for their fine solos (the latter was a role taken on by Mozart for the first performance). Weirdly, Tamino held his on-stage flute up in the air instead of miming, creating an odd disconnect between sight and sound. By contrast, the enforced response of Monostatos (Kanen Breen) and his henchmen to the sound of the magic bells was a hilarious spasm of dancing, macarena moves included. </p>
<p>The costumes by Anna Cordingley are eclectic. Cordingley uses guano-stained tradie attire for the bird-catcher Papageno, simple blueish outfits for Tamino and Pamina, red overalls and outsized glasses for Monastatos, and a gaudy gold cloak for Sarastro. All the villains are changed into tie-dye hippy clothes for the final chorus. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Nathan Lay, David Parkin and Gregory Brown act in The Magic Flute." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573321/original/file-20240205-27-y02uxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">David Parkin portrays Sarastro in a gaudy gold cloak and bold eye makeup.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Saunders/Opera Australia</span></span>
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<p>The Queen of the Night (Giuseppina Grech) asserts her pantomime villain credentials with her platinum blonde hair, vampish fur and feather costume. Outdoing even this for connoisseurs of camp is the late appearance of Papagena (Jennifer Black) in a Brazilian-carnival-style bird costume. </p>
<p>Michael Yeargan’s set has a three-sided exterior surrounding grass, with ornamental entrances on each side. Shiny ribbon curtains represent the fire and water tests, with other curtains repeatedly drawn across the middle of the stage for projections and byplay between characters. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-tale-of-two-queens-flipping-the-script-on-the-princess-culture-in-opera-125606">The tale of two queens: flipping the script on the ‘princess culture' in opera</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Spell-casting performances</h2>
<p>Needless to say, the Queen of the Night’s two arias are among the most applauded. Grech conquers the stratospheric coloratura with aplomb. But for me, the standout voice belongs to Alleaume, who brings a burnished legato to Pamina’s arias, but also playfulness in the ensembles. </p>
<p>Ben Mingay is a seasoned musical theatre performer and aside from some roughness in tone quality, he takes on the role of Papageno with assurance and brings out the humour and humanity of the character. </p>
<p>Smallwood has a pleasing light lyrical tenor as Tamino – less forceful than some exponents of the role, but tuneful and exemplary in his diction. </p>
<p>The three spirits, extended and demanding roles for child singers, are sensibly double cast, and the opening night trio of Abbey Hammond, Zev Mann and James Valanidas demonstrate sureness of ensemble and decent acting chops. The adult trio of Ladies, Jane Ede, Indyana Schneider and Ruth Strutt, work very well together. </p>
<p>Of his big numbers, Parkin as Sarastro (and Speaker) is probably most satisfactory in the aria, Within these sacred halls, which sits higher in his register. His brave but unwise decision to go for the final unwritten low “E” reveals his problematic bottom register, which is often distorted with vocal fry. </p>
<p>Breen brings his trademark comic gifts to Monostatos who, like the other villains, is welcomed into the fold at the end. Gregory Brown and Nathan Lay are solid priests. </p>
<p>Whether one enjoys a laugh, or finely sung sentimental numbers, this production has something for everyone. It may not have solved all the conundrums of the work, but at least one gets to appreciate Mozart’s genius uncut. </p>
<p><em>Opera Australia’s <a href="https://opera.org.au/productions/the-magic-flute-sydney/">The Magic Flute</a> is at the Sydney Opera House until March 16.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221595/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Larkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A new production by Kate Gaul does not shy away from pantomime silliness.
David Larkin, Senior Lecturer in Musicology, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/213645
2023-10-25T19:10:40Z
2023-10-25T19:10:40Z
Monolith considers the cultural and social implications of new technology, without overdoing it
<p><em>This review may contain spoilers.</em></p>
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<p>One of the socially redeeming features of mass media has always been its communal aspect, the fact people are drawn together into a shared experience based on network programming. Of course, this, in the English-speaking world at least, has been driven by the desire for profit through selling advertising space to corporations. </p>
<p>In the era of narrowcasting, smaller and smaller audiences can now be targeted online, on various social media sites and channels, on podcast and other apps, and on streaming services, so we feel like we are now able to consume what we want, when we want, even as megacorporations still control the content, and it’s still produced for profit. The result of this is greater social atomisation.</p>
<p>Monolith, the new Australian film from first-time feature director Matt Vesely and writer Lucy Campbell, is one of the first Australian films to critically navigate the ramifications of narrowcasting technology. </p>
<p>The film follows a podcast journalist, brilliantly played by Lily Sullivan, as she investigates a lead from an anonymous email for her latest show, “Beyond Believable: A Show that Unmasks the Mysteries.” </p>
<p>People around the world have been receiving mysterious black bricks – from Germany to the US to Australia – and this seems suitable fodder for an episode.</p>
<p>Her investigation takes her across the globe and back through time to the 1980s and the Cold War. We watch as she interviews people, often using ethically dubious practices, and assembles the material entirely from inside her home. </p>
<p>The show becomes rapidly successful – we, as well as the main character, recognise its ridiculousness, and this seems to be a dig at new media culture: the idea that this kind of sensationalist, alien-hunting garbage would capture the hearts and minds of the world is preposterous.</p>
<p>Her life, mirroring the investigation, becomes increasingly strange as her own repressed history begins to surface. The dark, moody interiors of her house begin to suggest the inside of a black brick. She starts looking sick, she smokes obsessively, she trembles with anxiety.</p>
<h2>What is the monolith?</h2>
<p>What is the brick, the monolith of the film’s title? We never definitively find out (which some viewers will surely find annoying). The bricks communicate with each recipient in a personal language related to their memory and history, reflecting their hopes, prejudices and – most pronouncedly – paranoid nightmares. </p>
<p>They may be some kind of alien artefacts that communicate with the recipient “from far, far away,” as Klaus, a German art collector and brick recipient says to the journalist. Or as a recipient from Ohio says, “It’s trying to tell me something and I’ve got to listen […] Something awful is coming.” </p>
<p>Maybe the bricks are an allegory for the contemporary world and the disappearance of social bonds, representing the alienation structured into personal (or narrowcast) communication systems. The obscurity with which the film represents the bricks seems to call for this kind of allegorical reading. </p>
<p>The portrayal of a single character’s descent into a living nightmare could easily become hammy, but Sullivan manages to keep the viewer entranced with her controlled, brilliantly understated performance. Joining Sullivan are the voices of some well-known Australian actors including Damon Herriman, Kate Box and Erik Thomson.</p>
<h2>The strange solitude of interpersonal communication</h2>
<p>The strange solitude of interpersonal communication in the global information economy underpins the whole thing, and the screen is replete with a plethora of different technologies reflecting this – talking head videos online, audio recording, editing and streaming, mobile phones, smart houses, close-ups of digital text. </p>
<p>We see, first hand, the sadness (and terror) of the journalist’s solitude and alienation – all she seems to do (alarmingly, perhaps, like many people in a post-COVID world) is talk to people on the phone and look stuff up on the internet. At the same time, we watch her go about the day-to-day business of living – making food in the kitchen, eating, showering at night – her deep solitude foregrounded throughout. </p>
<p>The final section of the film is a touch underwhelming, with the whole thing resolving too neatly in a personal register (whereas what had driven the enigma of the bricks was their social aspect – the fact people all over the world had also received a brick). </p>
<p>Rather than developing into a full-on surreal nightmare (which would have made a better film, one suspects, in the vein of media horror thrillers like Lost Highway or The Ring, the ripples of which radiate throughout this) everything comes together in a way that seems a bit too neat.</p>
<p>There are carefully dispensed echoes of class critique thrown in, fitting the current strain of fantastic cinema that seems to think a film needs an explicitly polemical dimension to speak to the zeitgeist. </p>
<p>Similarly, the doomed, portentous tone becomes a little annoying in the final third – it feels like a space film, but without the necessary existential dread that space elicits – and there is a fair quotient of nonsense underpinning the narrative. </p>
<p>Despite this, Monolith remains an effective fantasy-thriller, remarkably engaging given its limitations – one location, one actor (well, two, including pet turtle Ian). </p>
<p>It’s also refreshing to see a high concept Australian film, as opposed to the usual social realist and period dramas. </p>
<p>Like an episode of Black Mirror - but without the heavy-handedness of many episodes of that show - Monolith thinks through the cultural and social implications of new technologies. It considers how we both reflect and are shaped by technology. </p>
<p>Monolith is a decidedly low-key film, but this should not be mistaken for dull. It is an arresting chiller, extremely tightly performed and made, low budget and, thankfully - and unlike virtually everything else playing in cinemas today - not overlong. Given its interest in contemporary audio-visual technologies, it will probably play best in the cinema, one of the last communal bastions against the blissful and anonymously smooth technological hell of narrowcasting.</p>
<p><em>Monolith is in cinemas from October 26.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213645/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ari Mattes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
New Australian film Monolith is a refreshingly high concept film, as opposed to the usual social realist and period dramas.
Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210162
2023-08-18T10:49:32Z
2023-08-18T10:49:32Z
Edwardian local press invented the ‘middlebrow’ with a lively mix of local news, reviews and fiction
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538562/original/file-20230720-21-2ojfw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1548%2C1026&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Our First Tiff by Robert Walker Macbeth (1878).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/our-first-tiff-98601">Walker Art Gallery</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/history-of-the-provincial-press-in-england-9781441162304/">provincial press has declined</a> in Britain, so too has local arts and cultural criticism. In the 19th and early 20th century, regional newspapers regularly published reviews of theatre productions and a wide variety of books including history, science, travel writing, poetry and fiction. </p>
<p>Starting in the late 19th century and coming to a head in the Edwardian period (1901-1914), regional newspapers even experimented with <a href="https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/jmps/article-abstract/14/1/70/380491/Reviews-Outside-the-Usual-Places-Daily-Newspaper?redirectedFrom=fulltext">a different style of reviewing</a>, which was shorter, chattier and more personal – a shift from the more formal style of the Victorian era.</p>
<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/victoriannewsnew0000brow_j4c2">Historians</a> have traced the sad decline in the fortunes of the local and regional newspaper press with interest. In the 19th century, it was impossible to get a London paper to distant towns or cities by breakfast, because the train system didn’t yet run quickly enough. This gave local newspapers a clear advantage in distribution.</p>
<p>Transportation began to change at the turn of the 20th century, however, and by the 1950s, the national dailies <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/history-of-the-provincial-press-in-england-9781441162304/">dominated the British market</a>. As <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/history-of-the-provincial-press-in-england-9781441162304/">a result</a>, local and regional papers had to consolidate titles. The computerisation of the newspaper workforce meant further lost jobs in the 1980s and 1990s. And today, they struggle to compete with social media for classified ad revenue.</p>
<p>Access to these local and regional papers can be gained through inexpensive databases such as the <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/">British Newspaper Archive</a>, which is available at many local libraries. A brief perusal of this database shows that many different sorts of papers published book reviews, from major regional titles such as the Glasgow Herald to smaller titles, including the Walsall Advertiser.</p>
<p>These reviews were published before the reviews in esteemed national quarterlies or monthlies and could therefore set the tone. A reader could turn to their local morning paper for ideas of theatre productions to purchase tickets to, or books to borrow from circulating libraries.</p>
<p>Although newspaper syndications existed during this period and reviews of monthly magazines were often repeated verbatim in several local titles, reviews of individual books were overwhelmingly original. This means that someone, probably local to the area, received a copy of the book and was paid to report on the reading experience for a wide variety of readerships.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Painting of a woman in a Victorian-style black dress and hair in a bun reading a large newspaper." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538567/original/file-20230720-17-8fpc6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538567/original/file-20230720-17-8fpc6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538567/original/file-20230720-17-8fpc6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538567/original/file-20230720-17-8fpc6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538567/original/file-20230720-17-8fpc6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538567/original/file-20230720-17-8fpc6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538567/original/file-20230720-17-8fpc6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Woman Reading a Newspaper by Norman Garstin (1891).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/garstin-a-woman-reading-a-newspaper-n04234">Tate</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since these reviews had no byline, it is difficult to trace who wrote them. Book reviews were also printed on the same page as articles about economics, politics, or sports, which made them seem more like news and less like a rarefied topic divorced from the issues of the day.</p>
<h2>The changing review</h2>
<p>In the Edwardian period, when the number of readers had risen <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/literature/printing-and-publishing-history/free-town-libraries-their-formation-management-and-history-britain-france-germany-and-america">due to</a> the establishment of public libraries and state-funded primary education, reviews in local and regional newspapers began to change and become more experimental in style.</p>
<p>Due to competition from an ever-growing number of newspapers and magazines, reviews were generally published earlier and became shorter. Various cultural commentators, including <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edith-Wharton">Edith Wharton</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/T-S-Eliot">T.S. Eliot</a>, bemoaned the lowering of the national tone through these shorter reviews. </p>
<p>Edith Wharton, for example, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25119460">complained</a> that reviewers supplied plot summaries rather than judging the books: “Whether real criticism be of service to literature or not, it is clear that this pseudo-reviewing is harmful, since it places books of very different qualities on the same dead level of mediocrity, by ignoring their true purport and significance.”</p>
<p>Wharton and others attributed this different style of reviewing to the cultivation of a different style of reading, which became known as “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-feminine-middlebrow-novel-1920s-to-1950s-9780199269334?cc=us&lang=en&">middlebrow</a>”. Reviews in provincial papers targeted their remarks about books at the leisure reader, complaining when a title was too long, disliking a book when it seemed too gloomy, or praising an author who seemed to be writing for women.</p>
<p>Such reviewing catered to a new, less reverent form of reading. Although many cultural critics of the day (and today) <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230354647_4">sneer at middlebrow taste</a>, I view it as a democratisation of the reading experience.</p>
<p>The loss of the local paper was also a loss for local readers, who could no longer rely on receiving reviews from someone in their area. <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/history-of-the-provincial-press-in-england-9781441162304/">Some newspaper historians</a> argue that modern local papers will have to seek new business models to survive, given that they are no longer able to compete with social media. </p>
<p>Forms of media are always changing. Today anyone can publish a review on sites like Goodreads. The local press must consider many factors as it carves a place for itself in the new media landscape – and perhaps the vibrant arts scene of the past can serve as food for thought.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210162/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Palmer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In the 19th century, it was impossible to get a London paper to distant towns or cities by breakfast. This gave local newspapers an advantage in distribution.
Stephanie Palmer, Senior Lecturer, School of Arts & Humanities, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/201388
2023-03-16T19:12:19Z
2023-03-16T19:12:19Z
Sexual exhibitionism, Riot Grrrl and climate change activism: 30 years of raging by Peaches, Bikini Kill and Björk, still going strong
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515643/original/file-20230315-22-aol773.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2044%2C1364&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Santiago Felipe/Perth Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Kathleen Hanna yells like she did in the 1990s, pushing the toxic male patriarchy out of the moshpit at Melbourne’s The Forum on the eve of International Women’s Day.</p>
<p>Hanna’s band Bikini Kill rampages through hits such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjS0R5BmYtg">Suck My Left One</a>, thrilling a happy, bopping crowd of parents with their teenaged children laced with a mixed gender of preppie and diehard punks, goths and curious spectators. </p>
<p>Across town at the Northcote Theatre the next day, Peaches comes out with a walking frame, wearing breast-shaped slippers with bright red erect nipples. </p>
<p>The popular sexual exhibitionist is still hoarsely rapping about abortion, and now the debate over the end of Roe vs Wade, with songs like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzdefT9nNOM">Boys Wanna Be Her</a>. She later wades into the beloved audience inside a large inflatable penis.</p>
<p>In Perth, a few days later, Björk’s echo-filled, childlike voice is as harrowing and powerful as ever.</p>
<p>These artists, all now aged in their 50s, are popular provocateurs, pulsating with rage. Feminism, ageism, sexism, transphobia, racism, capitalism and environmentalism are their musical agenda.</p>
<h2>Do-it-yourself ethos</h2>
<p>As Gen X, third-wave feminist icons, Peaches (Merrill Nisker), Bikini Kill and Björk grew up during the punk movements of the 1970s and ‘80s. </p>
<p>Based in Olympia in Washington State, Bikini Kill was part of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_grrrl">Riot Grrrl</a> movement in the early 1990s, funnelling the do-it-yourself punk ethos into zines, songs like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOCWma5vOiQ">Rebel Girl</a>, and confrontational live shows.</p>
<p>Bikini Kill encouraged women and girls to start bands as a form of “<a href="https://bikinikill.com/about/">cultural resistance</a>”, challenging masculine toxicity long before <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Reporting-on-Sexual-Violence-in-the-MeToo-Era/Baker-Rodrigues/p/book/9781032115511?gclid=Cj0KCQjwtsCgBhDEARIsAE7RYh17gz-j49hVcVOkxPbOmppFnQc-YtekC7FKeqrtbO-1R72MtoEBIE4aAgKDEALw_wcB">#MeToo</a>. </p>
<p>During the 1990s in Canada, Nisker formed a Riot Grrrl band, Fancypants Hoodlum. </p>
<p>By 2000, aged 33 and recovering from cancer and a heartbreak, she renamed herself Peaches. Her solo electro-pop album The Teaches of Peaches became a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/mar/08/peaches-the-teaches-of-peaches-the-start">feminist classic</a>, with singles like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZz5nBc2_Bw">Lovertits</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515711/original/file-20230316-22-fy5fg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515711/original/file-20230316-22-fy5fg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515711/original/file-20230316-22-fy5fg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515711/original/file-20230316-22-fy5fg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515711/original/file-20230316-22-fy5fg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515711/original/file-20230316-22-fy5fg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515711/original/file-20230316-22-fy5fg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515711/original/file-20230316-22-fy5fg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peaches, Mona Sessions at Mona, Mona Foma 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mona/Jesse Hunniford. Image courtesy of the artist and Mona Foma</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Recording music since the age of 11 in Iceland, in 1992 Björk left <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFQPNApwJGU">The Sugarcubes</a>, the alternative rock band she co-formed in 1986. </p>
<p>Björk’s first solo album came out in 1993, with huge hits like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0mRIhK9seg">Human Behaviour</a> about the way humans act and interact. </p>
<p>Thirty years on, they are all still making music.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/harder-faster-louder-challenging-sexism-in-the-music-industry-58420">Harder, faster, louder: challenging sexism in the music industry</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Women supporting each other</h2>
<p>Bikini Kill are killing it during their all-ages gigs at The Forum. </p>
<p>The Forum’s iconic roman statues look down from the ceiling. Lead singer Hanna wears a khaki green, girly dress with pink punky tights, backed up by Kathi Wilcox on bass and <a href="https://musicfeeds.com.au/news/bikini-kill-have-announced-their-first-australian-tour-in-25-years/">Sara Landeau</a> (from The Julie Ruin) on guitar. Drummer Vail is sick tonight, so Lauren Hammel from Victoria’s Tropical Fuck Storm is filling in. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515712/original/file-20230316-26-vqytnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515712/original/file-20230316-26-vqytnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515712/original/file-20230316-26-vqytnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515712/original/file-20230316-26-vqytnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515712/original/file-20230316-26-vqytnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515712/original/file-20230316-26-vqytnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515712/original/file-20230316-26-vqytnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515712/original/file-20230316-26-vqytnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bikini Kill, Mona Sessions at Mona, Mona Foma 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo Credit: Mona/Jesse Hunniford. Image courtesy of the artist and Mona Foma</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hanna tells us she has “a gratitude journal” now, but remains Riot Grrrl-fuelled about the Trump era, rape, abortion, trans rights and Black Lives Matter.</p>
<p>She tells how during the 1990s audiences once spat in her face and threw things at the band on stage. These days they rarely do. </p>
<p>Hanna’s demeanour softens when a young female audience member gives her a carboard sign reading “Kathleen please draw my next next tattoo based on [the song] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWjCdLtx5t4">Feels Blind</a>”. </p>
<p>At Peaches’ performance, the eclectic crowd is enthusiastically cheering her on. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515713/original/file-20230316-20-hu3ken.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515713/original/file-20230316-20-hu3ken.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515713/original/file-20230316-20-hu3ken.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515713/original/file-20230316-20-hu3ken.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515713/original/file-20230316-20-hu3ken.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515713/original/file-20230316-20-hu3ken.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515713/original/file-20230316-20-hu3ken.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515713/original/file-20230316-20-hu3ken.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peaches, Mona Sessions at Mona, Mona Foma 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo Credit: Mona/Jesse Hunniford Image courtesy of the artist and Mona Foma</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Leaning towards us, Peaches asks what The Teaches of Peaches meant to everyone when it was released, “and what does it mean collectively together now?” The crowd cheers louder as if their favourite footy team has won the grand final. </p>
<p>Her encore <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rRIIWo_JeA">Fuck the Pain Away</a>, with Melbourne feminist punk singer Amy Taylor, has the floorboards of the colonial theatre thumping. </p>
<p>For Perth Festival, Björk is performing her sci-fi pop extravaganza Cornucopia in a purpose-built 5,000-seat stadium.</p>
<p>Presented only a few times globally, Cornucopia is Björk’s most elaborate performance to date. Based on her 2017 album Utopia, she <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/arts/music/bjork-cornucopia.html">has described</a> the show as “about females supporting each other”, our connection to Earth, and a plea to act on climate change.</p>
<p>In Perth, we have IMAX-sized visuals and a 54-channel surround system to garner an immersive multimedia experience in an Eden of bird sounds.</p>
<p>Argentinian filmmaker <a href="https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-live-reviews/bjork-cornucopia-perth-review-45402/">Lucrecia Martel</a> directs the futuristic screens of lush green plants, live organisms, expanding fungus and blooming blood red and pink-tinged flowers. </p>
<p>An 18-person Australian choir, <a href="https://voyces.com/about-us/our-story/">Voyces</a>, opens and closes the concerts. Björk is also joined on stage by harpist <a href="https://katiebuckleyharpist.com/about/">Katie Buckley</a> and the multi-talented <a href="https://www.sessionworkrecords.com/collections/manu-delago">Manu Delago</a> on the Aluphone percussion instrument, keyboards, other electronics and water drums. </p>
<p>For <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaQfixl2Ss4">Body Memory</a>, the seven female flautists of <a href="https://www.instagram.com/viibraflutes/?hl=en">Viibra</a> are dressed in fairy costumes, circling Björk. A hula-hoop-like circular flute descends over Björk and down to the flautists, requiring four of them to play it. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515654/original/file-20230316-2689-i6ezz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman plays the flute" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515654/original/file-20230316-2689-i6ezz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515654/original/file-20230316-2689-i6ezz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515654/original/file-20230316-2689-i6ezz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515654/original/file-20230316-2689-i6ezz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515654/original/file-20230316-2689-i6ezz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515654/original/file-20230316-2689-i6ezz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515654/original/file-20230316-2689-i6ezz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The flautists play a circular flute surrounding Björk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Santiago Felipe/Perth Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The sound is spellbinding. </p>
<p>Two songs, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPr_D-b5v2Q&t=12s">Ovule</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FD2mUonh5s">Atopos</a> from her new album Fossora have their live global premiere at the concerts. They pay tribute to her mother, the Icelandic environmental activist <a href="https://www.rollingstone.co.uk/music/news/bjork-on-how-her-mothers-death-shaped-new-album-fossora-21625/">Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir</a>, who died in 2018.</p>
<p>Towards the end of the concert, a video of 20-year-old Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg looms before us: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We need to keep fossil fuels in the ground and we need to focus on equity. If the solutions in the system are so impossible to find, then maybe we should change the system itself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Much as Hanna and Wilcox from Bikini Kill said during their All About Women talks at the Sydney Opera House, Björk is optimistic in the young people advocating for change.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bjork-digital-feminist-diva-helps-cure-our-wounds-in-a-visceral-sydney-show-60324">Björk, digital feminist diva, helps cure our wounds in a visceral Sydney show</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Changing the script</h2>
<p>When I heard Bikini Kill, Peaches and Bjork were performing almost in the same week, I grabbed tickets immediately. I scored a trifecta of my favourite female artists.</p>
<p>It had been many years since I saw them perform live. Seeing them this time was an empowering reminder that women in their 50s are still out there, oozing with vibrant creativity, worthiness and relevance.</p>
<p>We are about the same age: creative, rebellious youths who grew under the shadow of the boy’s club in the punk movement. </p>
<p>Their performances continue to challenge a male-dominated industry defined by fleeting talent, youthful beauty and voyeurism. </p>
<p>Their voices are stronger than ever. Their musicianship is tight, and the onstage antics are imaginative, playful, colourful and fun. Their messages are uplifting and clear, intelligent and thought provoking, now tinged with a softened version of empathetic rage about social injustice. </p>
<p>I have been seeing music gigs for more than 35 years, but these performances left me breathless. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/at-mona-foma-i-encountered-death-rituals-underwater-soundscapes-worship-and-transcendence-199868">At Mona Foma, I encountered death rituals, underwater soundscapes, worship – and transcendence</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201388/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Jean Baker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Seeing these performances was an empowering reminder that women in their 50s are still out there, oozing with vibrant creativity, worthiness and relevance.
Andrea Jean Baker, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/160770
2021-05-16T19:54:33Z
2021-05-16T19:54:33Z
From Mickey to Moana — Disney treasures at ACMI tell the story of animation’s evolution over almost a century
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400679/original/file-20210514-19-1wv4h2q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C44%2C5874%2C3637&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ACMI/Phoebe Powell</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/disney-the-magic-of-animation-exhibition/">Disney: The Magic of Animation</a> at ACMI.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://www.disneyanimation.com/">Disney</a> is one of the longest running animation studios in the world. As a result, the studio’s nearly 100 year legacy also provides a substantial insight into the history of the animated film.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/disney-the-magic-of-animation-exhibition/">Disney: The Magic of Animation</a> features 500 items — original sketches, drawings, paintings, concept art and models. They have been carefully curated from the 65 million artworks at the Walt Disney Animation Research Library in Los Angeles. </p>
<p>The first feature exhibition at Australia’s national museum of screen culture since its major redevelopment, it showcases Disney’s legacy, and the process and artistry at work. </p>
<h2>Moving pictures</h2>
<p>When you first enter the exhibition space you are greeted with an array of large scale <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/zoetrope">zoetropes</a> — spinning cylinders with flickering images inside. They display the animated characters of Mickey Mouse, Pluto and Donald Duck. </p>
<p>These pre-cinematic animation devices provide a neat summation of the animation process, in which a quick succession of individual drawings, each one slightly different than the previous, can create a moving image. The zoetropes remind us animation has existed for <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/07/before-walt-disney-5-pioneers-of-early-animation/241448/">many decades</a> (<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/30/the-surprise-and-wonder-of-early-animation">if not centuries</a>) prior to the invention of cinema.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mhfp6Z8z1cI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘They worked in shifts, night and day, to create this unique experiment in entertainment.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Also on display are artworks from some of the studio’s earliest and most iconic animated shorts, such as Mickey Mouse’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019422/?ref_=tttr_tr_tt">Steamboat Willie</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019278/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Plane Crazy</a>. Equally impressive are the extensive artefacts from more than 25 feature films, ranging from <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029583/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</a> to this year’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5109280/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Raya and the Last Dragon</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400684/original/file-20210514-19-p04qa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Man draws cartoon mouse on chalkboard" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400684/original/file-20210514-19-p04qa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400684/original/file-20210514-19-p04qa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400684/original/file-20210514-19-p04qa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400684/original/file-20210514-19-p04qa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400684/original/file-20210514-19-p04qa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400684/original/file-20210514-19-p04qa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400684/original/file-20210514-19-p04qa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=931&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Walt Disney and his Mickey creation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://photos-cdn.aap.com.au/Image/19380426000017682234?path=/aap_dev2/imagearc/2006/11-20/c6/80/3b/aapimage-5ca8w4i0kpt1bcpjol5g_layout.jpg">AAP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australia has also played a little known but substantive role in the Disney animation story. Between 1988 and 2006 Walt Disney Animation Australia operated in Sydney, and employed hundreds of extremely talented Australian animators, artists and technicians. </p>
<p>They worked on dozens of animated sequels to big name Disney features, including The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride, Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World, The Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea, Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventure, and Peter Pan: Return to Neverland.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/shrek-at-20-celebrating-the-films-unique-brand-of-animated-anarchy-and-sardonic-irreverence-159797">Shrek at 20: celebrating the film's unique brand of animated anarchy and sardonic irreverence</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Artistry on display</h2>
<p>Exhibition curators have chosen a remarkable selection of highly dynamic animation drawings for display. Even as still images, these pencil drawings express incredible life and movement.</p>
<p>There are also a number of concept drawings created by American artist <a href="http://magicofmaryblair.com/about-mary/">Mary Blair</a>, whose designs informed Disney’s Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. She was also known for her children’s book illustrations (<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42278.I_Can_Fly?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=GV1MtToA8t&rank=1">I Can Fly</a>) and murals (including Disneyland’s <a href="https://www.designingdisney.com/parks/disneyland-paris/disneyland-park/fantasyland/designing-its-small-world-mary-blair/">It’s a Small World</a> attraction). Her drawings and paintings use just a few strokes and splashes of contrasting colour to convey brilliant vibrancy and expression. </p>
<p>Also remarkable to behold are the series of background paintings from 1959’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053285/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Sleeping Beauty</a>. Created by artist <a href="https://eyvindearle.com/bio/">Eyvind Earle</a>, the works show angular shapes and exquisite detail. Eyvind Earle’s sister, <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A47505">Yvonne Perrin</a>, was also an animation background painter, who spent much of her life in Australia, working at the Eric Porter Animation Studio in Sydney and later illustrative children’s books with bush themes. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zurARl81oQ8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Walt Disney was a fan of Mary Blair as an artist within the studio and beyond.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-storyboarding-for-film-131205">Explainer: what is storyboarding for film?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Mechanical to digital</h2>
<p>It’s not just two-dimensional art on display. Model cars made of wood and metal from the production of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055254/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_26">101 Dalmatians</a> provide insight into the technical aspects of making the film. </p>
<p>Painted black and white, the cars were moved by hand and filmed in real time, using high-contrast film-stock. The resulting footage was then enlarged and transferred, frame-by-frame onto <a href="https://www.animationconnection.com/about-the-art/cels">cels</a> and incorporated into the rest of the animated scene. </p>
<p>The result was fluid motion on screen and accurately depicted vehicles which, despite appearing to careen around corners and collide with each other, maintained their precise dimensions. The approach, to some degree, anticipated the use of 3D digital models that would be incorporated into the studio’s later animated films. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400685/original/file-20210514-15-z4l6au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Disney warrior Raya" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400685/original/file-20210514-15-z4l6au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400685/original/file-20210514-15-z4l6au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400685/original/file-20210514-15-z4l6au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400685/original/file-20210514-15-z4l6au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400685/original/file-20210514-15-z4l6au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400685/original/file-20210514-15-z4l6au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400685/original/file-20210514-15-z4l6au.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Modern Disney warrior princesses are a tougher breed than their dainty predecessors.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5109280/mediaviewer/rm1195559681/">Raya and the Last Dragon/IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Because Disney’s more recent films like Frozen and Moana were created almost entirely in the digital realm, the displays devoted to them tend to highlight concept art, rather than production materials. But it is still fascinating to see the concept artwork which guided these films through their early development. We gain a greater understanding of how the artists conveyed atmosophere, adventure and enchantment to create fantasy worlds.</p>
<p>As technology has evolved, so have Disney’s characters and narratives. This is notable as the exhibition reacquaints visitors with <a href="https://www.cottonable.com/entertainment/chronological-timeline-of-disney-princesses/">classic and dainty Disney princesses</a> through to today’s more contemporary warriors like <a href="https://observer.com/2021/03/raya-and-the-last-dragon-review-disney/">Moana and Raya</a>. </p>
<p>Disney: The Magic of Animation celebrates each frame and component behind some of audiences’ favourite films of the last century. In doing so, the exhibition not only provides an illuminating peek into the animation process — but also gives us the opportunity to admire the artistry and complexity of what went into making every second of these works of art. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/disneys-mulan-tells-women-to-know-their-place-146017">Disney's Mulan tells women to know their place</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/disney-the-magic-of-animation-exhibition/">Disney: The Magic of Animation</a> is on at ACMI until 17 October.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160770/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Torre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
ACMI’s first feature exhibition since its redevelopment shows fans the complex artistry behind their childhood favourites.
Dan Torre, Senior Lecturer in the School of Design, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155120
2021-03-19T01:02:02Z
2021-03-19T01:02:02Z
Galup theatrical walking tour recalls the dancing and violence of the colonial encounter
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390308/original/file-20210318-21-89w2t9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C15%2C2017%2C1348&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ian Wilkes leads a Galup evening tour. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Grant</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Galup, by Ian Wilkes and Poppy van Oorde-Grainger, Perth Festival with Same Drum and Performing Lines.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://www.perthfestival.com.au/events/galup/">Galup</a> is a “theatricalised” walking tour created by Ian Wilkes and Poppy van Oorde-Grainger. The artists’ aim is <a href="https://www.reconciliation.org.au/truth-telling-and-reconciliation/">truth-telling</a>, to restore memories of the First Australians and their early contact with white settlers beside Lake Monger, Perth.</p>
<p>Tales of hunting, of spear throwing, of Noongar warrior Yagan, and of visitors from distant Aboriginal lands have been <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/shaking-hands-on-the-fringe-negotiating-the-aboriginal-world-at-king-george-s-sound">told before</a>, but are not well known.</p>
<p>The Noongar name for the lake is Galup, or place of the fires. It was used as a campsite, with ready food and fresh water. Today it is a popular reserve.</p>
<p>At the core of Wilkes’ one-man guided tour is the 1833 meeting between local Noongar (including Yagan) and two Aboriginal men — Gyallipert and Manyat — who had <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tiffany-Shellam/publication/304637159_Manyat%27s_%27Sole_Delight%27_Travelling_Knowledge_in_Western_Australia%27s_Southwest_1830s/links/5f73dc4b299bf1b53efff02e/Manyats-Sole-Delight-Travelling-Knowledge-in-Western-Australias-Southwest-1830s.pdf">undertaken an epic journey</a> by tall ship from the southern coast to visit their northern peers.</p>
<p>Yagan attended the meeting, despite the fact he’d recently been declared an Imperial outlaw for his defence of Noongar sovereignty. Not long afterwards, he was murdered by white shepherds further up the Swan River.</p>
<p>Yagan’s death is an especially grotesque colonial incident. His head was souvenired for display in the United Kingdom. His remains were repatriated in 1997. Wilkes was one of those who <a href="https://www.noongarculture.org.au/yagan/">welcomed Yagan back to Noongar <em>boodja</em> (land)</a> through dance.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/part-escape-room-part-choose-your-own-adventure-the-whodunit-whistleblower-has-the-audience-at-its-heart-154271">Part escape room, part choose-your-own adventure, the whodunit Whistleblower has the audience at its heart</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A rarely told massacre</h2>
<p>One story about Lake Galup is rarely told. It is about the massacre that began when mounted troopers rode into a Noongar camp and opened fire. Those who could ran to the lake and hid, slipping away at night. The closing sequence of Galup features Noongar elder Doolann Leisha Eatts telling this story by the campfire.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390309/original/file-20210318-13-1w5tvpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="people sitting around campfire" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390309/original/file-20210318-13-1w5tvpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390309/original/file-20210318-13-1w5tvpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390309/original/file-20210318-13-1w5tvpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390309/original/file-20210318-13-1w5tvpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390309/original/file-20210318-13-1w5tvpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390309/original/file-20210318-13-1w5tvpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390309/original/file-20210318-13-1w5tvpy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The story of a massacre is told around the campfire, at the site where it happened.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Grant</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Lake Monger massacre is not listed on the Newcastle University <a href="https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php">Colonial Frontier Massacre map</a>, though two comparable attacks have been recorded that were launched to <a href="https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/detail.php?r=885">demonstrate colonial military superiority</a> and as <a href="https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/detail.php?r=884">reprisals for killing sheep</a>.</p>
<p>Galup is restricted to 15 spectators per night, giving it an intimate social ambience that begins convivially. Wilkes tells us we are moving into a dual time. The artists are explicit in their goal for this as an activist work; they hope to <a href="https://www.samedrum.com/galup">erect a memorial</a> in the future. One must not therefore get lost in the past. One must hold these experiences in the present.</p>
<p>Wilkes introduces one of the many characters he plays, both white and Black, as the son of a white settler and a Noongar woman. The settler hid the woman from pursuers at his hut, and came to love her — or so the son hopes.</p>
<p>Wilkes takes on these and other roles with a light grace. He gently alters his bearing and intonation — these are not the deep alterations of “<a href="https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/deep-focus/birth-method-revolution-american-acting">method actors</a>” like Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman and company. Gestures lie upon the body, rather than transforming it. The boundary between Wilkes playing various characters or being an anonymous guide are therefore fluid.</p>
<p>Wilkes delivers much of his speech in Noongar. Spectators may not retain the utterances themselves, but Wilkes makes the performance an act of affective gifting. Understandings are shared even if the precise grammar is not unpacked.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/articulation-of-womens-rage-slow-burn-together-and-its-haunting-of-women-dancers-154270">'Articulation of women’s rage': Slow Burn, Together and its haunting of women dancers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Give and take</h2>
<p>Gyallipert and Manyat <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Y-SGDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA128&ots=X4_9g_53bq&dq=Gyallipert%20and%20Manyat%20whites%20played%20piano.&pg=PA128#v=onepage&q=Gyallipert%20and%20Manyat%20whites%20played%20piano.&f=false">reportedly attended a dinner where the civil commissioner’s wife played piano</a> for them. They were said to have reciprocated with song and dance.</p>
<p>Wilkes teaches those on the tour a Noongar song of walking. Later we come across a piano, and like Gyallipert and Manyat, Wilkes teaches us dances including that of the rainbow serpent (<em>waugul</em>) whose snaking journeys above and below the ground produced Lake Galup and its underground water sources.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390311/original/file-20210318-15-106tt98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="people walking outside together and smiling" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390311/original/file-20210318-15-106tt98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390311/original/file-20210318-15-106tt98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390311/original/file-20210318-15-106tt98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390311/original/file-20210318-15-106tt98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390311/original/file-20210318-15-106tt98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390311/original/file-20210318-15-106tt98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390311/original/file-20210318-15-106tt98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The tone of the show is intimate and social.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Grant</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/black-drop-effect-review-infusing-the-present-moment-with-layers-of-the-past-129785">Black Drop Effect review: infusing the present moment with layers of the past</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We try our hand at spear throwing, and Wilkes elects me to play Gyallipert. It is, for me as a <em>wadjela</em> or white man, an embarrassing honour to be dressed in his gorgeous kangaroo skin cloak. Unlike Gyallipert, I have no cloak or weapons to gift back. </p>
<p>Snippets of language and history are offered throughout, sometimes with audience participation. We receive biscuit rations as the Noongar did. Now, as then, the portions are meagre.</p>
<p>Wilkes mourns on behalf of his ancestors, “What are we Noongar to do, now all our <em>birdiya</em>, all our leaders, are dead?”</p>
<p>Yet, there is grace here. The dominant characteristic of the performance is one of openness. There is space to ponder. Listening to the dual narrative of survival and dispossession, I was struck by how encroached-upon the reserve is today. At one point Wilkes moves through a pair of poplar trees. Unlike the thin line of gums earlier on the trail, these trees are signs of colonial conquest.</p>
<p>Where we throw spears, I notice barely perceptible marks where someone has illegally driven a vehicle. Lake Galup is hemmed in by neat suburban housing. It is far from “wild”, though its waters still sustain game.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/where-are-you-really-from-the-harsh-realities-of-afro-aussie-life-are-brought-to-stage-in-black-brass-156110">'Where are you really from?' The harsh realities of Afro-Aussie life are brought to stage in Black Brass</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Beginning a full accounting</h2>
<p>Survival and resistance in these circumstances is fraught. Social conditions and the high value placed by nearby householders on neatly maintained lawns — irrigated by underground water we steal from the <em>waugal</em> below — work against the development of an improved relationship with Noongar <em>boodja</em> and its peoples.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390312/original/file-20210318-17-uwenbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People walk alongside lake, city buildings" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390312/original/file-20210318-17-uwenbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390312/original/file-20210318-17-uwenbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390312/original/file-20210318-17-uwenbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390312/original/file-20210318-17-uwenbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390312/original/file-20210318-17-uwenbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390312/original/file-20210318-17-uwenbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390312/original/file-20210318-17-uwenbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lake Galup is far from ‘wild’, surrounded by urban housing and facing the city buildings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Grant</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The episodic structure of Galup renders it a thoughtful if uneven experience. The massacre story does not develop out of preceding action, and it is a jarring conclusion for a work that doesn’t seem to be aiming for tragedy.</p>
<p>A full accounting of the histories of contact between First Nations people and white settlers, of singing together at the piano, of dancing, as well as violence and murder, has yet to become central to our national memory. Galup and works like it may change this.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.perthfestival.com.au/events/galup/">Galup</a> is part of the Perth Festival, running until March 20.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155120/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan W. Marshall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Artists Ian Wilkes and Poppy van Oorde-Grainger invite audiences to walk where the first contact between Noongar and white settlers at Lake Monger took place.
Jonathan W. Marshall, Postgraduate Research Coordinator, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155365
2021-03-01T19:10:26Z
2021-03-01T19:10:26Z
Street art in a white cube: Rone at Geelong Gallery marries ephemeral beauty with a proven formula
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386876/original/file-20210301-21-fiqq5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C26%2C5879%2C3907&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Green Room (Omega Project) 2017 archival pigment print on 310 gsm Canson Baryta; A/P
Collection of the artist
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Rone</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: RONE in Geelong, Geelong Gallery</em></p>
<p>In 2004, black-and-white posters of a woman staring into a distant horizon began appearing inexplicably throughout Melbourne. The images — of model <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/the-girl-in-the-tunnel-20070730-ge5go0.html">Suzanne Brenchley, taken from a fashion magazine ad</a> — were renamed <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Jane%20Doe">Jane Doe</a> by <a href="https://www.r-o-n-e.com/">street artist Rone</a>, who had created them. To avoid criminal prosecution, his paste-ups were applied surreptitiously at night.</p>
<p>These works contributed to the patchwork assemblage of stickers, tags and stencils that formed Melbourne’s burgeoning street art scene at the time. Although it is synonymous with Melbourne’s inner-city cultural identity today, this was a time before Banksy’s meteoric ascendancy, so municipal authorities made no distinction between unauthorised street art and vandalism. </p>
<p>Most of these early works were erased in 2006 in an attempt to beautify Melbourne for the Commonwealth Games.</p>
<p>Following Banksy, street art was propelled from its <a href="http://www.cdh-art.com/Writing/CDH%20AMA%20Notes%20on%20the%20commodification%20of%20street%20art.pdf">counter-cultural origins into the mainstream</a> and Rone’s career trajectory followed this cultural arc. He has since painted one of <a href="http://thecityjournal.net/arts-and-culture/first-art-tram-designed-by-local-melbourne-artist/">Melbourne’s art trams</a> and <a href="http://openjournal.com.au/the-week-in-review-rone/">murals of Kylie Minogue and Cate Blanchett</a> for the NGV’s <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/jeanpaulgaultier/">Jean Paul Gaultier</a> exhibition. Rone himself has advertised <a href="https://melbourneartcritic.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/">clothing for Uniqlo</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386877/original/file-20210301-15-8r45ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386877/original/file-20210301-15-8r45ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386877/original/file-20210301-15-8r45ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386877/original/file-20210301-15-8r45ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386877/original/file-20210301-15-8r45ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386877/original/file-20210301-15-8r45ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386877/original/file-20210301-15-8r45ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386877/original/file-20210301-15-8r45ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artist Rone preparing the Geelong installation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photographer: Tony Mott © Rone</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Last month, to underscore this inversion from subculture to peak mainstream, Rone was awarded a <a href="https://www.grants.gov.au/Ga/Show/2dce4c99-8114-44af-8270-0b456fd16531">$1.86 million RISE Arts grant</a> from the federal government. It was <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/street-artist-rone-scores-a-covid-grant-coup-20210202-p56yvt.html">met with surprise</a>: grants of this size usually go to theatre companies or production houses, rather than individual artists (although Rone will employ other practitioners as part of it). </p>
<p><a href="https://www.geelonggallery.org.au/rone">Rone’s latest exhibition</a> at Geelong Gallery in his home city is a comprehensive survey of his work over two decades, tracing the evolution of his Jane Doe motif into states of greater realism, painterly technical proficiency and larger scale murals. </p>
<p>It is styled in decaying vintage opulence, like an ethereal moment in time. There are murals painted directly onto the walls of the gallery but the majority of the exhibition features studio works on varied surfaces, under framed glass: early stencils on canvas, portraits on poster advertising (styled to look torn and weathered) and poster-sized photographs of murals in abandoned, dilapidated buildings.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386879/original/file-20210301-13-1mpbum3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386879/original/file-20210301-13-1mpbum3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386879/original/file-20210301-13-1mpbum3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386879/original/file-20210301-13-1mpbum3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386879/original/file-20210301-13-1mpbum3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386879/original/file-20210301-13-1mpbum3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386879/original/file-20210301-13-1mpbum3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386879/original/file-20210301-13-1mpbum3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Opulent decay in Rone’s Geelong installation (2021). © Rone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photographer: Tony Mott/Geelong Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All street art is ephemeral, but here Rone exaggerates transience in the staging and framing of the work. The smooth porcelain skin of Rone’s “muses” juxtaposed against flaking, crumbling walls provides an arresting contrast of textures. The rooms are <a href="https://www.theestablishmentstudios.com.au/contact">styled by Carly Spooner</a>, mixing decadence and disintegration.</p>
<p>The exhibition is accompanied by a musical score by <a href="https://www.nickbatterham.com/about#:%7E:text=Nick%20Batterham%20is%20a%20musician,major%20labels%20and%20extensive%20touring.">composer Nick Batterham</a>. Highly evocative, the classical arrangement enhances a haunting atmosphere and sense of loss; the music was originally written in response to the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/latest-arts-windfalls-show-money-isnt-enough-we-need-transparency-154725">Latest arts windfalls show money isn't enough. We need transparency</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Empty show</h2>
<p>Before Banksy’s success, it was difficult for street artists to exhibit in established galleries. This led to the innovation of the “Empty Show”: street artists would install their works in an abandoned space and then hold unauthorised exhibition openings.</p>
<p>Rone has previously exhibited in non-traditional spaces: the derelict Lyric Theatre in Fitzroy (for <a href="https://www.r-o-n-e.com/empty-project">Empty Project</a>) and at Burnham Beeches, a dilapidated Art Deco mansion (for <a href="https://www.r-o-n-e.com/empire">Empire</a>). The art functions as an invitation to explore these spaces, which would otherwise be accessible only to trespassers. </p>
<p>It stimulates an imagined history of the buildings and invites speculation about the previous occupants. The spaces also fit with Rone’s apparent intention to use environmental decay as a material resource in his work.</p>
<p>The white cube of a gallery, however, is designed to remove everything else from view, leaving only the artwork for consideration. It’s perfectly climate-controlled to preserve the artworks inside. </p>
<p>So, in Rone’s latest exhibition, the themes of moribundity, transience and imagined historical echoes sit awkwardly in a traditional gallery space: broken bricks and detritus laid out carefully and precisely to mimic an abandoned building; a temporary artifice wall made with crumbled plaster. Translating his work into an art gallery has faded some of the verisimilitude (or the story world’s appearance of truth) and charm of previous exhibitions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386878/original/file-20210301-17-lsslw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386878/original/file-20210301-17-lsslw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386878/original/file-20210301-17-lsslw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386878/original/file-20210301-17-lsslw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386878/original/file-20210301-17-lsslw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386878/original/file-20210301-17-lsslw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386878/original/file-20210301-17-lsslw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386878/original/file-20210301-17-lsslw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain (2016) from Rone’s Empty series.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Rone/Geelong Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/getting-to-the-street-art-of-a-year-like-no-other-149923">Getting to the (street) art of a year like no other</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Pretty girls</h2>
<p>The accompanying exhibition literature outlines the intended reading of the works: “beauty and decay”. But this immediately prompts a counter-reading: What is being presented as “beautiful”? What assumptions are encoded into the visual representation?</p>
<p>Many of the paintings conflate beauty with specific attributes: youth, Caucasian in appearance, female, thin-bodied, full-lipped, big-eyed. With few exceptions, there’s a very specific and narrow type of woman on display: the <a href="https://melbourneartcritic.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/sexy-girls-girls-girls/">pretty girl motif</a> via <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-the-male-gaze-mean-and-what-about-a-female-gaze-52486">the male gaze</a>. This motif can be found throughout popular culture: advertising, fashion and cosmetics, social media, pornography and the industry of celebrity.</p>
<p>Rather than trying to find beauty in new ways; these works are reproducing the most conventional notions of beauty to an established formula.</p>
<p>That doesn’t make the work necessarily “bad” (although some could argue it’s pernicious), but it does make the images derivative (of this mainstream motif).</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gallerysowhite-a-digital-exhibition-exposing-racism-in-contemporary-art-spaces-153920">#GallerySoWhite: a digital exhibition exposing racism in contemporary art spaces</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Divergent agendas</h2>
<p>In the exhibition press release, the mayor of Geelong, Martin Cutter, is quoted as saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This exclusive Geelong Gallery exhibition is expected to attract over 25,000 people to the region and contribute approximately $3 million to the local economy. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>His high hopes for the show are well-placed. Deputy gallery director Penny Whitehead explained at the launch the exhibition has pre-sold 5,000 tickets, over three times the pre-sales of the touring Archibald Prize at the gallery.</p>
<p>Rone’s use of a proven formula (some would say cliché) is what makes it a favoured project for a risk-averse municipal body, hoping to revitalise a local tourism economy. The motif is familiar to a broad audience. No one feels challenged or lost. It will attract a large crowd.</p>
<p>This prompts an interesting discussion about the balance major public galleries must strike between populism and fostering new art that can be difficult or unfamiliar by virtue of its originality. </p>
<p>Attracting broader audiences is of course good, providing it’s not training them to engage only in superficial experiences. So if you attend the Rone Exhibition, the Geelong Gallery also has an impressive permanent collection of Australian art worth exploring. There are major works by Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin, but I got lost in Charles Blackman’s painting of <a href="https://www.geelonggallery.org.au/scenic-victoria/key-works-2295/charles-blackman">Joy Hester’s house</a> .</p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.geelonggallery.org.au/rone">RONE in Geelong</a>, is at Geelong Gallery to 16 May.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155365/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Honig does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Street artist Rone’s return to his home town gallery is sure to draw crowds — but his definition of ‘beauty’ is conventional and narrow.
Chris Honig, Lecturer, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/137805
2020-05-19T14:30:03Z
2020-05-19T14:30:03Z
Review: herri is a rare new arts and culture journal from South Africa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334359/original/file-20200512-175235-1xgn6y6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The band Country Conquerors, written about in herri.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aryan Kaganof</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How does one rethink the arts journal – a publication of cultural reviews and essays – in the age of the internet and <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/political-science-and-government/political-science-terms-and-concepts/decolonization">decolonisation</a>?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.herri.org.za/"><em>herri</em></a> is a provocative new e-journal from South Africa that responds with vigour to both challenges. It’s named after <a href="https://herri.org.za/1/patric-tariq-mellet">Autshumao</a>, also known as Herrie die Strandloper, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-origin-of-the-khoisan-tells-us-that-race-has-no-place-in-human-ancestry-53594">Khoi</a> leader and interpreter for colonial administrator Jan van Riebeeck. </p>
<p>It doesn’t set out to create a template of how an e-journal emerging from the <a href="http://www.boaventuradesousasantos.pt/media/Epistemologies%20of%20the%20south%20and%20the%20future_Poscolonialitalia_2016.pdf">south</a> should look. Rather, it’s an exercise in principled plurality. “<em>herri</em> is merely one option among many,” its <a href="https://herri.org.za/about">“about” page</a> reads, it’s “a soundmine of narratives, mythologies, ideologies, statements, ambiguities and ideas just waiting to be excavated.”</p>
<p><em>herri</em> is a hybrid marriage of website and journal. The left and right arrows page through the content in a linear way, as one might page through a book. A menu in the top right corner brings the website aspect into play, allowing non-linear navigation between sections and “articles”.</p>
<h2>An omnivorous journal</h2>
<p>I use the word “articles” loosely, for <em>herri</em> is omnivorous. It includes academic-style studies, essays, poetry, film collections and art exhibitions, as well as book, film and album reviews. Different sections provide scaffolding for the content, with titles that range from the self-explanatory (“editorial”, “theme”, “galleri” and “backpage”) to the curious (“borborygmus”, “claque”, and “hotlynx”). </p>
<p>What sets <em>herri</em> apart as an online medium (as opposed to print journals or online journals that are basically digitised versions of those) is the extent to which the website elements – the background, images, hyperlinks, videoclips, audioclips and animations – frame and interact with the text. </p>
<p>These features make the content more densely intertextual than regular articles. The sounds, images and references that surround and interweave the text add rich layers of interpretation to the words on the page. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334370/original/file-20200512-82393-1a1i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334370/original/file-20200512-82393-1a1i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334370/original/file-20200512-82393-1a1i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334370/original/file-20200512-82393-1a1i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334370/original/file-20200512-82393-1a1i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334370/original/file-20200512-82393-1a1i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334370/original/file-20200512-82393-1a1i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334370/original/file-20200512-82393-1a1i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The landing page of the second edition of herri, animated text floating around the image.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screengrab</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Enabled by design</h2>
<p>Browsing <em>herri</em> invites detours. I found myself scrolling to look at images, playing videoclips and reading snippets of text in a piecemeal fashion. To <em>herri</em>’s merit, when an article is read from top to bottom, the longer read is as arresting as the audiovisual experience.</p>
<p><em>herri</em> is the brainchild of filmmaker, writer and online archivist <a href="https://africanah.org/opening-stellenbosch-of-aryan-kaganof/">Aryan Kaganof</a>, who realised it with designers Andrea Rolfes, Jurgen Meekel and Martijn Pantlin. The design elements are not merely gimmicks for ever-shorter attention spans. They are intimately linked with <em>herri</em>’s intellectual project. </p>
<p>An example of this is the way in which the language selection does not switch the entire text to another language – as websites usually do – but lifts your selected language from the page while the other one remains visible, like the selected language’s shadow. The decolonial insistence on plurality, in this case the insistence on the co-presence of two or more languages at once, is made possible by the design. </p>
<h2>And the content?</h2>
<p>Content-wise, <em>herri</em>‘s roster of contributors represents the cutting edge of South Africa’s critical landscape, including writers Lesego Rampolokeng, Antjie Krog, Njabulo Ndebele, Zakes Mda; sound artists Warrick Sony, Neo Muyanga, Cara Stacey, and Jitsvinger; and visual artists and filmmakers Baloji, Dylan Valley, Khahliso Matela and Tsepo Ntsukunyane.</p>
<p>Each issue is focused on a theme. The first issue revolved around the venerated Xhosa bow player Mantombi Matotiyana’s first album, set against a broader concern with representation. How do we begin to think and speak (“do research”) about a practice such as music that “lives inside people” without approaching it through a colonial lens, asks Neo Muyanga in his <a href="https://herri.org.za/1/neo-muyanga-editorial">editorial</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334420/original/file-20200512-82379-1gl4z5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334420/original/file-20200512-82379-1gl4z5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334420/original/file-20200512-82379-1gl4z5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334420/original/file-20200512-82379-1gl4z5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334420/original/file-20200512-82379-1gl4z5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334420/original/file-20200512-82379-1gl4z5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334420/original/file-20200512-82379-1gl4z5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334420/original/file-20200512-82379-1gl4z5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scene from Baloji’s short film Zombies, reviewed in herri#1.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screengrab</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The journal offers various perspectives on this question. Congolese rapper, artist and filmmaker Baloji’s brilliant short film <a href="https://herri.org.za/1/baloji"><em>Zombies</em></a> is a critique of techno-dependence, and <a href="https://herri.org.za/1/the-back-page">an essay by Henk Oosterling</a> considers the relationship between recordings and the real, among others. <em>herri</em> itself is not exempt from this question, and the whole issue could be regarded as a meditation on its own role as medium.</p>
<p>The second issue is on code-switching. It engages with this theme through the ghoema-reggae band <a href="https://herri.org.za/2/jitsvinger">Country Conquerors</a>’ contemporary first album, <em>Streng Verbode</em>, and <a href="https://herri.org.za/2/zakes-mda">Hilde Roos</a>’s book <em>The La Traviata Affair</em>, a history of South Africa’s Eoan Opera Group, which existed between the mid 1950s and the mid 1970s. A juxtaposition? Certainly. It places an ostensible high next to low, what might be considered a white colonial artform next to a grassroots musical connection with the Afro-diaspora, the cosmopolitan next to the rural. Reading about the Country Conquerors and the Eoan Group side by side becomes an exercise in code-switching.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334355/original/file-20200512-175241-1desppa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334355/original/file-20200512-175241-1desppa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334355/original/file-20200512-175241-1desppa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334355/original/file-20200512-175241-1desppa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334355/original/file-20200512-175241-1desppa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334355/original/file-20200512-175241-1desppa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334355/original/file-20200512-175241-1desppa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334355/original/file-20200512-175241-1desppa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The artist Jitsvinger writes about Country Conquerors as a ‘sonic stew’ of influences like reggae, ska, goema and vastrap.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Aryan Kaganof</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Herri</em> steps into a lacuna in the (South) African critical and intellectual landscape. It is not an academic journal although its content is intellectually rigorous. It has interests in the nooks and crannies of art worlds, the corners of unofficial histories, uneasy myths and unorthodox truths. </p>
<p>It brings together artists and writers who operate within the academy and resolutely outside it (and all coordinates in between) around the bonfire of radical thought and practice. And this is no mean feat.</p>
<p>herri <em>is conceived, curated and edited by Aryan Kaganof, designed by Andrea Rolfes, Jurgen Meekel and Martijn Pantlin, and published by Stephanus Muller for <a href="https://aoinstitute.ac.za">Africa Open Institute</a>. Read it over <a href="https://herri.org.za/archive">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137805/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Vos is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Africa Open Institute, which publishes herri. Stephanie's post-doctoral fellowship is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.</span></em></p>
Herri steps into a lacuna in the South African arts and culture publishing landscape and deploys design to add richness to its critical texts.
Stephanie Vos, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Stellenbosch University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/136947
2020-04-27T04:34:38Z
2020-04-27T04:34:38Z
Breaking Glass review: Sydney Chamber Opera livestreams premiere
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330625/original/file-20200427-145503-1ej6k4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C14%2C2451%2C1489&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Breaking Glass</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are very few silver linings that have developed from the current catastrophic health crisis, but the wider accessibility of world class performances is one positive outcome to have emerged in recent weeks.</p>
<p><a href="https://carriageworks.com.au/events/breaking-glass/">Breaking Glass</a> – a quadruple bill of single-act operas composed by four Australian women – is an example of these. Originally programmed for late March at Carriageworks, it instead premiered on Facebook Live on Saturday.</p>
<p>Breaking Glass is a collaboration between Sydney Conservatorium’s <a href="https://www.sydney.edu.au/music/industry-and-community/community-engagement/composing-women.html">Composing Women</a> professional development program and the Sydney Chamber Opera (SCO). While gender inequality is an issue across most art forms, the inequality in operatic programming is <a href="https://witnessperformance.com/opera-and-the-invisibility-of-women/">especially stark</a>. Projects such as this are essential to bringing new perspectives and diverse artistic voices to audiences within an otherwise conservative art form. </p>
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<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-a-notoriously-sexist-art-form-australian-women-composers-are-making-their-voices-heard-108991">In a notoriously sexist art form, Australian women composers are making their voices heard</a>
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<p>SCO was the ideal partner for Composing Women in this project. Established in 2010 to present operas of the 20th and 21st century, SCO has shown a commitment to works by Australian composers, with previous productions including <a href="https://www.maryfinsterer.com/opera">Mary Finsterer’s Biographica</a> in 2017 and <a href="http://sydneychamberopera.com/?p=2666">Elliott Gyger’s Oscar and Lucinda</a> in 2019.</p>
<p>While the name suggests a reference to breaking through the glass ceiling in the opera world, the violent imagery of breaking glass is also fitting in the context of the contemporary themes of ecological disaster, inequality, mental illness, and dystopia explored in these four works.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330624/original/file-20200427-145544-b15zft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330624/original/file-20200427-145544-b15zft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330624/original/file-20200427-145544-b15zft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330624/original/file-20200427-145544-b15zft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330624/original/file-20200427-145544-b15zft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330624/original/file-20200427-145544-b15zft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330624/original/file-20200427-145544-b15zft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330624/original/file-20200427-145544-b15zft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Commute.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Four works</h2>
<p>Her Dark Marauder, composed by Georgia Scott with the libretto by Pierce Wilcox, is a reworking of concepts drawn from the works of Sylvia Plath. There was an almost expressionist aesthetic to both the staging and the music.</p>
<p>Opening with the three singers separated on the stage surrounded by haze, Scott’s use of insistent repeated-note instrumental motifs, tremolo strings and flutter tonguing immediately evoked a disturbing, oppressive atmosphere. The vocalists – Jane Sheldon, Simon Lobelson, and Jessica O’Donoghue in this work – showed exceptional range, with virtuosic execution of techniques such as vocal fry, portamenti and fricative sounds along with beautifully phrased melodic material.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330622/original/file-20200427-145530-1sh1frf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330622/original/file-20200427-145530-1sh1frf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330622/original/file-20200427-145530-1sh1frf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330622/original/file-20200427-145530-1sh1frf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330622/original/file-20200427-145530-1sh1frf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330622/original/file-20200427-145530-1sh1frf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330622/original/file-20200427-145530-1sh1frf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330622/original/file-20200427-145530-1sh1frf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dark Marauder opened the Facebook premiere event.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Commute, composer Peggy Polias depicts a woman’s daily commute through the lens of ancient Greek mythology and Homer’s Odyssey, with two “suitors” representing mythical monsters. The staging of this work, which was directed by Clemence Williams, was particularly effective, with O’Donoghue hesitantly walking across stage while in front of menacing, oversized projections of hands, and later a single eye representing the cyclops.</p>
<p>This short 20-minute work has a satisfying five-part structure full of contrasting musical textures. From the pulsating white noise and fragmented plosive vocalisations from the two suitors (played by Lobelson and Mitchell Riley) in the opening Amen I through to the entreating modal melody from O’Donoghue in Episode II: The Eye, Polias employed a vast range of compositional techniques to great effect. Commute ended on a note of refreshing optimism, with the final Dawn section featuring interwoven pentatonic melodic lines against the visual effects of a sunrise.</p>
<p>Josephine Macken’s The Tent diverged the most from typical operatic conventions. The title refers to a short story of the same name by Margaret Atwood, which is used as a conceptual framework rather than narrative structure. This abstract, almost wordless work explores the idea of researchers feeding knowledge into an intelligent machine in the wake of an ecological disaster. Macken has created a desolate soundscape using howling winds, drones, microtonality, with the vocal text mostly comprising disjointed phonemes, sustained vowel sounds and fricatives.</p>
<p>Bree van Reyk’s The Invisible Bird draws a connection between invisible and forgotten women in history and extinct or endangered birds. Its minimalist libretto consists of names of vulnerable, endangered and extinct bird species. Despite the seriousness of its subject manner, there was humour and absurdity in the staging. With three performers dressed in formal wear, it opened with cabaret-like choreography complete with jazz hands accompanying birdcalls from both singers and instrumentalists. </p>
<p>The music was palindromic in structure, starting and ending with energetic polyphony. The middle section was particularly poignant, with Sheldon portraying a night parrot shedding its feathers while mournfully singing the names of extinct species. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330623/original/file-20200427-145503-125h714.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330623/original/file-20200427-145503-125h714.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330623/original/file-20200427-145503-125h714.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330623/original/file-20200427-145503-125h714.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330623/original/file-20200427-145503-125h714.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330623/original/file-20200427-145503-125h714.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330623/original/file-20200427-145503-125h714.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330623/original/file-20200427-145503-125h714.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Invisible Bird.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Virtuosity under pressure</h2>
<p>Despite the difficult circumstances, all aspects of this production were outstanding. </p>
<p>The singers showed impressive virtuosity throughout, as did the instrumentalists in the small ensemble, which included some of Australia’s most experienced and committed new music practitioners.</p>
<p>Breaking Glass is a testament to the importance of professional development programs like Composing Women. It is vital new, ambitious artistic work has the opportunity to be presented. In this case, the result was spectacular. While the four operas were very different from each other, they were equally engaging, relevant and thought-provoking.</p>
<p>Getting this production ready to premiere in a different format in such a short time shows adaptability and hard work from all involved. Hopefully this is a sign that large scale, innovative art forms will be able to weather the current crisis, despite unprecedented challenges to the sector.</p>
<p><em>Breaking Glass can be viewed <a href="http://sydneychamberopera.com/">online</a>. In lieu of ticket purchases, tax deductible donations can be made to SCO.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136947/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Walters does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
While the name of the season - now online - suggests breaking through opera’s glass ceiling, the violent imagery fits the context of ecological disaster, inequality, mental illness, and dystopia.
Melanie Walters, PhD candidate in music, University of Adelaide
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/132668
2020-03-04T19:08:59Z
2020-03-04T19:08:59Z
Shadow Catchers review: fakes, body doubles and mirrors from the analog to the digital lens
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318473/original/file-20200303-66106-nbg60a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=46%2C31%2C3385%2C2483&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After the rainbow from the series Dark matter 2009, remastered 2016. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Soda_Jerk/AGNSW</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/shadow-catchers/">Shadow Catchers</a> at Art Gallery of New South Wales.</em></p>
<p>Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-28/vladimir-putin-says-he-never-used-body-double/12009780">denied using a body double</a>, saying he’d been offered one before but declined. The rest of us, in our glorious anonymity, might take up the offer. An actual person could shadow us through daily life. They could hold us tight while we attend to the task of living. They could reply to emails, chauffeur children and stand in for us at work while we go to the beach instead. </p>
<p>Body doubles come into focus in a major exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Curated by Isobel Parker Philip, <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/shadow-catchers/">Shadow Catchers</a> includes almost 90 works from the art gallery’s collection: photography, video, sculpture and installations from Australia’s most respected artists, alongside important international works. </p>
<p>Common to the works is the use of shadows, body doubles and mirrors, many of which challenge a straight forward understanding of photography and the moving image. </p>
<h2>The camera can lie</h2>
<p>Shadow Catchers shows that since the <a href="https://photo-museum.org/niepce-invention-photography/">first photography in 1827</a>, the medium has given us truthful copies of ourselves and the world. However, we also know it is easily exploited. In the era of fake news, we increasingly question the veracity of images.</p>
<p>One of the oldest works in the exhibition, Clarence H. White and Alfred Stieglitz’ 1907 work <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/425.1977/">Experiment 27</a> (lady in white with crystal ball), shows images have long performed a dual function of revealing but also manipulating or concealing reality. The exhibition presents us with distortions, mirror images and doppelgangers and brings us truth and fiction in equal measure. </p>
<p>Viewing the works of <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/412.2016.1-120/">Patrick Pound</a>, <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?artist_id=redgate-jacky">Jacky Redgate</a> and <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?artist_id=phillips-debra">Debra Phillips</a>, I wondered whether I was seeing the moon, the Earth, a UFO, a mirror or a simple ball. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318475/original/file-20200304-66078-19tr5bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318475/original/file-20200304-66078-19tr5bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318475/original/file-20200304-66078-19tr5bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318475/original/file-20200304-66078-19tr5bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318475/original/file-20200304-66078-19tr5bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318475/original/file-20200304-66078-19tr5bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318475/original/file-20200304-66078-19tr5bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318475/original/file-20200304-66078-19tr5bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Untitled (Denise and Diane twinning) 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/206.2019/">Emma Phillips/AGNSW</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I was drawn into the cosy domestic space of what I thought was a lesbian couple. Instead, I was being intimately invited by <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?artist_id=phillips-emma">Emma Phillips</a> to witness the tenderness of twin attachment. </p>
<p>The self-splitting allure of the mirror reveals itself in works by <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/moffatt-tracey/">Tracey Moffatt</a> and <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?artist_id=morley-lewis">Lewis Morley</a> (famous for his portrait of Christine Keeler). The erotic force of a simple shop mannequin is the signature of French photographer <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?artist_id=molinier-pierre">Pierre Molinier</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?artist_id=bing-ilse">Ilse Bing</a>’s intimate self-portrait from 1931 illustrates the central curatorial premise, duplicating her dark beauty in a staging of two angled mirrors where she looks both at us and away from us.</p>
<p>Other highlights include eight imposing photographs by <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?artist_id=raskopoulos-eugenia">Eugenia Raskopoulos</a>. Activating the illusory properties of the mirror after a hot shower, letters from the Greek alphabet are wiped onto the steamy surface. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317997/original/file-20200302-18279-1dt5z3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317997/original/file-20200302-18279-1dt5z3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317997/original/file-20200302-18279-1dt5z3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317997/original/file-20200302-18279-1dt5z3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317997/original/file-20200302-18279-1dt5z3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317997/original/file-20200302-18279-1dt5z3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317997/original/file-20200302-18279-1dt5z3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317997/original/file-20200302-18279-1dt5z3s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=645&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Self portrait with Leica, Ilsa Bing (1931).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/16.2005/">Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York/AGNSW</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Grand scale</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?artist_id=fairskye-merilyn">Merilyn Fairskye</a>’s large scale portraits, printed on a plastic substrate, emit a shadow onto the wall behind them and create a schism that gently ruptures the faces of her subjects.</p>
<p>Body double, a work by <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?artist_id=rrap-julie">Julie Rrap</a>, is the centrepiece of the exhibition. The artist has worked with notions of the double in sculpture, video and photography since the early 1980s. Two silicon rubber casts of the artist’s body lie corpse-like on a stage, one face down and one face up. A ghost-like figure of a man or a woman is projected onto the bodies. The projection of the body rolls across the stage from one figure to the other, appearing to resuscitate the silicon forms. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318476/original/file-20200304-66078-zgspgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318476/original/file-20200304-66078-zgspgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318476/original/file-20200304-66078-zgspgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318476/original/file-20200304-66078-zgspgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318476/original/file-20200304-66078-zgspgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318476/original/file-20200304-66078-zgspgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318476/original/file-20200304-66078-zgspgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318476/original/file-20200304-66078-zgspgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Handwalk (2015)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ronnie van Hout</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The organisation of the works across four rooms intermingles historical works with the contemporary, reminding us that the present is always informed by the past. </p>
<p>The exhibition offers a poetic reflection and critical account of our enduring fascination with technologies of representation. </p>
<p>While the exhibition successfully returns us to photography’s past and the defiant contribution of postmodern approaches to “doubling”, it neglects to question our current and future predicament. </p>
<p>The world today is saturated, even drowning, in shadows, which we are too slow or too tired to catch. Today we share the world with millions of our body doubles whether we want to or not.</p>
<p>Shadows and mirrors follow us through daily life and reflect us in the screens of our digital devices, ultrasound images, x-rays, dentists’ moulds; our experience of ourselves in the world is constantly mediated through the experience of seeing ourselves duplicated. Bitmoji, digital avatars, gaming skins, VR personas, Instagram feeds, CCTV surveilance and passport scans mean we have plenty of body doubles lurking in cyberspace. </p>
<p>It is suggested we live in a <a href="https://www.lensculture.com/articles/mois-de-la-photo-montreal-biennale-2015-the-post-photographic-condition">post-photographic</a> time. What this means is that technology is creating images of and with us, for and not for us. These may be better or worse than our mortal bodies and mostly beyond our control. </p>
<p><em>Shadow Catchers is showing at Art Gallery of New South Wales until May 17.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132668/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cherine Fahd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Photographic works drawn from the Art Gallery of New South Wales collection explore fakery, mirrors and tricks of the light. But Shadow Catchers stops short of today’s digital doppelgangers.
Cherine Fahd, Director Photography, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/132753
2020-03-02T04:58:08Z
2020-03-02T04:58:08Z
A meeting of monsters at the Adelaide Biennial brings us closer to our fears
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317945/original/file-20200302-57503-1kcs7ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C14%2C1952%2C1293&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Julia Robinson's Beatrice</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Saul Seed/AGSA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Monster Theatres</em></p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.agsa.sa.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/2020-adelaide-biennial-australian-art-monster-theatres/">Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art</a> – now in its 30th year – has a tradition of measuring the pulse of contemporary art practice. This iteration is no different. </p>
<p>Art Gallery of South Australia curator Leigh Robb approaches contemporary anxieties, the challenges of technology, the unfolding anthropogenic tragedies and the continuing fallout from empire colonialism in this exhibition. She wrangles these fears under the compelling umbrella of Monster Theatres. In a sense, Robb picks up where Nick Mitzevich left off in his 2014 biennial <a href="https://adelaidebiennial.com.au/2014/">Dark Heart</a>, probing the guilt and grief of the national psyche. Six years on, the anxieties feel greater and more urgent. </p>
<p>Monsters have always been a cultural trope; in an accompanying display, Julie Robinson explores this phenomenon with a look at <a href="https://www.agsa.sa.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/sleep-reason-produces-monsters/">historical monster prints</a>. Once, monstrous imagery by <a href="https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/object-package/dark-night-prints-d%C3%BCrer-goya/27815">Durer, Goltzius and Goya</a> depicted hybrid creatures with an assortment of limbs, bodies and heads and catered for societal follies and fears; their message was understood then as a moralistic warning or omen. The visual language of today differs greatly. </p>
<h2>Humans, machines, monsters</h2>
<p>The 24 solo projects in the biennial by Australian artists include two major performance artists, <a href="http://stelarc.org/projects.php">Stelarc</a> and <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?artist_id=parr-mike">Mike Parr</a>. </p>
<p>Each day for six days, Parr reads a 100-page script based on a Roland Barthes text in Reading for The End of Time. He has modified the text to stress repetitious words and phrases and synonyms, so the audience hears the same phrases coming up again and again. His only props are a glass of water and a reading lamp. As each day progresses, Parr reads this text against the video playback of the previous day. His monster is the cognitive dissonance this causes. At the time of writing, his voice was still holding out. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317979/original/file-20200302-18308-1ys1cxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317979/original/file-20200302-18308-1ys1cxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317979/original/file-20200302-18308-1ys1cxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317979/original/file-20200302-18308-1ys1cxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317979/original/file-20200302-18308-1ys1cxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317979/original/file-20200302-18308-1ys1cxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317979/original/file-20200302-18308-1ys1cxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317979/original/file-20200302-18308-1ys1cxs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Man meets machine in Reclining StickMan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Saul Seed/AGSA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Reclining StickMan, Stelarc placed himself on a large nine-metre robot made for the exhibition space. Over two five-hour performances on the opening weekend, he choreographed its movements and sounds. Audience members contributed via a touch screen, as did remote users. The robot’s movements and sounds stem from a mathematical algorithm and human interaction. This is the most recent and perhaps most spectacular of Stelarc’s work in which his own body facilitates complex interactive systems between the human and the machine.</p>
<p>There are some deeply psychological works on show, including <a href="https://brentharris.com.au/">Brent Harris</a>’s grotesque paintings exposing the trauma and menace of his abusive father. <a href="https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/artists/judith-wright/">Judith Wright</a>’s haunting Tales of Enchantment are a memorial to a lost child she imagines in a shadowy surreal underworld. </p>
<p>Muslim artist <a href="https://abdulabdullah.com/home.html">Abdul Abdullah</a>’s Understudy sits alone in a picture theatre. Viewers can, if they wish, take a seat next to this slightly hunched-over figure dressed in faux designer human clothing, but they will soon notice the hood he is wearing partly conceals his monkey face – he is one of the rare and endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys. The monkey, also a familiar figure in monster films such as Godzilla and King Kong, reflects the artist’s outsider experience in post-September 11 Australia. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.karladickens.com.au/">Karla Dickens</a>’ Dickensian Country Show feels like a sideshow with its lights and glitter, but its imagery is a dark exposé of Aboriginal members of the country circus and boxing troupe whose blackness was the attraction, the oddity, the “other”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317941/original/file-20200302-57522-1fdthuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317941/original/file-20200302-57522-1fdthuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317941/original/file-20200302-57522-1fdthuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317941/original/file-20200302-57522-1fdthuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317941/original/file-20200302-57522-1fdthuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317941/original/file-20200302-57522-1fdthuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317941/original/file-20200302-57522-1fdthuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317941/original/file-20200302-57522-1fdthuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Judith Wright’s installation imagines a lost child.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Saul Steed/AGSA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What fear sounds like</h2>
<p>Monster Theatres lends itself to the idea that the exhibition space is a site for speculation and wonder. In Transmission, experimental sound artist <a href="http://www.julianday.com/">Julian Day</a>’s found organ pipes emit a monstrous and resonating timbre that echoes through the gallery’s atrium, on the hour. On the opening weekend of the biennial, Day orchestrated a moving performance called A Civic Space in the nearby Freemasons Lodge with a group of singers and brass musicians improvising abstract sounds, augmented by the organ.</p>
<p>Ecological threat is imminent and urgent in Monsters Theatre. Quandamooka artist <a href="https://www.agsa.sa.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/2020-adelaide-biennial-australian-art-monster-theatres/megan-cope/">Megan Cope</a>’s sound installation Untitled, Death Song replicates the ghostly warning sound of the bush stone curlew, an endangered nocturnal bird. The “instruments” are re-purposed remnants from mining and deforestation projects. The auger drill, oil drums and rocks, along with a piano, ring through gallery space. Their haunting sounds are arresting enough to make viewers sit and listen.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317981/original/file-20200302-18283-1xwu0vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317981/original/file-20200302-18283-1xwu0vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317981/original/file-20200302-18283-1xwu0vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317981/original/file-20200302-18283-1xwu0vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317981/original/file-20200302-18283-1xwu0vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317981/original/file-20200302-18283-1xwu0vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317981/original/file-20200302-18283-1xwu0vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317981/original/file-20200302-18283-1xwu0vm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Biennial visitors are invited to spend the night with some bees in Mike Bianco’s Anthrocomb.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Saul Seed/AGSA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The biennial extends to the nearby Adelaide Botanical Gardens with sculptures by <a href="https://www.mark-valenzuela.com/about">Mark Valenzuela</a> and <a href="https://michaelcandy.com/">Michael Candy</a> in the Palm House and the Bicentennial Conservatory. Candy’s slowly moving and mesmerising Big Dipper hangs high above Conservatory’s entrance while Mark Valenzuela’s Once Bitten, Twice Shy pops up in a lily pond. </p>
<p>In his purpose-built bee house Anthrocomb, <a href="http://www.biancoprojects.com/">Mark Bianco</a> counters the collapse of bee colonies by literally sleeping with them in the structure. He invites audience members to do the same. </p>
<p><a href="https://artguide.com.au/julia-robinson">Julia Robinson</a>’s Beatrice, an ill-fated toxic creature – part-human, part-flower – sits in the <a href="http://adelaidia.sa.gov.au/places/museum-of-economic-botany">Museum of Economic Botany</a>. Her writhing soft sculpture tentacles in beautiful purples and mustards point to a creature trying to avoid a monstrous fate. </p>
<p>Glass artist <a href="https://www.artistprofile.com.au/yhonnie-scarce/">Yhonnie Scarce</a>, of the Kokotha and Nukuna peoples, reclaims the Deadhouse in the Gardens, once used to house Aboriginal body parts for “medical purposes”, by filling it symbolically with healing glass-fabricated bush bananas.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Abdul Abdullah with his work, one of several exploring feelings of ‘otherness’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Saul Seed/AGSA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This biennial brings a refreshing psychological depth, reflective gaze and energy to our fears. Robb has imaginatively added a new ingredient to the cultural mix: the monster. The exhibition underscores how in colonial, post-colonial and decolonial times, and now the anthropegenic era, the monsters are not only within us, they have always been us.</p>
<p><em>Monster Theatres is on show at the Art Gallery of South Australia until 8 June.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132753/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Speck has received funding (2011-13) from the Australian Research Council, with Joanna Mendelssohn, Catherine De Lorenzo and Alison Inglis, for the research project: 'Australian Art Exhibitions 1960-2009'. </span></em></p>
Artists have always created monsters to embody human fears. In this year’s Adelaide Biennial, Australian contemporary artists bring our past demons and current fears to life.
Catherine Speck, Professor, Art History;, University of Adelaide
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126587
2019-12-01T18:59:22Z
2019-12-01T18:59:22Z
Hugh Ramsay review: a virtuoso of white on white who left the art world too soon
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304184/original/file-20191128-176606-1js6749.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=105%2C24%2C5228%2C3814&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two girls in white (1904) is a composite study of three of Ramsay's sisters, who cared for him before his death from tuberculosis. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Art Gallery of New South Wales</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Hugh Ramsay, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra</em></p>
<p>Hugh Ramsay’s <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/849/">Two girls in white</a>, known for many years as The sisters, is one of my first memories of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. </p>
<p>I was intrigued by these women wearing fancy clothes, who were interesting rather than pretty. </p>
<p>Later I came to appreciate how <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/artist/488/">Ramsay</a> used obvious strokes of paint to imply texture, as well as the many different colours that were white. When I studied art history, I realised the painting was in part an homage to the virtuoso treatment of fabric by <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/john-singer-sargent-475">John Singer Sargent</a> and the tonality of <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/james-abbott-mcneill-whistler-598">James McNeil Whistler</a>. </p>
<p>However, the faces don’t fit the model of fashionable Edwardian portraiture. There is no flattery here. Their strong, raw features imply honesty and strength of character. Who were they, and why were they staring so intently? </p>
<p>The answer lies in the date, 1904, two years before Ramsay died of tuberculosis at the age of 28. </p>
<p>Two girls in white is a composite study of three of Ramsay’s sisters, looking at the brother who has been told that the decision to paint them will shorten his life. And those red flushed cheeks on one of the two? The figure on the right is a combination of the elegant Madge and Jessie, who nursed the acutely ill Ramsay when he returned from Paris. Jessie died four years later from the same illness. Rosy cheeks are one symptom of the disease.</p>
<p>The Ramsay <a href="https://nga.gov.au/ramsay/">exhibition</a> is a visual record of the pathways leading to this work. </p>
<p>It opens with the rigorous but dull teachings of<br>
<a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/636/">Bernard Hall</a> at Melbourne’s National Gallery School. Ramsay excelled in painting the precise backs of nudes so valued by his teacher, but he recognised the limitations of Hall’s pedagogy. </p>
<p>Instead, he sought the company of artists recently returned from Paris, befriending the older <a href="https://www.daao.org.au/bio/sir-john-longstaff/biography/">John Longstaff</a>, who would become a lifelong mentor. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304211/original/file-20191128-178066-yfsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304211/original/file-20191128-178066-yfsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304211/original/file-20191128-178066-yfsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304211/original/file-20191128-178066-yfsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304211/original/file-20191128-178066-yfsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304211/original/file-20191128-178066-yfsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304211/original/file-20191128-178066-yfsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304211/original/file-20191128-178066-yfsd6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Self-portrait in white jacket (1901-1902).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ramsay’s father, who had brought the family from Scotland when the artist was a baby, objected to his career choice. He had some financial help from an older brother but the young artist raised most of his own money to travel to Paris. The cold and malnutrition he experienced as a result of poverty was one of the triggers for his final illness. </p>
<p>With the exception of some commissions, most of Ramsay’s subjects were his sisters, his friends, and himself. One advantage of such a limited repertoire is that it is easier to track how his art developed in Paris. </p>
<p>There is a liberation of paint, but a continuance of the muted palette first seen in Melbourne. He ventured into fashionable decorative symbolism, but for the most part he placed himself in the academic tradition of <a href="https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/artist/velazquez-diego-rodriguez-de-silva-y/434337e9-77e4-4597-a962-ef47304d930d">Velázquez</a>, with a nod to Whistler and sometimes Sargent with his virtuoso frills and furbelows. </p>
<p>At NGA, a series of self-portraits dominates one wall, each giving subtly different approaches to tone, using his body as an element in the overall composition. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304210/original/file-20191128-178083-1wylm77.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304210/original/file-20191128-178083-1wylm77.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304210/original/file-20191128-178083-1wylm77.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304210/original/file-20191128-178083-1wylm77.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304210/original/file-20191128-178083-1wylm77.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304210/original/file-20191128-178083-1wylm77.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304210/original/file-20191128-178083-1wylm77.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304210/original/file-20191128-178083-1wylm77.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Interior of artist’s studio (1901)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is no figure in <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/73888/">Interior of an artist’s studio</a>, but this exquisite small study, balancing forms and shapes in tonal harmony, gives an idea of one direction his art may have taken if illness had not intervened. </p>
<p>Then there is the deliberately angular <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/67746/">Jeanne</a>, a Whistler inspired portrait of his concierge’s daughter. The muted tones of the thinly applied paint are lifted by the red bow in the little girl’s hair.</p>
<p>Australians in Paris looked out for each other. Ramsay’s friends included <a href="https://www.daao.org.au/bio/george-lambert/biography/">George and Amy Lambert</a>, <a href="https://www.daao.org.au/bio/ambrose-patterson/biography/">Ambrose Patterson</a> and <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/macdonald-james-stuart-jimmy-7338">J. S. MacDonald</a>. </p>
<p>The grandest of patrons was Patterson’s relative by marriage, <a href="http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/melba-dame-nellie-7551">Nellie Melba</a>. The exhibition includes a small study for the grand portrait that Ramsay planned to paint of her. He travelled to London for the commission but just as his talents were being noticed, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. </p>
<p>Melba lent him money to return to Australia, where she hosted a solo exhibition at her house in Toorak. She continued her support him with commissions to paint a portrait of her ailing father and her niece, Nellie Patterson. </p>
<p>It seems Ramsay was determined to leave a legacy that would endure. After he was told painting would exacerbate his illness, Ramsay painted his largest work, <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/2863/">An equestrian portrait</a>, a study of his doctor’s son. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304213/original/file-20191128-178101-13xz7hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304213/original/file-20191128-178101-13xz7hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304213/original/file-20191128-178101-13xz7hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304213/original/file-20191128-178101-13xz7hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304213/original/file-20191128-178101-13xz7hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304213/original/file-20191128-178101-13xz7hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=667&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304213/original/file-20191128-178101-13xz7hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=667&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304213/original/file-20191128-178101-13xz7hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=667&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An equestrian portrait (1903).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He painted portraits of his sisters, culminating in Two girls in white, which he completed in 1904. It is not his final painting. There was another, incomplete, self-portrait, focusing on his solemn face, looking at the underlying structure of his bones, painted just months before his death. </p>
<p>Ramsay was perhaps luckier in his afterlife than in his life. For well over a century, his family have worked to ensure his place in Australian art history. As well as donating many works to public collections, they have endowed the <a href="https://arts.unimelb.edu.au/news/past-news/hugh-ramsay-chair-in-australian-art-history-established-following-major-gift">Hugh Ramsay Chair of Australian Art History</a>. </p>
<p>If he were not such an outstanding artist this familial devotion to his memory would be awkward. As it is, the Ramsay family have done us all a service in keeping Ramsay’s name alive in the narrative of Australia’s art history. </p>
<p><em>Hugh Ramsay is showing at the National Gallery of Australia until March 2020</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn has in the past received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Gordon Darling Foundation. </span></em></p>
Hugh Ramsay’s Two girls in white, was painted just two years before he died at the age of 28 in 1906. It is the central work in the National Gallery of Australia’s survey exhibition.
Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/125064
2019-10-14T19:08:08Z
2019-10-14T19:08:08Z
Guan Wei review: feng shui for a vision of a world in harmony
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296620/original/file-20191011-188829-171lsxc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C0%2C3940%2C1209&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Chinese-Australian artist Guan Wei is on display in a new exhibition at the MCA. The centre piece of the exhibition is the 18x6m mural Feng Shui (2004).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Guan Wei, Feng Shui, 2004, acrylic on composite board. Museum of Contemporary Art, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Cromwell Diversified Property Trust, 2017. Image courtesy and © the artist</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It seems appropriate that a painting titled Feng Shui dominates the new exhibition of Guan Wei’s work at Sydney’s <a href="https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/exhibitions/830-guan-wei-mca-collection/">Museum of Contemporary Art</a> (MCA). He is the master of working and living between two cultures: the China of his birth and Australia, his home for most of the last three decades. </p>
<p>A rhythmically moving ocean where creatures great and small leisurely swim in tranquillity between continents: this is Guan’s vision of a world in harmony. </p>
<p>Clouds of good fortune blow to encourage the swimmers on their journeys; a fleet of sailing ships join their voyage. Taking up two adjoining walls of the gallery, the work takes on a three-dimensional appearance as swimmers and fish advance towards the viewer.</p>
<p>Guan has a long fascination with both antique maps and mythical creatures. At the core of this work is a giant map: patterns in shades of blue echo isobars and weather maps. The grid of the 120 individually painted panels appear to define latitude and longitude. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296796/original/file-20191014-135495-ws97gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296796/original/file-20191014-135495-ws97gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296796/original/file-20191014-135495-ws97gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296796/original/file-20191014-135495-ws97gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296796/original/file-20191014-135495-ws97gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296796/original/file-20191014-135495-ws97gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296796/original/file-20191014-135495-ws97gy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Taking up two adjoining walls, the figures seem to advance towards the viewer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anna Kucera/MCA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Feng shui is central to the Taoist belief of <a href="https://abodetao.com/feng-shui-guidelines-to-energy-flow-analysis-what-is-qi-and-how-qi-flows/">balance and harmony of nature</a>. The words translate literally into “wind” (feng) and “water” (shui): the painting becomes both an illustration of its underlying concept, and a visual pun. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-oceans-are-out-of-balance-can-we-learn-some-tips-from-feng-shui-64975">Our oceans are out of balance – can we learn some tips from feng shui?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>From China to Australia</h2>
<p>Guan is from that remarkable generation of Chinese artists who, in the 1980s, began to <a href="https://pitt.libguides.com/chineseaptart">exhibit in private homes</a> because the work they made was not acceptable to the state. In this scene, Guan befriended <a href="http://www.nicholasjose.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/NicholasJose-Bio.pdf">a young Nicholas Jose</a>, who would later become Australia’s cultural counsellor in Beijing. </p>
<p>In 1988, an exhibition of Australian art at the embassy in Beijing led to invitations from touring curators for Chinese artists to visit Australia. At <a href="http://theartlife.com.au/2013/floating-worlds-a-conversation-with-guan-wei/">the invitation of Geoff Parr</a>, the director of the Tasmanian School of Art, Guan spent the early months of 1989 as artists-in-residence in Hobart.</p>
<p>Guan returned to China before the climax of the events at <a href="https://theconversation.com/thirty-years-on-china-is-still-trying-to-whitewash-the-tiananmen-crackdown-from-its-history-118178">Tiananmen Square</a>, but through the support of Parr and the Australian arts community, several Chinese artists were able to emigrate to Australia. </p>
<p>Australia in the 1990s was especially open to contemporary Chinese artists. The MCA exhibited <a href="https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/exhibitions/6-mao-goes-pop-china-post-1989/">Mao Goes Pop</a> shortly after opening; in 1993, the Queensland Art Gallery started its ground-breaking series of <a href="https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/about/our-story/apt">Asia Pacific Triennials</a>. </p>
<p>Guan, with his wife and daughter, settled first in a small apartment in Enmore in inner Sydney, before relocating to a large house in Glenmore Park in the western suburbs. It was here, in the cavernous space of the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, he painted Feng Shui.</p>
<h2>Strength and endurance</h2>
<p>In 1992, the MCA became the first public gallery to collect his work. The 48 postcard-size paintings, Two Finger Exercises (1989), were painted in Beijing, and in the current exhibition they are framed by a mural of an angel, a demon, and red flags – a reference to the conflict at the time of their making. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296797/original/file-20191014-135521-qk9mvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296797/original/file-20191014-135521-qk9mvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296797/original/file-20191014-135521-qk9mvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296797/original/file-20191014-135521-qk9mvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296797/original/file-20191014-135521-qk9mvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296797/original/file-20191014-135521-qk9mvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296797/original/file-20191014-135521-qk9mvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two Finger Exercises (1989) was the first of Guan’s work collected by a public gallery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anna Kucera/MCA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The blob-like figures in various poses and relationships all hold up two fingers. Some appear defiant, others hectoring; one is upside down. The <a href="https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/works/1993477/">two-fingered sign</a> was popular with the student radicals as they stared down the might of the bureaucracy in the occupation of Tiananmen Square. </p>
<p>The two fingered symbol can mean a “V for Victory” and also a defiant “up yours” gesture to authority. There is also another, specifically Chinese meaning. Ancient masters of <a href="https://ymaa.com/articles/history/history-qigong">Qigong</a>, the meditative movement now popular with fitness classes, were supposed to be able to concentrate their Qi (life-force energy) with such strength they could balance on two fingers. In this, Guan’s paintings are a reminder of strength and endurance.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296622/original/file-20191011-188823-19oh6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296622/original/file-20191011-188823-19oh6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296622/original/file-20191011-188823-19oh6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296622/original/file-20191011-188823-19oh6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296622/original/file-20191011-188823-19oh6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296622/original/file-20191011-188823-19oh6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296622/original/file-20191011-188823-19oh6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296622/original/file-20191011-188823-19oh6py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 48 postcard-size paintings are ‘a reminder of strength and endurance.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Guan Wei, Two-finger exercise no.48, 1989, Museum of Contemporary Art, gift of the artist, 1993, image courtesy and
© the artist, photograph: Jessica Maure</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Shortly after he arrived in Australia, Guan made a series of collage works, Certificate (1990), using stamps, symbols and red ink as commentary on China’s officious bureaucracy, and family photos manipulated to define, confine and sometimes eliminate particular figures. </p>
<p>Guan’s family were direct descendents of Qing dynasty courtiers, and so were <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/the-hot-seat-guan-wei-20060909-gdocd4.html">eliminated from public life</a> in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s. He has a particularly intimate experience of the whims of bureaucracy.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-china-still-cant-make-sense-of-the-cultural-revolution-59624">Why China still can't make sense of the Cultural Revolution</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The question of how an artist living today may react to both the events of the present and the beauty of traditional art and nature is addressed in Paper War (2003), where a facsimile of a 17th century scroll painting by the Nanjing master <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/65620">Gong Xian</a> has been overlaid by silhouettes showing military invasion and death by an unnamed enemy. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296798/original/file-20191014-135517-1xc1ffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296798/original/file-20191014-135517-1xc1ffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296798/original/file-20191014-135517-1xc1ffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296798/original/file-20191014-135517-1xc1ffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296798/original/file-20191014-135517-1xc1ffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296798/original/file-20191014-135517-1xc1ffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296798/original/file-20191014-135517-1xc1ffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296798/original/file-20191014-135517-1xc1ffd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paper War is a reaction to both the ‘events of the present and the history of traditional art.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anna Kucera/MCA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2014, Guan reworked Paper War as a video, which intersperses the scroll with animated figures of fighter planes and soldiers parachuting in to create destruction. There is no land so beautiful it can’t be despoiled by war. </p>
<h2>Finding feng shui in migration</h2>
<p>In 2016 Guan entered the Archibald Prize with <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/archibald/2016/29727/">Plastic Surgery</a>, a wry comment on the nature of immigration and acceptance. </p>
<p>A series of faces transition from the heavily regulated persona demanded by Chinese officialdom in the 1980s to the compromises made by immigrants to fit in with a new culture. </p>
<p>Guan’s art suggests it is far better for those moving between cultures to adopt another path – to find harmonious connections, to seek humorous twists in even difficult circumstances – and be guided always by the equilibrium of feng shui. </p>
<p><em>Guan Wei: MCA Collection is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, until 9 February 2020</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125064/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn has in the past received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>
Guan Wei’s art, now on display at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, crosses both Chinese and Australian cultures, working together in harmony, best described as an aspect of feng shui.
Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/123355
2019-09-13T05:22:02Z
2019-09-13T05:22:02Z
Fangirls review: new musical has enough warmth, witty lines and catchy tunes to win its own fangirls
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292363/original/file-20190913-35634-1i8x9rw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C46%2C3897%2C3510&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sharon Millerchip, Ayesha Madon, James Majoos, Chika Ikogwe, and Kimberley Hodgson in Fangirls at the Brisbane Festival. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Stephen Henry</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Comedy often succeeds where tragedy fails. Fangirls, the pop musical which premiered on Thursday night in Brisbane, is not the first drama to explore our fascination with the wild, uncontrollable power of young female passion and girls’ infatuation with their boy-loves. Yet its catchy tunes, witty dialogue, and hilarious, occasionally absurdist, comic scenes set it apart.</p>
<p>Over 2,500 years ago, <a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Bacchae/">Euripides’ play The Bacchae</a> featured a chorus of maenads, followers of Dionysus and the world’s first fangirls, who ecstatically tore cattle apart with their bare hands. Any unfortunate male who crossed their path was similarly rendered limb from limb. Fear of uninhibited female obsession runs deep. </p>
<p>Stephen King’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100157/">Misery</a>, starring the psychotic uber-fan Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), struck a chord in our collective psyche. The delusional female fan has long been a character to be feared and shunned. At best a figure of derision, at worst a figure in need of strong medical and psychiatric intervention. </p>
<p>It is against this background that Fangirls seems so refreshing. This musical doesn’t stigmatise the world of the fangirl and her pop-star fixations, it revels in it. It emerges from a genuine desire to understand and celebrate its subject. Driven by such compassion, the laughs – and there are many – are never cheap.</p>
<p>The musical teaches us that the boundless creativity of young girls needs to run free, not be stifled by convention or ideas of proper behaviour. Armed with unbreakable determination and a few instructional YouTube clips these girls can achieve anything. The bouncy, upbeat music and dynamic video-walls that dominate the stage capture well the frenzied energy unleashed by the fangirl. Whatever it is, idol worship is not idle worship.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292365/original/file-20190913-35601-afyw5l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292365/original/file-20190913-35601-afyw5l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292365/original/file-20190913-35601-afyw5l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292365/original/file-20190913-35601-afyw5l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292365/original/file-20190913-35601-afyw5l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292365/original/file-20190913-35601-afyw5l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292365/original/file-20190913-35601-afyw5l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292365/original/file-20190913-35601-afyw5l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Talented Fangirls creator and star Yve Blake.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Stephen Henry</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The story and music were written by the abundantly talented <a href="http://www.yveblake.co/">Yve Blake</a> who plays the lead role of young 14-year-old Edna. The plot of the musical concerns Edna and her fixation on Harry (Aydan), the lead singer of the world’s biggest boy-band True Direction. With smouldering eyes and perfect hair, Harry’s effect on his teenage fanbase is visceral. </p>
<p>In an early musical number, Harry’s fans writhe around in half-agony, half-ecstasy clutching their pillowcases as they remember the first time that they witnessed him take the stage. As a former star of the hit talent show The Voice, Aydan is perfectly suited to the role.</p>
<p>Edna’s devotion to Harry and her unshakeable conviction that only she truly understands him is a source of tension between Edna, her school friends and her mother (Sharon Millerchip). Edna escapes from her increasingly fraught home life through the internet and the chatrooms full of True Direction fans.</p>
<p>Together with her online BFF Saltypringl, brilliantly played by James Majoos, Edna writes fan fiction in which she and Saltypringl imagine scenarios where they each team up with Harry to fight against their common enemies. The opponents become increasingly outrageous, but the trajectory of the stories remain the same. With the opposition out of the way, Edna and Saltypringl can each enjoy time alone with Harry as they giddily tousle those begging-to-be-played-with locks. Gradually the line between fiction and reality becomes blurred with literally riotous results.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3CZtcJXk3X8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A musical first crush with all the feels, Fangirls is bright and joyous.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the hands of another dramatist, Edna could be a figure to be pitied. In Fangirls, you constantly cheer her on, no matter how ridiculous her plans. Her friends may treat her badly, but you forgive them as well. They possess such vitality and spunk that most crimes can be forgiven. </p>
<p>Edna’s frenemy Jules (Chika Ikogwe) is so fabulous in her narcissism that you forget all of the terrible things she says and does. In all her naked unrestrained power she is a joy to behold.</p>
<p>This musical neatly exposes the gender double standard that lies at the heart of our treatment of fangirls. We mock them for their exuberance, but if a boy showed similar passion for a footballer or cricketer, we wouldn’t hesitate to applaud such devotion. </p>
<p>It equally reveals the cynicism of the commercial music industry that seeks to atomise its fanbase. The songs of boy bands claim to speaking to you alone. Anyone else who thinks otherwise is delusional. It is an irresponsible strategy that promotes intense rivalries, online trolling, and fights between fans. Boy bands cause division as much as they unite.</p>
<p>The scenes of teenage life are painfully well observed and many parents will wince in recognition of how Edna speaks to her mother. Yet it is the warmth of the drama that shines through. This musical is a celebration of love in all its forms. It is a reminder that it is love that makes us better people, repairs shattered friendships, and teaches us to appreciate life. It is love, not some pop star – no matter how perfect the hair – that makes us whole.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.queenslandtheatre.com.au/Shows/19-Fangirls">Fangirls</a> runs until 5 October at Brisbane’s Bille Brown Theatre and will open at Sydney’s Belvoir Theatre from October 12.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123355/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alastair Blanshard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
There are no cheap laughs in this musical celebration of fan fixation - but there is love in all its forms.
Alastair Blanshard, Paul Eliadis Chair of Classics and Ancient History Deputy Head of School, The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/119528
2019-07-22T19:57:41Z
2019-07-22T19:57:41Z
‘Are you one of us or one of them?’ Margaret Olley, Ben Quilty and a portrait of a generous friendship
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285047/original/file-20190722-116562-rhb8ss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973. Margaret Olley 2011. Oil on linen / 170.0 x 150.0 cm. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Collection of the artist. Courtesy the artist. Photograph: Mim Stirling</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Margaret Olley: A Generous Life, and Quilty, QAGOMA</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Margaret Olley’s exhibition at QAGOMA is titled <a href="https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/margaret-olley">A Generous Life</a>, referring to her capacity to maintain enduring friendships, her support for her artist peers (it is said she would cover their fares to travel and publish books for them), her role as mentor to younger artists, and her enormous generosity as a philanthropist to galleries in Australia, as well as to other arts organisations like the Australian Chamber Orchestra. </p>
<p>Olley donated her own work (in the case of the Orchestra, to auction), that of her peers and younger artists, and works from her own collection. She also made major donations to public collections, such as a donation to the Art Gallery of New South Wales that included works by <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1686334.htm">Cezanne and Picasso</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284866/original/file-20190718-116562-i59dkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284866/original/file-20190718-116562-i59dkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284866/original/file-20190718-116562-i59dkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284866/original/file-20190718-116562-i59dkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284866/original/file-20190718-116562-i59dkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284866/original/file-20190718-116562-i59dkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284866/original/file-20190718-116562-i59dkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284866/original/file-20190718-116562-i59dkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Margaret Olley, Australia, 1923-201. Margaret Olley: A Generous Life exhibition views at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Images courtesy the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA). Photograph: Natasha Harth, QAGOMA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the launch of <a href="https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/quilty">Ben Quilty’s exhibition</a> in the adjoining gallery two weeks after Olley’s, curator Lisa Slade said Quilty’s exhibition could also be called “A Generous Life”.</p>
<p>Slade was referring to Quilty’s passion for speaking out in support of human rights and against injustices. For example, his determination to address the ignorance around official versions of Australian history, which obscure the truth of violence to Indigenous people; his response as a War Artist in Afghanistan to the way the trauma of war seeps through all ranks; his amplifying the voices of refugee children in Greece, Syria and Lebanon, revealing the anguish of living with war. </p>
<p>And then there was his <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/artist-ben-quilty-on-his-bali-nine-friend-and-student-myuran-sukumaran/news-story/a27f9bef7742102aff621dc28df40d26">friendship and support</a> for Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan of the Bali Nine and the battle to turn public opinion and legal might against the death penalty, and his actions urging us not to ignore the tragedy of refugees and asylum seekers detained in our own waters. Quilty has made all these issues the subject for painting and activism.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284868/original/file-20190719-116579-u4u709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284868/original/file-20190719-116579-u4u709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284868/original/file-20190719-116579-u4u709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284868/original/file-20190719-116579-u4u709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284868/original/file-20190719-116579-u4u709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284868/original/file-20190719-116579-u4u709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284868/original/file-20190719-116579-u4u709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284868/original/file-20190719-116579-u4u709.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Margaret Olley and Ben Quilty, 2005.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy: Steven Bacon / Fairfax syndication.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-noisy-passionate-show-from-an-artist-in-a-hurry-quilty-has-just-one-emotional-pitch-112943">A noisy, passionate show from an artist in a hurry, Quilty has just one emotional pitch</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Quilty’s exhibition of works from the last seven years (travelling from the Art Gallery of South Australia) and Olley’s exhibition of 100 works from across her professional life (curated by QAGOMA’s Michael Hawker) are brought together by good planning. The artists are said to be an odd couple or as arts critic John McDonald says “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/review-olley-quilty-and-art-that-triumphs-over-celebrity-20190702-p523cq.html">a legendary Aussie duo</a>” (the others he cites are Burke and Wills, and Kath and Kim!). </p>
<p>However the two exhibitions don’t so much fit together (the subject matter, the artistic approach and intent, could not be further apart) as somehow <em>build</em> together.</p>
<p>Perhaps not unlike the way Olley and Quilty’s friendship built. <a href="http://archives.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/media/archives_2002/bwtas_winner_2002/index.html">In 2002</a>, Olley, a judge for the Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship, awarded the scholarship to Quilty. From then on, she was his mentor, buying his work and gifting it to state and regional gallery collections, and introducing him to her influential friends of the art world. </p>
<p>Their friendship grew such that towards the end of her life, Olley agreed to sit for Quilty for a 2011 Archibald Prize portrait, which Quilty won. Just as Olley’s artist career was affirmed through William Dobell’s winning portrait of her in the 1948 Archibald, so in an inverse sort of way, Quilty’s career has similarly been affirmed through his 2011 winning portrait of Olley.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284865/original/file-20190718-116539-vemqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284865/original/file-20190718-116539-vemqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284865/original/file-20190718-116539-vemqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284865/original/file-20190718-116539-vemqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284865/original/file-20190718-116539-vemqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284865/original/file-20190718-116539-vemqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284865/original/file-20190718-116539-vemqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284865/original/file-20190718-116539-vemqaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973. Margaret Olley 2011. Oil on linen / 170.0 x 150.0 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Collection of the artist. Courtesy the artist.Photograph: Mim Stirling</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Olley is the only person to have been the subject of an Archibald Prize winning portrait twice (excluding self portraits) - at the beginning of her artist life and at the conclusion. Olley died three months after Quilty’s win. Happily, both intriguing portraits of her are in the Olley exhibition.</p>
<p>In preparing viewers to navigate between these shows, Quilty has created on the North Gallery wall interfacing Olley’s exhibition large line drawings of Olley taken from his preparatory sketches for the Archibald portrait. Just as the finished oil paint portrait exists through the slightest suggestion of paint, so these chalk drawings are equally ethereal, with a presence that just lingers. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285029/original/file-20190722-116573-1htvezv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285029/original/file-20190722-116573-1htvezv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285029/original/file-20190722-116573-1htvezv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285029/original/file-20190722-116573-1htvezv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285029/original/file-20190722-116573-1htvezv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285029/original/file-20190722-116573-1htvezv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285029/original/file-20190722-116573-1htvezv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285029/original/file-20190722-116573-1htvezv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ben Quilty, Australia, b.1973. Sketches for Margaret 2019. Site-specific pastel wall drawing / cast pastel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Commissioned by QAGOMA for the AGSAtouring exhibition ‘Quilty’. Photograph: Natasha Harth</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Interestingly, the chalk is created from red, pink and blue chalk casts of jugs, teapots and lidded jars – gifts from Olley’s vast collection to Quilty over the years. In their cast forms, these objects appear in the gallery as clusters of fragmented empty vessels below the wall.</p>
<p>On the opposite North Gallery wall adjoining Quilty’s exhibition, Quilty has reconfigured his work <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u53IvEmqNOs">Inhabit</a> (2010). This consists of 16 cell-like images that move us from abstracted matter to discernable images of James Cook, and then to Cook as a cadaver, to a cranium, to Quilty, and onto a mere spatial presence. In this iteration, these figures appear to be present at a dinner party. They are within two large tables with baroque flourishes created by black spray paint onto the wall.</p>
<p>Throughout Quilty’s exhibition there is an urgency to look deeper, to step back, to weigh up, to know more, to reassess, to unravel, to grieve and occasionally smile at the absurdities served up. Justin Paton, head curator of International Art at the Art Gallery of NSW, refers to recent Quilty work as “painterly-political grotesque”. He describes Quilty as a “painter of conflict, turbulence, knots, double binds, dark laughter and awkward resistance”. There are certainly demons and the macabre that won’t go away, nevertheless somehow there is empathy and compassion. It is this that holds us.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284896/original/file-20190719-116579-z10ni2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284896/original/file-20190719-116579-z10ni2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284896/original/file-20190719-116579-z10ni2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284896/original/file-20190719-116579-z10ni2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284896/original/file-20190719-116579-z10ni2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284896/original/file-20190719-116579-z10ni2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284896/original/file-20190719-116579-z10ni2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284896/original/file-20190719-116579-z10ni2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ben Quilty, Australia, born 1973. Flowers for Heba (installation view) 2016Oil on linen / 265.0 x 202.0 cm. Private collection. The Last Supper no.9 (installation view) 2017Oil on linen / 265.0 x 202.0 cm. Private collection. Baino, after Afganistan (installation view) 2013Oil on linen / 180.0 x 170.0 cm Private Collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA).Photograph: Natasha Harth, QAGOMA.\</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Olley’s inspiration</h2>
<p>In Olley’s exhibition her family home of Farndon becomes the central site of inspiration and reference. We enter the exhibition past a huge (possibly dusty) flower arrangement, and into a dimly lit hallway with a wood detailed archway, familiar in old Queenslanders. Farndon is where Olley lived and worked for stretches of time after her father died and then from time to time between her stays in Sydney and Newcastle (keeping paintings and materials in all three locations), until the house burnt down in 1980. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284884/original/file-20190719-116569-7ayus0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284884/original/file-20190719-116569-7ayus0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284884/original/file-20190719-116569-7ayus0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284884/original/file-20190719-116569-7ayus0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284884/original/file-20190719-116569-7ayus0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284884/original/file-20190719-116569-7ayus0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284884/original/file-20190719-116569-7ayus0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284884/original/file-20190719-116569-7ayus0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Margaret Olley, Australia, b. 1923. Interior IV 1970. Oil on composition board / 121.5 × 91.5cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gift of the Margaret Olley Art Trust through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2002 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hawker says Farndon had a calming presence on Olley, with its high ceilings, generously sized rooms, and plays of latticed-light across the floors. It was surrounded by lush vegetation that we see, all but bursting in the room in her paintings Interior 1V, and VII (1970). </p>
<p>Olley is said to have avoided having her own work on white walls and in this spirit, the gallery walls are a distinct mood setter of rich green, grey and salmon. Just as in Olley’s paintings of interiors where paintings, artefacts, furniture and, of course, flowers, create her universe, so this effect is created in the exhibition in several places. </p>
<p>The exhibition charts Olley’s early work in Brisbane (1946-48) where she paints iconic buildings (Old Masonic Lodge, Treasury Building, Queensland Club), her delicate Boonah (Qld) landscapes, and then <a href="https://learning.qagoma.qld.gov.au/artworks/the-banana-cutters/">portraits</a> of young Indigenous men (with guitars and bananas), and most interestingly Aboriginal women (with dazzling, jostling flowers) and as nude subjects.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284889/original/file-20190719-116596-18jou5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284889/original/file-20190719-116596-18jou5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284889/original/file-20190719-116596-18jou5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284889/original/file-20190719-116596-18jou5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284889/original/file-20190719-116596-18jou5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284889/original/file-20190719-116596-18jou5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284889/original/file-20190719-116596-18jou5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284889/original/file-20190719-116596-18jou5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Margaret Olley, Australia, b.1923. The Treasury Building (Brisbane) 1947. Oil on panel / 61 × 76cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gift of the artist, 1997 Collection: Museum of Brisbane</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To me, her figures always look a little uncomfortable – slightly halted, detached, even frozen. From the mid 60s, Olley left figure painting and focused more and more on still life. </p>
<p>Ironically, it is when Olley focuses on still life that I feel her subjects (in fact objects), create a highly animated world. Space became a keenly articulated interest for Olley. It is where the subtle dramas can be created or insinuated. “Space is the secret of life”, she has said. “[I]t is everything, and I have used it to suit me not only in my surroundings but over time.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284878/original/file-20190719-116590-v0ddaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284878/original/file-20190719-116590-v0ddaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284878/original/file-20190719-116590-v0ddaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284878/original/file-20190719-116590-v0ddaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284878/original/file-20190719-116590-v0ddaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284878/original/file-20190719-116590-v0ddaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284878/original/file-20190719-116590-v0ddaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284878/original/file-20190719-116590-v0ddaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Margaret Olley, Australia, b.1923. Cornflowers with lemons (Cornflowers with Turkish coffee pot) 1984. Oil on board / 76 x 102cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Private collection</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What ultimately brings both these exhibitions together in a satisfying way is that each artist has developed their own sense of direction and a studied sense of purpose.</p>
<p>At the exhibition opening, Quilty said that after Olley awarded him the Brett Whiteley travel scholarship, she asked him “Are you one of us or one of them?” He says he has never worked out what she meant. </p>
<p>Given what we know about Olley, we could say she was asking Quilty – is art central to your life and the reason to be? It was for Olley, and it would appear to be for Quilty.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/margaret-olley">Margaret Olley: A Generous Life</a> and <a href="https://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/whats-on/exhibitions/quilty">Quilty</a> are on at QAGOMA until October 13.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119528/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Ostling does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Margaret Olley was known not only for her paintings, but her generosity. An exhibition of her work is currently on in Brisbane, alongside a survey of the work of Ben Quilty, her mentee and friend.
Susan Ostling, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/120575
2019-07-18T05:43:02Z
2019-07-18T05:43:02Z
Opera Australia’s Whiteley brings together 3 icons to tell the artist’s complicated story
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284632/original/file-20190718-147307-1b29p50.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Leigh Melrose as Brett Whiteley in Opera Australia's 2019 production of Whiteley at the Sydney Opera House. The opera focuses on the artist's addictions and his relationship with his wife.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Whiteley, Opera Australia, Sydney.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Opera Australia’s newest production, <a href="https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/whiteley-sydney">Whiteley</a>, brings together three Australian icons. Elena Kats-Chernin, the doyenne of Australian composers, has written an opera on the life of a famous Australian painter and had it staged at that most recognisable of Australian buildings, the Sydney Opera House.</p>
<p>With Sydney Harbour described as “the jewel of Australasia”, there were moments when it felt like a tourism commercial. However, the artist in question, Brett Whiteley, had an equivocal attitude to his homeland, as the opera as a whole makes clear.</p>
<p>Like so many of his generation, Whiteley aspired to success abroad, and thanks to a travelling art scholarship, he first made a splash in the British art scene. The opera’s libretto by Justin Fleming traces his travels to Italy, his London stint, and his periods in America and Fiji, before his return to Australia. His expulsion from the Pacific island left Whiteley yelling “bugger” as Act I concluded, a heartfelt comment on his forced repatriation.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, after settling back in Sydney, his fame at home skyrocketed as his wider reputation faded. His biographer <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30225164-brett-whiteley">Ashleigh Wilson</a> represents him as deliberately rejecting internationalism in favour of local celebrity, and certainly his canvases increasingly depicted Sydney scenes. Some of these featured as backdrops during the opera; for instance, the Harbour ferry at the start of Act II was clearly reproduced from a canvas.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284636/original/file-20190718-147275-8ty7w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284636/original/file-20190718-147275-8ty7w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284636/original/file-20190718-147275-8ty7w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284636/original/file-20190718-147275-8ty7w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284636/original/file-20190718-147275-8ty7w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284636/original/file-20190718-147275-8ty7w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284636/original/file-20190718-147275-8ty7w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284636/original/file-20190718-147275-8ty7w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leigh Melrose as Brett Whiteley in Opera Australia’s 2019 production of Whiteley at the Sydney Opera House.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our fascination with creative artists runs deep, but when it comes to representing their lives in film or on stage, the focus is often on their personalities and biographies rather than on the acts of creation themselves. While several of Whiteley’s paintings did feature (good use was made here of projections by director David Freeman and production designer Dan Potra), the opera’s two main themes were the artist’s turbulent relationship with his wife, Wendy, and his addictions. </p>
<p>The centrality of Wendy was clear from the opening tableau, where the drink-sozzled artist sees her (or imagines her?) in a moment of crisis - but she rejects him. This wordless flash-forward was separate from the main course of the opera, which traced episodes of his life in chronological order.</p>
<p>With Whiteley’s widow present at the premiere, it was perhaps no surprise she was portrayed sympathetically; her <a href="https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/brett-whiteley-art-life-and-the-other-thing/">affair with Michael Driscoll</a> was preceded by her husband’s infidelities, and she urged him to follow her example and <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/dickins-and-the-rocket-man-20021208-gduwc2.html">get clean of drugs</a>. “All my heroes are addicts”, sang Whiteley, and his use of alcohol, heroin and other substances is represented as both creatively stimulating and personally destructive. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284634/original/file-20190718-147318-8e7slr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284634/original/file-20190718-147318-8e7slr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284634/original/file-20190718-147318-8e7slr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284634/original/file-20190718-147318-8e7slr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284634/original/file-20190718-147318-8e7slr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284634/original/file-20190718-147318-8e7slr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284634/original/file-20190718-147318-8e7slr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284634/original/file-20190718-147318-8e7slr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Julie Lea Goodwin as Wendy Whiteley and Leigh Melrose as Brett Whiteley in Opera Australia’s 2019 production of Whiteley at the Sydney Opera House.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-never-look-away-we-finally-have-a-painter-biopic-offering-insight-into-the-creative-process-118599">In Never Look Away we finally have a painter biopic offering insight into the creative process</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Sensitive scoring</h2>
<p>Kats-Chernin was recently voted 16th in an <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/classic/classic100/archive/search/?year=2019-composers">ABC survey</a> of Australia’s favourite composers, which made her the second most-beloved living composer (after John Williams), the highest woman in the list and the top Australian.</p>
<p>Her score for Whiteley displayed in the abundance catchy rhythms, attractive melodies and sensitive scoring that have endeared her to so many. Some of the strongest numbers were the lighter ones: the satirical “Brett Whiteley has arrived”, where a stage full of critics pontificated pretentiously about the young artist, had a winsome verve to it.</p>
<p>Other plot elements were given recurring musical motifs. Drug use was signalled by thin, dissonant notes high on the strings, while creative acts were often accompanied by solo winds, including the rare alto flute. The melancholy saxophone music that began the overture later returned as Brett questioned whether Wendy still loved him.</p>
<p>With its shifts in location and time, the libretto sometimes became disjointed, and Kats-Chernin wasn’t always able to solve this. On a few occasions, conductor Tahu Matheson brought a number to an end, and left a few seconds before starting the next. These seams were not always jarring, but they were noticeable and could have been avoided by a few bars of transitional music.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284635/original/file-20190718-147318-2n70rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284635/original/file-20190718-147318-2n70rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284635/original/file-20190718-147318-2n70rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284635/original/file-20190718-147318-2n70rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284635/original/file-20190718-147318-2n70rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284635/original/file-20190718-147318-2n70rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284635/original/file-20190718-147318-2n70rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284635/original/file-20190718-147318-2n70rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cast of Opera Australia’s 2019 production of Whiteley at the Sydney Opera House.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other parts less to my taste included the schmaltzy D major music in which Fiji was extolled as a paradise, and the ending, where Whiteley’s wife, daughter and mother provided reflections after his overdose. </p>
<p>This trio felt somewhat bloodless: euphonious without being truly melodious, not grief-stricken nor suggestive of the transcendent. Maybe this was the point: a life like Whiteley’s does not offer a clear moral message.</p>
<p>In the title role, Opera Australia newcomer Leigh Melrose was a titanic presence. He sang with power throughout the evening, capturing both the charisma and the darker side of the artist. Julie Lea Goodwin was good match for the role of Wendy, tracing the course from young lover to disillusioned wife in a ringing soprano.</p>
<p>Their daughter, Arkie, was played by two different singers: Natasha Green was the younger version, and sang with very pure tones and accurate pitching, while Kate Amos demonstrated a highly flexible soprano as the older Arkie. Dominica Matthews was as reliable as ever as Whiteley’s mother, and managed to coax some humour out of the part.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284633/original/file-20190718-147295-1mo3h8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284633/original/file-20190718-147295-1mo3h8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284633/original/file-20190718-147295-1mo3h8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284633/original/file-20190718-147295-1mo3h8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284633/original/file-20190718-147295-1mo3h8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284633/original/file-20190718-147295-1mo3h8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284633/original/file-20190718-147295-1mo3h8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/284633/original/file-20190718-147295-1mo3h8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leigh Melrose as Brett Whiteley and Kate Amos as Older Arkie Whiteley in Opera Australia’s 2019 production of Whiteley at the Sydney Opera House.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Richard Anderson was a strong dramatic presence as Joel Elenberg, one of Whiteley’s two closest Australian colleagues, while Nicholas Jones’s attractive tenor voice made his scenes as Michael Driscoll particularly enjoyable. Fitting a life lived on three continents, a large contingent of small roles was needed, among whom Celeste Lazarenko as a backpacker and Sitiveni Talei as a Fijian Police Officer stood out.</p>
<p>The female members of the Opera Australia chorus were unseen presences in some scenes, but shone when they appeared as the murder victims in a case that fascinated and stimulated Whiteley. The orchestra under Matheson negotiated the tricky corners of the score with aplomb, allowing the driving rhythmic pulse to emerge clearly.</p>
<p>The Whiteley opera appears at a time when debates around opera have ramped up a notch: is it too much in thrall to a <a href="https://theconversation.com/opera-is-stuck-in-a-racist-sexist-past-while-many-in-the-audience-have-moved-on-120073">canon of past works</a>, and are these works consonant with <a href="https://performing.artshub.com.au/news-article/opinions-and-analysis/performing-arts/blackwood-lim-polias-and-van-reyk/opera-and-the-doing-of-women-257968">social values today</a>?</p>
<p>Meanwhile, can Australian opera <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-where-is-the-great-australian-opera-96908">establish itself</a> on the world stage? Where Kats-Chernin’s work fits into such debates remains to be seen, but that it can be seen right now at Australia’s premier opera venue is an important first step. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/whiteley-sydney">Whiteley</a> is on at the Sydney Opera House until July 30.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120575/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Larkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A new opera focuses more on the personal life of artist Brett Whiteley than his artistic creations. As the opera reveals, a life like Whiteley’s does not offer a clear moral message.
David Larkin, Senior Lecturer in Musicology, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/119747
2019-07-08T23:52:10Z
2019-07-08T23:52:10Z
Indonesian art is fresh, energetic and lively. Why do we not see more of it?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282991/original/file-20190708-51292-pilfu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mella Jaarsma, The landscaper 2013, costume: wood, paint, iron and leather, single-channel video: 3:40 minutes, colour, sound.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 2018. Photo by Mie Cornoedus</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia, National Gallery of Australia</em></p>
<p>They talk of a family of nations, or families of nations. In Australia, the UK can still be referred to as the mother country, while the English talk of their American cousins. Geographic neighbours usually have these relationships down pat, though with a frisson of sibling rivalry or pecking orders of favouritism. </p>
<p>However, one of the truths about Australia and Indonesia, so physically close, is that there is pretty well no familial relationship at all. It’s like we are different species.</p>
<p>I think this is central to the on-again, off-again, try-hard, well-meant, scratchy relationship that struggles to get to first base, always slipping back into the no-man’s-land of “it-is-all-too-hard” and “who-cares-anyway-ville”.</p>
<p>I recently listened to an <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/the-art-show/jennifer-higgie/11244064">ABC RN arts program</a> on the Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia exhibition, now at the National Gallery of Australia, where the announcer spoke of Australian artists travelling to “New York or Berlin or London” with no instinctive, familial thought that, just maybe, travelling to “Jakarta, Singapore or Tokyo” might also be part of the mix. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282768/original/file-20190705-51284-109rfgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282768/original/file-20190705-51284-109rfgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282768/original/file-20190705-51284-109rfgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282768/original/file-20190705-51284-109rfgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282768/original/file-20190705-51284-109rfgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282768/original/file-20190705-51284-109rfgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282768/original/file-20190705-51284-109rfgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282768/original/file-20190705-51284-109rfgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zico Albaiquni, For evidently, the fine arts do not thrive in the Indies, 2018, oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist and Yavuz Gallery, Singapore</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia could be from outer space. Despite 30 years of close contact with Indonesia by Australian curators and artists; despite goodwill and a lot of government rhetoric about the “importance of the relationship”; despite so many exchanges and residences and lectures, the nuance is still irredeemably “other”.</p>
<p>I’ve been involved in arts management training programs in Indonesia, curated exhibitions (from 1990, when I organised <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/14467486?selectedversion=NBD28203209">Eight Views</a> at the National Gallery in Jakarta), been behind the <a href="https://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/arts/exchanges/current-and-alumni/past-residencies/indonesia">Asialink Artist-in Residency program</a> in Indonesia, served on the <a href="https://dfat.gov.au/people-to-people/foundations-councils-institutes/australia-indonesia-institute/Pages/australia-indonesia-institute.aspx">Australia-Indonesia Institute </a>(pushing always for strong, intelligent, meaningful arts programs to be supported) and I still see Australians not able to catch Indonesian names, or artists, and hold them as important. Teaching of Indonesian language is struggling; academic inclusion of Indonesian cultural material remains minimal.</p>
<p>Yet Indonesian art was and is great. This exhibition shows many of the reasons why: it is fresh, energetic, human, performative, warm, serious, funny, clever, sensitive, political and not political.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282771/original/file-20190705-51268-1l5qhgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282771/original/file-20190705-51268-1l5qhgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282771/original/file-20190705-51268-1l5qhgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282771/original/file-20190705-51268-1l5qhgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282771/original/file-20190705-51268-1l5qhgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282771/original/file-20190705-51268-1l5qhgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282771/original/file-20190705-51268-1l5qhgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282771/original/file-20190705-51268-1l5qhgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tita Salina, 1001st Island - the most sustainable island in Archipelago 2015, plastic waste, fishing net, rope, floats, bamboo, LED lights and oil barrels, single-channel video: 14:11 minutes, colour, sound.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are many wonderful works: Tita Salina has built a raft of rubbish that she rides into Jakarta Bay (shown here as a video), a totally pertinent comment on pollution, but also beautiful and elegaic. </p>
<p>Yudha “Fehung” Kusuma Putera dresses and photographs motley groups of people and animals in cloths that distort their forms – out of it comes humorous but pointed comment on what we are. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282765/original/file-20190705-51305-mpocrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282765/original/file-20190705-51305-mpocrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282765/original/file-20190705-51305-mpocrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282765/original/file-20190705-51305-mpocrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282765/original/file-20190705-51305-mpocrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282765/original/file-20190705-51305-mpocrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282765/original/file-20190705-51305-mpocrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282765/original/file-20190705-51305-mpocrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eko Nugroho, We keep it as hope, no more no less 2018, manual embroidery on fabric with rayon thread.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 2018</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Eko Nugroho’s graphic work based on popular culture is relatively well known in Australia, but here he blows three-dimensional air into his usually flat cartoon forms, which then seem about to waddle off down the street.</p>
<p>Mella Jaasma’s work is classy as usual: a video of a Sufi dancer outlined against the sky, twirling his skirt made of mock Mooi-Indie (“beautiful Indies”) sentimental colonial landscapes. His trance-dance is a comment on humanity’s capacity to seek and find inner strength despite fake news – current and past.</p>
<p>And then there’s Entang Wiharso’s just wonderful magic house made of cut metal (but it could be of lace cobwebs), lit by a chandelier. It throws shadows to the walls like any self respecting environment for the flat, back-lit forms of wayang puppetry, though on closer inspection the cut forms are illustrations of the artist’s life and world, totally of this day. </p>
<p>This is some of the art of the archipelago. It is an art scene as lively as anywhere and both this and the art is increasingly recognised around the world as being a hot spot of creative energy and interest. Why do Australians not know this? </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282759/original/file-20190705-51305-1uc7hre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282759/original/file-20190705-51305-1uc7hre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282759/original/file-20190705-51305-1uc7hre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282759/original/file-20190705-51305-1uc7hre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282759/original/file-20190705-51305-1uc7hre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282759/original/file-20190705-51305-1uc7hre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282759/original/file-20190705-51305-1uc7hre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282759/original/file-20190705-51305-1uc7hre.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Entang Wiharso, Temple of hope: Door to Nirvana 2018, stainless steel, aluminium, car paint, light bulbs, electric cable and lava stone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Commissioned 2018 and Purchased 2019 © Entang Wiharso, Black Goat Studios</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Missed opportunities?</h2>
<p>We have had heaps of opportunities, yet this exhibition in Canberra is the first ever of “contemporary” Indonesian art for our premier national visual arts gallery. The NGA has previously held exhibitions of Islamic Indonesian imagery, with calligraphy to the fore, and textiles – both of great quality – but they are not what would be called contemporary art.</p>
<p>Jaklyn Babington, one of the two in-house curators of this new exhibition, was candid about the paucity of Indonesian art in the NGA collection during her talk at the associated conference. This is despite leading curators being nearby at ANU, Caroline Turner in the main, the leader with David Williams and Jim Supangkat in the selection of Indonesian work for the First Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane, nearly 30 years ago (with a selection trip in November 1991 in which I also took part). That selection and subsequent ones have seen a significant collection of Indonesian work held in Brisbane … But not Canberra.</p>
<p>The exhibition now in Canberra was obviously put together quickly – too quickly, as Babington noted them not having “long enough” (no criticism here of the curators, caught between changing administrations of the gallery). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282769/original/file-20190705-51268-12jpus7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282769/original/file-20190705-51268-12jpus7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282769/original/file-20190705-51268-12jpus7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282769/original/file-20190705-51268-12jpus7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282769/original/file-20190705-51268-12jpus7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282769/original/file-20190705-51268-12jpus7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282769/original/file-20190705-51268-12jpus7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yudha ‘Fehung’ Kusuma Putera , Past, present and future come together 2017, series of 9 inkjet prints with accompanying instructions for participatory elements of the work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 2018</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Compare the time now put into collecting at the National Gallery Singapore, which recently acquired one of the icons of Indonesian 20th century art, Semsar Siahaan’s Olympia. This is the gallery that had the chutzpah to research and bring together the <a href="http://www.alisoncarroll.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/89-Between-Worlds-Raden-Saleh-and-Juan-Luna.pdf">seminal show of Raden Saleh’s 19th century Indonesian paintings a year ago</a>, and put on their current <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.sg/see-do/programme-detail/28983113/awakenings-art-in-society-in-asia-1960s%E2%80%931990s">Awakenings</a>, a serious investigation of 1960-90s art of the region including Indonesia – a show that really offers new research work into this area.</p>
<p>The great themes of Indonesian art need space to emerge: to find the sense of theatre, of the magic lurking in shadows, of the mischief and moral purity of the gods, of the elegance of line and style of a culture trained to see the angle of an arm or the bend of the knee as highly pondered action. The art is also permeated by an easy communal sense of coming together to make cultural objects and performance, including friends and members of villages, both urban and rural, in their creation.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nact.jp/english/exhibitions/2017/sunshower/">Sunshower</a>, the 2017 exhibition of Southeast Asian Art by major institutions in Tokyo, was given due space and time to work itself into its proper shape. The miraculous program the Japan Foundation instigated in Indonesia ten years ago, <a href="https://www.jpf.go.jp/e/project/culture/exhibit/oversea/contemporary/indonesia.html">Kita! Japanese Artists Meet Indonesia</a>, sent curators and artists to work with Indonesians, in a project that sang with energy and creative interest.</p>
<p>In 2014, there was an inspiring show of Indonesian art at the <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/the-instrument-builders-project/">National Gallery of Victoria </a> in a much smaller space than the NGA has provided, but the two curators Joel Stern and Kristi Monfries, uniting sound with visual art, used their expertise to create something new.</p>
<h2>A way forward</h2>
<p>Australia used to be considered a player in Indonesian art scenes. We were proactive; we created collaborative projects; we worked throughout the archipelago – from Timor Barat to Sumatra. In the early 2000s we fell back, just as Indonesians were starting to hit their international stride. Jim Supangkat, doyen curator, said to me around 2005: “where have you Australians gone?” </p>
<p>We went. Partly deterred by events, that is sure, like the Bali bombing, but also by an Australian arts fraternity probably relieved not to have to face Indonesia any more. The Australia Council’s funding of Indonesian projects <a href="http://www.currency.com.au/books/platform-papers/platform-papers-31-finding-a-place-on-the-asian-stage">sank like a stone in these years</a>; only the Australia-Indonesia Institute keeping a frail flame alight. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282764/original/file-20190705-51253-3t0m58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282764/original/file-20190705-51253-3t0m58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282764/original/file-20190705-51253-3t0m58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282764/original/file-20190705-51253-3t0m58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282764/original/file-20190705-51253-3t0m58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282764/original/file-20190705-51253-3t0m58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282764/original/file-20190705-51253-3t0m58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282764/original/file-20190705-51253-3t0m58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eko Nugroho , Carnival trap 2 2018, resin, wire, upcycled plastic, iron and syntehtic polymer paint.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 2018</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This review started by talking about families, an implication of blood families. If that doesn’t work with Indonesia, what about marriages? Or even engagements? Even dating needs a commitment and, it would be hoped, some sense of a future, some idea that actions now can lead to positive outcomes later. </p>
<p>What about a commitment to trying something for a length of time, say a five-year plan mentality? The big institutions, and the Australia Council, could build programs of yearly collaborations; significant regular talk series; regular curatorial and “interested-others” tours of Java in particular, seeing the arts sights, visiting studios, attending the many performances that abound. </p>
<p>Or what about a commitment to a new Australian Cultural Centre in Yogyakarta? That was mooted some 15 years ago, and a budget put forward, but it languished with the bombing threats. Almost every other country that deals with Indonesia culturally has one of these, except us. It was to be a site for engagement, a site for linkages, for some discussions and exhibitions; not expensive; not staffed by public servants; a bit free and loose like so much in Java that makes the art scene there so beguiling. </p>
<p>This is about a commitment over tokenism; about the long-term; about building knowledge and about keeping delivering. If we aspire in this way, then maybe those personal links will lead to outcomes we all acknowledge as part of our inheritance.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://nga.gov.au/contemporaryworlds/">Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia</a> is on at the National Gallery of Australia until October 27.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119747/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Carroll does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The exhibition Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia has many wonderful works. But it is an exception - despite our close proximity, there are few opportunities for Australians to engage with Indonesian art.
Alison Carroll, Senior Research Fellow, Victorian College of the Arts, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/119645
2019-07-01T06:43:01Z
2019-07-01T06:43:01Z
A radical new adaptation eviscerates the dominance of male voices in Wake in Fright
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281959/original/file-20190701-105168-1rrtmsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zahra Newman in Wake in Fright. A new adaptation of Kenneth Cook's novel retells the story of a man's descent into violent masculinity with a female voice, accompanied by visual and aural spectacle.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Wake in Fright, Malthouse Theatre</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Australian literary classics are currently enjoying a comeback at our major theatre companies. Over the past three years <a href="https://australianplays.org/script/CP-143">Cloudstreet</a>, <a href="https://australianplays.org/script/CP-an52">Picnic at Hanging Rock</a> and <a href="https://australianplays.org/script/CP-3283">The Drover’s Wife</a>, among others, have been adapted for the stage. At their best, stage adaptations recognise the cultural value of the original texts, while offering fresh insights for new audiences through the medium of theatre.</p>
<p>In keeping with this trend, Declan Greene has reinterpreted Kenneth Cook’s 1961 novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1533656.Wake_in_Fright">Wake in Fright</a> at the <a href="https://malthousetheatre.com.au/whats-on/wake-in-fright?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI5-y_scqS4wIVwQorCh3FBgslEAAYASAAEgL1EvD_BwE">Malthouse Melbourne</a>. Greene’s is a radical adaption that tells the story of teacher John Grant’s outback nightmare through a multivocal and physical performance by actor Zahra Newman (who is also a co-creator of the piece).</p>
<p>Newman is alone on stage for the duration of the 70-minute performance, flanked by two members of the technical crew who, like musicians, annotate her performance with visual and aural spectacle.</p>
<p>In the novel and play, Grant finds himself in the fictional mining town of Bundanyabba or “the Yabba” on his way back to Sydney.</p>
<p>Grant is fresh meat for the alcoholic men of the town, who pour beer down his throat, lure him into a two-up joint, revive him with stringy meat, offer him a sweet girl, and send him on a kangaroo hunt and an endless night of debauchery. “New to the Yabba? Best place in Australia,” says everyone he encounters. </p>
<p>He is inducted into a menacing, bullying, violent masculinity that takes him to the abyss of despair. Our protagonist finally returns to Tiboonda with more questions than answers about the meaning of human life.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281962/original/file-20190701-105191-m9mucm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281962/original/file-20190701-105191-m9mucm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281962/original/file-20190701-105191-m9mucm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281962/original/file-20190701-105191-m9mucm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281962/original/file-20190701-105191-m9mucm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281962/original/file-20190701-105191-m9mucm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281962/original/file-20190701-105191-m9mucm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281962/original/file-20190701-105191-m9mucm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Greene’s adaptation, Cook’s story is told with one actor accompanied by visual and aural spectacle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-cloudstreet-nostalgia-all-too-easily-redeems-australias-colonial-past-117001">In Cloudstreet, nostalgia all too easily redeems Australia's colonial past</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Those familiar with the novel, or with Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067541/">film adaptation</a>, enter the Beckett theatre with some trepidation. How will the young teacher’s nauseating beer-binge, and the infamous moments of kangaroo slaughter, be staged? </p>
<p>Instead, we’re unexpectedly greeted by the mascot <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-04/broken-hill-lead-program-shows-signs-of-progress/9205916">Lead Ted</a> – the friendly, cuddly bear designed in the 1990s to teach the children of Broken Hill how to avoid lead poisoning (Bundanyabba is said to be based on <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-2752538001/a-heart-that-could-be-strong-and-true-kenneth-cook-s">Cooke’s impressions of Broken Hill</a>). Once everyone is seated, Newman appears from within the bear to banter with the audience about contemporary immigration politics, the exploitation of Uber drivers, and lead poisoning in Broken Hill. This introduction welcomes the audience and establishes a contemporary context for the adaption.</p>
<p>As Newman kindly warns the audience about noise levels, one suspects she’s also setting up for an imminent loss of audience rapport. Indeed, once the house lights dim, an invisible curtain descends between performer and spectator. As the story of John Grant’s hellish bender progresses, Newman digs deeper into the character and the separation is almost complete. </p>
<p>She brilliantly narrates the story, alternately voicing the town’s people and embodying Grant with a physicality that manifests his deteriorating mental state. Newman’s enactment of Grant’s unlucky night at the crowded two-up joint is a highlight. She shows how, like a boxer, he is up for a round, and then, dancing around the stage high on power and luck, he bets it all and loses.</p>
<p>Newman next voices the trio of manipulative alcoholics – Crawford the cop, Tydon the doctor (interpreted in the play as an expat white South African), and the Irishman Tim Hynes – who present the now-penniless Grant with a solution: have another beer. In this world, women are either housekeepers or sexualised daughters used as bait for male bonding rituals. Hynes’ daughter Janette is offered to Grant, who manages only to vomit noisily; Newman enacts his writhing and wretching on the stage floor covered in dust.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281961/original/file-20190701-105176-3tu4dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281961/original/file-20190701-105176-3tu4dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281961/original/file-20190701-105176-3tu4dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281961/original/file-20190701-105176-3tu4dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281961/original/file-20190701-105176-3tu4dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281961/original/file-20190701-105176-3tu4dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281961/original/file-20190701-105176-3tu4dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281961/original/file-20190701-105176-3tu4dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zahra Newman acts as both narrator and a cast of characters in Wake in Fright.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The horror depicted in the novel’s kangaroo hunt is translated into a techno nightmare of melting coloured images, glimpses of kangaroos, and loud amplified sound effects. While drawing on aspects of the hunt that are described in the novel as a “rush of visual effects”, a problem for the spectator with this virtuoso performance is that the specific cruelty of the kangaroo hunt is obscured. The audience is spared the detail of what lies behind the spectacle and with it the explanation of Grant’s breakdown. </p>
<p>The reader of the novel, on the other hand, experiences an innocent young “hero” undergoing a cruel initiation into outback life. Within that social environment, he finds himself capable of disembowelling dying kangaroos. In the book, only this act of human cruelty to an animal explains why Grant attempts suicide. </p>
<p>In the performance, the sight of Newman’s body harnessed to and suspended from a pulley ends the story, as a voiceover simultaneously explains that Grant returns to Tiboonda Station to begin another year of teaching – creating ambiguity about his fate.</p>
<p>Newman and the creative team wisely reject a naturalistic adaptation of the novel, full of fake beer and blood. The use of a sole narrator to voice and embody the multiple characters, the presentational style of direct audience address and the cross-gender representation of masculinity is engaging. </p>
<p>The spectator certainly experiences a theatrical take on the original – Newman’s female voice eviscerates the dominance of the male voices that endure in the novel. The question that remains in this adaptation is whether the audience has enough access to the background of the spectacle to leave the theatre with new knowledge of this Australian classic. </p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://malthousetheatre.com.au/whats-on/wake-in-fright?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI5-y_scqS4wIVwQorCh3FBgslEAAYASAAEgL1EvD_BwE">Wake in Fright</a> is on at Malthouse Theatre until July 14.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119645/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denise Varney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In a new adaptation of the classic Australian novel, the story of masculinity and despair in the outback is told through a female voice.
Denise Varney, Professor of Theatre Studies and co-director of the Australian Centre in the School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/119226
2019-06-21T04:42:04Z
2019-06-21T04:42:04Z
Why revive a forgotten Australian classic? Oriel Gray’s The Torrents remains relevant today
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280615/original/file-20190621-149818-1xdo4ij.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Celia Pacquola as Jenny Milford in The Torrents. A new production of the forgotten Australian play shows its themes are still relevant today</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philip Gostelow</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: The Torrents, Heath Ledger Theatre (Black Swan & STC)</em></p>
<p>Set in a regional Australian newsroom in the 1890s, Oriel Gray’s <a href="https://www.bsstc.com.au/plays/the-torrents">The Torrents</a> is a play about change. On the surface, it is about one man’s attempt to revitalise a declining gold mining town, but it also looks at the challenges of young journalist Jenny Milford as she tries to be taken seriously in the workforce. Both issues are unfortunately still relevant over 60 years after the play was first produced. </p>
<p>But a contemporary playwright could also be commissioned to address these issues, so why revive a play that was long ago dropped from the Australian theatrical canon? </p>
<p>In 1955, <a href="https://australianplays.org/script/CP-3290">The Torrents</a> was recognised as an important work at the vanguard of Australian-written plays contesting the dominance of British works. It shared the Playwrights Advisory Board Competition prize with <a href="https://australianplays.org/script/CP-2584">Summer of the Seventeenth Doll</a> by Ray Lawler that year. </p>
<p>The latter play is better-known and has been produced countless times, while The Torrents has only received brief recognition. One could speculate that Gray’s youthful commitment to feminism, communism and anti-fascism may have affected her reception into the more conservative theatre world, even though she drifted away from overt political alignment in her late twenties. </p>
<p>It is a well-made play and Gray is a consummate writer. The script is wonderfully structured, skilfully playing out two intersecting storylines through complex and engaging characters. And it is very funny in places too, with some excellent one-liners provided by Jenny’s co-workers. Geoff Kelso (Christy), Sam Longley (Jock) and Rob Johnson (Bernie) all put in fine performances as this comic trio. </p>
<p>Celia Pacquola, perhaps best known for her role in the ABC comedy series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5226698/">Rosehaven</a>, shines in the role of J. G. (Jenny) Milford, who applied for a job at the paper without using her first name. Once this “error” is discovered she has to fight to stay employed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280614/original/file-20190621-149831-hzbsn7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280614/original/file-20190621-149831-hzbsn7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280614/original/file-20190621-149831-hzbsn7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280614/original/file-20190621-149831-hzbsn7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280614/original/file-20190621-149831-hzbsn7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280614/original/file-20190621-149831-hzbsn7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280614/original/file-20190621-149831-hzbsn7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280614/original/file-20190621-149831-hzbsn7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Luke Carroll, Celia Pacquola, and Tony Cogin in The Torrents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philip Gostelow</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-australian-plays-the-torrents-the-doll-and-the-critical-mass-of-australian-drama-69990">The great Australian plays: The Torrents, the Doll and the critical mass of Australian drama</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Jenny knows her own mind and handles the foibles of men very well, although she finds this frustrating. She also has a clever way of flipping our perspective. Jenny declares on her entrance that she “always uses her initials because she does not to wish to take any advantage from being a woman”. </p>
<p>While the play’s humour may reflect the quick-witted dialogue, precise stage directions and political undercurrents of George Bernard Shaw, who Gray admired, it is very Australian. References to morning drinking in the pub, and the view held by entrepreneur-turned-newspaper proprietor, John Manson (Steve Rodgers) that mining is the only way to get rich, are both familiar. </p>
<p>At its centre, this play is about the reconciliation between a father and son, Rufus and Ben Torrent. Rufus (Tony Cogin), who owns the paper, does not respect his son and heir, the hard drinking philanderer, Ben (Gareth Davies). Even though Ben is engaged to Gwynne (Emily Rose Brennan), he does not love her, and the marriage is destined to failure. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280612/original/file-20190621-149851-1786ta4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280612/original/file-20190621-149851-1786ta4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280612/original/file-20190621-149851-1786ta4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280612/original/file-20190621-149851-1786ta4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280612/original/file-20190621-149851-1786ta4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280612/original/file-20190621-149851-1786ta4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280612/original/file-20190621-149851-1786ta4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280612/original/file-20190621-149851-1786ta4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gareth Davis and Emily Rose Brennan in The Torrents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philip Gostelow</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This makes the role of Jenny an interesting one. She acts more like a catalyst for these characters to change. She inspires the spoilt gadabout Ben to take himself more seriously and stand up to his father. She forces Rufus to advocate for a plan he knows the town needs to survive, but is too timid to champion. And she shows the passive Gwynne that she too can be a “new woman” and have agency in her life. </p>
<p>But Jenny herself is not changed by the end of the play. She arrives as an independent woman and at the end of the play she still is one. She is more like Mary Poppins, or even Puck, although her only magical skills are in leading by example.</p>
<p>Directed by Black Swan’s Clare Watson, this production’s nine performers work well as an ensemble with delightful moments of clowning and comic timing. All the action happens in the wooden panelled news room, allowing for smooth scene transitions and good pacing (set design by Renée Mulder). Joe Paradise Lui’s sound design adds to this with music that blends past and present, and the two-level set is perfectly lit by Lucy Birkinshaw, with subtle changes in tone to support the mood.</p>
<p>The Torrents presents an Australia that seems eerily similar to today. The character John Manson, holds familiar attitudes to mining and exploitation of land. He even says, “Australia’s a big country and its yours for the taking”. The play also deals with freedom of the press and the position of women in the workplace, two issues that still remain critical.</p>
<p>The play also makes us think about issues we are now more conscious of in Australia. Local engineer, Kingsley, played sensitively by Luke Carroll, plans to revitalise the town by building an irrigation pipe to grow fruit such as apples and melons. However, casting an Indigenous actor in this role complicates this European notion of land use, and contemporary questions of land rights and sustainability are highlighted by their absence. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280606/original/file-20190621-149806-15va8p6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280606/original/file-20190621-149806-15va8p6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280606/original/file-20190621-149806-15va8p6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280606/original/file-20190621-149806-15va8p6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280606/original/file-20190621-149806-15va8p6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280606/original/file-20190621-149806-15va8p6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280606/original/file-20190621-149806-15va8p6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280606/original/file-20190621-149806-15va8p6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tony Cogin, Luke Carroll, Sam Longley, Celia Pacquola and Rob Johnson in The Torrents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philip Gostelow</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If the aim of this production is to rehabilitate a long-forgotten play, then it has succeeded. However, it is presented here as a play of its time, recreated very closely to what may have been its original staging, rather than as a modern take on a classic work.</p>
<p>Because of this play’s relative obscurity, presenting as it was written seems more appropriate. This gives the play time to find its place in the canon, and test if it deserves to be there. </p>
<p>Gray died in 2003 aged 83 and was acclaimed as a “playwright of ideas”. The author of numerous plays, including some for radio, Gray also worked on several TV dramas, and she published a novel and her memoirs. This production is an important step towards recognising the contribution she made to Australian performance writing.</p>
<p>Whilst this production may not be shaking up theatrical conventions, it is a solid, immaculately performed and very funny presentation of a forgotten classic by an important female Australian playwright. And it still has something to say to us today.</p>
<p><em>The Torrents is on at <a href="https://www.bsstc.com.au/plays/the-torrents">Heath Ledger Theatre</a> until June 30 and will be playing at <a href="https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/whats-on/productions/2019/the-torrents">Sydney Opera House</a> from July 18 - August 24.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119226/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vivienne Glance is a member of the Australian Writers Guild, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and the Greens. </span></em></p>
A new production revisits a play dropped from the Australian theatrical canon long ago. Set in a regional newsroom, the play’s themes are strikingly relevant today.
Vivienne Glance, Hon Research Fellow in Poetry and Theatre studies, The University of Western Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/118580
2019-06-13T01:32:00Z
2019-06-13T01:32:00Z
Dark Mofo 2019: a journey through the inferno to robots and extinction
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279261/original/file-20190613-32317-150j2xv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mona Confessional 2016 – 19. The art unveiled for this year's Dark Mofo is a disturbing journey into our future.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julie Shiels</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>While <a href="https://darkmofo.net.au/">Dark Mofo’s</a> winter solstice events populate many above-ground sites across Hobart, its heart of darkness will always be the subterranean galleries of the Museum of Old and New Art. </p>
<p>The museum just got a lot bigger with the opening of a $27 million extension housing four major new artworks from renowned contemporary artists. The works – by Alfredo Jaar, Ai Weiwei, Oliver Beer and Christopher Townend – have been unveiled in time for this year’s festival, in conjunction with a new temporary installation by Berlin-based Simon Denny. </p>
<p>These new commissions contribute to an already impressive collection of art. The physicality of the newly excavated spaces adds a compelling dimension, and the new works offer immersive and interactive ways of engaging with some of the darker questions of our times. </p>
<p>The extension is called <a href="https://mona.net.au/museum/siloam">Siloam</a>, after an ancient water channel built in Jerusalem. As visitors traverse its tunnels, hidden movement sensors activate Townend’s sound installation, Requiem for Vermin. Comprising 230 speakers, the composition has been configured to flood the senses with harmony and texture and trick the brain into hearing what is not there, like full orchestras, choirs, and piano and sounds from nature. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279020/original/file-20190611-32335-16zur4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279020/original/file-20190611-32335-16zur4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279020/original/file-20190611-32335-16zur4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279020/original/file-20190611-32335-16zur4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279020/original/file-20190611-32335-16zur4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279020/original/file-20190611-32335-16zur4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279020/original/file-20190611-32335-16zur4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279020/original/file-20190611-32335-16zur4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Siloam, Mona’s new underground extension.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mona/Jesse Hunniford. Image courtesy Mona, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Accessed via a tunnel and operating at a scale reminiscent of large caves in Vietnam and Cambodia, where temples were secreted to avoid the bombing raids of the American war, Ai Weiwei’s White House offers sanctuary from the visual and sensory bombardment.</p>
<p>The artist uses industrial paint to recuperate a Qing Dynasty home that was scheduled for demolition. This massive ready-made is supported on clear, crystal orbs that absorb and mirror the surroundings, offering a fluid, milky abstraction when viewed from above. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279031/original/file-20190612-32342-1q69cqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279031/original/file-20190612-32342-1q69cqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279031/original/file-20190612-32342-1q69cqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279031/original/file-20190612-32342-1q69cqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279031/original/file-20190612-32342-1q69cqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279031/original/file-20190612-32342-1q69cqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279031/original/file-20190612-32342-1q69cqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279031/original/file-20190612-32342-1q69cqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">White House, 2015 by Ai Weiwei.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mona/Jesse Hunniford. Image courtesy Mona, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From the tranquillity of this cavern, a staircase leads up to Alfredo Jaar’s immersive, experiential journey through hell, purgatory and heaven inspired by Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century poem The Divine Comedy.</p>
<p>The entrance is a portal of devil’s-cloak red – only ten people can enter at a time. There are strict protocols and instructions – an amalgam of performative ritual and briefing about the required behaviours – including a ban on speaking whilst inside the work.</p>
<p>Silently bonding, we are led into the first chamber, where the senses are activated via the ears, skin and eyes.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-dantes-divine-comedy-84603">Guide to the Classics: Dante’s Divine Comedy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Heat, sound, light and silence are employed in a highly staged and meticulously directed experience, which according to Jaar, references a hell of our own making – that is climate change. </p>
<p>As we move through purgatory and on to paradise, the artist draws on his skills as filmmaker and architect to manage the combination of space and image for poignancy and impact. His careful modulation of media ensures this is much more than art as spectacle.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279021/original/file-20190611-32347-1i2gfyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279021/original/file-20190611-32347-1i2gfyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279021/original/file-20190611-32347-1i2gfyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279021/original/file-20190611-32347-1i2gfyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279021/original/file-20190611-32347-1i2gfyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279021/original/file-20190611-32347-1i2gfyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279021/original/file-20190611-32347-1i2gfyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279021/original/file-20190611-32347-1i2gfyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Entrance to The Divine Comedy, 2019, by Alfredo Jaar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mona/Jesse Hunniford. Image courtesy of Mona, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Divine Comedy offers us an opportunity to traverse the polarities of life and death, heaven and hell, sin and redemption. The latter is also a concern of Oliver Beer’s interactive sculpture, Mona Confessional, which creates a bridge between the interior and exterior of the building.</p>
<p>The internal sculpture is a soft, dark felt spiral like a giant ear canal; the external component a giant ear-trumpet in weathering steel. </p>
<p>On fumbling their way into the dimly-lit centre of the inner ear, the visitor encounters sounds spilling from the outside world and is invited to confess and reveal their innermost thoughts. </p>
<p>On the outside, another anonymous person listens to these thoughts. Neither party even knows where the other is located.</p>
<h2>A disturbing game</h2>
<p>Denny’s installation also uses interactivity and play. His concerns though, are less metaphysical, and more of a hard-edged critique of capitalism. Like Jaar, Denny warns of a climate change catastrophe of our own making.</p>
<p>Exhibited across three galleries, Denny’s works present an unsettling examination of the mining industry. It shows how technology is changing the nature of human labour, hastening species extinction and spawning a new industry of data collection. </p>
<p>Making use of the O (Mona’s mobile device that serves as a digital art guide), some parts of the exhibition are embedded with data that can be scanned by the device to reveal more content and information, in the form of videos and vignettes.</p>
<p>The spare and cavernous first room holds just one object, a cage that could be a bird aviary. On closer inspection, this unnervingly industrial object/sculpture reveals itself as the life-sized realisation of an actual patent drawing (owned by Amazon) of a cage. </p>
<p>Its purpose, if ever made, is to protect the body of a lone human sitting among robots in a fully-automated workspace. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279029/original/file-20190611-32342-1io0ipv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279029/original/file-20190611-32342-1io0ipv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279029/original/file-20190611-32342-1io0ipv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279029/original/file-20190611-32342-1io0ipv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279029/original/file-20190611-32342-1io0ipv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279029/original/file-20190611-32342-1io0ipv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279029/original/file-20190611-32342-1io0ipv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279029/original/file-20190611-32342-1io0ipv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Simon Denny, Amazon Worker Cage Patent (US 9,280,157 B2:</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julie Shiels</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the wall of the same room we are introduced to videos of the endangered King Island Brown Thornbill. The reference to the canary in the coal mine is deliberate: the extinction of the Thornbill heralds the potential disappearance not just of the human worker, but of the human species. </p>
<p>The second room, by contrast, is a riot of movement and colour. At first glance the life-sized sculptures of industrial machinery look real under harsh artificial lights – it could be a trade show replete with exhibits and interactive screens. </p>
<p>We must focus our O devices on images of the endangered Thornbill to gather information about the rare metals being mined.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279022/original/file-20190611-32361-ywam8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279022/original/file-20190611-32361-ywam8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279022/original/file-20190611-32361-ywam8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279022/original/file-20190611-32361-ywam8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279022/original/file-20190611-32361-ywam8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279022/original/file-20190611-32361-ywam8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279022/original/file-20190611-32361-ywam8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279022/original/file-20190611-32361-ywam8b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Simon Denny, Mine, 2019, installation view at Mona.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mona/Jesse Hunniford.
Image Courtesy Mona, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Denny has extended the game metaphor by turning the floor into an enlarged version of the classic Australian board game Squatter. Australia no longer rides on the sheep’s back but instead hitches a lift with the fully-automated, long-wall tunnel miner. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279028/original/file-20190611-32356-1598bsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279028/original/file-20190611-32356-1598bsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279028/original/file-20190611-32356-1598bsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279028/original/file-20190611-32356-1598bsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279028/original/file-20190611-32356-1598bsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279028/original/file-20190611-32356-1598bsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279028/original/file-20190611-32356-1598bsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279028/original/file-20190611-32356-1598bsq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Simon Denny, Mine, 2019, installation view at Mona.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mona/Jesse Hunniford. Image Courtesy Mona, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Either way, the accumulated wealth is based on the same colonial legacy of dispossession: prospectors stake their claims just as the squatters settled “empty” land and called it “mine”. </p>
<p>Denny has even created a new board game for our current era. It’s called Extractor, and also serves as a catalogue for the show.</p>
<p>The final room offers a survey of work by other artists that also addresses the merging of the human and the technological to meet the contemporary demand for labour. But it is also a ruse to drive home the point that everyone is in on the game, including Mona. </p>
<p>At the end of the exhibition, it is revealed how the museum is tracking our behaviour and gathering our data through our use of their mobile device. In this context we are all players in the game.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://darkmofo.net.au/">Dark Mofo</a> is on until June 23. Simon Denny’s <a href="https://mona.net.au/museum/exhibitions/mine">Mine</a> is at Mona until April 2020.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118580/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Shiels does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Mona’s new subterranean extension adds a compelling dimension to the art of Dark Mofo 2019. Upstairs, a series of interactive sculptures contemplates our automated future.
Julie Shiels, Lecturer - School of Art, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/118582
2019-06-11T06:59:32Z
2019-06-11T06:59:32Z
‘Faboriginal’ Steven Oliver jump-starts a conversation about race in a thrilling new show
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278811/original/file-20190611-52767-yqn19b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Steven Oliver's Bigger and Blacker, which premiered at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, calls for more engagement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Claudio Raschella</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Bigger and Blacker, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Sun 9 Jun</em></p>
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<p>Nothing beats the Adelaide winter blues quite like a superb, well-crafted cabaret show in a warm, cosy, intimate space. And few theatre spaces are more suited to cabaret than the <a href="https://www.adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au/your-visit/venues/the-famous-spiegeltent/">Famous Spiegelent</a>, which returns for the 2019 Adelaide Cabaret Festival, now under the leadership of Artistic Director Julia Zemiro.</p>
<p>Among the opening weekend highlights was the world premiere of self-described “faboriginal” Steven Oliver’s autobiographical <a href="https://www.adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au/events/steven-oliver-bigger-and-blacker/">Bigger and Blacker</a>, a series of poignant, and hard-hitting stories told through song, prose, and spoken word poetry. Many will know Oliver from his brilliant character sketches on the ABC series, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3697996/">Black Comedy</a>. </p>
<p>Working with musical director and cabaret stalwart Michael Griffiths, Oliver, a gay Aboriginal man, presents stories of “being lost and found again”. The journey touches on his recent success, one that suddenly made him if not famous, at least “gaymous”.</p>
<p>It takes us through his setbacks in finding love, the pain of confronting racism in the online world and his struggle with depression to his offer to open up cultural space for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians to meaningfully engage with one another.</p>
<p>Oliver brilliantly and relentlessly plays with words from a position of his double-marginalisation as “a minority within a minority”. As we travel with him, we are guided through unlikely spaces, including the back room of a gay bar where, as he observes, Aboriginal men “won’t be hard to find because we’re the only blacks”. </p>
<p>In a smart, black suit and bow tie, Oliver commands the stage with his presence and his stories. His spoken word poetry alternates with his original songs: both possess a confessional, soulful quality. </p>
<p>Words pour out of his body and heart, sometimes erupting like a geyser, then a raging river, winding down into a narrow stream, a patter, punctuated by a pause. He is at times a conjurer, using language like a preacher, taking it into the realm of incantation. It is as if by saying it, he makes it so.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278818/original/file-20190611-32361-1gzybe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278818/original/file-20190611-32361-1gzybe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278818/original/file-20190611-32361-1gzybe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278818/original/file-20190611-32361-1gzybe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278818/original/file-20190611-32361-1gzybe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278818/original/file-20190611-32361-1gzybe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278818/original/file-20190611-32361-1gzybe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278818/original/file-20190611-32361-1gzybe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oliver alternates between spoken word and poetry throughout the show.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Claudio Raschella</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/black-comedy-the-abc-makes-a-bold-foray-into-race-relations-33744">Black Comedy: the ABC makes a bold foray into race relations</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Throughout, his hands and body only briefly come to a full stop, and then only for dramatic effect. </p>
<p>Oliver is a beautiful mover, swaying and rocking, at one point launching into a jaunty tap routine while engaged with a bit of playful banter with the ever-dapper Griffiths, seated at the piano. But his hands are his most expressive physical tool. They accentuate and underline words, flittering, exploding and twirling at speeds that sometimes appear to be faster than light.</p>
<p>Oliver’s rhyming is clever, at times brilliant, as he lets the movement of the words guide him into storytelling, rapping, and then transitioning into song. Griffiths adeptly supports him, leading from spoken word to song with musical phrases that appear as if out of the air. </p>
<p>Griffiths also provides back-up vocals and harmonies for Oliver, while never overpowering him. It is a musical collaboration marked by generosity, restraint, and mutual respect. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278809/original/file-20190611-52753-fp16e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278809/original/file-20190611-52753-fp16e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278809/original/file-20190611-52753-fp16e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278809/original/file-20190611-52753-fp16e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278809/original/file-20190611-52753-fp16e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278809/original/file-20190611-52753-fp16e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278809/original/file-20190611-52753-fp16e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278809/original/file-20190611-52753-fp16e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oliver’s hands are his most expressive tool.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Claudio Raschella</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At times, Oliver gives us more naughty than nice, causing jaws to drop a bit, as when, early in show, while speaking of the therapeutic value of dance, he says, “When you shake your ass, you shake off a lot of shit”. Taking a beat, he adds, “ohhhh, that came out wrong”, requiring another beat, ending with an audible audience groan. </p>
<p>Oliver shows himself to be a master at drawing the audience into the material, an essential feature of cabaret. Many of his musical numbers caused spectators to involuntarily tap their feet on the wooden floor of the Spiegeltent, physically connecting us to one another.</p>
<p>Though intensely personal, Oliver’s words and songs are consistently interwoven into the larger social fabric of being Indigenous in Australia. Speaking of trolling on Facebook on social media, he observes trenchantly, “The thing about racism is that it teaches you how to behave”. When he later recounts his struggle with depression, he connects it to a story about a boy bullied for being effeminate, calling for a world where such a boy would “not just dance to sadness, but just dance”.</p>
<p>Bringing the personal and the political together, Oliver ended the evening with another urgent spoken word piece. “I’m a blackfella”, he asserts, observing that learning to engage starts “by talking to me”. </p>
<p>With Bigger and Blacker, Oliver jump-starts such a conversation by bringing us along for a ride that is thrilling, exhilarating, and at times, equal parts naughty and challenging. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au/">Adelaide Cabaret Festival</a> is on until June 22.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118582/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Steven Oliver’s new cabaret show is an exhilarating journey through hard-hitting stories about success, love, depression and racism.
William Peterson, Associate Professor, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/118176
2019-06-09T23:21:58Z
2019-06-09T23:21:58Z
An intimate, arresting exhibition highlights the hard work of living queer
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278073/original/file-20190605-40738-1cicvrc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dallas Dellaforce, Queer Central, Imperial Hotel, Erskineville, 2018. 'Queerdom' presents an archive of queer and trans life in Sydney. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Queerdom/James Eades</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://imperialerskineville.com.au/queerdom/">Queerdom</a>, an exhibition showing at the Imperial Hotel in Erksineville, is an arresting and unsettling archive of queer and trans performances in Sydney. </p>
<p>A collaboration between photographer Jamie James and poet Quinn Eades, working here as James Eades, Queerdom presents a history of sexual and gender transgression that refuses containment and comfort. Instead, these works ask much more probing questions about the hard work of living and performing on the sexual and gender margins.</p>
<p>The exhibition aims to present what the artists term a “queertrans” history, from the 1990s until today – this term is a deliberate attempt by the artists to put these identities, practices and experiences into productive dialogue with each other.</p>
<p>Each work pairs a photograph of a queer or trans (or both) performance with poetry. In one sense this is an exhibition about live performances; stages and performers at the Imperial in Erskineville, Performance Space in Redfern, the Albury Hotel in Paddington, and Tap Gallery in Darlinghurst loom large. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278263/original/file-20190606-2768-1y0ggv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278263/original/file-20190606-2768-1y0ggv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278263/original/file-20190606-2768-1y0ggv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278263/original/file-20190606-2768-1y0ggv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278263/original/file-20190606-2768-1y0ggv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278263/original/file-20190606-2768-1y0ggv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278263/original/file-20190606-2768-1y0ggv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278263/original/file-20190606-2768-1y0ggv1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘falling in’, image: Stelladelight and Tank, Grumbalism, Red Rattler, Marrickville 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Queerdom/James Eades</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Implicitly, the exhibition delineates a historical geography of queer performance – of dissidence moving westward, as queer alternatives have been pushed from Darlinghurst and Surry Hills to Redfern, Erskineville and Marrickville by rising rents and the cultural homogenisation that so often accompanies them. That this exhibition is taking place at the Imperial is a reminder of how important and vulnerable those spaces can be. </p>
<p>We see “Glitta Supernova” leaning back on stage at Fetish Ball in 1996, screaming in delight as she sprays orange liquid, Berocca we are assured, over her audience – and not from her mouth. “What’s so terrifying about piss”, we are asked. And what might happen if we just “let ourselves taste it … could we just acquiesce?”</p>
<h2>Life on the margins</h2>
<p>While this might be an exhibition about performance, words work in tandem and tension with these photographs to produce intimate accounts of life on the margins of the sexual and gender order more broadly. This exhibition has much to say about the emotional life of its subjects.</p>
<p>As any historian will tell you, archives are not simply repositories of data from the past – they are mediated representations of historical knowledge. This archive provokes and unsettles what we might expect to see in an exhibition about gender and sexuality, as we might well expect a queer project to do. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278273/original/file-20190606-2780-j7njl4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278273/original/file-20190606-2780-j7njl4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278273/original/file-20190606-2780-j7njl4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278273/original/file-20190606-2780-j7njl4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278273/original/file-20190606-2780-j7njl4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278273/original/file-20190606-2780-j7njl4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278273/original/file-20190606-2780-j7njl4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278273/original/file-20190606-2780-j7njl4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘lost gays of Sydney’, image: Victoria Barracks, Albury Hotel, Oxford St, Darlinghurst, 2001.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Queerdom/James Eades</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one sense, Queerdom is a powerful riposte to the comforting narratives that abounded in the campaign for same-sex marriage and its aftermath. Leaders in this campaign, as well as the exhibitions shaped by its politics during the 2018 Mardi Gras, tended to mobilise a story in which sexual minorities were making the final steps towards love, happiness and acceptance. </p>
<p>The story works something like this: sexual minorities in the past were caught in the trap of socially imposed shame and loneliness, unable to express and manifest their sexual and gender identities in public. The hard work of activism since the 1970s, not least in projects that spoke the language of liberation and pride, has offered a route to happiness and love. Gay and lesbian life, we are so often told, is all about love and a happy, shining couple finally able to get married. </p>
<p>This intimate exhibition of exuberant and modest moments has more challenging and discomforting things to say. </p>
<p>We see Kimo and Teik-Kim Pok, backstage at Carriageworks during the performance series Quick and Dirty in 2009, looking tired and confused, one performer wrapped in a towel with furrowed brow, the other looking pensively into a mirror. </p>
<p>This is not the golden couple of marriage equality. These friends (or lovers, or maybe just performers):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>turn to face each other / to catch a mirror’s silvered kiss / take steel into delicate throat / swallow a quiet sword or seven / say this is acceptance and not regret</p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278264/original/file-20190606-2764-596fwc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278264/original/file-20190606-2764-596fwc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278264/original/file-20190606-2764-596fwc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278264/original/file-20190606-2764-596fwc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278264/original/file-20190606-2764-596fwc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278264/original/file-20190606-2764-596fwc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278264/original/file-20190606-2764-596fwc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278264/original/file-20190606-2764-596fwc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘appraisal’, image: Kimo and Teik-Kim Pok, Quick and Dirty, Performance Space, Carriageworks, 2009.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Queerdom/James Eades</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, some of the pieces here can be yoked to a story of pride and celebration. There is a heathy dose of queer fabulosity on display. Photographs abound of performances exploding with pleasure and the thrill of gender and sexual transgression, however the poetry works hard to force the viewer to think carefully about what they are seeing and the easy thrill they might get from the labour of others.</p>
<p>While some critics might suggest the inclusion of poetry alongside these photographs makes their meaning rigid, leaving less space for ambiguity, these words do precisely the opposite – they force you to stop, they ask you questions. </p>
<p>A photograph of the performance “Axis of Evil” at Carriageworks in 2009 captures the performers back stage, in the familiar setting of a mirror-filled and clothes-strewn dressing room. Sinewy arms protrude and make up runs down faces.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>after crimson ribbons / five bodies bringing the house down / the thunk of twenty limbs on a juddering stage // now doubled in the dressing room / now grinning in the aftermath / now coming down in the detrius</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278265/original/file-20190606-2750-16la5tq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278265/original/file-20190606-2750-16la5tq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278265/original/file-20190606-2750-16la5tq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278265/original/file-20190606-2750-16la5tq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278265/original/file-20190606-2750-16la5tq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278265/original/file-20190606-2750-16la5tq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278265/original/file-20190606-2750-16la5tq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278265/original/file-20190606-2750-16la5tq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘the other side’, image: Axis of Evil, Quick and Dirty, Performance Space, Carriageworks 2009.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Queerdom/James Eades</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Through the inclusion of moments offstage, Queerdom asks us to consider the emotional cost of living and performing in ways where the narrative destination might not be a happy couple with easily recognisable gender identities. These are moments on the edges of difference. </p>
<p>We see performers looking wrung out, collapsing into one and other while also looking uncertain about what these moments might mean. </p>
<p>Here, life looks exhilarating, but also exhausting. Living in ways that don’t conform to the stories we like to tell about gender, sexuality and intimacy isn’t just a struggle for recognition. It’s the struggle against the terms under which that recognition is proffered – the desperate work of trying to exist and thrive in ways that make others so very uncomfortable.</p>
<p>“You know they’re still saying we’re monsters”, James Eades points out in the poem “taking the coverings off”. Maybe a bit of unsettling monstrosity is what we should be working towards, even if it is sometimes terrifying and exhausting.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://imperialerskineville.com.au/queerdom/">Queerdom</a> is showing upstairs at the Imperial Hotel, Erskineville until June 30.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118176/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leigh Boucher receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>
Queerdom, an exhibition of photography and poetry, presents a history of queer and trans performance in Sydney that challenges recent narratives about queer life in Australia.
Leigh Boucher, Senior Lecturer – Modern History, Macquarie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/117825
2019-05-29T19:45:53Z
2019-05-29T19:45:53Z
A scope as big as humanity can conjure: the Terracotta Warriors & Cai Guo-Qiang
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276905/original/file-20190529-42576-16q8ll9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Installation view of Cai Guo-Qiang’s Murmuration (Landscape) 2019 (detail) Realised in Dehua, Fujian
province and Melbourne, commissioned by the NGV.
Proposed acquisition supported by Ying Zhang in association with the Asian Australian Foundation, 2019
NGV Foundation Annual Dinner and 2019 NGV Annual Appeal, on display at NGV International.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Cai Guo- Qiang. Photo © Tobias Titz </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The oft-quoted saying “may you live in interesting times” has been (rightly or wrongly) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times">interpreted as</a> a Chinese curse. The exhibition <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/terracotta-warriors-cai-guo-qiang/">Terracotta Warriors & Cai Guo-Qiang</a> at the National Gallery of Victoria has a similar subtle duality: the implication of threat in what might seem benignly interesting. </p>
<p>This is reflected in the warriors themselves, 2200-year-old figures of supreme beauty made to accompany their Emperor into death, and mirrored by very contemporary works (some made in the last few weeks) of inspiring ethereality, formed using that most mercurial and potentially deadly Chinese invention – gunpowder.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276900/original/file-20190529-42565-qyf66a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276900/original/file-20190529-42565-qyf66a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276900/original/file-20190529-42565-qyf66a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276900/original/file-20190529-42565-qyf66a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276900/original/file-20190529-42565-qyf66a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276900/original/file-20190529-42565-qyf66a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276900/original/file-20190529-42565-qyf66a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276900/original/file-20190529-42565-qyf66a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view of Standing archer on display as part of Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality and Cai Guo-Qiang: The Transient Landscape at NGV International.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Sean Fennessy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The eight individual (and individualised) serene and commanding warriors who march down the main hall of the gallery’s temporary exhibition space come from the burial site of Chinese Emperor Qin Shihuang who died in 210 BCE. These figures are answered by contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s murmuration or sweep of birds (again individually made, similarly in clay,) flying miraculously in unison.</p>
<p>That each individual warrior (some 8000 apparently exist, most still buried) and each bird is given this respect and value within the group reflects an understanding espoused by Confucius some hundreds of years before the warriors were made.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276737/original/file-20190528-42600-ip0ta2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276737/original/file-20190528-42600-ip0ta2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276737/original/file-20190528-42600-ip0ta2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276737/original/file-20190528-42600-ip0ta2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276737/original/file-20190528-42600-ip0ta2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276737/original/file-20190528-42600-ip0ta2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276737/original/file-20190528-42600-ip0ta2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276737/original/file-20190528-42600-ip0ta2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view of Kneeling archer on display as part of Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality and Cai Guo-Qiang: The Transient Landscape at NGV International.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Sean Fennessy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s an element that challenges the Western notion of the supremacy of the individual above and beyond the group. It explains the potential power of Chinese culture – the capacity to move a huge civilisation in a direction that benefits every person. </p>
<p>This exhibition reveals this reality, albeit subtly. The Emperor was just one person, albeit at the apex, within this system and was expected to behave with moral honour and rectitude – or bring down the wrath of heaven on the whole empire. </p>
<p>Each warrior and starling retain this sense of themselves as a part of a wider whole. For a Westerner to see this, and reflect, is to better understand our own culture.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276741/original/file-20190528-42576-7otkbp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276741/original/file-20190528-42576-7otkbp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276741/original/file-20190528-42576-7otkbp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276741/original/file-20190528-42576-7otkbp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276741/original/file-20190528-42576-7otkbp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276741/original/file-20190528-42576-7otkbp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276741/original/file-20190528-42576-7otkbp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276741/original/file-20190528-42576-7otkbp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view of Kneeling archer (detail) on display as part of Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality and Cai Guo-Qiang: The Transient Landscape at NGV International.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Sean Fennessy 20190523_NGV_</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As leaders of society in Confucian China, scholars espoused the ideal of controlling one’s vital energy towards the good for all; in art, scholar-artists directed this inner energy, called <em>qi</em> (or chi), into a single perfect brushstroke. The warriors have this “less-is-more” inner strength, taut in their bodies yet appearing calm, faces determined yet full of life, hands ready for action but so soft you can almost feel the flesh.</p>
<p>Cai harnesses this inner force through gunpowder: the explosive energy resulting in the final flourish, like the brushstroke of old finally laid down with such controlled bravura.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276902/original/file-20190529-42551-1wvj6yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276902/original/file-20190529-42551-1wvj6yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276902/original/file-20190529-42551-1wvj6yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276902/original/file-20190529-42551-1wvj6yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276902/original/file-20190529-42551-1wvj6yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276902/original/file-20190529-42551-1wvj6yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276902/original/file-20190529-42551-1wvj6yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276902/original/file-20190529-42551-1wvj6yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cai Guo-Qiang, Qatar, 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Wen-You Cai, courtesy Cai Studio</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It takes time to see the restraint and admire its qualities. Western art has traditionally admired the opposite, of “more-being-more”, especially art made at the height of Western colonial power. </p>
<p>Cai talks of the essential tension in his work between harmony and chaos, words so central to Chinese concepts of “world balance”, as articulated by Confucius and still resonant today. I interviewed Cai in 2013 in Brisbane for the film series <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/journey-through-asian-art">A Journey Through Asian Art</a>. He talked then as now of the seeming calmness of the gunpowder contrasted with its ignited energy, reflecting on the invisible forces that “inform the spirit of Chinese art and culture”. </p>
<p>The Cai work at NGV has a subtitle of “The Transient Landscape”, and indeed, besides the murmuration of birds, he has evoked the inexorable forces of the natural world in his room mural of dying peonies, with a funereal “grave” of singed terracotta flowers in its centre.</p>
<p>In another room, a landscape of Mt Li, the sacred peak where the Qin Emperor was buried, is further suggested as a rise on the horizon delineated in that spare, harsh gunpowder flash.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276903/original/file-20190529-42593-1p0eiwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276903/original/file-20190529-42593-1p0eiwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276903/original/file-20190529-42593-1p0eiwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276903/original/file-20190529-42593-1p0eiwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276903/original/file-20190529-42593-1p0eiwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276903/original/file-20190529-42593-1p0eiwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276903/original/file-20190529-42593-1p0eiwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276903/original/file-20190529-42593-1p0eiwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view of Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality and Cai Guo-Qiang: The Transient Landscape at NGV International, 24 May – 13 October 2019. © Cai Guo-Qiang.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo © Sean Fennessy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The exhibition is fleshed out, if that is the right term for a show exploring burial and death, by further ancient objects from various museums in Shaanxi, the exhibition partner. These include the small, slender, even elfin female figure, also made in terracotta during the (next) Han dynasty. In her own case, in the last room, she seems to be smiling to herself, perhaps at the display of pomp and circumstance of these men around her.</p>
<h2>Art and politics</h2>
<p>The contrasts here, or binaries if you wish, are revealing and many: life and death, harmony and chaos, energy and control, art and politics. But perhaps this last couplet is not so antithetical, especially in these interesting times.</p>
<p>The first major exhibition of ancient Chinese art in Australia, shown in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide in 1977, came in the wake of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s <a href="https://insidestory.org.au/whitlam-in-china/">official recognition of the People’s Republic</a> and two visits there. This was a political act of significance internationally.</p>
<p>The 1982-3 exhibition of Terracotta Warriors shown in all the mainland state capitals, which again had Prime Ministerial support, (from Malcolm Fraser), was timed to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Australia and China. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this – how many Euro-American grand exhibitions reinforce diplomatic relations, passing without comment? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276904/original/file-20190529-42593-x72yep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276904/original/file-20190529-42593-x72yep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276904/original/file-20190529-42593-x72yep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276904/original/file-20190529-42593-x72yep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276904/original/file-20190529-42593-x72yep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276904/original/file-20190529-42593-x72yep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276904/original/file-20190529-42593-x72yep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276904/original/file-20190529-42593-x72yep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Qin Shihuang’s terracotta warriors, Pit 1, Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE) (detail)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Shaanxi History Museum (Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center) and Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the end of 2018, the Victorian Government announced a <a href="https://www.vic.gov.au/victorias-china-strategy">Memorandum of Understanding with China</a>. Chinese Premier Xi Jinping acknowledged the discussion of culture (or civilisation) as a political force <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/world/clash-of-civilisation-talk-is-stupid-xi-jinping-20190516-5dqxz.html">a few weeks ago in Beijing</a> saying, “… it is foolish to believe that one’s race and civilisation are superior to others and it is disastrous to wilfully reshape and even replace other civilisations”. </p>
<p>Xi, like Whitlam and Fraser before him, sees the links between history, politics and culture. Confucius surely would have nodded in agreement.</p>
<p>As ever, if the art is without perceived value no amount of political encouragement will lift its success. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276907/original/file-20190529-42546-l22xvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276907/original/file-20190529-42546-l22xvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276907/original/file-20190529-42546-l22xvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276907/original/file-20190529-42546-l22xvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276907/original/file-20190529-42546-l22xvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276907/original/file-20190529-42546-l22xvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276907/original/file-20190529-42546-l22xvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276907/original/file-20190529-42546-l22xvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view of Cai Guo-Qiang’s Murmuration.
(Landscape) 2019 (detail) Realised in Dehua, Fujian
province and Melbourne, commissioned by the NGV.
Proposed acquisition supported by Ying Zhang in
association with the Asian Australian Foundation, 2019
NGV Foundation Annual Dinner and 2019 NGV Annual
Appeal, on display at NGV International © Cai Guo-
Qiang.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Tobias Titz Photography</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The late Edmund Capon, long-term recent director of the Art Gallery of NSW, wrote the catalogue for the 1982-3 Warriors exhibition, a text remarkable for its expertise in ancient Chinese culture. He championed a return Warriors show in Sydney in 2010, and untiringly advocated for understanding of Chinese culture in person, on film, and through his museum work. </p>
<p>This exhibition is about life and death. Its aim and scope are as big as humanity can conjure. I like to think Edmund is sitting in true ancestor mode (with his arms resting on his knees), grinning at this – the first NGV Winter Masterpiece exhibition from Asia – and the fact that a new generation of people, especially in Melbourne, get to see it. These are interesting times indeed, but, one hopes, in the best way.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/terracotta-warriors-cai-guo-qiang/">Terracotta Warriors & Cai Guo-Qiang</a> is on at the National Gallery of Victoria until October 13.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117825/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Carroll does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A new exhibition pairs China’s famed Terracotta Warriors with contemporary works of inspiring ethereality. The contrasts here are many: life and death, harmony and chaos, energy and control, art and politics.
Alison Carroll, Senior Research Fellow, Victorian College of the Arts, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/117588
2019-05-28T05:52:15Z
2019-05-28T05:52:15Z
In Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie, theatre finds a voice of reckoning on sexual assault and the law
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276553/original/file-20190527-40042-50ulud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sheridan Harbridge as Tessa in Prima Facie, a new play about a lawyer who becomes a victim of the legal system after she is sexually assaulted.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Prima Facie, Griffin Theatre Company</em></p>
<p>Suzie Miller’s one-woman play <a href="https://griffintheatre.com.au/whats-on/prima-facie/">Prima Facie</a> is an unsparing study of the Australian legal system’s treatment of sexual assault cases. The play, which opened to standing ovation, concludes with a simple but compelling statement – spoken by the character Tessa, played by Sheridan Harbridge – “something has to change”.</p>
<p>This is not a plea, and it is more forceful than a call-to-arms. It is a voice of steely reckoning that contains within its very timbre the rage of being a woman. The voice not only carries the rage – its strength comes from having been conditioned by it. </p>
<p>Tessa is a criminal defence barrister who is proudly at the top of her game, having conquered class and gender barriers to get there. She enjoys the pace of the kill and plays expertly on witness vulnerabilities, with sleek mastery of the unemotional palette needed to win. </p>
<p>In the words of 1980s feminist playwright Caryl Churchill, Tessa is a “<a href="https://www.bl.uk/works/top-girls">top girl</a>”, a career woman who believes she has accessed patriarchal power by reaching the higher echelons of her field. </p>
<p>Then Tessa is raped by a colleague. Her journey is one from enabler of the legal system to its victim. It shows how rape ruptures not only body and psyche, but the narrative that binds them together. Yet the legal system expects coherence. Where rape ruptures sense of self, the legal system demands that a witness speak from a place of reasoned agency. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276552/original/file-20190527-40034-aat884.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276552/original/file-20190527-40034-aat884.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276552/original/file-20190527-40034-aat884.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276552/original/file-20190527-40034-aat884.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276552/original/file-20190527-40034-aat884.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276552/original/file-20190527-40034-aat884.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276552/original/file-20190527-40034-aat884.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276552/original/file-20190527-40034-aat884.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Prima Facie, Sheridan Harbridge plays Tessa, a criminal lawyer at the top of her game.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the age of #MeToo, Prima Facie puts on the record that women’s experiences of assault have been silenced for as long as women have been abused by men and systems of power. It offers similar insight into the legal system to Queensland author Bri Lee’s award-winning 2018 memoir, <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/other-books/Eggshell-Skull-Bri-Lee-9781760295776">Eggshell Skull</a>.</p>
<p>The play states the problem plainly: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A woman’s experience of sexual assault / does not fit the male-defined system of truth. So it cannot be truth / and therefore there cannot be justice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Miller’s text won last year’s prestigious <a href="https://griffintheatre.com.au/creative-programs/griffin-award/">Griffin Award</a> for an outstanding play or play or performance text that displays an authentic, inventive and contemporary Australian voice. It is easy to see why. It is punchy, leaving almost no time for pause – witty and despair-making in equal measure.</p>
<p>Harbridge is dynamic as she moves Tessa through varying social vernaculars (such as when she imitates her Mum) and into a range of emotional tempos, activating every angle of an increasingly suffocating stage. Barring one exit, Tessa spends 100 minutes on a raised platform that feels much more confining than the usually intimate space of Sydney’s Stables Theatre. Most often starkly lit, and before an audience who plays quasi-theatrical jury, Harbridge does not miss a beat.</p>
<p>Sound is used only occasionally, with the depth of an inner eardrum/heart beat. Sparing projections mark the shifts in time as well as the legalese that Tessa traverses. The understated elegance of these elements allow the physical detail to mould the weight of the story: the rhythmic nuances of Miller’s script, their expression through Harbridge’s Tessa, and their unflinching, empathic direction by Lee Lewis. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276671/original/file-20190528-193514-1ii08t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276671/original/file-20190528-193514-1ii08t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276671/original/file-20190528-193514-1ii08t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276671/original/file-20190528-193514-1ii08t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276671/original/file-20190528-193514-1ii08t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276671/original/file-20190528-193514-1ii08t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276671/original/file-20190528-193514-1ii08t8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Miller’s play is punchy, witty and despair-making.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brett Boardman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This production seems to make clear that beyond the law, it is female labour - in myriad guises - which tries to change the present in view of its history.</p>
<p>Structurally, the play performs a process of finding voice. Narratively, this is conveyed as Tessa’s coming to terms with her own experience – a conflict that she describes as landing between “legal truth” and autobiographical truth. Beyond this particular story, the process of finding voice becomes a comment on the theatrical form itself. Where legal avenues fall short, theatre can testify, the play seems to declare – only it does so differently, and for different ends.</p>
<p>In her program notes, Miller draws her background as a lawyer into focus, explaining that the work “has been playing out in [her] mind since [her] law school days”. The implication here is that the inadequacies of the legal system in part led Miller to carve new ways of making justice happen. In the play, Tessa finds her voice, explaining, “it’s a different voice, but I keep talking”. Perhaps this is a subtle nod to Miller’s own trajectory into the realm of theatre-as-tribunal.</p>
<p>Prima Facie shows how rape becomes nullified by the legal system, which fails to recognise the ways in which this form of violence shatters. Prima Facie’s strength is that it fashions itself out of the shards of this shattering. And this is why it is so compelling and so resonant. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://griffintheatre.com.au/whats-on/prima-facie/">Prima Facie</a> is on at SBW Stables Theatre in Sydney until June 22.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bryoni Trezise does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Written by a former lawyer, a new play presents a forceful critique of the Australian legal system’s treatment of sexual assault.
Bryoni Trezise, Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/117807
2019-05-27T06:58:20Z
2019-05-27T06:58:20Z
A night at the opera: art comes alive in a modern twist on Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276520/original/file-20190527-40042-welioz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Juan de Dios Mateos as Cavalier Belfiore and Ruth Iniesta as Corinna in Opera Australia's 2019 production of Il Viaggio a Reims at Arts Centre Melbourne. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeff Busby</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Il Viaggio a Reims, Opera Australia</em></p>
<p>In 1864, four years before his death, Italian composer Gioachino Rossini <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=wPzJ3nEwiJUC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=Alexis+Azevedo+biographer&source=bl&ots=Bq-jf9nJrr&sig=ACfU3U1SDovopUXUcYjqlxxH5_GZrq_lFw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjq1N61hLviAhWE73MBHZJiAxAQ6AEwCHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Alexis%20Azevedo%20biographer&f=false">recalled to his biographer</a> Alexis Azevedo that he would probably have ended up a “chemist or an olive oil salesman” had it not been for the French invasion of Italy. That invasion had begun in 1792, the year of Rossini’s birth.</p>
<p>By 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte had established the short-lived <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisalpine_Republic">Cisalpine Republic</a> in Northern Italy, in turn raising hopes a unified Italian state might soon emerge. Only two years later, however, an Austro-Russian coalition mounted a successful counter-offensive. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_unification">Italian unification</a> would not come until 1871. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, in Italy as elsewhere in Western Europe, the Napoleonic age heralded great social and cultural change. Opera houses became places of mass entertainment – Rossini could now contemplate a career as a freelance composer on a scale that had been denied to his forbears such as Handel and Mozart.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276523/original/file-20190527-40034-wmpx7z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sian Sharp as Marchesa Melibea and Shanul Sharma as Conte di Libenskof in Opera Australia’s 2019 production of Il Viaggio a Reims.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At first it seems ironic that Rossini would eventually compose one of his finest works to celebrate a restored French monarchy. <a href="https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/il-viaggio-a-reims-melbourne">Il Viaggio a Reims</a> (The Journey to Rheims) was conceived as a celebratory cantata (essentially a set of hymns of praise set to music) to mark the coronation of Charles X (1757–1836) and was first performed in Paris on June 19 1825. </p>
<p>Rossini never expected Il Viaggio a Reims to become a repertoire staple. Despite it being a popular triumph at its premiere, it received only four performances. Rossini instead repurposed about half of the music for his later opera <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_comte_Ory">Le comte Ory </a>(1828).</p>
<p>It was only through musicological detective work that the original score was returned to life, receiving its first modern performance in 1984. But as a result, we can now appreciate how much Il Viaggio a Reims is as much a work of political satire as political propaganda. </p>
<p>The work is now receiving its first complete staging in Australia in a collaboration between Opera Australia, Dutch National Opera, and the Royal Danish Theatre. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276518/original/file-20190527-40059-mk3jxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Conal Coad as Don Prudenzio, Christopher Hillier as Antonio and The Opera Australia Chorus in Opera Australia’s production of Il Viaggio a Reims.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The opera’s plot setup is one familiar to us due to murder mysteries such as Agatha Christie’s, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7981885-murder-on-the-orient-express-and-other-destinations?from_search=true">Murder on the Orient Express</a>, or Quentin Tarantino’s, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3460252/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Hateful Eight</a>. In these, an ensemble of eccentric characters are forced to spend time with each other due to unforeseen circumstances. </p>
<p>In the original work, a group of aristocrats from Germany, Poland, Russia, Spain, England, Italy and France arrive at a hotel in the spa town of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plombi%C3%A8res-les-Bains">Plombières-les-Bains</a>, on their way to Rheims Cathedral for Charles’ coronation. A lack of available horses to take them the remaining 300 odd kilometres, however, thwarts their plans. </p>
<p>But their sojourn provides the excuse for a kind of allegorical diplomatic convention in song; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_of_Europe">the Concert of Europe</a> in concert, no less.</p>
<p>The fact that the desired journey to Rheims never actually eventuates is one of a number of elements that suggests Rossini, and his librettist Luigi Balocchi, set out to subtly satirise some of the political pretensions of royalist France. </p>
<p>Charles’ decision to be crowned in Rheims was a deliberate act of provocation to his anti-royalist enemies. The last French king to have been crowned there had been the ill-fated Louis XVI. Constructing a commemorative work of theatre in which an imagined group of guests did <em>not</em> make it to Rheims for the occasion suggested an implied commentary concerning the credibility of Charles’ enthronement.</p>
<h2>A new interpretation</h2>
<p>Perhaps unsure how to engage a modern audience with such elements of historical political intrigue, director Damiano Michieletto’s production instead shifts the time and place to a present-day art museum on the cusp of a major exhibition opening. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276519/original/file-20190527-40012-5j46qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1044&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Julie Lea Goodwin as Madama Cortese in Il Viaggio a Reims.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Madama Cortese, the “Tyrolean hostess” in the original setting, now becomes the museum’s curator (here sung by Julie Lea Goodwin channelling Meryl Streep in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458352/?ref_=nv_sr_2?ref_=nv_sr_2">The Devil Wears Prada</a>). The scholarly Don Profondo (superbly sung and acted by Giorgio Caoduro) becomes an art auctioneer; the Englishman Lord Sidney (charismatically portrayed by Teddy Tahu Rhodes) an art restorer, and so on. </p>
<p>The remaining assemblage of foreign nationals are transformed into the subjects of paintings that progressively emerge from their frames or their packing cases in a manner reminiscent of Shawn Levy’s film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477347/?ref_=nv_sr_4?ref_=nv_sr_4">Night at the Museum</a>, or Gilbert and Sullivan’s satirical opera <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruddigore">Ruddigore</a>.</p>
<p>While this directorial fancy does nothing to alleviate the work’s already episodic nature, there is no doubt it also makes for a very entertaining evening on the stage.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276522/original/file-20190527-40038-1udv9a6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Lord Sidney in Il Viaggio a Reims. The Opera Australia production includes a Night at the Museum-esque element.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prudence Upton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The original context of the work is nevertheless eventually acknowledged, in spectacular fashion, when Paolo Fantin’s lavish set and the whole ensemble combined to recreate the painting “The coronation of Charles X” (1827) by François Gérard at the opera’s conclusion.</p>
<p>Standouts among the 14 principals include baritone Warwick Fyfe, who gave a marvellous comic turn as the Barone di Trombonok, and tenor Juan de Dios Mateos (Cavalier Belfiore) and sopranos Ruth Iniesta (Corinna) and Emma Pearson (Contessa di Folleville), who each sang with great beauty and virtuosity. </p>
<p>Orchestra Victoria delivered Rossini’s sophisticated score with great style, thanks to the superb direction of Daniel Smith (making a well overdue debut in his native Australia), fine <a href="https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basso_continuo">continuo</a> accompaniment work from Anthony Hunt on a fortepiano, and some terrific solo work from Lisa-Maree Amos (flute) and Megan Reeve (harp). </p>
<p>The latter’s two ravishing duets, with Ruth Iniesta and Emma Pearson respectively, were a particular musical highlight. </p>
<p>The second of these forms the inevitable song of praise to Charles which closes the opera. But it is the first (which itself slyly references the contemporaneous Greek struggle for liberation from Ottoman rule) that I suspect directs us to the more universal political message that Rossini wished to convey: the hope that “one day the dawn of the golden age will reappear, and fraternal love will reign in human hearts.”</p>
<p><em><a href="https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/il-viaggio-a-reims-melbourne">Il Viaggio a Reims</a> is on at Arts Centre Melbourne until June 1.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117807/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Tregear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Gioachino Rossini’s opera was originally meant as a satire of royalist France. A new production updates the work for a modern audience, setting the drama in a museum where the paintings come to life.
Peter Tregear, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.