GIG GUIDE WEDNESDAY 13
Q RAILWAY HOTEL, BYRON BAY, MATT ARMATAGE Q BEACH HOTEL, BYRON BAY, 5PM DYLAN PINKERTON, 8PM JASON DELPHIN Q BALLINA RSL LEVEL ONE 10AM CIRKUS MAXIMAS KID’S SHOW
Q SALTBAR, KINGSCLIFF, 7PM TRIVIA
E N T E R T A I N M E N T
Q COOLANGATTA HOTEL 7PM TRIVIA
THURSDAY 14 Q RAILWAY HOTEL, BYRON BAY, JAHFRO Q BEACH HOTEL, BYRON BAY, 5PM TWO MOONS, 8PM 2 TEARS IN A BUCKET Q HOTEL BRUNSWICK 6PM BRIAN WATT Q BRUNSWICK HEADS PICTURE HOUSE 7PM SAM SIMONS – SAM I AM, 9PM CHEEKY CABARET
INTERVIEW WITH
Q CLUB LENNOX 7PM TRIVIA NIGHT
FRIDAY 15 Q RAILWAY HOTEL, BYRON BAY, MAJESTIC KNIGHTS
Brendan
Q BEACH HOTEL, BYRON BAY, 3PM KARUAH, 6PM SCOTT DAY VEE, 9PM SUNSTONE Q HOTEL BRUNSWICK 6PM SIMON MEOLA Q BRUNSWICK HEADS PICTURE HOUSE 7PM SAM SIMONS – SAM I AM, 9PM CHEEKY CABARET
Kelly
When I first met Mullumbimby-based artist, Brendan Kelly, he was trying his hand at stand up. Energetic, larger than life, with astute colourful depictions of everything from the mating behaviour of peacocks to the high drama of almost burning down his house, Brendan knew how to tell a story. Kelly had the charisma and the chops that could have seen him break through as a comedian, but he put down the microphone and picked up the paintbrush. Almost a decade later Brendan Kelly is a successful exhibiting artist, cutting his own creative path. His medium may have changed, but his mission hasn’t. He is emerging as a master storyteller. His flamboyant strokes have moved from the stage to the wall, magnetising viewer attention with even more command than his comedy. Brendan Kelly has found his voice through the brush, and weirdly, it’s louder than he ever was through a PA. Like many creatives, Kelly has used his art to make sense of his life. ‘When I separated from my first wife I had this feeling like I wasn’t being heard, that I didn’t have a voice, which led quickly to the stand up. The stand up was basically the first time I felt I had a voice, although it was quite frustrated and angry’ says Brendan. When his close friend and mentor, stand up comedian Dave Grant, died of pancreatic cancer, Brendan got spooked. ‘Dave said, it's the comedy that has done this to me. It's the nerves. Get out. You have everything you need’. This was all the encouragement that Brendan needed, as he had been finding the down time of comedy frustrating. Full of energy and ideas, Kelly was never the bloke who slept until afternoon. Ironically Dave Grant’s sage advice set him on the path to find his true creative niche. ‘I started to draw cartoons – I had always drawn, since school days. When I left school I wanted to be a commercial artist, I drew cartoons for national magazines, so I was going alright, but then I dropped the comedy altogether and did the cartoons full time. This led to me doing drawing classes that led to larger scale works.’ It was the humour that still had Brendan hooked. ‘Cartoons could be subversive – not in a ha ha type of way, but in more subtle ways. I loved the story telling – how you could tell a story in a minimal way with an image and a caption. You had to be concise. This story telling thing awoke in me. And once I went into painting and large-scale work it was all about storytelling. Except this time it wasn’t so obvious, it was abstract and it was figurative.’ Brendan works best with music. He commits a full workday, every day to his studio. He plays Cohen, Dirty Three, Nick Cave, something loud and moody, and he lets it transport him to his darkest, most fluid and unmapped creative spaces. ‘I am looking for direct, raw, mark making’ says Brendan. ‘What I would call a living line instead of a coerced illustrated line. These are visceral marks.’ He doesn’t contrive his paintings. Instead, he says ‘The paintings reveal themselves. I am not writing a story – I am not trying to illustrate. I am hunting, I am panning for it through mark making, and changing and evolving, and when it settles on a place that might reveal something poignant or confronting – I know that’s it.’
www.echo.net.au/byron-echo Byron Shire Echo archives
Q YOUTH ACTIVITY CENTRE (YAC), BYRON BAY, 7PM SEA OF SHADOWS WITH SEA SHEPHERD – OUTDOOR FILM SCREENING + Q&A Q WANDANA BREWING CO., MULLUMBIMBY, 4.30PM DJ MONSIEUR DIOP Q LENNOX HOTEL HOTEL STAGE 8PM DAN HANNAFORD Q BALLINA RSL 7PM, LEVEL ONE TERRACE SESSIONS: DAN CLARK Q LISMORE WORKERS CLUB MAIN LOUNGE 7.30PM TWO MEN AND A LADY Q KINGSCLIFF BEACH BOWLS 5.30PM ROCKIN RON Q KINGSCLIFF BEACH HOTEL 7PM TIM STOKES Q HOTA SURFERS PARADISE, SCOOP FESTIVAL: SESSIONS START 10AM
SATURDAY 16 Q THE NORTHERN, BYRON BAY, 6PM FELIPE BALDOMIR ONLY LIGHT TOUR Q RAILWAY HOTEL, BYRON BAY, KESH Q BEACH HOTEL, BYRON BAY, 1PM ZAHLU, 4PM ALIVAN BLU, 6.30PM JEROME WILLIAMS, 9PM MAJESTIC KNIGHTS
Brendan Kelly telling stories with paint.
Q BYRON THEATRE 7.30PM BLADE RUNNER (1982) SPECIAL EVENT PRESENTED BY PARADIS MOVIE CLUB Q HOTEL BRUNSWICK 6PM CADENCE
Kelly’s work leaps out at you. A deconstructed goats head appears in just a line. Its life force beckons to you from the canvas. Kelly knows how to deliver volatile imagery, but he also knows how to leave space. It was this quality that saw him scouted, from Instagram, by Sydney’s Wellington Gallery, to their walls. It’s a story with dark folk tale echoes, where a man who has built his studio deep in the forest, then dug even deeper into his foundations to find his way home, is found by two men from the inner city who’ve never stepped foot in the forest. Gallery owners Mark Smythe and Ray Saunderson were taken with his wildly fluid figurative abstraction. They sent him a message: ‘We really love your work. And we are wondering if you are interested in exhibiting and being represented by a gallery in Sydney?’ Brendan was surprised and thought perhaps he’d be offered a spot in a group show – but instead was offered a full solo exhibition. In just over a month he transported 19 works from his bush studio to Sydney. His first solo exhibition, called Flight to Light was held at Wellington Gallery in Waterloo, in June 2020. He sold 80 per cent of his work. For an artist who painted and sent his work to private buyers a single piece at a time, Kelly had never seen his paintings hung as a body of work. ‘It was like walking in and seeing someone else’s show’ says Brendan. ‘To walk in and see them on enormous white walls with state-of-the-art lighting was when I realised I had a new stage and a new voice, but in a different way; it was a pictorial voice and that [was when] I realised that this is what I should be doing.’ By November last year Brendan had produced another 31 works to hang. Trouble in the Order is an abstracted, figurative, and dystopian depiction of the virus that arrived in 2020. Brendan is currently working towards his third show. To do this he is leaving his idyllic bush studio to return to his former home, Sydney. ‘The idea is to immerse myself in the city where I grew up but haven’t lived for 30 years. I am going to go back and set up a studio right on Sydney Harbour, with new stimulation and inspiration.’ Although Kelly has lived in Mullumbimby for three decades, he says ‘I never have dreams of Mullumbimby, all my dreams are around Lane Cove and Bobbin Head.’ So country mouse goes to the city. What does he see? How does the city stain the hands of a man who’s used to the sanctuary of nature? ‘I am going to throw a spanner in the works’ laughs Brendan ‘… purposefully.’ Now that’s going to be one hell of a story.
Q BRUNSWICK HEADS PICTURE HOUSE 2PM PICTURE HOUSE CIRCUS BONANZA, 7PM SAM SIMONS – SAM I AM, 9PM CHEEKY CABARET Q MULLUMBIMBY COMMUNITY MARKET 8AM DEADSET Q WANDANA BREWING CO., MULLUMBIMBY, 4PM DJ LUSTR, 6.15PM DJ RAHEL Q LENNOX HOTEL HOTEL STAGE 8PM HARRY NICHOLS DUO Q BALLINA RSL 7PM, LEVEL ONE TERRACE SESSIONS: ISAAC FRANKHAM Q KINGSCLIFF BEACH HOTEL 7PM DUSTY AS DUO Q SHEOAK SHACK, FINGAL HEAD, 3PM JORDAN MAC, 7PM MANOA BAND Q TWIN TOWNS, TWEED HEADS, THE STAGE 3PM BEST OF THE BEE GEES, 8PM BEST OF THE BEE GEES Q HOTA SURFERS PARADISE, SCOOP FESTIVAL: SESSIONS START 10AM
SUNDAY 17 Q RAILWAY HOTEL, BYRON BAY, LEIGH JAMES Q BEACH HOTEL, BYRON BAY, 1.30PM ANIMAL VENTURA, 5PM SOUTHWALL TRIO, 9PM MARSHALL OKELL Q HOTEL BRUNSWICK 5PM PUSH Q BRUNSWICK HEADS PICTURE HOUSE 2PM PICTURE HOUSE CIRCUS BONANZA, 6PM SAM SIMONS – SAM I AM Q MULLUMBIMBY EX-SERVICES CLUB 12PM COUNTRY MUSIC CLUB, 4PM RUSSELL MORRIS Q WANDANA BREWING CO., MULLUMBIMBY, 5PM HARRY NICHOLS Q LENNOX HOTEL BEEF & BEACH 3PM NIC CAMPBELL Q HOTA SURFERS PARADISE, SCOOP FESTIVAL: SESSIONS START 10AM
MONDAY 18 Q RAILWAY HOTEL, BYRON BAY, CHRIS ARONSTEN Q BEACH HOTEL, BYRON BAY, 5PM JOHN CROSBIE, 8PM HARRY NICHOLS Q KINGSCLIFF BEACH BOWLS 12PM TOMMY MEMPHIS
TUESDAY 19 Q RAILWAY HOTEL, BYRON BAY, SIMON MEOLA Q BEACH HOTEL, BYRON BAY, 5PM ALISHA TODD, 8PM PHIL & TILLEY Q BRUNSWICK HEADS PICTURE HOUSE 6PM ARJ BARKER – SAFE SPACE, 8PM ANNE EDMONDS & LLOYD LANGFORD – BUSINESS WITH PLEASURE Q KINGSCLIFF BEACH BOWLS 7PM TRIVIA
WEDNESDAY 20 Q THE NORTHERN, BYRON BAY 8PM, HANDS LIKE HOUSES Q RAILWAY HOTEL, BYRON BAY, SUNSTONE Q BEACH HOTEL, BYRON BAY, 5PM FINTAN CALLAGHAN, 8PM SLIM PICKINGS Q BYRON THEATRE 3PM RAPHAEL REVEALED – EXHIBITION ON SCREEN PRESENTED BY BYRON THEATRE Q BRUNSWICK HEADS PICTURE HOUSE 6PM ARJ BARKER – SAFE SPACE, 8PM ANNE EDMONDS & LLOYD LANGFORD – BUSINESS WITH PLEASURE Q SALTBAR, KINGSCLIFF, 7PM TRIVIA Q COOLANGATTA HOTEL 7PM TRIVIA
January ǨǪǽ ǩǧǩǨ The Byron Shire Echo 39