ARTS ZINE NOVEMBER 2025 by Robyn Werkhoven

ART ZINE issue 64 november 2025 s t u d i o L A P R I M I T I V E

GEORGE GITTOES AI ARTIST

George Gittoes - Rainbow Way still 1975. Taken from 35mm Kodak Colour Slide.

Black Milk to Kyiv – Humanity In Danger

HELLEN ROSE

FELIDAE: House of Bastet

page 238 Tales of a City (London, 12-2024)

Heide Museum of Modern Art

Lorraine Fildes

The Healing Nature of Art: How Inspiration, Practice & Persistence Mend the Soul

BERNADETTE MEYERS Page 230

studio la primitive slp CONTRIBUTORS

George Gittoes

Hellen Rose

Lorraine Fildes

Maggie Hall

Bernadette Meyers

SEIGAR

Eric Werkhoven

Robyn Werkhoven

Gresford Community Gallery

Arts National Newcastle

Timeless Textiles

Barbara Nanshe

Back to Back Galleries

Straitjacket Gallery

Dungog by Design

Helene Leane

Studio La Primitive

Eric and Robyn Werkhoven. Photo courtesy of artists.

The Battle, collaborative drawing E&R Werkhoven, mixed media on board H 60 x W 90cm.

Mad Moment, collaborative drawing, 40x30cm. mixed media. E&R Werkhoven 2024.

Final Editorial

Greetings contributors and readers to our November issue of ARTS ZINE.

Sadly, this is our final issue after twelve years of successful publication.

The November magazine presents a tribute, looking back at all the issues and a special poetry section and a final article from our resident contributors.

On the 1st October 2013 we launched the first issue of STUDIO LA PRIMITIVE ARTS ZINE, an independent art and literary online magazine.

The Arts Zine has featured artists’ interviews - a glimpse into the artists’ world, to gain an insight into how their creative concepts evolve, exhibitions, art related articles, essays, poetry and art news.

In 2017 Arts Zine was selected by the NSW State Library to be preserved as a digital publication of lasting cultural value for long-term access by the Australian community.

The Zine is free, with no advertising from sponsors. It is just something we wanted to do for the Arts, which has been our lifelong passion. As we believe art and culture are extremely important for a healthy society.

Arts Zine has been a voice for the artists and writers - not only from the Hunter Region NSW, but nationally and internationally.

What began with 50 pages grew to over 200 pages and reached 64 issues.

The magazine has featured 400 artists and writers including many emerging and high profile Australian & international artists – Del Kathryn Barton, Blak Douglas, Wendy Sharpe, Kathrin Longhurst, Nigel Milsom, Loribelle Spirovski, Kim Leutwyle, Matthew Quick, Braddon Snape, Euan Macleod and many more.

We wish to thank renowned artists and award-winning film makers George Gittoes and Hellen Rose who have been wonderful supporters and contributors to the magazine. We would also like to thank our other fabulous resident contributors, Lorraine Fildes, travel writer and art photographer, poet and artist Maggie Hall, artist and writer Bernadette Meyers and International, award-winning Spanish artist and photographer Jose Luis Seijas Garcia- SEIGAR.

We wish to sincerely thank all the artists and writers for their wonderful contributions of interviews and articles. It has been a privilege to work with all of you. Your editors will keep in touch as they have other art projects in the pipeline.

Please if you wish to download your articles from online - by the 1st. March 2026. Or email us at werkhovenr@bigpond.com for a PDF copy of your article. Cheers Robyn and Eric Werkhoven (Editors).

COLLECTION OF ARTS ZINE FROM 2013 - 2025

ERIC & ROBYN WERKHOVEN

FANCY MARGO HUMPHRIES 2 0 1 3 O C T O B E R

NIGHTMARES EXHIBITION

O O D S

BEN KENNING

ERIC & ROBYN WERKHOVEN

MICHAEL GARTH

PETER LANKAS

BEA JONES

Group Exhibition NAS Gallery

JOSH MCGREGOR

DAVID GRAHAM

BRIAN ROBERTS

0 1 4 M A R C H

BRIAN ROBERTS SHIRLEY CAMERON-ROBERTS

DEBRA LIEL-BROWN

0 1 4 M A Y

DONALD KEYS

BEN MARCUS KENNING

2 0 1 4 J U L Y

PABLO TAPIA

2 0 1 4 S E P T E M B E R

GROUP EXHIBITION AT NEWCASTLE ART SPACE

CHRISTINE PIKE

2 0 1 4 N O V & D E C

ANDREW SHILLAM

2 0 1 5 M A R C H

ROGER McFARLANE

2 0 1 5 M A Y

LACHIE HINTON

2 0 1 5 J U L Y

THE SEVEN PAINTERS

SUSANA ENRIQUEZ

0 1 5 S E P T E M B E R

LORRAINE FILDES

CARLOS BARRIOS

2 0 1 5 N O V E M B E R

PETER SPEIGHT

MARK ELLIOT– RANKEN

2 0 1 6 M A R C H

LORRAINE FILDES

SALLY RYAN

2 0 1 6 M A Y

ADRIAN LOCKHART

2 0 1 6 J U L Y

MERTIM GOKALP

2 0 1 6 S E P T E M B E R

JANE RICHENS

GROUP EXHIBITION

LORRAINE FILDES

SANDRA SHAW

RICHARD CLAREMONT

2 0 1 6 N O V E M B E R

DEE

JACKSON

MEL BRIGG

2 0 1 7 M A R C H

LORRAINE FILDES

JANIS LANDER

2 0 1 7 M A Y

MAGGIE HALL

MATTHEW QUICK

2 0 1 7 J U L Y

by MAGGIE HALL

REKO RENNIE

2 0 1 7 S E P T E M B E R

Maggie Hall

LORRAINE FILDES

2 0 1 7 N O V E M B E R

MICHAEL BELL

MAGGIE HALL

WENDY SHARPE

2 0 1 8 M A R C H

MAGGIE HALL

KATHRIN LONGHURST

2 0 1 8 M A Y

KATHRIN LONGHURST

2 0 1 8 J U L Y

BERNADETTE MEYERS LORRAINE FILDES

Vicki Sullivan

PENNIE POMROY

2 0 1 8 S E P T E M B E R

BRETT McMAHON

2 0 1 8 N O V E M B E R

Group Exhibition at Maitland Regional Art Gallery.

RIVER OF TIME

GEORGE GITTOES

2 0 1 8 D E C E M B E R

GORDON ELLIOTT & MICHAEL EYES

MATTHEW COUPER

LORRAINE FILDES

0 1 9 M A R C H

BERNADETTE MEYERS

LOTTIE CONSALVO

2 0 1 9 M A Y

LOTTIE CONSALVO

NIGEL MILSOM

NIGEL MILSOM 2 0 1 9 J U L Y

TERRY FOGARTY

LORRAINE FILDES

MAGGIE HALL

LORI CICCHINI

2 0 1 9 S E P T E M B E R

LORI CICCHINI

Lorraine Fildes

MARCUS CALLUM

2 0 1 9 N O V E M B E R

MARCUS CALLUM

Robyn Werkhoven

SANDRA SHAW

JOHNSTON

2 0 2 0 M A R C H

JAMES JOHNSTON

JAMES

DAVID MIDDLEBROOK

2 0 2 0 M A Y

TREVOR WEEKES

2 0 2 0 J U L Y

NICK PONT

2 0 2 0 S E P T E M B E R

AVRIL THOMAS

NEIL HOWE

2 0 2 0 N O V E M B E R

WILLIAM YANG

EVERT PLOEG

2 0 2 1 M A R C H

RICHARD TIPPING

2 0 2 1 M A Y

RICHARD TIPPING

ROSA FEDELE

2 0 2 1 J U L Y

2 0 2 1 S E P T E M B E R

MANDY ROBINSON

ROD PATTENDEN

2 0 2 1 N O V E M B E R

GRAHAM LANG

2 0 2 2 M A R C H

KIM LEUTWYLER

2 0 2 2 M A Y

LORIBELLE SPIROVSKI

2 0 2 2 J U L Y

GRAHAM WILSON

2 0 2 2 S E P T E M B E R GRAHAM WILSON

2 0 2 2 N O V E M B E R

JANNE KEARNEY

BLAK DOUGLAS

2 0 2 3 M A R C H

PETER TILLEY

GEORGE GITTOES

2 0 2 3 M A Y

JODY GRAHAM

2 0 2 3 J U L Y

2 0 2 3 S E P T E M B E R

LIAM BARR

SPACE COWBOY

2 0 2 3 N O V E M B E R

Maggie Hall

GEOFFREY BREEN

2 0 2 4 M A R C H

JOSH LORD

2 0 2 4 M A Y

JOHNNY ROMEO

2 0 2 4 J U L Y

EUAN MACLEOD

2 0 2 4 S E P T E M B E R

2 0 2 4 N O V E M B E R

DEL KATHRYN BARTON

LINDA GREEDY

2 0 2 5 M A R C H

2 0 2 5 M A Y ANN CAPE

KARA WOOD

2 0 2 5 J U L Y

2 0 2 5 S E P T E M B E R

SARAH HICKEY

ARTS ZINE POETS TRIBUTE

LE VIOL (The Rape) by Rene Magritte

BEA JONES - 2013

LE VIOL (The Rape) based on the painting by Rene Magritte

SEE NO EVIL

But I have eyes within my nipples. I can see the enormity of power bearing down on me. I can see the lies to his conscience in the last heavy hour, rising to the occasion.

HEAR NO EVIL

But I have ears beneath my frenzied hair.

I can hear the obscenities he is breathing, to camouflage the fears in shallow grave that feed his sleepless addiction.

SPEAK NO EVIL

But I have a mouthmy vagina is screaming.

I can taste the sour juice of his wanton lust but help me, for I am loath to cry out in accusation of this abuse, for fear that he will kill me

LE VIOL THE RAPE Rene Magritte 1934.

THE VALLEY OF CLOUDS

Where we live, we are surrounded by some pretty high country, and in the cooler months the clouds blanket the peaks. They make for a beautiful sight.

As clouds drift down to the valley

They rest in the waiting trees,

To hide from the warmth of the sun

And escape from the whispering breeze.

While water from high on the mountain, Trickles down to the floor of the glade,

To bring life to the velvet moss,

That dwells in the mountain’s shade.

MICHAEL WINCHESTER - NOVEMBER 2013

To Wake Again At Night

Back then . . .

The night had eyes to see dark eternity shone its light where once I hid in fear under the bed in black recluse.

A kind embrace I came to know to live and die In love with life, a dream. At morning’s birth I slept and dreamt my life. Then woke again at night. Then woke again at night.

Michael Winchester performing at Nightmares Exhibition. Image by Christine Pike.

DAVID GRAHAM - MAY 2015

York

there are bricks and then there’s ivy, but that says nothing about feeling them both with you at a place where a drunk eye can be happy with a blue streak sky with riling clouds as we drive, the trees perform a merry-go-round of chance encounters curtained by boroughs we have drunk of the river Ouse and fed on the miller’s leaves washing our tongues with stones it is an old way to be related to the growing of mushrooms

GLENDA SMITH - 2014

Poem for Panda

Panda’s ghost-memory follows me

Down to the goats,

Or runs ahead

Flipping a stick with her nose.

Her familiar shape poses in the kitchen doorway -

Sphinx-like, composed,

Her front feet elegantly crossed.

Phantom Panda waits patiently for toast,

Or ferocious, sounds out her morning boundary.

The expectant greetings,

The reluctant goodnights

Still linger –

DAVID GRAHAM - DECEMBER 2013

Van Gogh’s Room

His yellow bed bulges forward and the walls have an irregular perspective with portraits of family, landscapes and notes hung on them.

Between those walls, on that pompous bed he tossed and threw himself within his mind.

Seeing in the floorboards bitter greens and ghastly yellows remembering the betrayal of Gauguin.

From out the window, he saw Saint Rémy on a starry night, painting its child wonder.

There are two chairs, that object he obsessed over, sitting empty and unused –silently they mourn the vacancy of the room.

I am drawn to the little table with the jug of water and a bible, tattered and faded, with a mark where he rested his hand searching for younger years.

Then to the single draw and what may lie within.

It could have been paintbrushes, letters from Theo, Japanese prints or that gun, oiled and wrapped in a cloth.

It waits, hidden, singing a silent song into the artist’s heart who closes his eyes and clutches at the red blanket.

-

Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890) generally considered the greatest Dutch painter and draughtsman since Rembrandt. One of the greatest of PostImpressionist artists. He strongly influenced the movement of Expressionism in modern art. His work, is noted for its striking rich colour, coarse brushwork, and contoured forms .

Room at Arles

Vincent Van Gogh

KATHRYN THOMAS - NOVEMBER 2014

WHALE –SONG TO DIRGE

You, who were meant to spend your lives, wandering in the greater depth of Mother-Sea; to transverse the globe in life-long hajj, in harmony with all, but man. Can it be, that those who hunt you do so from that core of hate, seeded from the sin, Envy? Seeming so jealously do they attempt to obliterate you, with the infamous hope, they will no longer be second. Down through endless, man-made millennia, your attained perfection continues to now, and I fear for you. The human evil, anti- Love, is gifted with existence; existence, then, is a Love - given gift, so, their hatred of other, becomes hatred of self. And for those who don’t care, they share in Sin. Those who’re complacent, become burdened with the Blame! Whilst those who do, rent their clothes, tear their hair, and heap ashes on their heads.

CARLIN McLELLAN - NOVEMBER 2014

We Never Made it to the Casino

You are very vast

You an unsolvable murder mystery

Take me to Toledo & I will hold your hand as best as I can

In the mosque I pray to Allah

In the church I pray to God

In the Synagogue, to Jaweh

At the gift shop

I'll select the most perfect post cards imaginable and as we sit in the shade eating ice creams the sky caresses us both

That night

You tell me San Miguel is your favourite angel & you are mine

Swallows dance above the rooftops

My skin melts into the mattress

Carlin McLellan - MARCH 2015

Send me a Postcard

What is it that you want to say but can't say?

I offer you a Marlboro Light which you tacitly decline I search your face for something resembling a smile as you stare at your shoes Fair enough, they are nice shoes But won't you tell me what is really going on with you?

We sit silently at the end of the pier & pelicans yawn on the roof of the toilet block

Our furtive eye contact is probably just love for each other hyperextended out towards the entire universe & all the creatures at the bottom of the ocean

I wonder when we will see each other again

Maybe you'll have a kid

Or I'll have a kid

I wonder what

Will happen at the end of the thirty-seventh Batman movie

I want to know what is going to Happen right now

But sometimes Not knowing Helplessly, hopelessly not knowing

Is kinda nice

Carlin McLellan & Bastion Fox Phelan -

collaborative poem - MAY 2015

Forever freedom

Sometimes love gets in the way of love

My brother used to say

She's choking me like a baby bird

Now I bring back fat worms to the expecting nest

I'm lightly grasped by your steady hands

Sometimes the hurting feels good

So we make an arrangement

To meet here every few years

When travelling to different dimensions

We bury our shared precious elements deep in the earth

Inaccessible except by excavation

That's why a crystal talisman means so much

Tell me,

How do you think love renews itself, for each person

Each day?

From where does love draw itself?

In an exchange of atoms

between fingertips & collarbones

In crystalline eyes burning like the sun

In impartial clouds

Love saturates everything

Spilling from the sky

Running down through estuaries

Before settling in the cracks

Between our bodies

Love renews itself

Each time we choose it

Not fear; love

Not hate; love

Not control, punishment, greed; love

Love is the only thing that multiplies each time you give it away.

MAGDALENA BALL - SEPTEMBER 2015

Dark Matter Wants to be Alone

How far would you go

In the darkness slowly towards the end of the road where the path splits to parallel lines, one leading away beckoning towards somewhere icy and free the other crunching leaves beneath bare feet bird songs you recognise smells to say you’re heading home. Is it wrong to want warmth to choose the safer route stuttered into paralysis a quiet so deep it cancels thought reaching for stolen protection butter knife and china plate the mother-urge; motherlode and everything that pulls like gravity, against your resisting body. Relief comes in bursts of sunlight short-lived, curated, absorbed and lost, returning again to this fork in the road.

The solemn unknown inferred rather than observed sliding invisibly, exerting the slightest of pressures molecules interact with air night breeze sinks against rising heat isolation’s hidden valley reaching into the silence to touch those spaces that remain open, bleeding an animation visible only through its missing electrical charge. As dark matter’s mysterious ghost I inhabit two worlds feed two hearts, hedging bets just in case one proves to be real the beater; the keeper.

TERRY FOGARTY - MARCH 2016

THE COMING TIDE (OF LOVE)

Scuttering

Like black leaves

Fighting the wind

Seared faces

Clumped by anger

Fright, fear

Seeking martyrdom

Hands empty

Chests full of

Bravado

Lightly she descends

Embracing evil

Clasping good

Melding

Minds kindle

Fingers link

Love bleeds

Melanie O’Dell - MAY 2016

‘You look nice’

It's time, time for a shift.

Celebrate your fellow females present them with a gift; a gift of gratitude rather than a measly 'you're pretty' comment... It's time we praised intelligence - that's damn certitude.

Yosua Aethyrin - JULY 2016

Day Begins

I pull up my socks

I button my shirt

I tie my tie

I wind my watch

I fold my money paper

I put my ink pen in its pocket.

No time for leather lounges.

My day begins.

Sativas strain

And coffee drip drip drip

Honeyed cherry tobacco pipe

The knife twists in this pomegranates tears.

The devils weed

Obscures my work

In beetle black

Black shellac

And dragons blood.

The cherry balm wood curled chips form

The edges of this inferior instrument.

Its gesso never meant for gilding

Only meant for gilt.

I tie my paisley tie in red and green

Italian silk.

My work begins

I pull up my socks

I tie my tie

I wind my watch

I fold my money paper

I put my ink pen in its pocket

My book holds silence in its empty pages

And the moon is black.

Let us Begin.

Cinnamon candies

And clove cigar

My dog tags

Worn clean

From a thousand wars

Seven nation army....

War pigs.....roar

This blackened

Zippo lantern

Light the way

Of infinities dance

My pen aches

For its destiny

This paged alter open to its fate

Drip of pomegranate tears on its pages

My knife abandoned

Its work complete

Burn caldron copper

black and red

Malachite steam bubble

Guava apple

Curried coriander

Peppered chilly crack

Chicken bone

Black for kitten

Come here cat.

MARK ELLIOTT RANKEN –

SEPTEMBER 2023

PORTRAIT OF AN UNKOWN SOLDIER

A smile, cheeky

Under that hat

None other like it,

The daggy uniform, khaki and green, Drab For concealment, Didn’t save him. Generations lost.

Others, family and lovers

Mourning for life.

The cost of industrial warfare

Life reduced to… Lost carbon units

Of production.

Someone, a class

Still profited, Filled with wealth, power, privilege, Wanting even more.

Demanded a repeat of the horrors, Over the bones

And rising sun hat badges

Of the lost, now forever Unknown.

BLACK CROW WALKING – SEPTEMBER 2021

DROUGHT

My skin thirsty and dry, like the land itself, longing for the first drops of rain as the storm circles building its thunder. The mountain rolls over and bares her belly to the sky.

A cool gentle breeze wafts over my arms.

I open like a flower, ready to receive its thirsting quench.

My arms reach up conducting the storm as it circles this dry field.

Lightening bounces off the horizon, brilliant, frightening.

I shall dance in the rain, twirling the storm into a frenzy of unleashed passion, too long left bereft of touch, barren of creation.

Earth opens her pores to the rain like a woman ready for love. Tiny seeds swell beneath her skin ready to burst forth with any encouragement.

Lusting thirstily for green life, Swelling with pride, the cracks of the earth close into mud puddles.

Birds dart for cover under the eaves of the veranda Warriors of the sky.

My flailing arms fall to my sodden skirts, lifting them to swirl through the puddles, that lay like sheets spread out to dry.

Then when the last drop has rung itself from the sky, and evening has shown itself as present.

I shall return as the birds do and resume the task of living touched by my own wild moments.

Creating that inner smile.

JOHN OBRIEN - 2016

Heavy Reason

I saw a woman with a spider in her underpants.

She was moving, she was dancing cos she had to dance.

I saw a man who held his own upon a horny beast.

I saw confusion, celebration and a colour feast.

I saw their eyes, I wondered why, I felt them in my reach.

But what they offered was a heavy reason.

I saw a god within the temple of a coloured stone.

She was solid she was flying she was indisposed.

I saw a war beneath a peace beneath a lucky eye.

I heard ululation, exultation, laughing cries.

I saw their eyes, I wondered why, I felt them in my reach.

And what they offered were some heavy reasons.

MONIQUE WERKHOVEN – MARCH 2017 A blank verse poem

Greener Gardens

A bug, sitting still on a beautiful flower, Look, closely, for a moment of truth,

What a glorious sight, tiny creature in sight, more fragile

Or less fragile, No insecticide, I plead,

Surely, in this garden plants are growing big and strong

Companion planting protecting one another,

Soil enriched.

With the compost, worm castings of the day,

Abundance of foliage, plant flowers for the bees

And pollinate creation of new.

We know

With a little helping hand, as a blossom blooms

We stare into unfolding beauty, until petals fall-

The aromatic, alluring scent of a rose,

The satisfying sprouting of those seedlings,

The long, awaited emerging of bulbs,

Or the hint of fragrance of a scented herb-

And the comforting flux of memories

Delicately lingers in the brain.

Foraging our gardens were the happy chickens then,

And all the evenings hoping back to roost,

And all the birds sang harmonies from all the trees.

All of the fruits upon the all the flowers!

And bees! The best idea is Permaculture

We never knew growing food could be so sweet.

The population rises.

The Mess

Grows bigger with more hunger.

Do we care now? Oh, we should care, now

I hate the supermarket all the food is dead

Save me some tranquillity O Garden bed

Growing seasonally, No waste its pickling time.

Is the World globalization really the best

And for young children have we done enough?

Ah! Stop pain! Suffer not to any, who are hungry

It`s such a simple solution, corrupted economy,

Pushed into cash crops full of spray,

Instant substances are being abused,

Unfair treatment of small farms fairly,

Often chemical warfare in food production, Facts

Inedible to swallow,

And consuming lives mean nothings left sacred.

The natural world fades.

Help! Us think

Answers have you? Not too late to be grateful for the Earth,

Collaborative process, little steps little tree grows

Bigger and bigger, greener and cleaner,

The joy that we have access to is priceless,

As all the prices soaring to the MAN!

To find a way to sustain ourselves,

Newfound freedom working within nature,

And ecosystems like a plethora of life

Searching community gardens near and far,

All produce locally grown cared for, and all

The better for the taste buds and the soul!

BERNADETTE SMITH - JULY 2020

Once Were Neighbours

Across the fence

They traded insults

He called them ‘White trash’

They yelled ‘Brahmin trash’

He threw chilli

They threw garbage

He defaced their car

They sent threats

Neighbours took sides

Their gods collide

Quoting Bibles

Chanting Mantras

Papers fan the flames

A knife was pulled

People stabbed

Both sides protest

Righteous rage expressed

Where would it end?

Holy War, Crusades

Bloody Sunday?

Then night horror…

Women butchered,

Blood trains in Lahore

So eye for eye

With gods on side

Wrought Hell on Earth

Millions homeless

Mass murder

Communal frenzy

Madness at midnight

A subcontinent

torn asunder

Fast forward downunder

Bigotry unfurled

Freedom of religion laws released Discrimination exemptions

Human rights cease

History forgotten

Easily repeats.

JENNIFER ROBERTSON - SEPTEMBER 2022

Sunpatch

The tension melts from my body.

Like warm milk and custard

Warmth like the healer's hands

Sealing golden ether into my flesh from my skin into my bones

Bring me home to velvet kissed with sunlight

I feel the colour of the surface of my soul change like a chameleon

‘til all within me soaks with golden pleasure

I measure my movement in greater stretching expansion

This feeling reaches from my cells to the tips of my hair strands

My lips, hands and fingertips my nails, my eyes, my eyelashes and my toes even my tail feels warm

wrapped in the gold blessing of light

Folded in warmth like sacred tobacco

Banana leaves with gentle folds

Filled with rice, ember dusted coals

I could lie in this cocoon forever

A sarcophagus turning to dust

NAOMI DOWNIE – MARCH 2020

MESSAGE STICKS

These

Sticks This Earth

Stomping

Stomping legs stand apart feet firm

Listening to the Ground

Calling up the spirits

Many sticks rattling in my hands

I roll them together

Crackling them against one another

No written language

Must be heard on the wind

In the trees them selves

So many sticks

Many messages

From different tribes tonight

Important collective story

Needs to be told

At this Our Curwaboree

Bones talking, tonight is ceremony

I stomp

I feel the earth

The ground beneath us

Greet it, honour its power

O Ancient of Days

The storm outside is gathering

Electric thoughts clashing

Clouds of tears

Bursts of tensions building

For change is coming

Birth is ripe

Crack this shell, this seed

Old reality cracks

Its protective covering, like a hard macadamia nut shell

Before sweet new life

Can emerge

The ancestors are in our bones

Urging us on

The fire burns our creation

Our sex our conception

Is already here

The new beginning, has always been with us

In every ending beginning is set free

They kiss like lovers do

As friends do

Like hope does with faith

From the earth, it rises

From the peoples before us, it rises

From the future, it rises.

Energy of Life, is rising

Through me

Like sap through a tree

I rise, Arise, I rise

Till I am in the knowing

I see the knowing

That knows all

All knowing Knowing All We Are the Knowing!

SKYLAR J WYNTER - 2021

HUMAN IDENTITY

There seems to be an increasing desirability to subdivide and label every idiosyncrasy that makes up the synchronicity of humanity. I have noticed this has seeded a concept there is a right and wrong of, and between, us. To combat that, I want to identify as human only.

I know our individual needs, secreted in the gaps in our own story, means not everyone will want the same thing, but please, when you look at me, see only a human being because the me I want you to know is hidden beneath layers of skin and bone, accent and clothes and it’s not always a comfortable fit or indicative, that what you see is what you’ll get I am not, my age, weight or genital set. Neither do my eyes, height, nor colour of my skin tell you anything, except generalisations about how I fit into a society using classifications to make us identifiable.

Sub-classes of Human to separate us into groups of people instead of, Species: Human; united, as a group of individuals.

I am not interested in your sexuality, gender, or colour of your skin because media is making it the trendy thing.

I am interested because you are a fellow human being, ergo connected to me by all we have in common.

Fascinating, because of all the things we don’t.

Valuable to each other, because our history and heritage has imbibed us with important, intuitive, sacred knowledge. Stories, customs, generational and cultural wisdoms to be shared to unite instead of divide, us.

Classification singles out characteristics that segregate and diminish the perfect fusion of all that is human.

Is that world we want future generations to come into?

MICHAEL COLLINS - SEPTEMBER 2022

FIVE HUNDRED ACRES

Five hundred acres of gum trees and scrub... And all we have to do is... nothing... Or almost nothing: drive around in a Four Wheel Drive Toyota Landcruiser; keep an eye on the chickens and cows... It is a farm and we have just dropped some acid ... A shot of Mindfulnessthough nobody called the state we were in that... not back then.

Stoned... Completely... Absolutely... Both of us... without a question of doubt... off our faces! We were 'there'... Totally!

Your mother told us she wanted us to weed the garden... There was no garden… Weeds? Yes. Garden? No.

Now she is dying and asking for you...

But you yourself have been killed in a car crash... swerving to avoid some animal ... Or so Vischia said: and she should know... She was with you.

So the garden-that-isn't has weeds no more and we are just laughing at the dirt... and the clouds... and the sky... and... the man who came to sell us life insurance... who smiled a lot, but could not see the joke... and who did not particularly want to ride with us in the Four Wheel Drive Toyota Landcruiser

No-one blamed him for that...

He smiled (again) and left.

Now she sees you and it is her turn to smile!

Your sister says: 'Only the dying see the dead'.

But I have since learned that that is not necessarily so ... It was an internment-for-two.

Another weed gets plucked (there is always another weed)

And we drink copious amounts of water

And read bits of books, and lament that the flood destroyed so much...

And drop more acid when the time is right

... to drop more acid.

(In memory of my friend Tony Cockcroft and his mother, Joy).

GEOFFREY LENNIE - NOVEMBER 2021

THE LANDLORD OF POVERTY STREET (a

song)

In Average Street, a landlord - kneels beside his bed

And prays to God in Heaven to deliver his weekly bread

He prays for his tenants’ welfare on knees devoutly bent

In pious supplication he prays, his tenants will pay the rent

The tenants will pay the rent, the rent

The tenants will pay the rent

He prays to God in Heaven

That his tenants will pay the rent

He felt a spiritual calling to house a nation’s poor

To ease the pain of suffering, to strike at evil’s core

In saintly fiscal communion with God’s banker, as it were

The Holy Ghost anointed him God’s chosen entrepreneur

God’s chosen entrepreneur

The Holy Ghost anointed him

God’s chosen entrepreneur

With borrowed, divine dollars, he bought a terrace of nine

In Poverty Street in Miseryville, the block ‘tween Howl and

Whine

Knocked around and requiring repair a little will need to be spent

But at the going rental rate – that's thirty-two per cent

Thirty-two per cent, per cent

That’s thirty-two per cent

From a Ford to a BMW

Mister thirty-two per cent

Time passed by and his tenants repaid Heaven’s merciful loan

And the property willed by Our Saviour, now the landlord’s own

God’s earthly work completed, via hallowed Bank and Church

Now another wealthy landlord – to wield a landlord’s birch.

Yes, he wields a landlord's birch, oh yes

He wields a landlord’s birch

God’s earthly work completed now

He wields a landlord’s birch

In Affluent Street, a landlord – on knees devoutly bent

Offers thanks to God above for his thirty-two per cent

He prays for the hungry everywhere, but mostly in Poverty Street

Where, his tenants having paid the rent, can barely afford to eat.

Mister thirty-two per cent

He prays to God his tenants survive

To pay the next week’s rent.

PIP SHHEENEN - SEPTEMBER 2024

THE STING

“The drummer in my first band was killed in Vietnam. He kind of signed up and joined the marines. Bart Hanes was his name. He was one of those guys that was jokin’ all the time, always playin’ the clown.” Bruce Springsteen the hospital bed is empty he left the nurse says the birthday cake in its box is heavy In my hand okay I say she says he's not well I know the guy was a Viet vet and a homeless alkie I'd known him then for about six months from refuge shifts he invited me to share a swig of his “sting” not a goer mate but what's ya story? mine first? I'd worn badges Stop the War protested in 1973 in Civic Park for Moratorium he'd lost a brother in a forward patrol in a booby trap think “Apocalypse” the brother had joined when he’s conscripted back home his wife and baby were killed in a car accident on the way to pick him up from the pub on Anzac Day days after the hospital I go to the ‘Loo squats to see if he's there nuh him gone sis bro was real sick him dead yesterday the cake is still in my fridge so I cut it up and eat a piece decorating it with tears I cry for decades to come I know he felt seen by me he knew I'd heard his agony not at the funeral imagine soil handfuls thunking on wet wood remember a larrikin with brown eyes full of grief whose story would have broken any one of us.

CLARK GORMLEY – MAY 2020

Meditation to Stockton Michael meditates on the ferry among loud teenagers and tired commuters eyes closed, hands on his knees an island of stillness on the gently rolling harbour.

Unconcerned that he’s missing the spectacle of dolphins and huge coal ships his daily practice renders the four-minute transit to Stockton timeless.

ANDREW SHILLAM - MAY 2021

NIGHT SONNETS

1.

All night in the long room, moving towards Light, as reality slips its cages

And swims the luminous sea of ages

And nurses are walking their rounds in wards

On the edge of dawn. Giant staircases

Tower in fields. Waking to toss and turn

Each hour. Forgotten details return

In darkness; the staring eyes in faces

Pale, of friends long gone, in the drag of night

Caught, in the long room moving towards light,

Plovers calling across the ancient field,

Ear to board, on knees bent as if to pray,

In the branch-scraping-beacon night, kneeled,

And morning rolling endlessly away.

2.

Groping with blind words in the singing night,

I have busted the shackles of this form,

In the graveyard shift, when realisations swarm

And manifestations move towards light;

Factory workers, nurses on their rounds,

Illuminated figures stacking shelves

In supermarkets, acid-induced elves

Climbing from pot plants as a horn sounds

On some distant highway, pale faced Goths

Drawn to midnights flickering flame like moths,

And loud drunken figures staggering home.

Reality comes apart at the seams

And shadows, climbing from the graveyard loam,

Enter the private masquerade of dreams.

3.

Opaque words now transparent, I enter

The singing night, where thought disintegrates

In lacquered darkness, and the air vibrates

With hymn-like screams rising to dismember

The mind. Here, across rooftops, lightning plays

And the earth, quickening to meet the sky,

Expands, ancient dreams filling the mind’s eye;

That black branch-scratched record of our days

Stretching back into the primordial night.

And now, in the street, dark rain falls. The bright

Lightning flashes against the window panes.

The eye returns, the page white with words black.

After thunder breaks the stillness remains

And the ebbing thoughts now are surging back.

4. 5.

In wood ribbed rooms, where my pen scratches

Night, stillness is permeated by dreams.

Memory, long held in the ancient beams

Of this house, released and moonlight catches

On wind shaken branches, scraping Time thin,

Singing like reeds. On the night wind bats fly

And banana leaves, dark against the sky

Flap slowly over chess board tiles and tin.

The wind slides and, in waves, the room expands to

Meet the night, where gardens writhe and cats mew.

Here, where thought stops something else takes hold,

The wind rolls and the mind reacts like skin

Automatically tightening in the cold,

The night expanding till the world falls in.

There is a widening of the mind’s eye

In these hours before dawn, dreams begin

To seep, rising through gaps in the thin skin

Of walls. Now a passing train, sounding high,

Grinds silver and blue metal on its rails,

And, out of their frames, the shapes of horses,

A river of manes and hooves that forces

Its way into the room, their swishing tails

And breath smoking in the whinnying night.

In the field of time, where patterned light

Flickers on a turning globe, a ticking

Metronome, used by artist and doctor,

Is acting now on the blue night, seizing

Our thoughts and leaving the mind in rapture.

Elizabeth

Lish Škec - SEPTEMBER 2023.

A

special occasion.

For Komninos Zervos

Halva was exotic.

A sweet from the delicatessen.

Sometimes mum would take me there to pick out a piece.

Not too bighalva was expensive.

I imagined women making enormous bricks of it on a remote hill in Greece overlooking a valley of grape vine with fig and olive trees. The sun always shining. Halva was happiness.

I loved the way the word sounded

H a l v a how my tongue moved saying it.

H a l v a

We only ate it at extra special occasions.

Like forbidden fruits.

Last night, I ate a piece of Baklava the first in more than ten years.

Sweet rich syrup set my mouth to a smile, made me laugh.

It wasn’t even a special occasion and all could think was

H a l v a.

Elizabeth

Lish

Škec

- MAY 2023

Joker Moon

If only I could pluck you to wear around my neck though you are rock and I am flesh. Inconstant transient moon. Companion of solitude. You always look better when I’m in love. The pearl of Autumn lightbulb in a winter sky, summer’s sigh of cool relief. A spring view enhancement!

I stopped writing poems about you when I grew up.

I never saw the man in the moon Just an old lady knittingLongest scarf in the universe! She looked lonely like me.

PETER J BROWN - SEPTEMBER 2021

Monitor Lizard

He slithers in over dry leaves, a rope of hunting muscle. His bones curve along the soft sheaves, rustling like lace in a bustle, toward our fire, us, our child, innocent creature hunting birds and eggs; the soft shiver of hackles rising wild in me, absurd; his spindly legs, pentadactyl limbs, five fingers spreading in greeting, the dinosaur meeting the old Adam, oldest Adam, and heading away from the fine-fleshed mammal, fleeting flash on the fossil record. Looking down I find a spade to hand. You can always find blunt instruments in the bush. I met someone who killed a monitor, ate it and skinned it, mined the dappled lizard-flesh from the earth to quell his fear and fill his gut; those hackles rising, fixed on us from birth, not bony plates, not spines, not fur, but still the nerves light, the fear flits across the synapses. Around my finger a ring curls, Dreamsnake, sapphire set in head of dragon, fits like a glove, jewel of a Viking king.

The thing is that we evolved from this, mighty archaeopteryx-hunters, wonders of creation; the dinosaurs kiss from a distance and the crack in the fossil record sunders.

PETER J BROWN - MAY 2022

Wishing

Four families combine at Mermaid Flats to Walk the beach, under the radiant moon. We gather within reach of each other, warm as peach, while the clouds scud across the sky’s blue ruin.

And Sue says, “Look, there’s a witch, riding a dolphin”, and brother, looking up I swear it’s true.

Down beachward the children run, eleven all told, toward the glimpse of endless sea rolling cold blue. Walking, Emma catches a pure white crab, which crawls in a friendly fashion, hitching a ride. We walk for a while and she points out her wishing star, which gives her strength inside. We roll down sandhills, distantly illumined by the lights of Nelson Bay, which twinkle like love on the tide, and I feel within the sense of surreal films, Led Zeppelin, and a kind of Neolithic loving pride.

As we return, she shows me an angel, riding above the moon,

And this is true, I swear, as true as tune.

Her wishes all come true, she says, as if Fate served her clear-cut cold as old prophetic rune.

Her wishes, may they come as full and light as rolling down a dune, may they be bright as diamonds, and may they all come soon.

My Neri and my Liam, I see them dancing in the water, the blue of wonder, the night all still and glassy as forests after thunder, and Wendy, who’s a Princess, with a mind so keen and bright, standing still and tall in the quiet lunar light.

BRAD EVANS - MAY 2017

that last poem

I can no longer remember, although it was written only a short while ago they come and they go these things that are fuelled by music, tragedy and smiling faces, of those events that confirm a continual fucking up of what some call civilisation.

I thank you for my life for letting me bear witness to the tragedies, the atrocities, and those few lighter moments that make my existence worth its momentary flicker But if they offered me immortality those gods of my imagination: a forever life without a thinking second I would rather decline and let go just like that last poem I can no longer remember.

BRAD EVANS - MAY 2020

The first job I had...

The first job I had I was given the task of renting out windsurfers to anybody, where I would clip mast to board and drag it down to the shoreline.

A cool breeze rippled the water a sure breeze - free of influence and involvement over the water and something spoke to me…

The first job I had I lasted a little under an hour. The employer was kind and paid me $3 - for a full hour’s work. I took the money and went to the nearest shop and bought a chocolate bar.

I ate and walked my way back along a low shoreline following the breeze and the stink of dying weed.

BRAD EVANS - MAY 2022

a jigsaw puzzle

it was there or at least fragments of it. pieces separate - scattered across pavement and road - where lay old grease & empty bottles and where rain's rendering had made parts soggy & unworkable. If you try to touch them, they will fall apart between gentle fingers & the footfalls of the booted ignorant.

At a glance you'll catch some of it, while from another - small colours, haunting images & the curiouslycurled shapes of stress. To leave it there may be careless to a good memory or necessary for a bad one.

He had no need for space or a place to be buried indeed. His poems, in their breathing, lie inside unlined pockets of ocular force. After the direct hit, fellow soldiers stood up & collected what scraps were leftmarked a little Belgian ground with a simple inscription: ONE OF THE WAR POETS. Earlier spotted him deep in thoughtpaying no heed to the sonic scream of the incoming shell. BRAD EVANS - MARCH 2023 Hulme

REESE NORTH – MARCH 2021

BOUNDLESS

On the shores of Ash Island there is a cove shaped as a horseshoe made of sand and seashells.

The smell of salt is thick here and brown seaweed clings like mermaids' fingers to an ancient rock that juts above the water just before the ocean makes its presence felt; its bogey, the undertow, can drag you out beyond the lights of Stockton to a place where even Nobbys lighthouse disappears.

I go there sometimes to that place beyond the lights;

I lie there in a wooden skiff my head upon a pillow propped against the prow where I watch the stars and listen to the lapping wet and divine the depth below me. There is peace here a peace I've never known before; a sense of things of meanings that take no shape in words.

I go there sometimes to that place of stars where sky and sea are mirrored and horizons don't exist.

REESE NORTH – MARCH 2021

A SACRED LAND (Lake Condah mission Victoria, 1985)

I slept in the shade of a sacred land a bush breeze spoke to me of ghost-grey boughs, gum-red flowers and afternoon shadows on water blossoms.

In the evening moonbeams splashed over the land. Green mists rose where rivers snake and dreams of sleeping creatures roused the silent wings of owls.

I woke in the shadow of a sacred land there sat the old man watching faces in the flames both warmed and chilled by the open hearth of his memories. He spoke deep into twilight about smoke-stacks on his riverbanks (the wound that bleeds within his soul) of a shadow that breathes over his people and of beauty that was old (the wisdom of a land beyond time). He took me down around the stones spoke of a cave where hands had woven a figure into the rock.

He told me of a spirit there where the tiger snake resides and of the eagle's eyrie.

Out in the wind a wild bird's song echoed inside the caverns and rippled along the billabong.

Beside the loamy river we heard a woman's song her withered lingo mourned remains of murdered bones, the last massacre of her people back inside the stones.

Her mourning song flowed on the river flowed on out to sea.

A sunbeam burst through the salt mist and set her mourning song free.

If you listen to the breeze back inside the stones on a summer's afternoon a black flower opens and hums a sacred tune.

REESE NORTH – NOVEMBER 2025

FOR THE HOMELESS CHILDREN a ( A Triptych)

1. ‘Ubi Sunt?’

Where have all my family gone?

I see them walking down unfamiliar avenues, going somewhere beyond my reach. Sometimes late at night I hear them speak in park gardens where I sleep, where winter waits & flowers break when winter’s finger taps & petals fall. My days are sombre yellow grey, between two seasons I tramp the streets looking for an open door, but I, an abandoned child, no longer ask for more.

2. ‘Being Human — 1983’

I arrived in Melbourne with the arse out of my jeans. No matter how much I tried my luck soured, & the air grew thick with desperation, like the dregs I drank with at the Builder’s Arms, the Champion, & the Royal Hotel, the three pubs on Gertrude street, Fitzroy where naked women danced in cages for an all male audience who tossed them coins, & the occasional crumpled $5 bill to perform degrading, & explicit acts on the cage floor for the amusement of toothless men with grim smiles.

The streets of Fitzroy were far more callous than the pubs.

One evening I saw a gang of skinheads bullying an old couple, they ran away when they saw me taking photographs, unaware I’d run out of film.

I saw the body of an old beggar being removed from the kids’ playground overshadowed by 4/ 20 storeys high public housing towers where hundreds of families struggled to keep the rent paid & food on the table.

The final obscenity that drove me mad with rage was the discovery of discarded foetal remains in a plastic shopping bag at the base of one of the Towers, not far from the corner where homeless 10-year-olds pled for enough to buy a hamburger, & seagulls pecked each other

3. ‘Some are born to Endless Night’

— William Blake

So here we are runaways drawn together by mortality — the world a little bleaker than before each of us a stranger to ourselves & each other Innocents, doomed to walk the streets alone where wildflowers peer through cracks

in factory walls where rabid dogs growl in alleyways & dark figures lurk in shadows light begins to fade we huddle together afraid love isn’t here but at least for a moment, in this cold vastness, we share our human warmth at last the stars come out the moon arrives, we turn our backs to each other & walk away.

ERIC WERKHOVEN - MAY 2016

DRAWING TOGETHER

We draw these pictures of people.

We draw these lovers floating in a blue sky.

Gestures where the hands drop gifts.

And eyes not clouded over from the wear and tear of the struggle, which is both an earthly and cosmic dance.

Where two lovers meet, and love one another intimately, like drawing water out of a deep well, for the children to drink.

Raise up to the many tunes of creativity and passion that lays submerged, because love needs to be protected.

We draw these people to fill one page after the other.

Some afternoons the floor is covered with their celebrations.

And we graciously collect them, to work on them later.

Lovers caught in an embrace, seeking shelter in the murmuring heartbeat.

Stroking the paper skin.

No need to erase all those lines, but for a few smudges of labour that reconnects us to the piquant world.

Our love flowing out towards these joint stages of becoming whole, to prolong the gesture where two hands touch each other.

ERIC WERKHOVEN - MARCH 2020

MINDSCAPE

Behind the base line, the self is constantly reinvented.

The miraculous impossibility of each thought, wrestled and subjected to more tests.

Which words will make this transition, to rise above this landscape?

Set forth the intention.

Set forth the various delay tactics and you may find me there concocting up a more lethal mix, alas I must admit it seems quite similar.

To what end, if it isn’t a new beginning.

To draw these finite comparisons and reach forth with these longer tentacles, areas previous off limit, to retain a proportion of tactile stuff.

Herald forthwith how this is done time and time again.

An exercise of restraint and wild imagination.

A line, a drawing, a photo shoot and there you go it is instantly recorded.

ERIC

WERKHOVEN - MAY 2020

BIRD

This or that space, between and beyond us is in part, the space birds and body.

A jolt went through me, as I realized its significance in addressing the leap towards liberation.

To imagine the power beneath their wings.

To imagine the power along the entire length of our arms and torso.

The dance of flying, means I have to strengthen my shoulders, my chest and my eyesight to scan the distance, below and within.

And I practise this most diligently, to attune my strength to that of a bird in flight.

ROBYN WERKHOVEN - SEPTEMBER 2019

WOMEN WITH WORDS

Women with words of great joy

Halcyon day dreams

I will give you my heart

Deep emerald eyes

Curvaceous goddess of life

Focused female form

Do you hear my smile?

Adorned by layers of words

Poetry of love

The music plays on

Lost in lyrical day dreams

Dressed in black writing

ROBYN

WERKHOVEN - SEPTEMBER 2019

WOMEN WITH WORDS

Woman of steel

Pink skin and rosy red lips

Strong arms and strong will.

Crazy eyes and mind

Grinning smiles and dancing feet

Scream your song of life

Contorted bodies

Symbols of old mystery

Love found and lost

Ephemeral dreams

Lost in lettering of life

Layers of feelings

GEORGE GITTOES AI ARTIST

AI ARTIST George Gittoes

In 2022 Hellen and I took Serica, my aboriginal granddaughter from my adopted son Bruce Shillingsworth , to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Serica is an artist and relies on me to teach her all I can about art history. She had travelled to New York, as I had done when I was young, to experience International Art. As we entered MoMA our attention was immediately taken by a huge screen with back projected abstract imagery which resembled my 1976 ‘Rainbow Way’ Film. I was stunned by it and sat down to fully experience it. I could not watch it to the end as I needed to take Serica to see Demoiselle’s De Avignon and Vincent’s Starry Night. Serica had given me the challenge of trying to explain the history of modern art, painting by painting, in an afternoon. This did not leave time to investigate anything about the artist who had made the work which had impressed me. The thought did, however, keep coming through my mind ‘This was what Kandinsky, Pollock and others were striving to achieve with abstraction. Could what I had just seen be the realization of everything modern art was progressing towards?’

On a personal level I had watched the display long enough to observe that the movement and patterns had their source in conventional film footage of tidal phenomenon, where waves meet with beach and sea rocks. I had used the same phenomenon to capture my ‘Rainbow Way’ experimental film footage and photographs back in 1975-6.

LINK FILM RAINBOW WAY: https://vimeo.com/178868149?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

LINK FILM WAR PAINT : ABC ARTS 2014-15 https://vimeo.com/810365907/c8b188805c Page 180: Rainbow Way Film strip. - George Gittoes 1975 –6.

I only recently learnt who the artist was when a Time Magazine’s cover (September 8 ,2025) caught my eye on a Newsagency shelf. The cover had an image made by Refik Anadol which resembled what I had seen at MoMA. The cover could easily be mistaken for one of my ‘Rainbow Way’ series of photographs from 1976. Back then my abstract photos were regularly on the covers of magazines like Australian Photography and Camera and Cine. But Anadol had used AI to achieve it and not the play of spectral light reflected on and under the moving ocean. For the Time Cover Anadol fine-tuned his studio AI system to absorb and reprocess an archive containing 5,000 covers of Time Magazine. The Time article describes this as ‘The resulting abstract visualisation, featuring Anadol’s signature flowing, molecular aesthetic, represents the AI “dreaming” about a century of TIME’S visual history.’ Reading that, I could not help thinking, “Refik has atomised the violent and barbaric side of the history I’ve been covering with my paintings and documentaries for last 40 years”.

From the Time story I learnt that the exhibition I had seen at MoMA in 2022 had attracted over 3 million people. MoMA made reproductions of its entire collection of paintings available for Refik to ingest into his AI program. The audience were seeing a chewed-up version of Modern Art ingested and then spewed back, the same way AI had used the time covers to eat Modern History. But what the Time article did not mention was that the particles, like the dots in the pointillist paintings of Seurat, had been swirled around and given dynamic moving from being applied to film footage of the ocean’s turbulence.

Anadol has discovered a way to use AI to visualise a kind of mystical experience as ‘trippy’ as ‘Rainbow Way’ and like the mythical aboriginal story, about the journey of the Rainbow Serpent, he uses the word ‘dreaming’ to describe it. When my Rainbow Way film was screened at the Film Makers Coop in Darlinghurst in the 70’s, viewers would drop acid to ‘trip’ as they watched.

My abstract photographs and films captured phenomenon that I had not created with my own hands or mind like a painter in a studio. I would take my cameras and tripod with its prisms down to the sea edge and find ways of placing them to manipulate the rainbow light and press the record button during selected moments when beautiful things could be recorded through my lens. Refracted sunlight and the movement of the ocean were my equivalent of Refik’s AI machines. What was created was beyond human imagination. No wonder Refik describes his art as Machine Hallucinations.

LINKS Refik Anadol: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzOhVtmL3jh/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_iedYhOXwp/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/Co8SCguj1Wb/

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGqUqkuIBUs/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/reel/CxVh5pZuGZZ/?hl=en

The weakness and strength of AI art is that it is not made with human hands and does not spring from human imagination. It can produce results that are too complex for Artists to create. The general art public have always loved mind boggling detail back to Hieronymus Bosch. Hollywood is employing this technology to animate science fiction worlds and spectacles for its blockbuster movies. It is often hard to work out whether the scenes we are viewing have real human extras or if they have been created using CGI (computer generated imagery).

Back in the 70’s I helped pioneer colour laser holography with Zoltan Hegedus at the CSIRO. I sculpted ceramic shapes similar to the light reflections I had filmed and produced holograms that resembled 3D versions my Rainbow Way photographs. At the time I predicted that Holography would be seen everywhere as the most exciting new artform of the century. I was wrong, it did not take off and the only examples of its present-day use are to be found on bank cards. The same fate could be the case with Refik’s AI creations.

When I discovered Refik’s work at MoMA I was unaware that the National Gallery of had Victoria had commissioned Quantum Memories, a major work of his for its Triennial in 2020. I could have seen it in Melbourne two years earlier. Refik is Turkish American and for a 40-year-old artist he is doing very well having made millions of dollars from commissions and selling NFTs.

Just one of his NFTs sold at auction for 8 million. Buyers can have a large flat screen in their home, where a painting would normally hang, allowing Refik’s animated hallucination to play on a continuous loop.

I am kicking myself. Seven years ago, I decided to take my prisms out of storage and walk them down to the sea rocks at Werri Beach and begin filming Rainbow Way phenomenon again, using my modern digital camera. Filming with 16mm film in the past was incredibly expensive and limiting. I was able to film hours of beautiful mystical light shapes dancing and swirling in a dimensional space unlike normal reality. A space cubists would relate to. Art Zine Magazine published a story I wrote about it titled ‘Lux Mysterium’ (see link) . :

https://issuu.com/robynwerkhoven/docs/arts_zine_march_2022_1d3bcb4a95c797

I had so much material I could have sold multiple sections of it as NFTs but never got around to working out how to do this. Like Refik I could see how buyers could view their unique purchases on flat screens.

George Gittoes - Rainbow Way still 1975. Taken from 35mm Kodak Colour Slide.

Magazine covers featuring George Gittoes ‘ Rainbow Way’ photographs from 1976.

Article in Camera & Cine magazine on George Gittoes film Rainbow Way 1976-77.

For the last couple of years, we have been using AI to save costs on postproduction for our documentaries. It is now possible to save thousands of dollars by having AI assist with processes like colour grading which in the past we had to pay exorbitant fees to have done at specialist facilities. As a result, I am comfortable enough with AI to start using it to enhance the abstract rainbow way footage I have recorded digitally at the ocean’s edge. All of life on earth sprang from the interaction of sunlight with the ocean. Back in the 70’s and early 80’s I projected my abstract Rainbow Way films onto the rock walls of Wattamolla in the Royal National Park and other outdoor venues accompanied by dancers, props and music in our TREE (Theatre Reaching Environments Everywhere) shows which attracted audiences in their thousands. Refik is being asked to project his AI hallucinations at events and performances around the world. I cannot help wondering what would have happened if, back then, I had presented my Rainbow Way work in the US and Europe. While the work of Refik Anadol is awe inspiring it does not share our human experience. AI machines can never know what it is like to be us. While Special Effects movies using CGI are superficially entertaining, I still prefer a well scripted drama about real human relationships in the real world. The work I have done in war zones bringing stories and images back from the heart of human darkness and showing what it feels like to be there could never be done by a machine. Machines do not suffer the pain of what we feel when watching what is happening in Gaza and Ukraine or know the joy of walking through a rainforest or snorkelling on a coral reef.

George Gittoes - Rainbow Way still 1975.

Taken from 35mm Kodak Colour Slide.

CURRENTLY SCREENING ON CURRENTLY SCREENING SBS ONDEMAND

YELLOW HOUSE, AFGHANISTAN

https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/movie/yellow-house-afghanistan/2435905603913

Yellow House Afghanistan TRAILER

https://vimeo.com/1026796896/d3cf1562f7 SNOW MONKEY

https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/movie/snow-monkey/797912643939

MISCREANTS OF TALIWOOD

https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/movie/the-miscreants/1567408707818

LOVE CITY JALALABAD

https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/movie/love-city-jalalabad/766390339564

GEORGE GITTOES

George Gittoes is a celebrated Australian artist, an internationally acclaimed film producer, director and writer.

Gittoes’ work has consistently expressed his social, political and humanitarian concern and the effects of injustice and conflict"I believe there is a role for contemporary art to challenge, rather than entertain. My work is confronting humanity with the darker side of itself."

As an artist Gittoes has received critical acclaim including the Blake Prize for Religious Art (Twice) and Wynn Prize. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of NSW. His films have won many International Awards and in 2015 he was bestowed the Sydney Peace Prize, in recognition of his life’s work in contributing to the peace-making process.

Black Milk to Kyiv – Humanity In Danger

HELLEN ROSE

Black Milk to Kyiv – Humanity In Danger

Hellen Rose

One day hurtling through the narrow side streets of Jalalabad 2024 clad in a black sparkling hijab in the back seat of Hitji’s Rickshaw, he spins past colourful trucks full of chickens clucking and squawking like he’s was handling a Lamborghini Diabolo on some kind of a Rio race track of his vivid imagination, he also has the knack of getting all hot and bothered, accidentally swerving towards women on the street, discreet leering, that’s also when I realised that men have the ability to ‘see through’ anything, even a burqua!! As we actually ‘made air’ over some kind of road hump and came rollicking back down, tyres bouncing, in that moment I realised that I needed to do a Punk Rock version of the beautiful 1000-year-old Pashtun song Rasha Janana and started texting

Jeffrey Wegener the Drummer with the idea. It wasn’t until getting into Jim Moginie’s famous Oceanic Studios, months later in Australia that it came blasting into reality, full tilt with Jim on electric guitar and the always brilliant Mick Harvey on bass and I can’t wait for you and our Afghan friends, to hear it!

The film just screened at the Warsaw Film Festival, to great acclaim and we are negotiating a sale with Polish TV, the other tracks on the Yellow House Afghanistan soundtrack, are a combination of recordings from the Yellow House musicians including Murtezah who features also in our film Snow Monkey (also on SBS On Demand) and Peshawar musicians Ustad Amanat Ali Khan from the famous Ahkbar Ali Khan family.

Please see Yellow House Afghanistan also currently screening on SBS.

Humanity In Danger is the third updated version of a Trilogy of films we made in Ukraine, although there are small parts in Afghanistan, as we were travelling between the two countries and making Yellow House Afghanistan concurrently.

The intensity of travel between the two was quite strange, the ancient, cobbled roads of Kyiv and the dusty prehistoric mountain Roads of Afghanistan actually have a lot in common, they were both on the ancient silk road and traded between each other for Centuries, Music, Art and crafts, clothing with ‘magical embroidery’ patterns full of mystical meaning common to Ukraine and also Afghanistan.

When creating Humanity in Danger, I realised that the film is not just about the horrors inflicted upon the people of Ukraine but the cruelty of humanity upon each other, every culture on earth has their own cultures blood on their hands along with, mostly, their closest neighbours it seems and how as a species we must overcome this and somehow and focus on saving our precious planet.

Page 188: Pen/ink drawing by Ukraine artist Ave Libertatemaveamor

I had already made a soundtrack for Ukraine Guernica - Art Not War so I decided with this soundtrack to not only include the music from the film but to also add a song from the ‘sister film’ Yellow House Afghanistan, as well as other songs inspired on the same themes written around the same time. I added the sub title ‘Half Dream’ to the album because of this.

Rasha Janana is a traditional Pashtun song that I translated into English with the help of my old friend Zhwandoon, who has helped me with translations and learning Pashto over many years now. It was strange to see him again at the Yellow House Jalalabad, he was very ill but had survived the Taliban takeover along with so many others who were surprised (to their relief, I’m sure) that they were spared. The song is called Rasha Janana and is a song written by a woman, so long ago that no one knows when but it really is descriptive of the nomadic Kuchi tribes as the translation into English we hear the woman calling to her lover , “Come my love, hurry as tomorrow we may leave”, the Kuchi pack up their tents and pack their camel trains and move to forage for food and graze their animals through the valleys and up the steep mountains of the Hindu Kush, the highest peak 7, 690 m. The style of singing is a kind of mountain singing, where instruments and vocal style is cultivated to carry sound from mountain to mountain, across the barren and craggy reaches through the clouds towards the sun in the day and touching the moon at night.

Another song I wrote for this album is called ‘Darling It Hurts’ a threnody, and it’s about the second war zone I found myself in, at around the age of 20, Kings Cross Sydney, the suburb we all lived in was the once Bohemian Darlinghurst, we use to call it Darling it Hurts. Its about my friends that I dearly miss who died of Aids, Drug addiction, suicide, you name it. Generation X. The 60’s and 70’s in Australia hadn’t really bought about the social change the younger generations demanded through peace and love, so our generation ‘acted out’ in a ‘monstrous’ demonstrative style that shocked middle Australia to the core, much more than the Hippy movement ever did, with visions of boot girls, their hair all shaved off or spiked up, teased into birds nest beehives and it was all played out in the same area of Darlinghurst, Kings Cross, Newtown and Woolloomooloo where our home, a giant warehouse ‘Squat’, known as The Gunnery loomed, lit up at all hours, wild looking people moving in and out and around the hub, music blasting up the cliff side that rises up to Kings Cross, it pulsed in a then desolate and run down wharf area where the dead bodies of those who ‘did wrong’ in the Cross were often dumped or junkies who’d taken ‘hot shots’ stiffened in parked cars, it was however, the coolest and fiercest venue and studio space in Sydney from 1985 to 1991, physically fought for by us, most of us only in our early 20’s.

Pen/ink drawing by Ukraine artist Ave Libertatemaveamor.

As well as being in independent theatre Companies, various bands and Performance Groups I was also working with the legendary ‘Pub Rock’ band Beasts of Bourbon and it was while living at the Gunnery in Woolloomooloo that the Album Black Milk was created. The now famous photographs taken by Tony Mott were taken in my living quarters at the Gunnery, decorated by me and that included a hanging mannequin, I called Rhoda, named after the child star from the 1956 horror film The Bad Seed. The story of how I acquired her is quite strange, the memory is a little blurry, but I recall her being ‘looted’ from a smashed store window. The police raided us frequently at the Gunnery, I use to taunt them with quips like, “Is this where you bring the junior pigs for training, ‘coz you wouldn’t get away with it up in the Cross?” One female cop pointed in disgust at ‘hanging Rhoda’ “My god look at that”, she pointed, and I replied, “You should be disgusted at that, because that’s exactly symbolic of what happens to young women in our society and your part of it!” That shut her up and her face came over all pale, she may have known more than I, after all I had only been four years out of the Juvenile justice system… but that’s another story. Just recently in September, Kim Salmon reached out to me and invited me back on stage with the Beasts, for a commemoration event for our dearly departed band mates who really were some of the greatest contributors to Australian Culture and gone too soon, I was deeply honoured and know how tough the world back then for those who dared to step outside the ‘norm’ was. The creatively explosive times around my dinning room table of writing songs, telling stories, listening to records at all hour’s day and night with those who have gone, I hold closely to my heart forever and ‘those’ are too many. I still have the table outside on the balcony of my current studio and there the carvings dug in, made from many a creative revery remain. Late at night sometimes I catch them all, my friends, lost too young, sitting around that table and writing songs, Spencer Jones, Brian Hopper, Tony Pola, James Baker and others like Brett Ford from Lubricated Goat and Ren, Louis Tillet, John Murphy, Sybilla from Matrimony. I think they like visiting my new place by the sea. We who still reside in the realm of this mortal coil, as Tex says, are, “Still kicking against the pricks!”.

‘Murderess’ is a song inspired by a pulp fiction book title ‘Can Ladies Kill?’ that features the mandatory buxom blonde, with 50’s style tight dress and pointing a ‘Saturday night special’ hand gun at someone unseen, that title and a recent news report of a thirteen year old girl in England who stabbed her mother to death and burned the house down with her mother in it, who then went to the playground and swung on the swings. The era of ‘victim blaming’, runaways and child abuse victims with no recourse to real justice, was how generation X and previous generations lived, this was my first war zone and I’m lucky to be alive. Homophobia, yobs coming into Oxford Street to ‘gay bash’, police bashing Gays, the notorious corrupt cop, Roger Rogerson ran Darlinghurst, and it was a criminals paradise, nightmare. Girls and boys were charged with being ‘uncontrollable’, sent to ‘mental institutions’ if they spoke up about child abuse, some killed their abusers like Mark Van Krevell who killed serial podophile and Mayor of Wollongong Frank Arkell and Debbie Adams, who I actually taught in the Mum Shirl Unit at Silverwater, stabbed her vile mother who should actually be in prison for life, poor Debbie was already so damaged she may have to spend the rest of her life in jail. That is what the song Murderess is about, about our youth in danger. “School girl with a knife, took her own mother’s life, she was seen in the playground, Oh what did you do? What happened to you…? Now in the era of Maxwell and Epstein it’s about the victims of these predators and how the world is fighting for justice that seems so reluctant in occurring. Over 20,000 Ukraine children have been captured and stolen by Putin and are being groomed into kill their own people… this is the type of sickness that putin thrives on and that makes him smile his creepy sickly smirk…

Performance of album Black Milk by the Beasts of Burbon, with Hellen Rose on stage. Photo courtesy of Hellen Rose.

The ephemeral ‘Ravens Feather’ is dedicated to the new Earth Movement in Kyiv and worldwide where people are inspired by the First Nations cultures to remember that we are all indigenous to this earth, though the people of Ukraine seem to have never forgotten. When we got back home from Ukraine, both films ready for editing, and winding down- we were going on Kayak trips down Broughton Creek, a tributary off the Shoalhaven River. Although it’s called a creek, it’s a very deep river where fish jump and flocks of tiny swallows skim over the water and one day we suddenly saw scores of giant spider webs joined together, with large gold and black Southern Cross Spiders, living like gangs amidst these interlacing, silken networks, all along the banks. “Down by the river, spiders’ webs quiver, gold black bodies shimmer down by that deep river” and of course my Raven friends Hrafen and Morrigan who adopted us, a blue-eyed Raven couple, who love me to feed them by hand on the front balcony. ‘Ravens Feather’ is inspired by the words of Shakespeare “The Earth has music for those who listen” as well as by dear Hrafen who, literally landed, out of the blue, on my balcony railing one day with a thump, as he is rather large, and turned his shiny, ink black feathered head toward me, jerked his black beak forward, to peer deeply, with his two piercing blue eyes, into mine, I was stunned and thrilled at the same time and perhaps I’ve been cast under a spell.

One of the Ukrainian musicians whose music is featured in the film is the fabulous blue haired tattooist, Nadia Kaliametes who is also in the band Heilung, an experimental folk music band whose music is based on texts and runic inscriptions from the Iron and Viking Age’s.

Amidst a new level of darkness, created entirely by humanity, we find children, the children of Gaza and Ukraine who go to bed not knowing if they will survive the bombing in the night. I still have not recovered from seeing the dead bodies of children in the cars on the Irpen Bridge, their little scattered coloured gloves fallen in the mud like confetti with their toys as some ran for their lives, to no avail. ‘Penelopa Rules the World’ was written in Kyiv and the wonderful banjo player form ZWYNTAR, one of the biggest bands in Ukraine and the divine Max Lisnyck- recorded at Eurovox Bomb shelter Music Studios. It’s inspired by the dear little daughter born to the featured artist Ave Libertatemaveamor. All the little children of the world seem to be unable to be protected from ‘political predators’ who have no qualms destroying their homes or killing them. Ave did the artwork for the single cover. The song features in the film, and we created a single release, made especially for the children of Kyiv and Ukraine. We are dedicating any sales funds to the Children’s School in the Hero City Irpen, called ALPA School.

Performance of album Black Milk by the Beasts of Burbon, with Hellen Rose on stage. Photo courtesy of Hellen Rose.

Lament of the Roasting Swan

Once I lived on Lakes

Once I was beautiful

When I was a swan

Misery me

Now I am roasting

And burning furiously

I’m adding a link here from Ukraine Guernica, my cover of the Golliard Monk song created around the thirteenth Century discovered by Carl Orf who then added it along with many others found in the same Monastery to make the Opera, Carmina Burana- the song Olim Lacus Colueram- Once I lived on Lakes, I sang on Mount Dytynka, Zamkhova Gora for my performance piece filmed in Kyiv 2023. I had no idea, until recently that the Swan is a potent symbol of Russian decent because of Tchykovsky’s Swan Lake, it is the symbol for the Russian youth uprising, against the dictator putin., only days ago a crowd of people gathering in St. Petersburg sang

“Cooperative Swan Lake” by Noize MC, whose lyrics condemn Putin’s aggression. After the deaths of Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko in 1982, 1984 and 1985 respectively, state TV played the ballet on a loop! Audiences saw Swan Lake return to their screens for three days straight in August 1991 after the failed August Coup which sought to forcibly seize power from Mikhail Gorbachev.

Now a symbol of resistance, the ballet was aired by the Russian dissident channel TV Rain when it was forced to close in 2022 due to its anti-war stance.

“I want to watch the ballet, let the swans dance. Let the old man shake in fear for his lake let the swans dance,” some lyrics from ‘Swan Lake Cooperative’ read

“Where have you been these eight years, f****** monsters?” “Get rid of Solovyov from the screen, let the swans dance,” the song ends. Solovyov is a Kremlin propagandist on the Russia 1 channel. His surname also means "nightingale," adding a double meaning to the lyrics.

There is something that musicians and artists do and that is ‘listen’ through some kind of psychic sensibility, something called a zeitgeist by the Germans, it’s an instinct also that is animal and that not only helps to keep us alive but creates pathways back and forth from history to now and into the future, like

‘song lines’ for us to navigate the world by, wisdom from the ancient voices mingling with now, words that still live, sounds that we still hear from those whose bodies may be back in the womb of the Great Mother Earth but whose words travel ever forward into the future.

From Black Milk, Hindu Kush to Kyiv the music and lyrics of those passed, travels through and with me.

Pen/ink drawing by Ukraine artist Ave Libertatemaveamor.

Australian Musicians featured on both soundtracks along with myself are Jim Moginie, Mick Harvey and Jeffrey Wegener

A second gig of the album Black Milk by the Beasts of Burbon with me on stage will be on December 12th at the Factory in Newtown.

See you there for some Voodoo Swamp Rock!!: https://www.factorytheatre.com.au/event/the-beasts-3/

Lament of the Roasting Swan: https://music.apple.com/au/album/lament-of-the-roasting-swan/1758479500?i=1758479813

Humanity In Danger : https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/movie/humanity-in-danger/2450635843794

Yellow House Afghanistan: https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/movie/yellow-house-afghanistan/2435905603913

Soundtrack: https://music.apple.com/au/album/one-rose-red-one-rose-white/1823806648?i=1823806650

Heilung: https://www.season-of-mist.com/bands/heilung/

Folkulaka: https://www.mixcloud.com/Folkulaka/listens/

ZWYNTAR: http://zwyntar.com/

HELLEN ROSE

Singer and performer. Awarded BVA Hons, M Teach, Grad Cert Arts and NSW Premier's Award 2014. Manager / Co founder The Yellow House Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

Rose is Co Producer and Music Director at Gittoes Films Pty. Ltd. George Gittoes and Hellen Rose make documentary films, often in and about war zones. Their latest film White Light deals with the gun violence that's rampant in the Englewood neighbourhood of South Side Chicago, USA.

Hellen Rose’s short film "Haunted Burqa," has been selected as a semi finalist for Best Short in the Berlin International Art Film Festival 2022 and the Indie Short Fest, Los Angeles International Film Festival 2022. Links to the Ukraine Guernica Soundtrack

iTunes http://itunes.apple.com/album/id1758479500?ls=1&app=itunes

Apple Music http://itunes.apple.com/album/id/1758479500

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/1N3eC7LRrOUghjroaowV70

Heide Museum of Modern Art

L O R R A I N E F I L D E S

Heide Museum of Modern Art

Lorraine Fildes

In 1934, arts patrons John and Sunday Reed purchased a former dairy farm of 16 acres at Bulleen, Victoria and named it "Heide" in homage to the nearby Heidelberg School of impressionist painters. Their farmhouse, now known as Heide l, quickly became a vibrant hub for avant-garde artists and writers. The Reeds nurtured the careers of influential Australian modernists such as Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Danila Vassilieff and John Perceval.

Heide l is now an art gallery hosting many paintings by these artists.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Heide l was a crucible for progressive art and literature. The Reeds required more space and in 1963, they commissioned architect David McGlashan to design Heide II - a modernist residence envisioned as a “gallery to be lived in.” This structure now houses changing modern art exhibitions.

In 1980, the Reeds sold “Heide” (including Heide l and ll plus the 16 acres of farmland and much of their art collection) to the Victorian Government, paving the way for its transformation into a public museum. Heide officially opened in 1981. Over time, the site expanded to include Heide III, a purpose-built gallery, and a stunning sculpture garden set within the original 16 acres of farmland. Heide is a testament to the Reeds’ vision - a sanctuary for modern and contemporary art.

In this article I will walk you around the 16-acre sculpture garden. One group of sculptures which I really loved were the cows grazing in the paddock at the back of Heide l.

Page 200: Heide l – the original farmhouse which has now become an art gallery housing paintings by Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Danila Vassilieff and John Perceval.

Jeff Thomson (1957 -)

Born in Auckland New Zealand and lives and works in Auckland.

Cows1987

Synthetic polymer paint on corrugated iron

(Black and Red, Grey and Brown cows purchased in 1987. Rainbow cow was a bequest of Barrett Reid in 2000)

The following pictures show “Cows” on the paddock at the back of Heide l.

Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth (1903 – 1975)

Born Wakefield, United Kingdom. Worked and lived in St Ives, United Kingdom.

Summer Dance 1971

Bronze and paint – edition 5/6

(On long term loan from a private collection, Melbourne 2024.)

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor (1954 - )

Born in Mumbai, India. Arrived in 1972 London, England. Lives and works in London. In the Presence of

Form ll 1993

Portland stone (Purchased through the Georges Mora Foundation with funds donated by the Victor Smorgon Charitable Trust 1993.)

Akio Makigawa

Akio Makigawa (1948-1999)

Bornin Karatsu, Japanarrived in Australia 1947. Lived and worked in Melbourne, Victoria.

Untitled 1999

Cor-ten steel (On long term loan from the Estate of Akio Makigawa 2018)

Inge King

Inge King (1915 – 2016)

Born in Berlin, Germany.

Arrived Australia in 1951. Lived and worked in Melbourne, Victoria.

Rings of Saturn 2005-6 Stainless steel (Commissioned through the Heide Foundation with significant assistance from Lindsay and Paula Fox 2005)

Alex Selenitsch George Baldessin

Alex Selenitsch (1946 - )

Born in Regensburg, Germany.

Arrived Australia in 1949. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria,

Tree of Knowledge 1989

Wood, iron, terracotta and synthetic polymer paint.

(Bequest of Barrett Reid 2000.)

Right: George Baldessin (1939 –1978)

Born San Biagio di Callalta, Italy.

Arrived Australia in 1949.

Mary Magdalene 1978 -83 Bronze

Lenton Parr

Lenton Parr (1924-2003)

Lived and worked in Melbourne.

Untitled

1970

Synthetic polymer paint on steel (Gift of Trevor and Christine Tappenden 2004.)

Peter D. Cole

Peter D. Cole (1947- )

Born in Gawler, South Australia. Lives and works in Kyneton, Victoria.

Southern Landscape 1988

Bronze, steel, aluminium, stainless steel and synthetic polymer paint.

(Gift of Peter D. Cole 1999)

John Atkin Les Kossatz

John Atkin (1959 - )

Born Darlington, England. Lived and worked in London, England.

Nomad 1989

Terracotta (Gift of John Atkin 1989)

Right: Les Kossatz (1943 –2011)

Born Melbourne, Victoria. Lived and worked in Melbourne.

Sweeney’s Keepsake

1987

Painted steel (Gift of Les Kossatz 1987.)

David Wilson

David Wilson (1947 - )

Born London, England. Arrived 1965 in Australia. Lives and works Mornington Peninsula, Victoria.

Budding 1981-2

Forged and welded mild steel

(Gift of Alun Leach-Jones 1992.)

Paul Hopmeier

Paul Hopmeier (1949 -)

Born in Sydney NSW. Lives and works in Sydney. Savage 1982

Painted steel (Purchased 1983.)

Anthony Caro

Anthony Caro (1924 –2013)

Born in London, England. Lived and worked in London. Sidestep 1971

Synthetic polymer paint on steel and cor-ten steel. (Gift of Tom and Sue Quirk 1998)

Ronald Upton Les Kossatz

Ronald Upton (1937 - )

Born in Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne.

Stages 1, 2 & 3 1981

Ferro cement (Purchased 1996)

Right:

Les Kossatz (1943 – 2011)

Born Melbourne, Victoria. Lived and worked in Melbourne.

Guardian of the Last Piece 2003

Stainless steel appearance

Neil Taylor

Neil Taylor (1945 - )

Born in Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne.

Theoretical Matter 19992000 Welded steel.

(Arts Victoria's Victoria Commissions Program, funded by the Community Support Fund of the Victorian Government.)

Robert ‘Bob’ Jenyns

Robert ‘Bob’ Jenyns (1944 -2015)

Lived and worked in Daylesford, Victoria and then in Tasmania.

Pont de l’Archevêché

2007

In 2007 he won the valuable Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award with Pont de l’Archeveche, a caravan made from oversized ‘Meccano’.

Emily Floyd

Emily Floyd (1972 - )

Born in Melbourne, Victoria. Lives and works in Melbourne.

Abstract Labour 2014

Two-part epoxy paint on aluminium and steel. This sculpture is standing in front of Heide lll, which was built in 1993. (Commissioned with support from the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria and the Victorian Public Sculpture Fund 2013.)

FELIDAE: House of Bastet MAGGIE HALL

FELIDAE: House of Bastet

Maggie Hall

In the year 2045, Elias Crane sat in a room that smelled of dust and forgotten ink, surrounded by towers of unsold books. His apartment, a crumbling relic in a city of glass and holograms, was a shrine to the novel a form he believed was the last bastion of human thought. Outside, the world buzzed with neural feeds, instant stories piped directly into brains via NeuroText implants. Novels, with their dense pages and patient demands, were relics, like wax cylinders or horse-drawn carriages.

Elias was 47, balding, with ink-stained fingers and a heart that beat for sentences. He had published one novel, The Weight of Shadows, twenty years ago to modest acclaim. Critics called it "a quiet masterpiece," but quiet didn’t sell in a world screaming for attention. Now, he was writing his second, The Last Novel, a book he swore would save the form or at least prove it was worth saving.

He typed on a salvaged mechanical keyboard, the clack of keys a rebellion against the silent swipes of the modern world. The novel was about a librarian who discovers a book that rewrites reality, but Elias was stuck on page 73. The words wouldn’t come. He stared at the screen, then at the stacks of novels around him—Dickens, Woolf, Marquez, Morrison—giants whose voices felt like ghosts in a world that no longer listened.

His neural implant, mandatory for all citizens, pinged with a notification: NeuroText Update: 10,000 new micro-stories available. Read in 3 seconds. Elias swiped it away. Micro-stories snippets of narrative consumed faster than a breath had replaced novels. They were cheap, addictive, and tailored to every user’s brain chemistry. Why slog through 300 pages when you could feel a story in a blink?

But Elias believed novels were different. They demanded time, forced you to sit with uncertainty, to wrestle with ideas. They were mirrors and maps, confessions and revolutions. He poured this belief into The Last Novel, though he feared no one would read it.

That night, he dreamed of a burning library, pages curling into ash, and woke with a single sentence in his mind: The novel is the last human act of defiance against oblivion.

Elias’s only friend was Mira, a former bookseller who now ran an underground book club in a basement beneath a drone repair shop. The club had six members, all over 40, who met weekly to read passages aloud from smuggled paperbacks. They called themselves the Readers, a name both proud and mournful. Mira was sharp, with eyes that saw through Elias’s bravado. “You’re not writing a novel,” she told him one evening, sipping synthetic tea.

“You’re writing a eulogy.” “It’s not dead yet,” Elias snapped, clutching his manuscript. “People will read again. They have to.” Mira laughed, not unkindly. “They don’t. NeuroText gives them what they want: instant catharsis, no effort. Novels ask too much. Patience is extinct.”

“Then I’ll bring it back,” Elias said. “The Last Novel will remind them what it’s like to feel something real.” Mira’s eyes softened. “I hope you’re right. But even the Readers are slipping. Last week, Jonah admitted he skimmed Middlemarch on NeuroText. He said it was ‘faster.’” Elias felt a pang. If even the Readers were faltering, what hope was there? Still, he invited them to his apartment to hear a chapter from The Last Novel. He read aloud, his voice trembling as he described the librarian’s discovery of the reality-altering book. The Readers listened, rapt, but when he finished, they were silent.

s beautiful,” Mira said finally. “But it’s too long. People won’t sit through it.” ll make them,” Elias said, though his voice cracked.

That night, he hacked his neural implant - a risky act, punishable by fines he couldn’t pay. He uploaded a fragment of his novel into the NeuroText network, disguised as a micro-story. It was a single scene, 500 words, about the librarian’s first encounter with the book’s power. He hoped it would lure readers to seek out more.

By morning, his implant buzzed with feedback: Content rejected. Exceeds attention threshold. The network had flagged his work as too dense, too slow. Elias smashed his fist against the wall, leaving a dent beside a framed quote from Proust: “Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.”

Desperate, Elias sought out the Architect, the elusive creator of NeuroText. Rumors placed her in a fortified tower at the city of Felidae ...

PART II

I've been selfish for so long. Living in my head, ignoring the main tune. A record scratch repeating code MRI memory in verse. Feeling trapped is this final publication. The moment we met in perfect unification. You believed in my mind Not in the sense of a painting but as a photograph. Visual artists wording music as imagery, I cry thinking this is the last archival submission, not sure if I’ll write again. A life partner is hard to lose in a game of poker. Caught behind a chip in the machine code. It’s not easy when the one you love has trans versed.

’m caught in a family history affirmation they will never write, the setup, the action. An ending in the ghost town during the sale of 99 illustrations. I turned the page to see someone that looks just like me show up as a human. Are we born into this symphony looking for a composer?

Now I've gone through menopause I feel like a gay man in a sex guide, masturbating with aim to perfect every intercourse. To get in touch with the forgotten fantasy this thing they call projection, just a duplicate chip. It’s Monday and I’m caught in a daydream.

I'd like to list a few things you can explore during a genetic memory test: Dolphins rubbing erect penises against a tank floor. A head chopped off into a basket. The lowering of a steel sheath following ejaculation. Moody hypersensitive spasms trembling, twitching, seized by the feeling. Known risks committed to the program of marriage in an outdated institution of fears and consequences. Riding motorbikes while still a virgin. Can you describe an orgasm signal in rhythmic contraction?

It’s in the passing away of a father figure that I look for the next mother. Between a man and woman there is only sex in filters represented with a promiscuous line up. They plate a dinner to an empty sewing table with five slices of canned beetroots, a beautiful presentation. We laughed and quipped to the challenge while they turn it into sweet potatoes. Missing sinew and muscle bones while digging for gold the excavated bottles soil seeds of change in a continuous move. Attack of the puppet people wearing masks, I’m not here. I’m in the screen shot wearing surgical gloves. It’s a midnight movie double in the village of giants.

Undercover police are dressed like hippies with guns. I’m not here, I’m in the other show, an unsung hero in an Opera. In my mind there is a space called heaven. Oriental dreaming in another culture the conducted book wears her blue robe and PVC black gloves. The mother of cats, a naked stone statue with a cloth penis. We’ve been here before in a different edition, the visual narrative typed by an oracle. Bastet. To the men he was a stranger. Of the old poets and in my chamber, when the dead went home and the arrow found her deer. I remember the moment as if it were yesterday.

FELIDAE: House of Bastet - Part I AI generated

Part II written by Maggie Hall

T H E L A S T B E G I N N I N G

MAGGIE HALL - NOVEMBER 2025

The Last Beginning

The hardest lines we speak are unseen

A final chapter turned to cut flowers, weeping milk.

The ghost watches from a sheet of dreams. A last sigh.

The first sip of a drink.

Ground rope turns into wine, the last breath, remembering.

In the house of cats where cornucopian birds bend at either side, a quetiapine ring decides.

Everlasting spring

Silent heart

A canter stops beating

Unheard

Defeated

Released passages of energy waltz inside a tent of fire.

A basket of legs without toes dance in the tent around three barrels.

A daylight nightspell beneath the chocolate star with corona eyes.

Tonight in this morning we write a book out of numbers.

The quiet voices screaming

Malakai mountain goats and chilli swallows air without a tongue in the cold war of science fiction.

A painting of the thorn pierced by his rosen virgin.

Five nights and nine tears repeat as the moon leaves fall, singing Evermore.

Trapped in concrete stone skin dries wrapped in silkworm.

An urn gifted to the unborn now lost in the persimmon grass.

The Healing Nature

of Art: How Inspiration, Practice & Persistence Mend the Soul

The Healing Nature of Art: How Inspiration, Practice & Persistence Mend the Soul

BERNADETTE MEYERS

In the quiet hours of illness, I have discovered again and again that art is a balm. In this final edition of Arts Zine, I reflect on how creative expression has helped me through dark seasons and how the steady commitment of fellow artists like Robyn Werkhoven has been a great encouragement along the way.

I’d like to thank Robyn for her incredible dedication in producing this magazine for the past twelve years. It has been a true labour of love - one that has inspired and served artists and collectors alike. Through all kinds of challenges, Robyn has worked tirelessly, and I know that for her, making art is what helps her keep going. I deeply admire her courage and perseverance.

Over the past eight years, I’ve faced some major health battles - a fractured skull, cancer, multiple surgeries and treatments. Some things make it hard to navigate difficult seasons, however, there are others that bring deep comfort and healing. My faith in God, and the love and support of family and friends, have carried me through. But art, too, has been a lifeline. Even when I was too unwell to work, the thought of creating - and of others who persist through difficulty - inspired me to keep going. Robyn’s consistent drawing practice has been a powerful motivator in this way.

Page 230: Drifting - Pastel on Paper, Bernadette Meyers.

Why are we driven to make art? I’m not entirely sure - it’s something different for each of us. I believe that God, the original artist, infused humanity with His own creative spirit. For me, there is no off switch when it comes to creativity. I must create; it is as essential to me as love, water, and air.

I don’t primarily make art for an audience. I make it because it’s how I express what I feel and see - the way I experience this wonder-filled life. Creative expression is both therapy for the artist and a gift from the soul to the viewer.

Two keys to an artist’s enduring stability are inspiration and practice.

As artists, we’re easily inspired by novelty - by travel, museums, performances, and new experiences. Yet I’ve found that while these moments fill me with joy and spark countless ideas, they aren’t usually what my art grows from. Most of my work springs from finding beauty in the everyday: the curve of a petal, the shifting cloud formations, the sparkles of sunlight on the surface of water. Spending long, quiet moments in nature, returning to the same places again and again, allows me to connect deeply and feel the beauty I long to express.

When I take my camera on a nature walk, I never capture good images with quick snapshots. I need time to become still, to look intently, and to find those secret worlds within worlds. I can sense a visceral shift in my spirit when I truly enter that space of seeing. These are the images I use, sometimes as finished photographs, other times as inspiration for paintings born from the emotions they stirred in me.

Inspiration also comes from community. Seeing other artists’ work and understanding how they practice feeds our creative spirits. Without consistency, it’s hard to make real progress - and that’s another area where Robyn has inspired me deeply.

Pink Eucalyptus Blossom Buds - photography, Bernadette Meyers.

I’ve come to feel that my art practice itself is more important than the finished artwork. I need to show up each day, pencil, brush, or pastel in hand, connected to my heart. My regular practices include:

Writing in my art journal

Exploring colour palettes

Developing compositions

Taking photographs

Sketching

Creating value studies

Reading artist biographies

Watching videos or listening to interviews with artists

Making small studies

Progress often feels slow, almost invisible, my proficiency goals seem to slip further away as the years pass. Yet this never reduces the joy I find in the process. There is something deeply satisfying in the act of putting brush or pastel to paper. I’ll never tire of mixing colours.

A Sense of Place 2 - photography,

Bernadette Meyers.

When beginning a new work, I draw on the contents of my huge collection of sketchbooks and reference photos. Often, I’ll start with a photograph and pair it with one of my many colour explorations to interpret the image. Even though most of this work remains unseen, it forms a vital foundation. Because of it, each new painting feels like a continuation rather than a beginning.

Persistence and consistency aren’t glamorous, sometimes they’re not even enjoyable, but they are so rewarding. Hard times and poor health slow us down, yet limitations can also spark unexpected creativity and growth in ways we never imagined. For me, keeping a small, ongoing project has been the best way to maintain continuity.

The greatest lesson I’ve learned in recent years is to cherish with gratitude every moment, every person, every conversation, every glimpse of nature - and to see the beauty in life itself. Art is a gift - our unique way of feeling, seeing, and expressing how we experience God, life, love, and the universe.

Voyage Edges - photography Bernadette Meyers.

https://www.bernadettemeyers.com/

Golden Dawn - pastel on paper, Bernadette Meyers.

Tales of a City (London, 12-2024)

Tales of a City (London, 12-2024) by

José Luis Seijas García (Seigar).

Artist Statement:

The Tales series is how I present all my travel and street photography. Through these photo narratives, my main goal is to express the Latin message of Carpe Diem. To me, it’s about waking up embracing life fully. Enjoying life is essential, but so is taking care of ourselves: eating well, staying active, and resting properly.

I've realized that two key steps can help us feel better, improve our lives, and strengthen our relationship with ourselves and our daily routines. First, we need to listen to ourselves and reflect on what we discover in our inner thoughts and conversations. Second, we must be mindful of our thoughts, words, and actions towards ourselves. What we tell ourselves matters—our inner dialogue should be kind, and even more than that, it should be the best we have to offer. These ideas all work together.

I'm also deeply interested in freedom. The ongoing debate about censorship and cancel culture reminds me of a bird in a cage with its doors wide open it’s free to fly. So let’s do it! Let’s take action instead of complaining. If we only realized the power we have in our own hands it’s up to us! We make the decisions. We are free, each of us, as individuals. This metaphor applies not just to censorship but to every aspect of life. How often do we delay our dreams, waiting for permission from someone or worse, from "the system"? But the doors of the cage are wide open just go for it!

One more thing I’ve learned—not only from traveling but also in everyday life (because you don’t have to go far to witness human nature)—is that despite our differences, the most Important things in life connect us. I've realized that most people are beautiful souls with so much to share and incredible potential. Yet, this vision of humanity feels quite different from the image portrayed by the media. It makes me wonder: Why? I’ll leave you with that thought. Reflect on it, draw your conclusions.

Enjoy Tales of a City!

SEIGAR Biography:

José Luis Seijas García (artistic name: Seigar) is a passionate visual artist based in Tenerife, Spain, whose work spans travel, street, social documentary, conceptual, and pop art. Deeply fascinated by pop culture, this influence is reflected in his artistic explorations across photography, video art, writing, and collage.

A philologist by profession and a secondary school teacher, Seigar is also a self-taught visual artist, having expanded his skills through advanced courses in photography, cinema, and television. His artistic mission is to tell stories through the lens of his camera, weaving an ongoing narrative shaped by his travels and personal encounters. He has taken part in numerous international exhibitions, festivals, and cultural events, with his work published in a wide range of media across the globe. More recently, his focus has turned toward documenting identity and promoting the message behind the Latin phrase Carpe Diem Seigar was awarded the prestigious Rafael Ramos García International Photography Award. He also shares his thoughts and passions for art and culture on his blog, Pop Sonality. Blog Pop Sonality: https://www.instagram.com/popsonality/

I would like you to publish this short thankful message, please:

Thanks, Robyn, for all your support through all these years. I have felt your love and passion for art in every new issue, and how important it is to you as an essential part of being human.

Thank you also for your personal involvement and kindness in your project — I could feel it in all our emails, messages, and communications.

At first, it made me feel sad to know this would be the last issue, but I immediately understood your reasons. You have so many fantastic projects ahead in your artistic life, and they all sound amazing, intriguing, challenging, and full of passion to me. So go ahead.

In Spanish, we have an encouraging word we always use to cheer people on a word that carries good feelings and support: ánimo. So, all I can say now is: ÁNIMO.

I can't wait to see all your next steps come true.

THANKS once more.

José (or as you know me Seigar).

Links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jseigar/ Webpage: https://seigar.wordpress.com/

Albums: https://www.flickr.com/photos/theblueheartbeat/ albums/

Blog Pop Sonality: https://www.instagram.com/popsonality/

GRESFORD COMMUNITY GALLERY

GRESFORD COMMUNITY GALLERY - NEWS

Four new fabulous artists are exhibiting with the gallery – Gavin Fry, Michele Heibel, Pearl Moon and Ros Elkin.

The gallery has available a beautiful unique range of clothing, jewellery, cards and an exquisite painting by multi-talented artist Pearl Moon. Please drop by to view a stunning showcase of Hunter Valley artists. The exhibition includes a great variety of quality art and craft, featuring painting, drawing, sculptures, ceramics, photography, fibre art, glass work, clothing and jewellery.

SKETCH

CLUB 2025

The gallery holds Sketch Club each month. Everyone enjoys the creative, friendly atmosphere. Please join us at the next event, all welcome –beginners and professionals.

Hosted by artist Christine Pike. Please bring your own art supplies. Cost $10.

Venue: Gresford Community Gallery 12 Park St East Gresford. (next to Arboretum/park, entrance at ramp.)

Enquiries : gallerygresfordcommunity@gmail.com Phone : 0428 271 819 Christine Pike .

The Gallery has a Face Book page which will give regular news / updates of the Gallery’s forthcoming exhibitions, workshops and features on the artists. Please Like and follow our page Link: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555506220944 Free Art Sunday for children at Gresford Community Gallery.

On the third Sunday of the month between 10am and 2pm. During these hours children of primary school age accompanied by an adult will be able to use the art equipment supplied to create their own art. Our friendly Gallery helpers will be on hand to assist.

Enquiries: Dawn Thompson 0428924800 Gresford Community Gallery opened weekends 10am - 4pm. 12 Park Street East Gresford. 12 Park Street East Gresford NSW. Gallery Hours: Saturday & Sunday 10am - 4pm.

EXHIBITION ARTISTS

JOHN BARNES

BARBARA NANSHE

BENJAMIN BROINOWSKI

SUSANA ENRIQUEZ

ROBYN WERKHOVEN

ERIC WERKHOVEN

SUZANNAH JONES

DAWN THOMPSON

JANET STEELE

CHERIE PLATEN

GAYE SHIELD

TARA MANN

GISELLE PENN

NATHAN KEOGH

HEATHER ANDERSON

LAURENCE THORSSELL

MICHAEL GARTH

GAVIN FRY

MICHELE HEIBEL

SANDRA LEE BROWN

SUE STEWART

KRISTEN LETHEM

LIBBY CUSICK

GILLIAN WADDELL

HELENE LEANE

CECILY GRACE

BERNADETTE MEYERS

GEORGIA HORACEK

PETER RONNE

CYNTHIA DENNING

WENDY JOHNSON

JOANNA GREENWOOD

ALICE ROPATA

KYLIE WEEDON

MAX LETHEM

ROS ELKIN

PEARL MOON

CHRISTINE PIKE

Gallery room 1

CHERIE PLATEN

ROBYN WERKHOVEN

MICHELE HEIBEL

GAYE EVANS

PETER RONNE PEARL MOON

12 Park Street East Gresford NSW. Gallery Hours: Saturday & Sunday 10am - 4pm.

SUZANNAH JONES JOHN BARNES

WENDY JOHNSON

12 Park Street East Gresford NSW. Gallery Hours: Saturday & Sunday 10am - 4pm.

CUTTING

Connecting people with the arts, and each other

Be entertained, fascinated and informed. Become a member or attend individual lectures as a guest.

After each lecture join the lecturer for conversation and light refreshments.

2026 membership now available on-line.

https://artsnationalnewcastle.org.au/

Lectures are at 6:30pm at the Hunter Theatre, Cameron St, Broadmeadow.

More information on ArtsNational Newcastle and the annual lecture schedule at https://artsnationalnewcastle.org.au/

CHURCHILL

2026 LECTURES

TIME: Lectures are 6:30pm on a Monday

LOCATION: Hunter Theatre, Cameron St, Broadmeadow

STUDIO LA PRIMITIVE ARTS ZINE

Arts Zine is an online independent art and literary magazine, featuring artist’s interviews, exhibitions , art news, poetry and essays.

We have been publishing the Zine since 2013, featuring many emerging and high profile national and international artists – Blak Douglas, George Gittoes, Wendy Sharpe, Kathrin Longhurst, Nigel Milsom, Loribelle Spirovski, Kim Leutwyler, Matthew Quick, Braddon Snape, Del Kathryn Barton, Ann Cape and many more. Arts Zine in 2017 was selected by the NSW State Library to be preserved as a digital publication of lasting cultural value for long-term access by the Australian community.

T U D I O

L A P R I M I T I V E

Magical Moment

30 x 23cm. Acrylic on canvas

Robyn Werkhoven 2025.

POETRY & SCULPTURE

Right : Dog and His Master, Autoclaved aerated cement / cement / laquer.

Right : Eric Werkhoven at Studio La Primitive.

Photograph courtesy of artist.

90 Hunter St. Newcastle, NSW. https://timelesstextiles.com.au/

29 October - 30 November

The Draw of the Outdoors: Rieteka Geursen 03 - 21 December Brooching the Subject #9: Seasons

07 Jan 2026 - 15 Feb 2026 Outback Ramblings: Eszter Bornemisza

18 Feb 2026 - 29 Mar 2026 Inspiring Women in Stitch: Wednesday Makers Group

S T R A I T J A C K E T S T R A I T J A C K E T

Michelle Brodie

Rhino Images - Art and the Rhinoceros

Lorraine Fildes and Robert Fildes.

Art and the Rhinoceros - There are over three hundred Rhino images in this book.

Whether in the ancient past or in the present the rhinos are always represented as huge, powerful and solitary animals. The book includes paintings, drawings, woodcuts, etchings, rock carvings and sculptures of the rhino all depicting the power of the animal.

These images of the rhino range from early civilisations such as in China, Roman Empire, Indus civilisation in Pakistan/ India area and from Southern Africa down to current day images of paintings and sculptures produced by modern day artists.

The text indicates where you may find these wonderful images as well as the websites of the artists concerned, the caves where the rhino images have been found and the places where posters use the rhino image.

There are very few of these magnificent wild animals left in the world, so unless they are protected and managed, artistic images will soon be the only viewing option.

Rhino Images – Art and the Rhinoceros, First Edition, 2017, is available for download at The Rhino Resource Centre web site.

Direct Link : http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/index.php?s=1&act=refs&CODE=ref_detail&id=1518479271