The Adelaide Review - April Edition

THE Adelaide

REVIEW Issue 410 April 2014

adelaidereview.com.au

Concrete, Space, Light An exciting exhibition shines a light on Adelaide-based architecture photographers

48

Labor’s Historic Victory

Hugh Laurie

Dark Heart

State Labor is the master of the marginal seat writes John Spoehr

The English actor and comedian will showcase his musical chops when he hits Adelaide as part of a national tour

John Neylon reviews the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Art: Dark Heart

07

17

26

coming in april & may SEASON 2014 A legendAry grAMMy® AwArd–winning superstAr returns to AustrAliA

A d e l A i d e F e s t i vA l C e n t r e A n d d Av i d M H Aw k i n s p r e s e n t

IN CONCERT Music’s greatest ‘hits’ re-iMagined by one of australia’s foreMost vibraphone players and his Mallets of steel

singing her number 1 hits

i AM woMAn deltA dAwn Angie BABy

2 & 3 MAY SPACE THEATRE

plus other favourites and classics

Tuesday 15 april FestivAl tHeAtre

“Dazzling dexterity balanced with supreme delicacy.”

“reddy grabbed her lA A audience at the very top and held them spellbound throughout”

The AdverTiser

Broadwayworld.com 2013

WORLD PREMIERE

a delicate situation Presented by Adelaide Festival Centre

in recital with terence dennis, Piano

22 – 24 May 2014 Space Theatre Tickets from $32.30

sunday 18 may 2014 festival theatre

Directed and choreographed by Lina Limosani

coming in june & july Adelaide Festival Centre, John Frost and Phil Bathols present

anthony Warlow and faith Prince

One

shOW Only

7-9 June

10 June festival theatre

dunstan PlayhOuse

Australian Premiere

adelaide international guitar festival

festival gala Australian String Quartet with

Pepe Romero, Maximo Pujol & Slava Grigoryan saturday

19 july

dunstan playhouse

adelaide festival centre’s

adelaide

international

17 : 20 July

2014

g u i ta r fe st i va l

Full program released May 2014

4 THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014

WELCOME

TheAdelaideReview

ISSUE 410

AdelaideReview

GENERAL MANAGER MEDIA & PUBLISHING Luke Stegemann luke@adelaidereview.com.au

38

SENIOR STAFF WRITER David Knight davidknight@adelaidereview.com.au DIGITAL MANAGER Jess Bayly jessbayly@adelaidereview.com.au ART DIRECTOR Sabas Renteria sabas@adelaidereview.com.au

GIN LONG CANTEEN

ADMINISTRATION Kate Mickan katemickan@adelaidereview.com.au PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION production@adelaidereview.com.au NATIONAL SALES AND MARKETING MANAGER Tamrah Petruzzelli tamrah@adelaidereview.com.au ADVERTISING EXECUTIVES Tiffany Venning Michelle Pavelic advertising@adelaidereview.com.au

MANAGING DIRECTOR Manuel Ortigosa

Publisher The Adelaide Review Pty Ltd, Level 8, Franklin House 33 Franklin St Adelaide SA 5000.

GPO Box 651, Adelaide SA 5001.

P: (08) 7129 1060 F: (08) 8410 2822. adelaidereview.com.au

Circulation CAB. Audited average monthly, circulation: 28,648 (April 12 – March 13) 0815-5992 Print Post.

Approved PPNo. 531610/007

Disclaimer Opinions published in this paper are not necessarily those of the editor nor the publisher. All material subject to copyright.

This publication is printed on 100% Australian made Norstar, containing 20% recycled fibre. All wood fibre used in this paper originates from sustainably managed forest resources or waste resources.

THE ADELAIDE

REVIEW

Paul Wood reviews the hyped North Adelaide Asian restaurant

INSIDE Features

06

Politics

07

Finance

10

Columnists

12

Fashion

14

Books

15

Performing Arts

17

Visual Arts

26 TASTING AUSTRALIA 38 Chefs Andrew Davies and Phil Whitmarsh talk

Food. Wine. Coffee

47

FORM

40

50

nose-to-tail, which they will showcase at Tasting Oz

GOLD FOR TROPPO Troppo’s Phil Harris and Adrian Welke won one of architecture’s highest accolades

COVER CREDIT: SAHMRI. Photo: Peter Barnes.

CONTRIBUTORS. Leanne Amodeo, D.M. Bradley, John Bridgland, Alan Brissenden, Michael Browne, John Dexter, Alexander Downer, Robert Dunstan, Stephen Forbes, Andrea Frost, Charles Gent, Roger Hainsworth, Andrew Hunter, Jane Llewellyn, Kris Lloyd, John Neylon, Nigel Randall, Christopher Sanders, Simon Sheikh, Margaret Simons, John Spoehr, Shirley Stott Despoja, David Sornig, Graham Strahle, Duncan Welgemoed, Paul Wood. PHOTOGRAPHER. Jonathan van der Knaap

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THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014 5

FAREWELL LUKE STEGEMANN Media & Publishing General Manager to seek new challenges

L

uke Stegemann, the General Manager of the Global Intertrade Media and Publishing Division since 2008, has announced his resignation from the role, effective March 31.

Returning to Australia after an extended period living and working in Europe and Asia, one of Stegemann’s first tasks upon appointment was to assist in streamlining the merger between The Adelaide Review and Rip It Up Publishing. To this end, in 2009 he instituted a complete restructure of The Adelaide Review, overhauling its editorial direction, its design and its commercial focus, while retaining its essence as Adelaide’s leading monthly publication for arts and ideas. Also in 2010, the temporarily closed Attitude Magazine was relaunched, to great and ongoing success, as Adelaide’s standout guide to fashion and urban style.

In 2011, Stegemann moved to Melbourne for two years. Putting together a commercial and editorial team and negotiating a network of supplier contracts, he established The Melbourne Review, a publication that both mirrored and built on the success of The Adelaide Review. While establishing strong connections with Melbourne’s arts and cultural institutions, the new publication also unashamedly sought to champion the role of Melbourne as Australia’s leading knowledge city. To this end, universities, innovative businesses, young entrepreneurs, designers, writers, architects and planners, along with biomedical and health researchers, were all brought in to be a part of The Melbourne Review, providing a platform for voices beyond the established circles of media and politics. The Melbourne Review has been widely admired as an addition to Melbourne’s intellectual life and fast-changing media landscape, with much praise also directed to its clean and beautiful

UNEXP ECTED PORT.

design, led by Sabas Renteria, who also keeps The Adelaide Review looking so splendid month on month.

Returning to Adelaide in 2013, Stegemann oversaw another thorough restructure of the publishing business, this time ensuring it was fully capable of meeting the many challenges of the digital age. All publications built on their existing web and social media platforms, and will soon be ready for mobile devices. In particular, Rip It Up Digital has continued to grow from strength to strength as South Australia’s online reference point for all matters related to youth arts, entertainment and culture.

Under Stegemann’s stewardship, two of the company’s signature events have blossomed: the annual Hot 100 South Australian Wines, under the management of Tamrah Petruzzelli, and Attitude Magazine’s A Night of Fashion, in collaboration with Honda Australia and the Art Gallery of South Australia, under the management of Charlotte Chambers.

Meanwhile, two of The Adelaide Review’s senior writers, Shirley Stott Despoja and John Neylon, have been recognised nationally for their outstanding work.

Knight, who has done so much over the past two years to revitalise the roster of writers.

After five-and-a-half years, Stegemann has decided to seek new challenges and leaves The Adelaide Review in the skilled hands of David

The management and staff of Global Intertrade wish Luke every success in his future endeavours.

Contemporary Arts Projects Now – June

Luke Stegemann

Unexpected Port is a series of contemporary arts projects held at unexpected public locations around Port Adelaide.

Here’s what you can ‘Unexpect’: AUGMENTED PORT: An interactive project spanning art, architecture and technology.

FELTmaps: Site-specific contemporary art installations around the Port.

RUPTURE: The Art of Collective Collisions.

DEB JONES & DANICA GACESA MCLEAN: Installation style photography in disused buildings.

THE SPECIAL ONE: An altered view of reality, through a series of windows.

MANGROVE: Floating sculptural forms and illuminations on the Port River.

Visit OurPort.com.au for more information on what to ‘Unexpect’.

The Unexpected Port initiative is a partnership between Arts SA, Renewal SA and the City of Port Adelaide Enfield.

6 The Adelaide Review April 2014

FEATURE Off Topic:

Natsuko Yoshimoto Off Topic and on the record as South Australian identities talk about whatever they want... except their day job. Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s Concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto was born in Japan but moved to Dubai at eight with the violinist winning a scholarship to an English music boarding school three years later.

by David Knight

“Other times during the year my mother used to supervise my practice; she’s a musician herself, but a pianist. In terms of really getting down to the technical side of violin playing, she couldn’t be too helpful, so those holidays became incredibly valuable and important for me. During one of those holidays we met a violin teacher who visited this specialist music school called the Yehudi Menuhin School, which is based in England. He suggested that perhaps my parents should consider sending me there, which is a boarding school. It’s quite a small school that only had 50 students aged from eight to 18, pretty small. You’re lucky to have a friend who’s the same age as you.

I auditioned there and got a full scholarship, so my parents thought if I was to seriously continue playing the violin then that would be the only option at the time, and that’s when I was 11.”

Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art University of South Australia

Yoshimoto says it wasn’t difficult being on the other side of the world to her parents (who moved back to Japan from Dubai when the Gulf War broke).

“I didn’t think about it like that. I remember being very sad, obviously. The first night when my parents left me at the school, I thought, ‘Why am I here? Why did they leave me?’ But that was it. After that night, because everybody else was in the same situation, I didn’t feel alone and you have the sense that everyone’s going through the same feeling anyway – they take over as your family while you’re at school.

“At the school all of your music lessons and practice times are incorporated into the timetable along with subjects like Maths, English, History etc. At the time I hardly spoke English, so it was quite an adjustment for me to be at this school and then suddenly having to study in English and have English roommates and try to communicate, but it’s kind of the best way to learn quickly because you have no other way to communicate.

You just have to get on with it.”

Aside from the individual music lessons, Yoshimoto played in a string quartet, learnt orchestral playing and composed as well as learning music theory.

11 April – 16 May 2014

Shaun Gladwell: Field Recordings 11 April – 18 July 2014

Shaun Gladwell: Afghanistan

55 North Terrace, Adelaide Open Tue – Fri 11– 5pm, Sat 2– 5pm and 11– 7pm on Thursdays Open Anzac Day 12– 5pm SMA TAR Apr 14.indd 1

20/3/14 5:19:38 PM

Photo: Jacqui Way

“

We went to live in Dubai because of my father’s work,” Yoshimoto begins.

“Dubai is quite different now, at the time it wasn’t such a huge development.

There was certainly no classical music training then, there was no violin teacher there at all.

Every holiday my parents would take me to Europe to have extensive lessons because they were the only times I could have proper lessons.

Natsuko Yoshimoto

“It was a musical education that I would never have got if I had stayed in Dubai and even Japan. So, it was intense. At the time, Yehudi Menuhin – whose school it was – was still alive as well. He would come and visit the school a lot and give me individual lessons and take orchestras and generally was there. I grew up listening to his records and I was trying to imitate and emulate him. To meet him in the flesh and be given lessons by him, it was an unbelievable experience for me, even at that time. That’s something I will never forget. It’s an experience you can’t buy. In a way those formative years at that school have made me who I am, certainly as a musician.

In fact the hardest time for Yoshimoto was after she finished schooling.

“It’s not the real world [the boarding school]. It’s a very idealised world. I found the adjustment the hardest when I left school. It wasn’t like school anymore. You’re suddenly in this real world, I realised that things didn’t work the way it necessarily did at school. I think quite a lot of people found that adjustment difficult and therefore couldn’t continue with music. It didn’t work for everybody.”

aso.com.au

THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014 7

ADELAIDEREVIEW.COM.AU

POLITICS

Labor’s Historic Victory

BY JOHN SPOEHR

L

abor has pulled off an extraordinary victory in South Australia. The foundations for this were laid with a change of leadership and style. Policy substance followed this, preferring sustained public sector infrastructure investment rather than the blind pursuit of a AAA credit rating as an end in itself. An assertive response to the collapse of General Motors Holden (GMH) and a call for greater Federal Government assistance for the recovery, showed a strength that had not always been on display.

Written off by most commentators as having no chance of winning, Labor has once again proved to be masters of the marginals. This was an election the Liberals could have won but they were out-campaigned. Labor displayed greater hunger for victory in the seats that mattered.

From the outset the Liberals had an underlying vulnerability that would ultimately be their downfall – their despoiled heartland, Frome held by Independent Geoff Brock and Fisher held by Independent Bob Such. They also failed in seats where they had a chance, underestimating the power of incumbency and the doggedness of some of their opponents.

The popular Stephanie Key in Ashford and the likeable Paul Caica in Colton proved to be

Photo: Matthew Burns

After correctly predicting a close State Election last issue, John Spoehr writes that State Labor is the master of the marginal seat after its fourth consecutive election win.

from being able to form a government. The superior electoral strategy of Labor has been on display for well over a decade. Labor has learned how to target its resources in marginal seats with great effect. It did cross the line in the seat of Elder by releasing racist campaign material targeting Liberal candidate Carolyn Habib. That was Labor’s campaign lowlight.

Jay Weatherill

Labor heroes. With the Liberals securing 22 seats and Labor 23, responsibility for forming a government fell to Bob Such and Geoff Brock to decide. Untimely illness made it impossible for Bob Such to engage in deal making, forcing Brock to face a difficult but clear choice. Only Labor could govern with his support. The alternative was a fresh election, an annoyance that only the Liberals would have tolerated.

That time of festivals, Mad March, would have been truly mad if South Australians were forced to go to the polls again. In the end Geoff Brock saved a festival weary state from that horrifying prospect. Brock made South Australian political history by enabling Labor to form government for a fourth consecutive term. He was rewarded with the role of Minister for Regional Development, a position that will help him deliver some important outcomes for regional South Australia.

Had Bob Such been in good health, he was likely to have brokered a deal with Labor. He may well do so when he recovers. Concerns about the Liberal Party’s lack of any coherent industry policy and fears they might cut hard into the public sector are at the heart of this. So to is the historic rift between he and the conservative wing of the Liberal Party. That reality is not likely to change over the months to come, giving Labor the advantage of having two independents that are likely to support rather than oppose them in crucial votes in the House of Assembly.

While the end to the State Election has been spectacular it was hardly a captivating affair.

Civil Contractors Federation SA Branch

GALA DINNER & AWARDS NIGHT Friday 9 May

There were too many distractions. Labor got off to an assertive start with the release of its comprehensive policy package, which the Liberals never really countered. Jay Weatherill campaigned solidly and assertively. The less experienced Steven Marshall was a genuine contender but he appeared rattled at times by the ferocious demands that modern electioneering places on candidates. He was also not helped by many of the policies of his Federal colleagues.

Tony Abbott’s presence on the SA Liberal campaign trail is likely to have unsettled rather than reassured swinging voters. Many were worried about the implications of national policies for their jobs and working conditions, particularly the push to abolish leave loading.

Many auto industry workers would have been disappointed at the lack of any decisive early action from the Federal Government to rescue GMH and Toyota from closure. In the back of some voters’ minds were fears that a Liberal State Government would be drawn to cut public sector jobs more deeply than they promised – think of Queensland. Failing to release final election costings would not have helped the SA Liberals in the last few days of the campaign. Neither did the last minute stumble by Stephen Marshall, imploring those South Australians seeking change to vote Labor. None of this helped but the main problem facing the Liberal Party was probably its inability to master the marginals.

In the end Labor ran a superior marginal seat campaign, one that enabled it to retain vulnerable seats and prevent the Liberal Party

Labor’s victory has conferred great political authority upon Jay Weatherill. He has forged a new, more assertive identity for himself and despite the closeness of the election he should be emboldened by the result. While many things can happen over the next four years, Labor is now in a position to win a further term in office if the Liberals fight over the spoils of defeat. The bigger problem might be the impact of Federal policies on their future prospects. Over coming months the Coalition will release its Commission of Audit report. Like former Prime Minister John Hewson’s now infamous ‘Fightback’ package delivered during the 1993 Federal Election, the Commission of Audit is likely to be a major political liability for the Liberal Party both nationally and in South Australia.

The Liberals will be devastated by their loss.

Many thought they would win and few realised it would be so close. As it so often does, retribution may well follow in the wake of defeat. Old rivalries might resurface as a challenge to the authority of the Liberal leadership. No doubt pain will be felt. Politicians are human, all too human. Loss of hope, unfulfilled dreams and the prospect of four more years in opposition weigh heavily and generate unhelpful desperation.

As the euphoria of victory subsides, the monumental challenges of governing South Australia during turbulent times face the new Labor Government. In the meantime Labor has made history. They have proven to be the masters of the marginals.

» Associate Professor John Spoehr is the Executive Director of the Australian Workplace Innovation and Social Research Centre at the University of Adelaide

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8 The Adelaide Review April 2014

Politics

Modern Times Europe points to a fractured future

BY Andrew Hunter

E

urope’s philosophic, aesthetic and political traditions once dominated our worldview. Many Australians today look to Asia due to geography and economic opportunity, and to the United States and the United Kingdom as a result of its cultural proximity. But Europe continues to shine a light on human potential – both good and bad – and remains relevant to our future.

Insular attitudes in Europe are threatening the legitimacy of the European Union, which has contributed to the relative peace and stability that has followed a century of violence.

Nationalists have returned to mainstream politics in many European countries, including France, Italy, Greece, and throughout Scandinavia.

European nationalists are strongly opposed to the free movement of people guaranteed to citizens of member states. Earlier this year, Switzerland also voted to limit immigration. The cap was proposed by the far-right Swiss People’s Party and was passed at a national referendum by a thin majority. Switzerland has effectively reneged on the Schengen Agreement that assures freedom of movement for EU citizens.

This modern era is well suited to simple messages that appeal to insecurity and there is a growing fear that both national identity and economic opportunity is increasingly compromised by high levels of immigration.

Armed with a narrative that proposes a solution to common fears, the extreme-right is mobilising many Europeans who are insecure about their future.

A nation’s identity is dynamic – since the beginning of organised society, not one culture

has evolved in absolute isolation. This modern era has, however, seen an accelerated loss of linguistic, cultural as well as market diversity.

If we all speak the same language, listen to the same music, watch the same films and consume the same products, has race and religion become the only valid expressions of national or cultural identity?

The renewed appeal of nationalism is, to some extent, a reaction to the suffocating effect globalisation has had on many local, ethnic and national traditions – but a national or cultural identity reflects shared values and cultural expressions, rather than a narrow focus on race, religion or ethnicity.

Italian essayist Raffaele Simone has pointedly argued that the rise of the extreme-right has coincided with the intellectual death of the European Left, which refuses to even discuss the issue of mass immigration. In Australia, Labor appears similarly reluctant to present a serious policy alternative on any aspect of immigration policy.

Does the European condition hold any relevance for Australia? The Right in Australia cannot oppose immigration because population growth has become crucial to our future prosperity. Immigration has increased five-fold over the past two decades and is currently one of the principal reasons for economic growth.

The Coalition instead targets a narrow group of immigrants – ‘boat people’. Asylum seekers generally are too few to contribute substantially to the economic growth upon which the Coalition derives its political legitimacy, and are therefore considered easy game. They have developed a simple, effective message through which it can mobilise those Australians who remain deeply fearful of the unknown ‘other’ – desperate individuals, most of whom are legitimately fleeing persecution.

Conservatives benefit politically from the present discourse, where asylum seekers are demonised but other forms of immigration are considered a necessary economic commodity.

This politically effective strategy has been achieved without drawing attention to its

inherent moral contradiction, rendering mildly xenophobic sentiments an acceptable position in mainstream Australia. As is increasingly the case in Europe, we focus on the security of our borders rather than what is happening within.

are now told by the Attorney-General George Brandis that Australians have the “right to be bigots”.

This situation must be urgently remedied.

Australians of my generation would vividly recall the shame that we felt at the rise of Pauline Hanson, yet she is now an acceptable public figure in Australia. During the same period, Marine Le Pen has moved from the fringes towards the centre of French politics.

Arguments which once prompted outrage are now deemed legitimate.

Australia will continue to rely on immigration for our economic prosperity and we will continue to benefit from the wondrous diversity that immigration bestows. We cannot rely on immigration to grow our economy but simultaneously stoke fears of the unknown ‘other’ and laud our right to bigotry. If we continue to adopt an increasingly insular approach that dehumanises the feared ‘other’ the internal explosion that awaits Europe could well be also felt on our shores.

The Left in Australia, as in Europe, has failed to develop a potent response to popular fears that does not compromise its inclusive, humanistic values. Without a prevailing counter-force, we have lost the moral compass which once guided the nation’s decency. We

»»Andrew Hunter is the National Chair of the Australian Fabians

THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014 9

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POLITICS

LETTER FROM EUROPE

BY ALEXANDER DOWNER

A

s I watched events unfold in Ukraine during the last three months, I couldn’t help but dwell on something President Putin said in 2006: “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century”. That was a huge call. It’s obviously highly debatable as a statement of historical fact but that’s not really the point.

The real relevance of the quote is its exposure of the mindset of the Russian President.

These days, most European leaders and even, more arguably, President Obama regard the era of great power rivalry and foreign policy as an extension of national security policy as anachronistic. That was how the world was through the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but in the era of globalisation, digital technology, transnational corporations and multilateral institutions, all that seems old hat.

Well, if they thought that, they should think again. The very term ‘geopolitics’ should remind everyone that a country’s security policy is naturally defined by its geography.

Let’s take Russia, the world’s largest country, but a country with few natural borders. Whereas Britain’s greatest city, London, and its hinterland are protected by the English Channel, Italy is protected by the Alps, India by the sea and the Himalayas, Russia has few natural frontiers. As history has shown, it’s relatively easy for Russia to be invaded especially across the northern plains through Poland and Ukraine. While Britain’s defence policy has depended for centuries on the Royal Navy, Russia’s has depended on the concept of defence in depth. Sure Napoleon and Hitler marched for hundreds of kilometres into Russia, but in the end they were overwhelmed by the vastness of the country.

The concept of the Soviet Union suited Russian security policy perfectly. To the east it included Ukraine and Belarus – and even, according to Moscow, the three Baltic republics.

To the south-west there was Georgia, Moldova and Armenia and to the south-east the Central Asian republics like Kazakstan and Uzbekistan.

Russia had buffer states in every direction.

When the Soviet Union collapsed all those countries became independent. For a while Moscow was too weak to do anything about it. Not surprisingly, the newly independent countries to the West wanted to integrate with the prosperous and secure world of Western institutions, especially NATO and the European Union. Most of Soviet dominated Eastern Europe succeeded as did the three Baltic republics. This was a huge strategic setback for Russia.

As post-Soviet Russia has regained its strength, largely through oil and gas, so it has started a process of trying to secure its neighbourhood.

As the Russians see it, they can’t allow the former Soviet states to fall under the spell of the seemingly hostile West, dominated as it is by the United States and the European Union.

In 2008 Moscow used the Georgia crisis as an excuse to invade and occupy part of the country.

Now it’s Ukraine’s turn. The Russians simply won’t allow the strategically sensitive Crimean peninsula which contains Russia’s Black Sea fleet base of Sevastopol to be controlled by a proWestern, pro-EU regime in Kiev. So they’ve sent in the troops using the same pretext they used in Georgia: to protect Russian speaking minorities.

For the West, this is outrageous. It is a blatant act of invasion. But for the Russians it’s all about geopolitics. They use the time-worn excuse that they need to protect the Russianspeaking Ukrainians. Anyone with a sense of history will recognise this argument. In the 1930s Germany invaded Czechoslovakia to protect German Czechs. Or go back 100 years to the Balkans where the First World War started.

The Serbs wanted the Austro-Hungarians out of Bosnia Herzegovina because they wanted to protect the Serbians living there. After the assassination of the Archduke, Vienna wanted to invade the recalcitrant Serbs and the rest is a horrible history.

Don’t worry. That’s not going to happen. But understand this: the Russians are not going to let NATO and the EU nestle up along their borders.

These days, our media don’t explain all this to the public.

My guess is the lazy days of easy relations between Russia and the West are over. That’s not good news. The Americans have tried for two decades to draw the Russians into the mainstream of Western diplomacy. While NATO and the EU have expanded eastwards giving those countries a greater sense of security from Russian imperialism, they have tried to compensate the Russians as best they can by bringing them into institutions like the G8 and APEC. My guess is that’s failed. And it’s failed for a good reason. Russia wants to consolidate its security because history tells them, for right or for wrong, that the West will always be a threat to them.

In far-off Australia, that seems absurd.

After all, NATO and the EU have no aggressive intentions towards Russia. But in Europe, as elsewhere, history matters. They remember the Germans came after them in the 1940s and, over a century before that, so did the French.

These things matter in world politics.

A First Place: David Malouf at 80 in conversation with Nicholas Jose Thursday 10 April at 6.30pm The Braggs Lecture Theatre, University of Adelaide Open to all / Free admission / No booking required Contact: robina.weir@adelaide.edu.au /8313 4064

Jointly presented by

Friends of the University of Adelaide Library and the

JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice http://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/friends/malouf/

Sponsored by Unibooks

10 THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014

FINANCE

ANOTHER YEAR OF EXPANSION?

BY STEPHEN KOUKOULAS

T

he economy has started 2014 on a strong footing, although there remain quite divergent trends within the changing composition of that growth.

Mining investment is falling away very sharply and perhaps one of the easiest things to forecast for the next few years is for further sharp declines. Many of the huge mining projects of the last decade have been completed or are close to completion. The work is finished.

Given the huge capacity in mining built up over that time, there are very few new mining projects on the horizon.

This is well understood and it a critical reason why the Reserve Bank of Australia has set interest rates at record lows. The other slightly disconcerting aspect of the economy is the softening in the labour force. Over recent months, the rate of job creation has stalled and the unemployment has reached a 10-year high

around six percent. This reflects prior softness in the economy, through to about the middle of 2013.

The reason why the labour force result, from a macroeconomic perspective, is only slightly disconcerting is because employment growth lags changes in the business cycle. It has only been in the period since about the September quarter 2013 that the rate of economic growth has started to kick higher.

It is encouraging to see that the rate of GDP growth lifted to an annualised pace above three percent in the latter part of 2013, up from just above two percent earlier in the year.

The partial indicators for the economy in the early months of 2014 suggest that GDP is on track to exceed three percent, perhaps by a wide margin in the near term. This sort of growth should be strong enough to start firing up the labour market, which means that solid rates of

job creation will return and the unemployment rate will certainly head lower.

In terms of some of those indicators, retail sales have risen at an annualised pace of nine percent over the last six months, a pace of expansion that normally coincides with uncomfortably high inflationary pressures. Consumers are clearly cashed up, enjoying the massive savings from record low interest rates on their mortgages and the $1 trillion that has been added to their wealth over the past two years from the boom in house prices and higher share prices.

Some of these positive effects are spilling over to the housing market. Importantly for bottom line GDP growth, dwelling construction has reached a record high in recent months to the point where housing construction will add significantly to growth through 2014 and probably into 2015. Favourable demographics from strong population growth and earlier under-building left Australia with a housing shortage, which was a critical factor behind the renewed optimism in the construction sector.

In terms of house prices, there is no doubt there is a boom of some importance currently underway. Prices have risen by around 15 percent in the past 18 months and while this is leading to issues of affordability for those not in the market, it is generating a strong lift in wealth and is encouraging builders to build more dwellings so as to take advantage of the higher prices.

What y cool h ou need m e of info ad and ac ost in an e m c you a rmation. T ess to reli ergency i ccess s able s he Ale state socia ource a rt SA l e the la mergency media me website le s s t t accor est on any services, s sages from s dingly o s . Mak ituation a that you k all nd www. e sure n alert. you b can plan ow sa.go ookm v.au ark it today .

Perhaps the most important aspect of the strong growth outlook has been exports and mining exports in particular. In both volume and value terms, exports are rising at a rapid pace. While the price of some key exports has fallen somewhat over the past year or so (iron ore, gold and coal), this is been at least partially offset by the lower Australian dollar and a surge in the volume of those exports.

It is this lift in export volumes that is adding substantially to economic growth while the high export values are supporting national income growth. Both very favourable factors for the economy and look set to continue while ever the global economy is moving to a strong and sustained expansion.

The end point is that the composition of economy growth in Australia is changing appreciably, with the fall away in mining investment being more than offset by stronger consumer spending, a housing construction boom and robust export growth. This is just what the RBA and Treasury would have been hoping for and it sets the scene for the economy to move into a 24th year of continuous economic expansion.

» Stephen Koukoulas is Managing Director of Market Economics marketeconomics.com.au

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The Adelaide Review April 2014 11

adelaidereview.com.au

FINANCE

Innovation is the Key in the Age of Digital Disruption

FRESH BLENDS

by Michael Browne

I

n a world where the pace of digital is accelerating, what worked yesterday may very well not work tomorrow.

At every turn businesses are being challenged to innovate, not just to create new products, services and customer experiences, but to drive greater efficiency and manage costs down.

It requires courage to embrace change and innovate and it requires businesses to have leaders who are courageous enough to change their approach and the way they do business. The irony of change is that those forced into it are often the ones to come out with the greatest competitive advantage.

Columbia University Professor Rita Gunther McGrath embraced this view in her recent book, where she challenged businesses to rethink their approach.

She put forcibly that the Holy Grail of sustainable competitive advantage is no longer the panacea it once was. Her argument is that in today’s fast paced world the strategic benefit of creating an advantage that makes you distinctive, is short term and transient. It is no longer sufficient to think that creating competitive advantage is a once-off activity.

Just like innovation, sustaining competitive advantage is about constantly testing, trialling and learning.

A slow response or no response by businesses to constantly revisit and reshape their competitive advantage may actually do more damage than good.

It’s a bit like the sporting team whose successful players stay too long while teams around bring in fresh new talent.

The new talent brings success as the former greats fade, their team drop

down the league table and becomes less attractive to fans, sponsors and other support.

Specifically at a business level, Kodak is probably the most well known example of the failure to innovate in every sense: its business strategy, its competitive advantage, its products, services and its customer experience.

In 1975 Kodak engineer Steve Sasson invented the first digital camera and in 2012 Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection. According to industry experts, Kodak’s failure was the result of its inability to take advantage of its first mover advantage during the 10year period after it invented the game changing disruptive digital technology.

Nearly all of the CEOs surveyed in PwC’s recently released 17th Annual Global CEO Survey believe technology will be the biggest transformer of business in the next five years.

The lesson in this for privately owned businesses is that the environment is changing quicker than ever and to stay in business you must keep innovating and responding to change.

For most businesses the biggest change they face is “digital” whether it is in delivering cost reduction, responding to the demands of the ‘always on’ customer or digitisation of processes.

The good news is that adopting an innovation mindset can often be achieved more easily by private businesses. Flat management structures that typify privately owned business enable them to be nimble and agile. Their structure

AUSTRALIA

also frees them from investor scrutiny and a need to justify changes to strategy which might include bricks and mortar store closures, detooling or outsourcing.

Investment in innovation can be easier too as every venture doesn’t have to succeed or else be questioned.

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ARTISANS UNEARTHED

While privately owned business has key advantages which could enable it to take on the innovation challenge, many are naturally risk averse arising from their traditional narrow ownership base and limited access to capital. As a result, they are often reluctant to devote the resources - both people and dollars - required to trial, test and learn.

Innovation is risky but the rewards are significant. It’s the growth from this process that will give a business the new product, services, processes and efficiencies that they didn’t know they needed or would be demanded by customers.

SUNDAY 4 MAY 2014 11AM–5PM

• Cooking demos by Natalie von Bertouch • Organic market • Craft beer • Boutique wine blending

Innovation is a challenge for businesses small and large, public and private. In a period of major disruption the Kodak experience is one to be avoided.

pwc.com.au

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• Chocolatier • Community garden • Wood-fired pizza • Tapas plates • Local DJs

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In our current environment failing to innovate may see successful business become a business at risk or worse, a casualty. Having a competitive advantage may genuinely not be sustainable or enough to guarantee survival.

»»Michael Browne is a Partner at PwC

•

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Some businesses will quickly adapt to the challenge, however, others will be slower or not meet the innovation challenge at all. You only have to look at recent announcements in the manufacturing sector to know that change waits for no person.

TASTING

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12 The Adelaide Review April 2014

COLUMNISTS Third Age Don’t Panic, it’s Just Another Stage of Life

BY Shirley Stott Despoja

W

hen my internet goes down, stay away from me. I become a maniac.

It creates a special kind of anxiety of which I knew nothing before the days of my beloved laptops. I remember each laptop as people remember their dead pets. And my early ones, not to mention the telephone services that sustained them, were as dependable as a politician’s promise.

I’d never have managed if my computer blokes, Darryl and Rob, had not lived close and were always there for the stuttering, distressed victim of early internet mania. Some friends gave up on the internet because of these early experiences. Others became stronger for it, learning quickly that the only constant is perpetual change. I just got better laptops and worse internet anxiety. That is the difference between young and old internet users. The young take the internet for granted. The old see it as a miracle and fear its loss.

Under stress of internet loss recently, I made a silly mistake about the workings of my car air conditioning switch. I have made similar mistakes in the past, even in my youth, and after a bit of a blush, shrugged them off. This time, despite kind words from the mechanic, I feared that I was not on top of my game anymore.

For this I have to thank the media for all their Armageddon stories about how just around the corner is an “avalanche” of demented old things. Past age 65, we become like rabbits in a spotlight, ever fearful that the D word will be aimed at us. We may lose confidence, though there is nothing wrong with us. We may see nothing but a downward spiral to becoming half-joke, half-pest to our families.

Because of ageing population panic, you can expect sly looks around you if you lose a pencil.

The rate of dementia is not increasing, but panic stories about it are.

It has increased in those with controlling temperaments, such as politicians and their advisers, a tendency to remove things from the lives of the old: their houses, their driving licenses, their ability to maintain their simple

lives within the constraints of fixed incomes. The latest discussion of toll roads is just one which has left out of account what such might mean to pensioners. Only the abolition of compulsory age-based testing for drivers has given me some hope of a turnaround in thinking.

Cue for some constructive stories, without the old stereotypes, about the interesting things that, say, Domiciliary Care does in the community to help old people sustain their lives at home, about more imaginative housing and health solutions, about improved attitudes to what is just another stage of life.

Self-doubt engendered by dementia hysteria can be crippling. It can ruin our precious years.

What do we do? Not sure, but now my internet is fixed I might find the answer. ****** My daughter and I got a cab from our Canberra hotel last month for a short trip to a building across the park. This was out of consideration for me because too much standing in an art class two days before had buggered my knees a bit. As we paid for the cab, the driver who, for all we saw of him, might not have had legs at all, stirred himself to give us the benefit of his advice. We shoulda walked.

My daughter invited the cabbie to observe that I was not exactly in spring chicken mode that morning, half expecting an apology for his cheek. Not at all. He simply said with scorn that it was not far.

Not far? I was not far from giving him a clip over his ear.

The unending health and fitness messages of our times seem to have encouraged Canberra cab drivers to express an opinion about who should walk and who should be driven. He seemed heedless that, with his sedentary occupation and fair-fat-and-forty spread, his knees might be far more whacked than mine if he reaches my age.

Fortunately things improved. At the function we attended, the Ambassador for I-will-not-reveal spotted my name tag and kindly congratulated me. When I explained that the new Ambassador was not I, but my daughter, she didn’t miss a beat, saying that if the new ambassador was my daughter, she must be very young. That, I would say, is the essence of diplomacy.

The day brightened.

@mollyfisher4

Six Square Metres

BY Margaret Simons

M

y compost bin is falling apart. It honey, only to find that this product of bees is an Aerobin, the extra expensive is also off the vegan list.

“But bees make honey anyway, don’t they?” type that is vermin proof, with the internal chimney which, when it is working, I asked, and got a small talk on the cruelty of keeps everything cooking and sweet without stealing it from them, smoking the bees – all the need for turning. the nastiness of honey factory farming. A few For nearly eight years it has served me well, days later my friend sent links to websites but now it is sagging at the seams. The rats that backed her up.

I was impressed, even awed, by her can get in, and the compost falls out.

Last weekend, in a frenzy of gardening in consistency. preparation for the autumn flush, I put on my And now I, the honey-eater, stood shovel oldest gardening trousers and took the bin in hand over the hairless baby rats. I knew apart, digging out the compost ready for the I couldn’t raise them, and of course I didn’t garden bed. I intended to rebuild the compost really want to. I try to get rid of rats. I wasn’t bin once it was empty. sure if the mother would come back if I I was half way through the job when a turn simply left them. And even if she did, why of the shovel brought down a nest of half a would I preserve the rats when I also laid dozen tiny baby rats - pink and hairless, with rat bait? blind bulbous heads straining for a teat.

I thought about burying them in the garden A very fat mother rat ran out under my feet with the compost – but burying them alive a moment later. was surely not a kindness. It was cowardice.

I went inside and made a cup of tea and What to do?

Living in the inner suburbs, and right next drank it slowly, watching from the window, to a McDonald’s restaurant, I have long ago not knowing if I was hoping for mother rat overcome my reservations about laying out to come back. She didn’t. rat bait. Either one does it, or one is overrun.

After half an hour I went back out and saw But – these were babies, right in front of me. the little babies still straining blindly. I stood And mother had gone. transfixed. It was cruel to leave them like that.

Some months ago I cooked dinner for a I brought the shovel down on them – once, friend who is a hard-line vegan. I find such twice, thrice – and killed them outright, meals a challenge. Vegetarian is easy. We before shoveling the compost on the garden. often have meatless meals. But this time I That night I didn’t sleep. found myself constantly wanting to reach And the next day I attempted to rebuild the for the forbidden. Fish sauce. Chicken stock. compost bin so that it didn’t bulge and sag, so Cream and milk. All of it, as my friend would that it would once again be ratproof. It hasn’t say, involving death and exploitation. worked. Today I bought gaffer tape, hoping We got through with garlic mushrooms to be able to stick it together. If this fails, and (minus the parmesan) and pea soup (on I think it will, I will need to buy another bin. vegetable stock) with good bread and cream on the side for those who wanted to add it.

When it came to desert, I offered fruit with @MargaretSimons

The Adelaide Review April 2014 13

adelaidereview.com.au

OPINION

Out of Africa

candelabra lily (Runsvigia josephinae – named for Empress Josephine) has the largest candelabra flowers with flower stems up to 1.5 metres high and umbels of scarlet flowers with a radius 50cm or more. Scented candelabra (Brunsvegia bosmaniae) flowers form carpets on apparently desolate plains – tens of thousands of leafless flower stems surmounted by an umbel 3cm in diameter with dozens of soft pink flowers finishing each arm. Brunsvigia grandiflora is another spectacular candelabra that flourishes in KwaZulu-Natal grasslands. A distinctive close relative with leaves arranged in a fan is Boophone disticha – variously assigned by botanists to both Haemanthus and Brunsvigia and even Amaryllis since collected in 178. The etymology for Boophone deriving from the Greek for ox killer – an accurate description of its poisonous bulb and providing ‘oxbane’ as a seldom used common name.

by Stephen Forbes

There’s some botanical irony in one of my favourite signifiers of autumn being the flowering of the paintbrush lily – Haemanthus coccineus – variously known as paintbrush lily, blood lily, ox tongue and Cape tulip (all of which also apply to various other South African bulbs reinforcing the value of the scientific name as a lingua franca).

The powerful flower stems to 30cm high and the spectacular red to orange paintbrush flowers 10cm in diameter appear out of bare earth from a massive bulb and are followed in due course by two shiny, almost succulent bottle-green opposite leaves exuded from the base for up to a meter in length and 20cm in width. The paintbrush lily is a beauty in its own right and it also demonstrates a sound strategy to deal with a climate with hot dry summers and relatively mild winters – avoid

Courtesy Botanic Gardens of Adelaide

T

he only winter deciduous tree native to Australia is Tasmania’s celebrated myrtle beech (Nothofagus gunnii) (although tropical Australia has many dry-season deciduous trees, including various eucalypts and the baobab). Nevertheless autumn is still defined for many Australians by the spectacular colour of winter deciduous trees and leaf fall characteristic of largely European and North American immigrants.

Spring bulbs such as daffodils and jonquils reinforce our perspective of the proper order of the seasons. Of course, the proper order of the seasons depends on where we are and how we relate to and understand our environment. For example, the Classical Four Seasons inherited from Ancient Greece reflect an agrarian society in the Mediterranean while Aboriginal seasonal calendars, such as that of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains, might define six seasons reflecting weather patterns, availability of water and differing food sources and the behaviour of fire.

While the paintbrush lily is a joy (and largely indestructible in Adelaide) there are a range of other marvellous lilies in the Amaryllidaceae (Haemanthus’s family), that deserve attention.

Bulbs of the Cape can reasonably become a patient obsession (from seed a decade may pass before flowering).

The diversity of South Africa’s bulb flora is bewildering – choose garden subjects with care – many South African bulbs have become weeds (such as Oxalis!). However, the autumn flowering Haemanthus, Brunsvigia and Boophone seem unenthusiastic about leaving gardens. A good place to start reading would be with any of Peter Goldblatt, John Manning and Dee Snijman’s books – Colin PatersonJones’ photographs for South African bulbs are exceptional (see colinpatersonjones.co.za) – Colin’s death in 2013 was a loss for many and especially his wife Cape bulb botanist Dee Snijman. The Pacific Bulb Society’s website is worth visiting (pacificbulbsociety.org) or better still go along to the South Australian Lilium and Bulb Society to find out who’s growing what, what might suit you and where you may be able to find seed or bulbs (liliumbulb.org.au). They meet on the first Wednesday of each month (apart from July) at the Crafers Institute.

Wittunga Botanic Garden on Shepherds Hill Road at Blackwood has a still fine, if rather diminished from its heyday, collection and display of South African bulbs.

The candelabra lilies (Brunsvigia species) provide one window into the richness of these autumn flowering bulbs – the flowers are arranged on an umbel – reminiscent of a dandelion in seed on a massive scale. Josephine’s

»»Stephen Forbes, Director Botanic Gardens of Adelaide

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (1814)

summer! Summer dormant bulbs such as the paintbrush lily and many of its relatives flower in autumn and lose their leaves in spring – the opposite of the behaviour exhibited in Classical Autumn by deciduous trees and spring bulbs, and well-suited for much of southern Australia’s climate.

The paintbrush lily is widespread through the Cape and was one of the first recorded Cape bulbs to reach Europe. Gouarus de Keyser collected bulbs on Table Mountain at Cape Town in 1602 and the first image was published by Mathias de l’Obel (for whom Lobelia was named) in 1605. Four centuries later discoveries continue to be made. The riches of South Africa’s Cape floral kingdom are legendary – like the south-west of Western Australia the flora has all of the diversity, colour and exuberance of a coral reef (the pollinators, especially sunbirds in the Cape and honeyeaters in Western Australia,

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provide more than adequate compensation for coral reef fish). South Africa’s bulb flora is astonishing. Over 1400 species of bulbs occur in the Cape botanical province – an astonishing 600 species occur around the so-called bulb capital of the world, Nieuwoudtville on the Bokkeveld escarpment of Namaqualand in the Northern Cape.

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14 THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014

FASHION

NEW YORK STATE OF MIND It began with a sweater. Six months before debuting his first menswear collection at this year’s New York Fashion Week (NYFW), designer Drew Villani hadn’t really thought about taking part in one of the world’s most stylish weeks.

BY LUCY AHERN

“

A good friend of mine here in New York told me I should do it and at the time I had only designed one cashmere sweater… so I had a lot of work to do.’

even as a kid, and that’s how I would learn, through visual presentation opposed to verbal.

But I actually never designed clothing before I moved to New York.”

Fresh out of a retail gig at Ralph Lauren on Madison Avenue, the NY-based, Adelaide-born Villani interned with Tumblr legend and street style maestro Nick Wooster and Free Agent from 2012 to 2013, before launching his own menswear label DREU. Much like New York Fashion Week (NYFW), a career in designing wasn’t an initial focus.

But you’d never tell. After making the move to the Big Apple in 2011 and designing for just two years, Drew’s NYFW offering was gorgeously pared back, with a versatile yet luxe palette of navy, grey and white. The impeccable cuts and the clean lines of his suits and knits radiated ease and confidence.

“I guess I was always into it without even realising,” he says. “I am very visual person,

“Minimalism in everything is my design aesthetic… I streamline everything,” he says.

A foundation in suiting has encouraged a taste for traditional tailoring, functionality and precision, however Villani says times are changing – and clothes should too: “We live in a fast-paced world where everything is getting streamlined to make our lives easier, so I simply put that in my clothing, but kept the construction of a fully handmade garment.”

Inspired by architecture, interior design and the natural beauty in other cultures, Villani also looks to women’s clothing for cues.

“I love menswear but I pull all my inspiration from womenswear,” he says. ‘The aim of this collection was to make menswear look sexy and beautiful again – but most importantly wearable, with an emphasis on minimalism using the finest materials and construction.’

The androgynous vibes of Villani’s garments flowed through to the actual show itself, with pixie-cropped model Holly Kiser rocking the threads just as well as the boys.

AUTUMN EDITION OUT NOW

Held at West Chelsea’s divine Drift Studios, the show saw a striking collaboration between Drew and jewellery designer Bernard James, with the pair’s similar aesthetics melding seamlessly to create an event that was stark yet beautiful in its simplicity.

While just a few years ago Villani may not have seen himself rubbing shoulders with the world’s design elite, the reality is that his effortless talent and timeless style has propelled him from just an Adelaide boy in

FASHION RENDEZVOUS

A T T I T U D E

A T T I T U D E M A G A Z I N E . C O M . A U

“From day one I fully intended to have a girl in the show. Because I want girls to wear the sweaters as well as men.”

GILLES STREET MARKET Sunday, April 6 and Sunday, May 4, 10am to 4pm 91 Gilles Street, Adelaide gillesstreetmarket.com.au

NY to a designer to watch.

“Adelaide has a wonderful way of life and although it’s a very easy and comfortable, it’s also hard for someone like me to grow and progress. So when I moved to New York, I was so far out of my comfort zone that I didn’t have a choice but to hustle: sink or swim.”

With meetings already teed up with potential buyers, and runway shows a definite goal for the future, this expat is decidedly on the up – but is wisely taking it “one step at a time”.

Villani’s advice for those contemplating the move to pursue the bright lights, big city?

“Do it. What’s the worst that could happen?”

For fab vintage and pre-loved fashion including the latest from local emerging designers, check out the Gilles Street Market. DJs spin the tunes alongside delicious food vendors and over 90 stalls of fashion and accessories.

THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014 15

ADELAIDEREVIEW.COM.AU

BOOKS Australian engineer. Mohammed’s soliloquy assumes a tone of defence, an accounting for himself that demands the respect he believes David hasn’t afforded him. The story of Mohammed’s departure from his boyhood village to take up his role as a bit player in the global economy carries a deeply wrought and finelybalanced sense of loss, excitement and fear. To understand someone’s story, to know what they have sacrificed to be where they are, to know what they know, is the very fabric of respect. But in its use of the second person and its confessional control over the telling of a story, ‘Respect’ also gives a hint to its true shape, in that it shares something with another, much older, classic that uses the same technique: Poe’s ‘The TellTale Heart.’

THE SECRET MAKER OF THE WORLD Abbas El-Zein / UQP

BY DAVID SORNIG

There’s a reason I sometimes enjoy indulging in an afternoon of listening to a good dose of Dad Rock, albums like Exile on Main Street, Who’s Next and Led Zeppelin II. It’s because they’re more-or-less no bullshit rock’n’roll, of the kind that’s kinked with a storytelling style that’s sometimes swaggering, sometimes sharp-witted, but mostly just straight from the heart. There’s ventriloquism there, but it seems to come from a place that its makers think is true.

Reading Abbas El-Zein’s new collection of short stories, The Secret Maker of the World, is a little like tuning into one of these albums.

The stories are straight-up, with little by way of conscious literary tricksy. Its characters come at us from places of extreme or unusual experience, from diverse historical periods and geographical spread, but also try to get across some of their mundanity: a sniper in war-torn Beirut; a boatman on the Yellow River who, for a fee, will collect the bodies he finds carried on the current; a deaf Iraqi woman’s diary romanticises her search for her lover who has fled to join the insurgency.

Everyone wants to survive, to make a living, to live to see another day. Some make it, some don’t.

While the range of voices that El-Zein performs leans mostly on a static third person, some play a little further away from that place of narratorial reliability. There’s an affecting and deliberate shift, for example, in ‘Respect’ in which Mohammed, an Afghan construction worker who has been attached to projects around the world, addresses David, an apparently dismissive and arrogant

‘Bird’s Eye,’ also stands out in its imagined account of the historically real thirteenth-century geographer Yaqut al Hamaoui as he prepares to flee the city of Merv, which is soon to be overrun by the Mongols. Its style recalls the novels of Orhan Pamuk, particularly in its close following of its central character’s deliberations, the sweeping back and forth between imagination, memory, dream and reality. Borges is there too, in the moment Yaqut loses himself while writing in a confusion, a sudden realisation that he might not be himself, but rather ‘the tool of some divine science; a poor gobetween in the service of a bigger and better intelligence.’

Like every good album, there are a couple of singles here that have been polished a little more closely than the rest of the collection. It’s reassuring to find that these hits rest on a solid bedrock of storytelling.

COCKROACHES Jo Nesbo / HarvillSecker

BY ROGER HAINSWORTH

Fans rejoice: Harry Hole is back! Having been shot in novel nine, Phantom, Harry appears to have risen Lazarus-like, to investigate the murder of a Norwegian ambassador in Thailand.

However appearances deceive. Nesbo published Cockroaches 16 years ago. Falling between Hole’s first adventure in Sydney (The Bat) and The Redbreast (the first to appear in English) Cockroaches has only just been translated. It was the hugely successful, award-winning The Redbreast that attracted overseas publishers – and a translator – and the two earlier novels were left on the vine. Cockroaches has been worth the wait: as addictively readable as its successors.

Having read Cockroaches I have no need to visit Bangkok. I feel as if, like Harry, I have spent days and nights in its sweltering humidity; endured the near gridlock of its traffic-choked streets; been appalled by the stomach-turning violence of its crimes. Of course, if you insist on following Harry Hole around while he investigates

a murder case you cannot expect a peaceful Cook’s tour of places of interest. Nevertheless, Bangkok as a rambunctious background to a crime is in a class of its own. Harry has been sent there when the Norwegian ambassador is killed, because allegedly Harry did well in Sydney, and the foreign office needs a token Norwegian detective. The Foreign Office would have loved to announce Ambassador Molnes “died peacefully at his residence” because it would sound better than “stabbed in the back in a brothel”. How it sounds matters because Ambassador Molnes was a very close friend of the prime minister, who had appointed him. Co-operative Thai police will hopefully handle the matter as discreetly as possible with Harry nodding gravely in the background. In other words, helping it disappear under the rug. The trouble is Harry is a detective of great persistence and slender reserves of tact. He arrives in Bangkok drunk (his normal condition when bored). To his credit he sobers up fast and goes on the wagon. From then on it is all down hill.

Harry is shown the crime scene and his detective instincts are on full alert. His eye like a dead fish for embarrassing detail wins the admiration of the American-born female chief detective. She is a memorable character whose role fades disappointingly as the narrative develops. (Nesbo has an excuse: Harry’s ruthless quest for answers tends to involve degrees of illegality.) Unhappily for Oslo, Harry’s remorseless investigation leads to more gruesome murders and horrid discoveries: kiddy-porn in the ambassador’s briefcase; evidence that he was a blackmailer and a compulsive gambler with heavy debts to dangerous men; the concealed imminent collapse of a corporate multinational; conscienceless and illegal currency trading involving Norwegians; and various aspects of sexual perversion. Finally comes the staggeringly violent confrontation between Harry and the master criminal in a public thoroughfare.

Harry triumphs but there are more bodies than Hamlet, and more bad publicity than Watergate.

It won’t please the folks at home. Cockroaches should, however, please Nesbo’s many fans.

It is totally absorbing, wild, horrifying, funny, terrifying and breathlessly fast. Definitely not a book for stolen moments!

Friends of the University of Adelaide Library

Heather Taylor Johnson

Writing the Body: Different Approaches to Illness as Metaphor in Fiction and Poetry Poet and novelist Heather Taylor Johnson moved from America to Australia in 1999 and in the same year was diagnosed with Meniere’s disease. Attempts to capture life with a chronic illness resulted in frustration until she conceived the idea of handing her disease over to a fictional character in her novel Pursuing Love and Death.

‘Writing the Body: Different Approaches to Illness as Metaphor in Fiction and Poetry’ will explore her creative processes.

Heather Taylor Johnson is the author of three poetry books (Thirsting for Lemonade, IP, is her latest) and one novel (Pursuing Love and Death, HarperCollins) and is currently the poetry editor for Transnational Literature.

Thursday 24 April 2014 at 6.00 for 6.30pm Ira Raymond Exhibition Room, Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide Bookings by Tuesday 22 April to: robina.weir@adelaide.edu.au or telephone 8313 4064 $5 admission / Open to the public / Seating is limited Sponsored by Unibooks Wines by Coriole Vineyards

16 The Adelaide Review April 2014

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Half of a Yellow Sun Selected cinemas now The lives of four people during the struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria. Directed by Biyi Bandele. Stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton and John Boyega.

The Grand Budapest Hotel Selected cinemas from Thursday, April 10 The adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend. Directed and written by Wes Anderson. Stars Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham and Edward Norton.

A Pastoral Symphony Elder Hall, North Terrace Wednesday April 16, 7pm Assistant Conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Jessica Cottis, conducts the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in this moving concert featuring two unique pieces. James Ledger’s Two Memorials beautifully unites the spirits and sounds of two great but very different composers: John Lennon and Anton Webern. Brett Dean’s Pastoral Symphony celebrates the greatness and beauty of our natural world but also has a timely warning.

The Invisible Woman Selected cinemas from Thursday, April 17 At the height of his career, Charles Dickens meets a younger woman who becomes his secret lover until his death. Directed by Ralph Fiennes.

Stars Ralph Fiennes, Felicity Jones and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Silver’s Circus South Australian Prize

GIVEAWAY Buy South Australian and The Adelaide Review have teamed up to offer a monthly all South Australian giveaway.

WIN This month’s prize is an Easter Egg Hamper from Haigh’s Chocolates, valued at $150!

Bonython Park, Port Road Thursday, April 17, 8pm Silver’s Circus is a household name in Australia and after nearly three decades on the road maintains all the sparkle, glamour and death defying acts expected of Australia’s premier circus. Guaranteed to tap into the nostalgia you hold for a unique circus experience.

Young and Beautiful Palace Nova Eastend Cinemas Rundle Street From Thursday, May 1 The portrait of a 17-year-old girl, in four seasons and four songs. Originally titled Jeune and Jolie. Directed by François Ozon. Stars Marine Vacth, Géraldine Pailhas and Frédéric Pierrot.

Admission: One Shilling

Enter at: www.facebook.com/BuySouthAustralian

Adelaide Festival Theatre, King William Road Saturday, May 24, 8pm A remarkable real-life story of piano virtuoso Myra Hess who in the darkest hours of World War II, believed in the power of music to lift the human spirit, producing a series of lunchtime concerts at London’s National Gallery.

Stars Patricia Routledge and Piers Lane.

Montefiore The Newspeak chatter is getting louder as one of Australia’s remnant historic places, the City of Adelaide, continues to suppress the casualty numbers in the long war against heritage conservation.

BY Sir Montefiore Scuttlebutt

O

ne of Adelaide city’s most enduring stories is a tale that few tourists ever hear. It is one that most South Australian politicians quietly keep under the radar, so much so that heritage historians need archaeological skills to dig out the facts. And if they are successful, and can find a soapbox from which to protest, the details are quickly swamped by the Newspeak chatter with which the Gen X chooks of the Fourth Estate are continually fed, information that keeps them complacent and uninterested.

Adelaide’s story is one of a long war to frustrate and obstruct the retention of the remaining heritage character of its 178-yearold capital city’s streets and laneways, a war that has been supported by generations of parliamentarians, senior bureaucrats and committee party cronies, smoothing the demolition way for wealthy, well connected property speculators and their lawyers. In an early hint at the use of planner Newspeak that pervades this narrative, their portfolios of city property are labelled ‘the private realm’.

Town Hall recently threw light on damning and fairly recent numbers to illustrate that the war continues, and the casualties can be seen at random demolition sites across the city. In a ‘policy position’ paper tossed into the March state election hurly burly (and ignored by both major parties) it noted that since 2009 – only five years ago – of 430 heritage buildings it proposed for local heritage listing, only 105 had been approved by the Labor government as at February 2014. In other words, 325 detailed property proposals, fully compliant with legal criteria, had been ignored.

The Labor team was of course only acting consistently with generations of previous administrations, which for decades have resisted, by all means available, hard-fought, well researched and highly credentialed bids to block the progressive destruction of remnant colonial, Victorian and Edwardian city streetscape character long admired by generations of tourists. It has been a destruction that in the bigger cities of Australia was achieved long ago – demolitions making possible the highly profitable replacement of prominent and attractive historic buildings, often very well preserved, with a homogenous, glass-walled, high-rise legacy utterly without distinction.

In war, truth is the first casualty, but in the heritage wars the truth is self-evident – if you can find the paperwork. But few do.

Government minders learned long ago that it is easy to distract the naive from ordinary meaning and context by replacing commonly understood plain English with developer Newspeak. This is usually communicated first by young, well-meaning commercial planners, the barrow boys of the property market. New buildings are their bread and butter.

Given that the future of Adelaide’s – and North Adelaide’s – remnant historic facades is now largely spoken for (when and if an owner seeks demolition) the only slice of the heritage cake left is what planners describe as ‘the public realm’. It comes as no surprise that, with regard to places that developers cannot own but would be pleased to see reconfigured at someone else’s expense, a refreshed Newspeak orchestra has now struck up.

The state government recently threw $100,000 at Town Hall to write an ‘Urban Design Framework’ which next year will become the blueprint to justify changes to the character of the city’s streets and public places – from the city’s southern fringes, across the CBD and up to North Adelaide.

A draft document claims the impetus is to “revitalise the public realm using new strategic directions without being constrained by past designs and approaches if they are no longer valuable.” Town Hall analysis goes on: “While some elements of the past are valuable and worth preserving, others do not contribute positively to the city and require improvement.” In aiming to “strengthen the character and identity of our capital city”, one of the public realm goals is to “express the story of the city by respecting heritage elements while embracing a new heritage”.

The Newspeak objectives follow. “Ensure the private realm is designed with consideration for how it affects the adjacent public realm – development has a very significant impact on the public realm, especially at the ground level, where the activities attributed to individual buildings meet with the city.”

Here’s what Town Hall says it means. “[It] will establish a robust framework based on best practice that delivers a cost effective and sustainable suite of treatments for the public realm to be used internally and also by developers to inform public realm outcomes.”

That’s Newspeak for you.

It must be of immense relief to South Australia’s 1.6 million residents to know that the preservation of their capital city’s street character is to be guided, in part, by the features of the new heritage ‘private realm’ – the characterless, multi-storey frontages in canyons of glass and steel. And the icing on the cake for the property industry? The public purse will pay for it, starting with an additional $100,000 to be paid by Town Hall whose heritage protection efforts have been so successfully thwarted these past five years – and the previous 25.

THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014 17

ADELAIDEREVIEW.COM.AU

PERFORMING ARTS and friend – everything I hoped for when I listened to his records and then more still. I owe him the whole shop.

Hugh Laurie

A BIT OF BLUES AND LAURIE Hugh Laurie will return to Australia for the first time in more than 30 years, joined by the Copper Bottom Band to deliver a set of blues, tango, southern and South American music. The talented actor, comedian and musician explains his late-career music turn, which has seen the former star of House record two acclaimed albums Let Them Talk and Didn’t It Rain.

BY DAVID KNIGHT

Y

our upcoming Australian tour will be your first visit to Australia since 1981. Do you have any fond memories from that comedy tour of 33 years ago?

Plenty of fond memories – which doesn’t mean they’re accurate ones. But in my head, we ate like princes, drank like kings, dressed like idiots and laughed all the time. With the mad arrogance of youth, we also assumed that this was what life would be like forever.

For the Australian shows, will you concentrate on material from the two albums, or do you like to incorporate covers, which you might never record, as well as songs that might make future albums?

I always want to play shows, pieces of theatre, rather than just recitals – so we have all sorts of odd things creeping into

the show now, some of which we might record one day. Our sound checks are almost the best part of the day, when we get to simply mess about. But it’s not just to amuse ourselves – I really want people to love these songs as much as I do. In fact, I’d settle for half as much, because that’s still a lot. I also want people to laugh and dance and cry and forget their troubles. A good show, basically.

Have you got plans for new recordings in mind? And will Joe Henry be involved with future recordings?

No immediate plans. I realise now that I was pretty quick with a second album – the conventional wisdom is you leave two or three years between releases, but I just couldn’t wait. I’m going to try and be cooler this time, cultivate some mystique.

And I would be mad to venture out without Joe Henry’s steady hand on the tiller. He has been an incredible partner

For the immediate future, is music your primary creative focus?

I don’t know about creative focus. But it’s certainly my greatest pleasure, and has been for a long time. I know very well how lucky I am to have this chance to play with people of this calibre and I’m determined to savour every note.

Before agreeing to record Let Them Talk, was the idea of recording an album always in the back of your mind? And do you regret not embarking on a recording/touring career earlier?

It’s something I’d always dreamed of, although not in a scheming, this-mighthappen way. I dreamed of it the way a child dreams of being invisible. I don’t regret not starting earlier because, well, I try not to regret things too much. I’m just so lucky to be doing it now.

You’ve collaborated with some wonderful artists. Does one stand out for you more than any other as a truly special experience?

Every one of them was a thrill. Every one. But I suppose Dr John was the biggest moment because he’s a piano player, the greatest there is, and he’s been my hero since the first day I heard him. After he left, I got into my car and actually cried, it was so overwhelming.

Aside from next year’s Tomorrowland, are there some upcoming film projects that you can share with us?

I’m not even allowed to talk about Tomorrowland, under pain of excommunication. Except to say it was fantastically enjoyable to do and George Clooney is a mensch. There are some other things floating around, but I don’t want to jinx them by shooting my mouth off.

» Hugh Laurie and the Copper Bottom Band Thebarton Theatre Thursday, April 24 hughlaurieblues.com

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Can you explain the process of choosing the songs to record and the styles to cover for each album?

It’s almost the best part of the whole process. Joe and I spend months swapping lists of songs, perhaps a hundred or more, and gradually we whittle them down. Then we just let the band try them on for size. The tricky thing is, like buying clothes for a model, almost everything looks good on them.

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18 THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014

PERFORMING ARTS

Australian playwright Daniel Keene on creating his latest play The Long Way Home, written in collaboration with soldiers deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, Timor, the Solomon Islands and Somalia.

BY DANIEL KEENE

A

ustralia has withdrawn its combat troops from Afghanistan. Their war is over. Whether or not it was worth fighting, whether or not

The Long Way Home was written in response to and in collaboration with soldiers who have been deployed from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Timor to the Solomon Islands to Somalia. It was never going to be possible to include all of the stories I heard during the five weeks I spent with them during our initial workshop in September 2013. Our interactions ranged from one-on-one interviews to group discussions, chats during tea breaks and talking at the bar after our work for the day was done. All of these conversations fed into my process, which was to distil the experiences of these soldiers into a dramatic form.

At the outset, the play’s director Stephen Rayne and I decided that we did not want to

Photos: Lisa Tomasetti

The Long Way Home

the loss of Australian soldiers’ lives can be justified, men and women who volunteered to serve this country in that war have paid the price of that service. No one returns from war unscathed. Homecomings are never as easy or as simple as we might like to imagine.

War changes those who fight it. Soldiers come home from war with memories they cannot shake, with wounds that cannot always be healed. Their wounds are not always visible and their memories may remain unspoken.

But we expect them to forget, we expect them to be healed. Or perhaps that is only our profound wish. The reality is different. The reality is more difficult.

Craig Hancock and Tim Loch in Sydney Theatre Company and the Australian Defence Force’s The Long Way Home.

create a piece of verbatim theatre. To try to literally recreate the experiences of these men and women would be fruitless; dramatic reenactments of being under heavy fire from the Taliban or driving over an IED or being wounded in a rocket attack are beyond the credible range of theatre. We also wanted to avoid the simply anecdotal, which reduces experience to a series of sound bites.

As well as discussions and interviews, together with the soldiers we created improvisations, played theatre games and read the scenes I was writing in response to the stories I was hearing during the course of the workshop. The outcome of all of this work was to reveal the central concerns, the common experiences, the shared troubles and the ongoing struggles of the soldiers to reintegrate into civilian life after their intense experiences, in Afghanistan in particular. This work also uncovered an extraordinary sense of humour, a fierce sense of camaraderie and a steely determination.

In writing The Long Way Home, I drew on all of these elements.

I wanted my writing process to be as transparent as possible. I wanted it to be demystified. I told the soldiers that basically my job was like that of a cook. They would present me with the raw ingredients and I would create something out of them. My critical concern was that each of these raw ingredients would make its presence felt in the final creation. In other words, I wanted the play to be faithful to its sources, to be truthful.

The test of that truthfulness was in the soldiers’ responses to the material I was writing during the workshop. I wanted to write as much as possible during that time, so that I could give it straight to the soldiers themselves while they were engaged in the process of relating and in a very real sense reliving their experiences.

Their responses were direct and honest and

Sarah Webster and Martin Harper in Sydney Theatre Company and the Australian Defence Force’s The Long Way Home.

they didn’t pull any punches. In the best sense of the word, we were collaborating.

Is The Long Way Home fictional? Yes, and no. Every situation that it presents and every line of dialogue is born out of the experiences of the soldiers who will perform the play. They will play themselves re-imagined. They are bringing their reality into contact with that of their audience. The theatre is the perfect place for this kind of meeting, a place where truth and fiction can co-exist, where reality can be imagined.

» The Long Way Home Dunstan Playhouse Tuesday, April 1 to Saturday, April 5 statetheatrecompany.com.au

THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014 19

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PERFORMING ARTS

Get Reddy

But, you know, I can’t remember how we got together in the first place. It’s so long ago now.

“He’s certainly an interesting man. I’d go into the studio to record in the evening and we’d end up writing another three songs by the end of the night. He’s very stimulating in that way because he just sets off a chain reaction and before you know it, you’ve ended up with another three songs.”

BY ROBERT DUNSTAN

W

hen Helen Reddy, the first Australian to win a Grammy, sang at her halfsister Toni Lamond’s birthday party, little did she know it would lead her back to the stage after a decade away.

The singer, who had a cameo role as a nun in the blockbuster film Airport 1975 and also has a tulip named after her, promises to present an eclectic mix of material on this tour.

The singer is now preparing to tour her homeland for the first time in almost 30 years and The Adelaide Review caught up with her for an engaging conversation.

“I’d been in full retirement for about 10 years,” she begins, “and had moved back to Australia although I’m now living back in the US. But I’m thrilled to be performing in Australia again because that’s where it all began for me.”

Reddy was born into the show business world as her parents were vaudeville performers and the singer found herself on stage at the age of four.

As a teenager, however, she longed for a more normal life away from all the glitz and glamour.

“But I was a teenager,” she laughs, “and all teenagers rebel against what their parents

“I can’t say each show will be exactly the same each night, as I do tend to improvise a bit,” Reddy explains with a laugh. “I’ll have a very good four-piece band with me and we’ll be doing some jazz and some ballads as well as some of the old hits. And I talk a little bit, although some nights I tend to talk a lot.

Helen Reddy

are doing. But I certainly don’t regret getting back into it as it’s led to a wonderful and very interesting life and I’ve been able to travel the world.”

It must have been very interesting working with American producer Kim Fowley, who had guided The Runaways to success, on two

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albums, Ear Candy and We’ll Sing in the Sunshine, as the 70s drew to a close.

“It’s funny you should mention Kim because as you ask that I am looking at a photo of him on my desk,” Reddy says. “I saw Kim again just a few weeks ago and he’s not in good health.

But he still has all the charm he always had.

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20 The Adelaide Review April 2014

PERFORMING ARTS

Life After Opera One of opera’s great careers shortly comes to an end when the curtain comes down on Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment at Covent Garden.

by Graham Strahle

W Dame Kiri Te Kanawa

hile by common consensus her voice remains as radiant as ever and shows no sign of diminishing – which comes from possessing one of the finest vocal techniques in the business – the New

Solo shows are where many believe she really shines, though. Dame Kiri says she loves them because she can sing music entirely of her own choosing and pace an evening as she feels best.

And as audiences may remember from 2011, when she was here last, few opera stars can give as classy a solo concert as she can.

Adelaide will hear Kiri the recitalist once again this May, when she presents two hours of her favourite music with compatriot Terrence Dennis accompanying on piano.

It will include some surprises, as she explains: “I enjoyed all my opera years, but I’m aware that an opera gives an audience only one composer’s music for the evening.

In a concert the singer can present various composers and items in several musical styles.

That’s what I do – I particularly enjoy Mozart and will include some of his song material. As a contrast, I also enjoy the French Songs of the Auvergne and will certainly include one or two. And for something different, a song from the South American composer Granados.

And to hark back to my opera years, I’ll sing some Puccini.”

Since she visited Adelaide three years ago, much has happened in Te Kanawa’s life.

Recently, she found herself at the centre of controversy after remarks she made about girl singers who starve themselves to look good on camera, and wannabes on talent shows who lack any proper training. “A singing voice needs a body to support it. You can’t sing with no microphone over a full orchestra for a couple of hours, feeling hungry,” she says.

State Theatre Company of South Australia presents

the flinders university

2014 Young Playwrights Award

Zealand soprano, who turned 70 in March, has announced her retirement from opera. From now on, she will only give concert and recital appearances.

if you are 25 years of age or under and have an interest in writing plays... ... get cracking and enter your one-act play into the Flinders University 2014 Young Playwrights Award presented by State Theatre Company.

The lucky winners will get to work on script development with a professional director, before working with actors and a stage manager who will help you showcase your play in the Space Theatre for your friends as well as industry professionals. Also up for grabs is $1000 cash as well as a four-play subscription to the remaining shows in State Theatre Company’s 2014 season. deadline 5:00pm Monday 7 April 2014 Full terms and conditions available on our website www.statetheatrecompany.com.au

Last year, Dame Kiri took many by surprise by appearing on television herself, in the UK series Downton Abbey. Acting the part of Dame Nellie Melba, she serenaded the Crawley household in an after-dinner performance of Puccini’s O Mio Babbino, Caro.

What was it like stepping into the shoes of another famous singer?

“Although we have a similar career path – soprano from the ‘other side of the world’ making it good internationally – in many ways Dame Nellie and I are very different. But I was honoured to represent her, and very amused that the script had the American-born Countess putting the Earl and the butler firmly in their place when they were preparing to dismiss Dame Nellie as ‘just an Australian’. It wasn’t a major role – Dame Nellie’s visit and her brief songs are only an ingredient in a major plot sequence which takes part at the same time.”

Te Kanawa says acting in a TV drama turned out to be little different to performing on the opera stage. “The music helps a lot of course, so although the two experiences are similar, a play or TV drama has just words, which makes

Maori music is very lyrical – it sits favourably into a singing voice, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of working with it.”

it slightly harder.” It helped, she adds, that right through her own career Nellie Melba has been an inspirational figure.

“There is very little not to admire about Dame Nellie Melba. Apart from the magic of her voice, she had an indomitable spirit, a huge capacity for work, did not suffer fools gladly, and also never forgot her home country, setting up music training here and then spearheading Australia’s fund-raising for war charities. No wonder she is such a legend.”

But while she admires many other greats from the operatic past, Te Kanawa says that no other singer has influenced her as much as Joan Sutherland.

“I only heard Callas once, one of her last performances at the very end of her career.

Without question she had a wonderful presence – but by the 1970s her voice was not the voice of her past glory. On the other hand, when I went to London in 1966, Dame Joan Sutherland was in full flight – all of us at the London Opera Centre regarded her as a goddess. It was she and Richard Bonynge who advised me to move from mezzo into soprano training – and they were right! There are other singers to admire – but Dame Joan Sutherland was by far the greatest in my time.”

Last year also saw Te Kanawa release her first record in seven years. Waiata is her third recording of all-Maori songs, and she says Adelaide will hear a selection. “My father was Maori but my school-days and early singing lessons eased my own musical training in a different more ‘classical’ direction, so I didn’t have a lot of contact with Maori music. But the interest was always there.

“Maori music is very lyrical – it sits favourably into a singing voice, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of working with it.”

Will this be the New Zealander’s last Australian tour? “Ah, I can’t answer that because I don’t know!” she laughs. “Ask me a year from now.”

»»Dame Kiri Te Kanawa 70th Birthday Gala Festival Theatre Sunday, May 18 adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au

THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014 21

ADELAIDEREVIEW.COM.AU

PERFORMING ARTS The retelling of the story by Lisa Peterson and the enthralling actor of the piece, Denis O’Hare, frame the narrative in modern idiom with contemporary references which cogently relate past and present. Hector returns from the front for a moment to be with his wife Andromache and their baby son – or is it a soldier on special leave from Afghanistan back in Adelaide, Newcastle, Boston or LA? Later, in a few stunning minutes, O’Hare lists in rapid succession what seems to be a complete, depressing catalogue of all the wars in Western history, from Troy to Syria – Crimea has surely been added to the script by now.

Roman Tragedies

Drama and Politics Anyone seeing much of the Adelaide Festival’s drama could well believe the Artistic Director David Sefton had cannily programmed for an election year. Not so, he assures me during a conversation a few days after the tumult and the shouting died away.

This interdependence underlies Homer’s Iliad, the story of the Trojan War, sparked

by Prince Paris of Troy’s abduction of Helen, the world’s most beautiful woman, who also happens to be the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta. Homer’s epic portrays the quarrel between the Greeks’ champion, Achilles, and their leader Agamemnon. Achilles sulks, won’t fight, and is only goaded to action when his bosom buddy, Petroclus, is killed. So Achilles kills the Trojan champion, Hector, and is himself finished off by Paris (or possibly the sun god, Apollo).

Closer to home, in Malthouse Theatre’s The Shadow King, director Michael Kantor and lead actor Tom E. Lewis transform Shakespeare’s King Lear into a tragedy of contemporary Australian Aboriginal life. Lear distributes his lands, as in Shakespeare, but now money is involved — big money, through mining rights — and Goneril and Regan have something to quarrel over apart from Edmund the bastard (in every possible sense of the word). Lear’s appalling error, and a sign of his egregious egotism, is that the land he gives to his vile daughters (Cordelia, the good one, misses out because she is honest) is not his to give. He does not own the land: the land owns him, as it owns all his people. How often is this Aboriginal concept brought before us? It makes an unshakeable foundation for this rich adaption of Shakespeare’s great tragedy.

Not quite like a real live election maybe, but by presenting us with such a clutch of plays in an election month (and I had to miss Big Mouth), whether by design or not, David Sefton gave added spice to the audiences’ enjoyment.

N

American Blues Magazine

egotiations began more than four years ago to bring out Toneelgroep Amsterdam’s stupendous Roman Tragedies, which gave its audiences unprecedented insights into Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, and ways of producing them.

Shakespeare’s text was cut and adapted, but revealed all the more clearly the terrible interdependence of personal passions and ambitions and politics.

Finally, back to the election: when all relevant votes are in, a surprise — David the underdog is the winner. And there had been no corruption at all. To make sure, I asked the usher collecting the voting dials: “Is it the same result every night?” “No, not in the least,” he replied. “Always different, depending on the audience.”

“A rousing, wickedly entertaining, deeply memorable live show.”

BY ALAN BRISSENDEN

By turning the whole expanse of the Festival Theatre’s performance area into a vast television studio – into which the audience were invited as observers – and dressing the cast in smart, mostly dark dresses or suits, director Ivo van Hove submerged the historical under the immediacy of the present. Characters are interviewed for TV current affairs shows; Coriolanus thumps the desk and scatters his papers as he furiously roars out of the senate; Antony begins speaking to his friends, Romans and countrymen in a whisper, his voice rising in anger until he discards his hand-held microphone, striding down from the stage to address the audience in his own unaided voice.

In Antony and Cleopatra he is married off for political reasons to a vacuous, gum-chewing Octavia; Cleopatra’s Egyptian court has an inexhaustible supply of champagne.

The destruction of political rivals through democratic process was the basis for the gritty, hilarious and enlightening Fight Night, a clever, rewarding piece by Australia’s Border Project and Belgium’s Ontroerend Goed. The 200 audience members were issued on entry with press-button dials to record votes and answer questions. Yes, it’s election time and David is eliminated in the first round. Four out of the five original candidates are left, a coalition is formed, another one goes. We are asked questions: how would we want our candidate to react in a hostage situation? Be a spokesperson, take action, or stay calm? Are certain words offensive to us? Are we religious, spiritual, neither? It’s a mixture of the political, the demographic, and the ethical.

Maggie Gerrand presents

For the first time in Australia

Tamara Anna Cislowska

Photo by Zane Simpson

HUGH LAURIE

Elena Kats-Chernin

Photo by Bridget Elliot

with The Copper Bottom Band performing an eclectic mix of blues, tango, Southern and South American music Thursday 24 April Thebarton Theatre venuetix.com.au or 08 8225 8888

www.hughlaurieblues.com

22 THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014

PERFORMING ARTS

THIS MONTH THE ADELAIDE REVIEW’S GUIDE TO APRIL’S HIGHLIGHT PERFORMING ARTS EVENTS

FOR THE FALLEN Elder Hall Friday, April 25 music.adelaide.edu.au/elderhall As part of the Anzac Day solemnity, Lunchtimes at Elder Hall will remember the World Wars with Cheryl Pickering, the acclaimed singer and Adelaide local. Pickering will raise morale on the day, singing the songs of World War 2’s ‘Forces Sweetheart’, Vera Lynn. The concert will also feature music from Elgar and the Graduate Singers. Directed by Karl Geiger.

ADELAIDE INTERNATIONAL CELLO FESTIVAL

SHEN YUN

Sunday, March 30 to Sunday, April 6 Adelaideinternationalcellfestival.com.au Featuring performances and masterclasses with an international line-up of guests including Lynn Harell, Marko Ylonen and Eugene Friesen, the 2011 Ruby Award winning festival is set to delight audiences once again.

Adelaide Festival Theatre Saturday, April 19 to Moday, April 21 shenyun.com With a name that roughly translates as the ‘beauty of divine beings dancing’, the New York-based classical Chinese dance and music company Shen Yun Performing Arts inevitably holds itself to a high standard. Bringing together dedicated artists from around the world, Shen Yun’s mission is to spur a renaissance of traditional Chinese civilization.

ADELAIDE CHAMBER SINGERS Crystalline Friday, April 4 (St Peter’s Cathedral) and Sunday, April 6 (Church of the Epiphany) adelaidechambersingers.com The Adelaide Chamber Singers’ Crystalline concerts will span 500 years of music as they perform work by contemporary composers Eric Whitacre, Arvo Part, Clare Maclean as well as Renaissance masters Victoria and Palestrina.

Crystalline will include a performance of Immortal Bach.

State Opera SA presents in association with Adelaide Festival Centre

Giuseppe Verdi

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The Adelaide Review April 2014 23

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PERFORMING ARTS NYMPH() MANIAC: VOL. 1 & VOL. 2

“Pogostkina switched on the power for an electrifying finish.”

by D.M. Bradley

Lars von Trier’s final entry in his ‘Trilogy of Depression’ (after Antichrist and Melancholia) is being screened here as a four-hour experience, instead of two separate movies, and in a LvT-approved version that, however cut and fiddled-with, proves pretty damn explicit. It’s just about the last word in his flagrantly controversial filmography, a huge, flawed, grandiose, sometimes impossibly didactic study of sex, the gender war, the life of the mind versus the body’s lower functions and a peculiarly Scandinavian existentialism that could be his greatest work. No, really.

A woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg, LvT’s favourite player) lies beaten in an alley, and when she’s found by Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård, LvT’s other favourite player). He doesn’t call an ambulance, but, however improbably, takes her home for tea and rest. She introduces herself as Joe and proceeds to tell him about her life as a self-diagnosed ‘nymphomaniac’ (‘sex addict’ would be the preferred label these days, but Joe rejects it), as Seligman sits listening, encouraging, slowing down proceedings to become LvT’s smart-arse proxy and making a bizarrely convoluted comparison between her carnal exploits and fly-fishing (?). Stacy Martin then plays Joe for most of Vol. 1, as we hear of her upbringing in a 70s Euronetherworld, her erotic interests as a kid, her virginity-losing experience at the hands of Jerôme (Shia LaBeouf) and

The Journal

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra

her other ‘outrageous’ adventures before starting a job where the older Jerôme is her cruel, belittling superior. Seligman suggests that she loved him, and that’s why this hurt her and accounts for her rampant but joyless promiscuity, but Joe laughs at the idea. Soon we’re into Vol. 2, where Gainsbourg’s Joe’s need for sexual release gets darker and more dangerous (naturally), and eventually she’s working for ‘L’ (Willem Dafoe), romancing ‘P’ (Mia Goth), and building to a long-delayed and vaguely unsatisfying climax (something that really wouldn’t surprise her).

There are fine performances here: Martin as the young Joe is scarily good; Christian Slater’s terrific as Joe’s dad;

and LvT’s culty mate Udo Kier cameos in the ‘dessert spoons’ sequence. The picture is often gorgeous to behold (now that Lars has dropped that ‘dogma’ nonsense), meaning that even the most lurid, startling, bum-thrashingly, genitalgropingly moment looks exquisite.

The Ultimate Lars von Trier Movie?

A frightening idea, but it probably is, and now that he’s said everything he so burningly needs to, then maybe he can retire. And I wish he would.

»»Nymph()maniac is screening now.

Rated R

Nicholas Carter Conductor Milica Ilic Soprano Paul McMahon Tenor Samuevl Dundas Baritone Adelaide Symphony Chorus Carl Crossin Director Young Adelaide Voices Christie Anderson Director

Friday 16 & Saturday 17 May Festival Theatre An unforgettable journey from the sinister to the sublime

Carl Orff’s choral spectacle with over 200 performers on stage Mariarosa Cattaruzza, Vicki Jarnis and Penny Jarnis.

Ethne Seifried, Garry Seifried and Jill Venning.

Meredith Imeson and Diana Anderson.

Mr Morgan’s Last Love Excite your senses.

Book your tickets now.

131 246 bass.net.au

The Adelaide Review and Trak Cinemas presented a preview screening of Mr Morgan’s Last Love on Monday, May 3 at Trak Cinemas.

Photos ANDREAS HEUER

Jan Johnson and Richard Johnson.

Bob Ainsworth and Leveda Ainsworth.

24 THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014

PERFORMING ARTS

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

BY D.M. BRADLEY

There was a time when Wes Anderson’s films, particularly The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited (coming after his Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums), were accused of being way too Wes Anderson-ish: i.e. archly artificial, calculated and inhuman. But 2012’s Moonrise

DIRECTOR OF SWIMMING POOL

Kingdom changed all of that, and this, his follow-up, is even better and more ambitious with continuing themes of friendship, loyalty, honour and love accompanied by a lovely tone of unaffected humanism.

Moustafa (wonderful near-unknown Tony Revolori) is taken under the wing of concierge and mentor M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes in just about his best performance anywhere), a tirelessly gentlemanly legend in the hotel of the title in the fictional Eastern European country of Zubrowka. Within this Old World establishment, as the clock ticks down to war, Gustave (“I go to bed with all my friends”) has a strong attachment to adoring octogenarian regular Madame D (Tilda Swinton in heavy make-up). When she winds up murdered it’s the ‘fruity’ Gustave who’s suspected of foul play, especially as he’s been bequeathed a priceless painting in her will. Soon her nasty son Dmitri (Anderson pal Adrien Brody) is also on Gustave’s case, with help from his assassin sidekick Jopling (Willem Dafoe), and a series of chases (often using charming FX and even a little stylised animation) result, with Gustave and Moustafa on the run from the law and Jopling, and Anderson utilising a high-kick-

HANNAH ARENDT

Thank goodness for films like Hannah Arendt, the newest from director Margarethe von Trotta. Unlike too many others these days its subject matter doesn’t blatantly pander to commercial tastes; that’s assuming that a biopic on a prickly German political writerphilosopher doesn’t possess popular appeal or ‘bankability’. And unlike too many others, it is a film that is intellectually challenging, illuminating and thoroughly involving.

HHHH

IN CINEMAS MAY 1 PALACE NOVA EASTEND

Featuring perhaps Anderson’s greatest and funniest cast, many of whom have appeared in his previous efforts (like Jeff Goldblum, Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray in his seventh Wes pic), as well as a few first-timers (Saoirse Ronan, Mathieu Amalric), this is also notable for not only revealing this director’s purest, sweetest romanticism but also his deftest and most daring shifts in tone. And the nattily-dressed (even when he’s in a prison uniform) Fiennes is simply gorgeous here, and is allowed such scope to charm and shine that some viewers will seriously want to get a room.

» The Grand Budapest Hotel screens from Thursday, April 10. Rated M.

Inspired by the work of Viennese/Austrian Stefan Zweig, this trickily takes place in four separate timeframes: a girl ponders the past in contemporary times; an unnamed author (Tom Wilkinson) speaks to-camera in the mid-80s; the ‘Young Writer’ (Jude Law) talks to Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) in the 60s; and they flashback to 1932, where the young

BY NIGEL RANDALL

ELEGANT... A MESMERISING SLOW BURN.

inducing soundtrack of zithers, balalaikas and even yodelling.

Given that it’s a film that closely follows its lead (Barbara Sukowa in brilliant form) as she mostly observes, ponders, thinks and talks about the Israeli trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, it is to von Trotta’s credit that the story is told with such urgent, even suspenseful, energy. The two hours running time struggles to do justice to the formidable scope of ideas in Arendt’s writing, published initially as a series of five articles in The New Yorker magazine in the early 60s and subsequently expanded into her masterwork Eichmann in Jerusalem: the Banality of Evil.

The exploration of Arendt’s incendiary position (Holocaust scholarship was still in its delicate infancy) is done mainly through the heated debates she engaged in with colleagues and friends at smart Manhattan cocktail parties. That she described Eichmann as a bureaucratic functionary incapable of his own thought who merely carried out orders was misconstrued as sympathetic defense. It was her criticism of Jewish leaders more so that prompted accusations of betrayal against her fellow Jews and ended several longstanding friendships. Although her allies – slightly adulterous husband Heinrich (Axel Milberg), assistant Lotte (Julia Jentsch) and novelist Mary McCarthy (wonderful Janet McTeer) – are staunch defenders, ultimately Arendt must stand alone with her convictions. And stand alone she does, in what will become regarded as a classic classroom scene in which the tired, chain-smoking, cerebral powerhouse gives an impassioned speech before her adoring students. It provides an inspiring and memorable end.

» Hannah Arendt is currently screening at Trak.

Rated PG

THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014 25

ADELAIDEREVIEW.COM.AU

PERFORMING ARTS class sisters, Kainene (Rose) and her twin Olanna (Newton) and their partners as Biafra breaks away to become an independent country from Nigeria before war (which claimed one million lives) breaks out between the neighbouring territories. First time film director Biyi Bandele, who also wrote the screenplay, focuses on the personal as well as the political in this almost-epic tale of love, honour and war. It follows the sisters over a 10-year period as they lead different lives during this tumultuous time. But both women have similarities: they are headstrong, passionate and forgiving but they are also flawed figures.

“I am excited when I see roles for women that are not the ordinary, the norm, that are multifaceted and are something that you have to think about,” Rose says. “I think that these women are women that you need to think about.”

Here Comes the Sun Currently starring on Broadway opposite Denzel Washington in the new production of A Raisin in the Sun, Anika Noni Rose found time to speak to The Adelaide Review about her latest film performance in the Nigerianbased drama, Half of a Yellow Sun.

BY DAVID KNIGHT

T

he Tony Award winner and official Disney Legend (she was Disney’s first black princess in 2009’s The Princess and the Frog) is best known to Australian audiences starring alongside Beyonce and Jennifer Hudson in the Oscarwinning Dreamgirls. A fan of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun when it was released in 2006, the 41-yearold says she jumped at the chance to star in the film adaptation alongside recent Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) and Thandie Newton (W., The Pursuit of Happyness) when her manager asked if she

Half of a Yellow Sun shows a different side to African society normally presented in film, as the intellectual chattering class, the upperclass, as well as the poor is featured.

“When you talk about films about Africa in general they often don’t show people who are in the upper-crust of that society. It’s as if that doesn’t exist when you talk about mass media generally, what is shown is the downtrodden and it’s usually an issue movie. So I’m really excited to show people who were definitely African but had money and travelled the world and were exposed and educated

and interesting in that way and not just interesting as somebody that we are prompting the world to want to look at and help, or look at and pity, or look at and cry for. It’s important for us to realise that there’s as much of a well-rounded society in Africa as there is in America, as there is in Australia or somewhere else where you have upper, middle and lower class of people.”

Rose says the Nigerian-Biafran war was not a hot topic of conversation when they filmed in the West African country.

“I went to several museums and I did a lot of reading and I listened to everything that I could listen to with regard to people, Nigerians, who had been in the war or Nigerians’ everyday experience and how it has affected their lives and how they move through the world – just the fact that this film has been made and that we’re showing this war that so many people don’t even know about, I didn’t know about it until I read the book. For America that was a time [the late 60s] of great struggle because it was the same time as the Vietnam War but I think it’s very important for us to be aware of these things that have happened because they are not singular and they seem to be things that we as human beings repeat so often.”

» Half of a Yellow Sun is in cinemas now

“ONE OF THE MOST STAR-STUDDED ENSEMBLES

would be interested in a role as one of the sisters, Kainene or Olanna.

“I didn’t even know which role they were talking about at that point, and frankly, I didn’t even care because I felt like the women are written so beautifully that I would’ve taken either one,” Rose, who plays Kainene, explains. “I was so honoured to be asked but Kainene was my favourite. I was very happy when I figured out that that’s who I was going to be,” she laughs.

Set during the Nigerian-Biafran war in the late 60s, Half of a Yellow Sun follows two upper-

IN HOLLYWOOD HISTORY” THE INDEPENDENT

“WICKEDLY FUNNY… RALPH FIENNES IS SUPERB” ED GIBBS, SUN HERALD UNWIND

««««« THE TELEGRAPH (UK)

««««

««««

««««

TIME OUT (UK)

THE GUARDIAN (UK)

EMPIRE

A film by WES ANDERSON

Now showing at The Trak Cinema

375 Greenhill Road Toorak Gardens

Wallis Cinemas

Mitcham Shopping Centre 119 Belair Road Torrens Park www.halfofayellowsun.com.au

IN CINEMAS APRIL 10 Ade review 123x158 QPblock

26 The Adelaide Review April 2014

VISUAL ARTS Review:

Dark Heart Rub our eyes...

by John Neylon

T

The timing of this Adelaide Biennial was significant. The project came off the back of the 2012 Adelaide Biennial, Parallel Collisions.

This previous project projected the intensity of suspended judgement mindsets associated with

Sally Smart, The Choreography of Cutting, (Spring), 2013–14, installation, mixed media, dimensions variable, © Sally Smart. Courtesy the artist and BREENSPACE, Sydney and Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide.

Photo: Clayton Glen

he Reverend Frazer in David Malouf’s novel Remembering Babylon, observes that ‘The very habit and faculty that makes apprehensible to us what is known and expected dulls our sensitivity to other forms… We must rub our eyes and look again, clear our minds of what we are looking for to see what is there’. Author Alice Brittan, in commenting on this passage, treats it as an expression of Malouf’s idea of the drug of analogy. The analogy (an extended comparison between two different things) serves, she believes, to “disguise the unknown as the familiar”. I carried these ideas into Dark Heart.

I anticipated that the exhibition would provide some new information about current directions in contemporary Australian art. But I also hoped that the exhibition might deliver some insights into the now of Australian lived experience.

Fiona Hall, Out of my tree, 2013, mixed media installation, dimensions variable, © Fiona Hall. Courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.

postmodernist discourse. This was evident in the ‘ tracking shot’ dynamic, which spilled from the exhibition’s epicentre in the downstairs gallery to keep viewers in a state of constant negotiation between what we know of the past and what contemporary experience is telling us. The curators declared that they were not interested in curating in “an authorial, singular position” but were more interested in the way ideas can “rise up through a space”. In this regard Dark Heart is in a different postcode.

GALLERY ONE

MITCHAM PRESENTS

Life@death 2014 THEME: LETTING GO EASTER ART EVENT

Exhibition open 21 March-25 April (closed school holidays) Tuesday - Friday 10.00-4.30pm Gallery One 1 Torrens Street Mitcham SA 5062 Business Hours: Tue-Fri 10am-4.30pm

Curator Nick Mitzevitch’s intention to create an “emotional and immersive” exhibition experience has meant that each work, while aware of and informed by proximities, functions within its own space.

There is, now trademark, visual theatrics of low ambient light, dramatic spots and floods and dark walls. The viewer is very much cast as audience. The aesthetic heft of this style of presentation predisposes a sense of drama and significantly an awareness of materiality as central to the transaction between viewers and works.

Phone: 08 8272 4504 Email: office@galleryone.org.au Website: www.galleryone.org.au

Back to Malouf’s drug of analogy. The question is, have the artists forced analogies on themselves and viewers? There is no ready answer to this.

Warwick Thornton’s evocation (Rebirth) of Albert Namatjira’s circumstance of being in, of and separated from country, for example, uses the visual analogy of jump cuts and absences to suggest a fragmented and continuing story. Fiona

Hall communicates menacing wunderkammer connections (Happy Hour) between ageold impulses to understand the world and contemporary obsessions with exploitation against a backdrop of time running out. The multiple cut out /pin up shapes in Sally Smart’s large wall installation (The Choreography of Cutting) mimic the dynamics of choreographed bodies in motion. The flopping, peeling instability of Caroline Rothwell’s various ‘reconfigurations’ of machines that might save the world amuse but inspire little confidence in a future dependent on neosteampunk inventions. Such examples exemplify the confidence all Dark Heart artists have in employing powerful analogies to tell their stories.

The slippery part of this is the business of casting the unfamiliar as familiar (and thus obscuring its true nature) or creating fresh analogies that somehow close the gap between artist, idea and audience.

Because the works are, generally speaking, very conscious of the materiality of expression, this factor plays a significant role in convincing the viewer to look longer and closer. Such a dynamic is a given with Julia deVille’s impeccably taxidermed and bejeweled mortes. A similar comment can be made of Alex Seton’s remarkable carved marble live vests. But it is also present as an engagement factor in Richard Lewer’s low-tech but almost unbearably intense animation about human grief and courage.

visual artists & venues REGISTRATIONS FOR EXHIBITIONS OPEN NOW UNTIL 19 May South Australian Living Artists Festival

1-24 August 2014

salafestival.com

The Adelaide Review April 2014 27

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VISUAL ARTS

THIS MONTH

Photo: Anthony Whelan

The Adelaide Review’s guide to APRIL’s highlight VISUAL ARTS events

The idea of engaging with the unfamiliar without being conned into thinking it is somehow immediately comprehensible (or familiar) lies at the heart of this seductive viewing experience. From the magic realism of Ah Xian’s stone studded busts, to the ominous tar-pit, soul sucking blackness of Ben Quilty’s maw of hell, the frozen shaft of dynamic energy that is Kulata Tjuta (many spears) and Brook Andrews’ haunting, lesioned summoning of the ancestors (AUSTRALIA 1 – V1) there is a compelling note of intent, a holding of the gaze, and often a sense of urgency in the telling. Is this the now of contemporary Australian lived experience? This humanity-rich and (almost creature and landscape free) and strangely timeless exhibition speaks eloquently to a contemporary audience about creative journeys beyond the reach of mindless media, crass consumerism and self interest politics.

The stories embedded in Dark Heart speak of more important things.

»»2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Dark Heart Art Gallery of South Australia Continues until Sunday, May 11 artgallery.sa.gov.au

Testing Ground Flinders University Art Museum and City Gallery Continues until Sunday, May 4 flinders.edu.au/artmuseum Curated by Julie Gough and featuring 14 artists, Testing Ground aims to “destabilise populist expectations about culture, nature and place” through sculpted objects, installations, photographs and new media. Artists include Sue Kneebone, Christian Thompson, Siying Zhou and Darren Cook.

Matthew Johnson Resonance Hill Smith Gallery Continues until Thursday, April 24 hillsmithgallery.com.au Resonance continues the Melbourne-based artist Matthew Johnson’s fascination with the “emotional experience of the environment and how colour can activate our memories”.

ROYAL SOUTH AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY OF ARTS INC.

Caring for Our Planet 23 March – 20 April 2014 This excellent selected exhibition depicts artist’s concerns with the environment & climate change, through their imagination, diversity & the beauty of nature.

Peoples’ Choice Awards: Sun 13 April at 3.00pm

Danger Zone, oil by Peter Noble, Winner 2012

5th Solar Art Prize

Youthscape 2014 22 June – 13 July 2014 Open to all young artists 15 - 26 years Over $5,000 in Prizes over all mediums Entry forms www.rsasarts.com.au

Where: RSASA Gallery, Level 1, Institute Bldg, Cnr North Tce & Kintore Ave, Adelaide.

Mon – Friday 10.30 – 4.00pm, Sat & Sun 1 – 4.00pm. Closed public holidays.

For more information: Bev Bills, Director, RSASA Office: 8232 0450 or 0415 616 900.

Royal South Australian Society of Arts Inc. Level 1 Institute Building, Cnr North Terrace & Kintore Ave Adelaide, Ph/Fax: 8232 0450 www.rsasarts.com.au rsasarts@bigpond.net.au Mon- Fri 10.30-4.30pm Sat & Sun 1- 4pm Pub Hol. Closed.

Arthur Phillips A Living Retrospective David Sumner Gallery Opens Sunday, April 13 david-sumner-gallery.com A Living Retrospective is a premium selection of watercolour works painted by Arthur Phillips over five decades. The exhibition paintings were selected from around 2000 works in Phillips’ personal studio.

Longwater – Works from the Coorong Prospect Gallery Sunday, April 6 to Sunday, May 4 prospect.sa.gov.au Featuring artists’ experience of the Coorong through printmaking, ceramics and photography, Longwater highlights the work of Jeff Mincham, Sandra Starkey Simon and Michal Kluvanek and their take on this enchanting part of the state.

28 THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014

VISUAL ARTS

AFGHANISTAN RECORDINGS Shaun Gladwell chose a different direction to the men in his family when he set out on a career as an artist.

BY JANE LLEWELLYN

L

ike his father, grandfather and great grandfather, he too ended up going to war – but it was his art that took him there. “In the end the interest got me, it kind of came full circle. I ended up going to war through being an artist.”

being the first digital artist to be chosen.

In 2009 Gladwell was commissioned as the Australian War Memorial’s official war artist in a scheme that has been running since 1917.

Gladwell joins a long list of Australian artists who have travelled to warzones to document and present the experiences of war from a different perspective. Artists have included Will Dyson, Arthur Streeton, George Lambert, Nora Heysen and Jon Cattapan, with Gladwell

“I went in 2009 and I haven’t really stopped thinking about it or using it in some way in my work. It’s a long-term thing,” explains Gladwell. “Field Recordings is more about my relationship to conflict in general including this experience of Afghanistan.”

4 April - 4 May 2014 TWO EXHIBITIONS

iMAGery

painting by Annah Stevens

artwork in various media by members of the Marion Art Group

Boskenna Art Studio Group Show artwork in various media by artists from the Boskenna Art Studio Colleen Bohonis, Gus Clutterbuck, Adele duBarry, Joy Levins & Margaret Russell (below) glasswork by Marg Russell (right) painting by Adele duBarry

Gallery M, Marion Cultural Centre 287 Diagonal Rd, Oaklands Pk SA P:8377 2904 info@gallerym.net.au

www.gallerym.net.au

When Gladwell set out on the expedition he had some idea of what he wanted to capture – the intensity and drama of the place – but then he was hit with things he hadn’t bargained for.

“For me, I think, it was the landscape itself.

The environment of Afghanistan is such an incredible part of the world. I wasn’t ready for how immense and beautiful and harsh it is – it’s so many things. It kind of just blew me away.”

While it might appear that documenting Australian soldiers in Afghanistan couldn’t be further removed from Gladwell’s work – his best-known work Storm Sequence features him skating in the rain at Bondi – it’s not the case at all. Curator of the exhibition Warwick Heywood believes there are strong elements in these works, which have carried through from previous works. He says: “Shaun’s interest is in the body and shaping of the body, the way the body moves in space. He has an interest in sub

Meg Cowell, There is a Bluebird in my Heart, 133cm x 92cm, limited edition giclee print

exhibitions gallery shop

The exhibition at Samstag is comprised of two parts – the Australian War Memorial’s travelling exhibition, which was a result of his 2009 trip to Afghanistan and Field Recordings, which are works he has made since then.

Shaun Gladwell, Double Balancing Act, 2010 (detail). Dual-channel High Definition video, 16:9, colour, silent Channel 1: 7 minutes 32 seconds; channel 2: 4 minutes 4 seconds. Performer (right screen): Bill Shannon. Videography: Josh Raymond. Courtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery

cultures – which started off in skateboarding and became an interest in sub cultures in general. I think that is a strong element to his work.”

captured Meg Cowell • Gee Greenslade Sam Oster • Marcelo Pla

4 - 27 April 2014 32 The Parade Norwood Mon-Fri 9-5.30 Sat 10-5 Sun 2-5 t. 8363 0806 www.artimagesgallery.com.au

It’s these sub cultures and how they relate to their environment that interests Gladwell.

He was fascinated with how Australian soldiers were adapting to their environment,

The Adelaide Review April 2014 29

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VISUAL ARTS

The exhibition features video, stills and paintings, as Gladwell says it is difficult to articulate the experience of Southern Afghanistan in just video form. “I do paint every now and then. I only paint if the idea needs to be a painting. I don’t just paint for the sake of painting. Some ideas needed to be video others are probably better as paintings.”

as well as how the southern Afghanis were surviving in it. “I am really interested in how people relate to their environments and how people can be in environments in really creative ways. When people are incredibly creative in whatever environment they find themselves in. That’s what I’m interested in

as an artist,” he explains.

A lot of the soldiers that Gladwell met were tech-savvy, as they have to use technology all the time. He handed them cameras and the works produced as a result of this are fascinating. In other works, Gladwell was

Gladwell’s 2009 experience in Afghanistan obviously had an impact on him, as several years later he is still producing work influenced by it. This highlights the importance of the war artist scheme in the development of artists as well as depicting the experience of war to the public. Heywood says, “It’s interesting that you send over various artists to the same conflict but they always come back with very different perspectives, often structured by their own interest. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a good thing. It allows you new ways of thinking about the war.”

»»Shaun Gladwell: Afghanistan Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art Friday, April 11 to Friday, July 18 »»Shaun Gladwell: Field Recordings Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art Friday, April 11 to Friday, May 16 unisa.edu.au/samstagmuseum

BRUSHES AND THREADS An exhibition by Graduates of Certificate IV Visual Arts – Painting, Drawing and Textiles

MARDEN

SENIOR COLLEGE

your pathway to success

28 March – 24 April 2014

Chris Bowden, detail

behind the camera capturing images of the soldiers sleeping, exhausted and from behind or looking out. He was looking for different ways to represent what was happening over there.

Opens: Friday 28 March 6 pm - 8 pm Launch Guest: Cathy Boniciolli Visual Arts Educator/Artist

T’Arts Collective

Free Artist Demonstrations throughout the exhibition:

Exciting artist run contemporary gallery / shop in the heart of Adelaide.

Saturdays 29 March, 5 and 12 April 2 pm – 4 pm

Gays Arcade (off Adelaide Arcade)

matthew johnson resonance

Free entry - all welcome!

Robyn Zerner Russel

27 March – 24 April 2014 www.hillsmithgallery.com.au

Window Display at Tarts from 31st March until 26th April.

Open Mon-Sat 10am-5pm Phone 8232 0265

www.tartscollective.com.au Find Us On Facebook

Pepper Street Arts Centre Exhibitions, Gift Shop, Art Classes, Coffee Shop.

558 Magill Road, Magill PH: 8364 6154 Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 12 noon - 5 pm An arts and cultural initiative funded by the City of Burnside

www.pepperstreetartscentre.com.au

30 The Adelaide Review April 2014

VISUAL ARTS

Review:

Australian Art: A History Sasha Grishin / Miegunyah Press MUP

by John Neylon

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acking 46 chapters, this history of Australian art has weight to go with the heft. My dog-eared little copy of Robert Hughes’ The Art of Australia (revised edition 1970) looks a minnow in comparison.

Blame it on population growth. Sasha Grishin, the author of Australian Art: A History, estimates that there are 25,000 – 30,000 artists working actively in Australia today. Hughes just escaped the tsunami of mushrooming art courses, organisations, exhibitions, galleries and journals. Likely by the time I’ve typed this sentence, another two or three artist sites will have been published on line. That said, and with many more artists at his disposal, Grishin has retained some of the era-chunking that held Hughes’s history together. From this perspective this book has a clear narrative structure, which favors chronology over thematic clustering and is the more coherent for it. Why write a new history of Australian art? I suspect the author weighed this question a number of times before heading down that long lonesome trail. That the topography of contemporary Australian art has been in constant churn mode since the 1970s and is populated by new generations of artists dealing with the hybridity and the tensions between dominant and subcultures are good enough reasons for any writer with a sense of destiny to want to try. But there are more, and Grishin has seized the moment.

From the outset, the author deals with Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian art as two sides of one coin, a rather thick coin it

transpires, as considerable attention is given to the zones of demarcation that in some other historical accounts are absolute. In citing not only the many examples of cultural interface and exchange between contemporary era Indigenous artists and others, but key instances of early to late colonial explorer/settler encounters with Indigenous art, Grishin enters a strong argument for re-envisaging this divide as dynamic and reciprocal. The second element is that of inclusivity. Recent exhibitions and publications have gone to great pains to demonstrate that the modern to contemporary era has been dynamically expressed through a wide range of art media and forms, beyond painting and sculpture. How refreshing then to find in a major art historical publication, prominently illustrated and interpreted examples of photography (from colonial to present day), printmaking, furniture, some ceramics and architecture. There are big gaps in this representation (such as contemporary furniture/design) and doubtless some hard editorial/design decisions needed to be made. But this writing mindset has meant that (for example) the counter-culture printmaking movement of the late 1960s–70s gets as much space as say the Art Nouveau tendencies in Australian art of the early twentieth century. As it should.

Another key element that enlivens the reading is the regular inclusion of voices in the form of extended quotes from artists and others, sometimes statements of intent but other times, extracts from letters and journals. The narrative is richer for this inclusion. This observation

introduces another significant element which gives this publication a special resonance – that of context. To get the balance right between articulating the business of art and the socioeconomic-political contexts that impinge on it is a challenge which Grishin has dealt with in an impressively researched but very readable style. And lastly there is the ‘drill down’ factor, which means that the text is studded with spur trails, listing artists and events for later research. In this way the author has been able to allude to a greater body of practice that could be meaningfully discussed in the book.

If Grishin revisits this text in a few years I would expect to see closer scrutiny of what’s happening and emerging in regional Australia and further commentary on new hybridities of

time-based practices including sound, video and computer-mediated art. Also public art, which is proving to be a circuit breaker in terms of building art audiences. A decision might have to be made about incorporating the Canberra/ modern architecture feature into an overview of modernism rather than leaving it dangling mid publication. I looked unsuccessfully for some drill down into the nexus between the Adelaide and Melbourne contemporary art ferment of the 1940s, profiling of the ‘Adelaide Angries’ brat pack and the impact of the Ern Malley factor on Adelaide-based modernism.

That’s detail that can be addressed down the track. This handsome publication with its comprehensive endnotes invites such close reading and response. It deserves it.

ADELAI DES LARGEST RANGE OF QUALITY ART MATERIALS

MASTER GLASS 2 - 5 CONTEMPORARY GLASS ARTISTS Nick Mount, Clare Belfrage, Brenden Scott French, Tim Edwards & Tony Hanning

27 March - 19 April 2014

444 South Road, Marleston, SA 5033 | T +61 08 8297 2440 | M 0421 311 680 | art @bmgart.com.au | www.bmgart.com.au

83 Commercial Road, Port Adelaide Open: Open:Mon Mon- Fri - Fri8.30-5pm 8.30-5pmSat Sat9-2pm 9-2pm Phone: Phone:8241 82410059 0059 sales@portartsupplies.com.au www.portartsupplies.com.au

32 THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014

VISUAL ARTS

Sam Songailo

BY JANE LLEWELLYN

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am Songailo’s painting interventions use bold colours and geometric patterns creating a somewhat design aesthetic. So it comes as no surprise to learn that he has a background in graphic design – he studied at the University of South Australia and ran a design business before his foray into visual art. He often uses the computer to plan and virtually mock up what he might do, a hangover from his design days, but also a necessity due to the large scale of his works.

In the case of his upcoming exhibition at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA) he has a long install of three weeks and so a lot of the experimenting will be done on site.

“The appeal for me in working over that timeframe is that there will be some period to experiment and let the process guide the result to a certain extent,” says Songailo. “I might be able to try some more risky things at the start because I have the time.”

The exhibition at CACSA fits into the Domus series, which began in 2001. Domus was a series of projects where artists responded to the physicality and other characteristics of CACSA’s suburban bluestone building. The idea was revisited last year, in Provisional States 2, prompted by a desire to move the gallery to a larger space in the CBD. Continuing with this premise, Songailo’s work will occupy the entire gallery and like Provisional States 2 will again highlight the limitations of the space.

“I am looking to create an experiential space. Create a little journey using colour and patterning, different colour and patterns as

C.A.C.S.A. Artist Impression

you travel through the front space into the backspace.”

Not coming from the traditional art school background has been both an advantage and disadvantage for Songailo. While on the one hand he might have missed out on a lot of the networking and connections that art school provides, on the other he hasn’t been influenced by anyone. While students going through art school have some guidance, Songailo says, “I have had a John the Baptist approach - out in the wilderness.”

Songailo started out painting canvases and now has moved his work beyond the canvas to create huge painting installations. “I’m moving away from the canvas which is sad because it’s where I came from. I’m using more industrial materials and techniques to realise things on a large scale.”

to imagine him been constrained by a canvas. “I find once I start painting I gravitate to wanting to paint everything in sight, to create the most immersive environment that I can.”

Songailo’s evolution from painting on canvas to the large-scale painting interventions was a natural progression for him. “I found that I started to become interested in space and how the work works with the space.” When looking at Songailo’s large-scale works it’s hard

» Sam Songailo Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia Friday, April 18 to Sunday, May 25 songailo.net cacsa.org.au

TESTING GROUND 22 February - 4 May 2014

A S alamanca Ar ts Centre exhibition toured by C ontemporar y Ar t Tasmania Curated by Julie Gough Jeff Mincham, A Grey Dawn Breaking (detail), Elliptical Ceramic Vessel

Flinders University City Galler y State Librar y of S outh Australia N o r t h Te r r a c e , A d e l a i d e Tue - Fri 11 - 4pm, S at & S un 12 - 4pm

Sandra Starkey Simon, Shards (detail), Steel plate etching

Michal Kluvanek, On Longneck, Silver gelatine photograph

Longwater – Works from the Coorong

Michal Kluvanek, Jeff Mincham AM, Sandra Starkey Simon 6 April – 4 May 2014

www.flind ers. edu. au/ ar tmuseum 1 Thomas Street (cnr Main North Road) Nailsworth

The Adelaide Review April 2014 33

adelaidereview.com.au

G Helpful hints on how to make your art say NOW. Plus ARTSPEAK Bonus Pack

by John Neylon

Guess what?

If, as Francis Bacon said, “all art has become a game by which man distracts himself” what better game to play that the guessing variety?

It’s fun and doesn’t require any real technical skills, only a vivid imagination.

Whatever First lesson. Don’t worry about things like meaning and truth. Just remember Andy (“I am a deeply superficial person”) Warhol’s advice, “Art is whatever you can get away with”.

Concentrate on filling the void because some space cadets will always be looking around for something. And if you still have the guilts about your art lacking a centre (the doughnut dynamic) remember the words of Donald Brook, the elder statesman of Australian experimental art, “Meaning and truth are simply spoils to the victors in the discursive conflict on the cultural worksite”.

Colour and movement Viewer distraction works every time. A retro lounge with a flashing disco dance floor requires absolutely no explanation. The performative experience as a ‘viewer’ doing The Hustle or

A-Z Contemporary Art ARTSPEAK GIGANTISM This goes way way beyond the Big Pineapple or the Big Koala. The Biennial or art fair experience is no longer complete without feeling overwhelmed or engulfed by an artwork, and preferably several. Gigantism in the human form is caused by chronic overactivity of the pituitary gland. Does this suggest some pathological state in cultural affairs? If so, what could be its root cause?

The overactivity of corporate magnates, oil oligarchs, futures traders and arms dealers in pumping up the art market has been commented on. There may be no known cure. William Blake would not be amused.

GENDERED Nothing is not gendered. Not these days.

Darren Sylvester, For you, 2013

The Bus Stop will erase any expectations of meaning or significance. But didn’t disco die in the 70s? Tell that to artist Darren Sylvester whose critical filters in matters of popular culture do not extend to distaste for abandoned fashions. On his dance floors, whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother, it’s just a matter of being alive. Another Australian artist, Marco Fusinato, master of ‘improvised noise-spit tsunamis’ takes viewer distraction to another level. He has been known to ‘engulf’ audiences with sound and light bursts. Art meets audioshock therapy doesn’t bear thinking about.

Subjugation The strategy here is to bore the viewer into submission until all questions or meaning or relevance are asphyxiated by mind-numbing nothing-much-ness. The highway of contemporary art is lined with such masterpieces. John Baldessari’s I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1971) is a benchmark work. The title of this work was repeatedly handwritten on gallery walls over a number of days. Warhol’s film, Empire (1964) an eight hour fixed shot film of the Empire State Building is in a class of its own. An emerging artist with a vivid imagination and a determination to make really boring art will always find options.

Puzzle art This genre is one of the darkest arts of all. Secretly many artists are drawn to its reassurances of viewer incomprehension tinged with a nagging suspicion that this or that work might mean something. A key principle is the availability heuristic. Basically this means, ‘If I remember it, it must be important’. Provided you give the viewer something to remember a work by (totally boring, made my ears bleed, like doing Sudoku, smelt strange, absolutely disgusting, didn’t look like art etc) the greater the possibility that the viewer will not only remember the work but will begin to give it some kind of value. Tip. The mistake many aspirant artists make is to leave too many gaps and assume that the viewer will simply join the dots. Well – news flash. If he/ she hasn’t been ingesting the latest book (as you have) on something like relational aesthetics those dots will dissolve.

Where’s the fish?

Research has shown that viewers look longer at empty fish tanks for much longer time than one teeming with fish. How sensible then for artists to exploit this state of affairs by putting empty boxes (make that a vitrine will you honey) into empty white cubes. Apparently, as one writer would have, this kind of action promises ‘the freedom of disaffiliated negation by detaching aesthetic judgement from the crypto-religious justifications left over from the Enlightenment’. Quite. Perhaps

GAZE Usually gendered. Has been known to hit the side of someone’s face. Often affected by emotional states particularly the apprehension of knowing that one is being gazed at. An absence of mirrors in the childhood home can delay the onset of such emotions. Only phlogiston has been more theorised.

in response to this, Australian artists, while enthusiastic ‘vitriners’, are also compulsive infillers.

It might have something to do with our wide-open spaces and a resultant horror vacui.

Wrapped The ultimate guess – what strategy is the wrap.

When Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag there were no caramel koalas for guessing what lay beneath. The trick is to tease and somehow make everyone think that you are ‘reconfiguring the genre’.

Less is less?

American psychologist Barry Schwartz revealed in his book Paradox of Choice (2004) that more choice doesn’t necessarily make us happier. But if the ‘paradox of choice’ principle is right, how come Starbucks delivers 80,000-plus drink combinations? Maybe More is More. Or did Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the ‘skin and bones’ architect, get it right with his ‘Less is More’. The successful ‘Guess What’ artist needs to get this sorted.

34 The Adelaide Review April 2014

VISUAL ARTS

Profile: Sera Waters

SALA Residencies

by John Dexter

F

by Jane Llewellyn

M

“It’s a mixture in my work, it’s contemporary stories, maybe new stories but also research into South Australian history. It’s family stories mixed with more documented history. I float somewhere between all of those ideas.”

Waters is particularly interested in her South Australian ancestors’ who settled here from different places, chiefly the ones from about 1838; a time when the only records kept were births, deaths, marriages and passages to South Australia. “I know those kinds of things but I don’t know all those little details and the more intimate side of their lives. I guess I’m using little bits of information and expanding them.”

This limited recording of information is in stark contrast to the digital world we live in today where our every move is documented and leads us to contemplate what might happen to all of this information. “I guess it depends how we record these things, a lot of that everyday information might get lost. Or there is too much and then maybe it’s not valued as much,” she suggests.

Waters is also delving into the fact that sometimes we have unexplained feelings about

Photo: Grant Hancock

ost of us at some time or other have contemplated how we will be remembered by future generations – or if we will be remembered at all. For Sera Waters, this thought process is the starting point of much of her work. It led her to delve into her family history as well as South Australia’s history and her ancestors’ place within it.

Sera Waters, The Beginning, 2013-14, cotton and found frame, approximately 340 x 350mm

a connection to a certain place. Perhaps by exploring our family history we can gain a better understanding of these feelings.

Her investigation into the past isn’t always positive and sometimes there is a darker narrative running through her work. “A lot of these are uneasy histories. I don’t quite know what happened but some histories are tragedies and these play out in some of my works.”

Waters’ practice is quite labour intensive and while she works in the medium of stitching she describes her real medium as time. “For me it’s more about investing the time and care and because things are so fast paced we can miss out on the details. Touch is a really important part of it too, being close and intimate with the work.”

In the upcoming exhibition at Fontanelle,

ARthUR PhILLIPS A Living Retrospective, 1970 - 2014.

13 April until 3 May A selection of works from the artists personal studio spanning several decades.

Salt Works 1991

DAVID SUMNER GALLERY 359 Greenhill Road Toorak Gardens Ph: 8332 7900

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titled Ghostscapes, Waters uses letters, photographs and diaries to pull on little anecdotes or stories from the past and expand them out. One work in particular, Canton Deck dreaming: Bound for Port(hole) Misery, encapsulates these ideas as she stitches together tapestries of Australian scenes to tell a story of hope. “I’m thinking about portals from the past to the present. I imagine the people who have stitched them and those beautiful hopeful scenes. They are very positive expressions of life in Australia.”

or the first time, SALA in 2014 will see three South Australian artists undertake residencies in the new South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) and the Adelaide Festival Centre.

For the next five months the artists will labour within the buildings to create pieces relevant to their inhabitants and visitors.

Bridgette Minuzzo, who specialises in images, installations and soundscapes, will investigate the place and function of SAHMRI, while Sonya Unwin will paint and draw with oils to interpret The Mind and Brain Department’s research.

Steven Cybulka will work within the Adelaide Festival Centre’s halls to develop sculptures that inspire and engage their viewers.

SALA Chair, the Hon John Hill, saying that this is a “wonderful collaboration with two of South Australia’s iconic organisations”, has hailed this varied and multi-disciplinary approach to SALA’s inaugural residency program.

“The residencies will give the artists an insider’s view of each organisation and I am really looking forward to how both the SAHMRI and the Festival Centre are reflected and interpreted by the artists in their work.”

salainc.com.au

»»Ghostscapes Fontanelle Gallery Sunday, April 6 to Sunday, May 4 serawaters.com.au

dan withey Three’s company 27 March – 24 April 2014 www.hillsmithgallery.com.au

Still Breathing, Steven Cybulka.

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* Full terms and conditions available at burnsidevillage.com.au. To enter the competition, customers must spend $40 or more in any one single transaction at any retail store or Coles, or $10 at any cafe or food outlet within Burnside Village where the customer will receive an entry form with a code. Customers submit their entry, including entry form code online or use the iPads within centre. Competition commences 7.00am on Thursday 20 March 2014 and ends 9.00pm Thursday 17 April 2014. Entry drawn at Burnside Village, 447 Portrush Road, Glenside SA, 5065 at 10.00am on Tuesday April 22 2014. A proof of purchase will be required to validate entry. The winner of the prize shall be notified in writing within 14 days of the draw and will be published in The Advertiser Newspaper on Friday 9 May 2014. The promoter is Burnside Village Pty Ltd. ACN 373 264 572. SA LICENCE NUMBER: T14/335

36 THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014

FEATURE

Singapore Airlines Celebrates 30 Years in SA

BY CHRISTOPHER SANDERS

O

n March 31, 1984, Singapore Airlines began its three-decade association with Adelaide, launching its first Adelaide route, a shared service with Melbourne. Singapore Airlines now operates 12 weekly services between Adelaide and Singapore making it the longest serving international airline in South Australia.

government departments to work together to export; we support the wine regions and the wine exporters.”

This includes serving South Australian wine on flights, plus Shawn + Smith’s Michael Hill Smith is one of Singapore Airline’s four global wine consultants.

Australia’s largest foreign carrier has become part of the fabric of South Australia, as it has serviced some of this state’s classic events, including the Formula One, the Turner from the Tate exhibition, as well as flying Adelaide Zoo’s most famous residents Wang Wang and Funi to the city. Singapore Airlines’ South Australian Manager Hugh Chevrant-Breton explained that the airline was proud to be associated with exhibitions such as Turner from the Tate, the Making of a Master.

wines and McLaren Vale to the eyes of the world when they fly Business Class.”

The airline has sponsored The Adelaide Review Hot 100 SA Wines for the last six years, as Chevrant-Breton believes “South Australian wines have a role to play economically”.

Hugh Chevrant-Breton

“Singapore Airlines was the principal sponsor of this hugely successful exhibition visited by 92,000 visitors,” he explained. “Singapore Airlines hosted a few private functions around this event. All the paintings were transported from the Tate Gallery by Singapore Airlines.”

The airline also sponsors critical food and wine events such as The Adelaide Review Hot 100 South Australian Wines and CheeseFest.

“In Adelaide we want to be associated with food and wine, so we are assisting various

“We use four experts from around the world.

We have an American, Asian, English and an Australian master of wine helping us to select wines to serve on board our aircraft. We buy wines all round the world. And we serve the relevant wines all around the world.”

Wine from McLaren Vale’s Dandelion Vineyards is currently served in Business Class while Singapore Airlines’ Adelaide lounge

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currently houses a Wirra Wirra theme for its wines.

“We want to be associated with a company that would recognise that sometimes a small local winery can produce a better wine than a big international or multinational wine company,” he says.

“As far as food and wine is concerned, we like to use local product for fruit and vegetables and meat and cheese. We try as much as possible to buy Australian products and in our current cycle we are serving McLaren Vale’s Dandelion Vineyards in Business Class, which means we are exporting and exposing South Australian

Chevrant-Breton says he is delighted that Singapore Airlines is the most respected legacy carrier in South Australia.

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We try as much as possible to buy Australian products and in our current cycle we are serving McLaren Vale’s Dandelion Vineyards in Business Class, which means we are exporting and exposing South Australian wines and McLaren Vale to the eyes of the world when they fly Business Class.”

“We are now like Coopers or Haigh’s Chocolates – Singapore Airlines is part of the fabric of the state. We are part of the brand assisting tourists from overseas to visit South Australia. We are also happy to assist South Australian tourists to travel the world and export local product.”

The carrier will celebrate 30 years in Adelaide with a cocktail event on Monday, March 31 at Adelaide Airport as well as other events during the year.

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38 THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE REVIEW:

GIN LONG CANTEEN

BY PAUL WOOD

I

was warned to expect a wait in line when visiting North Adelaide’s latest Asian offering. Gin Long Canteen has moved into the space formerly occupied by a much less exciting oriental offering and has made all of the right changes to create an electric mood and buzzy atmosphere, complete with neon signage and oversized mosaic wall hangings. A diner-style eatery, literally spilling out onto the pavement on O’Connell Street, with an updated interior and effective use of every surface available for eating their refreshing fusion menu.

Though unfortunate enough to be stood behind a group of complaining types not au fait with the marketing ploy of a no booking policy for groups less than six, our short wait

for our table did give us time to soak in the sights and smells and to notice a familiar face working frantically in the open kitchen. Chef Nu Suandokmai has taken up residence after a short stint opening Golden Boy in the city, bringing his signature style into an eatery that has already created some noise on the culinary scene.

I do love a good play on words, but decided to skip past the Gin Long ‘Liesling’ (see what they did there?) and there was a collective groan at the table having noticed the ‘Yellow Fever’ mandarin daiquiri. The fun and frivolity of this venue does get the thumbs up for its ‘how to eat rice paper roll’ instructions on the menucum-placemat, though I wished there were some at hand to try our skill as we waited for

MARKET FEAST SAT 5TH APRIL

dishes to land. Seated at a booth style table, one of many options in this jam-packed space, it’s cozy yet open enough that you don’t feel too claustrophobic; kind of like Ikea I suppose.

7:30 PM - 12:00 AM ADELAIDE CENTRAL MARKET

On advice from our cheerful waitress we started with the signature Gin Long Pandan infused gin. It arrived sealed in a ‘quirky’ plastic bubble-tea cup and was perfectly alcoholic but not as exotic or as infused as expected. The stab-it-yourself giant straw while functional in getting through the plastic layer was not the most pleasant to drink from, either. Big Gulps can stay at the footy.

THINK.TALK. FOOD >WINE SA TUES 8TH APRIL 9:00 AM - 5:30 PM NATIONAL WINE CENTRE

Making some of our own decisions proved a winner, with a much more palatable Longview ‘Boatshed’ Rose in preparation for the spice of our first few dishes. (The wine glass also verifyied itself as a much less comical method of getting liquid to mouth.) The Miang Kam is a sweet and spicy little Thai snack with flavors of tamarind and crunchy kai lan leaf, and the Betel Leaf Cigar was a great starter, dipped in a nuoc cham sauce – an Asian meatball, if you will. Both tasty and setting us off on an adventure of balance and flavour.

TOWN PICNIC SAT 12TH APRIL 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM RYMILL PARK, ADELAIDE

4 - 13 APRIL 2014 adelaidefoodandwinefestival.org @adlfoodwinefest @adlfoodwinefest

As the main dishes arrived we realised we might have gone a little overboard when ordering. The dishes are all quite large, and thankfully all quite delicious. The pomegranate chicken features pan-fried chicken with more sweet tamarind and a hint of spice in the delicate sauce scattered with fresh pomegranate – easily my favourite dish of the night. The waitress had certainly got this recommendation

spot on, though I may have felt a little less exclusive as it landed on every other table around us. Popularity can be a fickle thing.

I badly wanted to try the spicy caramel chicken but to avoid the potential of samesame, and on negotiation with my dinner dates we went with the lychee duck curry – another delicious yet unassuming dish piled with cherry tomatoes and pineapple, topped with finely sliced chili and Thai basil; clean flavours with the perfect amount of heat. Lastly we tucked into the slow braised Thai beef ribs with cinnamon and Thai basil, along with a side of Vietnamese coleslaw. This melt in your mouth dish was bursting with flavour though would have been best eaten first as we reached our dietary consumption peak.

Just as we came to terms with the imminent (overloaded) trundle home, complimentary crème caramel and chocolate mousse desserts arrived courtesy of the chef and to thank us for the slight delay between courses. A lovely gesture though these seemed out of place on an otherwise interesting Asian menu and were regrettably left as we made our way through the still crowded venue to settle the bill and depart.

» Gin Long Canteen 42 O’Connell St, North Adelaide 7120 2897 ginlongcanteen.com.au

THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014 39

ADELAIDEREVIEW.COM.AU

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

Moran’s Feast Kangaroo Island’s FEASTival returns this month with 15 dining events over five days including culinary experiences with the annual event’s two big-name draw cards in cooking legend Margaret Fulton and Aria’s Matt Moran.

BY DAVID KNIGHT

A

ria and Chiswick chef and owner Matt Moran will showcase the produce of Kangaroo Island as a guest of the festival to deliver an Argentinian-inspired menu with local chef Tony Nolan on Thursday, April 24.

“The focus of the dinner is this fantastic BBQ that will be showcasing all the great products from Kangaroo Island, including lamb, suckling pig and seafood,” Moran explains about the opening night dinner.

Kangaroo Island’s produce is one of the main reasons the Sydney identity is part of FEASTival.

“I just really believe in good produce, it’s such a big part of my life. Kangaroo Island is one of those amazing locations that offers so much in terms of great Australian produce whether it’s seafood or farming.”

With this dinner, the chef, restaurateur and author hopes to bring the farm-to-table story to life, which is similar to the theme of his current television show, Paddock to Plate; a Foxtel series where the celebrated chef travels around the country to showcase the journey from the paddock to the dinner plate. He says he won’t be filming in Kangaroo Island on this trip but that the island is “definitely on the radar” in the future.

“I’m actually filming Paddock to Plate series two at the moment, so I’ll be travelling around regional South Australia and seeing lots of its amazing produce and meeting local growers and farmers.”

With six restaurants and two catering businesses, Moran grew up on a farm before moving to Sydney in his teens. He left school at 15 to start work in the food industry and undertook his chef apprenticeship at Le Belle Helene Restaurant. He opened his first restaurant in 1991 and began Moran’s Restaurant and Cafe in 95. He hit the big time with Aria – the Sydney Harbour fine-dining eatery. Other restaurants part of his empire include Aria Brisbane, Chiswick and the Opera Bar (located in the Sydney Opera House).

Moran’s tenure as one of Australia’s leading chefs has coincided with the improvement of Australia’s gastronomic scene, which has risen to another level over the last few years with restaurants including Melbourne’s Attica and Sydney’s Quay placing in the San Pellegrino’s World’s 50 Best Restaurants list last year.

“I think it’s just natural progression – TV shows have helped, the internet has helped and people travelling more has helped. I think people are just generally more health conscious, they want to know what they’re eating and where it came from.”

Discover the surprises inside

Other events at FEASTival include Margaret Fulton’s Garden Party (Sunday, April 27), Southern Ocean Lodge’s Chef Tim Bourke’s honey-inspired dinner Pollen-ate (Monday, April 28) and the family-friendly Bite of the Bay (Saturday, April 26) at Kingscote Wharf where you can dine on fresh seafood while listening to stories from local fishermen and enjoy live entertainment.

» Kangaroo Island FEASTival Thursday, April 24 to Monday, April 28 tourkangarooisland.com.au/kifeastival

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40 THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

Adventurous Delights

Milano Cucina offers casual, friendly contemporary Italian cuisine.

With its Euro-hip style this clever Italian kitchen and diner offers an extensive menu range including a large selection of coffee, home-made biscuits and cakes.

Top Rated Italian Restaurant

With pioneering nose-to-tail chef Fergus Henderson as its high profile guest, Tasting Australia serves up an innovative program including dinners and cooking demonstrations of offal delights from local, national and international chefs.

BY DAVID KNIGHT

U

nder the guidance of Paul Henry and Simon Bryant, Tasting Australia looks to be reinvigorated with an inventive and seducing program.

Two Adelaide-based chefs are integral to Tasting Australia’s 2014 nose-to-tail program: Press* Food and Wine’s Head Chef Andrew Davies and the Daniel O’Connell’s Chief Chef Phil Whitmarsh. The two chefs spearhead the nose-to-tail revolution in Adelaide, which has arrived hand-in-hand with Adelaide’s current food resurgence. The teaming of Adelaide’s finest

TASTING AUSTRALIA Functions including business meetings, Christmas parties and special celebrations comprising birthdays, baptisms, anniversaries and weddings are fully catered for.

Whatever your gastronomic indulgence may be, from a casual breakfast through to fine dining, you will find it in this corner of the CDB.

Vineyard Tour, Wine Masterclass and Paddock Plate Luncheon with Joel, James & Matt FRIDAY 2ND MAY

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1pm: A five-course, wine-matched Paddock Plate luncheon and informal panel discussion with one of the world’s most influential farmers, Joel Salatin (USA), and chefs Matt Wilkinson (Pope Joan, Vic) and James Henry (Restaurant Bones, Paris).

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Phil Whitmarsh

nose-to-tail exponents with Henderson (who is responsible for the London restaurant St John and the book Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking) is a mouth-watering prospect.

Davies, who will soon open a “mini Press*” on Peel St, feasted on Henderson’s creations when he worked in London as a chef at Pied a Terre.

“We used to go and eat there [St John] after lunch service on Saturdays or Sundays,” Davies remembers. “It wasn’t that popular back then and then it became the chef’s chef’s place. I’ve always been inspired by what he does because you didn’t see that sort of food very often. We did get a lot of offal and stuff like that at Pied a Terre but it was a two-star Michelin restaurant, so it wasn’t quite as rustic as what you’d get there. Going there was a nice simple experience without all of the food-associated wank and hype. I’ve always been inspired by that and when I came back here and started d’Arry’s Verandah we served a lot of offal.”

Andrew Davies

the family’s been all right.”

Davies said he didn’t think about Fergus for a few years. But then came Press* and Henderson’s philosophy fitted in with what Davies wanted to achieve with his acclaimed Waymouth St restaurant. This included an offal menu. Whitmarsh says Davies and Press* really started the nose-to-tail trend in Adelaide.

Both chefs will deliver dinners with Henderson as part of Tasting Australia (as well as Melbourne’s Ian Curley from The European) – Nose to Kale at Press* and Open House at the Daniel O’Connell.

Whitmarsh will also lead a demonstration called My Bloody Valentine, which will see him cook with blood, which he believes is one of the most underutilised parts of an animal.

“Obviously Press* have been leading the way for a few years with the offal scene and let’s not forget Chinatown. It’s getting there. When I first came over here 11 years ago you couldn’t find sweet bread let alone a trotter. A butcher did tell me to go to the bakery to get sweet bread!”

“I’ve got a couple of savoury things and a couple of sweet things for that. I’m going to make blood merengue and blood macaroons for the sweets. For the savoury, I’m going along the lines of black pudding and then I might throw in a bit of a blood bread as well.”

Whitmarsh, who believes in the philosophies of Henderson in regards to respecting the beast that has given its life for the table, returned to Adelaide to start the Daniel O’Connell last year.

The gourmet pub serves up a delicious mix of prime and secondary cuts, but is making waves for its inventive offal dishes.

» Tasting Australia

“I think people are starting to get more adventurous,” Whitmarsh says about noseto-tail dining. “It happened in Sydney a few years ago. I thought maybe the time was right for Adelaide. I moved back to Adelaide to see what we could do. It’s just taken off. At the time a friend of mine said, ‘Are you sure offal is the right thing to do in Adelaide because when you go broke everyone’s going to blame you?’ I was like, ‘Ohh... no pressure then’. Thankfully

» Nose to Kale Dinner Press* Food & Wine Friday, May 2, 7pm » Open House The Daniel O’Connell Thursday, May 1, 12pm-10pm » My Bloody Valentine Victoria Square Monday, April 28, 12pm tastingaustralia.com.au

THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014 41

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FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

A Sense of Compassion

BY KOREN HELBIG

L

ast summer, American rock band Tool hit a hiccup as they toured Australia.

Just before their Adelaide concert, frontman Maynard James Keenan fell ill with a sore throat and had to postpone the gig by a day. So the rock star headed up to the Adelaide Hills, to a little winery tucked beside a hill in Basket Range, where he rested his vocal chords over a home cooked meal and joined local winemaker Taras Ochota in making a small batch of premium wine.

The seed of this star-powered collaboration stretches back some 15 years to when Ochota was a scruffy young vineyard hand, playing bass in a punk band named Kranktus. The band was briefly popular, even played the 1996 Big Day Out festival, but eventually split in 1999.

“That’s when I got more focused on making a living from wine and not just playing the top string of my bass and screaming with a distortion pedal,” Ochota, 43, says.

After ticking off an oenology degree, Ochota and his wife Amber hit the road, following seasonal vintages across the hemispheres and travelling in-between. It was during a surf trip down to Mexico in their battered Volkswagen camper van that the couple resolved to create their own Ochota Barrels wine label. “We thought we’d make some Grenache because no one was into Grenache. It was the underdog variety,” Ochota says. “Everyone was into Shiraz here in Australia. Everyone sort of pooh-poohed Grenache, it was a bit low-brow.”

festival, Ochota invited him up to Adelaide Hills to hang out, check out a vineyard and make some wine. The pair pressed the grapes together two months later when Keenan returned with Tool.

Ochota Barrels launched in 2008 but not without a nod to Ochota’s punk rocker past, with their prized Grenache named Fugazi, after the American punk band of the same name. That caught the eye of US wine importer and punk nut Ronnie Sanders, who insisted the Ochotas have dinner with his friend Keenan, the wine-fanatic rocker who runs his own vineyard in his spare time.

They named it A Sense of Compression, just 919 bottles co-fermented with a dash of Gewürztraminer to “make the wine pop”, most of which sold out just four days after this year’s March 1 release.

“We hired a car and drove out through all the crazy meth lab areas, two hours out to a little place called Jerome in Arizona where Maynard lives,” Ochota recalls. “He’s a bit of a maverick out there. But to me his music seems like his day job. That’s what he does and it pays the bills and that’s what he’s always done but his passion is wine. He loves it.”

The following year, when Keenan toured Australia with the 2013 Soundwave music

“They came here, we had a nice lunch, basket pressed with an old ratchet on the front verandah, just pressed it straight to barrel and that was it,” Ochota says. “We didn’t make much. We didn’t want to be greedy, we just wanted to make something special that we’d enjoy.”

Maynard James Keenan and Taras Ochota

It’s a phenomenon the Ochotas are becoming accustomed to. Last year, when James Halliday awarded their 2012 Shiraz 97 points – beaten only by Henschke’s Hill of Grace and Penfolds Grange – the phone rang hot with orders but everything had already been snapped up. Still, there are no plans to grow beyond the small batches that Taras and Amber, with the help of Ochota’s father Yari, can handle themselves.

“That’s where we want to be, where people are going to enjoy our wines because they’re a bit more artisan and have hopefully a bit more character, they’re not your big bulk market wines.”

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Ochota aims for lean and savoury winemaking, making picking decisions based on the grapes’ natural acidity rather than their flavour. “It makes the wine a bit tighter and feminine and elegant,” he says. “At the same time we manipulate time on skins, so the wines are a bit more savoury and have a textual element that makes them different.

That’s our main focus – texture.”

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FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

Random Cups of Kindness

BY KOREN HELBIG

“

A free coffee when you’re down-and-out is heavenly,” Damo Carroll says, sipping at a freshly brewed latte with a neat milk foam rosetta artfully drawn on top. The Port Adelaide man knows only too well what life is like on the poverty line. A plumber and self-confessed alcoholic, Carroll came within a hair’s breadth of homelessness after losing his licence and then his job for drink driving two years ago.

Now Carroll, 38, has become the unlikely champion of a program helping connect the needy with free coffees across Adelaide, a spinoff from a humble tradition that began in the Italian city of Naples some 100 years ago. Called caffè sospeso or ‘suspended coffee’, customers would pay in advance for another who could not afford a cup of coffee.

The elegant pay-it-forward, anonymous act of charity and kindness – in which the donor often doesn’t meet the recipient – waned as the Italian economy picked up postwar but made a comeback in recent years as the eurozone battled a long-running economic crisis. The tradition quickly spread around the world, including the US, Canada and Japan, and arrived in Australia last year. In Adelaide, more than 15 cafes are now involved.

But some Adelaide cafes have found connecting those in need with a hot cuppa challenging. In Port Adelaide, the Red Lime Shack on St Vincent Street has devised its own solution, cards bearing two tokens that can be redeemed for two coffees or one smoothie, which are given to local counsellors and nonprofit group coordinators to be handed on to the disadvantaged.

The cards are also given to Carroll, who has proven a secret weapon in connecting the needy with the scheme. “[Red Lime Shack] is using me as a conduit because I’m out there busking and I can see people in need, the lower demographic or whatever, the type of people who can’t afford to give a busker a dollar,” he says. “I’ll call them over and say ‘hey, would you like to try these coffees? Don’t worry, the community’s already paid for it, the community did that for you’. And they go ‘Me?’ They want to give me the shirt off their back. They’re so thankful.”

The program’s success likely lies in its simplicity. Ian Steel, a 46-year-old political research officer who lives and works in Port Adelaide, says the system provides a “really easy opportunity” to contribute to those less fortunate in his own community. He has donated about 30 coffees since stumbling across the Red Lime Shack’s scheme last year.

“I’ve seen workers doing really well, others out of jobs in really tough times, so I appreciate that anybody can find themselves scratching around for a dollar,” he says. “I’m really lucky, I’ve been in paid employment for most of my life, I can easily afford to hand over a few extra bucks. For working people who have a bit of disposable income, it’s an affordable way of making a fairly small contribution which is often much more meaningful than it seems.”

Red Lime Shack owner Stephanie Taylor says about 420 coffees have been suspended since she launched the cafe’s scheme last July and 320 have been claimed by local battlers - single mothers, troubled teens, people with mental illness and women experiencing domestic violence.

Taylor agrees that each cup of coffee represents something far greater than a simple caffeine hit. “For some people they’ve actually never walked into a cafe in their life, they’ve never thought they were worthy, as if it was something that only someone of worth could

do,” she says. “But they’ve realised that anyone can go into a cafe and have a coffee and sit down and not be judged and they’re now quite comfortable to do so.”

Other cafes have teamed up with non-profit group Another Step Closer to ensure donations not redeemed in-store reach those in need. CEO Oliver Pfeil says Pages Cafe within Waymouth Street’s Koorong Bookstore recently handed over $800 to the Women’s and Children’s Hospital food program, while the Lunch Bar on Payneham Road gave almost $200 to homeless

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SOUTH AUSTRALIAN

Shobbrook Shows His Natural Tendencies Tom Shobbrook wants people to like natural wines – not on the basis of any sympathy with a manifesto or fad for novelty, but because they taste good.

BY CHARLES GENT

agency, The Hutt Street Centre.

Lunch Bar owner Debbie Beelitz says often customers open their wallets and give much more than just the couple of dollars needed to cover a coffee. One woman who donated $60 told staff how she had experienced homelessness as a youngster.

“I guess it’s easier than having to go find a charity and it’s local,” Beelitz says.

Social media has played a large role in bringing more cafes onto the scheme and getting the word out to the community.

Carroll hopes it continues to grow across Adelaide. “It gives people a break from the grind and it breaks down barriers. I feel like Santa Claus when I’m doing it,” he says.

» To find participating cafes in Adelaide and across Australia, head to suspendedcoffee.com.au

S

hobbrook, with his chum Anton van Klopper, the Struwwelpeter of Basket Range, is among natural wine’s most successful exponents in Australia. Thanks in no small part to Shobbrook’s advocacy, many drinkers are now familiar with the philosophy of “nothing added, nothing taken away”, which more or less encapsulates the credo of the natural, or minimal interventionist, winemaker.

There is no doubt that Shobbrook’s own wines are achieving their reputation through merit, not as curios – he has pulled in highly complimentary reviews from some very hard-nosed international wine critics. And following on the heels of a top 10 spot in the previous Adelaide Review Hot 100 South Australian Wines for Giallo, a cloudy, yellow Sauvignon Blanc, his Shobbrook 2012 Syrah won fourth place in the latest.

The judges spoke of “orange pith, wild herb and undergrowth” as well as “a headiness of wild, brambly, berry fruits”. And, as other reviewers have before, the wine was singled out

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

for its “freshness”, a term not usually associated with full-bodied Barossa Shiraz.

While released fairly promptly – “I had to go overseas and I needed money for an aeroplane ticket” – the 2012 Syrah followed an established pattern. The fruit came from the family’s biodynamic (but not certified) vineyard at Seppeltsfield in the Barossa, was fermented using wild yeasts and then matured for around 12 months in middle-aged French oak. The wine is (naturally) unfiltered.

While perfectly happy with the quality of his 2011, which picked up weight and “zingy” acidity during the prolonged stay on the vine necessitated by cool conditions and grey skies, Shobbrook says the growing season for vintage 2012 produced everything a vigneron could want.

“It was like having a little switch in the office,” he said. “You needed sunshine, you got it; you needed rain, you got it; you needed warm days and cool nights, you had those. It was beautiful, slow ripening, sugars weren’t peaking very high, acidity was great: it was one of the best ones we’ve had for a long time.”

While many natural wines are best drunk young, Shobbrook says there is no need to hurry the 2012 Syrah.

“With all that balance in the vineyard, you tend to end up with wines that will hold up for quite a lot longer, maybe for 10 or 15 years.”

Shobbrook expresses frustration that natural winemaking is still seen, and occasionally used, as a refuge for making bad or faulty wines.

“It’s not an excuse to make things in an improper manner,” he said.

“The wines should be great to start with – it should be just an extra benefit that there’s nothing added to them.

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“I just want people to try and grow their fruit as clean as possible, and try and make wines without adding anything. We didn’t have to add stuff for a couple of thousand years; I don’t see the point in doing it now. If you can grow good fruit in your vineyard, you should be able to make exciting wines in your cellar.”

Shobbrook believes Adelaide is on the verge of becoming a remarkable place to live in terms of its wine, produce, cuisine and architecture.

“Hopefully at some point they can come together, rather than being separate,” he says.

“If you live in a place in the middle of nowhere, you’ve got a couple of choices: you can live in a really boring place in the middle of nowhere, or you can live in really exciting place in the middle of nowhere. You have to make your own fun.”

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44 THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014

WINE & CHEESE 2012 TELMO RODRIGUEZ ‘GABA DO XIL’ MENCIA Valdeorras RRP $33 telmorodriguez.com If you need proof that a country’s history is reflected in its wine, Mencia may well be it. A red grape variety indigenous to the Bierzo region of north west Spain, Mencia has endured – and reflected – most of Spain’s political and economic vicissitudes. Since the 1890s, phylloxera infestation, civil and world wars, political distraction and the industrialisation of agriculture, left Mencia neglected and out of favour. However, in the 1990s Telmo Rodriguez – winemaker and crusader for Spanish wine – set out to reverse this decline for Mencia and other varieties by rediscovering regions, cultivating native varieties and improving wine quality. From Valdeorras, it is a highly perfumed wine, offering vibrant lifted aromas of berries, herbs and some floral notes. The palate continues with additional savoury and smoky flavours typical to the variety, finishing with pleasing and typically soft tannins.

Autumn Reds WINES BY ANDREA FROST CHEESE PAIRED BY VALERIE HENBEST

2012 SORRENBERG GAMAY

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Beechworth RRP $40 sorrenberg.com

Too often we think of red wines as being heady and heavy with depths like the abyss. But these days, winemakers and wine drinkers the world over are appreciating the virtues of medium bodied red wines. Here is a selection, which makes a perfect line up for autumnal drinking.

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It is understandable that Gamay is often compared to Pinot Noir – not only is it a mid-weight red wine, which Pinot Noir is perhaps the most famous, but Gamay also comes from Pinot Noir’s heartland, Burgundy, where the virtues of the two were compared for centuries. Pinot Noir, obviously, won out in the ‘great wine’ stakes while Gamay become known for its role in Beaujolais – the bright, fruity wine style released very soon after vintage.

Gamay is now grown in many countries, including Australia, where its ability to make complex, spicy and mediumbodied wines, is being loved and lauded.

Sorrenberg, the esteemed producer from the cool Victorian region of Beechworth, produces a benchmark Australian style.

The nose offers alluring dark berry fruits, shimmerings of spice and a savoury earthiness while the palate continues with a beautiful mid weight body, fine acid and gentle tannins. An elegant wine that is as close to drinking autumn as you’ll get.

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THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014 45

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WINE & CHEESE GERHARD PITTNAUER DOGMA 2012 Burgenland RRP $48 pittnauer.com

MANCHEGO DOP 6 MONTH Made in the La Mancha region in central Spain since the time of the Romans, this cheese is now produced in large modern cooperatives. The flavour however remains unchanged as the sheep are still producing the same rich, aromatic milk as they continue to graze on the shrubs and grasses of the Dahesa.

Much easier to drink than it is to say, Blaufränkisch (pronounced blouw-frankish) is one of Austria’s three indigenous varieties and expresses similar wonders as Gamay. Another deliciously perfumed, medium-bodied beauty, at its best Blaufränkisch makes a complex wine offering cherries and red berries, spiciness, pepper and a lovely savouriness. Brigitte and Gerhard Pittnauer of the Burgenland region of Austria, produce a number of excellent single-vineyard Blaufränkisch from their biodynamic estate. Fruit for this wine comes off their best Blaufränkisch site, ‘Ungerberg’. The wine is free of additions, including sulphur. The wine is fresh and vibrant on the nose and tastes of earth, minerals, violets, berries and spice. Featuring a refreshing line of acidity, the palate is medium bodied and very attractive. The 2012 is the first release of the Dogma and is available here from April.

To qualify as an authentic Manchego cheese, milk must be sourced from sheep from La Mancha and the distinctive pattern on the waxed rind (originally a result of the cheese being wrapped in braided grass), must be visible.

The cheese is firm and dry with a rich and creamy flavour that offers notes of meaty savouriness, brazil nuts, salty caramel and lanolin.

ABONDANCE This mountain cheese is produced using only milk from cows of the Abondance, Montbeliard and Tarine breeds.

It takes 100 litres of milk from cattle grazing in the high mountain pastures to make a single wheel of Abondance weighing in at 9-10kg.

The cheese is made during the d’alpage (the summer migration

of herds), when the cows graze outside on high mountain pastures full of grass, herbs and wild flowers. All cheese is made from fresh raw milk using small copper cauldrons, before being drained in wooden hoops and pressed overnight.

S.C. PANNELL GRENACHE 2011 McLaren Vale RRP $60 pannell.com.au

PRÉFÉRÉ DE NOS MONTAGNES Préféré de nos Montagnes is a modern version of an old cheese with a long history. During the Middle Ages, farmers in the Haute Savoie paid their taxes with part of their milk production.

When tax collectors called, they only partially milked their cows, so as to lower their level of production and their taxes.

Also known as Garnacha in Spain, Grenache is one of the world’s most planted grape varieties. Not only does it make a wonderful wine on it’s own – it is a superb composite of spice and berry fruit offerings. Grenache flourishes in hot and dry climates making it an excellent long-term prospect, especially in places such as Australia, where the climate may be considered marginal. The Barossa and McLaren Vale both produce stunning versions of Grenache and McLaren Vale’s Steve Pannell is well known for his innovative winemaking and success with Mediterranean varieties. This wine is no exception offering an intense, generous and lifted perfume of red fruits and spice, and a weave of savouriness. The palate offers a similar composite of red berry fruits woven with complexing spice and earthiness with a gentle rub of tannins.

Lovely, savoury, spicy stuff.

After the tax officers had left, the farmers would go back and milk the cows again. The milk from the second milking was much richer and was used to make this beautiful washed rind cheese.

Préféré de nos Montagnes translates as ‘favourite from our mountains’. An elegant cheese, it has a moist, supple semi-soft interior, a creamy texture, delicate aromas, and a light hazelnut flavour.

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REYPENAER VSOP Jan and Rien van den Wijngaard run this family business with a 100-year-long history of making traditional cheese.

Only the finest milk is used in the production of Reypenaer cheese.

The cows are free to roam outside during the Dutch summer when rain and pleasant temperatures provide the ideal

conditions for the growth of lush, green grass.

This cheese has two years in the 100-year-old traditional maturing room. This provides an optimum climate of mild temperatures with high humidity for the development of full flavour.

Reypenaer VSOP has white spots which indicate the start of mineral & protein crystals. The complex and nutty flavours are beautifully balanced.

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This triple cream white mould was created in the 1930’s by Henri Androuët and named after the renowned 18th Century food writer, Brillat-Savarin who claimed ‘A meal without some cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye’.

The cheese is mild in flavour when young but as it matures it will develop rich, complex flavours that meld beautifully together.

The white velvety mould encases a soft and creamy interior. During maturation the rind may develop small patches of orange mould.

Roquefort has a very long history, some say dating back to AD79. The Coulet family has been making Roquefort since 1872, when Guillaume Coulet found that his caves contained fleurines or fissures, which allow ventilation of the cool air and indigenous moulds. Five Coulet generations later, the family is still producing a premium Roquefort.

This cheese is well known for its consistent, moist, ivory texture which is veined with striking steely blue/green moulds. The flavour is salty and spicy with plenty of life and vibrancy.

Inspired by traditional Italian farmhouse cheese, BellaVitano Gold has a dense texture and full flavour.

Selected wheels of this cheese are then hand rubbed with Chai to create an east meets west experience in this exotic pairing.

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46 The Adelaide Review April 2014

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

Cheese Matters Regions

BY Kris Lloyd

T

he South Australian wine industry has been largely responsible for the establishment and marketing of our regions. Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and the Adelaide Hills, to name but a few, are all regarded as regions with quite specific and diverse wine styles. These clearly defined areas possess what is referred to as ‘terroir’ – all the funky doo-dads and characteristics that make up the region. Anything from the indigenous weeds, terrain, tradition, rainfall, altitude, slope, fauna and flora all play a part in what will ultimately shape that drop in your glass.

we be able to say, for example, that a Camembert made in the Adelaide Hills has a richer texture than Camembert made in the Limestone Coast?

granted to particular French geographical indications for wines, cheeses, butters, and other agricultural products.

Different characteristics are present in the wine specialties from each region. For example, Adelaide Hills is best known for its cool climate wines, such as Pinot and Chardonnay. This has become a marketing tool and a key driver for consumers when choosing a dry or perhaps herbaceous style to go with dinner. Will we see this concept adapted across to food products? Will

Europe has clearly defined and carefully controlled regions dating back centuries.

The AOP, DOC and PDO are all “buy in’’ certifications that have strict rules, which must be adhered to in order to gain the prestigious classifications. The appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) which translates as ‘controlled designation of origin’, is the French certification

The Italian system is referred to as the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). Special seals identify the product as authentic; this ensures that only products genuinely originating in that region are allowed to be identified as such in the trade. The purpose is to protect the reputation of the regional foods, promote rural and agricultural activity, help producers obtain a premium price for their authentic products, and eliminate the unfair competition and misleading of consumers by non-genuine products. These laws protect the names of wines, cheeses, hams, seafood, olives, olive oils, beers, balsamic vinegar and even regional breads, fruits, raw meats and vegetables. (Fun fact: Roquefort was the first cheese to be awarded an AOC label, in 1925, and since then more than 40 cheeses have been assigned AOC status.)

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I recall being in the Piedmonte region of Italy visiting a Parmigianino Reggiano Affineur.

There I witnessed the appellation control officer determine the grade classification of the cheeses being matured. At 12 months, the Consorzio Parmigiano-Reggiano inspects each and every cheese. This officer reversed his car into the back of the factory and popped the boot to reveal what can only be describe as a ‘wheel-looking-contraption-thing’ and several other bits of equipment. He carefully gowned up in his spotless white lab coat and gathered a smallish hammer – the only instrument a master grader needs when testing cheese.

Off he went into the cheese room. He tapped, sniffed, listened and fondled hundreds of cheeses and occasionally he would shake his head and ‘tsk tsk’ in disappointment before moving to the next gigantic wheel.

I figured this was bad and I was right. By tapping the wheel at various points, he was able to identify cracks and cavities within the wheel.

A cheese with a hollow sound when tapped was inferior and needed to be admonished from the elite! He carefully removed the offending cheese from its stately position on the cedar wooden shelves with the assistance of the owner. He

placed the imposing cheese weighing in at around 45 kilograms on a trolley to be wheeled to the open boot of the officer’s car. There it was placed on the ‘wheel-looking-contraptionthing’. He pressed a button and the cheese began to spin. With a large chisel he began to score the rind of the cheese deeply, creating a pattern. The cheeses that did not pass the test had its rinds marked with lines or crosses all the way around to inform consumers that they are not getting top-quality ParmigianoReggiano. Those cheeses that pass the test are heat branded on the rind with the Consorzio’s logo, indicating top quality, worthy of PDO status.

The move in recent times around food and food tourism in South Australia, combined with a growing consumer understanding of local produce and the benefits around these practices, begs the question – should our regions clearly define food in the same way that they define wine? Could it be that a cheese produced in the Adelaide Hills using milk specifically from that region will have characteristics we can claim as unique to that source?

While the European model presents yet another series of regulations and red tape, strictly controlled by officers, hammers, and spinning wheels – the fundamental thinking behind protection of regionalism, promotion of sustainability within regions and producers obtaining a fair price for their authentic products, should be seriously considered.

When buying wine to match with your dinner you choose based on the characteristic that the region influences in that product – should we not promote this concept in the food industry?

Surely knowing where your food heralds from is just as important as the source of what you drink?

»»Kris Lloyd is the Head Cheese Maker of Woodside Cheese Wrights woodsidecheese.com.au

THE ADELAIDE R EVIEW AP RIL 2014

FORM D E S I G N • P L A N N I N G • I N N OVAT I O N

GOLD FOR TROPPO

Brammy Kyprianou House. Photo: Troppo.

At the recent Australian Achievement in Architecture Awards ceremony, Troppo co-founders Phil Harris and Adrian Welke walked away with the evening’s highest accolade.

48 THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014

FORM

POINTS OF VIEW Photo: Gary Sauer-Thompson

The Light Gallery at the Centre for Creative Photography showcases the work of five Adelaide-based architectural photographers in a new exhibition.

Gary Sauer-Thompson’s city details of Hobart, Adelaide and Melbourne. Curiously, each shot feels like it could be anywhere in the world and only close inspection reveals its actual location.

BY LEANNE AMODEO

When internationally renowned architectural photographer Iwan Baan made the cover of New York Magazine with his shot of Manhattan post-Hurricane Sandy his phone must have been ringing off the hook. It only stands to highlight the symbiotic relationship between architect and photographer, where the end result has as much to do with the photographer’s eye and signature style as with the actual building or interior itself.

In Australia, where names like John Gollings, Peter Bennetts and Shannon McGrath dominate,

Photo: Peter E Barnes

A

rchitectural photography is a genre that has gained serious momentum in recent years. Aided in no small part by the publishing industry, which decrees projects must be professionally photographed before an editor will even consider looking at them. On the other hand, there is no better record of the architect’s work than a glossy, high-colour image shot by one of the industry’s best.

the field continues to broaden as architects increasingly realise the importance of highcalibre documentation. What an exhibition like Concrete, Space, Light offers the industry is a gentle reminder that there are also exceptional architectural photographers working outside of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Curator Mike Lim has assembled a fine sampling of Adelaide-based architectural photographers, each with their own generous eye and distinct style. The Light Gallery at the Centre for Creative Photography can’t be an easy space to curate due to its small-scale, but Lim has managed to include a number of works from five different photographers. Concrete, Space, Light is easy to navigate and the variety in the selection is to be commended.

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Three works by Peter Barnes of the recently completed SAHMRI building appeal instantly.

It is, of course, an outstanding example of contemporary architecture, but what Barnes has done is capture it in its best possible light – literally. The interior shots are particularly stunning for their bright, shiny detail. At the other end of the spectrum, Wayne Grivell’s three images are wonderfully gritty studies of urban life, each composed with almost gridlike precision.

The pops of colour and stark composition in Mark Zed’s photographs are reminiscent of a Jeffrey Smart painting. He brings splendour to the SA Water Desalination Plant and the viewer is caught scouring each scene for a figure that doesn’t exist. This haunting beauty is echoed in

A fine contrast to the work of these four photographers is the small-scale architectural details by Ben Liew. Pinned to the wall in the corridor they are a lovely study in pattern, repetition and symmetry, and as a series they work very well together. This exhibition successfully functions as a taste of what Adelaide has to offer the genre of architectural photography, highlighting new names that are well worth watching.

» Concrete, Space, Light: Five Adelaide Architectural Photographers Peter Barnes, Wayne Grivell, Ben Liew, Gary Sauer-Thompson and Mark Zed The Light Gallery at the Centre for Creative Photography Continues until Friday, April 25 lightgallery.ccp.sa.edu.au

THE ADELAIDE REVIEW APRIL 2014 49

ADELAIDEREVIEW.COM.AU

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Innovative Learning

and collaborate. It means the library now has the resources to host artists-in-residence and partner with organisations such as ANAT, creating a lively and fun environment for learning.

Photo: Sam Roberts

With the recent opening in Rundle Place of the new Adelaide City Council City Library, Hassell shows off its design for the library of the future.

BY LEANNE AMODEO

L

ibrary design has undoubtedly become one of the most exciting areas in interior architecture in recent years. Rapid digitalisation has shifted the role and identity of these hubs of learning, making the playing field rich for innovation. With the opening last year of Europe’s biggest public library it would seem that anything is possible. Its architects, the Dutch practice Mecanoo, are hailing the palatial Library of Birmingham as the ‘library of the future’, but this isn’t to say it’s a one-size-fits-all template.

Adelaide City Council opened its new City Library in February, proving the library of the future also comes in an intelligently modest package. For Hassell’s Adelaide studio it was

an opportunity to bring their extensive research and development in the area to fruition. In terms of briefing, the architects sat down with key stakeholders, including library staff, to brainstorm ideas and concepts over an intense two-and-a-half days. The resulting vision statement is an unabashedly people-focused strategy that has community at its heart.

Its mission is best expressed in the ‘plug in to the pop up’ catchphrase Hassell Associate YanYan Ho introduced at the project’s inception. “It refers to making digital technologies available to anyone who’s interested in learning about them,”

she explains. “As well as getting people that might otherwise be disengaged from the community to ‘plug’ into something.” This idea of social sustainability is strong and supports the library’s belief in lifelong learning and knowledge sharing.

The concept also refers to the flexibility of the space, which functions in much the same way as a temporary ‘pop-up’ would. Two thirds of the 1900sqm City Library is actually ‘people space’ intended for events, functions, seminars, exhibitions and training. The self-contained meeting rooms, internet hub, innovation lab and digital hub allow for groups to congregate

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Perhaps the project’s most resounding design expression, however, is the foyer. This generous entry features a handsome blade ceiling above a ‘self check and return’ kiosk, café and ample seating.

The impressive Studio One is also located here and exemplifies the interior’s capacity to evolve and change. With two walls that fold back completely it further opens up the space, providing the perfect setting for larger scale openings and launches.

It’s the most innovative aspect of the project and was informed by Ho’s overarching ‘one element many forms’ design concept. “We’ve used the idea of origami as a metaphor not only for how people use the space, but for the actual physical space itself,” she says. “Everything in this interior has two purposes, so a shelf is also a wall, a divider is also used for display and all white walls are projectable and able to be written on.” It’s smart design at its best – even down to the modular joinery units and choice of GECA certified furniture – and sets a fine standard for re-thinking library design both nationally and internationally.

adelaidecitycouncil.com hassell.com

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50 The Adelaide Review April 2014

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Rob Fox and Sue Fox.

SA Architecture Awards VIP Preview The Adelaide Review and Australian Institute of Architects (SA Chapter) hosted a preview of the 2014 SA Architecture Awards at Nexus on Friday, March 21. It included a panel featuring Max Pritchard, Dimitty Andersen and John Adam, hosted by Leanne Amodeo.

Gold for Troppo

by Leanne Amodeo

W

as anyone actually surprised at Phil Harris and Adrian Welke’s win in the recent Australian Achievement in Architecture Awards? As two of the industry’s most well loved and respected figures it was only a matter of time before the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA) bestowed its highest honour upon the Troppo co-founders. Winning the Gold Medal places both of them at the top of an impressive list of past winners, including Harry Seidler, Glenn Murcutt and Peter Corrigan.

Having established Troppo in Darwin 34 years ago, Adelaide-based Harris and Perthbased Welke have watched it grow and diversify to include studios in Adelaide, Townsville, Perth and Byron Bay. The practice has won numerous awards at state, national and international levels and cultivated a portfolio of over 2500 projects that range from tiny remote buildings to large-scale urban design. Amongst its many distinctions is the 1994 Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture for the Bowali Visitors Centre in Kakadu and the 2010 UNESCO-supported Global Sustainable Architecture Award.

What has long set both Harris and Welke apart is their desire to produce socially responsible architecture that responds to climate and local setting. Troppo is widely regarded as a world leader in environmentally sustainable design with architecture that promotes the importance of building for place and people. As AIA National President and this year’s Jury Chair Paul Berkemeier notes, “Through their work Harris and Welke have evolved an architecture that deals with the heat, the rain and the subtleties of climate, while understanding and reviving the lessons of the Top End’s history and legacy of building.”

It’s quite possibly what imbues the Troppo portfolio with that unmistakably appealing sense of ‘heart’ and most definitely what gives it that characteristically signature Troppo style.

Economy in construction and a smart energyefficient approach is synonymous with the practice’s name as is a wonderfully informal spirit, which Harris and Welke both embody in abundance. According to Berkemeier, “They have pioneered a unique approach to Australian architecture – irreverent but sophisticated, inventive with a tinge of larrikin spirit.”

This casual, laidback attitude translates into conceptually accessible, fun architecture that is adaptable to any change in climate or lifestyle. It’s also an approach that makes Harris and Welke a pleasure to work with, which was a fact not lost on this year’s jury. Between the two of them they have mentored, educated and supported many students and graduates, who in turn have gone

Savia Haysman and Sue Dickson.

Photo: David Sievers

At the recent Australian Achievement in Architecture Awards ceremony in Hobart, Troppo co-founders Phil Harris and Adrian Welke deservedly walked away with the evening’s highest accolade.

Photos ANDREAS HEUER

Phil Harris and Adrian Welke.

on to have successful careers themselves. As agents of change they have been enthusiastic and influential, even championing a number of regulatory issues that contradict recent Building Code amendments.

Bella Fowler and Ben Drogemuller.

It may very well just be Harris and Welke’s time and the jury was savvy enough to acknowledge this. But what is undisputable is that there are no two more deserving recipients of the Institute’s most prestigious award. If the Gold Medal is presented in recognition of distinguished services then Harris and Welke’s outstanding contribution to the architecture profession has been duly recognised. In true Troppo spirit this is going to be toasted for some time to come.

troppo.com.au

April Whitehead and Nicole Jesenko.

Inspired by the glitz and glamour of the 1920s golden era, the newly refurbished Platinum Gaming Room at the SKYCITY Adelaide Casino delivers a dazzling gaming experience never before seen in South Australia.

With thousands of opulent elements and precision detailing, a dedicated and highly specialised team was required to provide the master craftsmanship the project deserved.

Schiavello is proud to have helped showcase our local talent through this uniquely positioned hospitality icon.

To learn more about this and other aspirational projects, visit us online or contact us for more information.

Contact Steve Lockwood slockwood@schiavello.com telephone 08 8112 2300 schiavello.com/construction

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