November 2016

trouble 140

CONTENTS COMICS FACE

Ive Sorocuk .............................................................................................

DOUBLE DATE NIGHT: EPISODE 1

Yung Victoria ..........................................................................................

SURREAL WORLDS: JOHN LESLIE ART PRIZE

Alexandra Sasse .....................................................................................

REG MOMBASSA: LANDSCAPES

Social Work ..............................................................................................

NOVEMBER SALON

Nascent ...................................................................................................

TRAVELS IN CLOWLAND: PART THREE

Judith Lanigan .........................................................................................

FINDING THE ART IN PHUKET: DANCING ON THE FRINGE

Anthony S. Cameron ...............................................................................

03 04 06 16 20 30

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COVER: F., Riot Stage, world premiere. Director Katrina Cornwell Writer Morgan Rose Assistant director Amelia Newman Producer Anna Kennedy Set and costume design Yvette Turnbull Lighting design Matthew Adey Sound design and composer Raya Slavin Stage manager Kate Brennan Peer advisor on gender sexuality and diversity Cecelia Devlin Performers Ross Daniels, Alanna Marshall, Sarah Conroy, Sunny Chiron, Taylor Seagal, Bonnie Brown, Todd Kingston, Izzy White, Jack Zapsalis, Thi Minh Chau (Blair) Phan, Ben van Rijn, Charlie Brown and Elise Louey. Duration approx. 75 mins. Trades Hall, New Ballroom, 54 Victoria Street, Carlton (VIC), 30 November – 11 December 2016.

Part of the Poppy Seed Theatre Festival 2016, 8 November – 11 December 2016 - poppyseed.net.au Issue 140 NOVEMBER 2016 trouble is an independent monthly mag for promotion of arts and culture Published by Trouble Magazine Pty Ltd. ISSN 1449-3926 EDITOR Steve Proposch CONTRIBUTORS Ive Sorocuk, Yung Victoria, Alexandra Sasse, Judith Lanigan, Anthony S. Cameron, love.

GET from AppStore FOLLOW on issuu & twitter SUBSCRIBE at troublemag.com READER ADVICE: Trouble magazine contains artistic content that may include nudity, adult concepts, coarse language, and the names, images or artworks of deceased Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. Treat Trouble intelligently, as you expect to be treated by others. Collect or dispose of thoughtfully.

DIS IS DE DISCLAIMER! The views and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the publisher. To the best of our knowledge all details in this magazine were correct at the time of publication. The publisher does not accept responsibility for errors or omissions. All content in this publication is copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without prior permission of the publisher. Trouble is distributed online from the first of every month of publication but accepts no responsibility for any inconvenience or financial loss in the event of delays. Phew!

This comic first appeared in Trouble July 2013

web comedy series

by Molly Daniels & Juliette Strangio

DOUBLE DATE NIGHT: Episode 1 Vic’s date, Pearl, is terrifying and intense, and Riley’s, Alastair, is a total douchebag, setting the whole double date endeavour off to a rocky start.

Starring: Laura Buskes, Molly Daniels, Tiana Hogben, Hayden McKertish, Gemma Bird-Matheson, Dylan Murphy visit Yung Victoria on Youtube

S

urreal

Worlds

John Leslie Art Prize Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale

by Alexandra Sasse

> Alice Wormald, Rocks in Water (detail) 2016

This landscape painting prize, based in Sale, is one of those generous moments when a local benefactor makes a significant contribution to the nation’s cultural life. Art awards are like that. For a relatively small sum of money (especially compared to sponsoring sport) an exhibition can be established that generates national interest and ensures that serious contemporary work reaches the regions. Such is the foundation of this present show of 49 works selected from 426 entries. This is considerable bang for your buck.

This is an exhibition with vertiginous highs and repellent lows. Predominantly the work is largish and surreal. Colour has mostly escaped any sense of communicating place or mood and is garish even random. Landscape is realised as political trope, as apocalyptic, as memory, dream, and experience, but common and essential to all, as a space of imagination. The idea of the wild appears, but neither as Arcadia nor in its alternate guise as ‘red in tooth and claw’. Here landscape is a stage in the theatre of our darkest imaginings. The sense of doom commonly imputed to Australian bush in nineteenth century literature and art in works such as Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life or the paintings of Piguinet and Von Guerard is reprised. And frequently added to the silent ominous gloom is the element of fantasy. Magical realism, one the plethora of movements in twentieth century painting and a compelling force in current fiction is a recurring theme. Close to surrealism, but more fantastical, this sees playful fictional elements introduced into the landscape.

In Kim Wilson’s See Jane Run sharks pursue a running child through a vortex of scrub. It is at once whimsical and chilling; dream-like with the threat of nightmare. Andrew Menzei’s Descension depicts deep ominous folds of what could be coral reef or earth in deep ultramarine and ochre. The picture draws you into its ambiguous depths, to where do we descend? This urge to look inward to the psychological rather than out and upwards to the sublime speaks of an existential sense of threat. It intimates a world where change and disruption make the classic sense of permanence, a feature of landscape painting throughout most of its history, almost redundant. If this is the temperature of the times, we seem unsettled.

Surreal Worlds / Alexandra Sasse

Painters have been forced to endure significant doubt for some decades about their medium by the “Painting is Dead” campaigners; the upshot of which is a widespread lack of understanding and faith in what painting can do. This context adds a level of difficulty for landscape painters today and places an extra burden of responsibility on the curators to facilitate an exhibition showing what painting is capable of. At best, this careworn converted office building serving as gallery (a new building is underway) could contain a profound realisation of thought and experience of the Australian landscape. Paint – a medium with such an extended and subtle range of expression that it has carried the imaginings of humankind since the Paleolithic age – is capable of that. Some of the works actually approach this, and that is reason to hold one’s breath in delight. Nicolas Harding’s Wilpena Wattle Scrub, and Ken Smith’s The Road to the Sea are poles apart in both sensibility and technique, but each pulsates with life and authenticity. Neither quite fits either the melancholic mood or narrative realism outlined above, and this is a credit to the exhibition and an antidote to the notion of that a single kind of landscape could epitomise the extraordinary diversity of Australian landscape and painterly responses. There is no point in seeking a ‘school’ of contemporary landscape, however neat that would make the messy strategies of painters. That simply is not the kind of world we live in. Both our geology and our demography are against it. The crucial factors in an artwork are the artist’s mind and sensibility expressed through form and informed by the history of what is possible. ‘The struggle between schema and things seen’ as Robert Hughes puts it ‘only becomes dramatic when it happens in the mind of a great painter’. There is no linear history in painting, you are on your own; informed but not directed by the past.

But within this plethora, comment can be made on recurring ideas and problems. Many of these pictures are far closer to Henri Rousseau than to Australian landscape forebears. The golden Heidelberg days are gone as is the heroism of Heysen. The sense of space is enclosed, frequently there is little or no sky or it is night time. Quite a number of the artists are struggling with the same constraint Rousseau faced: the lack of an education in drawing.

To this is added the photographic filter through which much perception is now mediated. The outcome may someday be a wonderful new synthesis of

NEXT SPREAD: Sophie Hewson, Untitled (detail) 2016

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experience and form, but the pitfalls of smooth surfaces, ambiguous forms and arbitrary colour would need to be overcome.

Forging a painterly connection between the worlds of imagination, the Australian landscape and the viewer is challenging. Courage and ambition are evident in all these pictures. The best works are those in which the painter has successfully communicated something of their own feeling not necessarily for a specific place, but conveying a sense of experience and not mere idea is paramount. The tangible sense of presence in the simplified almost monocolour Gauze by Adriane Strampp is convincing as is the moody Tidal River (Best Gippsland Work winner) by Linda Gibbs. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the winning work which suffers all of the problems outlined above; a sense of the power of either nature or the medium of paint is dimly realised in Amelda Read-Forsythe’s Under the Storm.

But one thing is crystal clear from this show: Australian landscape painting is vibrantly alive.

Alexandra Sasse Visual Artist and Critic John Leslie Art Prize, Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale, 3rd September – 20 November 2016 wellington.vic.gov.au/John-Leslie-Art-Prize PREVIOUS SPREAD: Kevin Chin, Crossing 2016 ABOVE: Amelda Read Forsythe, Under The Storm 2016 RIGHT: Peter Daverington, The Floating 2016

reg mombassa social work Photo by Tony Lopes

reg mombassa | social work

Born in New Zealand in 1951, Chris O’Doherty, otherwise known as Reg Mombassa, emigrated to Australia with his family in 1969. After graduating where from the National Art School in Sydney in 1975, he formed rock band ‘Mental as Anything’ in 1976 with four other art students. The ‘Mentals’ went on to release eleven albums and twenty-seven singles, with twenty of those entering the top forty.

Reg began working as a freelance artist in 1976, and he has worked closely with Mambo Graphics since 1986 designing t-shirts and posters. His first painting exhibition was held at Watter’s Gallery, Sydney in 1975 and he has had numerous one man shows at Watter’s ever since. His artwork is included in the permanent collections of The National Art Gallery, Canberra, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Powerhouse Museum of NSW and the University of Sydney Union.

How similar are your political beliefs to those of your family?

Reg Mombassa: Quite similar, we are all somewhat to the left of centre and we all have scepticism and disapproval of authoritarian leaders and all other pompous wankers.

Do you have a favourite family story?

RM: Yes, to ensure that his old van would start in the morning in cold and wet New Zealand my father would put a blanket and hot water bottle on the engine.

What do you hope for?

RM: A human race that is less contentious and irrational.

What do you think is your main purpose in life?

RM: To be an artist of some sort.

Do you think its ok to lie?

RM: No, but unfortunately I am an accomplished and habitual liar.

What does freedom mean to you?

RM: Being able to choose your activities and avoid prison, mental hospital and the gutter.

What do you think are the most important social issues today?

RM: Domestic violence, homophobia, racism and an excessively punitive justice system. The ridiculous war on drugs for instance, should be immediately flung in the dustbin of history.

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What beliefs do you have that you think will never change?

RM: That the warrior alpha male is a dangerous and foolish creature.

Is any religious text important to you?

RM: The bible, because it has had such an influence and presence in our history and culture, although I am not a practicing Christian and I certainly do not literally believe most of the content of the bible.

Have you ever come close to dying?

RM: Not really, although as a young man I did stupidly drive a vehicle a couple of times while so drunk that I couldn’t walk and was virtually blind.

What do you like the best about your body?

RM: My long ape-like arms.

What do you think would be the best thing about being the opposite gender?

RM: Not having to embody stupid concepts like pride, honour and violently ruthless competition with other males.

Who is the best teacher you have ever had?

RM: Dougal Page, who was my high school art teacher.

What was your favourite book as a child?

RM: As a small child I loved Rupert the Bear books and as an older child I loved the historical novels of the Henry Treece and Rosemary Sutcliffe (what a pathetic nerd!).

If I asked a good friend of yours what you were good at, what would they say?

RM: They would probably say he was good at virtually nothing.

What stays the same in your life, no matter how much other things change?

RM: The compunction to draw and play music.

What is stopping you?

RM: Laziness and fear.

Over 200 of Mombassa’s iconic landscapes have been brought together in Reg Mombassa: Landscapes (Hardie Grant Books, October 2016). The book is an evocative retrospective of one of Australia’s most beloved and celebrated artists. Reg Mombassa’s work has been a part of the fabric of Australia’s pop culture for nearly 40 years. It is his irreverent take on life down under and his unique landscapes that have earned him a place as one of Australia’s most influential and prolific fine artists - hardiegrant.com.au

november salon

Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, The Drag 2015, Rover P6; 2-channel video. Colour, sound. 28 minutes. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.

People Like Us, Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Horseshoe Bend, Swan Hill (VIC), until 27 November 2016 - gallery.swanhill.vic.gov.au

november salon

LEFT: Ling Jian, Dream of the Red Chamber 2015, oil on canvas, 180 x 150cm. Views on the Marmara, Views from the Propontis, curated by Jeremy Gales, ACAF Projects, Contemporary Istanbul, Istanbul Congress Center (ICC) and Istanbul Convention and Exhibition Centre (ICEC), 3 –- 6 November 2016 contemporaryistanbul.com ABOVE: Natascha Stellmach (AUS), Day 1, Anne’s Letting Go 2014, print on Baryta, 40 x 40cm. The Letting Go, Galerie WAGNER + PARTNER, Strausberger Platz 8, 10243 Berlin (GER), until 19 November, 2016 - galerie-wagner-partner.com NEXT SPREAD: Hotel Now, What’s Yours Is Mine, world premiere. Performers and devisors Hayden Burke, Simone French and Tom Halls. Director Yvonne Virsik. Producer Anastasia Ryan. Production designer Owen Phillips. Stage Manager Rikki-Lee Butinar. Photo: Jules Tahan. The Butterfly Club, 5 Carson Place, Melbourne (VIC), 22 November – 4 December 2016. Part of the Poppy Seed Theatre Festival 2016, 8 November – 11 December 2016 - poppyseed.net.au

ABOVE: Prudence Flint, Wash 2015, oil on linen. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Australian Galleries. Winner of the 2016 Len Fox Painting Award, Castlemaine Art Gallery, 14 Lyttleton Street, Castlemaine (VIC), until 31 December 2016 - castlemainegallery.com RIGHT: Glenn Barkley, IwishIwaswhereIwouldbe (vase) 2016, earthenware, 41 x 56 x 16 cm. Courtesy the artist and Utopia Art Sydney. GLENN BARKLEY: itsallright, Utopia Art Sydney, 2 Danks Street Waterloo (NSW), until 19 November 2016 - utopiaartsydney.com.au NEXT SPREAD: David Hashimoto & Gabrielle Bates, Illuminatrope 2016. Wollombi Sculpture in the Vineyards 2016, the Hunter Valley NSW. The free public exhibition is open 10am – 5pm, 7 days a week.

Sculptures will be displayed in the village of Wollombi and Stonehurst Cedar Creek, Wollombi Wines, Wollombi Village Vineyard, Undercliff Winery and Noyce Brothers Wines. All works are for sale. Until 4 December 2016 - sculptureinthevineyards.com.au

november salon

TRAVELS IN

PART THREE

The Garden of Unearthly Delights photo by Andre Castellucci.

7. Popup Clowntown If you had a map of Clownland in your hand, you would see a popup clowntown that appears now and then in different places. It is a collection of intimate modern speigeltents, each one with a distinctly different flavour. The owners of this popup collection of venues fill them with a rotation of short clown shows.

The word Ukiyo is Japanese for ‘The Floating World’; the pleasure seeking quarters of ancient urban Japan where clown and burlesque happened in the theatres and geisha houses and bars. The speigeltent in this clowntown is Ukio modern. An anime of a classic cherry tree in blossom woodprint creates the illusion, when you are outside it, that you are in fact in a Japanese cartoon.

Next to it stands Hendrick’s Parlour of Curiosities. The doorway to this wooden tent opens into a decadent, plush, opium-esque den; a fringed and velvety Victoriana. The bar where you buy drinks is built of glass-fronted cabinets full of stuffed ducks and other birds, bottles of strange liquids, bones and carvings.

Next to it the Rastelli is modernist design of red and green, the traditional colours of madness and lunacy. The Little Palais is a shocking, striped arte deco minimalism. The Castello is, as you might expect, a little castle. In front of it sits an almost traditional looking clown who has been cross-bred with a businessman. He wears very large black shoes, a suit, a blonde comb-over to an off-centre quiff, and an implausible nose. This is Enrico. Enrico, it seems, is the boss of this clowntown, even if only in his own mind.

Enrico is a personage of Nigel Martin, a.k.a Mr. Spin.

‘How did you start performing clown?’ I asked him. I have heard this story before, but I would like him to tell you, in his own words.

‘I started dancing when I was seven,’ Nigel said, ‘and I trained really hard and I got into the Australian Ballet School which is the most prestigious ballet school in Australia. It has a great reputation around the world and I think there are about four thousand students that audition each year and I was one of the twenty that got in to start, and then it would end up with eight of you at the end.

‘I got through and ended up in third year and of course we were all trying to get jobs and stuff. I was hoping to be in the Australian Ballet or the New York City Ballet, but just before graduation there was a job going in the opera > The Japanese art of Ukiyo-e (“Pictures of the floating [or sorrowful] world”) developed in the city of Edo (now Tokyo) during the Tokugawa or Edo Period (1600-1868), a relatively peaceful era during which the Tokugawa shoguns ruled Japan and made Edo the seat of power. The Ukiyo-e tradition of woodblock printing and painting continued into the 20th century. This 1862 print is a half-length portrait of an actor, wearing a robe with a bird motif, in the role of Asahina. The print is from the series The 36 Stars of the Modern Day (Tōsei Mitate Sanjū Rokkasen). Asahina Kobayashi was a warrior of the Kamakura period (late 12th to early 14th century) known for great strength and valour. In this Kabuki act, however, Asahina plays the clown. Source: Wikimedia.

Aida, in Japan, and there was an opening in one of the main dancing spots.

We didn’t have mobile phones back then, and I had to do this final call to see if I was the one that got the role, so instead of going to the ballet that night I went to the pub with my friends. I had two beers with my mates then it was seven o’clock; time to call these people. I went down into the mall in Melbourne, and made the call. They said: “you’ve got the job” and there’s this much money upfront to get you here – fantastic pay – all of which I was completely thrilled about.

‘I was really excited so I came out of the phone box and went running down the mall, did a leap off a park bench and came crashing down. I landed wrong, and my foot ended up beside my face with my leg behind my back, and I pulled on my leg which flipped me on my face and it was throbbing and pulsating and stuff. Luckily some police saw me, and they called an ambulance. And while all this was happening the ballet had finished and all the students that had been up there watching the ballet, like I should have been, were all coming out of the theatre to get their trams home and stuff and there I was lying on the ground, my leg twitching and stuff.

‘And yes, that was the end of it all, because there was over a year of recovery to be able to dance like that again. So I spent a lot of time getting my music together and juggling instead.’

It was around then that Nigel developed the theory that it was possible to learn any trick if you devote yourself to it for three weeks.

Nigel’s first clown was called Mr. Spin. You would usually find Mr. Spin at the top of high unicycle, juggling baseball bats and talking as much to himself as he talked to the audience.

‘At the Australian Ballet they said that the way you practice will be the way you perform on stage, and so you should always practice with a smile on your face as if there is a crowd in front of you, so that even if you slip into your practice mode it is still a good performance. So I always used to pretend there were crowds in front of me when I was juggling, saying: “go Mr. Spin, we love you” and I’d go “thank you thank you”. And as you were saying earlier, yes, that’s quite delusional.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, in a normal person that is a sign of madness.’ I asked, ‘How would you define your clown?’

‘I would call myself a post-modern clown. I am wearing the big shoes and the red nose, which is rare these days. They don’t put the nose on a lot of the time, the modern clowns, but I enjoy the nose. It’s not easy being a clown; people think it’s some kiddy thing. I don’t think clown necessarily has to be ‘kiddy’ and if everyone thinks it is kiddy then that’s where it’s going to go.

Clownland / Judith Lanigan

So someone’s got to be the one that turns it back around here, because in Europe its not kiddy, you’re an artist. But a lot of people are scared of clowns.

A lot of girls go: “I don’t want to go in, it’s a clown”, and their friends will go in, and then come out and say: “Oh yeah we had a great laugh”, and they’ll come in later. They’re more scared of the white face, which I don’t do.’

We’re walking through the back end of the Garden of Unearthly Delights, past the old shipping containers set up as offices and caravans, and I’m really shocked to see a whole pile of carnival rides here; the sort you would see at the Agricultural Shows.

Nigel said, ‘There’s lots of carny rides now, and there’s some really scary clowns with their faces on and they come out with chainsaws running and they say: “Come to the Fright Train”.’

I looked where he was pointing. A haunted hotel loomed over us, dark and menacing. I knew it was only plywood but it was still quite unnerving somehow.

Nigel nodded. ‘They come out as clowns and they wear those horrible rubber masks and they come out and scare the people.’

I changed the subject before fear of clown overtook me. ‘And then you worked with (legendary Australian award winning filmmaker) Rolf De Heer?’ I asked.

‘Yes. The Dr. Plonk role happened purely because his kids used to go down to the beaches here in Adelaide, where I would do my shows, so he would watch me all the time with his kids. He loved the way I would improvise as a clown. One of the musicians I worked with also worked as a photographer with Rolf on some of his other movies, so he was able to get my number and one day he decided to do the silent black and white movie and wanted me to do the lead. It’s funny because I love Rolf de Heer’s work. I loved his movies Bad Boy Bubby and Tracker. My brother and I were quite addicted to Bad Boy Bubby, and we used to send it to friends and they’d be quite disturbed by it, but we loved it. My brother comes and sees my shows in Europe and Australia. He even calls me Mr. Spin, which is lovely. And he’ll say “Mr. Spin you’re famous” and I explain that I might be famous very, very, very briefly for a moment at a festival, but it passes very quickly, which I really like.

Some street performers buy into it and think it is real, and it goes to their heads a bit, but I like it, and then it’s gone and you are no one again, and unrecognised, which is lovely because you’ve still got a lot of your freedom and stuff. So I’d say to my brother: “No I’m not famous. The day I’m famous is when Rolf De Heer asks me to do a lead role for his film” and we both laughed at that. Then of course two years later he did ask me and when I told my brother he thought I was joking, and I’m like, no, I’m serious ...’

‘So, Mr. Spin and Enrico, they are defined, separate identities to you?’ I asked.

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‘No I think there is always you in there. It’s like an extension of me. The clown can get away with a lot that you, a normal person, can’t. So Mr. Spin is an extension of myself. Mr. Spin is clean face clown. He looks like a normal person.

He is sort of cool but he’s not cool, but he doesn’t have to get away with so much because he’s just silly. But because he’s a clown he’s allowed to be silly.’

‘And Enrico’s got really big shoes,’ I commented.

‘Really big shoes,’ Nigel said, ‘red nose, suit, and a small, stubby tie. He hasn’t done it up properly, but he thinks of himself as really well dressed, you know what I mean? He can get away with a lot of stuff, but he also does little bits of skill, and he’s very influenced by George Carl. He’s an amazing clown, George Carl. So Enrico’s got a lot of problems, which clowns should be fine with. I find it hard watching clowns that have a problem and it becomes such a problem to them that they’ve got a problem. I find that frustrating. I find that Enrico’s always got problems. He’s a clown; he’s got problems happening all the time. In a way he sort of enjoys them. Like he’s getting on with stuff while this problem’s happening, because in a minute it’ll just disappear and I find that more funny than being too attached to his problem.’

We paused for a moment, and drank our coffee.

There’s this theory in some religions that if you kill ambition then you are going to do well in life. So I said to myself, I’m going to kill all my ambition.

Then Nigel continued, ‘I think there is always a lot to learn. I mean I never thought when I was Mr. Spin that I was the best, or anything. That’s where some people go wrong with Clowning and performing, their egos can get in the way. And it is very interesting seeing some of the egotistical clowns are the ones that you don’t seem to like and the ones that have these problems.

They’re going: “I’m the great clown I’m going to teach you …”

‘But the secret is to not be trying to be the great clown, because it is not about that. I learnt that really early on, back in the Australian Ballet School. I had this thing about ambition. There’s this theory in some religions that if you kill ambition then you are going to do well in life. So I said to myself, I’m going to kill all my ambition. It doesn’t mean that you can’t strive to go places and do things. It just means that it’s not about how you have got to be the best, how you’ve got to get to here or there, but if you just have a go you will get there in the end, as long as you’re walking that path. If you stop, you won’t get it, but if you keep walking that path you will. You don’t have to be the best, but if being the best happens along the way then all well and good.’

Clownland / Judith Lanigan

8. Circus Royalty.

Imagine, you work at home, with your family. You have a few animals. One of them is really, really old. It was born the same year as you, at the place where you live. Your parents brought up its parents. This animal doesn’t look beautiful, no matter how much you wash it, and it costs a lot to feed, but you don’t mind. In fact you go without a few things to keep it fed. It can’t do much anymore, but that’s ok. You just want to make this animal’s last years as comfortable as possible. And you know that if you gave it away it would die; the shock and loss would be too much. You know animals. They have always been around you and have been treasured parts of your life, your father’s life and his father’s.

Then suddenly you are in all the newspapers and people with placards picket your family business. They are saying you mistreat your pets. They put pictures of your favourite, the oldest, looking old, and don’t print that the animal is over a hundred years old. They gather donations to help fight to take your pet away. Those donations go into paying themselves to get more press. They get lots more donations when it is you and your family they attack, because your family is circus. Your favourite pet is an elephant, an elephant that was born into your arms.

Fighting for the rights of elephants is a fluffy, feel good, romantic audience pleaser, and a good revenue raiser. Fighting for the rights of the domestic pet isn’t going to get as much media and fuss. For the media the statement that a circus animal is well treated and happy is not a good story, so they don’t play it that way. You are defamed in the media, and in every home. There are thousands of people hearing and reading lies about you.

This is an excerpt from a public letter from Gary Brophy, written in 2010: The latest battle against extinction is being fought here in Australia under striped and star spangled coloured canvas. It is a battle not only to survive, but a battle for the right to continue in a centuries old traditional style of living and working ...

I was born in the circus industry. I am fourth generation circus. My wife Caroline Belli is fourteenth Generation; that makes my children fifteenth generation circus. Our families have been involved with animals our whole lives, my father-in-law Rudy Belli has trained fifty-five elephants around the world. My wife’s family started in Circus in 1648 in Italy, long before Australia was even discovered by Europeans. It would be

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a shame if my children can not keep this wonderful life we are so lucky to have going as we are from one of the oldest circus families in the world.

So I am a voice for our industry.

These so called activists have no idea what they are talking about. Nor does the mis-informed media. For example the media said the first baby elephant was born in Taranga zoo last year. False. The first elephant born in Australia was with Wirths Circus in 1904 in Sydney.

So our industry had the first and last circus elephants - that’s a story the public should know ... Yes, there has been abuse in circus and that was many years ago. But there is no record at all of animal abuse from the Perry Bros Circus. I have known them my whole life and they are good animal people, they would know more about elephants than anyone else in Australia as they have lived with them for over fifty years.

It is sad that she (Saigon, the elephant the activists are protesting should be returned to the wild) is now alone, as the other elephants have passed on from old age. But Saigon was a loner, she did not mix well with some of the others. Her mate is Perry Maynard who has been part of her life for forty years. They have grown up together and she trusts him.

Nobody can give her the attention she needs other than the Perry family.

I (Gary Brophy) have had to put my horses in agistment because animal activist have managed to stop local councils renting vacant land to us to put on a family circus. So now I do not have any animals in my show and I miss them a lot.

These people are destroying our way of life. We are animal lovers not abusers. What is the difference between us having the knowledge to train animals and others having family pets doing some basic tricks?

Please help us to stop these people from destroying our business. No traditional circus in Australia has ever received any Government Grants or any assistance what so ever ... We have travelled the whole of Australia doing this without any help, only relying on ticket sales to keep it going.

I think it is time that our voice is heard and not just the ringmaster shouting Ladies and Gentlemen and children of all ages, may all your days be circus days ...

Regards, Gary Brophy, Circus Sunrise

Lorraine Maynard of Perry’s Circus was offered the sum of two million dollars for Saigon and Minyak. Why didn’t they accept this offer? Lorraine explained: “That’s easy – we were not interested. Our elephants are priceless. > “The Barnum & Bailey greatest show on earth Wonderful performing geese, roosters and musical donkey”. Chromolithograph. Source: Public Domain.

I wonder how pet owners would feel if suddenly one of your two beloved dogs, cats birds etc. passed away and people who you have never met in your life started telling you to get rid of your remaining animal and how horrid and cruel you were for keeping it. I bet you would tell them to go to hell and mind their own business. I’m not comparing elephants to any other animal but the sentiment is the same.”

My own research in Wirth’s Circus Archives found that, at the end of the 1890’s the Wirth family went on an adventurous world tour, and while in south-east Asia they noticed the extraordinary abilities of the local elephants and purchased a couple and brought them back to Australia to assist in the heavy lifting and manoeuvring involved in a travelling circus. It was after they had developed relationships with the elephants as domestic workers that they began to appreciate their skills at performing. Their elephants featured in the family photograph albums and were discussed in journals and diaries as if they were human.

In the 1920s Wirth’s circus thought that their elephant Alice might be too old to make the ocean voyage from Australia to New Zealand so they gave her into the care of a zoo. On their return to Australia they were shocked to find that Alice had pined and sickened, almost dying, so they took her back. Once she was back with the people she had lived with for many years, returned to her circus environment, she recovered very quickly.

Please excuse me if I digress for a moment and explain that I also have a personal sense of guilt about this. I am from ‘new’ circus, the relativity recent wave of circus that has spread out beyond the circus tent and vaudeville stage. New circus built its popularity on a media platform that announced loudly that we were not that “bad old traditional animal circus” we were new, good, people circus with NO animals. I accepted as truth those defamatory statements and attitudes without finding out for myself.

It was not until I was a guest artist with the Great Moscow Circus and worked alongside the Brophy family and their animals that I realised that these performing animals lived better than any domestic pet. The animals enjoyed performing, they looked forward to it. They knew the musical cues of the acts before theirs, they were ready and excited to go into the ring. And often they performed in the ring freely, at liberty, not leashed and harnessed.

That’s when I started realising that ‘new’ circus has played its part in killing the livelihood of the traditional circus, and I think the world is poorer for it.

I know that most of this chapter may seem like a digression, but ... I can’t help it. It is important, isn’t it?

Gary Brophy’s brother Warren and I were to meet under the clocks of Clownland / Judith Lanigan

Flinders street station and go across the road to have coffee. I was quite nervous and not embarrassed to admit it. I felt as if I was about to meet royalty. My hair was brushed, my shoes were clean.

Warren said, ‘Gary’s a clown and I’m a clown. I know others that have tried it but found that they aren’t funny. In yourself you’ve got to feel right for that part. It’s like theatre, I suppose. If you feel like you’re going to do that part and it is working, it’s good. Clowning makes people laugh if you enjoy what you’re doing.

‘We just sort of fell into it, I guess. My parents, they pushed us in the right direction that they thought we might enjoy – the whip cracking and the juggling. They needed a juggler and I tried it, I didn’t mind it, and they needed a clown and I tried it and my brother tried it. My little brother was always into the balancing. We were going to school and doing different sorts of things.

Before we started Brophy Brothers we were with Perry brothers circus over in Western Australia. I did a riding act there ...

‘Clowning-wise, there’s a number of different skits, like there’s the old telescope act. That’s been going for long before I was born, and is probably one of my best gags. Then you got the old balloon gag where you shoot a balloon from over another clown’s head. I do that one as well ... It’s an old gag but you change to your way of thinking and your feel.

‘If you’re too serious being a clown then it just doesn’t happen. You’ve got to look at the audience see that they’re enjoying the act. If you just go on the stereotype – like if you write down the gag and go exactly that way every single time – then it’s not going to work. Any clown in Australia that knows clowning or does traditional clown in circus, they know that.

‘I could probably walk over there, trip over, fall on my face and no one would laugh. I put a rubber nose on, make up, baggy clothes, and I’d get a laugh.

‘I’ve changed my makeup and my hair over the years. I used to have a full face of makeup and I found a long time ago the kids would freak out, so I’ve got rid of most of the makeup and just have a little bit on to sort of try and identify with the kids.’

Me: ‘Do you work with a clown partner?’

He nods ‘My son’s a clown. He is nineteen, and I got a younger son too, a four year old, and he clowns with me too, so he brings stuff into me. My boys have always started young in the ring. They do a little bit of clowning first to sort of get them used to the people and everything else, and then you can’t stop them. My oldest boy, he does rola-bola, slack-wire, whip-cracking and rope-spinning. Anything he can try, he’ll do it, because he’s that sort of kid.

Andy, the other one, he does a bit of clowning, he juggles, he’s in the circus scene too, he likes it.’

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Me: ‘When you go into the ring or into costume, as a clown, as Brody, does that feel like it’s a different person for you?’

Warren: ‘Once you go into the ring, you got your costume on, you can put on your character the way you feel it should be, and you go from there, but when you go in the back door you’re still the same person. I don’t have to be called “Brody come here” or not have a conversation with someone or anything. I’m me. I’m Warren. I’m still me, but it is completely different. You go in there and you’re there to entertain and give it your best shot.’

Me: ‘I’ve been reading about different clown archetypes like the Commedia Dell Arte, and in circus clown there’s different status of clown. I was wondering if you associate your clown and your performance style with any particular influence?’

Warren replied, ‘In our business, you ask anyone going to the circus “what do you want to see?” and the kids will always say “I want to see the clown.”

They won’t say the European style, or the white face, it’s just a clown. And there are a lot of clowns in Australia, different circuses, who have all got their own different styles. Who’s the best? Who knows? It is the way people enjoy your clowning, the way you deliver your lines. The way you get wet, the way you fall over. It’s just the way you feel yourself.’

“... you ask anyone going to the circus ‘what do you want to see?’ and the kids will always say ‘I want to see the clown’. They won’t say the European style, or the white face, it’s just a clown.”

‘You were saying you pulled back from clown makeup a bit earlier on. You were talking about the kids that get freaked out by clowns. Do you feel that that’s a new thing? Have people always been like that?’

‘No,’ Warren replied. ‘I think there’s that much entertainment on the tv, cinema, the internet, horror pictures like the IT one, Steven Spielberg with the crazy clown. It’s hard to say.’

‘The horror clowns, they are what tainted it?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think so. I’ve had adults terrified of clowns and normally, before they leave the circus when it’s finished, I’ll go, without makeup, and say, “it’s just me, I’m the clown”. That’s just the way it is, but if it’s the movies or the internet, who knows?’

‘How is Saigon going?’ I asked.

‘She’s fine.’ Warren said. ‘She’s at home, resting peacefully in a massive big Clownland / Judith Lanigan

paddock. It was just that people got a misunderstanding about the animal.

She’s like a family member to us. We’d go without a feed before she does. But that’s the way people are. Once the media hits they say one bad thing, put in one bad photo and that’s it, it’s snowballed.

‘The Melbourne Zoo came down and inspected her. They said: “She’s fine.

This is where she is staying, with you guys, and no-one can do nothing about it.” We’re happy.’

I wrote to Warren’s brother Gary. I had to write to him because it became so difficult for them to get council permission to put up a show that they went overseas.

He replied ‘We are now performing in the famous Blackpool Tower Circus in England. It is one of the oldest circus buildings in the world.’

I asked what he considers to be the important attributes of a clown.

‘Well, for me it is not trying to be smarter than the kids I am entertaining.

Ok, every now and then I can toss in a line that will get a laugh from the adults ... And always stay in character as long as you have that face on. You never know who may walk in to the back door of the circus. Why take that magic away from a kid and after the show he or she sees you without your clown nose having a drink, or a smoke, sort of not a clown anymore. That kid’s memory of you will not be the same. Stay the clown until you are behind closed doors.

‘When I put my face and nose on I become a completely different person.

Being a clown makes me feel young and I put my self on the same level as a five or six year old.’

I asked both Warren and Gary Brophy who their favourite clown was when they were children. Growing up in a circus surely meant that they would have seen a few. They both replied: ‘Theo Zacchini’, a musical clown performing with Ashtons Circus. The Brophy family often visited the Ashtons socially.

The multi-generational circus families of Australia, I realised, are an intertwined, complex family forest of many trees. As Mr. Robert Perry said, there are three Perry brothers married to three Ashton sisters. It’s a natural thing given that the families visit each other, and work in the same industry.

I asked the Brophy Brothers about this.

Gary replied, ‘Our family is related to the Perrys. Warren is married to one.

My sister Shayne’s husband is related to the Lennons and West families. My wife is related to just about every old circus family in Europe; Belli, Gasser, Strassburger, Renz, Quasier, and many others as well. My daughter Bonita’s partner, the father of my grandchildren, is related to many of the old circus families here; Hoffmann, Roberts, Chipperfield, Endreze and others.’

It’s been confusing, in writing this book, to know what words to use in

defining the different ‘waves’ of circus. The traditional/new/contemporary thing. Very complicated, especially as the so-called ‘traditional’ are very much also contemporary, just not receiving any of the funding available to the ‘new’ circus movement. It has been quite a dilemma for this journey, talking to so many clowns of so many types and traditions. My solution, and I am prepared to defend it, is to define the ‘traditional’ circus and families as ‘circus royalty’.

Because they are. I’d like this to catch on as a general trend of respect.

I asked Gary, ‘In the normal world, I believe that circus families like yours are a shining example of how families should be. Do you have any advice about that? ‘ He answered, ‘Smash the tv, turn off the internet and get your lazy fat ass off of the lounge and take the wife and kids to see live entertainment.’

I asked him, ‘have you any advice for people suffering defamation and slander? What is the best way forward?’ I do not tell him I have a very personal reason for asking it.

‘You are asking questions that I do not have answers for,’ he said. ‘I will give it a go anyway. Build a bridge and get over it, and if you cannot do that then go to Bunnings and buy a can of “Toughen The Fuck Up”, or get the hell out of this business.

I thought about that. Being lied about is different to bullying. Bullying happens to you. Being lied about happens about you, when you aren’t there, so there’s nothing you can do about it. It is like a bushfire that is hard to put out, because the sparks and embers blow around in the wind and can catch again in totally unexpected places.

“Building a bridge and getting over it” is a very different approach to holding your head high and ignoring it. It’s more about understanding that a pathway gets damaged and you have to decide where it is you want to be, and then make the pathway there consciously. It’s not passive, it’s not ignoring the situation, it’s not denial, it’s not pretending nothing happened.

It’s a rebuilding and a strong conscious movement forward.

I add that to my list.

NEXT ISSUE: Being handed the keys to the moment.

Judith Lanigan is the daughter of a journalist and a detective. She studied her circus specialty – hula hoops – at the Moscow State Circus School and documented her experiences in A True History of the Hula Hoop, published

by Picador in 2009. This series is extracted from her latest book, Clownland, released by Aerofish Media in August 2016 - judithlanigan.com.au

FINDING THE ART IN

Phuket Dancing on the fringe

by Anthony S. Cameron

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Misfits come in all shapes, colours and sizes in Phuket, and the most colourful of all have to be the Katoeys; the ladyboys. Far more colourful than the criminals on the run, more fascinating than the guy in witness protection on a yacht anchored in Patong Bay, far more interesting than all the guys avoiding divorce lawyers or the failed entrepreneur trying to escape his creditors, more magnetic than the Nigerian coke dealers, more revealing than the Tuk Tuk drivers that take you to places you never would have found on your own. Katoey’s are an accepted part of the matted social fabric that makes this island so special.

People come from all over Thailand to make it big here. Some come to ‘expand’ their business operations, such as the criminal gangs that hail from Nakorn si Tammarat. Others arrive on their own from Isaan, usually young girls on the lookout for old ex-pats to marry. Some come to free themselves from the bonds of family, others to escape a life of dead-end streets, tired of eking out an existence in the sprawling chaos of Bangkok. Still others come trapped in men’s bodies, and Phuket is the place where they can be who they wanna be.

I am sitting in Sunshine Bar, Rawai, on the southern tip of the island looking across the street at the tour operator touts and fishermen drinking Thai whisky under a huge casuarina tree on the water’s edge. It is around midnight and the floor show is getting into full swing when our drinks arrive, delivered by a six foot two Katoey my wife and I affectionately call ‘Tits McGee’ due to the size of her breast implants. She leans in close and says to me, “Come back later … alone” so my wife can hear. We all laugh for a moment, then with a dramatic head tilt and flick of her long hair, she is gone, back to centre of the horseshoe shaped bar that is her Moulin Rouge.

Sunshine Bar is unique, even here in Phuket. Sure, there are places like Simon Cabaret where you can see extremely talented Katoeys on a big stage, with lots of stage lights and frocks that dazzle, á lá Priscilla Queen of the desert, but there is something mechanical about it, something soulless. It is no accident that there is ample bus parking because this is the acceptable, family friendly ladyboy experience. Sunshine Bar is different. The ten or fifteen Katoeys that take turns on the pole or vie for centre stage are the fringe dwellers of the scene.

Some have had boob jobs, some haven’t. Some have gone all the way, the full sex re-assignment surgery, but these are few due to the $12,000 US price tag.

Finding the Art in Phuket / Tony Cameron

Some are struggling with it all, some aren’t. Some are dancing on the fringe, caught between worlds, between bodies, and some just stand there dumbstruck.

Scattered amongst them are a couple of gay boys that of course out dance all the ‘girls’ and create the on stage tension that makes the show so watchable.

What makes Sunshine Bar so special, though, is the lady who owns the place.

She is the heart of it all. Like a den mother she takes all these lost souls in, gives them a job being who they wanna be, nurses them when they are sick and confused or recovering from their operations, lets them drink as they work.

She just lets them BE. And because of this we forgive her for her dated choice of music, which comes blasting out of the roof either side of the pole. Sometimes she grabs a mic and sings along and, lucky for us all, it is mostly unintelligible and laden with effects. We forgive her for the cheap vodka that makes your brain rattle in time with the music as you watch another drunk tourist try to climb the oh-soslippery pole, at the top of which resides the magic bell: if he makes it, it’ll be drinks on the house.

Over the years we have watched the misfits come and go. We have watched them grow and change with each operation, we have watched them fly mama’s

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coop, to make their own way. We have sat and talked and laughed into the early hours, until the real world became some kind of aberration, a moment of pristine madness that, thankfully, passed quickly as another dawn smashed the darkness away.

So where is the Art in all this?

Like always on this mad little island, it is where you would least expect it.

It is in the face of Tits McGee as she shoves another 100 baht tip between her ample cleavage, gives a confident and well-practised head tilt and dreams of being released from the body-prison that has had her trapped all her life. It is in the cut of the surgeon’s knife as he re-sculpts a penis into a labia, leaving a small bump as a clitoris. It is in the awkward gait of a gangly Katoey, new at the business of moving like a woman, nervously checking that her unwanted, even despised, genitalia remains hidden in the crack of her arse. It is in the maternal grin of the den mother as she watches her girls synchronise their moves until the place starts jumping, the whole street resonating with the swollen laughter and cheesy bass lines spilling out into the night.

For this is the Art of Transformation, the greatest Body Art of all. The surgeons are the great sculptors of our times, the unsung heroes who are liberating thousands of girls trapped in men’s bodies. And with every frontal bone shave, every breast implant, every tracheal shave, comes a little more happiness for an incarcerated few. And if you can’t afford the $20,000 US price tag for the full re-assignment, you can always make do with a perky set of ‘Pamela Andersons’ and keep your eyes on the bar door in the hope that one night, maybe tonight, Mr Right will stagger through with a smile on his face, a pocket full of Euros, and a wife sleeping in a hotel room somewhere far away from here.

ANTHONY S. CAMERON is an Australian ex-pat living in Phuket, Thailand, and the author of two novels, Driftwood (2014) and Butterfly on Bangla (2015).

Born in Melbourne, he escaped in his early twenties to central Victoria, where he designed and built a sustainable house, raised two sustainable children. His books are available on Amazon here.

Pics by Roxy Cameron.