Trouble April 2018

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CONTENTS COMICS FACE

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

HAVE YOU SEEN THE LISTERS

Eddie Martin, Director ..............................................................................

THE HUMILITY OF HOKUSAI

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

WHAT HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE OPERA

Robert Ruckus .........................................................................................

APRIL SALON

Ab-so-lutely ................................................................................................

FINDING THE ART IN PHUKET: RACING TO THE BRIDGE

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

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COVER: Kim ANDERSON, Protection 2017, ink, charcoal and pastel on paper, 120 x 80cm. Image courtesy of the artist. Hiding in Plain Sight, The Art Vault, 43 Deakin Avenue, Mildura (VIC), until 9 April 2018 - theartvault.com.au Issue 155 APRIL 2018 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, Robert Ruckus, Anthony S. Cameron, love.

GET from AppStore FOLLOW on issuu, facebook & 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 FEBRUARY 2010

troubleflix

a troubled feature trailer

Have You Seen The Listers? (Trailer) Director: Eddie Martin (Jisoe, All This Mayhem) | Featuring: Anthony Lister Have You Seen The Listers? is a candid and personal insight into the rise of worldrenowned street artist Anthony Lister as he challenges conservative Australia, whilst battling his own demons. Lister will have you gasping for air as he rises up the ranks from street artist to celebrated contemporary artist in the complex world of fine art.

While the complexities of hype, fame and contradictions of the art world are present, at its heart this is a story about family and fatherhood. We witness the birth and breakdown of a family unit, juxtaposed with the rise of a star.

In Australian cinemas nationally APRIL 5, 2018 Running time: 90 minutes I Classification: CTC Distributed in Australia by Transmission Films

The Humility of Hokusai 北斎の謙虚さ Alexandra Sasse

“If heaven had granted me five more years, I could have become a real painter.”

- Katsushika Hokusai Last year, one hundred and seventy-six elegant woodblock prints by Japanese nineteenth century artist Katsushika Hokusai found their way to Melbourne’s NGV for the Hokusai exhibition (21 July – 22 October 2017). It was a huge exhibition, and a popular one. What is it about these images, from a culture aeons from mine in sensibility and almost two centuries in time that are so riveting? And why do they remind me of Turner, Freidrich and Cozens – those Northern European painters for whom landscape was a metaphor of transcendence? What could a Japanese printmaker have in common with a Romantic painterly sensibility?

Printmaking and painting are fundamentally different forms. They require such separate ways of constructing an image that art schools have usually trained artists in either one or the other. Woodblock is a subset of printmaking that is firmly based on drawing – that is – on line and pattern.

Painting is much more about volume and colour.

Hokusai’s images are beautiful, and beauty needs no explanation for its ability to hold us mesmerised, if only for a moment. His forms are sinuous, his line embracing.

Likewise, those Romantics left us in no doubt about the power of beauty with their breathtaking tonal volumes and sublime colour. But there is something else happening here – there is a kinship in the way these artists are looking at the world that rarely finds a parallel in our own.

The Humility of Hokusai / Alexandra Sasse

Thirty-six views of Mt Fuji, and it is never dull.

Hokusai’s ability to invent landscape compositions seems inexhaustible. Now Mt Fuji looms over us, people scurry in its shadow; next it is a small shape against a distant horizon, a background to built forms and human activity.

Its omnipresence speaks to an idea of the divine. An ever present deity, sometimes foregrounded, other times receding to a speck against the concerns of daily life.

This speaks to me, at least, if not to you. One’s perspective in life is in flux, as surely as is Hokusai’s viewpoint. He swings his forms through space with a combination of the careful and the cavalier. No laws of perspective hold him.

Those rooflines may tip up towards the horizon or down towards a valley, but his pictorial space is always coherent.

His world feels orderly, finite. Everything seems to have its place, and human activity is always a part of that. People harvest crops, watch sunsets, build buildings, rest from travel. There is a strong sense of belonging in his world.

The Romantic painters (who were working at the same time as Hokusai) also found a place for people in the landscape. Unlike their Japanese counterpart, their figures often seem to exist merely to expound the idea of vast volumes of space – they are a foil, not a feature. And unlike their forebears, the Renaissance painters for whom landscape was merely background to human activity, the Romantics painted the landscape large, with the figure reduced to a trivial onlooker. Our place in the natural world remains as central an issue in our own time as it was in theirs. Our own imagery tends to depict it as both paradise (think of landscape photography) and paradise lost (contemporary art in general). Where we fit in is contentious – but a common narrative is that we’ve been cast out of paradise for trashing the place.

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But to return to Hokusai: his kinship with the European painters is not in the means – painting and printmaking are very different – but in the motive. These artists share a feeling of the world as something much larger than themselves, and they seem to belong to it. In our narcissistic age, where we delude ourselves daily with the hubris of our modern meritocracies and bear a burden of guilt about our impact on the planet, these are significant differences.

Their world – on both sides of the globe – appears stable, whole, entire.

In fact theirs was a world of sudden death, oppressive politics, war and revolution. The Romantics painted during the period of the Napoleonic wars and the Industrial Revolution. Hokusai worked under the rigid isolationism of the Edo period in Japan, and within memory of the deadly 1792 Tsunami. Yet that uncertain world in which their actual lives were lived gave birth to these astoundingly coherent and beautiful pictorial worlds. The sense of forces beyond ourselves in Hokusai’s Great Wave and Turner’s Snow Storm Steam Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth, in no way diminishes humankind. The bravery of the mariners in both scenes is clear, but a sense of the smallness and fragility of the human frame is also very evident. Our activities are tiny. Perhaps this will jar with our sense of importance; perhaps you could argue it is a retrograde political attitude. Or perhaps we are the ones at odds with history.

The ancient Greeks had the Fates to keep them humble. A sense of forces that do not bend to human will was integral to their sense of tragedy and is what made their heroes like the rest of us. Perhaps both humility and belonging are some of the deeply appealing things about Hokusai’s prints. In our age, humility is – to paraphrase Oscar Wilde – like a happy marriage; everyone has heard of it but no one has ever seen it. We live in an epoch of display. On a personal level at least, humility is an antidote to anxiety, which might be exactly what our times require.

IMAGES IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Hokusai’s most famous print, the first in the series 36 Views of Mount Fuji.

First publication: between 1826 and 1833. This edition: Reprint by Adachi from the Shōwa period (between 1926 and 1989). | The Dragon of Smoke Escaping from Mt Fuji | The Yodo River [Moon], from Snow, Moon, Blossoms | Yoshino Waterfalls, where Yoshitsune Washed his Horse, from A Tour of Japanese Waterfalls | Kirifuri waterfall at Kurokami Mountain in Shimotsuke, from A Tour of Japanese Waterfalls | Cuckoo and Azaleas, 1834 from the Small Flower series.

The Humility of Hokusai / Alexandra Sasse

What Happened On The Way To The Opera (Because The Show Itself Was Not Really Worth Writing About)

Robert Ruckus

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My companion for the night finally arrives to greet myself and the cool glass of Pimm’s – a farewell to the quickly diminishing summer that has graced us so generously in 2018 – waiting for him on the table. According to my rapidly dying phone I count about two point five-ish hours until we arrive at this show.

BK Opera’s Pirates of Penzance - Not your grandmother’s G&S (Adults Only).

“Fuck, that’s a mouthful!” I am laughed at as I take a far too enthusiastic gulp with ice and fruit and booze making me blowfish my cheeks out while attempting to maintain whatever demeanour I was previously lacking anyway, failing the entire time and instead swirling shit about my mouth hole like a tobacco chewing cowboy. Spit-oo-n(ahh).

eg A VERY BRIEF HISTORY LESSON Pirates of Penzance – also known as The Slave of Duty – is a comedy opera from the late 1800s, written by Gilbert & Sullivan. It was later turned/revived into a musical theatre show, Pirates, by Joseph Papp.

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We muse over the impending show’s concept by name alone.

“I don’t know, maybe dudes in their boxer shorts being overenthusiastic appreciators of being on stage? I will make a bet there is at least one, there is always one hidden away in every show and, i secretly love it.”

“But, singing opera? … speaking opera?”

“That’s musical theatre.”

Apparently there is a difference.

So, to paraphrase a little here, Opera is - “you’re at a house party and someone starts to vomit on a beautiful rug and everyone begins to watch and then they flay their heads about in ecstatic reprieve as their internal fluids cover those surrounding them. They convulse and quiver at the pieces of vomit touching their faces and open mouths, beginning to spasmodically vomit themselves, contributing to this orgy of fetid mass just collecting itself in a ritualistic and

What Happened on the Way to the Opera / Robert Ruckus

uncontrollable rage. Heads fly about and hair is quickly stung with the stink and stench of this mouth hole orgy. The carpet is just mud and everything is a mess and ... It’s fucking beautiful, but tragic,” Erik explains.

“So, what about musical theatre?” I ponder loudly back.

“That’s just some cunt vomiting on your favourite rug at your house party, and there’s only ten friends, and that is your favourite rug and it’s fucking gross but all you can do is stand there and hold their hair back and think ‘bitch get off my rug! But it’s just ... traaggiicc.” *we begin to shake jazz hands about in the air spectacularly* I hit a passer by with my enthusiasm, spitting my drink gleefully with the contact but awkwardly looking in her direction as I spray her convoy with mist. The rocky shores come crashing all around me as they make eyes to my misdemeanour. I am almost naked in my despair, smiling, gawking, reaching for napkins. No – she beckons with her head – the damage is done and I have yet to pass the first act, or even walk through the door.

I go to fumble words out, my internal monologue screaming like the MajorGeneral’s Song in a gibberishly upbeat and enthusiastic manner, never knowing I knew this particular track until Erik points out that The Simpsons probably introduced me to its genius. Instead I stay quiet and look, smiling, eyes rolling in my head to suggest internal madness as the now spit covered convoy and its leading lady continue past to (hopefully) a better night ahead.

Erik looks at me then requests that I whip my hair as if I have just been slapped. I concede.

“You fucking deserved that slap,” he says sternly.

We should move onwards I decide. I have embarrassed myself a little too much, although unabashedly, my clothing and pride still intact as if I walk from the stage followed by a teleprompter.

We walk to catch a train. I hit up Erik about what low burlesque would imply.

It’s in the imprending show’s description, after all.

“Just think low-ball,” my knowledgeable companion confides. “Since people seem to think burlesque is just K-Mart underwear, stockings and an occasional whip or coat removal, so low burlesque would be like doing an awkward striptease in your bedroom on a Tinder date ...

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What Happened on the Way to the Opera / Robert Ruckus

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“Or like wearing sequinned underpants, making fauxmo-erotic gestures that perhaps come across as fauxmophobic instead, and people singing out of tune or out of sync. But hats, lots of hats and wigs and maybe fishnets. And, since it is oopeeraa, don’t forget cackling old ladies in the wings ‘Oh-hohing’ or ‘Ah-hahing’ or singing like seagulls with laughter while twiddling their funky glasses.”

That actually sounds kind of entertaining I ponder on the train Footscraybound, as people shift awkwardly in their seats while a lone man sways, conducting Tai-Chi-esque moves to his own reflection in the dark glass of the train doors. He parries and sways, hands in motion as if shaking hands with an invisible enemy, then politely pushing them out of the moving train.

BING! It stops as if each station is an Act, the longest being around ten minutes. The stranger opens the door for the incoming passengers. They avoid his strange smell or gleaning eyes (I am unsure which is more offputting) and seat themselves, before becoming transfixed on his motions as the rest of us are, sitting in captivated silence, the perfect audience. Held quietly in the bizarre-ness of this moment in time, together.

Someone laughs, but they are just looking at their phone.

It’s almost like Gogglebox exclaims Erik smugly. “A show about watching people watch stuff strikes me as absurdly meta, terrible, peculiar, addictive, and even partially intelligent if you can get people to pay you to make it.

Reality watching reality outside of reality.”

I get the experiment for free on public transport so I wonder why I would pay for it?

“Some people just want a show, regardless of whether it is below their pay bracket,” says Erik.

We walk into the venue and grab a beer before swiftly sneaking out for a cigarette. On the way out I spot tea and … BISCUITS! Ciao BK Opera’s Pirates of Penzance - Not your grandmother’s G&S was part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and played three shows (29, 30 & 31 March 2018) at Kindred Studios, 3 Harris Street, Yarraville (VIC). For full cast list see bkopera.com.au Thanks to BK Opera for the tix.

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1. Tom MOORE, Pyrotechnic puffer fish 2016, blown and solid glass, epoxy, 50 x 51 x 28 cm (largest). Courtesy the artist. © the artist. Photographer: Grant Hancock.

The winner of the 2018 Tom Malone Prize, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth Cultural Centre, Perth (WA), until 28 May 2018 - artgallery.wa.gov.au 2. Paul OSWIN, Eastern Barn Owl, watercolour and inks.

Mallee Birds: Paul Oswin, Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery, Horseshoe Bend, Swan Hill (VIC), until 6 May 2018 gallery.swanhill.vic.gov.au 3. Edward HOPLEY, A Primrose from England c 1855, oil on canvas, Gift of Mr & Mrs Leonard V Lansell 1964 Collection of Bendigo Art Gallery. New Histories, Bendigo Art Gallery, 42 View Street, Bendigo (VIC), 14 April – 29 July 2018 - bendigoartgallery.com.au 4. Armello: Armello is a property, copyright and trademark of League of Geeks Pty Ltd. Code Breakers: Women in Games, curated by ACMI and supported by Creative Victoria. Manningham Art Gallery, Manningham Civic Centre, 699 Doncaster Road Doncaster (VIC), 4 April – 12 May 2018 - manningham.vic.gov.au 5. William RITCHIE, Favorite perch Gouldian finch 2017.

Part of Daylesford and Macedon Ranges Open Studios 2018, 3 weekends over April/May 2018: Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 April 2018, Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 April 2018, Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 May 2018.

Studios are open 10 am - 5 pm each of those days.

FREE ENTRY. Group Exhibition, The Convent Gallery, Daylesford, Saturday 21 April – Sunday 6 May inclusive dmropenstudios.com.au 6. Nonggirrnga MARAWILI, Baratjula V, 2015. From the Private Collection of Geoffrey Hassall OAM and Virginia Milson. Copyright of the artist Nonggirrnga Marawili.

Acquired, Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre 2015. The Hassal Collection, Wangaratta Art Gallery, 56 Ovens Street, Wangaratta (VIC), 14 April - 27 May 2018 wangarattaartgallery.com.au 7. Kim ANDERSON, Conceal / Reveal 2017, ink, charcoal and pastel on paper, 120 x 80cm. Image courtesy of the artist. Hiding in Plain Sight, The Art Vault, 43 Deakin Avenue, Mildura (VIC), until 9 April 2018 theartvault.com.au 8. Robert OWEN, Model for silence #2 2012, painted stainless steel, 58.0 x 72.0 x 74.0 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and ARC ONE Gallery. Another Dimension, McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park, 390 McClelland Drive, Langwarrin (VIC), 1 April – 5 July 2018 mcclellandgallery.com

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FINDING THE ART IN

Phuket Racing to the Bridge

by Anthony S. Cameron

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Years ago I was at a party that happened to be full of musicians, and yet oddly there were no instruments being played. There was plenty of alcohol and weed and yet the evening seemed bereft of music.

Fidgeting musicians sat around the fire waiting for someone to start the ball rolling, bring out their guitar and punch out a few crowd friendly tunes to get our collective toes tapping. An hour went by and still nothing. A friend of mine decided to take action, whispering to me “Watch this” as he went over to his car, got his guitar case out and placed it strategically behind the fire. He then opened the case and scuttled back to where I was sitting with a mischievous smile on his face. Sure enough, within minutes a couple of the frustrated minstrels were eying off the guitar and increasing their fidgeting, turning around regularly to see who was going to claim it as theirs. My friend and I at this stage were chuckling quietly to each other as we watched his plan ignite. Eventually one of the musicians got up, went over to the guitar, halfheartedly asked the fire sitters whose guitar it was, promptly picked it up and started tuning the strings. He sat back down at the fire, faked a self conscious smile and began strumming a few chords.

Within thirty seconds a handful of guys rushed off to their cars and retrieved their precious guitars, had them in their hands and were tuning up as the first guy started strumming a little harder, a little louder. Minutes later ten guitars were pounding out ‘Layla’, and with each beat the tempo got faster and faster as they raced each other to the bridge so they could pull the solo before anyone else. By this stage my friend and I were in hysterics, and I had pulled out my notebook and wrote the words ‘Racing to the bridge’, tears of laughter making the ink run as I began writing feverishly.

The words that landed on the page that night contained imagery of desperate teenagers trying to prove their manliness by playing chicken in their hotted up cars, seeing who would brake first as the cliff loomed in the distance. The car scene from Rebel Without a Cause figured prominently as I laughed silently in horror at the metaphor I had stumbled across for the human condition. We were all racing to the bridge in our own way, selfie sticks at the ready, pouting as humanity hurtled towards its own demise.

Finding the Art in Phuket / Tony Cameron

And to answer your question, yes the weed was very strong that night.

Twenty years later and I sit here on this beach in Phuket thinking about that funny night illuminated beyond the moment by my youthful posturing with the pen.

Phuket is humanity on steroids, racing to the bridge in a G-string bikini with a belly full of cheap cocktails. It doesn’t give a fuck about the impact it is having, in fact there is almost a flagrant edge to the endless polluting of the waterways that lure so many tourists and so much money here. As the twenty-year-long boom continues, as the numbers of tourists and the human ugliness that accompanies it increases daily, the only thing that doesn’t grow here, sadly, is the waste infrastructure.

Some combination of ignorance, greed and corruption has turned the water a putrid black on some beaches as untreated tourist sewage spews out of the outfalls in the dead of night. The coral reefs that boatloads of tourists snorkel over is largely dead, the fish they supported largely gone. And yet, the tourists flood in like there is no tomorrow, adding more tonnes of plastic to the waterways, creating large sunscreen slicks to compete with the black sludge.

As you can imagine, I am not the most popular guy here, given the general human trait of looking away from the brutal reality of our impact on this poor planet. Most people I come across opt instead for the vacuous need for superficial optimism. The common declaration that ‘this place is paradise’ travels up and down the beaches like office gossip around the water cooler.

And like any mantra, if you say it often enough it becomes a wobbly truth held up by the frailest of threads, the sheer weight of numbers guaranteeing its universality.

I am wondering, humanity, how long will we look away, how long we will talk sustainability but not live it? How long will we pout at the camera while behind us the black sludge makes its way out into the Andaman sea?

I ask not to be misunderstood here as just another whinging middle class kid from a cushy country. I urge you to come with me on my regular beach

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scrounges and collect the consumer waste that outnumbers fish in all our oceans. I urge you to see the optimism that has me turning this waste into some kind of art. I ask you to enjoy the art of scrounging as something that enriches the soul, something that is a way of screaming into the void. I urge you to see your local rubbish dump as a place of endless inspiration, not an embarrassing eyesore. I ask you to see the beauty in our madness and express that in any way you feel is right.

And if you ever find yourself in Phuket, look me up. I am easy to find. Just wait for a storm to hit the island and cruise up the west coast. I will be there somewhere, standing out like dog’s balls as I collect broken timber, cigarette lighters, doll appendages, flip flops, action toys , bottle caps and plastic drinking straws whilst tourists on a ten day package with breakfast included bake themselves in the seductive tropical heat.

Come and scream with me, come and howl at the madness we call a modern life. Come and make some art out of it all. You wouldn’t believe how liberating it can be.

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).

His books are available on Amazon here. You can find his sculptural furniture on Facebook here.