issue 97 December 2012 / January 2013

dec 12/ jan 13

LISTINGS NSW / ACT

(66)

TASMANIA

[68]

MELBOURNE

(69)

BAY & PENINSULA

(77]

CENTRAL VICTORIA

(78)

MURRAY RIVER

(84)

NORTHERN VICTORIA

(86)

WESTERN VICTORIA

(87)

Issue 97 December 2012 / January 2013 trouble is an independent monthly mag for promotion of arts and culture Published by Newstead Press Pty Ltd, ISSN 1449-3926 STAFF: administration Vanessa Boyack - admin@troublemag.com | editorial Steve Proposch art@troublemag.com | listings - listings@troublemag.com CONTRIBUTORS: Mandy Ord, Ive Sorocuk, Inga Walton, Robin Pen, Courtney Symes, Neil Boyack, Emmi Scherlies, Ben Laycock, Jase Harper, Darby Hudson, Matt Emery.

Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Troublemag Subscribe to our website: www.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.

FEATURES (04) COMICS FACE

(59) THE IRON GARDEN

Emmi Scherlies

(10)

(62) GREETINGS FROM

LA PAZ

Ive Sorocuk

SUMMER INDOORS

Inga Walton

(22) SKULL MOVIES: SCENE 1

Ben Laycock

Robin Pen

(34) ACTEASE

Courtney Symes

(38) MELBURNIN’

Courtney Symes

(44) DEC / JAN SALON supoib

(56) STRALIAN STORIES

Neil Boyack

COVER: Photographer HAL, Flesh Love #44 (Sakamaki & Makino) 2011, archival pigment print, 80 x 60 cm, edition 1/11. I am Heathcliff, Daine Singer, Basement 325 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (VIC), 29 November – 21 December 2012 - www.dainesinger.com 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!

Download Entry Forms www.mcclellandgallery.com Tel +61 3 9789 1671

McCLELLAND SCULPTURE SURVEY 2012 CALL FOR ENTRIES McCLELLAND AWARD $100,000 APPLICATIONS OPEN 19 SEP – 21 NOV 2011

SEASON 2013 LAUNCHING JANUARY 29 hermaj.com

Eamon O’Toole:

BIG BOYS TOYS Full-scale plastic sculptures and motorsport art by a self-confessed revhead

Sat 15 Dec 2012 - Sun 24 Feb 2013 Art Gallery of Ballarat | 40 Lydiard Street North Tel: 03 5320 5858 | artgalleryofballarat.com.au Open daily | Admission Free the hughes gallery

Eamon O’Toole McLaren Formula Mp4/4,1 – Ayrton Senna Car 1991/92, hand-moulded plastic, wood and steel frame, enamel paint, textas, aluminium leaf, gold leaf, rubber. 470 x 230 x 90 cm. Photograph: Brian Hand

Season 2013

Henri Szeps in

KAGE

It’s My Party (And I’ll Die If I Want To)

Sundowner

by Elizabeth Coleman

Sat 2 March 8pm

Subscriptions on sale now

Wed 12 June 8pm

Stiletto Sisters Sat 20 July 8pm

Brew Duo

The Australian Ballet presents

Fri 15 March 8pm

The Dancers Company

ACO2 VIC Tour Sun 21 April 8pm

Fri 26 July 7.30pm Sat 27 July 7.30pm A version 1.0 and Merrigong Theatre Company Co-Production

R&J

The Table of Knowledge

Produced by Expressions Dance Company & Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Wed 7 August 8pm Thu 8 August 8pm

Natalie Weir

Tue 7 May 8pm More Than Opera

The Ring.

Wagner.

Animated.

Fri 17 May 8pm An Ensemble Theatre Production

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Tue 20 August 8pm Goldthorpe Creative presents

Chet Baker: Like Someone in Love Tue 10 September 8pm

Frankenstein

by Nick Dear

John Buchan and Alfred Hitchcock’s

Fri 24 May 8pm Sat 25 May 8pm

The 39 Steps

Flinders Quartet

Fri 18 October 8pm Sat 19 October 8pm

with Dmitry Onishchenko (piano) 50 View Street, Bendigo Victoria 3550 Tel: 03 5434 6100 thecapital.com.au

Fri 7 June 8pm

Adapted by Patrick Barlow From an original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon

David Helfgott Sat 26 October 8pm

Box Office Hours: 9.15am to 5.15pm weekdays.

10am to 1pm Saturdays.

One hour before each show.

Details are correct at the time of publication. The Manager reserves the right to add, withdraw or substitute artists and vary the program should the necessity arise.

The Capital is proudly owned and operated by The City of Greater Bendigo

Summer Indoors

a survey of galleries this summer in Melbourne

by Inga Walton

THE SUMMER MONTHS are when the majority of Victoria’s commercial galleries and art spaces are in hiatus, allowing the many fine public institutions and regional galleries across the state to come to the forefront with their respective holiday programs.

Enticing viewers to spend some concerted ‘art time’ wandering around cool and restorative environs seems to be the idea behind the National Gallery of Victoria’s new slogan, “Summer is best spent indoors”. This premise is amply supported by the vibrant and topical works of leading Yogyakarta art figures Jompet Kuswidananto and Eko Nugroho in the paired exhibition Rally: Contemporary Indonesian Art (until 1 April, 2013), the first show NGV has dedicated to artists from the region.

Both artists came to prominence after the collapse of the repressive Suharto regime in 1998, and their individual works reflect the frenetic and often brutal pace of cultural, religious and socio-political change in the intervening years.

look at the images inside, it is something like a movie because [of] the falling of the water. It makes [a] very special effect, it’s very natural, it’s not digitalised, but it’s happening and I like this idea”, Nugroho says. Inside, the extending flat painted dais with cushions, dubbed the ‘Comic Zone’, is designed to engage with children who are encouraged to sit and draw comics inspired by the work. The improvisatory aesthetics of Nugroho’s practice sees him rework esteemed cultural traditions like batik and embroidery, combining and integrating them with newer references assimilated from a more ‘globalised’ popular culture such as street art, comics, music and video animation.

Across the foyer, Kuswidananto’s The Commoners (2012) dominates Nugroho becomes only the third artist Federation Court, its discordant invited to paint NGV’s iconic and eversoundtrack and phantom participants popular waterwall. Inspired by his love with megaphones held aloft and drums of the shadow puppet theatre (wayang unstruck evoke the artist’s background kulit) of Indonesian tradition, Flick in music, performance, and that chip from your shoulder (Waterwall documentary film. These disembodied mural) (2012) ranges across the glass and ‘ghost’ figures could be seen to integrates seamlessly with the motion of represent the average citizen: workers, the water. “I’m playing [with] this idea of labourers, farmers, the young, itinerent the shadow through the wall. So if you and the elderly.

continued >>

Summer Indoors / Inga Walton

“In this society I live in, there is an interesting interaction between traditional and modern knowledge ...” > These ‘invisible’ people, the ‘faceless masses’, are often marginalised both economically and socially by a rapidly changing country that provides few options for them. Kuswidananto is concerned with issues of Javanese identity and history, and the way in which these concepts continue to reverberate in contemporary life. “In this society I live in, there is an interesting interaction between traditional and modern knowledge ... The way I work with the medium and technology in my art works celebrates that history and tries to make my own narrative on my reality”.

makes the complete transition from one cultural space to another ...”

For those whose aesthetic sensibility tends to something a little less boisterous, the splendid Radiance: The Neo-Impressionists (until 17 March, 2013) will captivate the senses. The first Australian exhibition dedicated to this movement, it has been curated for the NGV by Marina Ferretti Bocquillon of the Musée des impressionnismes, Giverny. The development of the Neo-Impressionist style in France and Belgium is traced through 78 works, including “The Seine at Courbevoie (La Seine à Courbevoie)” (1885)

by Georges Seurat (1859-91) recognised as the first Neo-Impressionist painting.

Seurat first met Paul Signac (1863-1935) in 1884 at the inaugural group exhibition of the Artistes Indépendants, which had been formed as a protest against the restrictive selection criteria of the annual Paris Salon jury. Despite their differences in background and temperament, the two young artists shared a taste for Through soundscapes, video installation compositional rigour, optical treatises and sculpture, Kuswidananto seeks to and the study of colour perception. Seurat articulate an idea he refers to as the ‘Third had been experimenting with a new Realm’. “The history of Indonesia ... can system of divided colour tones, whereby be read as the narrative of a nation that is the painter places individual touches of perpetually in an ‘in-between’ situation, pure colour side by side on the canvas, or state of transition. From pre-colonial to allowing the viewer’s retina to complete colonial periods, colonial to post-colonial, the work, at a distance, of combining agrarian culture to industrial, from these tones together. Seurat and Signac industrial to post-industrial information sought to develop this new aesthetic era, from rural culture to urban ethos”, language, dubbed ‘Neo-Impressionism’ by he contends, “It is a culture that is the anarchist and art critic Félix Fénéon located between two spaces: between the (1861-1944) in 1886, which they felt would traditional and the modern, the original objectively describe and represent the and the alien, the inside and the outside, modern world they saw advancing apace the high-brow and the low-brow. It never all around them. Fortuitously, NGV owns PREVIOUS SPREAD: Eko NUGROHO, Generational Dilemma (Dilema Generasi) #2 2012, oil and synthetic polymer paint on fibreglass, steel, 203 x 73 x 75 cm. Courtesy of the artist © Eko Nugroho.

Photo: Edwina Brennan.

Gasometers at Clichy (Les gazomètres.

Clichy)” (1886), Signac’s first landscape to strictly adhere to the new principles.

This ‘divisionist’ style was adopted by the more established Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) and his landscape painter son Lucien (1863-1944) who exhibited with Seurat and Signac in May, 1886.

Seurat sent seven paintings to the Cercle des XX (Circle of the 20) exhibition of 1887, a body established by progressive artists in Brussels. These works inspired a number of Belgian artists to adopt the technique like Georges Lemmen (1865-1916) and Théo Van Rysselberghe (1862-1926), who are considered to be the movement’s principal portraitists.

The impressive selection of a dozen works from Maximilien Luce (18581941), show his deft interpretation of both idyllic harbours and villages around Saint-Tropez, and the bustle of Parisian cityscapes. Quai de l’École, Paris, evening (Quai de l’École, Paris le Soir) (1889) shows homeward-bound Parisians teaming across the bridge in the twilight, while The Louvre and the Pont du Carrousel, night effect (Le Louvre et le Pont du Carrousel, effet de nuit) (1890), veritably hums with movement, the dying light now replaced by incandescent gas lamps casting reflections on the water. An invitation from Camille Pissarro in 1892 to visit him in London resulted in Luce casting his keen eye over Charing Cross Bridge and the view over the Thames from Cannon Street.

• NGV (International) 180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, 3004: www.ngv.vic.gov.au Heide Museum of Modern Art has secured Louise Bourgeois: Late Works (to 11 March, 2013), a selection of pieces from the French-American artist’s studio

in New York, including 18 sculptures, two suites of fabric drawings, watercolours, embroidered texts and lithographs, supplemented by 15 works on loan from public and private collections here. Bourgeois (1911-2010) achieved widespread recognition relatively late in her career following a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1982, the first woman to receive one. The only substantial exhibition of her work to be mounted in Australia was initiated

by James Mollison at the NGV in 1995, which then traveled to Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (1995-96).

Bourgeois is regarded as having invented the idea of ‘confessional art’, given the largely autobiographical content of her work, which is expressive of childhood trauma, emotional instability, alienation, disillusionment and personal struggle.

Just as Bourgeois constantly evaluated her own past, she also drew on the difficulties she encountered in the transition from Paris to New York after her marriage in 1938 to American art historian Robert Goldwater. In trying to establish her career in a comparatively unsympathetic environment where she was considered a peripheral figure, Bourgeois honed her deeply personal and idiosyncratic style of practice. She is cited as a major influence in feminist art history/theory, and for her distinctive attitude to sculpture, evident from her first exhibition at New York’s Peridot Gallery in 1949 where she positioned her works directly on the floor.

Bourgeois’ signature works are those from her Maman series of spiders which began as a commission for Tate Modern in 1999, but actually reference a small ink and charcoal drawing completed in 1947.

They allude to Bourgeois’ mother >>

Louise BOURGEOIS, Spider (1997), steel, tapestry, wood, glass, fabric, rubber, silver, gold, bone, 449.6 ◊ 665.5 ◊ 518.2 cm, (The Easton Foundation, New York), © Louise Bourgeois Trust/Licensed by VAGA, New York/Viscopy, Sydney.

> Josephine who repaired tapestries in the family’s textile restoration workshop in Paris, and whom her father regularly humiliated with his philandering after she became an invalid. Although many recoil from spiders, for Bourgeois they were a friendly, reassuring presence, imbued with the aspects of usefulness, strength, industry, nurture and protectiveness she associated with her mother.

Spider (1997) and Cell XVII (Portrait) (2000) are among the enclosed installation works Bourgeois referred to as ‘Cells’, containing symbolic objects which represent her ruminations on the psychological, mental and intellectual aspects of fear. Other works have a more recognisably Surrealist bent like Knife Figure (2002) and Untitled (2000) where prone and mutilated torsos are terrorised by common kitchen objects. These soft sculptures express Bourgeois’ anxiety about entrenched gender roles and the subsequent loss of identity experienced by women confined to the domestic sphere. In Couple IV (1997) dismembered figures, one wearing a leg prosthesis, are displayed in a vitrine. Their furtive liaison is exposed, and their shame preserved for public scrutiny, just as Bourgeois retrospectively redressed her father’s marital betrayal.

Heide curator Linda Michael has assembled a complementary exhibition Louise Bourgeois & Australian Artists (to 14 April, 2013) featuring works from those who have been inspired by aspects of Bourgeois’ artistic legacy. Pat Brassington, Janet Burchill, Carolyn Eskdale, Joy Hester, Kate Just, Patricia Piccinini, Heather B. Swann and Kathy Temin discuss her influence on their practice. Del Kathryn Barton created some new work specifically for the

exhibition, admitting, “I had a weak-atthe-knees, tingle-all-over moment when I saw Louise Bourgeois’ work for the first time about fifteen years ago in Los Angeles. Yes I am a crazy fan. And, yes it’s true I lay under her big spider in Tokyo and cried”.

Brent Harris met Bourgeois at her home in 1989, “It was a fascinating encounter for me, as she seemed a very powerful, small person and had a charismatic personality”, he recalls. “The strongest influence Bourgeois has had on my work has been to license psychological content and to show me that strong personal emotions can be very generative in the creative process”.

• 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen, 3105: www.heide.com.au Fresh from its showing in Sydney, Gold Street Studios prepares for Ralph Gibson: 50 Years (19 December, 2012-24 February, 2013) which brings together 26 works from the veteran American photographer.

Gibson was raised around film, his father was an assistant director for Warner Brothers Studios during the 1940s and 1950s, and he was an occasional child actor. After attending the San Francisco Art Institute, Gibson began his career as an assistant to both Robert Frank and Dorothea Lange (1895-1965). Gibson’s last exhibition here was 34 years ago, and he was pleased to reacquaint himself with the place, conducting two workshops with Point Light Gallery and giving two public lectures at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Turner Hall at Sydney Institute of TAFE, respectively.

“I have just recently recovered from my jetlag from last month’s trip to Sydney. I must say, however, that I love Australia and look forward to my next visit ... soon, I hope”.

Summer Indoors / Inga Walton

Gibson was one of the first of his profession to introduce photography into galleries and museums as a legitimate art form, but he also pursued publishing as a logical extension of his vision. Since his first title The Somnambulist (1970), he has released over forty monograph books, the latest being Nude (2012) out through Taschen. “The book is my forum of longest duration. Exhibitions of my work show how I think about photography and the book shows how I think about photographs”, he observes. “I love the controlled viewing distance commanded by a book as well as the sequencing possibilities. I am always working on a book and every photograph I take has a future role in one or another of my ongoing book projects”.

“The only definition of what I do is pictures.

What does it mean to look at something?” reportage, and it doesn’t have the same contouring and feeling you get on film”, he stresses. “What I want to see from [a] digital image is something that photography cannot do. Now it’s just imitating what photography can do.

Digital images make everybody’s pictures look the same, it’s a big unifier”.

Gibson continues to shoot his work on film stock, which he develops personally, Gibson is also an accomplished guitarist “I don’t want my film to be developed too who has collaborated on several projects well, too cleanly, too smoothly. I don’t with composer and musician Jon Gibson want that slick look. I’ve had a life long (no relation), a founding member and relationship with grain...I’ve always felt performer with the Philip Glass Ensemble. that grain gave texture both to cinema, Gibson acted as the cinematographer on as well as photography. I’ve used it for Lou Reed’s directorial début, the short any number of reasons for the entire film “Red Shirley” (2010), and worked length of my career. It’s almost harder to with Andy Summers of The Police for get a grainy image nowadays than it is to the book Light Strings: Impressions of the get the shot!”. Although his forays into Guitar (2004). “The guitar, like the Leica, colour are not as extensive, all Gibson’s is a life-long passion that only seems to work is characterised by a tight formal grow hotter every day. I love to compose composition, a certain tension within on the guitar and I love to compose the image, and a dynamic interplay of with the Leica; eyes, ears, and the man shadows. “I never do long shots. I move in-between”. closer and closer to the subject. I want to photograph what it feels like to look Gibson has worked with a Leica at something- the emotional side of it... throughout his career, to the extent that If I could describe what I do in words, I he has his own signature edition. He would do it in words. The only definition is not, to put it mildly, a fan of digital of what I do is pictures. What does it cameras, “Digital photography is good for mean to look at something?” certain things. I think we should not call it ‘photography’- because photography is • 700 James Lane, Trentham East, 3458: light on film- while digital is more like an www.goldstreetstudios.com.au >> ‘imaging system’. Digital is good for Artist site: www.ralphgibson.com

Summer Indoors / Inga Walton

> The intriguing and decidedly eclectic pop-up exhibition Migration: Melbourne Edition (to 15 December, 2012), curated by German gallerist Matthias Arndt, makes excellent use of the rather dilapidated and otherwise neglected first floor of historic Ormond Hall. An old wall cabinet, badly stained and unsealed floorboards, water damage, scruffy walls and a warren of tiny rooms creates an unconventional backdrop for the disparate works of thirty-four international artists.

the larger scale work Be Proud of Your Flag (2009) on display at NGV.

Accorded their own room, the delicate and immersive ‘inhuman sculptures’ of Mathieu Briand manage to be both enchanting and sinister, as though Grimm’s fairytales had been filtered through Memento mori stylings. Briand uses polyamide and selective laser sintering to produce amazingly intricate stark white figurative and landscape works. The suspended Arbre retourné (2011) perches a solitary hatted figure atop the inverted root structure of a The principal room is dominated by Nick large tree, he reappears inside the jawless Cave’s Soundsuit (2011), an absurdist skull of Grand Crâne (Large Skull) (2010) mannequin clad in a suit of pearlescent bearing witness to a hanging. The tangled buttons topped by an elongated chimneynerves and vessels of the severed spinal like hat. Behind that, fashion designer Kostas Murkudis’ row of 141 silk dresses/141 column form the ‘branches’ of the tree colours (2012) seems to be about sixty short from which the victim dangles. Small Skull (2011) contains an oversize baby, finger to (perhaps sales have been good?), but pure lips, motioning for us to be quiet, while on eye candy nonetheless. Three examples the floor Le Chasseur (The Hunter) (2010) of the always discreet work of Gilbert & tries to conceal his stealthy progress under a George blare from the opposite walls. The cloak of tangled vine and leaves.

London Pictures series (2012) plasters hectoring newspaper headlines in grid The inclusion of a so-called ‘Design formations superimposed over their own Chamber’ featuring some two dozen unsmiling features. The cheery flourish, “A examples of furniture, lighting and London Picture/It’s written all over them”, decorative objects by designers such as sits beneath a reproduction of the Queen’s Gianni and Joe Colombo, Franz West, Oscar impassive profile.

Niemeyer, Marcel Breuer, Vico Magistretti, Vogt + Weizenegger, and Erno Saarinen is Eko Nugroho reappears with two works less successfully integrated. However, the similar to those exhibited in Rally. La sheer diversity of the exhibition, ranging Rue Parle #7 (2012), twenty-four separate from a Dalí-esque contemporary ring by embroidery panels against a custom painted Jannis Kounellis, two intertwined golden black background, is based on snapshots of coccyx by Wim Delvoye, Agus Suwage’s Parisian street scenes, architectural features, three beady-eyed crows perched on a and images of the artist’s work in the studio. shovel, to a fifteenth century devotional Here Nugroho positions his work within a tempera panel by Lippo d’Andrea, warrants more global context, by literally allowing a thorough investigation – the rickety stairs the ‘street to speak’, as well as suggesting the and creaking floorboards notwithstanding. notion of ‘street talk’. Under Pillow Ideology (2009), a crouching life-size fibreglass • 557 St. Kilda Road (enter via Moubray sculpture, wearing a facemask and cloaked Street), Melbourne, 3004: www.ormondhall. in a batik patchwork quilt, is an echo of com.au & www.arndtberlin.com

PREVIOUS SPREAD: (foreground) Nick CAVE, Soundsuit 2011, buttons, wire, bugle beads, basket, upholstery, and mannequin, 279.4 x 60.96 x 60.96 cm. (background) Kostas MURKUDIS, 141 dresses/141 colours 2012, Toroni silk, installation dimensions variable.

Photo by Inga Walton.

THIS SPREAD: GILBERT & GEORGE (Gilbert Proesch & George Passmore), Muslim Straight 2011, from the London Pictures series, 6 panels 151 x 190 cm.

Prospero’s Books

Barton Fink

SKULL MOVIES scene one: The Boxing of My Tormented Senses

by Robin Pen

A Visually Inclined Scribe Tells His Tale of Popped Corn and Subtle Madness Despite all my wild dreams and fervent imaginings I never thought such things could happen to me. I must recount my story, here and now, before the ephemeral truth of it passes from my memory and I, under sceptical questioning, come to see it all as nothing but dissipant fantasy. I can but hope you are able to believe what I am compelled to tell you, and whether you comprehend the conspiracies that pervade the cinematic existence of our everyday is beyond my control.

Pray, heed what I tell you! The audio-visual experience is just a veil for that hidden truth which can turn your critical sensibilities inside out, that which is all around us and within us, that which can unhinge you from the cine-fabric like the spilling of stale popcorn behind the back-stalls of existence.

Indeed, I fear my madness will be a testament to it! continued >>

> My story begins where I spend many a sordid hour of my miserable life: A pseudo-Italian cafe buried in the city’s central backwater; a seedy little joint that needs a fresh coat of paint, its heavily scratched windows replaced and its tiredly “comfortable” booths re-upholstered. If they were, of course, I’d never come back; the dump suits my temperament - not really moody, but energetically faking it - a pretend hole for me to pretend to hide in. The only thing that could make it better would be a pall of soft smoke, a shaft of pale blue from directional lighting at the rear and an end to the omnipresent musical wall-paper (“Inoffensive Classic Hits, all day, every day”, until ambivalence claims consciousness in desperation). Of course, the coffee could be cheaper, but that’s just idle fancy.

involvement in the US comics scene (at least I think I’ve got that right). I didn’t hear her sit, I didn’t see her sit. I’m perpetually face-down as I write about the fallacies of modern cinema and its deplorable objectification of women (when I’m not surreptitiously observing the curvaceous denim beyond the cafe window).

Occasionally, however, I’m forced to look up and forward to order fresh coffee, and that’s when I noticed her there in front of me.

Perhaps “notice” isn’t quite the word. She was wearing an obviously expensive and rather formal three-piece business suit patterned in large black and white stripes. Her skin was bone-china white while her lips, eyes and pristinely plucked eyebrows were as deep a black as her hair; tied back tight in that WWII It was a particularly painful piece of musical style perpetuated by the likes of Carol Landis, obscurity that prevented me from hearing Betty Grable and The Andrew Sisters. She her take the seat across from me; that and reminded me of a Western business geisha the conversational hubbub of the sallow, black preparing to sing the corporate boys home and purple costumed art-students discussing after an especially boisterous pillaging of the inner-city real-estate prices and the Armanified Hong Kong Stock Exchange; enough to bring a yip-Suits contemplating recent British tear to your fiscally-sensible eye.

Prospero’s Books

Skull Movies part1 / Robin Pen

No, I did more than just notice her; I looked at her - rather obviously I imagine. Imagine a crash-test dummy who achieves selfawareness five feet before the Volvo hits the wall. I think you get the picture – I looked.

She smiled politely while I attempted basic verbal communication, but my best efforts felt like I was juggling marbles with my tongue.

And when she spoke it was with the kind of smooth American accent that has launched a thousand ad campaigns.

Distortions of a Derivative Nature: Part One Prospero’s Books is reminiscent of 1935’s A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, lushly colourised and drastically reworked into a psycho-sexual pantomime (a U.S. Christian Film Guide described Prospero’s Books as “Evil”, warning God-fearing souls to stay indoors and smear their windowsills with hog-grease and chicory oil if it ever came to their town). The film is rich (like a fruit-cake) and occasionally glorious in its visuals, but it suffers from a distinctive artificiality – that Greenaway-by-the-numbers approach – which creates a lack of empathic cohesion, ultimately making Prospero’s Books a rather dry version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. But then, if this film was meant to be a “faithful” adaption of The Tempest, that’s probably what Greenaway would have titled it.

The film opens with the following lines: “Knowing I lov’d my books, he furnished me, From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.”

And thus we’re shown the centre-point around which The Tempest has been reshaped - reshaped and distorted like iron filings ‘round a magnet; reshaped and metamorphosed into another entity entirely; namely, Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books.

And Prospero’s Books is very much meant to be a fruitcake tour de force. Ultimately its

intricate mesh of classical symbols brimming with meaning and portent end up signifying nothing; it becomes merely a clever piece of self-indulgent entertainment splashing about immodestly in the tidal pools of an oceanic mythology. At times Prospero’s Books can be intellectually engaging and visually attractive, but only superficially; it is never absorbing. It’s a film to be puzzled over, treated as a semiotic exercise. It’s best enjoyed with ice-cream and an ever-alert sense of being entertained. Watch the harlequin dance - that’s your role here. The Chinese say we live in a world of ten thousand things, each of which signifies precisely nothing.

Prospero’s Books does the same, yet perhaps it’s not such an ignoble cause.

“You’re a Robin aren’t you?”

A past-master of the proverbial gift, I responded with aplomb.

“A what?”

“A Robin.”

“A Robin?” (I thought that’s what she’d said.)

“Gee, well yeh, I guess there are lots of people with that name. Uh, look at Robin Hood for instance. He . . .”

“No, no . . .” Her face wrinkled ever so delicately.

“You’re a Robin, a Robin Pen?” “Well, um, I suppose there must be other people named Robin Pen besides me . . . so, ah . . .”

“No, not other people. You.” She looked straight at me and said, slowly and carefully, “You are a Robin Pen.” But I was staring at my reflection in her eyes.

“You’ve lost me.”

“Look,” she said. “We’ve got off to a bad start.

Let’s begin again, shall we?”

“Let’s,” I said, not quite sure what it was we were beginning. >>

>> “Is your name Robin Pen?”

Distortions of a Derivative Nature: Part Two

“Yes, it is.”

Does Barton Fink work? What exactly is it about? Does it come together? Is it a whole film? Questions for a film that seems to be “I must?” I was having difficulty with complex nuthin’ much ta do with nuthin’ but questions. concepts at this stage. It was a good twenty Is it enjoyable? Well, I thought so. But then I minutes since my last coffee. don’t think everyone will. Unless they’re into “Yes, you must.” questions. There’s one question that is easy to “Okay,” I blinked. You know me; an easy, happy- answer: Is Barton Fink an act of self-indulgence

by Joel and Ethan Coen? I think it is, and I think go-lucky kind of guy. “Where?” it’s a self-indulgence that I indulge in myself. You “Nowhere.” see, I’m a style junkie. Gimme style and I’ll be as Now, I might well have thought that a bizarre happy as a fly on a turd. Which is what a lotta thing to say, if I hadn’t been too busy wondering people will think this is - a turd. Unless they’re when everything had gone monochrome, into style. And questions. including me. And not just black ‘n’ white either; Barton Fink is all style or, more accurately, it was grainy and scratched. No, there weren’t all design; design of the sets, the lighting, the tears and furrows in the furniture or the framing, the pace, the characters, the dialogue, walls, but large, white, hair-like scratches were randomly appearing and disappearing all ‘round the sound, the music, the story, the movement, everything. The whole film is a piece of slick, the cafe. And it definitely was not the cafe I’d formal and aesthetic design; the slickness and been in a few moments before. It was now a formality is something to hang on to when bar of some type, full of well-dressed people, everything is askew, and the aesthetic design atmospheric smoke, a band playing laid-back, is there to let the audience see clearly what’s sultry jazz, and simply excellent back-lighting. going on in this Escher’s nightmare of a film.

Half of my brain - the intellectual left - was “Good, then you must accompany me.”

doing back flips, while the other half - the artistic right - stayed calm and quiet, kinda’ like Karen Quinlan. Somewhere, a voice not unlike my own was telling me to “hang loose, be cool, relax, and enjoy the show.” Sooner or later voices like that start talking about messianic missions, ancient Peruvian architecture and the secret, missing frames in the Zapruder film, but heck, you’ve got to trust someone.

Barton Fink

Heavily influenced visually by Leone and Fellini, in its sense of place, time and character by F. Scott Fitzgerald and W. Somerset Maugham, and in its conception by contemporary writers of the absurd, Barton Fink is a beautifully realised merging of distinctive arts. It stands as a supreme example of fantasy, not as a genre but as a mode, an attitude, a way of perceiving what constitutes our reality and showing how those perceptions can so easily be turned up-side-down by playing on assumptions and narrowed visions where escapism has become reality and reality fantasy.

Barton Fink is a film about madness, senselessness and synchronicity. Behind the apparent coolness of the events portrayed, the filmmakers are working feverishly to generate an illusion of purpose. Every seemingly pointless event is deliberately chosen to show the

Skull Movies part1 / Robin Pen

“reasonable” to be ridiculous. Everything, every character, every line of dialogue, every seemingly random activity exists for the express purpose of externalising, materialising, and physically manifesting the madness that, to the Coen brothers, is the natural state of mind.

Barton Fink portrays Los Angeles and Hollywood as a type of Hell: Contradiction as Hell - a Hell rich with appropriate symbols and sub-texts while actually quite empty of real meaning (after all, what isn’t?) built instead of “attitude”, an original angle on perception.

After all, everything we see is coloured by the attitude with which we perceive it - isn’t it?

Well, at least that seems to be the question around which Barton Fink turns. And what an existential thing it is to contemplate such a question in a movie; after all, a movie is essentially nothing more than colour, sound and movement. Why should you get anything more from a film than that?

“I hadn’t noticed until then that she looked exactly like a young Lauren Bacall.” then that her shoulder-pads could land Harriers.

I hadn’t noticed until then that she looked exactly like a young Lauren Bacall.

“It was a pleasure meeting you,” she said, “but I have other things to do.”

“What do I do?”

“Nothing. Just stay here. Someone wants to talk to you.”

“What about you?” I had to ask.

“What about me?”

The corporate geisha was still seated in front of me, but now she didn’t look out of place at all. And her contrast had been turned down she had greyed out a bit in sympathy with the environment. And I was starting to relax. Maybe, I thought, this was the sort of place my soul could find a home. I just wished I was wearing one of those neat suits all the other guys had on. It was then I noticed that some of the people in the bar looked very familiar.

“I thought you were a manifestation of my unconscious fantasies.”

“Hey,” I asked. “Isn’t that the back of Edmund O’Brien?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you often speak in clichés?”

“That’s, uh, very sweet.”

“And I thought this place was an aspect of my sub-conscious I’ve escaped to in order to avoid acknowledging deeply repressed feelings of sexual inadequacy.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you should see a doctor?”

“Yes,” she nodded, distractedly. “But don’t worry “That’s all I speak, honey. That’s all we ever about it.” speak.”

“Any chance of James Cagney?”

She leaned over and gave me a peck on the “Not in a B-picture.” Don’t be ridiculous, said her eyes.

“A what?” I gasped.

“Look, I must be going.” She stood up and straightened her dress. I hadn’t noticed until

cheek, and then she was gone, along with everything else. What replaced her and the bar is something rather difficult to describe. How do you describe a junction point between multi-universes? At least, that’s what the game show host called it. >>

Skull Movies part1 / Robin Pen

Distortions of a Derivative Nature: Part Three inside you - like the internal pull of an elevator speeding up and slowing down. Of course, in I had to see Cape Fear again to make sure I’d order to be repeatedly seduced you must be seen it right the first time. I’m pretty sure I did. regularly repelled.

And what did I see? I saw a finger painting.

Maybe I’d better explain myself. Imagine a The most obvious attempts at repelling the picture made up of concentric circles of thick, audience out of its immersion in Cape Fear’s wet paint in earthy, natural, colours. Now seductive depths are those deliberate reminders imagine a big blob of alabaster, splat! in the that this film is a remake. Robert Mitchum, centre. Well, that’s not Cape Fear. But now Gregory Peck and Martin Balsam make notable imagine someone sticking big, callused fingers and deliberately ironic appearances (all featured in that alabaster and swirling it around the in the original 1962 version), as if to make a big painting, disrupting the borders of the circles, in-joke of much of it. Scorcese’s use of Bernard drawing their colours along in its path; making Herman’s original score (with minor adaptations) a big mess of it all. The alabaster is Robert - a score that could well be considered “over DeNiro’s Max Cady, and the big mess is Cape the top” by today’s standards - gives a dated, Fear. Except it’s not a mess at all. nostalgic feel to large chunks of the film. And then there’s the conscious adaption of the Martin Scorcese’s Cape Fear is a fantasy film; cinematic techniques of a bygone Hollywood, not in the story it tells, but in the way in which like the split focus shots, the tight zooms, and it tells that story. The emotional impact of a the noir-ish technique of extreme close-up. All psychopath terrorising a family suffering from of these contribute to Cape Fear’s ‘50s/’60s feel a breakdown in communication becomes the with an ‘80s/’90s tone. vehicle for an act of cinematic expressionism.

The use of tinted negatives, washes of reds In a bizarre sense, Cape Fear is a comedy. and yellows, opticals of thunderstorms and Certainly it’s not a terribly funny one, but it fireworks, contradictory images, illusions, does play within the theatre of the absurd and anachronisms, distortions, rippled reflections, the ridiculous. It deliberately prods and pokes irrational sound: What is all this, but the attempt the boundaries of acceptability; near slapstick to merge absurdity and heightened reality in in a large pool of blood, half the side of a face order to create a powerfully emotive picture? burnt away, the character of Cady himself. For Through the use of surrealism Scorcese tries some this has proven to be too much and the to turn something which has been done to result has been total switch-off. But the film’s death in cinema into a totally fresh experience. real message lies beyond this ridiculous element, In my experience it was a success; the surreal and it’s about the fallacy of how we perceive the element homed in on my aberrant psyche and world. And if we’re to believe it then all we’re a connection was made. I was seduced. ever seeing is distortion and surrealism anyway.

This act of seduction is the great strength of Cape Fear. It is a film out to seduce its audience more than once; it wants to seduce over and over again. When you experience a film, you are seduced by the filmmaker; he persuades you to “fall into” the film. Speed is experienced through acceleration, not velocity, so those moments of seduction are when the “experience” wells up

Did I mention the game show host? I never actually caught his name, but he must have been a game show host; nothing else looks quite like that. He was one of the sixteen trillion things that replaced the Black ‘n’ White Bar. Everything else was a whirl of technicolour, Todd-AO, Vistavision, Panavision, Eastman and CinemaScope; the anamorphic lens in all its >>

Cape Fear

Skull Movies part1 / Robin Pen

> multi-dimensional glory. Shit, if you ever get the chance to visit a junction point between multi-universes, jump at it!

The game show host smiled at me (which was scary in itself) and said, “Walk this way and don’t lose your step, because there’s no way you’ll ever find it again around here.” I followed him. Or tried. Actually, I think we stayed in the same spot while everything else moved along around us, like a triple zoom through a wide-angle lens, or so it seemed. What I saw was pretty neat - bits and pieces of movies I had never seen; Shirley Temple as Dorothy, Bette Davis as Scarlett, Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones, Mel Gibson dying at the end of Lethal Weapon 2, a scene from Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind (Roy Neary in a glitzy Games Show Host outfit holding a bunch of Marigolds - gamma-rayed of course - and shouting, “Hi Hon, I’m home”). That’s when I realised that the guy I was with was the spitting image of Richard Dreyfus in slicked-back hair and a truly shocking wardrobe. Naturally, I said “You’re Richard Dreyfus.”

Distortions of a Derivative Nature: Part Four Life is full of unanswered questions. (Questions like “Why do hackneyed cliches pop up endlessly in even the finest critical writing?”)

For instance, there is a particular question that has tickled my trivial mind for some time now.

It’s a rather silly question; more a fancy, really. I ask myself “If Albert Camus was a modern film critic, what questions might trouble him?”

Now, that might seem a damn silly thing to lie awake at night over, but I’ve given it some thought; humour me! What would he ask?

What about: “If sentimentality and schmaltz are legitimate surrealist techniques, does that mean that Hook is symbolically rich and full of portent?” Or: “Is looking like Warren Beatty a positive advantage to a charismatic young gangster with a dream (given that the Ben Siegel of Bugsy is indistinguishable from the actor who plays him)?” How about: “Can cheap futurism like having Mick Jagger dressed in leather and riding a bright red ARV be a valid, even hip, dialectic tool?”, or “Does re-making Total Recall for 25% of the budget and sans the “No. I look like Richard Dreyfus, but he never stupid ending make Freejack five times as good got the role. A couple of nosefulls too many, if a film?” Then there’s: “Does ignoring little details you know what I mean.” like simple logic in an abseiling scene mean that Medicine Man is set in another world, or just “Which, the role of Roy in C.E.4.K?” that it uses a surrealist technique to get to the “C.E.4 . . . ? No, that never made the planning next bit quicker?”, “Must encountering oneself stage, but there was so much speculation about in a time-distortion mirror always lead to the it that it turned up here, between boxes.” tragic consequences it does in The Comfort Of Strangers?”, “Does it constitute surrealism if “Boxes?” the characters in The People Under the Stairs, “Don’t worry, you’ll explain what that means or indeed in The Hairdresser’s Husband act shortly.” in an unexplainably odd manner?”, “Because the audience in JFK are asked to sort the While I puzzled that one, I watched a crusty old gentleman in a stil-suit chasing a great white truth from the embellishments in the film’s confusing mix of heightened realism, fictional worm from the bow of a beautiful, baroque and documentary footage, well known actors sail-barge (a juxtaposition of classic literature in key roles and wild conjecture, can we call it a or a failed movie adaptation, I imagine) before mosaic (if not prosaic) fantasy?”, “Does whether it was all, quite suddenly, replaced. By a boring it’s for real or ‘all in the mind’ make a hoot of a room. With me in it. Twice. difference when a lover comes back from the

Freejack

dead in Truly, Madly, Deeply or when the dead come back as a lover in Dead Again?”, and “Is Star Trek VI simply a whodunit masquerading as contemporary myth behind a facade of popular and palatable SF iconography?” And finally: “Is Delicatessen’s compressed and twisted vision of everyday life, which forces irrationality and humour out of every drab little nook and cranny, ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ in all its glory?”

Sure, there’s a lot more that could be said about the fantastic nature of all these films but, as Camus would probably insist, beyond the colour, sound and movement, the rest is your own problem. However, problems can often be a lot of fun to solve.

“Good. I’m here,” I (he) said. “Find the trip amusing?”

“Mildly,” I (me) replied.

“Well anyway, let me introduce myself,” I (he) said.

“If you like,” I (me) said.

“Hi. I’m you,” I (he) said.

“And I’m you?” I (me) asked.

“No. You’re you, and I’m you too,” I (he)

answered.

“Ah. So it’s that sort of trip. When do I come down?”

I smiled, shook my head sadly, and explained it all to myself. It was all quite simple really, and I explained it so well that I won’t try to paraphrase.

“A movie is projected onto a screen,” I (he) began. “That screen is a window to a world which is, basically, an alternative to the world of the audience. Actually there is no real world; all worlds are just alternatives to one another.

Makes things much simpler, don’t you think?”

Hmm. Maybe it would be better if I paraphrased.

Understanding Filmic Reality In Four Simple Lessons Lesson 1: A dramatic film is a projection on a screen. That screen is generally rectangular with a distinct edge or border. So, in a sense, the screen is a window through which the audience watch the story unfold. >>

> Lesson 2:The story of a dramatic film has to be set someplace and sometime, though the place can be anyplace and the time can be anytime; even a fictional place, a fictional time. In any case, this place and time must be part of a larger place - a longer time. Even though the audience can see only part of this large place and time - the “world” of the story - a whole “universe” can be extrapolated from what is visible.

“As you now understand, there are a large number of variations of ourselves within the quasi-universe of filmic “boxes” that make up the cine-fabric. Some of us are pretty strange people (Ur-Regent R’ Byn-Penn of Wezurstral and the discontinued Pen R4-NL Series spring to mind), but most of us are ever-so-slight variations on the basic we.”

Lesson 3: Everything that comprises a dramatic film is ultimately derived from the reality of the audience watching it; a cinematic world is created by taking elements of the audience’s world and distorting them appropriately to fit the film. Thus, all film worlds are distorted realities (some mildly distorted to fit, for example, a cop thriller and some significantly distorted to encompass, say, a spacey sci-fi flick).

“No, like you. Anyway, most of the possible variations are of a Robin Pen who’s keen on film and is eager to extend his passion to as wide an audience as possible, if you get my drift. Well, I’m afraid that one of us got or will get - a “box” encapsulates all time - a bit too eager, and has developed or will develop a new theory of film that has had or will have so huge and widespread an impact that it will, quite literally, cause a rift in the cinema world - a tear in the cine-fabric that could potentially result in the collapse of all the separate “boxes” or universes to a single flux-point. Of course, I could be completely wrong. Anyway, that theory you formulated is known as the Theory of Post-Brechtian Contra-Dynamics.”

Lesson 4: If every film world is a distortion of the reality of the audience, then it stands to reason that someplace, sometime within that distorted reality is a version of the audience itself, distorted appropriately. So, for every dramatic film, for every alternative reality, there is a variation of you; there is an alternate you trapped within that “box” containing the alternate universe which you can just glimpse through the window that is the screen on which the film is projected.

“See; all very simple,” I (he) concluded.

“Yeah, for you and your mother,” I (me) replied.

“Our mother. Well, our respective, equivalently distorted analog mothers -” “For Christ’s sake, shut up!” I was getting pretty tired of this. “Why the hell am I here?”

“We have caused a problem. Actually, a particular we has caused a problem, and another we - you - are here to correct it.”

“Go on,” I said. It sounded perfectly reasonable to me, but then I’ve seen both Total Recall and Terminator II.

“Like you.”

“And I, that’s me, am the one who formulates this theory? That’s my crowning achievement; a theory so incredibly important and all-pervasive that it rocks the very fabric of the cineverse, sweeps opposing theories into the gutters of ignominy and knocks the gibbering hordes of counter-critics to their philistinous patellae?” (As you can imagine, I was getting a little excited at this stage, and my language tends to get colourful when that happens.)

“Oh no,” I (he) replied. “You don’t get anywhere near that. I’m afraid your lifetime achievement will be a discourse which postulates that Godzilla’s appeal is principally due to the sexually carnivorous look in his down-turned eyes, and that both he and Spock are sex icons and universal animus figures because they are super-human, sexually unobtainable and regularly

Skull Movies part1 / Robin Pen

misunderstood. In the end Godzilla is forced to wear mirrorshades in all his later movies and you are almost smothered to death in a very ugly incident with an enormous and outraged Trekkie, a cramped Convention toilet stall, an inflatable Vulcan and a goat.”

“So why the fuck am I here?” (See what I mean about colourful language?)

“To be in the same universe as the Robin who did develop the theory of Post-Brechtian Contra-Dynamics.”

All you had to do was to be in the same filmic “box” as you . . . ah, him.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Yep.” “No whoosh, pow, or anything wildly exciting like that?”

“Nope. I’m afraid not.”

“Sort of anti-climactic really.”

“I thought so.”

“For God’s sake why?”

“Well, that’s it then?”

“Well, when two mutually exclusive but nevertheless entirely correct theories are brought together in a single filmic “box”, both theories, and their respective consequences, are nullified. It’s a pretty Greg Bear kind of a thing.”

“That’s it.”

“So you’re saying that my theory about Godzilla as a sex demon will destroy this Post-Brechtian whatsit?”

“No, no, no. What’s important here is another of your theories - one you develop in your abortive attempt to launch the CinePunkTM Movement.

A crucial sub-construction of the Theory of Post-Brechtian Contra-Dynamics is the fact that the artificiality of special effects in film tend to detract significantly from the filmic experience by providing proof to the audience that the filmworld isn’t real, and thereby causing a breakdown of suspension-of-disbelief. In contrast, your halfbaked CinePunkTM conception contends that SPFX actually enhance the cinematic experience by requiring that audiences further suspend their disbelief in order to maintain an emotional intimacy with the story in progress.”

“Gee, I’d like to have met this Post-Brechtian theorist,” I said, sort of wistfully.

“Maybe you have,” he replied, and before you could say “Surrender Dorothy!” I was home: Back in my seedy little coffee hole with a Brazilian flatwhite steaming at my elbow and not so much as a lobby card or a ticket stub for proof.

But that’s my story: Believe it . . . or simply award me ‘Best Male in a Supporting Role’. I’m beginning to think I may have imagined it, though I can’t help feeling that the large, scratched cafe window is really a big projection screen, and that I’m watching a movie; a movie of ordinary people walking along an ordinary city street.Yet, why do I assume they’re ordinary people? Maybe from another window I’d see them differently; as heroes and villains, antagonists and protagonists.

All I can say is that, inside or outside the window, everything’s both real and fantasy. Depending on your point of view, of course.

Still, it would’ve been nice to hang around that “One point for me. So, now that I have the black ‘n’ white bar and share a drink with Lauren weapon to combat this Contra-Dynamics thing, Bacall and Edmond O’Brien. The drink would what do I do?” probably have tasted of monochrome but, gee it would have been worth it, don’t you think?

“Actually, you do nothing at all. It’s been done.

Robin Pen is a lapsed blogger. See The View From Mt Pootmootoo ( http://members.iinet.net. au/~robinpen/blogger.html ) and Planet Blog ( www.planetvideo.com.au/blog ). This series originally appeared as The Secret Life of Rubber-Suit Monsters, in Eidolon 8, April 1992 © 1992 Robin Pen.

ACTease

< Jeff Carter (1928 – 2010), Henry Grace using his home-made ear-trumpets to listen to bird songs 1964 – 1966. Gelatin silver print. National Library of Australia. Things: Photographing the Constructed World, until 13 February 2013.

DATELINE: DEC 2012 / JAN 2013

by Courtney Symes

We’ve just fixed our coffee machine - again. It’s usually the milk-frother that blocks up, but this time it was the bit the coffee trickles out of (or slowly ‘dripped’ out of on this occasion). We probably should have given up and replaced it a couple of years ago. It’s now over six years old, which is ‘geriatric’ for most electrical appliances these days, but we just can’t par t with it. When it works it makes kick-arse coffee with a wicked crema and a thick foamy froth that you could devour on its own with a spoon. It’s weird how we get attached to things, like an old coffee machine that can evoke more swear words than a stubbed toe when it doesn’t work. This month the National Library of Australia is celebrating the role of ‘things’ with a photography exhibition dedicated to objects from our everyday lives, many of which we take for granted, but would be lost without.

There’s a practical side (in addition to the artistic side) of photography that has been used for many years to document and record objects. Most commonly, we’ve documented our lives with por traits of ourselves and our families. We’ve also used photography to document objects we’ve created – machinery, monuments, domestic items such as furniture, toys and industrial products, among others things. The National Library of Australia celebrates these unsung photographic subjects in their latest exhibition, Things: photographing the constructed world. Curated

by ANU School of Ar t’s Helen Ennis, the exhibition draws on photographs from the Library’s collection from the nineteenth century through to the present day. The various images featured are from renowned Australian photographers, including Jeff Carter, Olive Cotton, Max Dupain, Frank Hurley, Wolfgang Sievers and Anne Zahalka,

as well as anonymous photographers. Runs until 17 February 2013. www.nla.gov.au It was a trip China for the 2012 Young Artist Biennale that inspired Ashley Bauman’s latest exhibition, Fingerprints in Order and Chaos at ANCA gallery this month. Bauman’s work explores a combination of ancient and modern ceramic concepts and incorporates materials and objects he sourced in China. “Fingerprints in Order and Chaos is an extension of different theories of the universe, life and gods and looking for the beauty in humanity,” says Bauman. Bauman is a recent graduate of the ANU School of Ar t and recipient of the 2011 ANCA EASS (ANU School of Ar t Emerging Ar tist Support Scheme) award. He is a multi-disciplinary ar tist specialising in ceramics and glass. Catch Fingerprints in Order and Chaos at ANCA gallery from 5 – 16 December. >> continued

ACTease / Courtney Symes

> The first Likan’mirri exhibition took place in 2004 at the Drill Hall Gallery, showcasing a selection of key works from the AIATSIS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies) Collection. Since then, the collection has grown and Likan’mirri II is a showcase of newly acquired works, curated by guest curator, Wally Caruana. This is a fantastic opportunity for visitors to view works that have not been on public display before.

AIATSIS originated during the 1960s from an Act of Parliament. Although the collection was originally an anthropological venture, it was developed with passion, as many of the collectors had a deep appreciation for indigenous culture and ar t. Likan’mirri II is a collaborative project between AIATSIS, the Australian National University Centre for Indigenous Studies and the Drill Hall Gallery.

Runs from 8 – 16 December - www.anu.edu. au/mac/content/dhg.

The Drill Hall Gallery presents exhibitions that are related to the Australian National University’s (ANU’s) vast academic programme and are frequently inspired by public events and conferences. The gallery also aims to suppor t the Canberra ar t community with captivating and relevant exhibitions of Australian and international art, with works often drawn from its own extensive collection.

Bungendore Wood Works Gallery plans to see out 2012 and welcome 2013 on a high with an inspiring exhibition, Double Vision: Tanya Stubbles & Richard Morecroft.

Whilst Stubbles and Morecroft are two very different ar tists, they both share a > Ashley BAUMAN, 2012, stoneware. Fingerprints in Order and Chaos at ANCA gallery, 1 Rosevear Place, Dickson (ACT), 5 – 16 December www.anca.net.au/

passion for pattern, structure and the natural environment – key themes throughout this exhibition. Stubbles’ work focuses on rich, painterly landscapes. She explains, “I am intrigued with repetitive patterns in the landscape. landscape. Using weathered timbers that carry a sense of history and place I create works that are intricately woven into pieces that speak of the Australian Bush. The works incorporate organic materials sourced on field trips including river sand, ochres and red earth and the works possess an ethereal reality”.

Richard Morecroft (television presenter known for his work with the ABC and SBS’s Letters and Numbers) has been exhibiting his unique landscape photographs for several years now. Morecroft says, “I’m fascinated

by the processes that produce patterns in geology and biology. As you examine the detail, you see repeated motifs, like variations on a musical theme. Erosion, sedimentation, fractal patterns of vegetation, or mineral formation – there’s a clear sense of common forces at work; universal rules of structure from micro to macro.” Morecroft’s latest works focus on cultural ar tefacts, which include What You Need, which was featured in the Blake Prize national tour. Runs from 6 December 2012 – 24 January 2013.

Don’t miss the National Gallery of Australia’s Carol Jerrems exhibition this summer. Jerrems is renowned for her intimate por traits taken during the 1960s and 70s that nod towards cultural issues such as women’s

liberation, Indigenous people and street youths. Jerrems’ urban backdrops also offer a documentary style of photography. The exhibition consists of works throughout Jerrems’ career from 1968-78, including prints and photo books, such as A continuum of age 1969. This concer tina-style book features imagery that references the passing of time i.e. a child, a uniform, a young woman, a glass of beer, a pair of mature hands and a mature face, as well as two different images of clocks. The beauty of Jerrems’ works lies in their timelessness – her images look as contemporary and relevant now as they did in the 60s and 70s. Runs until 28 January 2013 - www.nga.gov.au.

DATELINE: DEC 2012 / JAN 2013

by Courtney Symes

< Cocktail Dress by Guy MELIET (Caracas, South America) c. late 1960s, silk faille. Hat by Stephen JONES (England), c. 1990s, synthetic mesh, faux pearls.

Photograph by Bridgette GRANT. Fictional character: Meredith in Margaret FOSTER’s novel Georgy Girl.

My most memorable encounter with vintage fashion was as a wide-eyed fashion design student when I visited the Bath Fashion Museum in the UK a number of years ago. Each garment on display was carefully curated, beautifully illuminated and truly enchanting.

As a student learning how to sketch fabric details such as ruffles, lace, buttons and all the other gorgeous finishes found on traditional costumes, the museum was an endless source of inspiration. Learning how to sketch and recreate these details with modern fabrics instilled in me a life-long appreciation for the intricate details on historic costume.

With so much to learn from period costume, it’s encouraging to see collections such as the Darnell Collection out on display for the public to appreciate.

The Darnell Collection consists of over 5,500 pieces of women’s clothing ranging from 1720 to present day and is considered to be the largest private collection of vintage clothing in Australia.

This month Burrinja Cultural Centre is hosting the exhibition Fashion meets Fiction, in which selected pieces from the Darnell Collection will be featured. The exhibition will focus on period pieces from key eras that fictional characters such as Scarlett O’Hara, Holly Golightly and even Carrie Bradshaw made famous. “Fashion meets Fiction is a unique and fascinating event that brings together over 200 years of costume, fashion, design and fiction with the many famous and often glamorous characters that inhabit our popular culture,” says Ross Farnell, Burrinja Executive Officer.

Doris Darnell founded of the Darnell Collection over 70 years ago in the USA. The Collection has grown from donations and gifts of garments from around the world, many of which have been accompanied by photographs, stories and letters regarding their origin. Doris Darnell’s goddaughter, Charlotte Smith inherited the collection in 2004 and it has continued to grow since. Collection pieces include outerwear,

underwear, nightwear, day and evening dresses, wedding dresses, sportswear and accessories such as shoes, hats, handbags, gloves, and jewellery. Some menswear and children’s clothing is also included in the collection, along with books, journals and exhibition catalogues. An extensive program of events will accompany the exhibition, including opportunities to meet Charlotte Smith, who is the author of two books inspired by the collection; Dreaming of Dior and Dreaming of Chanel. Runs until 17 February 2012 - www.burrinja.org.au Beth Arnold’s Maribyrnong River-inspired work is the final installation for Incinerator Gallery’s 2012 Atrium Project – an awesome finale to the monthly showcase of work from a stellar line-up of some of Melbourne’s most talented contemporary artists. Arnold is fortunate to have a studio located along the Maribyrnong River and this project explores “the temporal, ordinary and intimate quality of the built environment along the river’s banks from Footscray to the Incinerator Gallery in Moonee Ponds”. Arnold’s latest project helps her continue to develop a better understanding of the local area and the changing environment around her. >> continued

Melburnin’ / Courtney Symes < Valentina PALONEN, Documentation of performance at Parc des Buttes Chaumont, Paris.

> Geoffrey Ricardo is fascinated by the human condition, “ranging from satirical to the absurd” and his latest project, Deeper Meaning at Incinerator Gallery this month “uses figurative based narrative surrealism and expressionism to explore contemporary issues”. Ricardo is a printmaker, and explains that “the prevailing mood in my printmaking comes from the techniques I use. The predominant one is a manier noire (Black method) process where I etch a textured surface (aquatint) into a copper or steel plate. This surface when printed would print as a continuous tone in black.” Ricardo then uses scraping and brushing techniques to lighten the surface of the plate before applying colour in a variety of ways. Both exhibitions run until 20 January 2013 - www.incineratorgallery.com.au Valentina Palonen is a Finnish-Australian visual artist who references visual themes including animism, metamorphosis, and fantasy. Palonen’s latest exhibition, Power Things at Blindside further explores her fascination with art and agency. The exhibition is comprised of “an eclectic range of objects which have been conceptually imbued with their own sense of agency through sitespecific casting, performance, and astronomical associations”. Runs until 15 December - www. blindside.org.au There’s plenty happening at Geelong Gallery this month, so a trip over the bridge is well rewarded these summer holidays with a variety of exhibitions including: James Whitley Sayer 1847–1914; A curious nature – the landscape as theatre in contemporary photography and new media; Djalkiri – we are standing on their names – Blue Mud Bay and A question of scale – maquettes and small sculpture from the permanent collection. >>

Melburnin’ / Courtney Symes

> James Whitley Sayer was one of the founders of Geelong Art Gallery, as well as a renowned member of the community during the late 19th century. James Whitley Sayer 1847–1914 showcases a variety of Sayer’s drawings, paintings, book illustrations, as well as a rare illuminated address. Works have been drawn from the Geelong Gallery’s permanent collection and will sit alongside pieces from private collections that are rarely on display to the public. This is a fantastic opportunity for visitors to get a feel for Sayer’s vast range of works and versatile talents. Runs until 28 January 2013.

A curious nature – the landscape as theatre in contemporary photography and new media consists of images (still and moving) that focus on natural and urban forms of landscape which become “the setting for performative actions, often of a peculiar or absurdist nature”. Viewers can expect works from artists including: Kate Bernauer, Siri Hayes, Gabriella Mangano & Silvana Mangano, Polixeni Papapetrou, Jacqui Stockdale and Christian Thompson. Runs until 10 February 2013.

As the exhibition name, Djalkiri – we are standing on their names – Blue Mud Bays hints, Blue Mud Bay in eastern Arnhem Land is the star of this show. Five talented Yithuwa Madarrpa artists (Djambawa Marawili, Marrirra Marawili, Marrnyula Mununggurr, Liyawaday Wirrpanda and Mulkun Wirrpanda) have joined forces with four visiting Australian artists (Fiona Hall, Jörg Schmeisser, Judy Watson and John Wolseley) to “capture essential aspects of country at Blue Mud Bay in eastern Arnhem Land”. The varying backgrounds of each artist, coupled with their different perspectives towards this project makes for an interesting and unique collaboration. Runs until 10 February 2013.

A question of scale – maquettes and small sculpture from the permanent collection reiterates that bigger is not always better. The exhibition is comprised of a series of small-scale sculptures from artists such as George Baldessin, Geoffrey Bartlett, Vincas Jomantas, Clifford Last, Fiona Orr, Tina Wentcher and Danila Vassilieff. Newly acquired works from Lenton Parr also feature in the exhibition. Featured pieces (comprised from a variety of media) have been specifically designed as small scale pieces, as well as small-scale models for larger works. The range and variety of works included in the exhibition makes for a captivating show. Runs until 24 February 2013 - www.geelonggallery.org.au “Jeffrey Smart created an entirely new vernacular of modern painting. He confronted a brave new universe of technology and architecture and declared that it was beautiful.

He became its poet,” says Barry Pearce, curator of TarraWarra Museum of Art exhibition, Master of Stillness: Jeffrey Smart paintings 1940 – 2011. Smart’s paintings are a commentary of Australia’s urbanisation, exploring our modern urban landscapes, such as industrial wastelands and concrete neighbourhoods, which have become part of our culture. In 2011, Smart was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of South Australia. This exhibition offers visitors a unique opportunity to view a lifetime-worth of Smart’s works, which have been sourced from galleries all over Australia and internationally, including the five works held at TWMA. Runs from 21 December 2012 – 31 March 2013 - www.twma.com.au

< Jeffrey SMART, The gymnasium (detail) 1962, oil on composition board, 63 x 77.2 cm. Gift of Eva and Marc Besen 2001, TarraWarra Museum of Art collection. © Jeffrey Smart

DEC / JAN SALON

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: Anne ZAHALKA (b.1957), Robosaurus (detail) 1999, colour print. National Library of Australia (ACT). Things: Photographing the Constructed World, until 13 February 2013 - http://www.nla.gov.au/ 1. Holly GRANVILLE EDGE, Wrong 2012, photograph. Holly Granville Edge: Chimera, PhotoAccess Huw Davies Gallery, Manuka Arts Centre, Manuka Circle Griffith (ACT), 29 November to 16 December - www.photoaccess. org.au 2. Joel ZIKA, December Rain 2012, video still, 3 mins. Curtain Call: End of the World Party, BLINDSIDE, Nicholas Building, 714/37 Swanston Street (enter via Cathedral Arcade lifts, cnr Flinders Lane), Melbourne (VIC), 19 – 21 December 2012 – www.blindside.org.au

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3. Jacqui STOCKDALE, Crudelia de Mon Della Botanica 2012, type C print.

Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne.

A curious nature â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the landscape as theatre in contemporary photography and new media, Geelong Art Gallery, Little Malop Street, Geelong (VIC) until 10 February 2013 - www.geelonggallery.org.au 4. Female figurine with baby, Late Cypriot II (c. 1450-1200 BC) NM 47.347. Mother and child figurine probably from a grave at Tamassos, showing distinctive Syrian influence from Astarte figurines (the Near Eastern equivalent to the Greek goddess Aphrodite).

Aphroditeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Island: Australian Archaeologists in Cyprus, The Nicholson Museum, southern entrance of the Quadrangle, the University of Sydney (NSW), 29 November 2012 until December 2013.

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5. Ethel SPOWERS (1890 – 1947), The green bridge 1926, colour linocut.

Collection of Bendigo Art Gallery. Japanese Visions: from the collection of Bendigo Art Gallery, 42 View Street, Bendigo (VIC), 1 December 2012 – 27 January 2013 - www.bendigoartgallery.com.au 6. John HINDS, Beefeater Stripe, colour Roast 2012, mixed media. From The English Suite, a limited edition of 10 artist’s books, each 56 x 39cm hand printed by the artist on 190gsm Saunders Waterford hotpress white, and bound by Whites/Law Bindery. Launched 1 December 2012, Chrysalis Gallery, 179 Gipps St, East Melbourne (VIC) - www.chrysalis.com.au

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7. Mundukul MARAWILI (born about 1890, died about 1950, Madarrpa clan, Yirritja moiety), Mundukul (Snake) story and Yirwarra (Fish Trap) 1942, natural pigments on eucalyptus bark, 175.3 x 103.3cm © Marrirra Marawili, Yilpara homeland, Arnhem Land. Source: The Donald Thomson Collection. On loan from the University of Melbourne and Museum Victoria. Photographer Rodney Start. Ancestral Power and the Aesthetic: Arnhem Land paintings and objects from the Donald Thomson Collection, Gippsland Art Gallery, 68 Foster Street, Sale (VIC), 1 December 2012 – 20 January 2013. 8. Two White Painted V Tankards with animal form handles, Middle Cypriot III-Late Cypriot IA (c. 1750-1600 BC). NM 53.101 and NM 53.100. Both excavated from Stephania Tomb 10, excavated by Australian Basil Hennessy in 1951. The handles of both vases are shaped like dogs. Aphrodite’s Island: Australian Archaeologists in Cyprus, The Nicholson Museum, southern entrance of the Quadrangle, the University of Sydney (NSW), 29 November 2012 until December 2013.

NEXT SPREAD: Eamon O’TOOLE: Sidchrome Tool Cabinet (large No2) (detail) 2006 hand moulded plastic, enamel paint, aluminium leaf, textas, steel. 120 x 80 x 25 cm (open).

Collection: Ipswich Art Gallery. Big Boys Toys, Art Gallery of Ballarat, 40 Lydiard Street North, Ballarat (VIC), 15 December 2012 – 24 February 2013 - www.artgalleryofballarat.com.au

stralian stories with Neil Boyack

T

he great thing about art is you can take from it what you

will. MTC Cronin’s new poetry collection, The World Last Night, might be brilliant for all I know, but I am not sure how long I will need to sit with it before working this out.

A work that is weaved with threads of life and death, it succeeds at times in giving insightful, penetrating ethereal poetry that leaves a gothic, almost misanthropic taste, which is not unpleasant. There are moments of domestic clarity and reflection that punctuate beautifully, letting the reader in to this otherwise impenetrable fortress of words, personal landscaping and private brainstorming. Cronin positions the rudimentary as wisdom in her work, and this only works in flashes. She is also very critical of the way our world is – fair enough – but the tone bleeds into the language of cynicism and complaint, which implies a rant quality and this can be a turn off.

read enough, written enough, or explored enough? On the other hand, I’m not sure if I wish to be this closed and confusing about my ideas and my thoughts on the world Cronin and I share. I am certainly from the school of social realism in terms of image and style, but this has not precluded me from interpreting and articulating complex situations, dialogues and arrangements to a broad audience.

For the most part The World Last Night is like facing a sheer, cold, hard cliff without trail or track. To gain meaning I found myself mentally meditating and working hard to imagine an opening, a rhythm, a beat, in order for beauty and/or meaning to From: As For Us We Will Have Huffing Bankers be revealed. So dense and, I would argue, Generals Covered In Vomit self-indulgent at times, The World Last Night And The Usual Complete Idiots Found In Every appears to be written for the inner circles Country of poetry to the exclusion of everyone else. after Benjamin Peret The dedications and references throughout the book may also suggest this. There are a As for us. As for us. lot of poems for someone, accompanied by We will have. Yes we will. someone, or after seeing or experiencing A new tribe of stars. someone. Thus I am sure that The World Last Turning its back on reciprocity.

Night will be lauded by higher profile uberA public not a community. poets, but in my view this work certainly In limbo little dancers and their hangers on. runs the risk of not meaning anything to ... anyone else, and this is where borders of Perhaps I am not worthy of this book as yet. interpretation arise and where one must Perhaps I am still the student, and haven’t make a decision around value.

MTC Cronin The World Last Night

UQP, Poetry RRP $24.95 www.uqp.uq.edu.au/

From: Bearing an Exact Date in memory of Paul Celan, 3-11-47 – 13-12-06 Your birth bears an exact date As does your death But further into telling So does every day of your life And also the days Lying before and beyond it I know this because Someone I have never met Has seeded me with their own pain ...

Writing and art that has influence calls and beckons the interlocutor, mystifies the observer yet invites further enquiry and digging. The invitation becomes the desire to unlock and understand the secrets of the work, the power, the allure, and in turn we drive ourselves through thought and perseverance to understand the language of art, the codes, and the mysteries. MTC Cronin is a poet who is well credentialed and published worldwide, and when viewing other angles around The World Last Night I got to thinking about the nature of time and how the work slows that time. Sitting with many things in this life often brings appreciation, understanding, respect, and the Stockholm Complex. Maybe offering a standardised book review isn’t enough for this work? Maybe I should be appraising this

work in a year, when I have time to absorb.

Yet, reading is the great consolation of life and one expects some reward for effort.

One expects to be trusted as a reader, to be given leads into the work, at least hints, in order for ideas to form. Here I don’t feel trusted, I feel frozen out, and at times a guinea pig for Cronin’s automatic writing experiments. Through the anchor-like weight of her word density, Cronin may well be trying to influence the time factor of a conventional book review. On a broader scale, maybe The World Last Night is a submission against the dominant paradigm of buy buy buy, now now now, fuck fuck fuck: the materialist capitalist system where bias and profit are stock in trade and equality will always be a debate; where time is money and the rush of life wallpapers >>

Stralian Stories / Neil Boyack

MTC Cronin Photo Susan Gordon-Brown

> over a deeper reflection on the reason for being, or the simple smelling of roses.

I’d like to give Cronin the benefit here, but at the moment, I’m not convinced of the profound outcome I feel she is aiming for.

From: World Over Babies Cry and make acupuncturists Lose their concentration Life Hits a nerve And never apologises As a writer it’s easy to be self-indulgent and ambiguous; to create walls deflecting one’s own vulnerability. It is very difficult however to redraft and exhaust grey areas and to break down complex ideas to a point where the writer can bring readers along, hopefully resulting in new possibilities and a fresh lens on the world. Let me be clear – i do not

expect a ‘Dummies Guide to Poetry’. I do not expect an easy read. Great writing is taxing, deafening in its stature, and merely comparing Cronin and The World Last Night with established influential poetry and renowned poets simply underscores the point I am making here. It may take time, but if you haven’t got it, and don’t want to make it, you may not enjoy this book very much.

At 183 pages this is a sizeable poetry collection, yet I will accept the burden. I will persist and allow The World Last Night to wash over me, and offer me the literary levitation I feel may lie within. At the moment however, I simply can’t believe in its spirit, or its execution. [ Agree or disagree? Decide for yourself!

Thanks to UQP we have 5 copies of The World Last Night to give away. First to email art@troublemag.com and ask nicely will win. ]

Neil Boyack is a writer and social worker. He is creator and director of the Newstead Short Story Tattoo. His new book Self Help and Other Works is out now, Check www.neilboyack.com and www.newsteadtattoo.org

The Iron Garden

by Emmi Scherlies

ON THE BANKS OF THE LODDON RIVER, Roger McKindley quietly tends his iron garden. This creative soul has built it from nothing, using discarded odds and ends that have found their way into his hands. Sometimes he is unsure whether he finds them, or whether they find him. continued >>

pics by Emmi Scherlies

The Iron Garden / Emmi Scherlies

<<

“I want to give everything life. I want to take it straight off my ute and give it respect and reverence.”

> “A lot of my work comes from play” says Roger. “I believe art is in everything. Things everywhere are saying here I am ... and they come together in union”.

Roger sees hidden beauty in even the oldest worn-out objects. He says that within the cracks and crevices of everything there is real beauty telling stories of other times. “I want to give everything life. I want to take it straight off my ute and give it respect and reverence.”

Most of his creations are untitled and all are open for interpretation. Roger wants people to see what they want in his art, and he notices that everyone is drawn to different pieces.

As I wandered through his garden, I felt like Alice in Wonderland – delighted and deeply enthralled, yet trying to make sense of it all.

The world he has created has melded life and death and natural and man-made into one.

Old tools and machinery are planted into the ground like trees, whilst resilient plants grow from the carcass of a vintage car. Horseshoes, chains, bottles, bones, hammerheads – everything is arranged into shapes and patterns. There is always something new for your eyes to feast on.

In his cottage, hours passed like minutes as Roger shared yarns about his life. He told me of his trip to India – the poverty, the sweaty bus trips, lepers and yogis ... India was a

landmark in his life, but he was thankful to be living in such a lucky country as Australia.

Mid-conversation, Roger’s scruffy hound Finnigan bounded through the open door.

He’d just been for a swim in the river, so he looked very satisfied and carried with him the familiar scent of wet dog. Animals are part of the family here. Of an evening, Finnigan retires to his own room, and the chicken sleeps by the fireplace where she’ll leave Roger an egg for his breakfast.

Roger spoke fondly about his friendship with Pig, who sadly passed away recently. Pig followed Roger in the bush one day, came home in the back of the ute (like so many of his treasures) and then spent twenty long years as Roger’s companion. The loss of Pig was mourned by many. Children even offered Roger hand-drawn pictures of the beloved boar. But just like his garden, Roger says nothing in life is fixed. Things are always changing. So every day Roger adapts and adds to his unusual garden. He lives simply with no power, he loves all, and is thankful for everything. “I have the gift of life. And I’m humbled by a running tap”.

You can visit Roger’s Antares Iron Art Garden by appointment. Call 0447 229 149 Located cnr Brandt St & Punt Rd, Newstead (VIC).

words & pics: Ben Laycock

LA PAZ DARKEST PERU PART IX

La Paz is like no other city on earth, except maybe Santorini in Greece which is built on the side of a Volcanic crater half submerged in the sea. La Paz is plonked in a canyon carved out of the Altiplano â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the Andean high plains that run through Chile, Bolivia and Peru. At 4,000 metres above sea level it is the highest city in the world. Just like in Rio De Janiero and unlike anywhere else in the world, the rich live in high rise apartments at the bottom of the gully, looked down upon with distain by their less for tunate brethren who are forced to build on ever steeper slopes. The last hovels perched precariously right under the unstable cliffs, where it is far too steep for roads so everything must be carried by Shanksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pony. continued >>

Greetings From La Paz / Ben Laycock

“... Apparently there are road laws in La Paz, but no one seems to know them or follow them.” > Showing a distinct lack of imagination the sixteenth century urban planners, no doubt preoccupied with The Inquisition at the time, drew the streets crisscrossing the canyon from one side to the other.

Latter-day Pen Pushers have compounded the absurdity by making the streets one way – up or down. As even Blind Freddy could have foreseen, this means that anyone on the ‘up’ streets are choked with fumes spewing from the rust-buckets driven by desperados planting the foot, attempting to get as far up the hill as they possibly can before they inevitably conk out, even snaking back and for th to get those last few metres. The natural consequence being, the dwellings of the poor, congregating in the ‘up’ streets, are caked with black soot, whilst in each alternate street the cars roll quietly down hill past posh hotels and elegant villas.

Apparently there are road laws in La Paz, but no one seems to know them or follow them. Instead they have devised their own simple and effective system: When approaching an intersection, slow down and edge the front of your vehicle into the fray until you are either cut off or you cut off your opponent; if the latter, proceed through the intersection unimpeded.

On one particularly grimy, noisy street we

found El Mercado de Brujas (The Witches Market). Bolivia has one of the highest indigenous populations in all of South America, but the wisdom of their shamans and natural healers is of course shunned by the Catholic hierarchy, so they are forced to ply their trade on the meanest of streets. The footpath on each side of the road is pilled so high with strange herbs and potions, symbolic amulets and totemic talismans imbued with mysterious properties, that pedestrians must risk their lives on the busy street.

Far and away the most ubiquitous item was the llama fetus. Row upon row of glass jars stuffed with tiny little partially formed llamas. Or for those with a little more cash to splash there were stacks of dried baby llamas. Apparently it is an ancient custom of the Aymara people, who have inhabited the Altiplano since way before even the Incas arrived, to bury a llama in the footings of their dwellings in order to propitiate everlasting health for all that cross the threshold. Of course only the well-to-do could afford a grown beast, hence the offer of llamas in various stages of growth and gestation.

Next Chapter : Lake Titicaca. Birthplace of the Inca Dynasty and Highest Lake in the World www.benlaycock.com.au

Lllama fetus anyone? ... Anyone?

canberra • National Gallery of Australia Now showing – Abstract Expressionism. To mark the 100 year anniversaries of the birth of JACKSON POLLOCK and the secondgeneration Abstract Expressionist MORRIS LOUIS the National Gallery is showcasing its holdings of important paintings, drawings and prints. Carol Jerrems: Photographic Artist.

CAROL JERREMS’ gritty, poetic and elusive images show people trying to find a new way of life and action in the 1970s. Her images have come to define a decade in Australia’s history.

Toulouse Lautrec: Paris & the Moulin Rouge.

Toulouse-Lautrec: Paris & the Moulin Rouge is the first major retrospective in Australia of the art of HENRI DE TOULOUSE LAUTREC and will include more than 100 paintings, posters, prints and drawings. Book your time and date now - ticketek.com.au/toulouse Open daily 10am-5pm. Parkes Place, Parkes, Canberra 2600. T: (02) 6240 6411, www.nga.gov.au • PhotoAccess Huw Davies Gallery 29 November to 16 December HOLLY GRANVILLE EDGE: Chimera; JACK BRANDTMAN: interval; TRAVIS HEINRICH in the Multimedia Room. 17 January to 3 February URSULA FREDERICK, Sleepwalker. Image: Travis Heinrich: Motion.

Manuka Arts Centre, Manuka Circle Griffith ACT Tuesday to Friday 10am to 4pm, weekends 12 noon to 4pm. T: (02) 6295 7810; www. photoaccess.org.au

NSW / ACT

cowra • Cowra Regional Art Gallery See our website for this month’s exhibitions.

77 Darling Street Cowra NSW 2794. Tues to Sat 10am - 4pm, Sun 2 - 4pm. Free Admission. www.cowraartgallery.com.au Image: G.W. Bot Glyphs: Tree of Life (detail) 2012, watercolour and graphite on colombe paper, 100cm x 100cm.

Winner 2012 Calleen Art Award.

sydney • Art Gallery of New South Wales FRANCIS BACON: five decades, 17 November 2012 – 17 February 2013. Dobell Prize for Drawing: 20th Anniversary, 30 November 2012 – 9 February 2013.

Art Gallery Rd, The Domain, Sydney NSW 2000.

T: (02) 9225 1744, www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au

windsor • Hawkesbury Regional Gallery Made It, Make It, 7 December 2012 – 20 January 2013. Image: Steven Vella, Mourning brooches #3 and #4, vintage teak bowl, palm thorns, seed pods, wooden beads, antique Victorian tassel, 23ct gold. Courtesy the artist and NG Gallery Sydney. Photo: Greg Lippiatt.

Deerubbin Centre, 1st Floor, 300 George Street Windsor 2756. T: (02) 4560 4441 F: (02) 4560 4442; Mon-Fri 10am-4pm Sat & Sun 10am3pm, (Closed Tues and public holidays). Free admission. www.hawkesbury.nsw.gov.au

devonport • Devonport Regional Gallery Open Mon - Fri 10am-5pm, Sat 12noon5pm, Sun and Public Holidays 1pm-5pm. 45 Stewart Street, Devonport,Tasmania 7310. E: artgallery@devonport.tas.gov.au T: (03) 6424 8296; www.devonportgallery.com Image: Pulse # 201207 by Paul Snell.

hobart • MONA, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart Ancient, modern and contemporary art.

Monanism the permanent collection – evolving over time. Current exhibition: Theatre of the World curated by JEAN-HUBERT MARTIN through to 8 April, 2013. More than 350 artworks and objects of curiosity spanning 4,000 years of creativity.

http://www.darbyhudson.com/

Fees: $20/adult; under 18s are free. Spring/ Summer opening hours: 10am to 6pm, closed Tuesdays. Food, bars, winery, microbrewery, accommodation, bookshop and library. 655 Main Road Berriedale, Tasmania, 7011. T: (03) 6277 9900, www.mona.net.au

TASMANIA

abbotsford • MUSK Architecture Studio MUSK Studio provides architectural services with a focus on materiality and sustainable design, from concept, planning and documentation through to completion. To achieve the best design outcomes, we embrace the unique circumstances of each project to uncover original design solutions that are personally engaging and enrich the environment in which we all share.

To discuss your project call Hannes 0410 223 676 or Daniel 0478 164 248 Image: Super Ply pavilion installed at Fed Square. Photo Alistair Kennedy.

berwick • ‘Paint in The Park’ Competition.

BERWICK ARTISTS SOCIETY invites all artists to ‘Paint in the Park’ at Wilson Botanic Park Berwick on Sunday 27 January 2013 from 10am to 4pm. Prizes: $500 for Best in Show and $200 for People’s Choice. Entries $5 Close 11 January 2013.

Contact Ros by email: rosmead@gmail.com or 0419 349 897 for details and entry forms.

box hill • Box Hill Community Arts Centre 4 – 9 December, BHCAC & Neami The Art of Living. 11 – 16 December BHCAC – Tutor’s Exhibition. 11 – 27 January Chinese New Year – Year of the Snake. A giant snake will make its home in the BHCAC Gallery during January adorned by scales made by primary school students from the City of Whitehorse.

470 Station Street Box Hill T: (03) 9895 8888 www.bhcac.com.au Image: FRIDA BIRKIC, Eclipse Set.

MELBOURNE

• Whitehorse Art Space Until 17 December 2012 One Step Further. This exhibition, organised by Victorian Quilters Inc., showcases the skills and boundless imagination of quilt and textile artists from around Victoria.

As the name implies the quilts entered in this exhibition competition go ‘one step further’ in style, technique and presentation.

Demonstrations covering different techniques will be held every Saturday at 2pm.

Hours: Tues and Fri 10am-3pm, Wed and Thurs 9am-5pm, Saturday noon-4pm. T: (03) 9262 6250, 1022 Whitehorse Road, Box Hill VIC 3128, www.boxhilltownhall.com.au Image: DIJAANE CEVAAL Art Quilt (detail) 2011 Winner people’s choice award One Step Further 2011.

brunswick • Counihan Gallery in Brunswick Until 8 December Moreland Summer Show.

An exhibition of practicing artists who live or work in the City of Moreland and who consider the varied interpretations of the circle. The Counihan will be closed from 9 December 2012 until 24 January 2013. 25 January to 17 February 2013 Gallery One: DEBORAH KELLY The Miracles; Gallery Two: MAGDA CEBOKLI, Drawn Out. Opening: Thursday 24 January, 6–8 pm. Image: Deborah Kelly, The Miracles (detail) 2012. Pigment ink print on Hahnemühle paper, antique frames. Installed dimensions variable.

Courtesy the artist.

233 Sydney Road, Brunswick 3056 T: (03) 9389 8622; www.moreland.vic.gov.au/gallery.

E: counihangallery@moreland.vic.gov.au

bundoora • Bundoora Homestead Art Centre 7 December – 10 February JOHN BORRACK: selected paintings & drawings 1970-2012.

Until 20 January Poetic Forms. 23 January – 10 February Shifting Landscapes: JOHN SHEEHAN 1991 -2012. Image: John Sheehan, Twilight Trees.

7-27 Snake Gully Drive, Bundoora.

(Melways 19 G2) T: (03) 9496 1060; http:// bundoorahomestead.com

deer park • Hunt Club Community Arts Centre Galleries To December 22: Student Showcase – works by participants in arts and culture short courses run by Hunt Club CAC. Gallery closed in January.

Centre open Mon-Thurs 9am - 7.30pm, Fri 9am - 4.30pm, Sat 9am -12.30pm. Closed Public Holidays. 775 Ballarat Road, Deer Park (Melway 25, F8) T: (03) 9249 4600 E: huntclub@brimbank. vic.gov.au www.brimbank.vic.gov.au/arts

doncaster

• Manningham Art Gallery Relocation MC² Transfer Project 28 November – 29 December. Presents a collaborative installation work by students from the Manningham Art Studios and artist-in-residence ALIEY BALL Closed 30 December – 22 January. Unveiled: Art from the Manningham, Maroondah and Whitehorse Council Collections, 23 January – 16 February. Image HUANG YIN, Role: Superman (detail) 2010, oil on canvas, Manningham Public Art Collection.

MC² (Manningham City Square), 687 Doncaster Road, Doncaster 3108. Mel Ref. 47 F1. Open Tuesday to Saturday 11am to 5pm. T: (03) 98409367. E: gallery@manningham.vic.gov.au; www. manningham.vic.gov.au/gallery Free entry.

fitzroy • Colour Factory Gallery Image: PETE JOHNSON, Crazy – Morayfield 2004 2004, from Polarized: Political Photomedia in Queensland presented by QCP until 1 December 2012.

409 - 429 Gore Street, Fitzroy 3065. T: (03) 9419 8756, F: (03) 9417 5637. Gallery hours: Mon - Fri 10am - 6pm, Sat 1 - 4pm. E: Gallery@ colourfactory.com.au www.colourfactory.com.au

healesville • TarraWarra Museum of Art Until 9 December 2012 TarraWarra Biennial 2012: Sonic Spheres. Curator: VICTORIA LYNN. An assemblage of contemporary Australian artworks engaged with music, sound and voice. 21 December 2012 – 31 March 2013 Master of Stillness: JEFFREY SMART paintings 1940-2011. A Samstag Museum of Art exhibition in partnership with TarraWarra Museum of Art. Master of Stillness is a major survey exhibition of over forty paintings by one of Australia’s most important living painters. As the curator of the exhibition Barry Pearce has said, ‘Jeffrey Smart created an entirely new vernacular of modern painting. He confronted a brave new universe of technology and architecture and declared that it was beautiful. He became its poet’.

Indemnification for this exhibition is provided by the Victorian Government. 21 December 2012 – 14 April 2013 NADINE CHRISTENSEN and ANNE WALLACE: Recent paintings. Image: Jeffrey Smart, Self-portrait at Papini’s (detail) 1984-85, oil and acrylic on canvas, 85 x 115 cm.

Private collection © Jeffrey Smart.

Visit website for public programs and events.

Exhibitions open 7 days a week from Boxing Day to Australia Day. Admission: $12 Adults / $8 Concession. TarraWarra Museum of Art, 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road, Healesville.

For information and bookings visit twma.com.au

langwarrin • McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park Until 14 July 2013: McClelland Sculpture Survey and Award 2012. Until 3 March 2013. JANET LAURENCE: The Alchemical Garden of Desire.

Until 3 March 2013 Aftermath: Landscape photographs by JOHN GOLLINGS from Black Saturday. Australia’s leading Sculpture Park and Gallery.

390 McClelland Drive, Langwarrin (Mel. Ref. 103 E3 only 45 min from St Kilda!) T: (03) 9789 1671. Gallery Hours: Tues-Sun 10am-5pm (Entry by donation).

McClelland Gallery Café, Tues-Sun 10am-4.30pm.

Guided Tours: Wed and Thurs 11am and 2pm, and Sat and Sun by appointment only. Prior bookings highly recommended. E: info@mcclellandgallery. com, www.mcclellandgallery.com

melbourne • BLINDSIDE 28 November – 15 December 2012 Gallery 1: VALENTINA PALONEN: Power Things; Gallery 2: ERIC DEMETRIOU: Knuckle Song. 19 – 21 December 2012 Gallery 1 & 2: Curtain Call: End of the World Party - PATRICK REES, KIRSTY AUDREY HULM, BOE-LIN BASTION and JOEL ZIKA. 31 January – 2 February 2013 Gallery 1 & 2: Summer Studio. Open Day BLINDSIDE, Nicholas Building, 714/37 Swanston St (enter via Cathedral Arcade lifts, cnr Flinders Lane), Melbourne. Hours: Tue to Sat 12-6pm. T: (03) 9650 0093; Image: Joel Zika, December Rain 2012, video still, 3 min.

• fortyfivedownstairs 13 November – 2 December Glimpse, THE KIN COLLECTIVE, theatre; 4 – 15 December Between 4 & 5 by ALLISON JONAS YOUNG, painting; 4 – 15 December And then there were five by ILONA NELSON, ERIKA GOFTON, CELESTE CHANDLER and SHARON BILLINGE, group exhibition, painting/photography; 4 December Lost Compass, Forgotten World, LINA ANDONOVSKA, contemporary flute; 5 December ASHLEY FRIPP Classical piano recital; 12 December 2012 A Soul Séance, WENDY SADDINGTON, HENRY MANETTA and ADAM RUDEGEAIR, soul and blues concert; 13 December KEN MURRAY & LAILA ENGEL Guitar and flute recital. Image: Chelsea (detail)

by Erika Gofton, 2012, painting.

45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, 3000. T: (03) 9662 9966 www.fortyfivedownstairs.com

moonee ponds • Incinerator Gallery 7 December – 20 January. Deeper Meaning, GEOFFREY RICARDO. He uses figurative based narrative surrealism and expressionism to explore contemporary issues.

Until 20 January. BETH ARNOLD. A new installation specifically designed for the Atrium Space. Exploring the intimate qualities of the environment around the Maribyrnong River.

Opening hours: Tues to Sun, 10am-4pm.

Free Entry. Incinerator Gallery, 180 Holmes Road, Moonee Ponds VIC 3039 T: (03) 8325 1750, E: incinerator@mvcc.vic.gov.au, www. incineratorgallery.com.au Image Deeper Meaning (detail), Geoffrey Ricardo.

southbank • ACCA - Australian Centre for Contemporary Art Desire Lines – 15 December, 2012 to 3 March, 2012. A major survey exhibition that investigates the physical, conceptual and psychological tracks created by artists. FRANCIS ALYS, SAMUEL BECKETT, NEAL BEGGS, PIERRE BISMUTH, MARCEL BROODTHAERS, MIRECA CANTOR, A K DOLVEN, JACQUELINE DONACHIE, WILLIE DOHERTY, TACITA DEAN, RODNEY GRAHAM, JOAN JONAS, LEOPOLD KESSLER, EVA KOCH, JOCHEN KUHN, RACHEL LOWE, RICHARD LONG, DAVID LINK, THOMAS MCMILLAN, BRUCE NAUMAN, MEL O’CALLAGHAN, PAULIEN OLTHETEN, YVONNE RAINER, DAN SHIPSIDES, CHARLIE SOFO, GRANT STEVENS, STEPHEN SUTCLIFFE, ROBERT SMITHSON, LAWRENCE WEINER, CATHERINE YASS, and AKRAM ZAATARI. Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 111 Sturt Street, Southbank. Gallery hours: TuesdayFriday 10am–5pm.

Weekends 11am-6pm.

Mondays by appointment. T: (03) 9697 9999 Admission: Free. www.accaonline.org.au

st andrews • The Baldessin Press and Studio Artists / writers retreats, workshops, studio access etc in tranquil bushland 50 kms from Melbourne. T (03) 97101350, www. baldessinpress.com

• The Pharos Centre Workshops – Pathways to Creativity 19 Jan, 2013 STELARC: Meat, Metal & Code, Alternate Anatomical Architectures. The cyborg body and the future. $290 per day incl. lunch.

23 Feb, 2013 JILL ORR: Mind, Movement & Making Art. An exploration through meditation, breath and performative awareness. $290 per day incl. lunch.

The Pharos Centre aims to host the most useful, innovative and exciting workshops for creatives at all levels. We also have the best food. 85 Ninks Road, St. Andrews, Vic 3761. T (03) 9710 1516 E pharoseditions@bigpond.com

• The Pharos Centre Workshops – Pathways to Creativity Pathways to Creativity 16 & 17 March, 2013 NINA SELLARS Naked to the Bone, The Skeleton in Life Drawing. The class adopts the drawing techniques of the Renaissance – think Leonardo. Two days, including lunches $450.

The Pharos Centre aims to host the most useful, innovative and exciting workshops for creatives at all levels. We also have the best food. 85 Ninks Road, St. Andrews, Vic 3761. T (03) 9710 1516 E pharoseditions@bigpond.com

sunshine • Sunshine Art Spaces Artist studios, gallery and shop front. Three new artists – photographer BRAD AXIAK, puppet maker LANA SCHWARZ and environmental artist MICHAEL SHIELL – have recently moved into the studio space located in what was previously a chemist shop. Opposite the studios is a Gallery space, which currently hosts the Sunshine Memory Spaces project.

Opening hours vary, call to confirm. 2 City Place, Sunshine (Melway 40, H1) T: (03) 9249 4600 E: artspaces@brimbank.vic.gov.au; www. sunshineartspaces.com.au

upwey • Burrinja Gallery Fashion meets Fiction: The Darnell Collection.

Fashion meets Fiction presents costumes from the internationally renowned Darnell Collection embodying the fashion of such favourite fictional characters as Scarlett O’Hara, Holly Golightly, Phryne Fisher and Carrie Bradshaw.

Celebrating the National Year of Reading, Fashion meets Fiction travels through time and the popular culture and fiction of the periods, drawing together the threads of character, period, fashion and finery. This is a must see exhibition for all lovers of fashion, fiction, design and history, until 17 February 2013. Image: GRANT COWAN, Dreaming of Dior.

Cnr Glenfern Rd and Matson Dr. Tue to Sun 10.30am-4pm. T: 9754 8723. W: burrinja.org.au

wheelers hill • Monash Gallery of Art (MGA) 23 November 2012 – 3 February 2013 PAT BRASSINGTON: It’s just a heartbeat away. It’s just a heartbeat away treats audiences to a towering encounter with Brassington’s uniquely arresting visual world. 23 November 2012 – 3 February 2013 Ingeborg Tyssen: photographs.

INGEBORG TYSSEN (1945-2002) was one of Australia’s leading photographers of her generation. Her earliest photographs, taken in the city streets, fun parks, and suburbs of ‘70s Australia and America, radiate a gentle surrealism mixed with urban isolation. Curated by SANDRA BYRON Ingeborg Tyssen: photographs is a Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre Travelling Exhibition. Image: Ingeborg TYSSEN, Ryde Pool, Sydney 1981, gelatin silver print, collection of the Estate of Ingeborg Tyssen, courtesy John Williams & Sandra Byron Gallery 860 Ferntree Gully Road, Wheelers Hill 3150.

Tues - Fri 10am to 5pm, Sat - Sun 12 to 5pm, Closed Mon. T: (03) 8544 0500, E: mga@ monash.vic.gov.au, www.mga.org.au

geelong • Geelong Gallery JAMES WHITLEY SAYER 1847-1914, 8 December to 28 January. A curious nature – the landscape as theatre in contemporary photography and new media, until 10 February.

Djalkiri – we are standing on their names – Blue Mud Bay, presented by Artback NT: Arts Development and Touring and Nomad Art Productions, until 10 February. A question of scale – maquettes and small sculpture from the permanent collection, until 24 February.

Image: JACQUI STOCKDALE, Crudelia de Mon Della Botanica (detail) 2012, type C print.

Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne.

Geelong Gallery, Little Malop Street, Geelong 3220. T: (03) 5229 3645, www.geelonggallery. org.au Free entry. Open daily 10am to 5pm.

Closed Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day and Good Friday.

BAY & PENINSULA

ballarat • Art Gallery of Ballarat Exhibitions: to 30 December DENA ASHBOLT: Green Car on the Freeway. 8 December – 20 January 2013 44th Ballarat National Photographic Exhibition. 12 December – 20 January 2013 Made to last: the conservation of art. 15 December 2012 – 24 February 2013 EAMON O’TOOLE: Big Boys Toys. Image: Honda NSR 500 (Wayne Gardner Motorcycle) 1989-90, hand moulded plastic, enamel paint, steel, rubber, aluminium leaf, textas. 230 x 100 x 75 cm. Private Collection.

T: (03) 5320 5858 Free entry. Open daily except Christmas and Boxing Day. E: artgal@ballarat. vic.gov.au; www.artgalleryofballarat.com.au

• Ballarat Arts Foundation Grants Rounds for emerging artists: 1 – 31 March and 1 – 30 September. Visit Downloads on www.ballaratartsfoundation.org.au or T: (03) 5332 4824 or M: 0409 352 268

• Her Majesty’s Wednesday 5 December. 7pm Her Majesty’s Theatre, MetHD The Tempest (ADÈS); Monday 10 December 2pm, DENIS WALTER’s World of Christmas; Sunday 16 December 1pm SMB Courthouse, MetHD La Clemenza di Tito (MOZART); Monday 17 to Wednesday 19 December 8pm. CARL BARRON A One-Ended Stick; Sunday 13 January 1pm SMB Courhouse, MetHD Un Ballo in Maschera (VERDI); Sunday 27 January 1.00pm SMB Courthouse, MetHD Aida (Verdi).

Her Majesty’s Theatre, 17 Lydiard Street South, Ballarat. Box Office/Ticket Sales: MajesTix T: (03) 5333 5888 Box Office hours - Monday to Friday, 9.15am - 5pm and one hour prior to performance starting times.

CENTRAL VIC

• Post Office Gallery Wed 19 Dec 2012 – Sat 26 Jan 2013 WES WALTERS: The Abstract Realist. Archibald Prize winner and renowned Australian artist Wes Walters successful and broad artistic career has spanned over 60 years across a myriad of styles, techniques and approaches. Having spent his formative years living in Ballarat and studying art at the Ballarat School of Mines, this exhibition celebrates Walters’ strong links to the University of Ballarat and the region and his extensive creative achievements with a range of iconic works which demonstrate a remarkable artistic career. Image: Wes Walters, Black Cross (detail) 1999, Ink on paper, 75 x 97cm. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Jeremy Dillon.

NB: The Post Office Gallery is closed from Mon 24 Dec 2012 until Wed 4 Jan 2013. Post Office Gallery, University of Ballarat. Cnr Sturt and Lydiard St Ballarat. VIC. 3350. Mon/Tue by appt.

Wed-Sat 1-4pm. T: (03) 5327 8615, E: s.hinton@ ballarat.edu.au; www.ballarat.edu.au.

• Radmac “Now Showing” at the Radmac Gallery through December/January. Local artist and art teacher TRUDY NICHOLSON along with her students will showcase various mediums, techniques and styles. As well we have JANET CURTAIN with her very colourful and interesting range of Aboriginal Art. We also have the very talented students from McCallum Community Connections.

Radmac Office Choice (incorporating Radmac Gallery) is your one stop shop for all your office and school supplies, computer consumables, copy and specialty papers, art and craft supplies, art classes (bookings essential) and much much more.

Radmac Gallery, 104 Armstrong Street (Nth) Ballarat 3350. T: (03) 5333 4617 Gallery Hours 8.30am to 5.30pm Mon - Fri, 9am to 12pm Sat.

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RADMAC

art * graphic * office and school supplies

*we supply service* 104 Armstrong St North, Ballarat 3350 Phone (03) 5333 4617 Fax (03) 5333 4673 Email radmac@ncable.net.au

bendigo • Artsonview Framing and Gallery Expert custom framing by GEOFF SAYER. Conservation and exhibition framing also available. Plus a small but interesting range of original artwork and photography. Ceramics and etchings by RAY PEARCE, limited edition prints by GEOFF HOCKING now in stock. 75 View Street. E: sayer@iinet.net.au; T: (03) 5443 0624

• Bendigo Art Gallery Japanese Visions: Works from the collection, 1 December 2012 – 27 January 2013. Image: UTAGAWA HIROSHIGE, A Spring Moonlight Scene at Shinyasgiuma in Yedo (detail) c1840s, colour woodcut. Collection Bendigo Art Gallery.

42 View Street, Bendigo. T: (03) 5434 6088. www.bendigoartgallery.com.au

• Community & Cultural Development (CCD) www.bendigo.vic.gov.au - for arts, festivals and events info at your fingertips. Select Council Services, then Arts Festivals and Events for Events Calendar and Arts Register. The CCD Unit is an initiative of the City of Greater Bendigo. E: eventscalendar@bendigo.vic.gov. au T: (03) 5434 6464

• La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre VAC Gallery: To 2 December MICHAEL COOK Through My Eyes. 5 December – 20 December LA TROBE UNIVERSITY VISUAL ARTS & DESIGN Honours Exhibition 2012.

5 January – 10 February DOMENICO DE CLARIO, from the opaque: ‘the question of the archive’ residency project. Access Gallery: To 2 December MAGGIE MacCATHIE-NEVILE and JESSICA RASCHKE Mystified. 5 December – 20 December CREATEABILITY EVENTS NETWORK create20twelve. 5 January – 27 January KAREN ANNETT-THOMAS Holes in the Earth. Image: domenico de clario, studio archive project, 2012. Image courtesy of the artist.

121 View St, Bendigo. T: (03) 5441 8724 W: www.latrobe.edu.au/vac

castlemaine • Buda Historic Home and Garden A property of national significance. Home of the creative Leviny family from 1863 to 1981, featuring their personal belongings, original furnishings and arts and crafts collection.

1.2 hectares of heritage gardens to wander including plant nursery. 42 Hunter Street, Castlemaine 3450. T/F: (03) 5472 1032, W: www.budacastlemaine.org Open Wed - Sat 12-5pm, Sun 10am-5pm. Groups by appointment. Nursery open daily 10am-5pm.

• CASPA Castlemaine Contemporary Art Space. Above Stoneman’s Bookroom, Hargraves Street. www.castlemainefringe.org.au/caspa Image: Pompeii Orchid.

• Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum Until 9 December, RAY STANYER and ELLEN HANSA, Wither shall I wander? Higgins Gallery; SUSAN WESTE, Elements of Nature: Meanderings with a Camera. 5 January – 3 February Director’s Choice: 38 Years of Collecting.

CAGHM, 14 Lyttleton Street Castlemaine, Vic. For full list of events and exhibitions log onto: www.castlemainegallery.com Image: Ray Stanyer, A never considered arrival (detail).

• Falkner Gallery 1 Nov – 27 Jan 2013 [Gallery closed 25 Dec – 23 Jan for Summer Break] Adventures into Automatism: GEOFFREY STOCKS, Paintings, linocuts; Connectedness: ANNE TWEED, Paintings, drawings; Typotany: FIONA SINCLAIR, Giclee prints & products.

35 Templeton Street, Castlemaine. Hours: 11am-5pm Thurs-Sun T: (03) 5470 5858; E: falknergallery@tpg.com.au; W: www. falknergallery.com.au Image: Geoffrey Stocks.

• Greengraphics: web and print We design anything, in web or print. Call (03) 5472 5300 or visit www.greengraphics.com.au

daylesford & macedon ranges • Boite Singers’ Festival at Daylesford 10 – 13 January, 2013 Singing workshops and concerts for all ages! Discover songs and vocal techniques from around the world. Learn songwriting and performance skills with local and international artists. Join the FREE, outdoor, acoustic Sunset Song Circle on Thursday evening. Kids can run away to the circus, while parents attend the festival. Bring your voice for a fabulous weekend of song! - www.boite.com.au Image: Grace Barbé, photo by Daniel Craig.

newstead • Dig Café KAREN PIERCE Views from the other side, 28 November 2012 – 9 January 2013. MARITSA GRONDA Camels in the desert, 9 January – 20 February 2013 Closed Monday and Tuesday. Open Wednesday and Thursday 9am-4pm, Friday and Saturday 9am - late, Sunday 9am-4pm. Cnr Lyons and Panmure Streets Newstead. T: (03) 5476 2744; www.digcafe.com.au

• Gathering Gathering is located in Newstead, 15 minutes from Castlemaine, 25 mins from Daylesford. We stock all original, all Australian, all handmade goods. Perfect for shopping for that special gift or for something for yourself. You can find one of a kind pieces for grownups and kids to wear, adorn yourselves with, and place in your home.

It is a space in our community to see hand making at its best. Panmure Street Newstead.

• Karen Pierce Painter, Illustrator, Art Teacher, Community Artist.

Quality prints and cards. Old Post Office Studio, 22 Panmure Street Newstead. T: (03) 5476 2459, www.karenpierceart.com

mildura • The Art Vault 28 November – 17 December Stock Show. 19 December – 7 January Stock Show. Artists in Residence: MARTIN KING; JANE GREENLAND. 43 Deakin Avenue, Mildura 3500. T: (03) 5022 0013 E: juliechambers@theartvault.com.au www.theartvault.com.au Gallery Director: Julie Chambers. Wed - Sat 10am to 5pm and Sun Mon 10am to 2pm.

• Mildura Arts Centre Until 24 January 2013, PENNY BYRNE: Commentariat, a Deakin University Art Gallery exhibition, Venue: Mildura Arts Centre Regional Gallery. Until 29 April 2013, Creatures and Critters and Chic Pics from the Mildura Arts Centre Collection, Venue: Mildura Arts Centre Regional Gallery. Until 28 February 2013, ALI JAFARI: drawings, Venue: Rio Vista Historic House. Until 11 January 2012, Colour Me Crazy, Venue: LEAP Project Space, 39 Langtree Avenue, Mildura.

Mildura Arts Centre, 199 Cureton Avenue, Mildura VIC 3500. T: (03) 5018 8330; F: (03) 5021 1462; www.milduraartscentre.com.au Image credit: Jenny Watson (b.1951), Horse Series No. 1: Palomino with Championship Ribbon, 1973, oil and acrylic on canvas © Mildura Arts Centre Collection.

MURRAY RIVER

swan hill • Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery Waradgerie Weaver – LORRAINE CONNELLY NORTHEY, 30 November - 20 January. In 2004 , the work of Lorraine Connelly-Northey came to light over the course of three exhibitions in Swan Hill. From there, Lorraine has gone on to exhibit widely and to be commissioned for many distinguished events and art festivals.

Her work has been collected extensively by the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and the Queensland Art Gallery to name a few. This solo exhibition will feature new work and will tour to the Ararat Regional Art Gallery in February. Cultures coming Together – ALAA NOURI and PAULINE BENNETTO, 27 November – 6 January. Familiar Unfamiliar – Pictures of Australian experience in print, 23 January – 17 March. Image from Lorraine Connelly-Northey.

Opening hours 10am-5pm Tuesday to Friday, 11am-5pm Saturday and Sunday. Horseshoe Bend, Swan Hill, 3585. T:(03) 5036 2430 E:artgal@ swanhill.vic.gov.au; www.swanhillart.com

NORTHERN VIC

benalla • Benalla Art Gallery Opening hours 10am - 5pm. Benalla Art Gallery, Bridge Street, Benalla, Victoria, 3672. T: (03) 5760 2619; E: gallery@benalla.vic.gov.au; www. benallaartgallery.com

shepparton • Shepparton Art Museum Until 29 Jan 2013: Smash Hits 80s and 90s ceramics from the collection. 7 Feb to 30 June: Miracle: contemporary artists respond to the SAM ceramics collection. 7 March to 2 June: The Golden Age of Colour Prints: Ukiyo-e from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 70 Welsford Street, Shepparton VIC 3630; T: (03) 5832 9861; E: art.museum@shepparton. vic.gov.au; www.sheppartonartmuseum.com.au Director: Kirsten Paisley. Open 7 days, 10am to 4pm (public holidays 1pm to 4pm).

LAUNCH PARTY Saturday 18 February 2012

wangaratta • Wangaratta Art Gallery 56 Ovens Street Wangaratta. Director: Dianne Mangan, Hours: Mon-Tues 12-5pm; Wed-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat-Sun 1-4pm. T: (03) 5722 0865, F: (03) 5722 2969, E: d.mangan@wangaratta. vic.gov.au or gallery@wangaratta.vic.gov.au; www.wangaratta.vic.gov.au then follow the links to the gallery. Follow us on Facebook.

Image: AMANDA HO, Plant, Mineral, Animal 2012, cotton warp, silk stainless seel weft.

Image courtesy of the artist. Petite miniatures entry 2012.

• Free arts activities, live music & tours of SAM: 10.00am to 5.00pm • Sir John Longstaff: Portrait of a Lady Exhibition • 2011 Indigenous Ceramic Art Award Exhibition • 6 New Permanent Collection Galleries For more information visit sheppartonartmuseum.com.au 70 Welsford St, Shepparton, 3630 VIC p 03 5832 9861 f 03 58318480 e art.museum@shepparton.vic.gov.au

ararat • Ararat Regional Art Gallery Dreamweavers, Gippsland Art Gallery & NETS Victoria touring exhibition, to 20 January 2013.

Waradgerie Weaver – LORRAINE CONNELLYNORTHEY, 25 January – 10 March 2013. A Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery touring exhibition.

Town Hall, Vincent Street, Ararat. Mon to Fri 10am-4.30pm, w/ends 12-4pm. Free entry. T: (03) 5352 2836; E: gallery@ararat.vic.gov.au; www.facebook.com/araratgallery Image: Aly Aitken, All the comforts of home (detail) 2008.

horsham • Horsham Regional Art Gallery 14 Dec 2012– 10 Feb 2013: NICKI CLARKE – Wimmera Tales. A selection of vivid, playful tableaux of life paintings, in a naïve illustrative style by a local artist.

21 Roberts Ave, Horsham. Tues-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat-Sun 1-4.30pm. T: (03) 5362 2888; E: hrag@ hrcc.vic.gov.au; www.horshamartgallery.com.au

• Print Council of Australia Inc. Printmakers and print collectors stay in touch with print exhibitions, events and technical issues through IMPRINT magazine. Members receive frequent email updates and information about opportunities (courses, forums, group exhibitions and competitions). Subscriptions $65/year or $45 concessions see website: www.printcouncil.org.au or phone T: (03) 9328 8991 for membership details

WESTERN VIC

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