Filed under: RUNOFF
9th June 2009
Filed under: PUBLISHED WORK
Arts Hub Australia, 23rd February 2009
Dolls and Angels’ French-born “père” and his wife, both of Kabyle Algerian descent, live in “the projects” (courtesy of American subtitling), one of the heaving cités on the porous outskirts of Paris. He (Samy Naceri) works for long stretches on distant and perilous construction sites while “la mère” (Fejria Deliba) stays home to rear their three unfeasibly attractive daughters. Chirine, almost 18, is a wet dream in stretch fabric and repels daddy dearest with her increasingly rampant sexual potency. Lya, around 15, is savvy, sporty and expressive, while Inès circumvents an excess of character interplay by being pie-sweet, under five and under three dimensions. The full complement is rounded out by father’s tendency toward remorseless, incandescent violence and mother’s resignation to it.
Filed under: PUBLISHED WORK
Arts Hub Australia, 1st September 2008
Attempting to define craft feels something like trying to hunt down an exceptionally speedy chameleon. Heave yourself heroically through the first paces of a crystallising thought and it is gone again, having taken on some new shade to one moment blend seamlessly with another distinct discipline, the next to stand out defiantly against the gamut of contmeporary art and design practice.
The impetus for an examination of contemporary craft was a long-standing personal puzzlement over its position within the wider context of visual arts practice: not merely “what is craft?”, but why are there so many seemingly disparate answers to that question? In brief, and hopefully in aid of enlightenment, the following is an overview of the elusive creature that is craft in 21st century visual culture. (more…)
Filed under: PUBLISHED WORK
Arts Hub Australia, 25th August 2008
Rosemary Cameron is back – if not with a vengeance, then at the very least with its more affable relation.
Cameron, who has just had her three-year tenure as Director of the increasingly robust Melbourne Writers Festival extended to take in the 2009 season, speaks with a kind of refined zeal of this year’s program and the developmental progress of an event relegated by some to runt status when held up against its Adelaide, Brisbane or Sydney counterparts.
In a city known for lovingly preening its cultural plumage, the hard facts of attendance numbers can elicit a faintly ignominious blush. The situation is now both compounded and redeemed by the recent announcement of Melbourne’s successful bid to be UNESCO’s second City of Literature (Edinburgh took out the inaugural spot in 2004). While the announcement can only precipitate growth for the Festival, some seem flustered by having been caught, as one of the nation’s more diminutive players, with their literary pants down. However Cameron, who has been on the Brisbane side of the fence, seems flushed only with optimism for a festival that, rather than di- or re-gressing, appears to be very satisfactorily progressing. (more…)
Filed under: PUBLISHED WORK
Arts Hub Australia, 18th August 2008
Darwin may the Northern Territory’s big daddy but it can rest easy in its sweet 16th spot on Australia’s most populous Statistical Divisions countdown. Given its size, it is one of Australia’s most culturally diverse metropolises and has the highest proportional Indigenous population of any capital city. Perched askew and simmering away at the Top End, it all too readily calls into slavish service the term “cultural melting pot”, yet it is difficult to find a superior option.
The program for the current Darwin Festival (14 – 31 August 2008) is testament to the upside of isolation; travel expenses and a prohibitive climate for much of the year stunt the growth of an arts industry that must instead rely on self-motivation, resourcefulness and, beneficially, collaboration. Perhaps the growth of festivals such as Darwin do not mirror the spangled, stellar trajectories of larger cities, but growth there is – if not up then out, to encompass a community celebrating its own differences and achievements rather than looking ever outwards for inspiration. (more…)
Filed under: PUBLISHED WORK
Arts Hub Australia, 23rd July 2008
Detractors of the cinematic long take may have been limbering their lungs in preparation for post-curtain huffing and puffing at the South Melbourne Town Hall on Friday night. They needn’t have bothered; for one thing, there was no curtain.
Claudio Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea (L’incoronazione di Poppea), is the sobering yet playful treatment of the events preceding the acsension to the throne of Poppaea Sabina, second wife of Roman Emperor Nero. Though staged by Victorian Opera unabridged and in mean tone – replicating insofar as was musically possible the opera’s 1643 Venice premiere – this production was by no means a period affair. (more…)
Filed under: PUBLISHED WORK
Arts Hub Australia, 21st July 2008
If it were up to Mark Woods, all Australian film producers could build a bridge and get over it. As it is, only 64 are registered for 2008.
This figure is still substantial when one considers that at Melbourne International Film Festival’s 37South: Bridging the Gap, the selected filmmakers will battle it out through the canny use of scheduling to secure 20-minute audiences with as many of the 39 local and international film financiers or buyers in attendance as their celluloid hearts may desire. (more…)
Filed under: PUBLISHED WORK
Arts Hub Australia, 7th July 2008
Beijing, Berlin, Birmingham, Marseille… Brisbane? If not for the French port city, anyone out of the loop could be forgiven for suspecting that Billboard’s annual Top 5 International Music Hotspots may in fact be compiled alphabetically, and that 2007 was B’s time to shine.
Before the surprise prompts a date with Botox, however, consider this: while the east coast’s self-crowned monarchs, Sydney and Melbourne, bicker over their respective merits and vie for the compliant adoration of the remainder of the populus, their northerly sister has been quietly grooming herself as the one most likely, accumulating citizens like the other two are going out of style. (more…)
Filed under: PUBLISHED WORK
Arts Hub Australia, 16th June 2008
The 2008 Biennale of Sydney will be spinning to the theme of Revolutions – Forms That Turn. Artistic Director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev explains how art makes her world go around.
Even filtered through lengths of fibre-optic cable, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s entire being seems in perpetual motion – of thought, deed and, one imagines, gesture. (more…)
Filed under: PUBLISHED WORK
Arts Hub Australia, 10th June 2008
Sydney Film Festival kicked off last week with an Opening Night Gala screening of Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky, a lot of red carpet and almost as much bling. Clare Stewart tells us how a spoonful of glam helps the Festival go down.
Sydney Film Festival’s Executive Director Claire Stewart sounds as though she has contingency plans in her pockets and a limber stride in which to take all eventualities. One wonders whether she’s having perpetual flashbacks to the opening night film. More likely is that said film sets the tone for an exceptional year of a now quite literally extraordinary Australian film festival. (more…)
