Raphael Morgan’s documentary photos Wild Mongolia are the star of the current three exhibitions at Gaffa. They take us across modern Mongolia itself — the most sparsely populated in the world — introducing us to herders, their families, flocks and lives. Within China's borders, an autonomous region called Mongolia strikes tensions of city versus nomad kind. Morgan's subject is the neighbouring, independent country of the same name. This Mongolia also also has a city/country divide, as minerals draw many of its citizens from a nomadic life to a growing slum around the capital Ulaanbaatar. Morgan’s photo work bridges both worlds, though this exhibition focuses more on the nomad life than that of the slum. It's Mongolian, it’s dusty and it’s in black and white. But this is a cowboy story. Morgan’s lens tracks lone riders lopes by dirt plains and rolling dry hills, settles on a stallion whose manes stoops to its knees and focuses on babysitting and babysat children, watching the world with wide jaws or stone-mouthed seriousness. Another child toddles in with the sheep. Mongolian tents are a big feature. While a Tsaatan teepee (and owner) gets a mention, most of these pictures are of low, circular gers (aka tents). One photo makes its ger look like nothing so much as a hobbit house let loose on a plain. Round, low-ceilinged, a small chimney and a squat (square) door at front.A bike and a motorbike lean against the side. Another photo of the same ger shows a solar panel on the roof and a satellite dish. Low, dusty hills roll away. More tents flock at a slum outside Ulaanbaatar. This slum looks something between a camping ground, a field of back sheds and a low-rise favela. Houses crawl up the hills in the background and spiny, wooden fences are everywhere. Though made of entirely familiar elements, this vista is unlike other places. What does it mean when nomadic people build a temporary slum? Is it easier for them to move on? Or, leaving their herds behind, are they as trapped as anyone else? Meanwhile, Susan Severino’s landscapes are the macro made micro. Here she studies mainly the tips mountains and ravines, taking one close-up snippet of her subject per canvas, like God’s collage-maker. Her mountain tops run like spines across the middle of her best canvases. Her colours are rich, impressionistic and at their best shine brilliantly. But some of the softer, less defined picture are less successful. And Hayden Youlley’s Paper Series sets out a small selection of porcelain cups and bowls, crumpled like paper at the base. It’s not a new trick, but it’s a good one. His work has the obligatory and appealing contrast between what the eye sees and what the hand expects. Photo: Mongolia 10 by Raphael Morgan.
If brutal honesty, passionate angst and extraordinarily affecting personal songwriting is your jam, rejoice the return of Martha Wainwright to Australia for a massive, 12-date national tour. Part of a large, fractured musical family, it was perhaps fitting that Martha made her first big splash with 'Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole', a song at once heartbreaking and defiant, laying bare her difficult relationship with her father in an extraordinarily public way. And her forthcoming album, Come Home to Mama, continues this deeply personal approach to music, inspired by the six-month period in which she gave birth to her first child and lost her mother — legendary Canadian folk singer Kate McGarrigle — to cancer. But it's not all doom and gloom. Over the years Wainwright has established herself as a compelling and engaging performer with an extraordinary voice, one that will have you in tears one moment and tapping your feet the next. It won't be an easy night, but it could be an amazing one. https://youtube.com/watch?v=pX-bIr8dr6U
Hop on your bike and cycle down to Centennial Park to enjoy the inaugural East Side Ride on Sunday, April 21. This free community event is hoping to promote green living through an array of entertaining activities and workshops that range from edible gardens to bike polo displays, which you can enjoy whilst eating something from one of Sydney's eclectic food trucks. All this will take place amidst the backdrop of live jazz, reggae and soul from the delicious Directions in Groove, Kingtide and Lily Dior. There really will be something for everyone. The event, organised by EastsideFM and made possible by a $10,000 Environmental Grant from the City of Sydney, is hoping to promote green living inititatives, and Lord Mayor Clover Moore hopes that this begins with everyone cycling to East Side Ride to educate people "about how cycling can help tackle traffic congestion and keep you healthy". So trade those four wheels for two and ride on down for a feast of food, fun and entertainment. Main image by NealeA.
Twenty years ago, Tracey Moffatt became the first Australian Aboriginal woman to make a feature film, in the process polarising critics, who argued over whether BeDevil was a work of genius or a cinematic failure. Contemporary audiences will have the chance to make up their minds on Friday, April 19. Public intellectual and activist Professor Maria Langton AM has chosen BeDevil to open Debil Debil, an event combining a weekend-long cinema programme at Carriageworks with an exhibition at Anna Schwartz Gallery. Saturday, April 20 will see screenings of Rachel Perkins's stirring musical drama, One Night the Moon, and two works directed by Ivan Sen: his psychologically penetrating Wind, and his intimate study of life on the mission, Toomelah. A series of short films will run on Sunday, including works by Wesley Enoch, Darlene Johnson, Beck Cole and r e a. All screenings are free, but numbers are limited. Avoid disappointment by booking online.
Oblivion is like a 'Best of' album for sci-fi movies. It's got the isolation and planetary caretaking of Moon or WALL-E, the post-alien-invasion devastation of Independence Day, the memory wipes and insurgency of Total Recall, the sentient and menacingly red-eyed robots of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the 'You maniacs!...You BLEW IT UP-edness' of Planet of the Apes. In fact, with so many classic hits, it's like the I Am Sam soundtrack, but where one of the tracks is I Am Legend. So if it's not terrifically original — if what we're talking about here is essentially a 'covers' film — is it worth seeing? Well, yes, thankfully, because like any good covers album, the tributes are done lovingly, respectfully and with a just enough reinterpretation to keep you interested. Oblivion is directed by Tron: Legacy's Joseph Kosinski, whose touch is immediately obvious both cinematically and aurally (although this time the pulsing soundtrack is provided by M83 rather than Daft Punk). Set in a fantastically bleak 2077, humanity has abandoned Earth save for two individuals, Jack (Tom Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), whose job is to monitor and repair a small fleet of aggressive security drones that hunt down any remaining alien invaders. Like every old cop in an action movie, Jack and Victoria are just two weeks away from retirement when the unexpected crash landing of another human, Julia (Olga Kurylenko), throws a spanner into the works. Jack wants to know who she is, whilst Victoria doesn't want anything to threaten their plans to rejoin the rest of Earth's survivors on an off-planet sanctuary. Performance wise, Cruise is dependably solid, though its Riseborough who steals every one of their scenes. Her Stepford Wife-esque emotional repression more than makes up for their lacklustre sexual chemistry and becomes especially compelling once Kurylenko is introduced into the mix. Morgan Freeman also makes a cameo in a Morpheus-type role; however, his performance is both fleeting and unremarkable. The true star of Oblivion is in fact the production design, brought to life in astounding detail via Claudio Miranda's (Life of Pi) engaging cinematography. Jack and Victoria's exquisite airborne apartment sits atop Earth's expansive wastelands, and the scenes in both are equally sumptuous. Coupled with Oblivion's many sci-fi tributes, Kosinski and Miranda's vision offers an enjoyable and fast-paced film that should appeal to a broad audience.
Three new exhibitions at Artspace cast a searching light on the ties between artist and machine, civil life and technology. In the wake of Anish Kapoor’s giant automatic artworks, this show has removed the artist’s hand from the construction of the work. Contemporary art has gone Blade Runner, the future is here and the artists are absent. Kiwi art lecturer Simon Ingram has Frankensteined together three 21st Century painting machines. A paintbrush —daily replenished by the gallery staff who also choose the paint colour — is propelled across a massive canvass in random circles and stripes, easy as a machine. The ground here isn’t new, but to really look at these works is to realise that even in automation there is variation. The works are neither as uniform, nor as gridded as they first appear, and they are created during the show itself rather than in the studio. Meanwhile, Mari Velonaki has created and videoed a humanoid robot in a glacial landscape, accompanied by a soundtrack automatically generated by a swirling kinetic machine. Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders have installed a mystery motorised machine that lurks behind the gallery walls, hammering and perforating its way across them. Despite the coldness of this concept, it weirdly enlivens the gallery space, leaving a trail of white paint dust on the floor as it goes. Together, the artists have transformed the gallery into a dark, machine-spurred cavern of clicks, whirs and zips. As with much conceptual art, this is not a show for browsing and glancing - speak to the friendly Artspace staff and get amongst the shows’ written statements. The ideas are all there. Just delve in.
SET: The Play, created and directed by Sam Atwell, is a tale of two halves. The first half tells the behind-the-scenes story of the fictional Australian soap Obsessions, which intertwines around its male lead Finlay Jones (Trent Baines); the second half is a whodunnit investigating his shock homicide. The play's success is also divided — with the second act easily surpassing the first in its achievements. The play aims to satirise the glamorous world of television, and despite being well informed to do so — with almost all of the cast and production team having been involved with Home and Away at some point — it ironically manages to mock itself through an overuse of the style. The first act derides the 'sex sells' television mindset through a surfeit of sex jokes and suggestive acts, but the extent of the crudeness is so overwhelming that the actors seem too embarrassed to commit, making the audience feel uncomfortable. This works against the play when later attempts at audience inclusion falter due to the lingering unease. Ultimately, the play's endeavours to break down the fourth wall merely chip away at it, leaving rubble too dangerous for either actor or audience to approach. However, the second act redeems the first act as a necessary prelude to the highly entertaining investigation that follows. The interrogations allow for compelling comedic injection from charismatic cops Detective Bryan Sizemore (Christian Willis) and Leanne 'Stumbles' Bridges (Alison McGirr), and with the crass removed, we experience the amusing exploration of characters that was demanded earlier. The murder mystery is masterful, with everyone having a motive, and you'll think you have it all figured out before being surprisingly informed you were entirely mistaken. For all the cliffhanger talk on stage, the conclusion doesn't demand tuning in for the next episode, but it is still neatly delivered by the audience favourite, Delilah 'Double D' DeRouge (Madeleine Chaplain), even if it does feel rushed. SET: The Play's satirical swing at the world of television has the metaphorical batsman playing and missing, but it is nevertheless enjoyable, particularly when the charming detective duo and Delilah are involved. Whilst it will not create any 'obsessions' anytime soon, it still offers Sydney some theatrical fun worth sitting through the first act for.
Deerhoof's members are evidence that it pays to take risks. In a post-modern world, where it can sometimes feel as though everything that can be said has been said, they continue to come up with arrestingly original ideas. Every album reveals another sonic surprise. Their twelfth self-produced release, Breakup Song, is no exception. This time around, Cuban rhythms fuel the San Francisco noise group's unpredictable melodic adventures. According to drummer Greg Saunier, the album is about "just turning around a sort of bad mood and finding a way to turn it into a good mood." As much as a Deerhoof record can definitely beat back the blues in the comfort of your lounge room, it doesn't match up to the experience of seeing them live. Their edgy creativity takes on a whole new dimension in front of a crowd. https://youtube.com/watch?v=u7DpLne1abo
Liberty Equality Fraternity, currently playing at the Ensemble Theatre, is a friendly farce about internet security and bureaucratic incompetence at ASIO. Looking to Kafka and referencing The Matrix, Geoffrey Atherden of Mother and Son fame has written a spy story meets existential crisis. Designer Michael Hankin has created a fittingly bland setting for the ASIO headquarters, with a beige office housing a pot plant, table, and chairs and a large smart screen on the wall. Sound designer Stephen Toulmin has successfully sourced the world’s most annoying waiting room music to set the scene. Left-leaning mother of two Orlagh (Caroline Brazier) has found herself in an interrogation room only to be worn down not by torture but by the bumbling ineptitude of trainee interrogator Alex (Andrew Ryan). Orlagh doesn't know why she's there and nor, it seems, does he (despite the vast amount of data he has gleaned from the internet about her). His willful stupidity drives us and Orlagh to the edge. Ryan has characterised Alex as a sort of David Brent who by some recruitment miracle has found employment as a spy. The sheer length of his dim interrogation is almost too much to bear, and while comic moments offer some respite, the first half of the play is endurance viewing. Brazier as Orlagh makes a believable eastern suburbs mother, but her journey from terrified to triumphant is slightly off kilter. We're never quite sure how high the stakes are as she shifts between panicked concern for her children and delirious but always friendly banter with Alex. Helmut Bakaitis's entrance is a welcome reprieve from Alex, and we find him playing the same type of well-healed sage he played in The Matrix Reloaded. Just as he explained the Matrix to Neo, he calmly explains the much less glamorous situation to Orlagh. This moment of parody is dramatically satisfying and Bakaitis's performance is beautifully polished. Structurally the play is slightly wonky; Atherden's writing takes itself too seriously to amount to a wicked comedy, and the fluid reality set up by Shannon Murphy's direction is not fully realised. It's an interesting topic but the bones of the play are not solid enough for it to be fulfilling. Photo by Heidrun Lohr.
Now that New Year’s resolutions are well in the past you no longer need an excuse to drink mid-week and eat pizza, but Li’l Darlin’s Surry Hills outpost has one anyway. Each Wednesday from 8.30pm until late they’re serving up a big slice of acoustic goodness along with their signature pizzas and cocktails, starting with 25-year-old Sydney singer/songwriter Jordan Millar. Millar’s jam is pretty folksy pop backed by bluesy riffs and an addictive intimacy — it’s stirring, yet still provides a light balance to a plate of Crispy Chilli Chicken Drummers ($11.90). His quietly (and independently) released EPs have sold thousands of copies since he released the first back in 2009, and since then he’s been touring with the likes of The Fray, Xavier Rudd, Colin Hay and Tim Freedman. Millar’s new album Cold Lights On Curious Minds came out just last week, so it’s a good chance to try before you buy.
Young writers often get told, 'write what you know'. Which is partially sound advice, and also partially to blame for there being so many plays about what could boil down to #firstworldproblems. Making theatre that presents something different than middle-class life to someone beyond middle-class audiences means both writers having to step outside their comfort zone and theatre companies having to cast a wide net for writers. A little bit of both is going on with Belvoir's stunning This Heaven, the first production in the smaller Downstairs Theatre for the year. The debut full-length play from 2012 Belvoir associate playwright and arts/law student Nakkiah Lui, it deals with what happens when the legal system does not furnish justice. Sissy (Jada Alberts) has her beliefs uprooted when her father dies in police custody and the court does not hold anyone responsible, issuing only a speck of a fine. Her family has always abided by not just the law but social expectations of what a 'good' Aboriginal family does: she's studying law to change the world, and her mother, Joan (Tessa Rose), is the Aboriginal liaison officer at the very station where her husband, a respected community member, died. Their new circumstances are a slap in the face. Sissy and her reactive younger brother, Ducky (Travis Cardona), are desperate, angry, and in total turmoil when they set in motion the events that will kindle violence in their neighbourhood. Watching This Heaven may be the first and only time a riot makes so much sense, which is exactly the sort of vast empathetic gulf we go to the theatre to cross. It's incredibly alive and unaffected, and it strikes a sonorous note of injustice. The power of it comes almost as a surprise given more cookie-cutter beginnings, in which Lui is invoking the inspiration that clearly possesses her as the play carries on. There is another character on stage, who spends most of his time with us quietly chain-smoking in a tracksuit top and ugly trainers. This Heaven would not be the same without the big-hearted attention eventually given to him, and the revealing performance of Joshua Anderson in the role. Between them, he and Alberts take This Heaven to the next level. Director Lee Lewis has used blackout and real fire to heighten the sense of danger and instability, and the metal swingset frame of the set (by Sophie Fletcher) doesn't hurt either, ringing out a reverberating clang when struck in the dark. You go, Nakkiah, this is an astonishing debut. Her next play has the working title Koorioke, so that can only go well.
When I hear the words, "a tale of a boy and his horse", my thoughts stray to the heartfelt moments of The NeverEnding Story where Atreyu bids farewell to poor Artax in the Swamp of Sadness. In Atreyu's screams and Artax's wild eyes, my childhood self felt a shiver of understanding about the bond between humans and animals. There are definitely a few of these damp-eye moments in the National Theatre of Great Britain's production of War Horse, but they are overshadowed by what this show is really about: fantastic puppetry and some tight choreography. Based on Michael Morpurgo's 1982 novel of the same name, War Horse was adapted for the stage by British playwright Nick Stafford and directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris way back in 2007. Opening shortly before the start of the First World War, War Horse is the love story of a Devonshire lad, Albert (Cody Fern), and a young foal, Joey, who, once it's come of age, is sold into service for the British Army. Seeing the injustice in this, our boy hero fights against age restrictions and cartwheels to Calais to save Joey, at which point his youthful bravado is tear-gassed into the harsh reality of early modern warfare. The play proved to be such a tremendous success that it relocated to the West End, then to Broadway and has now manifested in the antipodes at the Lyric Theatre. War Horse owes its longevity to South Africa's Handspring Puppet Company, which has created a stable of horses, some soon-to-die cavalry, crows, swallows and a very animated goose. Though surrounded by puppeteers and, in parts, constructed out of obviously mechanical pieces, these puppets realistically breath and quickly pop out as the most genuine players in the show. Apparently Morpurgo was surprised to hear that his novel was being adapted for the stage. This is with good reason — the length that a novel has with which to enter the lives of its many characters is far longer than the 135 minutes allowed by a theatre audience's patience. The result is that War Horse limps through several overly sentimental, surface-level episodes that were probably very satisfying on the page. A twee relationship between a German deserter and a rural French family is particularly shallow. It is in the archetypal that War Horse's narrative works, in the dramatic sequences of puppets and choreographed soldiers clashing on field of cruel warfare. A strong creative team featuring set and costume designer Rae Smith, sound designers Christopher Shutt and John Owens, lighting designer Karen Spann and choreographer Toby Sedgwick produce several powerful moments on the Lyric stage, with a doomed cavalry charge and Joey's gallop for freedom amongst tanks and barbed wire especially moving. War Horse has marked thousands of audiences by now, and it is certainly worth watching as a celebration of theatre craftsmanship. However, it would excel with a tighter script and less reliance on puppets to sell the story. https://youtube.com/watch?v=9a9-zLDqx5g
Art plus bar. This almost universal gallery opening deal is a pretty tasty mix already. But the MCA adds extras to this time-honoured tradition with its now SMAC-winning series ARTBAR. They're evenings of strange and interesting things at play among the art, recurring monthly and curated by a rotating cast of local artists. This month's art interventionist is Emma Price of the Starbuck-buzzing Kingpins. Her Artbar occupation runs along the theme of love, with performance promised, a kissing booth and some lecturing on amore.
What is the psychological draw of the miniature? Smallness has its own ineffable appeal, and the artists in Speculative Spaces, curated by David Eastwood, explore their own attraction to miniature models, with petite dioramas and maquettes, and with other expressions across varied media, from oil paint to clay to perspex to video to plywood. Featured artists include Kylie Banyard (Galerie pompom), Anna Carey (Artereal Gallery), David Eastwood (Robin Gibson Gallery), Eugenia Ivanissevich (Robin Gibson Gallery), Col Jordan (Mossenson Galleries & Peter Pinson Gallery), Mark Kimber (Stills Gallery), Amanda Marburg (Olsen Irwin Gallery), Rob McHaffie (Darren Knight Gallery) and Peter Nelson. The show is also open late on March 22 as part of the Precinct Nights schedule. Speculative Spaces is part of Art Month 2013. Check out our guide to the festival's ten best events here.
The world's most unpredictable duo is back. This time around, the girls are armed with their new "Objekt Instruments" — handmade technology that traverses the territory between the functional and the aesthetic — and some new tunes from their soon-to-be-released electroclash album, Scream. During the past year, they've played at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary's tenth anniversary; hosted their first pop-up shop in Osaka, Japan; and "lectured" at the Milan Art Fair. They're currently completing a two-month residency at Artspace, Sydney, and one half of the team, Melissa Logan, has started researching for a PhD in Biological Arts at UTS. If you've never witnessed Chicks on Speed before, prepare yourself for an outrageous, irreverent hybrid of art, video, fashion, technology and music. In the words of Logan, they're all about "getting to the blatant points and not pussy-footing around." https://youtube.com/watch?v=g_1kziD6Lec
Multiple media collide in SCREAM, the latest high-octane offering from European hyper-creative collective Chicks on Speed. Fresh from their residency at ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, for this exhibition the Chicks have hatched an interactive app that lets spectators participate in the artwork. A combo of live performance and technological mayhem, SCREAM centres on a huge sculpture that plays canvas to the iPad-controlled whims of the viewer, who can pick and mix the audiovisual elements that are projected into the space. The work is a logical progression from the Chicks' Objekt Instruments, which landed here during Mardi Gras. Colliding art, fashion and music, you can see them firsthand at the Red Rattler on March 8. SCREAM is part of Art Month 2013. Check out our guide to the festival's ten best events here.
Ever since Urthboy's pioneering hip-hop crew The Herd welcomed the political demise of John Howard with"finally the king is dead we cried off with his head", it was clear this was one rapper who didn't fit hip hop's chest-beating conventions. And now the man born Tim Levinson is bringing his unique brand of Aussie hip-hop to the Annandale. Since the chart-topping success of Macklemore's marriage equality anthem 'Same Love', hip hop with a conscience has been back in a big way. Yet while Macklemore trades in gimmickry and overt sentimentality, Urthboy offers his fans a heady mix of brains and the lefty protestor, with songs that tackle that most unsexy of topics: politics. With everything from Australia's refugee policy ('77%') to the national flag ('Empire Tags') to Rudd's infamous 'Sorry speech' (in a GetUp!-sponsored reworking of the Paul Kelly classic 'From Little Things Big Things Grow'), Urthboy has become an unintentional and unlikely voice of a generation. He's now showing off a host of fresh new tunes from his hit album Smokey Haunts, so there has never been a better time to don your favourite Che Guevara T-shirt and jump on the Urthboy train. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xc_V6qqx70I
Daniel Lopatin's 2011 album Replica won him Best New Music, but he was steering analogue synths through unchartered territory long before the tastemakers caught on. Not to suggest Pitchfork was slow on the uptake or anything — Lopatin's first few albums were released on cassette only, making them significantly less RTable than SoundCloud uploads. It's the retro equipment though that makes Oneohtrix (pronounced "one-oh-trix) Point Never's progressive sound so immediate and so immediately recognisable. Droning synths (made on an old Roland Juno-60) are scraped through astral echoes and across jittery chord progressions, giving them an intimacy that's heightened further by the hiss of black thread. He's managed to keep that sound while incorporating both noise and accessible melodies in 2010's Returnal, and venturing into 2011 with an album recorded on studio software. Which is great because, you know, Spotify and stuff. https://youtube.com/watch?v=hiwi7d0f91Y
After recent exploits in the US and Europe, PVT are becoming old hands at the whole ‘touring’ thing. They’ve supported high profile acts such as Bloc Party, Menomena and Gotye and, over the course of their career to date, have toured Australia several times in support of their creative efforts. The latest of these efforts is Homosapien, a thrilling example of PVT’s instrumental prowess and creative capabilities. This album is their fourth, and it brings together all of the great elements of their previous releases dating back to 2005 (released under the name Pivot). They have wasted no time in inserting themselves into the Australian music consciousness. Indeed, the trio have had taken the country by storm with their brand of electro-laden music that blends ethereal elements with grounded, contemporary hooks. Homosapien sees the band place more emphasis on vocals, adding an intimate element to their experimental soundscapes. Joining PVT on their tour is the up and coming electro-RNB duo, Collarbones, who have been making waves since releasing Die Young last year. They are being hailed as a great genre-bending talent, much like their tour buddies, PVT. Get in quick and secure a ticket. Trust me, you’ll be blown away.
It's sad to say goodbye now that autumn's come, but City Farm is sending the program off in tasty style by hosting a grand harvest finale and hoedown. We tend to be woefully out of touch with the earth in the city. The City Farm's Summer Garden initiative, however, has helped Sydneysiders reconnect to the soil by offering a rich, educational program all about getting farm-fresh food from sustainable local sources. Sourcing ingredients from the garden itself, TMOD and Yulli's brainchild The Veggie Patch Food Van will be serving up dishes that combine ultimate freshness with artistic flair. OzHarvest will also be on hand to inspire ecological thinking with tips on how to reduce food waste at home. This nonprofit rescues excess food that would otherwise become landfill and passes it on to needy bellies — helping both people and the environment. Good food demands good music, so three-piece bluegrass band Oh Willy Dear (who have recently delighted ears at the Union, Arcadia Liquors and the Old Fitzroy) will provide the jig-worthy soundtrack to it all.
Popcorn Taxi is set to air one of the world's most highly anticipated TV series, Top of the Lake. The screening will also feature a Q&A with the miniseries' writer/director Jane Campion (the legendary filmmaker behind The Piano and Bright Star) and co-writer Gerard Lee. Top of the Lake, a murder mystery starring Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss that's said to be Twin Peaks-esque, made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was greeted with a standing ovation. The show will air on March 24 on the Sundance Channel in the US, BBC Two in the UK, and UKTV on Foxtel in Australia. This is your chance to see an exclusive screening of the show before it airs internationally — something that any TV lover wouldn't want to miss.
Since selling out two Oxford Art Factories in less than ten 10 minutes back in January, Foals have relased their third studio album, Holy Fire — a sweeping follow up to their sophomore effort Total Life Forever. Holy Fire is an uninhibited mix of emotion and instrument, and should give Yannis Philippakis and the crew plenty of juice with which to fuel their notoriously savage live sets. But while it doesn't stray far from Foals' addictive sound, a blend of riffy math rock and danceable electronics, the album does sound more cohesive than anything the band has released previously. Tickets for Foals Enmore Theatre show go on sale Monday, 18 March at 9am. https://youtube.com/watch?v=qJ_PMvjmC6M
It seems pretty safe to say that us Sydneysiders are absolutely, undeniably food obsessed. And not just in an instagramming our food way. Just check out how many food festivals we have. Yup, it's a lot. Taste of Sydney is the next one on the food calendar, running from March 14-17, and if you've never been before, just picture Centennial Park covered in food, alcohol, and chefs under white tents. It's kinda like the food and cocktail circus is in town. You might also want to drop by one of the 20 restaurant stands, like 4Fourteen, The Woods, or Efendy. Here are our picks of the best stuff on. Read our guide to grazing your way through Taste of Sydney here.
Noel McKenna takes centre stage in the MCA's South of no North. The exhibition matches up McKenna with overseas artists Laurence Aberhart (New Zealand) and William Eggleston (USA), whose photography has been selected by McKenna to accompany his paintings. The three artists' plaintive urban landscapes are a perfect match for one another: McKenna's blue-tinted world, Eggleton's quiet streetscapes and Aberhart's visions of New Zealand and the USA. McKenna's Priest in Room feels like it escaped from Picasso's blue period with its optimism intact. Picasso's harder realism from the period doesn't make the leap, but the cool bleakness of scene does. At its centre, the priest sits behind a candle and religious toy blocks. Amid the grey malaise, he's a ray of diligence, reassurance and optimism. His eyes radiate warmth much more than his candle. Eggleton's Untitled from Troubled Waters and Untitled (Greenwood Mississippi) move this same sense of urban drift outside. The warmth of McKenna's images of animals and people are the highlight of the show, especially Boy Dressed as Batman's mix of adult savvy and child's instinct, as well as Boy's room, Brisbane 1967 where a watchful cat stands in for a missing owner. He also paints three of Australia's oversize roadside attractions, including the Big Rocking Horse, Gumeracha. They match nicely with Eggleton's Untitled, Memphis, a striking photo of a child's tricycle framed as though gargantuan. The composition and subjects of Aberhart and Eggleton's photography are beautiful. It's hard to deny their technical skill. But the distance in these images is relentless. They are not new images, many coming from in or before the 1970s. They show big American urban sprawl, where the pop culture of the roadside attraction mixes with the realities of everyday life. It's a combination of cool and decay. A decade ago there would have been easily enough fun in that to hold up an exhibition. But since 2000, pop culture has given us more nuanced explorations of rural and urban wastelands, like Ghost World or No Country for Old Men. The American cultural overflow we receive by proxy on our screens these days have moved on to weightier themes and to different locales, the occasional Breaking Bad notwithstanding. It's hard for a contemporary Australian viewer to connect with these empty spaces without a stronger sense of who should be filling them. There's no fault in the photos themselves. They are simply orphaned here in 2013. Their emptiness doesn't move you. And they don't bring the past into the present. Noel McKenna, Big Rocking Horse, Gumeracha, South Australia © the artist
Is the Biennale of Sydney (BOS) the Australian art world's Hollywood blockbuster? It’s an institution. It is big budgets, celebrity artists and dazzling settings. But if it is art’s equivalent of the blockbuster, it’s not just disposable entertainment and pure spectacle. The BOS is also not just a three-month exhibition and program of artist talks, performances, forums and film screenings (all free, might I add). It’s also a link to the global art world, which can often feel far away from Australia. There are dozens of international artists exhibiting at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cockatoo Island, Walsh Bay, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Carriageworks. The joy of the Biennale is that it disproves that much beloved myth: that contemporary art is inaccessible, irritating and elitist. The BoS, now coming of age with its eighteenth birthday, has thoroughly wound itself into Sydney, no, Australia’s, arts calendar. Thousands of pilgrims will ferry over to Cockatoo Island, once an industrial graveyard and now a premier entertainment and tourist precinct, and a work of art in and of itself. It is at once a portal into Sydney’s industrial past and a glimpse of contemporary art’s future. The big question is: will the Island overbear the curated artworks, as it has in earlier years? Let’s do the impossible and pinpoint a couple of highlights. The 18th Biennale of Sydney, themed "all our relations", kicks off with a special ARTbar night at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Friday June 29. This is a new range of events for the MCA, and it’s exciting to see more Sydney institutions dip into the realm of late night programming with a focus on culture and community rather than clubbing and drunkenness. This ARTbar installment is all about the mechanics and bipolar excellence/strangeness of cinema. There’ll be pianos with pinballs, inflatable delusions, 1960’s 3D cinema and the opportunity to view the Biennale exhibition spaces on levels 1 and 3. Lastly, Art Lounges at Cockatoo Island and Pier 2/3 will provide more free, public spaces to engage with the ideas of the Biennale. FBi Radio is coming on board to run the Biennale Bar from 6.30–9.30 pm every Friday throughout August (3, 10, 17, 24 and 31 August) at Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay. Image by Ann Veronica Janssens "Blue Red and Yellow" (detail) 2001
For three days of delectable aromas and delicious flavours dieters should ditch the calorie counter and prepare to get their taste buds racing as hundreds of leading food producers, wine makers and chefs come together at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre for the Good Food and Wine Show. With celebrity chefs, master classes and more dishes than a stomach can handle there’s so much to sink your teeth into (pun intended), at what has to be any food lover’s dream weekend. Fans of TV cook-offs can watch in awe as famous names like George Calombaris, Manu Feildel and Matt Moran show off their culinary craft at the Fisher & Paykel Theatre, or simply lose themselves in a sea of flavour. Concrete Playground has two double passes to the Good Food and Wine Show to give away. For your chance to win, subscribe to Concrete Playground (if you haven't already) then email hello@concreteplayground.com.au
As digital accessibility continues to erode traditional methods for the communal experience of artistic events, more and more creatives are coming up with new ways to keep old-school activities relevant. Underground Cinema is one of the champions. No more checking schedule times, reading reviews to determine the pick-of-the-programme, queuing for tickets or choosing between popcorn and choc tops. Underground Cinema (or UGC for short) doesn't involve merely seeing a film; it's an immersive experience. Participants purchase tickets online knowing only the theme, date and time of the event. They're clueless as regards to where they're going to meet, what they're going to see or who's behind the programme. Upon receiving notice of a top-secret location (anywhere from a parking lot to a disused ballroom to an abandoned warehouse), they turn up to enter not a cinema but an alternate universe, arranged according to the ethos of the movie they're about to see. That means live performances, music, costumes and who knows what else. The next UGC event intends to transport attendees to 1950s Hollywood. "It's swinging, saucy and sexy," reads the site. "We've got big bands, colour TV and stars in our eyes. It's a world of glitz and glamour, allure and attraction, but beware — all that glitters is not gold." Tickets for the Sydney event go on sale on Tuesday, August 27, at 1pm from the Underground Cinema website. https://youtube.com/watch?v=3UMG2fXsyAU
This article is sponsored by our partner The City of Sydney. The tail end of 2013 is heating up for Sydney's fashion set, as Vogue brings Fashion's Night Out back to the CBD on 5 September, hot on the heels of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Festival (21-24 August). It's your annual chance to taste the VIP experience as our premier shopping precinct is transformed into a playground of style from 5pm. Shoppers can expect exclusive deals from select participating retailers, including a Christian Louboutin shoe style that will only be available on the night through their Westfield store, along with live entertainment and celebrity appearances. Enjoy champagne and 10 percent off the Spring/Summer 13/14 collection at Manning Cartell, canapes and artisanal leather embossing at MIMCO, and fashion blogger styling and 15 percent off your favourite designers at The Corner Store. Runways are set to litter the city, while beauty consultants and manicurists attend to your grooming needs. There is no word yet on specific musicians and DJs performing this year, but if 2012's celebration of the songstress (headlined by Megan Washington) is any indication, we can vouch for the entertainment value. For full details on participating retailers and events head to the event website. Image by Nicole Bentley.
Although Lior Attar and Nigel Westlake originate from different corners of the musical world, they both have a reputation for emotionally charged compositions. The raw sincerity of Lior's Autumn Flow saw it become one Australia's most successful debut independent releases, whilst Westlake's stirring 2011 tribute to his murdered son, Missa Solis: Requiem for Eli, brought Sydney audiences to tears. Now, the two are collaborating for the first time, on a symphony titled Compassion. Marrying Lior's striking vocal powers with Westlake's riotous orchestral arrangements, it's a powerful, melodic work, inspired by a selection of ancient Jewish and Islamic writings. The piece will be premiered at the Sydney Opera House on September 6, with Lior at centrestage and Westlake conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The first half of the evening will feature orchestral arrangements of some of Lior's most well-loved original songs, including 'Daniel', 'Bedouin' and 'This Old Love'. https://youtube.com/watch?v=cYn8BfY0TRM
Get your cat-eye sunnies at the ready, Sydney’s Fifties Fair is set to hit town this August for its 18th year running. For all you retro rookies, the annual event is held at the Rose Seidler House of Wahroonga, a Bauhaus time capsule made easily accessible by a free shuttle bus to and fro Turramurra station. The fair will be kicking off at 10am, with plenty of rockabilly acts to get you jiving, beauty parlours, burgers by the crew from Porteno, as well as dreamy '50s furnishings, fashion, trinkets, photography exhibitions and the like for you to ogle. So head en route to the Rose Seidler House in your Buick, 'cause August 25 is coming around faster than Betty Draper can spark up a curling iron.
Writer-director Sarah Polley's follow-up to the much-loved drama Away from Her, Take This Waltz, follows the story of freelance writer Margot (Michelle Williams) as she meets a rickshaw driver from Toronto, Daniel (Luke Kirby). Margot shares with him an uncontrollable sexual chemistry, and when they realise they live just across the street from each other, the bombshell is dropped: Margot is happily married to sweetheart husband Lou (Seth Rogen), a gentle and caring cookbook writer. Margot finds herself in a complex and conflicting situation, not knowing whether her comfortable routine with her husband, whom she still loves, is enough in the face of the fiery desire of her alluring neighbour. She finds herself frequently trying to bump into the young man and testing the limits of her resolve by having late-night pool dips and sipping margaritas with him, yet not actually acting on the attraction. Far from being a shallow display of trivial conflicting desires, the movie poignantly illustrates the internal dilemma of whether familiarity and comfort will suffice when they come up against the temptation of exotic sex, romance, and art. Williams gives a heartwarming and evocative performance, making audiences sympathise and identify with her plight. Similarly moving displays from Rogen and Kirby work to make this film a heartwarming and complex production, which is a must-see for romantics and cynics alike. We're giving away tickets to Take This Waltz. Enter here. https://youtube.com/watch?v=xUQTNY5yaVk
So it's a book. Not a film, not a day at the beach, not a party. James Joyce's (recently more public-domained) Ulysses is set across the single day of June 16 in 1904. And on June 16 every year, Bloom lovers (like Stephen Fry) get together to read the book out loud, attempting to squeeze it into a single day themselves. This year's Irish odyssey is being brought to life with the first Bloomsday on Bondi. Leaving you with film, Guinness, and a bit of beach to go with your book loving. It's a drop-in, drop-out affair, with music and beer on tap throughout the day, and a midday, free reading followed by a screening (also free) of Nora, starring Susan Lynch and Ewan McGregor (possibly only once before screened in Sydney). Before lunch, the opening chapters meet Buck Mulligan's Breakfast and after seven O'Punsky's Theatre offers up the day's climactic reading. Breakfast and evening sessions are paid events and need to be booked. Can't catch it at Bondi? Listen to the BBC version the day after or download the original. https://youtube.com/watch?v=JT367gsMEvo
Cool nomenclature combines with music, dance, storytelling, humour and animation in RRAMP: The Collector, the Archivist & the Electrocrat. Employing the romantically grotesque animation of Ahmarnya Price, it tells the story of the Collector, the tall lady-of-the-house, and the unsuspecting band members she recruits. RRAMP: The Collector, the Archivist & the Electrocrat is part of the Performance Space season Show On. Read about the other shows here.
The Lunarcade is rolling into town this week and you had better be concerned. A circus of madness and joy, of lateral thought and digital poetry, Lunarcade will have you prying open your ribcages and allowing the child inside to leap bloodily for the nearest game controller. Landing in Serial Space for just seven days, Lunarcade is an international festival of independent games that are putting the art back into artificial intelligence. The theme for the Sydney season is 'Spatial Narrative', and audiences are invited to take part in games both completed and in-development that engage storytelling practices in real and virtual spaces. Heavily represented are games that place more focus on exploring alternate worlds, with almost none of the bloodshed that has become the opiate of mainstream gaming masses. In place of the lust for gunfire, you have atmospheric, taut mysteries that unfold in realtime. Already available for purchase is Dear Esther, a ghost romance by Dan Pinchbeck that often feels like you're reading a novel hidden in beautiful graphics. Equally seductive is the yet-to-be-completed Lifeless Planet, which plunges you into the suit of an American astronaut exploring a distant, presumed uninhabited planet, only to find that Soviet Russia got there first. More intriguing, though, may be the emergent tales from the in-progress Memories of a Broken Dimension, with a game world that appears to be glimpsed through an MRI scanner and almost nothing else known about it except for some forum posts about satellite orbits. Similarly, there is the aptly titled TRIP, which all but challenges you to explore its polygon acid kingdom with your sanity intact. Finally, and perhaps the most likely to enthuse with bursts of glee, is the real-space game J.S. Joust, which runs each evening at 7pm. Grab your friends, prepare your slow-speed control, and prepare to make some new enemies before the night is over. https://youtube.com/watch?v=5y1P2BUCeuc
Theatre is the art of the voice, of the story, and of the connection between people to create a temporary community. What is necessary in a city of Sydney's size is that the voices making these connections are not all speaking with the same timbre. One representative of this broadening chorus is the StoryLines Festival — a co-production of bAKEHOUSE Theatre Company, Tamarama Rocksurfers, and the National Institute of Dramatic Art — which has a boutique program featuring artists from African, Indigenous, Islamic and Malaysian backgrounds. At the core of the festival, which is hosted both at NIDA's Parade Theatres and the Bondi Pavilion, are three plays written by award-winning Australian playwright Justin Fleming: A Land Beyond the River, Junction, and Coup d'Etat. However, surrounding these works are exhibitions and a public forum, hosted by James Valentine, that seek to connect communities throughout Sydney via the arts. Found herein are works from Sarah Barker, Steven Floyd, the Villawood Refugee Centre and the Kinchela Boys' Home, all presented under the title 'Voices and Visions'. As well as these cultural events, the StoryLines Festival is supporting fundraising for South Sudan Educates Girls and the establishment of the Kinchela Boys' Home Belonging Place. The StoryLines Festival runs from July 31 until August 5 at NIDA Parade Studios, and from August 8-26 at Bondi Pavilion.
It was the late Robert Hughes who asked: “What does one prefer? An art that struggles to change the social contract, but fails? Or one that seeks to please and amuse, and succeeds?” Following the downfall of the Soviet bloc more than twenty years ago, the question of changing the social contract fell out of the international conversation entirely. It wasn’t until the Global Financial Crisis and the Occupy movement that the other 'c' word (capitalism) returned to the collective vocabulary, and suddenly even Time magazine was asking whether Karl Marx was right after all. These questions have finally trickled down to the art world, which is often concerned more with such incisive issues as the musical abilities of Laurie Anderson’s dog. Everything Falls Apart (Part II) is a curated exhibition about the collapse of political systems, and it arrives at a time when the social order seems more threatened by its own myriad internal contradictions than by outside dangers like terrorism or invasion. As such, the show’s strength lies in its portrayal of an empire crumbling from the inside. Its weakness is that solutions and alternatives to capitalism’s crisis are only remotely alluded to, perhaps due to a fear of reinforcing the idea that political art is necessarily preachy, myopic and didactic. Vernon Ah Kee’s four channel video work Tall Man stands out as a confronting reminder that Australia’s colonial nature does not lie in some mythological, distant past, but continues into the present. The video is accompanied by two spectacular close-up large-scale portraits of an Aboriginal man whose steely and unashamed gaze is profoundly moving. It's a reminder that contemporary artists can talk about the things that should matter in a universal and human way that doesn't alienate audiences. The show is accompanied by a symposium entitled 'Another World' on Friday August 17 (free, 10am-4.30pm) which discusses the role of art in a volatile society, and three free film screenings of New Zealand doco Patu! by Merata Mita (details here). Image: Tall Man by Vernon Ah Kee, 2010
The Powerhouse may revive memories of some dorky, primary school excursions, but its late night series has us pumped. (Did you go eat 3D-printed chocolate last time the museum opened its doors after-hours?) This time around the it plunges further into new technologies, with an interactive, electronic art hallapalooza called Electric Dreams. Aside from late viewings of current ISEA exhibitions — Experimenta Speak to me, Semipermeable (+), and Synapse: a Selection — there's a whole program of artist talks and fun stuff to do. Among ISEA2013's artists, Katie Turnbull, George Khut and Benjamin Forster will all speak about their work. Meanwhile James Nichols helps you make your own party machines, Beryl Nicolai lets you wield a camera lucida, and Melinda Young provides old computer parts for you to craft into awesome jewellery. Google Earth Liquid Galaxy and Streetview Hyperlapse cameo for your interative pleasure, and the soundtrack for the night features the brilliantly named Rainbow Chan, who mashes up antique music boxes with 8-bit keyboards. The real clincher is the chance to play a bunch of throwback video games — Pac Man and Donkey Kong will also be in attendance.
The Nicholson Museum’s Lego Colosseum was a big hit last year. Vast and ambitious — on a Lego scale — the Colosseum was a cutaway of the famous Roman monument rendered in Danish brick by certified Lego Professional Ryan McNaught. This year, the Museum has commissioned McNaught to return to build a new ancient Mediterranean archaeological construction: the Lego Acropolis. The real Acropolis is a hill towering above Athens, whose most famous, ancient resident is the Parthenon. You can see the real one in Athens, a full-size fake one in Nashville and now the Lego version here in Sydney. The real Parthenon has been a temple, a church, a mosque and gunpowder storage. (And the building only became a ruin when the storage thing collided with a Venetian cannonball.) It’s also the object at the centre in one of the best-known, public archaeological debates. (In fact, this one will feature a Lego Lord Elgin.) This one is unlikely to become the centre of debate, but it should make for some pretty interesting conversation, nonetheless. The Acropolis will have a grand opening Saturday, July 6 from 10–4. It comes with Greek soldiers. The Nicholson Museum is open 10–4.30 Monday to Friday and 12–4 the first Saturday of the month.
We Steal Secrets is the story of Wikileaks, and from the outset it fast becomes apparent how little you know of an organisation dedicated to transparency and the sharing of information. Directed by Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), the documentary mirrors the real-world by focusing on two key individuals: Wikileaks' Australian founder Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, the US soldier whose disclosure of classified documents thrust Assange onto the world stage. The stories of the two men are told with surprising sensitivity, particularly in the case of Manning, who — on account of his ongoing incarceration — is represented exclusively by typed words on a screen. Sent over the course of his deployment in Iraq, the catalogue of Manning's brief online exchanges with various hackers reveals an extraordinarily lonely soul unable to reconcile serious questions about both his own identity and what he perceived to be the ongoing cover-up of atrocities by the US Government. "I want people to see the truth," he wrote, just before leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to Assange. "It affects everyone on earth." The altruistic tone of Manning's narrative seems entirely genuine, particularly when set against the supposedly similar motivations driving Assange. The now infamous 'hacktivist' refused to be interviewed for the film unless he was paid $1 million; however, his willingness to jump in front of cameras over the preceding years provided Gibney with more than enough material with which to paint a fascinating portrait of the Wikileaks founder. Coupled with interviews from the organisation's supporters, employees, detractors and pursuers, Assange emerges as a largely paranoid narcissist, championing free speech whilst doing everything he can to ensure no one speaks freely about him. And yet, as is pointed out during the film, Assange's paranoia isn't necessarily always unjustified. The rhetoric (and hypocrisy) of the US Government's condemnation of him is at best fascinating and at worst quite concerning. Both the New York Times and the Guardian collaborated on the publication of the leaked documents, yet neither of those organisations' editors have been indicted or even publicly criticised. In all, We Steal Secrets achieves a fine balance in its depiction of two men whose lives became inextricably linked and, thereafter, changed almost certainly for the worse. Assange sits seeking political asylum within a small room inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and Manning's trial has only now just begun in the United States. In attempting to justify his impending leak, Manning ultimately wrote: "I...care?" This documentary will compel you to do the same, though where you'll fall in your opinion will depend on who you choose to believe. https://youtube.com/watch?v=SdezJrNaL70
Don't know your music history? Want to? One of the most public-spirited sidelines of this year's Fringe Festival will be the 2SER-fronted series of musical evenings at new festival hub Emerald City Garden Bar. Stepping in for former festival focus 5 Eliza, this new venue brings the Fringe to the Seymour Centre courtyard, offering weekend DJs and free Friday night Fringe teaser nights to whet your appetite for the week to come. In the History of.. series, two hours across three September Thursdays will feature 2SER presenters and friends to shepherd you through key DJs, Motown and Afro-Caribbean beats. The series comes with evenings of Hip Hop (12 September), Funk & Soul (19 September) and Rhythm Out of Afrika (26 September) at 7pm. Read the rest of our top ten picks of the Sydney Fringe Festival 2013.
Daniel Mudie Cunningham is a Sydney-based artist, curator, writer and cultural critic, currently the chairman of dLux MediaArts and senior curator at Artbank. His works draw on and rethink the image streams of art history, everyday life, popular culture and fandom, demonstrated mainly through video and performance. In 2012 his piece Funeral Songs — a jukebox that plays a mix of songs people have said they'd like played at their funerals — was included as part of the permanent collection at Hobart's MONA. He's currently working on a project that will reflect on the Cronulla Riots ten years on and how its visual history intersects with the seemingly very different Stonewall Riots of 1969. More immediately, Cunningham is going back in time, re-performing his 1993 work Gender is a Drag at ALASKA Projects in Sydney. It's the 20th anniversary of the work, which also marked the artist's first public performance. Image by Ross Cunningham.
We're first introduced to Jasmine (Cate Blanchett), an unpleasant socialite who's fallen on hard times, as she talks the ear off a poor woman on a plane to San Francisco, her fellow passenger having made the mistake of interrupting a monologue she was having with herself. It's a fitting introduction to Woody Allen's claustrophobic new drama, which follows Jasmine to San Francisco, where she hopes to start afresh after her husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin), is exposed as a fraudster and adulterer. An unrepentant snob with a haughty bearing and a wardrobe full of designer clothes, Jasmine finds herself at odds with her adopted sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins), whom she plans to stay with until she is back on her feet. Jasmine had little time for Ginger when she was living high on the hog in Manhattan and finds herself appalled at Ginger's working-class lifestyle and new boyfriend, Chili (Bobby Cannavale), a mechanic. Still clinging to her old luxurious lifestyle and increasingly embracing delusion, Jasmine finds she is so cut off from the modern world that she needs basic computer classes before she can even think about her lofty ambitions to train as a designer. The story flashes back and forth between Jasmine's glamorous New York life of polo matches and Hamptons holidays and her later comeuppance in California. Along the way, Ginger and ex-boyfriend Augie (Andrew Dice Clay) make a rare visit to New York, where Jasmine suggests Hal can invest money for Ginger and Augie. The flashbacks find Jasmine in wilfully ignorant bliss, raising the question of whether she should have taken more of an interest in his staggering accumulation of wealth. There are definite echoes of Blanchett's tour de force performance in A Streetcar Named Desire here, with Chili a kind of hot-blooded Stanley to Jasmine's pretentious Blanche Dubois figure. As in the Tennessee Williams classic, the arrival of a down-on-her-luck heroine strains the relationship of her reluctant hosts, and Hawkins is terrific as the long-suffering Ginger. The performances make up for the shortcomings in a script which is surprisingly slight at times, lacking for something new to say about the Bernie Madoff-like figure of Hal and his downfall. Still, the prickly figure of Jasmine, a character who is by turns contemptible and pitiful, washing Xanax down with vodka as she endlessly recounts stories from better times, is perfectly realised, and Blanchett's compelling work lights up one of Woody Allen's darkest films. https://youtube.com/watch?v=BXnktqEWvGM
Every year, pioneering artists, activists and thinkers come together to collaborate on how to better our world at The Creative Time Summit in New York City. This occasion is viewed by over 4000 live audience members and watched online by more than 30,000. If you’re one of the thousands that has tuned in, this year is your chance to be there without having to jump the pond. This year, the curatorial collective Original Affluent Society is bringing the Summit to the Newtown Library in Sydney to explore the same issues on a local level. The theme of this year’s summit is ‘Art, Place, and Dislocation in the 21st Century City’, which focuses on the role of art in creating sustainable cities, gentrification and modes of resistance to urban development. The Sydney Program will feature highlights from New York, including a discussion panel made up of speakers such as performance artist Vito Acconci, renowned art theorist Lucy Lippard, Creative Time chief curator Nato Thompson, artist and Occupy activist Michael Premo, My Brooklyn director Kelly Anderson, artist Lucy Orta, Project Row Houses founder Rick Lowe, and more. Local responders include Yellow House co-founder and artist Jonny Lewis, Grow It Local’s Jess Miller, artist Lucas Ihlein and Ian Milliss on Green Bans, and artists Diego Bonetto and Adrian O’Doherty. Following the summit is the Summit Social, a closing party and exhibition held at the local artist-run gallery Archive_Space from 5-8pm on Sunday. Works from artists Keg de Souza, Diego Bonetto & Adrian O’Doherty, and Belem Lett will be on display, as well as live performances from Beth Dillon and James Gatt, and Alex Guthrie. The Sydney Creative Time Summit is a platform for people of all sorts to come together to explore the changing role of art in the world and Sydney in an informal way. So if you want to become a better-informed citizen of the world, then this could be an event worthy of your time.
For one day only, Sydney art lenders Artbank are transforming their Rosebery headquarters, which are normally closed to the public, into Artbank Social Club - sort of a one-off art exhibition with astroturf, a pop-up bar and live music from DJ Matt Vaughan. If you're feeling peckish, there'll also be a couple of food trucks around. You can wander into their showroom and take a look at their impressive collection (over 10,000 Australian artworks collected over the past 30 years), then hang with the artists themselves in their carpark-turned-outdoor-lounge area. Artbank is a support program created by the government to promote Australian artists by buying, curating and leasing artworks. Their headquarters are a bit tricky to find if you haven't been there before, so they've very kindly provided a shuttle bus running every 45 minutes from Chalmers St at Central Station, making stops at Flinders and Oxford Streets along the way. Otherwise, it's about a 15-minute walk from Green Square Station. Artbank's Social Club runs from 1-5pm.
The secret to humour is surprise. With these famous words of Aristotle in mind, Club Cab Sav is a comedy night all about surprising its audience. Aware that there is a comedy-loving audience in Sydney overwhelmed by the multitude of stand-up-exclusive clubs operating, Club Cab Sav offers its patrons an alternative take on the traditional night of laughs: a mash-up of comedy and performance styles that creates a night that you will never see repeated. Expect to see a mixed bag of entertainment experiments, laugh-inducing comedy and an eclectic palette of performances, all for just $10. With upcoming guests including Nick Sun and Sydney comedy favourite Cyrus Bezyan, that is serious value for money. Club Cab Sav is held on the last Wednesday of every month at FBi Social, and if you enter with an open mind, then you are sure to leave wearing a quirky smile.
As other festivals fall by the wayside, St. Jerome's Laneway Festival just keeps on keeping on. Just a couple of weeks ago Laneway debuted in Detroit, bringing that Melbourne laneways vibe to the Motor City, and now we are thrilled to announce the 2014 lineup for Australia. As we've come to expect from Laneway, it's an intriguing mix of established names, up-and-comers and best-kept secrets, as well as a number of crowd favourites from previous Laneways making a return appearance. The organisers have also forecast a bunch of tweaks to all the venues so that you can get from the mosh to a gozleme in record time, and grab a cider on the way back from the toilets without missing half the festival. Laneway has gone from strength to strength over its 11 years, adding dates in New Zealand and Singapore as well as Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth from its humble beginnings in the back of a bar in Melbourne. It's a festival that knows exactly what it is trying to do, and who its audience wants to see, and I reckon this lineup is going to blow a few minds. In alphabetical order: Adalita Autre Ne Veut Cashmere Cat Cass McCombs Chvrches Cloud Control (no sideshows) Danny Brown Daughter Dick Diver Drenge Earl Sweatshirt Four Tet Frightened Rabbit Haim (no sideshows) Jagwar Ma Jamie XX King Krule Kirin J Callinan Kurt Vile Lorde (no sideshows) Mount Kimbie MT Warning Parquet Courts Run The Jewels (EL-P & Killer Mike) Savages Scenic The Growl The Jezabels (no sideshows) Unknown Mortal Orchestra (no sideshows) Vance Joy Warpaint XXYYXX Youth Lagoon TICKETS PRESALE: Laneway Festival fans with Visa Credit, Debit or Prepaid cards can get tickets first through Visa Entertainment. Visa Entertainment presale starts noon on Monday, 30 September, through to noon on Tuesday, 1 October (local time), or until tickets sell out at www.visaentertainment.com.au. Visa presale: Noon, Monday, 30 September – Noon, Tuesday 1 October (local time) GP on sale: Thursday, 3 October, 9am (local time)
According to the late, and surprisingly great, film critic Roger Ebert, film noir is a genre that “at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending.” It's bleak, thunderous stuff. But it's an electric and exciting experience, as well. The Museum of Sydney is investigating this dark and smoky genre with an exhibition exploring a bleaker vision of our town after the Second World War, Suburban Noir. The world of the 50s and 60s is so often set out as a notional consumer paradise, slowly changed by the coming of a cultural revolution. A Mad Men idyll transformed by second wave feminism and protests against Vietnam. This is not that story. This is Sydney through a blackened lens. The exhibition promises a Sydney of isolated moments, gathered through archives of old police photographs from the 50s and 60s. These are stark images of a despondent town. Alongside the original photos, there'll also be artistic interpretation of same from contemporary chroniclers of local byways like Ken Searle, Rhett Brewer and Vanessa Berry, who'll be hanging their own interpretations of these lonely Sydney scenes. Image: Bondi by Rhett Brewer.
The holiday season is quickly approaching, and with it the rat race of gift buying. If you're trying to stay off the commercial path and are looking for unique knickknacks for your peeps, then be sure to check out Etsy's upcoming Christmas pop-up shop. The darling online marketplace for vintage and handmade goods is taking a physical form for just 15 days in November and December. The temporary shop will feature over 300 products from 150 independent artists and skilled craftsmen, including jewellery, art, fashion, kids wear, vintage items and homewares. Shoppers will also have the opportunity to test out their own skills in any of the free DIY workshops and attend demos hosted by the artists and sellers. Specials include flower bomb and ceramics workshops, and 'Man Night' with free haircuts from a professional barber. So if you're in the mood to get a little artsy at Etsy, or just want to find a rad gift, check out their shop in Sydney's CBD. They'll be open daily from 8am to 9pm.
Patrick White's 1947 play, The Ham Funeral has dated, and that's a good thing. Seeing the piece in all its mothbally shabbiness is a history lesson in Australian theatre. White was one of the first Australian playwrights to start experimenting with form, and the metanarrative of the Young Man protagonist may seem twee now but was innovative for its time. The play is also full of glorious, carnal language. White's ability to combine narrative drive alongside arresting poetry is satisfying. Our protagonist, the Young Man (Rob Baird), is a floundering poet boarding in the greying, linoleum-floored and dank boarding house of Mr and Mrs Lusty. Mr Lusty (Zach McKay) is a truculent sort who, seeming half dead to begin with, delivers some fabulous vitriol to his bawdy wife before promptly expiring fairly early on in the piece. McKay's performance here is suitably sour and we believe Mrs Lusty (Lucy Miller) when she tells him his "mouth is foul with silence". Mrs Lusty declares they must have a ham funeral, and so begins the vulgar, dark comedy. Miller playing the "smudgy, sludgy" Mrs Lusty is tawdry yet poised, but the hideousness that the Young Man and Mr Lusty ascribe to her never comes to the fore. The performances are generally strong and director Phillip Rouse has given the text a clear shape, though I might pretend that the dancing before interval never took place. I'm at a loss to find who designed the stage in the program notes, but whoever it was, props to them (update: it's director Phillip Rouse himself, what a skillset). Because the New Theatre stage is such a barn, too often productions truncate it into a shallow downstage strip presumably to make it more manageable. This designer has used three levels and maximised the depth of the space so that the stage looks positively three-dimensional for once. Sian James-Holland's lighting design is presumably aiming for some sort of edge-of-reality-type shadiness but is just plain dim for much of the show. Rouse's straightforward interpretation of the play gives us a view of the past and a sense of Australia's theatre legacy. The play is seldom performed, and though it didn't make it onto a Melbourne stage until 2005, it's part of the canon of Australian plays (if we can really talk of such a thing) because it's a great piece of literature.
As a piece of stand-up comedy, Stories I want to Tell You in Person is faultless; rich, hilarious and warm. But considering Lally Katz is one of Australia's best playwrights, it is slightly odd that she's doing stand-up in one of Australia's best theatres, about the fact that Belvoir never staged the play they commissioned her to write, ostensibly because Simon Stone was too busy to direct it. No matter how charismatic her performance, at the end of the day I was frustrated that we weren't watching the play she wrote instead. Katz arrives on stage in front of a glittery gold curtain designed by Ralph Myers, and she is thrilled to be there. She bursts through with aggressive enthusiasm and promptly finds her place on stage on top of a mark saying 'Stand Here'. She tells us a bit about herself — she grew up in the US and then moved to Canberra, hence her interesting accent. What follows is a farrago of stories about psychics, love, her subconscious and a commission from Belvoir to write a play about the Global Financial Crisis. She strikes a handsome balance between the sincerity of her beliefs in magic and acknowledging how ridiculous they are. Her accents are accurate and she wisely opts out of doing a Pakistani accent as she admits she is incapable of it. Her karaoke rendition of 'Don't Cry for me Argentina' will make you cry if you have the remotest sense of pitch. She admits she is tone deaf and belts it out anyway. The joy of the piece is Katz's famous Apocalypse Bear, who appears in many of her plays and is a kind of theatre mascot. As a piece of entertainment, it is idiosyncratic, good, clean fun. As a piece of programming, it appears narcissistic and short-sighted. The work does not show Belvoir in the best light, making the company look unsupportive of new work. Gifted as she is at stand-up comedy, her skills and talent as a playwright have been wasted. I look forward to seeing her GFC play on the main stage soon.
