Sunday Arts Magazine

4 Sep 2016

Hidden Faces, Malthouse 2017, Imagined Touch, Heidelberg Symphony

Arts, Music, Performing Arts, Society & Culture, TV & Film, Visual Arts

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:34:25 — 43.2MB)

Hidden Faces, Malthouse 2017, Imagined Touch, Heidelberg Symphony

Brendan has a few films to talk about starting with Mel Gibson playing a gruff, older action hero in Blood Father– 3 stars. Next is Thriller/Crime/horror film Don’t Breathe which has been described as ‘Hitchcock on crack’ and is already doing very well in the US–4stars. David has a background in the music industry and likes to keep up to date with the latest trends. Today he talks about singer Imany and her song Don’t Be Shy and also about Barry Adamson.

Special guests today are:

11:43 to 30:03 mins–Amaya Iturri and Janne Kearney are visual artists and both have pieces showing at a portrait exhibition called Hidden Faces – The 2016 Salon des Refuses Exhibition on until 06 October at Hilton Melbourne South Wharf, 2 Convention Centre Place Melbourne. Hidden Faces is an exhibition of portraits by about 45 Victorian artists, originally submitted for national portrait prizes but not chosen for major prizes or exhibited. There are many amazing pieces which are on par or better than those selected for the competition. Janne loved art all her life but didn’t get the opportunity to study it till her mid 40s; and she honed it from there. She is now represented by Flinders Lane Gallery and is making a living from it. Amaya has an artistic father and studied art at uni in Bilbao, Spain (a town which also houses a Guggenheim Museum). She came to Australia for a holiday and met her husband here. For Hidden Faces, Amaya’s portrait was of Ben Knight from ABC’s Four Corners. Janne had 2 photo-realistic portraits chosen from her Dystopia Series, taken at an electrical substation in Geelong. Both talk about how they approach painting portraits.

30:45 to 57:58 mins– Matt Lutton is the Artistic Director of the Malthouse Theatre and is here to talk about their 2017 Season of plays. Matt was addicted to the arts at school in Perth and loved telling stories; dabbling in theatre, music and short film-making. After school, he studied theatre-making at WAAPA–which included acting directing and writing. He then started his own theatre company and ran it for 10 years, learning a lot through making shows there. He’d set up the company to collaborate with well-known East coast companies which included being a guest director for the Malthouse on 2 occasions. This led to him being offered the role of Associate Director at the Malthouse which he accepted and then moved to Melbourne. He talks about his present job as Artistic Director and how he and his team put the 2017 Season together. They didn’t start with a theme but found at the end there were 2 big ideas that emerged i.e. protest/revolution and heart/empathy. Matt gives some fascinating info about some of the plays– including Little Emperors, The Homosexuals or Faggots, The Real & Imagined History of the Elephant Man, The Testament of Mary, The Black Rider: Casting of the Magic Bullet, The Encounter, and You’re Not Alone. Season tickets are available now.

59:05 to 1:18:16 mins–Jodee Mundy is the Artistic Director of Imagined Touch the deafblind live art experience on at Arts House 7 to 11 September. Her parents and brothers are all deaf so AusLan signing was her first language but she picked up spoken English quickly at school. Jodee grew up around mime and slapstick at deaf clubs and pantomime at shopping centres until her world expanded when she went to the Newtown High School of Performing Arts. After school she became a sign-language interpreter to help pay her way through the theatre-making course at VCA in Melbourne and got a scholarship to go to England and study corporeal mime and physical theatre. Back at home, as someone who signs she knew 2 extraordinary deaf/blind women–Heather and Michelle–who approached her in 2011 asking her to make a work with them about being deaf/blind. Once they got funding they did 30 workshops with various artists about how deaf/blind people navigate the world and what their strengths are as a human using touch and smell. After doing a ‘development’ in 2014 they got a lot of industry attention, did more work and raised more money. They ended up with the show Imagined Touch…at Arts House 7-11 September which was sold out. She talks about the show and the audience experiencing what it’s like to be deaf/blind with tactile signing being the form of communication. There is a documentary that followed the process and it is likely the show will ‘move on’. A way to stay in touch for news is Jodee’s website or the Jodee Mundy Collaborations Facebook page–if you ‘Like it” you’ll see the updates.

1:18:40 to 1:34:00 mins– Roman Ponomariov is a Horn soloist who will be performing with the Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra (HSO) in the upcoming European Masters series on 10 September along with core orchestra members Julie Danaher (Flute) and Chrissy Chan (Timpani). The HSO has been around for almost 40 years but few know of it. It has about 50 core members and is one amongst many non-professional orchestras out in the suburbs where the musicians are volunteers, with day jobs, who do it because they love it. The orchestra play 4 concerts a year plus a children’s one. This year they’re doing concerto concerts with soloists such as Roman which they’re excited about. Our guests talk about their backgrounds and later–Julie talks more about the concerts HSO does, Roman outlines the large range of projects he has performed in recently and Chrissy describes the role of percussion as a ‘gel’ in the orchestra.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:34:25 — 43.2MB)

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