Sunday Arts Magazine

27 Nov 2016

STIGMA, Bronwyn Oliver, The Gathering, Suburban Therapy&Pharmacy

Arts, Dance, Design, HIV, Performing Arts, TV & Film, Visual Arts

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STIGMA, Bronwyn Oliver, The Gathering, Suburban Therapy&Pharmacy

Our hosts are Brendan and Neil today. David is at a party somewhere!! Brendan is happy to be back on air and has already seen a couple of movies since returning from overseas. First review is of The Founder, where Michael Keaton plays the man credited with founding McDonalds. It is a great movie and biopic–4 stars. Next up is Arrival which Brendan also enjoyed. It is a ‘slow-burn SciFi film’ with Amy Adams as the main character–4 stars. Brendan reviews Nocturnal Animals which Daniel also reviewed 2 weeks ago. Brendan sees it as borderline pretentious and as a cautionary tale with a poignant ending. It’s also polarising–where you either love it or despise it. Brendan loved it–4 stars.

Special guests today are:

12:12 to 33:06 mins–Theatremaker/performer Darren Vizer and Sound composer/performer Zac Kazepis are here to discuss their Midsumma show S_T_I_G_M_A on from 30 January to 1 February 2017 at La Mama Courthouse in Carlton. Darren has a background in gymnastics, dancing, choreography, acting and now theatre-making. He is also very into collaborating. These all helped him in the process of fully developing a show which has a strong message. Zac has always been interested in performance art. He interned at a theatre, met Darren, got to do some sound design work for him and learnt that and other skills on the job. For Darren, the motivation for stigma came from being sick of being ashamed of his HIV status. He wanted to unpack the stigma that he faces daily because it hasn’t gone away. He also wanted to include women’s voices as they’re not often heard. Darren details the development of the piece including the music. Leading up to the performance next year there is a community engagement workshop at PLC on 11 December for people with HIV to share their experiences of stigma.

34:00 to 1:00:01mins–Julie Ewington is a curator, writer and broadcaster but has also been an art historian, critic, and academic as well as having experience in theatre and dance. Julie switched from being an art historian to curating almost 30 years ago as she wanted to work more closely with artists. She talks about the transition, her curating experiences and also the conceptual and social aspects of art. At present, Julia is curator of The Sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver on from 19 November 2016 to 5 February 2017 at TarraWarra Museum of Art, 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road, Healesville. Julie talks about some of the artwork around Sydney of this famous sculptor who passed away at a young age almost 10 years ago. It is necessary to remember the work of a prominent artist like her and to introduce her work to the current generations. She then talks of Bronwyn’s history who was driven to do her own type of sculpture, who got a scholarship to the Chelsea School of Art–the hub of new British sculpture. She hit her stride in her late 20s and later started working with metal. Bronwyn was a woman of ideas but she also had a thread of nature in her works. She was interested in the night sky (e.g. comets) The metal was not easy to forge. Julie thinks the key to all Bronwyn’s work is one conundrum–‘how you make an idea of movement become completely encapsulated in one still thing’. E.g. the feeling of a comet rushing towards the earth.

1:00:37 to 1:17:24 mins–Writers and Performers Belinda Jenkin and William Hannagan are here to discuss their musical–The Gathering–on from 26 November to 11 December at fortyfivedownstairs. Belinda did a lot of musical theatre in high school and later did a dedicated course, where she met William. They both decided to write a musical which was fresh and suited to their generation in order to attract the early20s set to the theatre. William was inspired to do musicals through exposure to The Boy From Oz and many other musicals. He got into the cabaret scene which inspired him to write. He and Belinda have worked together for 5 years and kept coming back to The Gathering as their major project. The protagonist is Tom, a young man who has run away from his group and then returns and re-unites with his friends. He wants to carry-on like nothing’s happened but there are so many questions! They gather in a spooky out-of-the-way house and the journey they go through involves both the history of the house as well as the protagonist. Our guests talk about the themes in this production. Also, alongside the serious themes, there is a lot of fun and humour. As for the music, it is a folky, acoustic, pop score and also includes some R&B and disco.

1:17:55 to 1:29:30 mins–Visual artists Luci Lee, Oliver Cloke and Kathy Heyward are here to discuss their creative piece called – Suburban Therapy + The Pharmacy which is part of Moreart 2016. The idea behind this piece is to make art more accessible to people. It is an interactive and fun pop-up booth where the public can converse with an artist, get a drawing made for them and get ‘medicine’ that looks like a familiar product but on closer inspection is actually information on art history or famous artists. This booth is open on Saturday 17 December between 11am and 1 pm at Coburg Mall. Oliver and Kathy created the OK Collective soon after they met at the VCA and have done Suburban Therapy for a while including at Moreart last year. This year they decided to collaborate and found the ideal partner in Luci (The Pharmacist) who makes the amazing art pieces that look like familiar medicines.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:29:40 — 41.0MB)

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