Sunday Arts Magazine

19 Feb 2017

MQFF, ACCA, The Homosexuals, Next Wave Fest, Converging in time

Arts, Comedy, Indigenous, LGBTIQ, Performing Arts, Training, TV & Film, Visual Arts

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MQFF, ACCA, The Homosexuals, Next Wave Fest, Converging in time

David, Brendan and Neil are in this week joined again by Taste Of Radio (TOR) student Fiona. An exhausted David wishes everyone a ‘Happy White Night’. Brendan reviews the film The Great Wall starring Matt Damon. It’s a weird monster tale which is remarkably bland and Brendan was not impressed–2 stars. The Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF) has been launched and is on from 16 to 27 March. Brendan has seen 3 of the movies already via other festivals and can vouch for them. They are Being 17, Paris 5.59-Theo & Hugo, and Who’s gonna love me now? The Opening Night film is I am Michael which is likely to sell out quickly. Brendan is looking forward to seeing Kiki and Taekwondo and will peruse the guide for other films of interest. David and Neil do a detailed review of this year’s White Night. Both found it very impressive!

Special Guests today are:

16:41 to 38:10 mins–Max Delany is Artistic Director of ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art) in Southbank. He immersed himself in art culture in Western Europe for 3 years after uni and, back in Australia, he has had an extensive career in the Melbourne arts scene including working for William Mora and eventually for the NGV as senior curator of contemporary art. He describes how the Melbourne arts scene has changed, the welcome increase in arts ‘infrastructure’, working with Ai Weiwei, the NGV under Tony Ellwood, and the amazing initiative- Melbourne Now. He then gives a detailed description of ACCA, including the amazing building. A current exhibition on at ACCA is part of the AsiaTOPA Festival. It’s by a Beijing artist He An and is called He An: Do You Think That You Can Help Her Brother?—it’s on until 23 April. The artist has clandestinely procured heritage signage with Chinese characters that are quickly disappearing from urban Beijing and has combined them to create poetry, across the façade of ACCA. Another current exhibition is Sovereignty–on until 26 March which focuses on indigenous contemporary art from the South East region of Australia. There is an extraordinary body of work and a number of historical touchstones including work by William Barak (an important historical figure whose face appears on the façade of a CBD building). Around this exhibition there have also been a series of events.

Our hosts talk about the band Panic! At The Disco and their songs–including The death of a bachelor. They then ask their TOR student, Fiona, to talk about her arts involvement outside JOY–in particular RMIT Design Hub’s ‘fascinating’ new exhibition which just opened recently. It’s called High Risk Dressing / Critical Fashion which is not just about fashion but also a review of the FDC (Fashion Design Council) which existed between 1983 and 1993. The exhibition explores the foundations and then looks at the contemporary response. Fiona was a fashion designer and had been a part of this organisation. She explains what it was all about and her own experience within it.

47:59 to 1:07:01 mins–Performers Mama Alto and Simon Corfield are here to discuss a play they’re starring in Declan Greene’s The Homosexuals, or ‘Faggots’ on at the Malthouse from 17 February to 12 March. Mama Alto is a jazz cabaret performer whose career started in the Butterfly Club and snowballed from there. With the most recent show Finucane & Smith’s Glory Box: Lucky 13 she toured many times, here and internationally. The Homosexuals is the first role she’s had where she doesn’t also sing, and doesn’t perform solo! Simon has been living out of a suitcase for2.5 years now and talks about the unpredictability of life as an actor. He was very excited about working in a production written by Declan Greene (from Sisters Grimm) and talks about his rehearsal experience with him, and well-known actors also. The Homosexuals… is an old fashioned farce with heightened reality, comedy of errors and physical comedy. The plot deals with ‘being offended’ and political correctness. Declan satirises 2 white gay men living in Sydney on the night of the Mardi Gras who have their future put into dire straits by one visitor. It’s essentially tackling white male privilege. Within the farce, Declan cleverly amps up the offense level with each scene resulting in a ‘payoff’ of sorts, which has a lot to do with a self-reflective critical analysis of what it is to be an white, Gay, upper class male in a queer community that often leaves the other letters (LBTIQ)out.

1:07:57 to 1:16:41 mins–Erica McCalman is Creative Director of Next Wave Festival. When younger she hung around the drag scene and worked with people from there. She slowly moved into stage management and then got a degree in production at VCA and became a producer. She got to work as an Associate Producer on the 2014 Fest working with people from Indigenous and culturally diverse backgrounds. Then when the Creative Producer position came up she jumped at the chance. Next Wave has run since 1984 and is a biannual festival. They run an artist-development program called Kickstart in the years when the festival’s not on. Here they recruit emerging and experimental artists all across Australia (including older artists) and work with them to consolidate skills which they don’t normally get elsewhere. They help them develop what they’re going to produce for the fest the following year. Their pathway culminates in the Festival in May every 2 years. Next one is in 2018. This year they chose 17 Kickstarters out of 200 applications and are teaching them how to apply for a grant despite the fact there’s less money around and Next Wave itself has been ‘de-funded’. But due to Next Wave’s extensive network of other arts organisations, they can procure practical resources for their students. For interested artists who want to apply or get more info, Erica suggests they go to the website and subscribe to their ‘pegboard’ to get news as to what’s happening next.

Artists Terri Bird and Scott Mitchell (along with artist Bianca Hester) are all part of Open Spatial Workshop(OTW) and are here to talk about their first major museum exhibition. This is at MUMA (Monash University Museum of Art) and is called Converging in time –on from 11 February to 8 April in the Caulfield East campus. Our guests talk briefly about their background and then move on to their exhibition which covers the whole gallery space at MUMA. OTW have done research at Museum Victoria for the last 6 years–mainly in the geological sciences area. They became fascinated with the connections between geology & the formation of rocks and sculpture. Through a process of developing and experimenting they came up with an installation that involves the bringing together of objects, films, and Museum specimens to look at how things are made–or formed. They looked at fossils and various rock types that were collected in Victoria including a 23 million year old partially fossilised tree log, and a meteorite which has tiny diamonds which were formed prior to the formation of our solar system! The artist have also made ‘specimens’ such as a future rock which exists when maybe humankind is gone from earth. There are also filmed experiments to see what forces would be involved in rock formation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:32:18 — 42.3MB)

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