Sunday Arts Magazine

6 Mar 2016

The F Word, Heide & Modern Love, Burning Man, New16 at ACCA

Arts, Health, Literature, Music, Performing Arts, Visual Arts

David is running solo today with the boys over at Mardi Gras. He tells us of soul/jazz singer Sharon Jones and plays her song 100 days 100 nights.

Our Arts guests today are:

02:45 to 27:26 mins– Actor and Theatre Producer Rachael Dyson McGregor talks about her background and her new show The F Word: Celebrating International Women’s Day which is on at Howler 7-11 Dawson Street Brunswick on 10th March at 7pm. Rachael got into the arts at high school in NZ. A friend dragged her into a national Shakespeare competition where they ended up getting a scholarship to the Globe Theatre. Next she travelled for a while, studied drama in NZ and got acting jobs in Auckland. She came to Melbourne and got arts Festival jobs from 2007 but no acting until she got into the amazing Melbourne Playback Theatre Company (MPTC). She performs and does workshops there and has collaborated on some experimental performances including one in a foodcourt . ‘Playback’ involves a facilitator gleaning real stories from an audience and then a group of actors and musicians creating a piece of theatre in response to the story. The F Word is a bit different in that it adds a panel and audience discussion at the start. Playback also brings out the strength or positive in a story even if it’s sad or challenging. Rachael is MCing. The next panel show at MPTC is SticksNStones on 27 May just before Australia’s National Day of Healing.

27:49 to 48:02 mins–Kendrah Morgan is a curator from the famous Heide Museum of Modern Art. She is from NZ and studied art history at Auckland Uni, lectured in it, worked in commercial galleries and got her first curatorial position in Auckland Art Gallery. Kendrah moved to Melbourne in 2002 and was fortunate to get work at Heide as she and the senior curator knew each other professionally. Kendrah has co-authored a book with Lesley Harding called Modern Love: The lives of John & Sunday Reed–about Heide’s founders who bought a dairy farm and developed a stimulating gathering place for modern artists, writers, musicians, intellectuals and those interested in radical politics. They nurtured many artists financially and channelled any resources into cultural and artistic endeavours. There is also an exhibition of the same name at Heide I until 10 April. Many books have been written about Heide but Kendrah and Lesley uncovered a lot of new material when researching the book. Present day Heide continues the legacy of the Reeds’ and promotes cutting edge contemporary art such as– Dancing Umbrellas: An Exhibition of Movement and Light 5 March to 5 June at Heide III and Sarah Crowest: Straponpainings 27 February to 29 May 2016 which is art that can be taken off and worn and instagrammed. Heide also constantly has artwork showing from the old days of Heide from Tucker, Nolan etc

49:00 to 1:16:33 mins–Stephanie Longmire is part of the Joy 94.9 team and presents the show Stand up Straight with Michelle on Thursdays. She talks about her experience at Joy and then goes on to talk about the remarkable annual event in the Black Rock desert in Nevada, USA, called Burning Man–which she attended twice. 150 miles from the nearest town, you are in this monochrome environment hemmed in by an incredible mountain range. You bring in your own water, food, clothing, first aid…everything! — which takes a lot of planning. Participants create a temporary city and the event is all about community and artistic expression– of all types. The event is very well-organised and is guided by 10 principles such as radical inclusion, communal effort & gifting. Stephanie took photos and videos and intends to do a show about the 2015 event as well as post photos on Facebook. There are gigantic sculptures, classes in yoga, meditation and even spanking; there are orgies, poetry recitals, live music and ‘theme cars’ and themes each day of what to wear like tutus. Many people dress in artistic ways and many go nude. If there is a dust storm or high wind you wear a hat, goggles and scarf. The area is 5 miles wide and people use bikes to get around. Stephanie talks about the origins of the event and her experience of it.

1:16:56 to 1:29:40 mins– Exhibition Manager Annika Kristensen is from ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art) giant, ‘rusty’ looking building in Southbank which has the ‘Yellow Peril’ sculpture in the open space there. It is a ‘commissioning space’ meaning that they work directly with artists to make new work. ACCA’s current show New 2016 on from 5 March to 8 May involves 8 projects that have been especially made for the exhibition by artists from all over Australia. Two of the artists, called ‘Catherine or Kate’, are in today. They met at uni in Brisbane and started working together (after working solo) in studio-based video works as undergraduates and Masters students. With the support from ACCA and the other artists they wanted to try something different. They made a few objects such as a ‘cycle desk’ which can be ridden around the gallery. Annika chose the projects by doing research and deciding on artists she’d like to do studio visits with and then travelled to 5 cities, seeing 50-60 artists. Artists in the 8 projects worked alongside each other doing the installations and got feedback from each other. C & K would like patrons to interact with their work and also, with Annika’s help, to change the space it even when they’ve gone home. It keeps thing dynamic.

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