Sunday Arts Magazine

17 Jul 2016

FLAIR Art W/end, Collins Pl. Pop-Up Gallery, MIFF, Julian Clavijo

Arts, Design, Food, TV & Film, Visual Arts

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FLAIR Art W/end, Collins Pl. Pop-Up Gallery, MIFF, Julian Clavijo

Brendan is back from Qld and David chats about the Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights Day where people dressed up and danced like her in the video from 1978. Today’s show is all about visual arts! Brendan talks about the very original film Swiss Army Man (popularly known as The Farting Corpse)starring Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano where a supposedly dead body washes up on a desert island where another man is already stranded. Within the bizarre situations they find themselves in, the 2 characters bounce off each other and develop a bond. 5 stars!! The film has only done the festival circuit and has polarised people. Here it’s showing at Cinema Nova. Brendan also briefly talks about the new all-female Ghostbusters–the controversy, internet trolls, the director, the production costs, faith in women, positive reviews and the stars. Our hosts had CD giveaways but only when the show was on air!!

Special guests today are:

15:34 to 29:06 mins–Kim Goodwin is a part-time Project Coordinator for Craft Victoria and is here to talk about the INAUGURAL multi-organisation FLAIR Art Event on from 18 to 21 August at various venues at the top end of Flinders Lane (and Collins St). Craft Victoria supports craft-makers and makers of handmade objects across Victoria. This includes exhibitions, a retail space, online store and behind-the-scenes support to develop the industry and also the craftspeople. E.g. there are 90 events across Victoria over the month of August. Kim herself escaped from the corporate world and did a Masters in Arts Admin, worked with a visual arts org in Sydney and then returned to Melbourne to undertake a PhD in Leadership Development for people in the creative space(ongoing). Kim’s research suggests one of the things artists often lack is confidence in selling themselves; which leads to under-pricing. Craft Victoria teaches them how to market, price and sell their work and earn a living from it. Craft Vic plus 4 other orgs have got together to run a festival called FLAIR (Flinders Lane Art In Review). Over the ‘weekend’ it focuses on art exhibitions in all the venues but also has events. One of the big events is a progressive dinner on 19 August where the people move from venue to venue. There is wine and delicious vegetarian food and it is a tasting menu, so no-one sits down. You see an exhibition but some venues also have music and performance. It’s limited to only 100 tickets and there are 2 times.

32:38 to 43.09 mins– Sim Luttin is Gallery Manager & Curator at Art Project Australia (APA) in Northcote and is here to talk about their Inaugural Collins Place Pop-Up Gallery on from 28 July to 31 August– and is also included in the FLAIR Art Weekend (18 to 21 August). The APA gallery in Northcote is off the main road and doesn’t get much foot traffic, so they’ve wanted to do a pop-up for a while; to connect more with city people and city galleries. They also needed to fill the gap caused by the Art Fair being postponed. They will be located at the bottom of the escalator going up to the Sofitel Hotel and have prepared over 400 artworks by 33 artists. There will be framed works, sculptures and ceramics. Not all will be shown at once. There will be different exhibitions each week over the 4 weeks but there is also a little stockroom at the back where the additional artworks are–which the public has access to. Sim tells the story of how this Pop-Up Gallery came to be via NKN Gallery. The staff at APA had a choice of works from 115 artists who used the studio space above the gallery and also had 1000s of works in a stockroom. They had to whittle it down by focusing on recent works of 33 out of the 115 artists. Most of the works haven’t been seen before. As far as trends are concerned, Sim feels it’s to do with ‘outsider’ artists—e.g. ones that are undiscovered, unrepresented, disabled or late starters—with art that is direct, immediate and accessible.

43:38 to 1:16:05 mins–Freelance wordsmith and Film Critic Stephen A Russell (with the lovely Scottish accent) is here again to discuss the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) with our hosts. He’d been on earlier this year to discuss MQFF. Initially the discussion is about the amount of Queer films at MIFF, the lack of female representation on film and the films Ghostbusters, Swiss Army Man and Our Kind Of Traitor. Then the discussion moves to MIFF. First up is The Childhood of a Leader–a film which blew Stephen’s mind. The story of a tyrant as a young boy, it plays with your mind throughout and you question whether evil is innate or comes from your upbringing. Next is Personal Shopper where Kristen Stewart plays a celebrity’s PA in Paris and is also a medium who speaks to her dead brother! Sounds terrible but it is ‘supposed to be spectacular’ and is as divisive as Swiss Army Man. As for queer films at MIFF Stephen talks about some must-sees– first the French film Being 17–an ‘aggressive’ but also tender romance between 2 teenage boys who have been thrust together due to one boy’s mother being sick. Next is the doco Kiki–about New York’s voguing ballroom scene, where dancers ‘war’ with each other. It’s also about the lives and activism of the young queer performers. It’s absolutely ‘joyous’. Next is a South Korean re-imagining of Sarah Waters’ lesbian novel Fingersmith called The Handmaiden which, as well as being erotic and visually stunning, is riotously funny in parts. As for Australian Films Stephen mentions the doco by a Melbourne film-maker called Winter at Westbeth about an artist-run community that started in the 1970s in NY and now, by default, has become an old age home. Two of the talking heads are queer. The Opening night feature is The Death and Life of Otto Bloom by Melbourne Director Cris Jones about a man remembering his future but not his past. A centrepiece Aussie film is Down Under another divisive film, this time a black comedy about the immediate aftermath of the Cronulla riots.

1:16:10 to 1:30:00 mins–Artist Julian Clavijo is here to talk about his background and his ongoing exhibition Patient Transition at the Ground Floor STK Art Space at STK residential building at 3 St Kilda Rd. Julian grew up in Columbia with 2 psychologist parents who sent him, as a small child, to a variety of classes in order to discover what he was good at! He found out he loved painting, sculpting and making things with his hands from age 6. If he had to choose, his favourite art, it’s painting. His style is ‘realism’ which he was introduced to via the work of realist painters here in Melbourne. He took it as a challenge to transmit the innocence and purity of children through their eyes, with realist paintings. The children he paints are victims of war and he paints them from photographs, after getting permission. Julian and David discuss one particular painting called ‘Reborn’ and also a public-art sculpture Julian had done last year. Julian has been in Melbourne for over 8 years and he describes the difficulties he’d faced as a newcomer and artist in the beginning. His passion for art kept him going. The social and humanitarian nature of his work also opened some doors. It also helped that previous education had given him a bachelor in advertising and marketing and then a diploma in business management and more recently–a Masters in Public Art. His main interest now is getting art out on the streets in the form of murals.

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