Sunday Arts Magazine

5 Feb 2017

Lifetime Guarantee, AsiaTOPA, Wildlife Photo Comp, Spirit Matter

Arts, LGBTIQ, Performing Arts, Visual Arts

David and Neil are hosting today and also have Fiona sitting in, who is in Week 2 of The Taste Of Radio (TOR) course. Brendan has an assignment with his day job and couldn’t come in today.  Last night David and Brendan went to the opening night of the multi-award winning musical The Book of Mormon which had an impressive red carpet and many celebrities attending–including the 2 creators who are also the creators of South Park. The opening song is David’s favourite and it sets up the story beautifully.  David describes the show as rude, crude and hilarious where they pick on everyone–nothing is sacred. The singing, dancing and acting are all great and you have ‘a rollicking good time’. There was a real buzz amongst the audience after the show. Many people are coming from interstate to see it. David highly recommends it and plays a few songs from it, starting with the opening song ‘hello’.

Special Guests today are:

10:17 to 25:30 mins–John Sheedy is Creative Director of Theatre Works and is here to talk about the Australian premiere of Lifetime Guarantee on at Theatre Works in Acland St from 9 to 26 February. It is written by Ross Mueller (who John has known since he was 10yo) and directed by John. John started his career as an actor and then moved on to directing mainly theatre and then as artistic director for a theatre co. in Perth which put on the world premiere of a new opera called The Rabbits. His main focus for the next few years is to develop and create new Australian works at Theatre Works. He talks about Theatre Works itself including its longevity, space, edginess and recent funding.  Lifetime Guarantee is a new work that looks at people’s relationships with objects where there is a real emotional and sexual attachment to the objects. An object has a guarantee, a manual; it can be fixed,  upgraded or traded in. With humans, there is no manual or guarantee. It’s a hilarious, cynical and also tragic look at 5 individuals and how their relationships overlap and intertwine and includes white goods, bicycles and cars! John talks about the mainly young cast, the mutual learning and Ross’ fabulous  text-driven writing.

25:43 to 40:19 mins–Catherine Jones and Stephen Armstrong are here to discuss Asia TOPA: Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts and two works from this festival that are on at Arts House. Stephen is currently the Creative Director of the inaugural Asia TOPA and Catherine is the General Manager of Arts House.  The two works at Arts House are contemporary Japanese performance works  including 1) Time’s Journey Through a Room by Chelfitsch from 9 to 12 February and 2) Kagerou-Study of Translating Performance on from  15 to 18 February. Stephen talks about his theatre background including producing, programming and directing. Catherine was executive producer of Chunky Move (dance) prior to Arts House– which she describes as Melbourne’s centre for contemporary and experimental performance–including dance. Stephen then gives an overview of the biannual event Dance Massive on from 14 to 26 March. AsiaTOPA started up in a similar way to Dance Massive, which Stephen explains, and is essentially a celebration of our relationship with contemporary Asia. Both the Japanese works at Arts House are responding to the 2011 Earthquake and the Tsunami that followed; bringing it down to a profoundly personal level and evoking empathy from the audience. Despite the tragedy of the situation both works are hopeful in terms of what we learn, how we change and what the resonance of those disasters are. There is also a sense of optimism and possibility. There is an Aftershock forum on 12 feb and other major Japanese events at different venues during AsiaTOPA.

41:48 to 55:11 mins–Padraic Fisher is the Director of the National Wool Museum in Geelong and is here to tell us about the museum and also about the remarkable Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 exhibition—on from now until 14 May. The museum is the home of Australia’s wool collection but it also operates as the regional museum for Geelong and surrounds. They host a series of exhibitions each year-travelling ones–and also exhibitions about Geelong and the regions. Padraic is from New York but came here for love. He has an arts management background where he ran theatre production, did fundraising and ran a regional arts council in Central Texas. Padraic’s family were deeply into the arts so he has been involved in it all his life.  The Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 exhibition comes from the Natural History Museum in London. The competition is in its 52^nd year and is considered the most prestigious wildlife and nature photography competition in the world. It features 100 images which were shortlisted from 48,000 entries across 96 countries!! Padraic describes the images as amazing, beautiful, iconic, storytelling, deeply emotional and political.  He goes into detail about particular images and what the photographers had to do to get them and that they needed an instinct with regard to timing. A requirement of the competition was that the image could not be photoshopped apart from basic tweaks.  The competition has a children’s category which one boy won twice. The comp for 2017 is open now with information online via the Natural History Museum London or googling Wildlife photographer of the year.

1:11:20 to 1:30:01 mins—Fredrick White is a sculptor whose exhibition Spirit Matter 1987 to 2017 on from 10 February to 12 March at ‘& gallery’ at 220 Spencer St. Fred will be at the gallery each Saturday. He went to arts school 30 years ago and chose sculpture because he liked form, raw elemental materials and feeling the heaviness of these materials.  To make money he worked for 15 years in art foundries; casting sculptures for other artists into bronze. He still does this sort of work, Australia-wide, for other artists with various different materials and this helps with his own work in that he learns a lot, gets inspiration and forms relationships with other skilled people.  Fred talks about all the practical things that need to be done when you’re a sculptor–with transporting the work being a big one. He also outlines his sculpting process and talks about design sense, autocad, competing for commissions and how that has changed, female sculptors, and the mental toughness needed to be an artist. Fred doesn’t regard. his practice as commercial; to him it’s more about defining and developing ideas and has a slight ‘spiritual’ bent. He and David discuss a sculpture done in the 90s which was shown at Midsumma, Mardi Gras and ended up at Club 80.  Spirit Matter came out of the blue for Fred so he only had a few weeks to put the show together. He describes what he did and some of the pieces that will be showing. Apart from his website, Fred is also on Facebook.

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