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There are 4 interviews this week and our guests talk about their own journey to where they are now as well as a current event, show or exhibition. Along with inside stories, interesting anecdotes and descriptions.

Special guests this week include:

15:28 to 25:05–Opera Director Julie Edwardson and singer Antoniette D’Andrea are here to talk about an upcoming opera-fusion performance  presented by Emotionworks – Cut Opera. This is Tosca bound in blues, soul and R&B and is on from 22 April to 7 May at Pentridge Prison Coburg. Julie talks about her career journey from jazz singer to opera singer to Opera Stage Director and then she and our hosts discuss how the former Pentridge Prison is being developed at present, its suitability as a venue, and the creepy ‘feeling’ of the place at night.  Julie’s Company is Emotionworks – Cut Opera–an Opera fusion company where they take traditional operas and cut them down to 90 minutes and fuse in different music genres– which fit in the particular opera e.g. for Carmen they included Latin music.  Also they do ‘reality opera’ where performances  are held in interesting ‘real life’ spaces such as Pentridge, a football oval or Spanish club–even the Men’s Gallery strip club! Antoniette is not a professional musician but music is a substantial part of her life. She is very excited about being a part of this opera.  She is a contemporary singer and plays one of the prison warden ghosts. The ghosts sing blues numbers interweaved throughout the story. Antoniette beautifully sings the song The Thrill Is Gone live onair.

27:39 to 44:24 mins–Artist Troy Innocent is here to talk about his artwork and also his Exhibition Pattern Recognition on until 29 April at the Anna Pappas Gallery in Prahran.  He has another exhibition also called Urban Code on at C3 Contemporary Art Space from 12 April to 7 May. He talks about the importance of understanding technology as it shapes our culture and lives and has had a huge impact in the last 20 years. He feels artists can help a great deal in that understanding by deconstructing and recontextualising things we take for granted or things we don’t realise have an effect. Troy’s creative practice is based around the idea of City Games or Playable Cities which is about wayfinding or how do you find your own way of being in the city. He explains this.  In Pattern Recognition, Troy has created another city and another language and has art objects which are artistic but which also have machine-readable patterns & codes in them (software with Troy’s artistic system in it). When you point your google cardboard glasses at them they create other artworks in 3D which are unique to each individual. Troy talks more about his practice–how he uses computer software and game engines to realise his ideas. Troy has got a thing about Techno identity–i.e. all the possibilities of different ways of being in the world.  Urban code is the flipside of Pattern Recognition. PR is all new work whereas UC is more a retrospective of urban codes.

45:39 to 1:07:15 mins–Artist Christian Wagstaff is here to talk about his amazing installation (with Keith Courtney) House Of Mirrors showing at Bendigo Art Gallery in Rosalind Park in Bendigo from 7 to 30 April. Christian learnt practical trade type skills and art at school and then performing art skills at TAFE including  dance and set design.  In the end he chose to be a designer and artist. He designed sets for Channel 9, La Mama and was Creative Director at Crown Casino. House Of Mirrors was originally commissioned for Dark Mofo in Hobart.  It is a traditional mirror maze based on a patented concept from the 1800s and has a very Victorian look with old timber that creaks when you walk on it. It has one entrance and one exit! It’s a travelling structure of great scale that they pack up into 8 shipping containers and move from city to city. It’s been to festivals in Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide and is now in Bendigo. 100,000 people have walked through it and all have loved it. Christian regards it as a sculpture which is both beautiful and ominous at the same time with a rundown ‘sideshow’ look externally and glistening mirrors inside. There is no roof but each panel is 4 metres tall. The optics are extraordinary due to the quality and positioning of the mirrors and there is no digital technology. He describes a couple of amazing visual effects and also the process of creating the structure.

1:08:13 to 1:28:01 mins–Artist/Painter Chris Seater’s work is featured in Marvellous Melbourne – Its Art and Soul at Hilton Melbourne South Wharf in the foyer–2 Convention Centre Place– on from 6 March to 25 May. It’s open 24 hours as there is always a concierge there.  There are paintings, drawing, photos and prints all about Melbourne. Chris was always interested in art and drawing and design.  He got a degree in design, did artwork and illustration for books, got into graphic design (which was much more hands-on work then) and then started painting more seriously. His artwork was abstract expressionism at the time and he loved every little thing about painting. He’s done portraits too and has entered the Archibald Prize for the last 11 years. He talks about some of his subjects and his painting style. Chris’ subject for Marvellous Melbourne is the Brighton Baths!  He sees it as a magical place with the sectioned off bit in the water to protect from sharks. His paintings are abstract but it’s still obvious what it is. Chris talks about the wonderful curator Jacqueline Taylor OAM who does so much for the arts. Chris also has a gallery called the Ministry of Art at 238 St Kilda Rd, St Kilda.  He talks about how it originated and how he and his 2 partners run it to most benefit artists. At present there is an exhibition there called Hidden–displaying the work of  3 Serbian artists who ‘explore the perceived world’.

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Special Guests today are:

12:46 to 35:18 mins–Famous Visual Artist/Sculptor and Conservator Penny Byrne is here to talk about her new exhibition-Brutal– at Linden New Art from 10 February to 8 March. Penny works mainly with ceramics but also uses bronze and glass.  She’s also a qualified conservator, restoring antiques and artefacts and credits this with where her art originated from. Penny’s art started when she entered the Linden Postcard show competition (which allowed sculptures then) with a figurine she’d made for the Fringe Festival which had the theme of murder. She expands on this. This figurine was a crazy sword-wielding ballerina who’d murdered another ballerina on the dance floor and held the head of her victim! Other figurines are also quite political and cover serious issues but many are generally fun. She gets porcelain figurines from the op shop and cheap copies from Taiwan and then transforms them. She had been busy with other artworks for a few years but has returned to figurines for her new show. It is called Brutal because last year was a brutal year for a lot of people. It’s rated ated MA15+ as it’s very political and there are some confronting pieces. She discusses some of them with our hosts and also talks more about her career.

36:13 to 49:49 mins–Travis Cox, Mark Payne and Alison Bennett from QueerTech.IO ‘is an online/offline exhibition of queer artists from around the globe who are working with new technologies in their artworks’. Mark and Alice worked together on a work in a queer tech space and saw a need to promote this in Australia and invited Travis and later other artists. Alison was on Sunday Arts a month ago about her show ‘muliebrity’ which is still on until 25 February; she summarises it here. She also talks about the Berlin conference that motivated them to put QueerTech together and connect to artists on a global scale. Our guests also discuss how QueerTech is good for artists in remote areas and for those in repressed countries. They also have exhibitions in public forums in the real world. On Twitter, putting in #queertech will connect artists to festivals and other artists talking about their work. It’s all part of the global conversation and many festivals put out a call for proposals. Queertech have also been promoting on other social media using video snippets and also encourage people to go on the Queertech site and send an email. . Federation Square is screening some of the QueerTech works on the big screen–likely to be 10pm at night at a date usually announced the day before requiring checking the Fed Square website each day. Alison has also just been invited to the South by South West music festival ( in Austin Texas) which is now incorporating a technology stream.

50:43 to 1:06:51 mins–Director Laurence Strangio is here to talk about his returning show Margeurite Duras’  L’amante anglaise on at fortyfivedownstairs from 8 to 19 February. Laurence’s career journey included: architecture, theatre-set design, studying at VCA and then moving into directing. Laurence talks about how he works with set designers and casts from a pool of actors he likes to work with. L’amante anglaise is about a brutal murder in rural France in the 1960s. It is fictionalised but based on a true event. The play poses 2 interviews with a husband and wife.  The wife has confessed to the murder and the husband says he knows nothing of it. The victim is the housekeeper, a cousin of the wife who was deaf and dumb. In this play, Duras beautifully subverts our initial gruesome curiosity about the murder.  What we do get is an amazing portrait of 2 people in a loveless marriage and access to the inner worlds– of the wife especially. This is a real mind-opening experience.  Laurence considers the actors, Jillian Murray and Rob Meldrum, to be consummate performers–in every subtle breath, nuance, movement and gesture. It’s like watching an acting Masterclass. Laurence talks more about ‘perfecting’ the play along with the actors each time it’s performed and also how different audiences have reacted to it.  Laurence loves all of Margeurite Duras’ plays and has directed several of them.

1:07:03 to 1:24:59 mins–Maree Coote has been on Joy before and is a publisher, an author, a graphic designer, an illustrator,a photographer,  an alphabet ‘sculptor’ AND a fervent Melbournian.  Maree talks about her background in advertising and 2 of her many famous books The Melbourne Book and The Art Of Being Melbourne.  Maree’s newly launched children’s book Andy Web: Artist is the story of a spider who lives in the National Gallery and loves to draw with his web and wants to be an artist when he grows up. Trouble is he has trouble with colour. His mother encourages him and he takes off in the gallery and studies all the Masters. He then gets an ingenious idea how to add colour.  Essentially this teaches children about art–about genres, Masters, styles and terms such as impressionist, portrait and abstract. It also teaches them that if you don’t have a certain skill, you can get there a different way. Maree has a follow-up book coming in April about architecture. Maree also talks about her store and gallery in South Melbourne called Melbourne Style. The gallery has artwork from Maree herself and many others too including photography, painting and other types of artwork. Also, launching on 17 February is a show which is the doctoral thesis of a graphic designer–Jane Connory–who’s looked at women in graphic design. The results of her explorations will be exhibited in a show called Anonymity. Maree and our hosts discuss graphic design.

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Special guests today are:

17:34 to 21:18 mins–a No Show!   Despite this, David outlines part of the topic that was going to be discussed i.e. the first Art and Industry Festival from 18 to 27 November at Hobson’s Bay. The missing guest was a jewellery-maker who creates art out of 3D printing. Daniel brings up the question–‘What is the medium actually contributing to the final piece of artwork?’

22:21 to 50:53 mins–Ross Watson is an internationally famous Australian artist and has been on Joy before. His latest exhibition is on from 12 to 27 November at the Ross Watson Gallery– 465 Nicholson St, Carlton North.  It is open on Saturday and Sunday.  Driven and self-motivated he never needed pushing when it came to art. After he won an art prize when at art school, he felt he could work full-time with his art.  He had a ‘blind fearlessness about this.   What set him apart about 15 years ago was when he re-painted masters and added a modern person in front–usually someone famous. Every year he goes to Europe to look at the great masters which has been very influential on his work.  There are a lot of very personal works in his exhibition.  Ross regards it as a narrative of the ups and downs of a challenging period he had. One of the main works shows Raphael’s Madonna and Child with a modern ‘daddy’ that Ross came across on Instagram and tracked down.

53:32 to 1:17:05 mins–Geoffrey Smith and Gary Singer are from Sotheby’s Australia and also great supporters of Joy.  They are both passionate about Australian art and it is their priority–to the ‘scholarship’ of it and also bringing it into the commercial arena.  They talk about a number of topics including–why Australian art, what IS Australian art, the amount of talent in Australia, older artists, a ‘found’ Streeton, gallery survival, buying online, technology, forgeries and street art.

1:17:15 to 1:32:24 mins–Simon Maidment is Senior Curator, Contemporary Art from NGV– here to talk about a major exhibition– David Hockney: Current from 11 November 2016 to 13 March 2017 at NGV International. Simon is excited about this show saying that Hockney is one of the most requested artists by patrons, supporters and others for an exhibition and explains why he thinks that is. David and Simon discuss a doco called A Bigger Picture–about Hockney making his giant painting Bigger Trees Near Warter–which is at the exhibition.  It is screening at NGV and David encourages people to see it prior to the exhibition.   As the artist is 79, Simon and team could have done a retrospective but decided they wanted to show Hockney as a contemporary artist.  There are 1200 works in the exhibition with the giant painting being the oldest at 9 years old.  Simon talks about the intense colour palette Hockney uses and the great speed with which he works.  He has also embraced technology as a tool e.g. an iPad.

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Special Guests today are:

11:10 to 38:04 mins–Audio-Visual and Laser artist Robin Fox is most famous for his shows where, via A-V and lasers, he connects sound and light electrical signals at the same time, thus artificially producing Synaesthesia in the audience. Robin’s mother had Synaesthesia which fed her avantegarde computer music in the early 1980s.  Robin went a different path, trying law and other music, but went full circle and ended up being taught experimental music by his mother at LaTrobe Uni! Robin is co-founder (with Byron J.Scullin) of a non-profit organisation giving access to the public, of a whole history of electronic musical instruments called The Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio (MESS). He is here to discuss this and his double-bill show Robbie Thomson: XFRMR / MESS: Live on at the Melbourne Festival at the Substation in Newport on 13 & 14 October. Robbie uses a Tesla Coil with spectacular effect and MESS use a heap of analogue-Synthesisers to create amazing sounds.  Apart from this show, Robin also wrote the score for Lucy Guerin’s show The Dark Chorus at the Festival as well as doing the Skylight laser show for the Fringe.

38:45 to 1:12:11 mins–Legendary Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith is here to talk about her MTC play Switzerland on at The Sumner, within Southbank Theatre, until 29 October. Joanna tells of her background and her journey to writing success where emotionally there was a vulnerability/openness, self-belief and a compulsion to write despite set-backs.  Switzerland is about the famous US crime-writer Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr Ripley, Strangers on a Train) who had a great understanding of the dark side of the human psyche and wrote it brilliantly. This brilliance was more recognised in Europe than in her homeland and she lived there, in exile, most of her life. Despite her brilliance and wit, she was also a horrible person in many. In Switzerland, Patricia is dying and a young man from her publishing company comes to visit her, over 3 days, to persuade her to write one more Ripley. The power-plays change over their time together based on the premise ‘if you put 2 people in a room and allow their true selves to emerge, only 1 will make it out alive’.  Joanna gives insights about rehearsals, re-writing and her writing process.  She also gives an overview of her new play in the MTC program next year called Three Little words.

1:12:53 to 1:28:11–Director Monica Cioccia and actor Danny Nercessian are here to talk about their musical The Wedding Singer on at Theatreworks at 14 Acland St , St Kilda from 14 to 23 October.  Monica studied and then worked in community theatre background for a long time where she acted, wrote and created cabarets, put on musicals etc.  With this experience and the additional degree in drama and contemporary dance, her directing skills evolved. Danny studied Musical Theatre at NIDA, graduating in 2012 and doing cabaret, burlesque and classical theatre since then. This is his first musical and he plays George–the main character’s friend, who dresses like Boy George.  Set in the 1980s, The Wedding Singer was made into a musical about 10 years ago and Monica surmises the funniest bits from the 1998 film are on the stage—but magnified. The songs are original but, amazingly, sound like 1980s songs.  The musical is different from the movie in that it focuses more on characters rather than moving rapidly from person to person.

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Special guests today are:

13:03 to 31:03 mins–Photographer Lisa Minogue and Curator Josephine Harkin are here to talk about Lisa’s exhibition The Coloured Girls at fortyfivedownstairs from 16 to 27 August. Lisa met Jo at a photo-imaging course at NMIT (now Melbourne Polytechnic) and Jo was her first teacher.  When Jo went to study curating, Lisa jokingly suggested that when she does her first exhibition, Jo should curate it. And it’s happened!  Jo was a commercial photographer, worked at NMIT, and also studied there, RMIT & Melbourne Uni, in order to be able to work in a museum context and is now working full-time at Linden New Art in St Kilda. Lisa now spends more time on Photoshop than with the camera and considers herself a visual artist. She specialises in images of African Australian and non-white multicultural people. She explains how this came about,  starting when she was in the process of adopting her 2 Ethiopian children.  Lisa loves studio lighting as it gives her a lot of control. The photos in her exhibition The Coloured Girls are A1 size i.e. 59.4 x 84.1cm which is very big. People will be face-to-face with them; staring into the eyes of the subject. Lisa felt this was important. Also every girl has a different colour on her face such as pink or green so that viewers will not lump them into one category. Lisa’s business name is Liberation Images and the models in the exhibit are now her friends; with one model being her 17yo daughter. Lisa asked all the women what it feels like, to them, to be coloured in 150 words and these stories are part of the exhibition.  Next will be Men of colour.

31:26 to 52:53 mins–Actors Pia Miranda and Grant Piro are here to talk about a production they’re starring in called Around The World in 80 Days at the Alex Theatre in St Kilda from 23 August to 4 September. Grant always considered himself an actor and got into his first soapie when a teenager and has been acting ever since.  He and Pia talk about the acting life in Australia with relatively low pay and periods of unemployment supplemented by hospitality or driving jobs. What keeps them going is the passion or fire within, and their wonderful community of ‘show folk’. Pia spent many years doing ballet until she got burnt out at 17. By then the acting bug had increased in size via watching many old movies over time. She starred in Neighbours, studied drama at uni and got her most famous role at 24yo i.e. Looking For Alibrandi.  Pia and the others discuss the phenomenon of early success and also Australian actors and crews overseas. In Around the world… there are only 3 actors; Pia and Grant playing multiple roles and Ian Stenlake playing the main character Phileaus Fogg–who makes a bet saying he can traverse the world in 80 days. The production has been ‘re-invented’ so that it’s comically appealing. Pia and Grant talk about how they pulled off playing multiple characters with many different accents.  The set is very simple and all the means of travel are ‘secreted’ within the design of the set. The script is excellent and funny and there is a lot of action. The play will tour Victoria, with plans for a wider tour next year. Pia and Grant talk about touring and its effect on family life.

54:08 to 1:26:33 mins–Recording Producer Bill Armstrong is one of the most important people in the recording history of the Australian music industry. He has had a long, productive and colourful career and is here to talk about it, and play some of his recordings. Bill started up Armstrong Studios (later called AAV)  in South Melbourne at a time when the rock n’ roll scene was big in Melbourne and a London producer was visiting and able to advise him on the latest techniques. He learnt his craft through Neil McRae and many other people and was actually able to build a lot of the audio equipment himself.

Bill talks about the following along with samples of some recordings (most available at JB HiFi):

-Operating the sound system at the MCG during the 1956 Olympics

-Working at WMG Records in the 50s

-Starting with one studio and then taking over house after vacant house, ending up with 7 studios connected with illegal cables

-Famous songs recorded at his studios such as ‘The Real Thing’ by Russell Morris (produced by Molly Meldrum)–(sample played)

-Orchestral music recordings through multi tacking and mixing via talented sound engineers

-Recordings of Barry Humphries as Edna with orchestra (sample played)

-Recording jazz musicians from early days and in 1949 recording them on a Pyrox wire recorder (sample played)

–Johnny Farnham pre-Sadie… singing a commercial for Ansett ANA in 2 different styles (samples played)

-An anecdote about famous Jazz musician Don Burrows along with a recording (sample played)

-How he and his team started up the first FM licenced radio station in Melbourne called EON (now Triple M)

-His sound engineering of ‘It ain’t necessarily by Normie Rowe  so’ (sample played)

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Special guests this week are:

13:09 to 30:30 mins—Writer and actor Patrick Moffatt is here to talk about Come with me to the End of the World on at the Malthouse Theatre from 5 to 24 July. Patrick started acting and directing other kids in send-ups of ads at primary school. At Curtin Uni in Perth he did a degree majoring in Theatre Arts and then got into VCA in Melbourne with an unusual audition. After VCA he produced a play and then was invited to join the Ranters Theatre Company by founders Raimondo and Adriano Cortese–23 years ago. It started off text-based but morphed into more group-devised pieces. They have established a network of producers and have toured all over the world. They just returned from New York with a show called Song and were actually there when Bowie died. Ranters’ latest production is a group-devised piece that developed out of a lot of improvisation which, at the end, started to reveal the actors’ interior lives which was very moving to witness. They thought the show could be about change and desire and ‘the collapsed dream’ meaning– things that you think would not finish such as a relationship or parent never dying and your quality of life reflecting how you negotiate these ‘collapses’.  The show is ‘a gentle meditation’ on these things and your own mortality. The show feels improvised but is actually scripted. Patrick explains the title and also the role of fantasy and dreams. They do want to create a space where people’s lives can enter into the piece. He gives an example of one such happening.

31:00 to 55:32 mins–Artist, sculptor and photographer Sonia Payes to talk about her career and her new solo exhibition- Parallel Futures– at McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park-a free event  from 3 July to 6 November.  She knew she was artistically oriented when she won a landscape competition, in Grade 3. She became a primary teacher, which she enjoyed, and got an ‘art release’ when she taught art and made backdrops and costumes for musicals. Once she had kids she started using a camera and studied photography at 2 colleges learning darkroom skills and producing beautiful B&W prints.  She loves documenting family and street life, photojournalism and experimenting/playing with photos and in the darkroom. Sonia is also a sculptor and is computer savvy but needs her technical experts which she works with to be able to get her envisioned sculptures out there. She talks about digital installations and animations she’d done called Insomnia I & II plus other solo exhibitions including Re:Generation (see her website) involving 5 metre tall, four-faced fibreglass heads installed in the park at McLelland. She got the McClelland Achievement Prize for this. Parallel Futures- is an indoor event, comprised of over 50 works and has both old and new works in all her disciplines but is all one story–about humanity, the environment and global warming.  She gives examples of how the works depict this and also the inspirations for some of the works. At the exhibition there will be a book about Sonia written by Ashley Crawford. Apart from her website, Sonia also has Instagram.

56:38 to 1:15:44mins–Director and performer Kendall Jane Rundle is here to talk about her theatre company’s (Bare Naked Theatre) new production 4.48 Psychosis on from 29 June to 2 July at Metanoia Theatre at the Mechanics Institute in Brunswick. Kendall started learning drama from childhood and got the bug. She and her family moved here from South Africa and Kendall decided to study Anthropology at uni. She went travelling, met a guy and went to Montreal where she got involved in the exciting theatre scene– and stayed for 13 years. Bare Naked Theatre to her means raw, open storytelling where the audience feel they’ve been part of an experience.  4.48 Psychosis, by British playwright Sarah Kane, is emotionally violent and brutal. The premise of the play is you’re experiencing a psychotic breakdown; a woman’s deepest darkest moment before she decides to kills herself at 4.48am. The text has no characters or scenes. There are 24 vignettes with a clue that now there’s a different speaker. Kendall and cast interviewed people with psychosis to get the feeling of the experience. The consistent thing they found was an exhaustion & tiredness with life, and emptiness. Kendall has tried to direct with this theme and remain true to the experiences of the people she interviewed. There are 4 people in the cast including Kendall and they all worked together to get an interpretation that’s true for all 4 of them.  Also on 30 July, a speaker from SANE Australia and Kendall will have a Q&A panel after the show.

1:15:58 to 1:30:51 mins–Donna Jackson is here to talk about her book Art and Social Change, Dust: A Case Study. As a child and teenager Donna did youth theatre & ballet classes, then studied drama & English at a tertiary level. She worked at a women’s refuge, played in girl bands and worked at Footscray Community Arts Centre where she set up The Women’s Circus and did large-scale shows.  The dust in her book is asbestos and the book is about the large-scale theatre show ‘Dust’.  Donna did the show for 7 years and 7 seasons in a lot of places including Williamstown, regional Victoria, Adelaide and Brisbane. The show talks about people making compo claims against James Hardie because they’d been exposed to asbestos and gotten sick. After a long battle they won. Songs for the show were written by Mark Seymour.  There were actors, technicians and a choir in the show.  Donna also worked with 70 people in each place getting them to tell their story of asbestos exposure. She wrote the book to ‘wrap-up’ the show talking about the origins, creation & impact and providing resources such as the script, the songs, sheet music, an ABC doco about making Dust, an evaluation model and lesson plans for schools. Donna talks about how the idea for the show snuck up on her via a building worker, when she was doing another show. Also how she collaborated with people to get photos, film vox pops, evaluate the show, help edit the book and design it so it had energy and colour. The book is available at Sun Bookshop in Yarraville or online via Paperback Books and Donna’s website.

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Special guests today are:

17:00 to 23:25 mins– Peter Keogh is a Perth writer, on the phone to talk about a book he wrote about his own life (My Hi-De-High Life) which was published initially as an e-book, then a hard copy and then took off around the world. It has a foreword by actress Debbie Reynolds and theatre producer John Frost which was very helpful!  He was encouraged to write it by friends as he’d had a very interesting life and it needed to be written.  He found it a very cathartic experience. He grew up on a farm, sometimes wearing his mum’s clothes to school.  The family moved to Perth where he had a very hard time as a gay youth.  He was at the first Mardi Gras in Sydney and saw things progress over the years. Once he sat down to write of his experiences it just flowed and memories flooded in.  A lot of it is very funny despite the hard experiences and it has a conversational style.  He tried publishing the book in Australia, with no success, but a UK company picked it up.  They edited very little of it which Peter regards as a blessing. He has also been approached about making it into a play and agreed to it with some advice from ex-partner John Frost.  Our hosts will do a more in-depth interview in about a month when Peter and his partner Sasha come to Melbourne.

24:50 to 46:51 mins–Paula Van Beek is an Independent Artist here to talk about Copy Cut Post on at the Metanoia Theatre at the Mechanics Institute from 26 June to 10 July.  Paula grew up in NZ where her parents took her to galleries and theatre shows as a child. She’s been in Melbourne for 10 years, initially coming over to study ‘animateuring’ at the VCA. This is ‘original performance-making’ which also involves a social aspect, such as public art. Paula and David discuss public art. Copy Cut Post is the first project (out of six) in Metanoia Theatre’s ‘liveworks’ program. It’s a response to the social media selfie culture where she asked 10 female artists of diverse ages and artistic backgrounds (i.e.performers as well as visual artists) to make a ‘selfie’ work in one day (25 June) in the venue.  On 26 June between 5 & 8pm is the ‘posting’ of the artwork i.e. the exhibition opening which the public are invited to. She and our hosts discuss selfies and social media– both good and bad aspects. Also selfie feminism, ‘palatable’ selfies & the lack of diversity being posted and selfies (self-portraits) in the past.  Paula talks more of how she moved from theatre to visual arts and previous collaborations and selfie projects.  She is now doing a PhD at RMIT which is specifically looking at the complexity of capturing a feminine experience.  She’s using smartphones as a research tool and is investigating private-public sites such as bathrooms and social media sites.

47:07 to 1:12:50 mins– Jason Smith is the new Director of Geelong Gallery and is here to talk about the gallery, himself, and a new exhibition called People Like Us on at the gallery from 18 June to 21 August. Jason liked to draw as a child in Canberra but really got the bug when, at 17, he met 2 famous artists who invited him to their studios. His career in short went from– art school, a commercial gallery in Melbourne, Post-grad in museum studies, Warnambool Gallery, a first Curation grant, NGV, Monash Gallery, Director at Heide and then Qld Art Gallery and then–from May–Geelong Gallery when Geoffrey Edwards retired.   Geelong appealed to him for a long time because it’s historically old and has an exceptional collection of national significance including work, from the 18 & 1900s, specific to Geelong’s history.  David and Jason discuss the amazing story of the purchase of the painting View of Geelong from Andrew Lloyd-Webber. Jason talks about Geelong itself, the diverse population, community engagement & the artists. People Like Us is curated by Jason’s colleague and friend– UNSW Galleries Director Felicity Fenner– and is being toured around many galleries by National Exhibitions Touring Support. It involves 13 Australian and International artists with pieces on their interpretation of the words People Like Us, and the human condition. There is a huge diversity of work and many are using new technologies.  Jason gives examples of various pieces. He then talks generally about the importance of art and artists in society and the programs in the gallery–present and future.

1:13:05 to 1:32:39 mins–Director Dan Czech and actor/writer/lyricist Jess Newman from a new musical called Einstein: Master of the Universe–on at Theatre Works St Kilda from 30 June to 10 July. Dan was involved with the Shakespeare company at Melbourne Uni while doing a music degree. He ended up running and directing it (as well as directing a musical) and decided this was his vocation–so he went to train at the VCA.  Jess is first and foremost an actor but became interested in writing musicals also when he discovered Stephen Sondheim in high school. David and our guests discuss what’s so special about musicals, especially the more recent ones.  Jess explains why Einstein is the subject and how the music is an expression of Einstein’s emotional life.  He did a lot of research on Einstein’s life in order to make a clear story, to pay tribute and to bring real people to glorious life. He wants to show the man behind the icon and the show takes the idea of relativity and imbues that in the emotional story. Dan explains the story–it begins with Einstein’s graduation from the Zurich Polytechnic in 1900 and it ends in 1933 when he’s leaving for America. It covers his struggles when working on his first theories and the breakdown of his marriage to his first wife. There are 12 people in the cast with some people playing multiple characters. Casting the right person to play Einstein was difficult and it took weeks before they found Scott Mackenzie–who is great. Dan talks more about the show is set with scenic projections on the walls behind the cast, showing the location they are in.

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