Kelly's first stand

Heard the one about the expat Kiwi running a British film company using American money to make a film about an Irish revolutionary in Australia? Michael Hutak plunges into Kelly country. 

"Are you gonna whack Heath on the cover?" asks Tim Bevan, founder of Working Title Films and arguably the world's most successful independent movie producer. On the line from his London office, there is much more than just his new flick, Ned Kelly, to promote today.

But let's start with the movie. Starring Heath Ledger as the defiant one, Geoffrey Rush as his Victorian police nemesis and Naomi Watts as his lady love, Ned Kelly reunites the producer-director team of Tim White and Gregor Jordan that crafted Ledger's 1999 breakthrough hit, Two Hands.

Collectables: Jeffrey Smart

Jeffrey Smart has virtually no market outside Australia, yet short supply keeps his work in demand

With his latest show at Sydney’s Australian Galleries another sellout, evergreen artist, Jeffrey Smart, appears at 82 years of age to be at the height of his powers and success. Netting almost $5 million in sales, the show comes hot on the heels of another record auction price: $439,450 for the 1990 work Near Pisa Airport, paid in late August at Christie’s sale of the BHP Billiton Collection.

Smart’s signature style – the industrial settings and motifs, the clean lines, bold colours and precise attention to composition – settled in when he left Australia in the late 1960s for the rural idyll of a Tuscan villa. From his studio there, for almost four decades, Smart has meticulously produced 20 to 30 major works per annum, feeding shows for his Australian dealers who can barely get their hands on works before they are sold.

Not too many investments outstrip Sydney real estate but Smart’s average price at auction has more than trebled since 1997.

Melbourne football identity, Sam Newman, kicked things along in 1998, blaming too much red wine when he paid a then-record $288,500 for Guiding Spheres (Homage to Cezanne) II at Christies Melbourne. The tabloids scoffed at the folly, but Newman, it appears, knew exactly what he was doing (or was acting on sound advice). The major touring retrospective of Smart mounted in 1999 by the Art Gallery of NSW sparked another jump in values and a minor rush on Smarts - 27 oils were offered at auction that year with only four unsold.

While they are a genuine blue chip investment, we are unlikely to see an glut of works by Smart filling auction catalogues any time soon.

Unlike, for example, Brett Whiteley (around 15,000 works) or Arthur Boyd (some 20,000), Smart’s lifetime output numbers only about 1000 major paintings. Exacting a rigid quality control, he has often destroyed works which, in his opinion, haven’t made the grade. Rarely does an inferior work reach the market. In the past ten years only 145 paintings have been sold on the secondary market through the auction room.

No more than 100 major works are in state or public galleries, the rest are held tightly by private collectors who typically would have bought them straight out of a show with his dealers.

The short supply has meant Smart has virtually no market outside Australia, yet he does have international standing. Global art auction data firm, artprice.com, rates Smart No.407 among the top 9,000 artists at auction, just below Mexican Frida Kahlo (402) but above the more-renowned contemporary Joseph Beuys (447) and venerable English master John Constable (436).

Today Smart enjoys his fame without paying the price. “I don’t really want to be well-known here in Italy, I’d like to lead my quiet life here,” he told The Bulletin when we visited recently. “It’s very thrilling to go back to Australia and find out you are Mr Famous.”

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First published in The Bulletin

Global warning

An eminent American academic came to Sydney last week to alert us to an ongoing war, one in which nothing less than our entire way of life is at stake, writes Michael Hutak.

Dr Stephen Schneider - adviser to every US president from Nixon to Clinton - arrived to spread the news not about global terror, but global warming.
With the issue of climate change hotting up, concerned citizens collected at the University of NSW in Sydney last Thursday to hear the accomplished "greenhouse guru" spell out the planetary consequences of the industrialised world's love affair with coal-fired production.
However, as one of the lead authors of the documents that formed the scientific basis for the Kyoto Protocol, Schneider is the first to admit that predictions of what will happen are not cut and dried.
"There's no statistical way to figure out what 2100 will look like," he told the audience. "The weather is a chaotic, dynamic system that cannot be predicted beyond two weeks. Instead what we have is climate models, which are inherently uncertain.
"Add to this the uncertainty of human behavioural activity and global warming by the year 2100 will range from anywhere from 1(degrees) or so to up to 6(degrees) -- from the relatively mild to the catastrophic."

Matthew Collings: Strictly modern

Intriguing connections surround the recent Australian visit of British art critic and author Matthew Collings, best known here for his British Academy Award-winning television series, This is Modern Art.

Collings, who has charted the rise of the so-called Young British Artists movement of the mid-1990s, wound up a sell-out speaking tour last week with a talk at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, where his subject was "The Solemn and the Trivial versus the Serious and the Playful". Collings' witty, plain-speaking accounts of the works of YBA stars such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst have done much to demystify art for the general public.

But now he believes that, while the popularity of modern art is on the rise (in Britain, at least), artists should have no obligation to be popular. Indeed, art is "neither democratic nor a form of entertainment but is a specialised endeavour for those willing to make the serious effort to engage with it".

Australia grapples with its emotions in aftermath of Bali bombing

by Michael Hutak

672 words
17 October 2002
Agence France-Presse
 

SYDNEY, Oct 17 (AFP) - Australia's moods are shifting by the hour from grief to anger to compassion five days after the nation's worst terrorist incident so far.

Talk radio, acknowledged as a barometer of public opinion, has been inundated with calls about the bombing, and trends are beginning to emerge.

A national media monitoring firm, Rehame, has tracked 1,300 calls since Saturday's attack and reports that overwhelmingly people are using radio as an outlet for expressions of grief and dismay at the attacks.

However other issues are emerging, many fueled by the assumption that Islamic radicals linked to the al-Qaeda network were behind the bombing.

More than 20 percent of callers have criticised the Australian government's strong alignment with the US administration of President George W. Bush.

"People are starting to draw the link between the attacks and the prime minister's unconditional support for US-led war on terror," said Matthew Mitchell, a media analyst for Rehame. "They're now starting to say that we are paying the price for that support."

"You have to rememeber that in the six weeks leading up to the attack, feeling against support of war against Iraq has been consistently at 60 percent, so this was to be expected," he said.

"But the anti-US feeling is very strong, with many callers critical of George Bush's 'underwhelming' response to the Bali attacks, and of the US media's focus only on American casualties."

Another trend emerging is a strong anti-Muslim sentiment, underlined by an attack Tuesday night on the home of Imam Ahmed Shabbir, a prominent Sydney Muslim cleric, and the firebombing early Thursday of a mosque near Melbourne.

Mitchell said most anti-Muslim feeling was emanating from Sydney, Australia's most ethnically diverse city which has seen racial tension following a series of notorious gang rapes in 2000 perpetrated by local Lebanese youths targeting what they called "Australian" women.

The crimes inflamed prejudice against the Lebanese community.

Callers to one of Australia's best known "shock jocks", John Laws, were running strongly against Muslims, said the program's producer Stuart Bocking.

"It's reopened old sores in the community," said Bocking, who cited the Afghan refugee issue at the 2001 federal election, the September 11 attacks in the United States and this year's trials of the Sydney gang rapists as lightning rods for the racial vilification of Muslims in the country.

"All this had died down a bit recently but the Bali bomb has reignited it and brought the bigots out of the woodwork again."

Other radio programmers report that the blame game had been less prominent.

"We've been struck by how many people simply want to know how they can help," said Richard Glover, a presenter on Sydney's ABC 702.

"We've had our share of conspiracy theorists, but the main thread, and perhaps a surprising one, has been an outpouring of compassion and sorrow for the Balinese people."

"Many people are saying that it's actually bringing the Australian and Indonesian people together in a way we have never been before, and that that's a good thing," he said.

Glover said that despite much anger about the failure of Australian intelligence agencies to pass on US warnings about possible terrorism in Bali, there was also a sense that most people would still have embarked on their holidays.

"People are angry but there's been no widespread call for revenge out there," said Glover. "It's more an fatalistic attitude of the kind that says 'there but for the grace of God go I'."

Mitchell said while Prime Minister John Howard was under harsh criticism for his closeness to the United States, there was also much praise for his government's relief operations.

"But next week when the death toll is finalised, then you will see the start of some serious finger-pointing."

ENDS

Sydney suburb Coogee mourns the loss of six sporting sons in Bali blast

by Michael Hutak
805 words
15 October 2002
Agence France-Presse
English

SYDNEY, Oct 15 (AFP) - Bedecked with flags advertising a popular local beer, the Beach Palace Hotel overlooks idyllic Coogee Beach, the focus of one of Sydney's most affluent suburbs.
In a very Australian gesture, those same flags flew at half-mast Tuesday, as residents mourned the death of six local sportsmen in Saturday's bomb blast in Bali.
Like scores of sporting clubs around the nation, the Coogee Dolphins Rugby League Club -- born and bred at the Beach Palace -- began their annual end-of-season holiday in Bali last week.
Today they count their dead: club president Clint Thompson, 29, team manager, Adam Howard, 26, treasurer Shane Foley, 33, and players Joshua Iliffe, 28, Gerard Yeo, 20 and David Mavoudis, 28.
"We're all still trying to come to grips with it," said the Dolphin's secretary, Mal Ward, who was all booked to go on the trip but decided to cancel at the last minute, preferring to spend time with his son.
On Saturday night, all 11 in the Dolphins' party were in the Sari Club in Kuta. Miraculously, five decided to leave the club just minutes before the blast.
"They then had to identify the bodies of their mates," said Ward, "and I just feel for those five, for what they've endured and what they've seen. That's a memory they will have to carry for the rest of their lives."
The Dolphins are an amateur club which plays rugby league football for the love of the game -- and to raise funds for local charity.
Every year they raise more than 10,000 dollars (5,500 US) for the Sydney Childrens Hospital.
The chief executive of the Hospital's Foundation, Elizabeth Crundall said the generosity of Dolphins was "typical of the community and sporting groups we rely on to survive."
"They've paid for physiotherapy equipment, for special beds, and they also would come and visit the kids in hospital. The kids loved them," she said.
"It's appalling that those who have been so giving of themselves should be struck down so senselessly."
The Dolphins and the Beach Palace have grown up together, the club was founded in the public bar the same year the hotel opened, in 1992.
"We've backed the boys since they started," said the Beach Palace manager, Tim Crowe.
The pub sponsors the club, paying for their sporting gear and outfits and by "putting a couple of hundred bucks on the bar after a game," added Crowe.
"A lot of them are locals who drink here all year round. We had 150 Dolphins supporters in here yesterday for a wake and it was a surprisingly happy occasion, with everyone remembering the good times."
The bad times are right now, as the enormity of the tragedy sinks in.
"Some of the families of our boys were there and they were able to see how many people were at the wake offering their support and that was good," said a Dolphin member, Paul Vanni.
"I think we all took solace yesterday in the fact that we were there in numbers and everybody was able to grieve with each other.
"We're still together and I suppose if you're looking for something good amongst all this tragedy, then that was something."
Vanni said five of his mates' bodies had been identified, even though badly burned, and the sixth was presumed dead. "We know he was with the other guys at the time so there's very little hope," he said.
"We considerd having a special memorial service but we also realized that we have six funerals to attend," Vanni said. "That will be the sorriest time."
Leading Australian thoroughbred jockey Simon Marshall was close friends with Adam Howard, who was also involved in the racing scene.
"It's just devastating," Marshall told AFP. "Adam loved his football, he loved horse racing, he loved life and he lived it to the full... for a 27 year old kid in his prime to be cut down like this is, well, there's no justice, is there."
The Dophins were not alone in their grief, with several football clubs across the nation counting their casualties and awaiting news of the missing.
The suburban Australian Rules football club in Kingsley outside Perth has seven players unaccounted for and presumed dead, and in the small New South Wales town of Forbes, three members of the local football team are believed to have perished in the massacre.
Back in Coogee, Ward was adamant: "We'll definitely carry on."
"We're more determined than ever that for the memory of the blokes we've lost there's no way we'll let this club fold."

ENDS

Ken Burns: oxymoronic hybrid

Dubbed the world's most influential documentary film-maker, Ken Burns has made his name and fortune bringing the past to life. "I've become so influential," Burns told The Bulletin, "that one of our most respected historians said recently that more Americans get their history from me than from anywhere else, to paraphrase the [American] ABC news slogan."
Burns delivered the keynote address at the 2002 NSW Premier's History Awards last Friday. Premier Bob Carr had been trying to get Burns to Australia since he instituted the awards in 1997. He was booked to come last year but September 11 intervened. Yet the director of the most watched documentary in television history, the epic nine-part The Civil War, admits he is "completely untrained in American history".

Consumers: A Matter of Trust

By Michael Hutak, 9 May 2002

Australian Financial Review
MARKETING 2002

Expect a more demand-driven market. So you'll need to earn the trust of customers.

AMERICAN CAPITALISM is in for a bumpy ride over the next two decades. Manhattan marketing guru Elliott Ettenberg says business priorities will need to shift from satisfying shareholders to delighting customers. This is not a rehash of the new economy's customer relationship management fad. It is the parting shot from one of the most influential forces on the US economy in the past half-century: baby boomers.

The Next Economy: Will you know where your customers are? by Elliott Ettenberg (McGraw-Hill, $56.95).

AMERICAN CAPITALISM is in for a bumpy ride over the next two decades. Manhattan marketing guru Elliott Ettenberg says business priorities will need to shift from satisfying shareholders to delighting customers. This is not a rehash of the new economy's customer relationship management fad. It is the parting shot from one of the most influential forces on the US economy in the past half-century: baby boomers.

"Forty-five to 55 is the peak spending age, and spending drops off sharply from there as people start to focus on savings and investment," Ettenberg said from New York. "And as we move through the first decade of the millennium the baby boomers are turning 50-plus, the kids have gone, they're moving to smaller quarters, working less, spending less and are starting to withdraw from the marketplace."

Ettenberg says the impact of the economic withdrawal of the wealthiest 28 per cent of the US population can't be underestimated. Faced with diminishing national savings, ballooning personal debt, shrinking customer loyalty and what Ettenberg calls "marketing impotence", companies will need to rebuild a bridge of trust between the discerning customer and brands that add value.

Ettenberg wants to reinvent marketing, which he argues is in terminal decline. In his latest book, The Next Economy: Will you know where your customers are?, Ettenberg says the way to rebuild the economy is to develop better, more accurate customer data.

He wants to see "concierge marketing", where consumers outsource their decisions to specialists who procure, package, deliver and administer purchases. Unlike conventional middlemen who represent producers to sellers, concierge marketers will represent buyers to sellers. They will charge for the service. But consumers, who have become disenchanted, will be happy to pay.

Ettenberg also forsees "horizontal co-marketing". Where in conventional vertical marketing, retailers and manufacturers share advertising and marketing costs, horizontal co-marketing means retailers, manufacturers and service organisations co-ordinate efforts - not around particular products but categories of consumers.

Ettenberg says our "new economy" is a transitional stage straddling the old - and his next economy. He argues that the postwar economy of the 1960s, 70s and 80s was driven by baby boomers and was based on products and services, eking out market share with a focus on efficiency. The new economy was built by "generation X geeks" who pushed technology to the forefront, and demonstrated the importance of information as a driver of economic growth. Success in the "gold rush" of the new economy was measured by time-to-market, but that deployment of technology has, says Ettenberg, failed to add value to our lives. No-one can afford to ignore the internet but the big mistake of the dotcom boom was that business saw it as a technological challenge. This has resulted in a selling interface between companies and consumers that is so unfriendly that it generates more frustration than it does satisfaction.

Ettenberg believes the key to selling in his next economy will be an economic, social and psychological problem - a marketing challenge. For the old categories of age and gender he prefers psychographic models of market segmentation, and endorses analytic models such as SRI's proprietary Values and Lifestyles typology (based on people's desires, beliefs, needs and attitudes) which allow marketers to access people's psychological make-up - something systems based solely on demographics or geographics are unable to discern.

 

Boss: Visual Values

Michael Hutak

8 March 2002
Australian Financial Review

Corporate art for legal offices; women versus women; phone etiquette via voicemail; promoting ideas for a better workplace.

News that Minter Ellison has appointed Sydney art consultant Amanda Love to crank up its corporate art collection begs the question: what is the value of art to an organisation? "Our clients come from all over the world," says ME partner, Lindsay Powers. "We hope to promote the artists we collect by exposing our clients to their work. Equally important, however, are our staff, who work long hours. We hope the art we display creates a stimulating environment, and that our dedication to Australian artists makes them proud to be a part of the firm."

Allen Allen & Hemsley, of Sydney, had one of the best corporate collections of contemporary and Aboriginal art in the country. After its merger with Melbourne's Arthur Robinson in 2001, the collection was scattered across 12 offices in seven countries. Group marketing manager Chris Fogarty cites three core benefits: "First, we are always asking our lawyers to come up with inspiring solutions, so we want to provide them with an inspiring environment. Second, legal firms typically have paintings of judges and racehorses on the walls, so because our collection is so eclectic it generates a lot of healthy discussion around the place. And third because we only buy emerging or unknown artists, it's a reminder for us all of the firm's commitment to community involvement."

Tough Love For Queen Bees

A new study has found a general bias, from both genders, against successful women, writes Michael Hutak.

Janne Chung, when senior lecturer at Edith Cowan University, Perth, conducted a study to discover whether the evaluation of a manager's performance is affected by the gender of the person doing the evaluating, and/or the gender of the person being evaluated. Her findings were published in the latest Australian Journal of Management (vol 26, no 2).

Thirty-three men and 24 women were asked to rate the performance of two managers - one male, one female - who had responded to two scenarios. Both managers had handled one scenario successfully, the other unsuccessfully.

When rating the female's successful scenario, both men and women were harsher than they were with the male's successful scenario. However, in the unsuccessful scenario, there was no such difference: both the female and the male manager were rated equally. This suggests a general bias against successful women.

Chung says the bias is enough to influence human resource decisions - such as hiring, remuneration or promotion - where competition is stiff. It may also cause frustration and lead to the premature exit of successful women, to the detriment of the organisation.

Chung, now an associate professor in accounting at Canada's top business school, the Schulich School of Business in Toronto, says a possible explanation for the lack of feminist solidarity among the women in the study is the "queen bee syndrome".

"Many senior women who have struggled to get to the top find they don't like competition from younger women," she says. 

Boss Magazine, Australian Financial Review

Get The Message?

Boss Magazine

Michael Hutak
391 words
8 March 2002
Australian Financial Review

There is no master plan to success in business! Getting started is what really counts . . . even wisdom doesn't matter nearly as much as getting started.

Fred DeLuca, co-founder of the Subway franchise, from Start Small, Finish Big (Warner Business, $29.95)

VOICEMAIL HAS become pervasive, but still we fumble with its use - mumbling, slurring, omitting, rambling and losing valuable business in the process. Don't waste people's valuable time is the first mantra of business communication, says Manhattan business consultant Hilka Klinkenberg. She founded Etiquette International in 1989 and advises major corporations like Sony, IBM, Andersen, Con Edison and Salomon Brothers on all aspects of social and business etiquette. Klinkenberg lists her top 10 voicemail tips:

* Think about what you have to say before you pick up the phone. A series of "ers", "aahs", and "ums" leaves a bad impression.

* Don't just speak clearly, speak clearly into the receiver. Don't cradle the phone under your chin while shuffling papers on your desk. And stifle any background noise - radio, TV, screaming kids, office parties and so on.

* Never slouch back with your feet on the desk. Poor posture changes the position of the diaphragm, making your voice sound lazy and disinterested. Sit up straight.

* Identify yourself. Nothing is more infuriating than messages of the "Hi, it's me. Call me back!" variety.

* Leave your contact number at the start and the end of the message. And say it slowly. Here's a tip: Write down the number yourself as you say it. Chances are your recipient will have time to do the same.

* Avoid telephone tag team by leaving as much relevant information as possible. Your recipient can then return your call prepared with the information you were seeking.

* Conversely, don't leave long-winded details about your day's itinerary. No-one cares. Just tell us when we can call you back.

* When you do leave a time to accept a return call, make sure you are there to take it.

* Change your own answer message to advise when you are on holidays or otherwise unavailable.

* Never leave bad news on voicemail. It's not just inappropriate, it's cruel. Breaking up with a lover via voicemail may be a convenient way out, but remember: they know where you live.

Somewhere Man: Phillip Noyce on "Rabbit Proof Fence"

“I wasn’t looking for a script to come back to Australia. I didn’t think I could come back. I thought that I had become a nowhere man, that as a migrant worker working in America I had perhaps alienated my sensibilities from the way Australia had developed in the 10 years since I had left.”
At Fox Studios in Sydney, Phillip Noyce takes a break from sound editing to talk to Australian Style about Rabbit Proof Fence, the film that after 10 years in Hollywood has brought him home; the same film that, ironically, he hopes will secure his international reputation as one of the cinema’s leading visionaries.
Back in Australia now for almost two years, Noyce has been simultaneously directing Rabbit Proof Fence, to be released nationally this month (February), and The Quiet American, based on the Graham Green novel and starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser (due for release late 2002).
A mountain of a man, unshaven and refreshingly unkempt, Noyce makes a habit of lighting up a cigarette, taking one drag then putting it out.

Gillian Armstrong: Shades of Gray

Gillian Armstong hopes by the time you read this, there will be no need to introduce CHARLOTTE GRAY, the acclaimed Australian director’s latest film and her first in four years. If life has followed the script, word of mouth (not to mention a healthy dose of good ol’ fashioned movie marketing) following the Christmas US release of the $US25 million World War II drama should have thrust Armstrong‘s film into Acadamy Awards contention, and her star Cate Blanchette into the running for another Best Actress nomination.

"I'd be hopeful for Cate,” the 51 year old director of 14 feature films told Australian Style in December last year. Our audience with Armstrong takes place at a Bondi hotel, a week after locking off the final print and two days before flying out to LA to begin the US publicity tour, a task the director faced alone, with Blanchette due to give birth to her first baby.

"The poster has just gone up on every bus stop in LA,” said Armstrong. “We open in America on December 28 in a select group of cinemas and then we go wide in January, which means we become eligible for the Oscars. That's why we've been working day and night to finish the film, but we literally only finished the mix three weeks ago. I mean, we had to screen a workprint with a ‘temp’ mix for all the long-lead magazines in America, and we’ve only locked off the final print ourselves a week ago.”

Collectables: Export vs. Heritage

Auction stations: The export market for indigenous artworks is being stymied by bureaucracy, argue the auction houses. But not surprisingly, Michael Hutak reports, the bureaucrats disagree.

What is more important? Australia’s multi-million dollar international market for Aboriginal art, or the value of that art to the cultural heritage of the nation as a whole? That’s the crucial question driving tensions between international auction house Sotheby’s and the federal government’s Movable Cultural Heritage Committee.

Five months after its annual sale of Aboriginal art in July, Sotheby’s is still waiting for the MCHC to decide whether seven works knocked down at the auction will be granted export licences to leave the country with their new owners. The auction house faced a similar situation in 2000 and the subsequent denying of export permits for three works resulted in the sales being cancelled and, according to Sotheby’s, the vendors being unable to achieve the proper market value for their paintings.

Sotheby’s 2001 sale again broke all auction records for Aboriginal art, with sales totalling $5m. But for the company’s Aboriginal art specialist, Tim Klingender, the worrying statistic is the percentage of works bought by overseas collectors, which fell by more than a third from 69% to 39%.

“It’s been nothing short of a disaster for us,” says Klingender. “International confidence in the Aboriginal art market is being affected. We have been advised by the largest private collector of Aboriginal art in the United States that he will not bid on any lot that does not have an export permit prior to the auction being held.”

Klingender says he told the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, which administers the relevant act, before the sale that some 75 works fell within the act’s guidelines for assessment. But the department would accept only 15 applications, eventually denying export licences to seven works.

After the auction, the department required 16 more works go to the MCHC for assessment, seven of which are still in limbo. A spokesperson told The Bulletin that to process 75 works within Sotheby’s timeframe would have “overburdened the committee; delayed other applications for objects that were definitely intended for overseas export; and risked a more superficial assessment of the cultural significance of the works”.

Klingender claims Sotheby’s has no problem with important works being banned from leaving the country as part of cultural heritage. But he maintains “the irregular meetings of the MCHC contributes to a process that is unacceptably long and frustrating to all involved”. He says: “We want the whole process to be streamlined. The expert examiners of works who advise the committee should be remunerated for their time and expertise and time limits and deadlines placed on their assessments.”

Brenda Croft is the indigenous art expert on the heritage committee. An Aboriginal artist and curator who has just been appointed curator of indigenous art at the National Gallery of Australia, she is unmoved by the auction house’s criticisms.

“People [on the committee] aren’t just there sitting on things,” she says. “We aren’t out to hamper the market but I don’t have a great deal of empathy because I’m not here to further the interests of the auction houses or commercial galleries. Our primary interest here is to protect cultural heritage, not to facilitate sales of work.”

With key US and European collectors refusing to consider works without an export permit in place, one leading Melbourne dealer in Aboriginal art said the act had effectively halved international prices and it was having a knock-on effect in the domestic market, creating an artificial, two-tiered market.

“I don’t take that argument on board,” says Croft. “There are many, many works that have secured permits. And besides, with a lot of the works that do go overseas, the onsale doesn’t go back to the artists, anyway, because these are secondary sales.”

This differs from the situation in the European Union, for example, where artists have a legal right of resale – or droit de suite – in which they are granted a percentage, usually 2% to 5%, of any resale of an original work.

“We’re not here to stop people selling,” says Croft. “But in my own mind I’ve had problems with seeing indigenous works sometimes seemingly traded like stock and bonds, particularly when I know there’s no right of resale to the artists.”

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First published in The Bulletin

Letter to Australia

Hi, allow me to introduce myself. I'm a fully paid-up member of the chattering classes, the new elites, one of the cafe-latte set, a chardonnay-sipping champagne socialist (if there is such a thing). I'm no action man, all I do is talk.

I'm a politically correct, university educated, inner-city wanker who has no real affinity with 'the vast mainstream' of Australia, or even 'basic Australian values' like mateship, 'a fair go' or unfettered free market capitalism. If I did I wouldn't feel totally disenfranchised by the recent re-election of the Howard government.

Since this momentous event I've been trying come to terms with my own irrelevancy. According to this country's professional right-wing media blowhards and a thousand letter-to-the-editor writers, cultural gatekeepers like me should just give up now. Or at the very least just piss off for three years while little Johnny gets on with important jobs like directing people trafficking in the South Pacific or privatizing any profitable government entity still left in public hands.

Apparently, anyone who voted against John Howard - and by polling day there were 49 per cent of us - was simply out of step with grassroots opinion. We have no affinity with the battlers, the workers, the people, the suburbs or the bush. We have no idea how tough things are 'out there'; especially for those 'ordinary decent' Australians trying to 'cope with change'. We wouldn't have the first idea how difficult it is for them to hold onto their racist views while all around them they are being swamped by 'different faces'. It's the likes of social engineers like us who are always trying to foist dangerous untested new ideas onto 'ordinary decent' Australians, like 'tolerance' or 'Islam'.

After all, I am one of those Balmain basket-weaving intellectuals who thinks multiculturalism is grouse. I don't give a rat's arse that the country is being swamped by Asians, Afghani terrorists, queue jumpers or even British backpackers overstaying their visas. You see, I'm blind to these and the other real problems facing this nation - like the outrageous unfair dismissal laws, or lesbians that want IVF, or Cheryl Kernot. Actually, Cheryl's not such a problem anymore.

Another substratum of this great nation with whom I'm completely out of touch are the so-called the 'new apsirationals', the wannabe yuppies living in gated housing estates in Sydney's western suburbs who supposedly delivered the rest of us - and John Howard - three more years of pain. The ones that aspire to be in more debt than their neighbours just so they can drive a new Beemer. The ones happy to pay through the nose for private health insurance and 'independent' schools because it makes them feel like they might be middle class one day. The ones who, though they live in the West, wouldn't be caught dead wearing stonewash or smackie-dacks. On that point, neither would I, but overall I'm still very much out of touch with these 'new aspirationals' as well.

The fact that I actually believe that it's a key role of government to provide adequate health and education for all marks me as nothing more than a tree-hugging pinko union thug. You can smell my support for the welfare state a mile away. I stink as much as user-pays. I'm one of those hopeless dreamers who is all for ecologically sustainable development, ethical investing and socially responsible work practices. My support for feminism, affirmative action and direct democracy shows just how impractical I've become. As for Aboriginal reconciliation, well, I'm sorry John Howard's got three more years but I have absolutely no right to do so being one who foolishly clings to the "black armband view of Australian history", as Johnny so capably dismissed it. It may come as a shock, but this ill-informed post-colonial, post-nationalist libertarian also supports a new flag, and I think it would be good to get rid of the Queen (metaphorically speaking). She only takes holidays here anyway.

On that topic, terrorism, I'm afraid, is out for the time being. Along with free speech. I agree with the blowhards here that in these "new and dangerous times" you can't have everyone going around saying what they really think! Unless its Pauline Hanson, of course. As you can guess, I'm also one of that lunatic fringe that thinks Howard got over the line by playing the race card! Imagine that? A politician of his standing and calibre stooping so low as to use the misery of refugees to tap into white Australia's lingering xenophobia. It's enough to make you throw your kids overboard.

What Howard's media attack squad will allow is that in three years, people like me can have another go at ridding this scourge from the body politic. Until then, I'm told, I should just "get over it" and "get on with life". So you can see how out of step I am. What am I gonna do for three years? I need to sit down and have long hard look at myself.

MICHAEL HUTAK

Easel Angles: Julian Schnabel on Before Night Falls

Julian Schnabel knows a lot about the collision of art and personality. He tells Michael Hutak why he put down his brushes to make a movie of a doomed Cuban writer. 

"I don't think this film will ever be gone from me," says Julian Schnabel, artist, film-maker and renaissance man, of his latest epic motion picture, Before Night Falls.

Splitting his time these days between his huge New York City loft/studio and the ritzy Spanish seaside resort of San Sebastian, Schnabel spoke to The Bulletin from his summer retreat in Montauk, Long Island. Premiered at last year's Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize, Before Night Falls won praise at the recent Sydney Film Festival and is due for Australian release. Schnabel financed, co-wrote, produced, cast, directed, edited and is now promoting this film himself.

"It was like a year ago," he says, "we were at Venice and while I can't believe I've been talking about the film for that long, it will never leave me, it was such a magical experience to be able to give this guy a voice."

Interview: Ben Mendelsohn

For a professional actor on a mid-career surge, Ben Mendelsohn is uncharacteristically modest... “I’ve been doing this (acting) since pretty much the beginning of my teenage years, and I’ve been financially independent since I was fifteen but it’s not really a career, is it? It’s a series of jobs, is what it is! I mean, you will never get to be ‘Head of South East Asian acting’. You might have a great life but it’s not a career.”

It’s mid-morning and we’re talking in a café overlooking Bondi Beach. “Bondi’s got a bit hectic – I’m shifting basically. I remember seeing this great TV special when I was 12, it was about Penthouse Pets and one of ‘em lived in Bondi – and I remember all these shots on the beach and I thought what a promised land – Bondi! I love living here but it’s getting very hectic.”

Preview: ART/MUSIC: Rock Pop and Techno

We are used to hearing rock stars refer to themselves, often portentiously, as ‘artists’. And indeed what hopeful musician doesn’t aspire to the heady status of recording artist. Yet no matter how aesthetic the pose, we still call their wares music, not art.

Now a new exhibition begs to differ, seeking to blur the boundaries and reveal the artful underbelly of popular music in the 1990s and beyond.

ART/MUSIC: Rock Pop and Techno, opening this week (Mar 21) at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, examines the convergence of the visual arts and popular music through the work of international and local artists who make music the subject of their art, and, conversely, make music for an art-literate audience.
“The territory we’re covering here is diverse to say the least,” says the exhibition’s curator, Sue Cramer, who traveled to the studios and clubs of Berlin, London and New York to source works for the exhibition. “We’re presenting artists who use recordings or performance or installation to deal with the idea of music, or with music as a theme in their wider practice, or even just what it means to be a fan of popular music.”
Only don’t go expecting to sight rare Super 8 footage of the Velvet Underground hanging round Andy’s Factory, or an installation of Lennon-era bags by Yoko Ono. Nor will you find the sunday paintings of Britney Spears.

“It’s not an historical show but a survey of contemporary art practices,” says Cramer, sticking to her museum’s brief. Instead, “these are visual artists who are working today in diverse ways with forms of music that are popular today.”
Headlining the show is legendary New York DJ and artist Christian Marclay who since the late 1970s has attracted a cult following for his use of the turntable in both his art and music. With a business card that reads ‘record player’, Marclay is better described as a “sound sculptor” or “dadaist DJ” and his appearance is a coup for Cramer and key to the exhibition.
“Christian really is a central figure in this whole underground art/music movement,” says Cramer. Influenced by the Fluxus movement, (the 1960s art movement which typically and chaotically deployed numerous art forms simultaneously) and Punk, Marclay “never studied music,” notes Cramer, “and he found a freedom in the punk idea that you didn’t have to be academically trained to produce art. In fact, in an experimental mode, it can actually be a hindrance to be trained.”
Marclay uses the objects of popular music – records, CDs, turntables – to create what he calls “a visualization of sound”.
“It’s great that he’s coming here and will be able to perform as well as mount his exhibition which is a floor work of CDs.”

Marclay will join Lee Ranaldo, guitarist for the seminal 1990s punk band Sonic Youth, in a special one-off live concert at the Sydney Opera House the night before the main exhibition opens. The concert will be complemented by free live performances by local Sydney DJs, to be held each Sunday at the MCA for the duration of the exhibition.
Cramer cites Sonic Youth’s experimental trailblazing in “noise” as a touchstone for many of the artists included in the show. Indeed another member of the band, guitarist Thurston Moore, returns to reprise his 2000 collaboration with local artist Marco Fusinato held last year at Sydney’s Sarah Cottier Gallery. The band also features in the inclusion of Sonic Matters, Sonic Kollaborations - a self-contained exhibition of printed material, videos and recordings originally brought together for Printed Matter Bookstore in New York.
Cramer hopes the sheer scope of the show - from American Charles Long’s sci-fi inspired collaborations with UK pop-group Stereolab, to New Zealand artist Julian Dashper’s abstract paintings on drum skins, to Australian Kathy Temin’s installation which simulates a teenage girl’s bedroom tribute to Kylie Minogue - will “generate a sense of excitement for what possibilities there are for music and art.”

With more than 27 international and local artists exhibiting, spent art lovers can recover from over-stimulation in ART/MUSIC’s very own “chill-out room”. There they can listen to a range of recordings made or produced by visual artists while viewing a display of artist-designed CD and album covers.
Sydney DJ duo Sub Bass Snarl has organized the free Sunday performances where, in among the dub, electronic and jazz sounds, they will find time to lead discussions on the “cultural politics” of DJing in Sydney.
While ART/MUSIC dovetails perfectly with a institution seeking to remain relevant to a younger demographic, Cramer says ART/MUSIC “has its own integrity as a show – it’s a real topic with people and history and ideas.” The range of works on offer “will stimulate all ages and tastes and will stretch from experimental to accessible”.
However, Cramer may have unwittingly tapped into a nascent curatorial trend: NONE MORE BLACKER, the current exhibition (closing Mar 24) at 200 Gertrude Street Gallery in Melbourne featuring, among others, prominent young-turks Adam Cullen and Ricky Swallow, is subtitled: “New Australian Art Influenced by Heavy Metal and Glam Rock”.

ART/MUSIC: rock, pop, techno
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 21 March - 24 June, 2001.

ART/MUSIC: Live
Presented by the MCA in association with the Sydney Opera House
The Studio, Sydney Opera House, 9:00pm, Tuesday 20th March 2001

First published in The Bulletin

Moulin Rouge Splits Genders

A new poll has found that Baz Lurhmann’s MOULIN ROUGE has sparked a rift between the sexes, with women and men split equally for or against the controversial ‘Hollywood on the Harbour’ production. The snap survey of close friends and associates, taken at the weekend, reveals that of those who had actually seen the movie, sisters universally saw Lurhmann as a girl’s best friend, while for the masculine gender, it’s a case of ‘no Can-Can do’, Baz-boy.

Women, without exception, said that they “loved” the film. Some reported “feelings of joy” upon exiting the cinema, others hailed it “a creative triumph.” One Bondi-based IT consultant, who can’t be identified, declared it “the chick flick for a digital generation”. Fellow Bondi resident, Suze, claimed the film’s emphasis on “decoration, singing and dancing, tragic fantasy, and cultivating community” all reflect largely, if not exclusively, “chick aspirations.”

“It’s about the triumph of fashion over formula, of largesse over logic,” said Suze, a media advisor for a public agency. “Watching it was like leafing through the pages of a beautiful magazine.” Jodi, a skincare consultant from Bondi Junction, agreed. “It’s primarily concerned with looking good – and you know I can appreciate that.” Her friend Rachel, a photographic agent from Darlinghurst, declared Rouge “a romp” with canny Scotsman Ewan Macgregor oozing the “it” factor.

“Ewan is so dreamy,” sighed Rachel, prompting a loud scoff from her husband, Andrew. “It’s greatest sin is that it’s just plain boring!” said the self-described “tech-wreck survivor”. Like all the men polled, Andrew rejected the film outright, branding it “rococoesque and shallow”. Geoff, a commercial photographer from Petersham, said he simply failed to suspend disbelief: “The few moments of exhilarating spectacle are dwarfed by a maudlin landscape of overwrought sentimentality."

Josie, who actually works in the film industry, told The Bulletin she copped the full brunt of the emerging gender split first hand. “I walked out calling it visionary and the boy I saw it with ridiculed me for the next two days. “But seriously, putting aside the hype, I think if this film had emerged out of nowhere we'd all be calling it visionary,” Josie added. “And for anyone who grew up in the 1980’s the soundtrack is just fantastic.”

“That’s the problem” countered Alister, a print manager from Summer Hill. "It’s just postmodern pap. It’s got nothing to do with the real, historical Moulin Rouge. There’s no real connection with Paris, or the French, or the Belle Epoque!

“And there’s no CAN-CAN! Lurhmann should hang his head in shame,” Alister exagerated.

The only odd woman out in the poll was Catherine, a TV writer from Surry Hills, who vowed to “never ever” see the film. She blamed the climate of conflicting word of mouth for her indifference.

“I’m getting on with life,” she said. “Barring acts of god, I shan’t be going.”

-MICHAEL HUTAK

---
First published in "The Bulletin"

Interview: Ben Mendelsohn

BEN MENDELSOHN: NO BULLSHIT!

For a professional actor on a mid-career surge, Ben Mendelsohn is uncharacteristically modest: “I’ve been doing this (acting) since pretty much the beginning of my teenage years, and I’ve been financially independent since I was fifteen but it’s not really a career, is it? It’s a series of jobs, is what it is! I mean, you will never get to be ‘Head of South East Asian acting’. You might have a great life but it’s not a career.”

It’s mid-morning and we’re talking in a café overlooking Bondi Beach. “Bondi’s got a bit hectic – I’m shifting basically. I remember seeing this great TV special when I was 12, it was about Penthouse Pets and one of ‘em lived in Bondi – and I remember all these shots on the beach and I thought what a promised land – Bondi! I love living here but it’s getting very hectic.”

Mendelsohn is dressed smart casual, freshly shaved, hair combed and still wet from his morning shower. His world weary delivery, punctuated by a steady succession of ‘Styvo Reds’, are at odds with his image, which is reminiscent of a naughty boy wagging Sunday school. How refreshing, we comment, to find an actor not obsessed with his public image; a thespian, no less, unencumbered by “vaulting ambition”. Oops, spoke too soon…

“Oh, I have very unhealthy ambitions,” he protests, “but I don’t see the point in advertising ‘em, y’know? I don’t see the point in sitting down and telling you (slipping into mock American accent) what I’m gonna do next. Coz if I do it I’ll do it and we’ll know about it then. 

"I can just see that quote coming up – ‘I have a lot of unhealthy ambitions’.”

If there’s blood coursing in his veins he should. On the back of good notices for his supporting role in the Hollywood blockbuster VERTICAL LIMIT, Mendelsohn is on a roll, with last year’s SAMPLE PEOPLE garnering him favourable press and anticipation high for his new release, a comedy drama called MULLET, which reunites the actor with David Caesar, his director in the 1995 hit, IDIOT BOX. And with CHILD STAR, his third film with director Nadia Tass, set for release in a couple of months, now is a good a time as any for ambition.

“Since the whole Vertical Limit thing my face has been back in the newspapers, and I’ve had a few more scripts come my way. I mean I’ve been in this business so long that I’m not expecting that much. It’s about working, y’know? About getting a bit of money in the bank, enough to not have to work for a while. I mean I don’t give a fuck – y’know? I don’t give a fuck.

“I hang out with a couple of actors but most of my time isn’t spent with other actors. My private life is not in the business. I’m not a big networker and luckily I’m not in a position where I need to do that and I’m glad about that. You’d go fucking mad – all you talk about is how much you’re working or how much you’re not working – I think about that stuff enough, I don’t need to pump it up any more.”

Having spent half his young life in the limelight, he’s more than accustomed to the drill. A new film, a round of publicity, same old questions: “It’s all bullshit, mate,” he intimates in reassuringly hushed tones.

Mendelsohn has been in the public’s consciousness since he was 15 and the HENDERSON KIDS was a hit on our TV screens. And it’s been more than 14 years since his remarkable film debut in the director John Duigan’s groundbreaking THE YEAR MY VOICE BROKE, a film that also launched the career of his contemporary, Noah Taylor. 

He remembers the film fondly. “It was slated as a telemovie, in amongst a bunch of films that Kennedy Miller were doing for TEN. They loved it so much in the first weeks that decided to go ahead and make it into a feature. I had no idea it was going to be so big.

“Duigan was fuckin’ great! He’s like a horse whisperer. He’s got the abilty to point you in a direction and just let you go. They’re the ones I like to work with, and look at the performances he got out of us – they’re pretty fucken on the money!”

Mendelsohn won the first of his AFI Awards for the role, and a string of distinguished performances ensued in some of the local industry’s best films of the late 1980’s and 1990s - THE BIG STEAL, SPOTSWOOD, MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART, SIRENS, METAL SKIN (attracting his second AFI Award), COSI, and IDIOT BOX.  He’s an actor that relies on his natural gift and sheer charisma. You can drop all that method "bullshit"! 

“One of the misconceptions about performance is the idea that you can get it perfect, that the more you wring your hands about it the better it’s gonna be – that’s bullshit. If a director or another actor asks me what my motivation is, well, I tell ‘em it’s got nothing to do with them.

“I wanted to be a spy when I was a kid,” he says straight-faced, which somehow figures perfectly. “I left school at 15, and I haven’t ever formally studied acting. I mean talking about acting is a bit like fucking for chastity, y’know?” He checks for a second, and is obviously keen to impress that he’s still very serious about his work: “That doesn’t mean I don’t do whatever I need to do to get the performance up there, I just think there’s a certain cult that focuses more on the preparation than on the actual result whereas I think here’s a lot to be said for just jumping in and doing it. I do like to think I’m getting better at it, but I don’t know that! I’m very critical of my own work and I see the bits that don’t work before the bits that do.”

Mendelsohn’s aim is to be ‘in the moment’ when the camera is rolling, a characteristic self-evident in his easygoing performance in MULLET, a modest but moving comedy drama set in a small south coast fishing village. Headlining a bevy of accomplished Australian actors like Susie Porter, Andrew S Gilbert and Steve L Marquand, Mendelsohn carries the film with an easy Aussie charm. He plays the lead role of a bloke in his late twenties who returns home from the Big Smoke. When Mullet upped and left three years earlier he didn’t tell a soul, and so his friends, family and ex-girlfriend don’t exactly accept him back into the fold with open arms. 

“Mullet’s a guy whose taken a turn in life and he can’t go forward without taking a counter turn… and so he has to go back home and try and reconcile what it is he’s trying to leave behind. Which is place, where he comes from, the situation with his family.”

Mendelsohn himself comes from Melbourne, but he’s been “living in Sydney close on ten years. I lived back in Melbourne in 96/97 for a year or so… I still see myself as an expatriate Melbournite more than a Sydney boy."

And after the exposure afforded by VERTICAL LIMIT, what about the ‘States? “Yeah, what about the ‘States? I dunno, I guess I’ll go over and have a look. I was there recently very briefly, saw a couple a people. I’ve got an agent there but I don’t talk to her. I got an agent in Britain too, but I don’t talk to her either. 

“I’m Australian based until I’m not. More or less.” 

One thing’s for sure, when he does do it, we’ll be the first to know.

MICHAEL HUTAK, 2001

Publication: Australian Style #53, July 01

ENDS