31 August 1996
21 April 1996
Interview: Liam Neeson is Michael Collins
Liam Neeson’s schedule on this hit and run promo tour is so tight there isn’t time to grant our respective publications a one-on-one interview. Now we have been told that that even our allotted thirty minutes with the star of writer/director Neil Jordan’s new film, Michael Collins, was in jeopardy.
The marketing flacks tell us we have to be satisfied with either a fifteen minute audience or none at all. We figure that at fifteen minutes there’s not much chance of even pretending to bond with Neeson, given we will have just under four minutes each to penetrate the movie icon’s psyche.
But such is life in a media ghetto. While we wait we chat about the film. Collins was an Irish freedom fighter in the 1920’s, the man credited with inventing modern guerilla warfare, and who brought the Brits to their knees in the war for Irish independence that followed the First World War. Collins would finally shift from his “talent for mayhem” to become peacemaker, negotiating the treaty which saw Ireland split into the Catholic free South and the British Protestant North.
Collins’s role in the treaty, according to Jordan’s version of events, led to his own assassination by the IRA for “selling out the North”.
We agree it’s starting to look hopeless when the former amateur boxer finally saunters in.
19 November 1995
Dead Man (1995)
Turning his back on his favoured scenarios of studied inner city querkiness, former cult hero Jim Jarmusch has made a western. Thank god. Another arcane excercise in by-the-numbers chic like his 1991 flop Night On Earth, and it would be curtains in tinseltown, of the “you’ll never bore audiences again” variety.
Set late last century in the amoral, anarchic American frontier, Dead Man is actually a cross-genre concoction - a western road movie. Acting dynamo Johnny Depp (what can’t this man do?) stars as William Blake - the accountant, not the poet. Straightlaced Blake travels to the frayed edge of the frontier, to a misbegotten hole called Machine, where he expects to take up employment at the local steel works. But fate is unkind, and soon Blake finds himself shot, on the run, wanted for murder and at the mercy ‘Nobody’, (Gary Farmer) a wise and enigmatic Native American who, assuming Blake to be the poet and not the accountant, is only too pleased to become his fellow traveller to... who knows where.
The film then settles into a journey into darkest night as Nobody guides the wounded, dying Blake through a ravaged landscape full of decaying reminders of white man’s savagry, to his final resting place in ‘the spirit world’. On the way, Blake becomes a kind of accidental avenging angel, casually wreaking vengeance on any ‘stupid white man’ who crosses their path. Adding interest to the narrative, these two archetypical christian pilgrims are pursued by ‘three wise gunmen’, led with distinction by a suitably consumptive Lance Henricksen (The Terminator, Hard Target).
While again bearing his trademark flaws of a painfully slow narrative, a camera that uncomfortably lingers, and a steadfast refusal to yell ‘cut!’, Jarmusch turns these negatives to his advantage in Dead Man. The film induces a strange, intoxicating semi-conciousness as it meanders and saunters its way home. Yet Jarmusch also puts the viewer on guard by punctuating the sparseness and silence with moments of extreme, graphic violence.
Death indeed stalks each frame, helped immeasurably by Robby Müller’s stark, brooding black and white cinematography and Neil Young’s other worldly splashes of inspired guitar licks, dropped in like emotional bombs from hell to augment the drama.
Farmer, who is Native American, is a revelation as Nobody, bringing a quiet dignity and defiant indignation to the ‘faithful injun’ role. Depp carries the film almost on sheer charisma and is perfectly cast as the ‘poet of atrocity’ wreaking vengeance on the guilty before ascending to a better world. Amusing cameos from the likes of Crispin Glover, Robert Mitchum, John Hurt, Alfred Molina, Gabriel Byrne and Iggy Pop are but small treats to savour on the way.
As a spiritual meditation, Dean Man is confused and a little flaky - the nihilism and sense of loss really lead nowhere beyond the end credits. As a political indictment of colonialism, it is more convincing, and eminently worthy. As film art it is effective, often funny and ultimately quite moving.
As entertainment, it’s thirty minutes too long.
Michael Hutak
---
First published in Beat magazine.
Set late last century in the amoral, anarchic American frontier, Dead Man is actually a cross-genre concoction - a western road movie. Acting dynamo Johnny Depp (what can’t this man do?) stars as William Blake - the accountant, not the poet. Straightlaced Blake travels to the frayed edge of the frontier, to a misbegotten hole called Machine, where he expects to take up employment at the local steel works. But fate is unkind, and soon Blake finds himself shot, on the run, wanted for murder and at the mercy ‘Nobody’, (Gary Farmer) a wise and enigmatic Native American who, assuming Blake to be the poet and not the accountant, is only too pleased to become his fellow traveller to... who knows where.
The film then settles into a journey into darkest night as Nobody guides the wounded, dying Blake through a ravaged landscape full of decaying reminders of white man’s savagry, to his final resting place in ‘the spirit world’. On the way, Blake becomes a kind of accidental avenging angel, casually wreaking vengeance on any ‘stupid white man’ who crosses their path. Adding interest to the narrative, these two archetypical christian pilgrims are pursued by ‘three wise gunmen’, led with distinction by a suitably consumptive Lance Henricksen (The Terminator, Hard Target).
While again bearing his trademark flaws of a painfully slow narrative, a camera that uncomfortably lingers, and a steadfast refusal to yell ‘cut!’, Jarmusch turns these negatives to his advantage in Dead Man. The film induces a strange, intoxicating semi-conciousness as it meanders and saunters its way home. Yet Jarmusch also puts the viewer on guard by punctuating the sparseness and silence with moments of extreme, graphic violence.
Death indeed stalks each frame, helped immeasurably by Robby Müller’s stark, brooding black and white cinematography and Neil Young’s other worldly splashes of inspired guitar licks, dropped in like emotional bombs from hell to augment the drama.
Farmer, who is Native American, is a revelation as Nobody, bringing a quiet dignity and defiant indignation to the ‘faithful injun’ role. Depp carries the film almost on sheer charisma and is perfectly cast as the ‘poet of atrocity’ wreaking vengeance on the guilty before ascending to a better world. Amusing cameos from the likes of Crispin Glover, Robert Mitchum, John Hurt, Alfred Molina, Gabriel Byrne and Iggy Pop are but small treats to savour on the way.
As a spiritual meditation, Dean Man is confused and a little flaky - the nihilism and sense of loss really lead nowhere beyond the end credits. As a political indictment of colonialism, it is more convincing, and eminently worthy. As film art it is effective, often funny and ultimately quite moving.
As entertainment, it’s thirty minutes too long.
Michael Hutak
---
First published in Beat magazine.
18 October 1995
Metal Skin (1994)
Stars Aden Young, Ben Mendelsohn, Tara Morice, Nadine Garner
Australian writer/director Geoffrey Wright's new film has been a long-time-coming and judging by it's savagery, he's had plenty on his mind. Like his promising 1992 debut Romper Stomper, it takes place on society's frayed edges, but where Romper's forthright engagement with racism struck a nerve, Metal Skin's confused and ugly vision of the world risks alienating audiences with its jaundiced world view.
Motorheads expecting "Days of Thunder Down Under" will be disappointed. The hotted up Chargers and GTR-XU1's career impressively around desolate streets but are secondary in screen-time to the main game: broken lives, doomed love, social disintegration. The kids are bad, their parents are mad, and everyone's one push away from the edge.
Set in the inner-urban wastelands of a bleaker-than-usual contemporary Melbourne, Metal Skin follows four troubled twenty-somethings as they walk the tightrope of love and fall off, one by one. There's lots of snogging and lots of sex, but all four are either unloved, unlovable or degrees of both.
Revhead misfit 'Psycho' Joey (Young) is in love with Roslyn (Garner), but she's in an destructive relationship with drag-racing anti-hero Dazey (Mendelsohn). Sevina (Morice), a delusional black magic devotee, in turn loves Dazey, who uses, then rejects her.
After an impressive first half spent chiselling these characters, building their connections and their world, Wright literally loses the plot, lets the whole shebang off the leash and the film spins out into a series of gory, ugly and hysterical episodes.
This is a pity for the gifted Young, who continues to deliver outstanding performances in ordinary films. Morice, Mendelsohn and Garner also do extremely well to draw genuine pathos from their near comic-book characters.
On a technical level the film is equally impressive in design, cinematography, and editing, with action sequences that pack a punch not seen in local cinema since Mad Max 1. But all these noble efforts of cast and crew are wasted in a script which gives in to the decadence it seeks to portray, lamely opting to trundle out a bunch of downbeat melodramatic cliches - from an homage to the "tower scene" in Hitchcock's Vertigo down to the ultra-violent car chase finale.
Metal Skin is a glorious failure, an exiting disappointment. It's own newspaper ads admit as much when they scream that "everything is about to got totally out of control. "And so it does, but to what end remains a mystery.
Rating B-.
- MICHAEL HUTAK
---
First published in Beat Magazine
1 September 1995
Interview: Alex de la Inglesia
Alex de la Inglesia interviewed by Michael Hutak, September 1995
---
If nothing else, Spanish filmmaker Alex de la Inglesia is in your face.
“I hate the real violence but I love the violence in the cinema. Violence is necessary in all artistic creation. Violence is part of humanity. Shakespeare works with the same idea. There is no drama without violence. My mum is violent, my dad is violent - the best thing to do is laugh.”
Emerging from the patronage of countryman Pedro Almodovar, Inglesia is on the phone promoting his latest film, Day of the Beast, an occult/sci-fi/splatter black comedy, which won six Spanish Academy Awards and has just opened locally. It tells the unlikely tale of a middle aged Madrid priest who discovers the antichrist is about to be born. He enlists the services of a tabloid TV host and a death metal freak in a desperate and hilarious attempt to stave off Satan and save the world. In the best Spanish traditions of the theatre of cruelty, gory, grizzly, and garish are words that spring to mind. And funny. Very funny.
“Day of the Beast is a local story - a story about the chaos that exists today in Spain. I set myself a hard task - to make an action film with an old man as the star. It is black humour - oil and water. The old man discovers a big secret, that the world is going to end, and this is too big a task for him.”
Portrayed as a decaying, morally bankrupt sespit, Madrid comes off very poorly in Inglesia’s vision, but “it’s not just a critique of cities, the problem is the people. When you put so many people together.
“The worst people are the normal people - who watch TV and go to the supermarket. I prefer people who say ‘I am not normal’. I’m afraid of the people who are satisfied.” When I ask if these people aren’t precisely his audience he lets out a strangely evil laugh, like I’ve caught him out. “I don’t think of my audience. I think of me. I try to explain the story, that’s all - like Hitchcock, the best director in the world,” he says, before adding cheerfully, “People enjoy it when you insult them. Ha, ha.”
While he may have disdain for the common man, his two features to date have been box office hits with the great unwashed in his native country. Day of the Beast, which cost just $US2 million, was the most successful local film in Spain last season. His first film, Militant Action, produced by Almodovar, was also a hit. “It was about handicapped terrorists who attack normal people. It’s a black comedy.”
Inglesia describes himself as a country boy who went to Madrid to draw comic books. He then started working in film, first as a set designer, then as an art director, before he got his big break when Spanish film’s most famous bad boy Almodovar read his script for Militant Action and offered to produce. “This is the best thing about Almodovar,” says Inglesia without missing a beat, “We have nothing in common at all. He loves Douglas Sirk. He is homosexual. Almodovar is not a person who likes followers.”
Talking from Mexico on the set of his latest film, Inglesia’s enthusiasm for his chosen craft pummels infectiously down the phoneline, his pidgen English struggling to match the obvious speed with which the ideas are coursing maniacly through his head.
“I have one or two proposals in Hollywood. Little movies I can make in Spain. I can do anything I want in Spain. I have no limits.” Coincidental to Australia, Spain swung to the right in elections earlier this year after 13 years of socialist government. “It was a very open country,” he laments, “in the last 20 years it was a cultural paradise, now it’s like the finish - the party’s over.
“That’s why I’m working in Mexico. In my next movie all the people are talking about God. It’s so funny. It’s a road movie with an android sex slave and a nymphomaniac girl of 12 years. But we needed more money - the budget is $US6 million which is very expensive for Spain so we are making it in America. Ciby2000 has the rights.”
“If I work in Hollywood I want a big budget. The most thing I love is sci-fi movies. But I want to do something not commercial - very violent, very sexy. Sci fi now is pathetic. When you have $US50 million budgets you have to make a family movie. This is not me.
“I work fast, I’m afraid to respect things. It is dangerous. I don't believe in talent, I only believe in work. I am only learning now - I have only made two movies. Movies aren’t mystical, they are work. I think if you make 80 movies, then you are a good director. The most important thing is work.”
MICHAEL HUTAK
---
First published in Beat magazine
30 January 1995
Mallrats (1995)
Instead, tyro writer/director Kevin Smith, the uncanny X-er who made such a critical splash with the super low-budget Clerks, wants to be the John Hughes of the nineties. This is no slur.
With Mall Rats Smith produces a worthy successor to such 80s teen movie benchmarks as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Valley Girl and Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. His formula of dry, witty repartee drenched in a self-reflexive solution of pop culture references has been augmented this time round with a heavy dose of slapstick. It’s not everyone’s schtick, but I laughed.
10 December 1994
Heavy metal out, easy listening in
From Seattle to London to Sydney, squares and swingers alike are revolting against the rock 'n' roll ethos in the name of cocktail culture, writes Michael Hutak
TO SEE Tony Bennett become hip once more, and the Carpenters become suddenly cool, is like watching the tip of an iceberg finally appear on the horizon. What's really going on is a worldwide resurgence of interest in a much-maligned, misunderstood musical genre: easy listening.
The broad church of easy listening - also known as "lounge" - stretches from the '50s bossa nova to Brian Eno's ambient music; from the exotique sound of Martin Denny to the Ray Conniff Singers to Phillip Glass; from Lawrence Welk, to Klaus Wunderlich's Hammond Organ Sensation, to Moog Plays the Beatles.
With a radiant Audrey Hepburn on the cover, the hip London magazine The Idler devoted its latest issue to what it has dubbed lounge culture, and declared the birth of the Cocktail Nation. Says The Idler's Joshua Glenn: "Today's crop of young people are suffering from metal fatigue. We have grown up listening to nothing but primitive id noise, and we can't take it any more."
Glenn says lounge music is "merely the soundtrack to the cocktail hour, that time-out of time during which one seizes the chance to relax completely, to live for the moment". It is an existential condition grunge rockers might call nirvana, but which "citizens of the Cocktail Nation call Happy Hour".
Now Sydney's loungers will finally have a venue to call their own when a group calling themselves The Adult Contemporary Swingers launch a new nightclub next Sunday night at a rejuvenated Les Girls nightspot in Kings Cross, now under the studious management of the local impresario Ian Hartley.
"We're calling it The Tender Trap," says organiser and easy- listening devotee Sean O'Brien. "It will be a celebration of cocktail culture at its most sophisticated and savage - multisensual stimulation for the Moog generation," a straight-faced O'Brien told the Herald.
Although the playlist will feature Brazil '66, Bacharach, The Fifth Dimension and Tijuana Brass, O'Brien insists The Tender Trap is not about kitsch. "Kitsch implies a certain shallow crassness. This will be highly tasteful and very deep. The Tender Trap is about reclaiming what it means to be an adult. It's a pastiche of Australiana and Americana from the mid-'50s to the mid-'60s - a bit "Rat-Packerish", some Las Vegas primitive exotica, a bit of Beat - for once the parents will understand."
Simon Holmes, the manager of Half a Cow Records in Glebe, says: "While there's always been a hard core of people hip to cocktail music, it has definitely become fashionable of late."
Holmes says three things can account for the surge of interest in Easy listening: "First you've got the release of two books in the past year called Incredibly Strange Music, by San Francisco publishers Re/Search." (Re/Search's Modern Primitives edition some years back single-handedly made body piercing popular and gave grunge an aesthetic to call its own. Its Incredibly Strange Music volumes are like bluffer's guides to the underground world of obscure, cult and exotic recordings.)
Second, Holmes points to the crossover success of American bands like The Coctails from Chicago and especially Combustible Edison, the tuxedo-clad combo led by Michael "The Millionaire" Cudahy, a former member of Urge Overkill with impeccable punk rock credentials. Combustible Edison (apparently named after a renowned '60s cocktail) have emerged from the American underground as the breakthrough "lounge" act. It is significant that they are signed to Seattle's SubPop label, the company which pioneered the Grunge aesthetic with bands such as Nirvana.
And third: "There's a feeling that there's no longer much innovation in popular music, especially in guitar rock. So there's a relief to be had in the whole easy listening thing in that it's light-hearted, and I think its popularity is a reaction to the (bombastic nature) of rock. Also a lot of acts like the Coctails only release their work on vinyl - it's pre-'60s and pre-rock, not just in style and attitude but also in technology."
Tuxedos and cocktail dresses will be de rigueur at The Tender Trap, but O'Brien insists there will be no "door policy" with one exception: "'80s power dressing is totally out |" Jeans and thongs are OK, so long as they are worn with a Beat Generation demeanour.
While it all may sound way too nostalgic for some, The Idler's Cocktail Nation Manifesto provides one cogent answer: "That a thing is original is no guarantee that it is the best ... a wig is better than unwashed hair |"
* The Tender Trap will be launched this Sunday night at 7 pm at Les Girls, 2 Roslyn Street, Kings Cross.
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
posted by Michael Hutak @ 9.12.94
TO SEE Tony Bennett become hip once more, and the Carpenters become suddenly cool, is like watching the tip of an iceberg finally appear on the horizon. What's really going on is a worldwide resurgence of interest in a much-maligned, misunderstood musical genre: easy listening.
The broad church of easy listening - also known as "lounge" - stretches from the '50s bossa nova to Brian Eno's ambient music; from the exotique sound of Martin Denny to the Ray Conniff Singers to Phillip Glass; from Lawrence Welk, to Klaus Wunderlich's Hammond Organ Sensation, to Moog Plays the Beatles.
With a radiant Audrey Hepburn on the cover, the hip London magazine The Idler devoted its latest issue to what it has dubbed lounge culture, and declared the birth of the Cocktail Nation. Says The Idler's Joshua Glenn: "Today's crop of young people are suffering from metal fatigue. We have grown up listening to nothing but primitive id noise, and we can't take it any more."
Glenn says lounge music is "merely the soundtrack to the cocktail hour, that time-out of time during which one seizes the chance to relax completely, to live for the moment". It is an existential condition grunge rockers might call nirvana, but which "citizens of the Cocktail Nation call Happy Hour".
Now Sydney's loungers will finally have a venue to call their own when a group calling themselves The Adult Contemporary Swingers launch a new nightclub next Sunday night at a rejuvenated Les Girls nightspot in Kings Cross, now under the studious management of the local impresario Ian Hartley.
"We're calling it The Tender Trap," says organiser and easy- listening devotee Sean O'Brien. "It will be a celebration of cocktail culture at its most sophisticated and savage - multisensual stimulation for the Moog generation," a straight-faced O'Brien told the Herald.
Although the playlist will feature Brazil '66, Bacharach, The Fifth Dimension and Tijuana Brass, O'Brien insists The Tender Trap is not about kitsch. "Kitsch implies a certain shallow crassness. This will be highly tasteful and very deep. The Tender Trap is about reclaiming what it means to be an adult. It's a pastiche of Australiana and Americana from the mid-'50s to the mid-'60s - a bit "Rat-Packerish", some Las Vegas primitive exotica, a bit of Beat - for once the parents will understand."
Simon Holmes, the manager of Half a Cow Records in Glebe, says: "While there's always been a hard core of people hip to cocktail music, it has definitely become fashionable of late."
Holmes says three things can account for the surge of interest in Easy listening: "First you've got the release of two books in the past year called Incredibly Strange Music, by San Francisco publishers Re/Search." (Re/Search's Modern Primitives edition some years back single-handedly made body piercing popular and gave grunge an aesthetic to call its own. Its Incredibly Strange Music volumes are like bluffer's guides to the underground world of obscure, cult and exotic recordings.)
Second, Holmes points to the crossover success of American bands like The Coctails from Chicago and especially Combustible Edison, the tuxedo-clad combo led by Michael "The Millionaire" Cudahy, a former member of Urge Overkill with impeccable punk rock credentials. Combustible Edison (apparently named after a renowned '60s cocktail) have emerged from the American underground as the breakthrough "lounge" act. It is significant that they are signed to Seattle's SubPop label, the company which pioneered the Grunge aesthetic with bands such as Nirvana.
And third: "There's a feeling that there's no longer much innovation in popular music, especially in guitar rock. So there's a relief to be had in the whole easy listening thing in that it's light-hearted, and I think its popularity is a reaction to the (bombastic nature) of rock. Also a lot of acts like the Coctails only release their work on vinyl - it's pre-'60s and pre-rock, not just in style and attitude but also in technology."
Tuxedos and cocktail dresses will be de rigueur at The Tender Trap, but O'Brien insists there will be no "door policy" with one exception: "'80s power dressing is totally out |" Jeans and thongs are OK, so long as they are worn with a Beat Generation demeanour.
While it all may sound way too nostalgic for some, The Idler's Cocktail Nation Manifesto provides one cogent answer: "That a thing is original is no guarantee that it is the best ... a wig is better than unwashed hair |"
* The Tender Trap will be launched this Sunday night at 7 pm at Les Girls, 2 Roslyn Street, Kings Cross.
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
posted by Michael Hutak @ 9.12.94
2 September 1994
Diversity bound by identity
A group exhibition of Aboriginal art steers away from familiar stereotypes, writes MICHAEL HUTAK.
SINCE its emergence as a dynamic cultural force in the 1980s, Aboriginal art has become submerged in a myriad of stereotypes.
For a fresh perspective, those seeking to forge a new connection with the culture of indigenous Australians would be wise not to miss Narratives, the latest show at Boomalli Gallery, in inner-city Chippendale.
Mounted by Boomalli's resident curator, Hetti Perkins, Narratives displays the work of four generations of Aboriginal women painters, offering insights into each artist's practice, and revealing the sheer diversity to be found in contemporary Aboriginal art.
And as the title implies, the thread that binds the generations is not just race but the will to tell of their lives. Beginning with the 24-year-old Kgamilaroi artist Peta Lonsdale, whose work has graphically portrayed her early experiences avoiding the mission system, Narratives offers not just a snapshot of contemporary Aboriginal painting but a stark image of a people who have suffered yet survived to tell the tale.
But, importantly, Perkins praises Lonsdale for "deliberately avoiding the'victim' mentality".
"Peta finds faith in the strength of Aboriginal society and culture to reinterpret our circumstances and find a positive resolution," says Perkins.
The South Australian artist Kerry Giles, in her early 30s, left her white mother at 16 to rejoin her "mob", the Ngarrindjeri people. Since then she has found a voice in her painting, prints and photographs and has few qualms about imbuing her work with striking political messages.
"This is documentary," she says. "It's graffiti." The massive canvases she is showing in Narratives depict before-and-after aerial views of the Murray River: before and after white settlement.
The first she calls her "pretty boy" painting: "It shows how the river Murray used to be before colonial people. You've got the whole ecosystem, full of bush tucker: musta, brolga, wombat, goanna, catfish, yabbie, freshwater turtle, periwinkles, mussels, stumpy-tail lizard and all the bush berries." A self-sustaining environment.
The next two paintings depict the gradual destruction of the river system culminating in Ugly Painting, Ugly Subject, a harrowing, almost nihilistic vision of the river. It is a conglomeration of quotes and newspaper clippings depicting the graphic degradation of the environment.
"It's past crisis point," says Giles. "People take pretty photos of dead trees that were killed by salt. It's a graveyard of dead trees.
"For instance, today the Ngarrindjeri people have to ask at farmyard doors to get the rushes to weave the baskets that they've been weaving for thousands and thousands of years because there are no rushes left.
"Paintings are not just pretty pictures on the wall - they are identity."
Elaine Russell, in her early 50s, is only just beginning her career in the visual arts and Narratives is her first major exhibition. "I always knew I could draw, but I've only been painting for 12 months," she told the Herald.
For Russell, painting is an expressive medium which gives her an outlet to tell of her past: "There are so many more stories I have to paint. I love it. It's so new to me. When I get a brush in my hand I just can't stop.
"And everything I've painted I've sold, so I must be doing something right|"
Russell's disarmingly straightforward paintings depict her childhood experiences on the Murrin Bridge Mission, during the era when fair-skinned children were forcibly removed from their parents' care.
"We did what we were told - if we didn't we wouldn't get our rations. It all left me very resentful of the whites in my teens, but it's OK now, I'm married to a white."
The paintings are supported by short texts, an extension of oral history traditions and reminiscent of the work of fellow Aboriginal artists Ian Abdulla and Harry Wedge. Her work reflects the "regimental and policed nature of mission life", according to Perkins.
The last of the foursome is Pantjiti Mary McLean who has been encouraged by a fellow Kalgoorlie artist, Nalda Searles, to introduce figurative elements to her practice of dot paintings. It has unleashed in Pantjiti a seemingly unending creative source.
"Mary's work is about everyday things. What you see is what you get," says Searles. "There's no dreaming here; it's all a huge story about everyday life
"She lives in a small settlement on the outskirts of Kalgoorlie where she's the only artist, so in a sense, she is working alone.
"Her work has become so popular because it's so colourful and joyful. There's never any violence in her work - there's abundance and the bush is alive and flourishing and so are the people.
"Because Mary doesn't read, her work is not linear and goes in all directions. She just turns the paper around and around."
Searles described an "enormous" painting Pantjiti has produced for the Tandanya Aboriginal Arts Centre in Adelaide. "It's four metres long by one-and-a-half metres wide and there are literally hundreds of figures on it, all coming together in a big celebration," she says.
"She's found her calling and now paints everyday. She's a wonderful inspiration to the children in the community."
Pantjiti Mary McLean also has a solo exhibition of works on paper called Homelands at the Aboriginal and South Pacific Gallery in Surry Hills, until July 16.
What drives Pantjiti, now in her 60s, to paint?
"It comes from the happiness in my heart," she says.
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
SINCE its emergence as a dynamic cultural force in the 1980s, Aboriginal art has become submerged in a myriad of stereotypes.
For a fresh perspective, those seeking to forge a new connection with the culture of indigenous Australians would be wise not to miss Narratives, the latest show at Boomalli Gallery, in inner-city Chippendale.
Mounted by Boomalli's resident curator, Hetti Perkins, Narratives displays the work of four generations of Aboriginal women painters, offering insights into each artist's practice, and revealing the sheer diversity to be found in contemporary Aboriginal art.
And as the title implies, the thread that binds the generations is not just race but the will to tell of their lives. Beginning with the 24-year-old Kgamilaroi artist Peta Lonsdale, whose work has graphically portrayed her early experiences avoiding the mission system, Narratives offers not just a snapshot of contemporary Aboriginal painting but a stark image of a people who have suffered yet survived to tell the tale.
But, importantly, Perkins praises Lonsdale for "deliberately avoiding the'victim' mentality".
"Peta finds faith in the strength of Aboriginal society and culture to reinterpret our circumstances and find a positive resolution," says Perkins.
The South Australian artist Kerry Giles, in her early 30s, left her white mother at 16 to rejoin her "mob", the Ngarrindjeri people. Since then she has found a voice in her painting, prints and photographs and has few qualms about imbuing her work with striking political messages.
"This is documentary," she says. "It's graffiti." The massive canvases she is showing in Narratives depict before-and-after aerial views of the Murray River: before and after white settlement.
The first she calls her "pretty boy" painting: "It shows how the river Murray used to be before colonial people. You've got the whole ecosystem, full of bush tucker: musta, brolga, wombat, goanna, catfish, yabbie, freshwater turtle, periwinkles, mussels, stumpy-tail lizard and all the bush berries." A self-sustaining environment.
The next two paintings depict the gradual destruction of the river system culminating in Ugly Painting, Ugly Subject, a harrowing, almost nihilistic vision of the river. It is a conglomeration of quotes and newspaper clippings depicting the graphic degradation of the environment.
"It's past crisis point," says Giles. "People take pretty photos of dead trees that were killed by salt. It's a graveyard of dead trees.
"For instance, today the Ngarrindjeri people have to ask at farmyard doors to get the rushes to weave the baskets that they've been weaving for thousands and thousands of years because there are no rushes left.
"Paintings are not just pretty pictures on the wall - they are identity."
Elaine Russell, in her early 50s, is only just beginning her career in the visual arts and Narratives is her first major exhibition. "I always knew I could draw, but I've only been painting for 12 months," she told the Herald.
For Russell, painting is an expressive medium which gives her an outlet to tell of her past: "There are so many more stories I have to paint. I love it. It's so new to me. When I get a brush in my hand I just can't stop.
"And everything I've painted I've sold, so I must be doing something right|"
Russell's disarmingly straightforward paintings depict her childhood experiences on the Murrin Bridge Mission, during the era when fair-skinned children were forcibly removed from their parents' care.
"We did what we were told - if we didn't we wouldn't get our rations. It all left me very resentful of the whites in my teens, but it's OK now, I'm married to a white."
The paintings are supported by short texts, an extension of oral history traditions and reminiscent of the work of fellow Aboriginal artists Ian Abdulla and Harry Wedge. Her work reflects the "regimental and policed nature of mission life", according to Perkins.
The last of the foursome is Pantjiti Mary McLean who has been encouraged by a fellow Kalgoorlie artist, Nalda Searles, to introduce figurative elements to her practice of dot paintings. It has unleashed in Pantjiti a seemingly unending creative source.
"Mary's work is about everyday things. What you see is what you get," says Searles. "There's no dreaming here; it's all a huge story about everyday life
"She lives in a small settlement on the outskirts of Kalgoorlie where she's the only artist, so in a sense, she is working alone.
"Her work has become so popular because it's so colourful and joyful. There's never any violence in her work - there's abundance and the bush is alive and flourishing and so are the people.
"Because Mary doesn't read, her work is not linear and goes in all directions. She just turns the paper around and around."
Searles described an "enormous" painting Pantjiti has produced for the Tandanya Aboriginal Arts Centre in Adelaide. "It's four metres long by one-and-a-half metres wide and there are literally hundreds of figures on it, all coming together in a big celebration," she says.
"She's found her calling and now paints everyday. She's a wonderful inspiration to the children in the community."
Pantjiti Mary McLean also has a solo exhibition of works on paper called Homelands at the Aboriginal and South Pacific Gallery in Surry Hills, until July 16.
What drives Pantjiti, now in her 60s, to paint?
"It comes from the happiness in my heart," she says.
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
8 February 1994
Generation without a cause: a very different commodity
Released in 1992 to universal controversy, Coupland's book laid claim to be the first to label the post-Baby Boomer generation. The Xer has since entered the pop culture vocabulary alongside other "people products" such as the SNAG(sensitive new age guy) and the DINKs (double income, no kids). And let's not forget the yuppie, or indeed the Boomers themselves.
Now a new survey of Sydney teenagers will launch yet another label epithet into this already crowded marketplace: make way for "Generation Why?" - the generation without a cause, the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters of the boomers.
26 January 1994
Moral Fiction (1994)
Moral Fiction, Version 1. Australia, summer 1994
Written and directed by Michael Hutak, produced by Vincent Sheehan. Featuring: Wendy Bacon, Edward Colless, Adam Cullen, Helen Demidenko, Mick Dodson, Dave Graney, Barry Jones, McKenzie Wark, and Don Watson. Porchlight Films 1994.
Moral Fiction (1994) from Michael Hutak on Vimeo.
Is Australia an experimental country?
Written and directed by Michael Hutak, produced by Vincent Sheehan. Featuring: Wendy Bacon, Edward Colless, Adam Cullen, Helen Demidenko, Mick Dodson, Dave Graney, Barry Jones, McKenzie Wark, and Don Watson. Porchlight Films 1994.
Moral Fiction (1994) from Michael Hutak on Vimeo.
What do you believe in? Are the nineties really different?
Is Australia an experimental country?
2 January 1994
Young at art: the New Painters
Back in 1994, my editors demanded that painting was not dead and tasked me to go out and prove it.
IF REPORTS from the front line are to be believed, news of the death of painting is vastly exaggerated. Despite the challenge of other forms of contemporary practice within the art world itself (from conceptual art, installation, performance, photo-media, sound, video and computer-generated art), painting remains most people's idea of what art is all about.
Paintings, it would seem, are for living with, and people continue to part with their hard-earned in order to live with paintings. And while the art market was hit particularly hard by the recession, now that life's at last becoming a little more liquid, the time is ripe to seek out those emerging painters whose work might still be picked up for a song, so to speak.
So just who should we be looking at today for clues as to the art of tomorrow?
Tony Bond, curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of NSW, says there is a desire in the market to "recreate painting and there's always people who have a commitment to painting, per se".
"But to be honest, Brian Blanchflower, who is not a youth, is actually the person coming closest to making something new in painting.
"I think Brian is the find of the century, frankly. His work has a feeling of being a real thing that transports you and I think that is actually quite unique.
"He's somebody who's really out in front but not acknowledged as such; I mean he's not hanging in the entrance court of every museum yet he's probably better than any straight painter in Europe."
Of the younger generation, Bond says Louise Hearman "stands out a mile".
"She's actually able to paint, which is a bit unusual. With Louise, everything about the mood of the painting is conveyed through its formal qualities. It's something not many young artists are able to do, or even see the importance of doing, but it makes all the difference in the world."
Bond also nominated the Sydney abstract painter Matthew Johnson and Richard Bell of Brisbane.
"If you're looking at abstract art then I rather like Matthew Johnson's work. His paintings are very elegant, beautiful and seductive. Frankly, there's been too many pretensions about the meaning of abstract art lately. In the end, when all the semiotics has been washed through, all you're left with is this thing, and in the case of Matthew, quite a nice thing."
Bond is similarly enthusiastic about Bell: "Very direct, very up-front, absolutely clear what he's on about and very humorous. I think irony and wit coming into the Mabo issue and into contemporary Aboriginal art is a great help."
Judy Annear, curator of the Australian component at last year's Venice Biennale, is also particularly keen on Bell, whose work she describes as"challenging and politically relevant".
"Richard is one of the new contemporary Aboriginal artists, and he presents an urban experience to his overview of the Aboriginal condition through using Western painting techniques.
"He's brought a new attitude to painting but they're not the sort of stuff your average socialite would want over their sofa. He doesn't use dots and he doesn't get caught up in the sort of mysticism that makes Aboriginal art easy to sell."
Other names to look out for, Annear says, are Gail Hastings of Melbourne and Anne Ooms from Sydney. "Gail Hastings is better known for these big installations but she also does do really beautiful watercolours. Highly salable. Very beautiful and delicate ... seductive."
She notes that Ooms, a 1993 graduate of the Sydney College of the Arts who has just won the 1994 Samstagg Scholarship to work overseas, is still very much in her formative years.
"She's very entertaining and she's only been making art for the last couple of years. Her last show at Artspace included objects which she painted with face powder. So they offered not just texture but perfume. The colours and shapes relate to you on an amusing and unconscious level - they are very jokey. I'll be interested to see what she's doing after her year on the Samstagg Scholarship."
Nicholas Baume, freelance curator and public programs co-ordinator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, says a fortuitous mix of factors is needed to make people sit up and notice emerging talent.
"It's a mixture of luck, the prevailing mood - what curators and dealers and collectors are looking for - and finally the power of the individual artist's work."
The work of abstract painter Christopher Snee caught Baume's eye at this year's Perspecta show at the AGNSW.
"Of all the abstract painting in Perspecta - and there was quite a lot - to me Christopher's work stood out.
"It was quite beautiful and formally successful as abstract painting but it didn't seem to be repeating anything I'd seen before. Very atmospheric."
Baume is also taken by the work of Peter Atkins, who has been chosen to represent Australia at the Indian Triennale in Bombay this year.
"His work seems to grow out of very personal experiences rather than addressing the grand themes of abstract painting or art history," says Baume.
"So it has a very warm, intimate quality that's very appealing."
The director of Sydney's Artspace, Louise Pether, would only agree to comment with qualification.
"I wouldn't necessarily say that painting is the place to watch for the future artists of Australia," she says. "I think the most interesting work is happening in photo-media and painting is less lively."
That said, Pether nominates Louise Hearman (again) and the Aboriginal artist Harry Wedge as two painters to watch. Of Wedge she notes: "He's one of those artists whose work just leaps off the walls at you.
"Those are the two I've known for the longest and they've held and maintained my interest and I'm just cursing that I didn't buy their works when I first saw them. I've since realised that if one is going do that, you should always follow your instincts."
The editor of leading art journal Art + Text, Paul Foss, is also guarded in his views about painting. "In Australia right now the younger set are into scatter art and installation - though this situation will no doubt change," he says.
"If I were to name any emerging painters here, I think Kerrie Poliness and Melinda Harper from Melbourne are worth mentioning, as is Sydney's Elizabeth Pulie. But the one to watch is Louise Forthun, who shows with Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne."
To conclude on a note of controversy, haven't we been told, in the realm of art at least, that modernism was a stillborn, forlorn project which gave way to these post-modern times, where there's nothing new under the sun and appropriation and pastiche are the order of the day?
In that context what makes today's art and our younger artists any different from times gone by? Is there an even newer broom sweeping the cultural landscape or are we merely seeing the arbitrary turnover of artistic fashion?
Nicholas Baume went out on a limb to sum up the Zeitgeist.
"There's a feeling that an authentic kind of contemporary art starts from one's own experience," he says. "And most of these up-and-coming artists are using their own experience in a very direct way and I think that's what gives their work authenticity and force: they're not slavishly following international trends or getting their ideas from the latest art magazines. There's a maturation there in terms of recognising that what really gives art its power is the personal intensity that the artist brings to it."
---
Author: MICHAEL HUTAK
Date: 01/01/1994
Words: 1326
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Section: Spectrum
Page: 42
19 October 1993
Home is where the art is
It's knock-off time. Time to wend your way back to your quarter-acre of heaven, your dream home in the 'burbs. But something's not quite right here.
There are 36 perfectly formed sand castles on the back patio, and three chocolate brains in the kitchen, gathering mould. The upstairs toilet is wall-papered with signs warning"Danger - Corrosive" and in your daughter's bedroom there's a neon sign blaring "No never means yes".
And where's the TV gone? Someone's put it in the roof, but you can watch it through the periscope in the walk-in wardrobe. Suddenly you scream: "This is not my beautiful house | This is contemporary art |"
You have stumbled into Sweet Dreams, a satellite exhibition for Perspecta, the Art Gallery of New South Wales's biannual survey of contemporary art.
Sweet Dreams is the brainchild of the curators Isobel Johnston and Suhanya Raffel. They have chosen eight artists to design work specifically for"Balmoral", a dream home at Homeworld II, the country's largest project home village at Prospect, near Blacktown in Sydney's west.
"I think this is a pretty logical step," says Johnston. "Many artists today are working with domestic ideas and this house can provide a venue where you have an audience which was already prepared to look at the notion of the home when they come to view the work."
Raffel says the show is another example of the growing interest by artists in working outside museum and gallery spaces.
"But we were also aware that a lot of art in public spaces has been difficult and not particularly successful because the work was usually in 'nowhere' places like billboards or in transit on the backs of buses," Raffel says. "This site, however, comes with it's audience. The audience has come to buy a home, not to go to an art gallery.
"Sweet Dreams also shows that there is a growing awareness at the art gallery of its responsibility to greater Sydney."
The curator Victoria Lynn has talked about this year's Perspecta as dwelling on, among other things, "the shadowy side of urban nightmares and suburban utopia", and Sweet Dreams embraces that spirit to the letter.
Eugenia Raskapoulos chose the daughter's bedroom for her neon installation for obvious reasons.
"Neon can be such a seductive, beautiful source of light but the message it carries here isn't such a pretty sight," she says.
"Because alongside all those dreams of owning a house and having a wonderful family, there are many women out there who have been oppressed within this environment. Rape can and does start at a very young age with incest and my piece is dealing with all those issues."
A number of the works are time-based sculptures which emphasise decay and disorder, such as Neil Wing's chocolate brains and Therese Saaib's 36 sand castles. Saaib fully expects the elements and visiting children to gradually destroy the precisely formed castles.
It was Robyn Bracken's idea to watch TV through a periscope in the closet. Her piece plays formally with the mechanics of perception but there's also a symbolic dimension.
"In a house like this the television is often the focal point of family life so I just wanted to dislodge it from that pride of place into a secret, closeted place."
So why would a commercial builder like Clarendon Homes willingly let a bunch of artists loose in one of their packaged dreams?
"Ultimately the public's perception will be that we are involved in what's happening today," says Clarendon's marketing manager, Peter Brown.
"It's not about house design or development of future housing trends. It's a personal view by the various artists of their interpretation of the family home."
The exhibition runs seven days a week until November 21.
Caption: ILLUS: Step inside for chocolate brains...the artists with marketing manager Peter Brown (right), all part of an unusual project. Picture by Ben Rushton.
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 19-10-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 23
Section: News and Features
Length: 756
---
There are 36 perfectly formed sand castles on the back patio, and three chocolate brains in the kitchen, gathering mould. The upstairs toilet is wall-papered with signs warning"Danger - Corrosive" and in your daughter's bedroom there's a neon sign blaring "No never means yes".
And where's the TV gone? Someone's put it in the roof, but you can watch it through the periscope in the walk-in wardrobe. Suddenly you scream: "This is not my beautiful house | This is contemporary art |"
You have stumbled into Sweet Dreams, a satellite exhibition for Perspecta, the Art Gallery of New South Wales's biannual survey of contemporary art.
Sweet Dreams is the brainchild of the curators Isobel Johnston and Suhanya Raffel. They have chosen eight artists to design work specifically for"Balmoral", a dream home at Homeworld II, the country's largest project home village at Prospect, near Blacktown in Sydney's west.
"I think this is a pretty logical step," says Johnston. "Many artists today are working with domestic ideas and this house can provide a venue where you have an audience which was already prepared to look at the notion of the home when they come to view the work."
Raffel says the show is another example of the growing interest by artists in working outside museum and gallery spaces.
"But we were also aware that a lot of art in public spaces has been difficult and not particularly successful because the work was usually in 'nowhere' places like billboards or in transit on the backs of buses," Raffel says. "This site, however, comes with it's audience. The audience has come to buy a home, not to go to an art gallery.
"Sweet Dreams also shows that there is a growing awareness at the art gallery of its responsibility to greater Sydney."
The curator Victoria Lynn has talked about this year's Perspecta as dwelling on, among other things, "the shadowy side of urban nightmares and suburban utopia", and Sweet Dreams embraces that spirit to the letter.
Eugenia Raskapoulos chose the daughter's bedroom for her neon installation for obvious reasons.
"Neon can be such a seductive, beautiful source of light but the message it carries here isn't such a pretty sight," she says.
"Because alongside all those dreams of owning a house and having a wonderful family, there are many women out there who have been oppressed within this environment. Rape can and does start at a very young age with incest and my piece is dealing with all those issues."
A number of the works are time-based sculptures which emphasise decay and disorder, such as Neil Wing's chocolate brains and Therese Saaib's 36 sand castles. Saaib fully expects the elements and visiting children to gradually destroy the precisely formed castles.
It was Robyn Bracken's idea to watch TV through a periscope in the closet. Her piece plays formally with the mechanics of perception but there's also a symbolic dimension.
"In a house like this the television is often the focal point of family life so I just wanted to dislodge it from that pride of place into a secret, closeted place."
So why would a commercial builder like Clarendon Homes willingly let a bunch of artists loose in one of their packaged dreams?
"Ultimately the public's perception will be that we are involved in what's happening today," says Clarendon's marketing manager, Peter Brown.
"It's not about house design or development of future housing trends. It's a personal view by the various artists of their interpretation of the family home."
The exhibition runs seven days a week until November 21.
Caption: ILLUS: Step inside for chocolate brains...the artists with marketing manager Peter Brown (right), all part of an unusual project. Picture by Ben Rushton.
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 19-10-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 23
Section: News and Features
Length: 756
---
1 October 1993
Ian burn lost in rescue drama
THE art world is in mourning as news of the death of Ian Burn, Australia's leading conceptual artist, begins to circulate. Burn drowned on the South Coast yesterday while swimming with his daughters.
Milton police told the Herald Burn, 53, of Rozelle, was swimming at Pretty Beach, an unpatrolled beach in the Bawley Point area, about 35 km south of Milton.
THE art world is in mourning as news of the death of Ian Burn, Australia's leading conceptual artist, begins to circulate. Burn drowned on the South Coast yesterday while swimming with his daughters.
Milton police told the Herald Burn, 53, of Rozelle, was swimming at Pretty Beach, an unpatrolled beach in the Bawley Point area, about 35 km south of Milton.
"He was there swimming with his two daughters between 10 am and 11 am when the incident occurred," said Constable Greg Crumblin. "They had gone straight into the water and were swimming for a while with no dramas until a large wave came and everyone was in deep water. They were caught in a rip and got pulled out.
"One of the other girls there started screaming. Burn went to help her and held her up. Some guys on surfboards came to assist. Burn then actually made it back into shore, and then went back out to help someone else - just who, we're not sure.
"There is a feeling that it may have been one of his own daughters who he thought was still out there but I can't confirm that. Then one of the surfers went back out to help him but Burn had already gone under by the time he got there."
Constable Crumblin said Burn's body was eventually located and resuscitation was attempted with no result. His body was taken to Milton Hospital where a routine post mortem will be held today.
Burn had been an outstanding student at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. He left Australia to work in London and New York, where he became involved in the growing conceptual art movement and was a member of the influential conceptual art group Art and Language.
He returned to Australia in 1972 with a firm international reputation and became a key figure in Sydney's leading conceptual art gallery, Central Street Gallery.
In the late 1970s Burn kept a low profile, preferring to teach, write and work rather than pursue a gallery career. Eventually he left his teaching position in the Fine Arts department at the University of Sydney to become a founding member and director of Union Media Services. He continued to create, write and curate until his death.
Indeed, in the past year public interest in Burn's work reached a peak, with a retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Minimal-Conceptual Works 1965-1970, and the show Looking at Seeing and Reading, which he curated at Paddington's Ivan Dougherty Gallery with Nick Waterlow.
"There aren't many of whom you'd say they're indispensable but he really was," said Waterlow yesterday. "So seldom do find someone who is an artist, a writer, and a curator of exhibitions - Ian was all three and he wasn't only concerned with his own area - conceptual art. I remember reading his incisive writing on Sidney Nolan and Fred Williams, an incisiveness you wouldn't necessarily expect from a conceptual artist."
Obituary page 21
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 30-9-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 24
Section: News and Features
Length: 602
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
Milton police told the Herald Burn, 53, of Rozelle, was swimming at Pretty Beach, an unpatrolled beach in the Bawley Point area, about 35 km south of Milton.
THE art world is in mourning as news of the death of Ian Burn, Australia's leading conceptual artist, begins to circulate. Burn drowned on the South Coast yesterday while swimming with his daughters.
Milton police told the Herald Burn, 53, of Rozelle, was swimming at Pretty Beach, an unpatrolled beach in the Bawley Point area, about 35 km south of Milton.
"He was there swimming with his two daughters between 10 am and 11 am when the incident occurred," said Constable Greg Crumblin. "They had gone straight into the water and were swimming for a while with no dramas until a large wave came and everyone was in deep water. They were caught in a rip and got pulled out.
"One of the other girls there started screaming. Burn went to help her and held her up. Some guys on surfboards came to assist. Burn then actually made it back into shore, and then went back out to help someone else - just who, we're not sure.
"There is a feeling that it may have been one of his own daughters who he thought was still out there but I can't confirm that. Then one of the surfers went back out to help him but Burn had already gone under by the time he got there."
Constable Crumblin said Burn's body was eventually located and resuscitation was attempted with no result. His body was taken to Milton Hospital where a routine post mortem will be held today.
Burn had been an outstanding student at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. He left Australia to work in London and New York, where he became involved in the growing conceptual art movement and was a member of the influential conceptual art group Art and Language.
He returned to Australia in 1972 with a firm international reputation and became a key figure in Sydney's leading conceptual art gallery, Central Street Gallery.
In the late 1970s Burn kept a low profile, preferring to teach, write and work rather than pursue a gallery career. Eventually he left his teaching position in the Fine Arts department at the University of Sydney to become a founding member and director of Union Media Services. He continued to create, write and curate until his death.
Indeed, in the past year public interest in Burn's work reached a peak, with a retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Minimal-Conceptual Works 1965-1970, and the show Looking at Seeing and Reading, which he curated at Paddington's Ivan Dougherty Gallery with Nick Waterlow.
"There aren't many of whom you'd say they're indispensable but he really was," said Waterlow yesterday. "So seldom do find someone who is an artist, a writer, and a curator of exhibitions - Ian was all three and he wasn't only concerned with his own area - conceptual art. I remember reading his incisive writing on Sidney Nolan and Fred Williams, an incisiveness you wouldn't necessarily expect from a conceptual artist."
Obituary page 21
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 30-9-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 24
Section: News and Features
Length: 602
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
5 September 1993
Walk into a garret today
In an innovative move, the Museum of Contemporary Art has linked up with six inner-city galleries to promote young contemporary artists.
In an innovative move, the Museum of Contemporary Art has linked up with six inner-city galleries to promote young contemporary artists.
Directors of the six galleries played host yesterday at an open day to museum members. Today, members and the public will be able to visit and view the work of 17 emerging artists in their studios.
"Originally, the event was exclusive to members," the museum's Natalia Bradshaw told Inside Sydney. "But, because the museum is still so new, we've decided to open up Saturday's studio walk to everyone, so people can experience the type of member benefits the museum offers.
"We want to be the catalyst for people to take an interest in, and learn more about, contemporary art. And these visits to artists' studios will be the perfect introduction."
The six galleries behind the venture are the Beatty Gallery, Kunst, Legge Gallery, Lime, ROM and Pendulum.
The idea for the visits came from Rosemary Luker, director of the ROM Gallery at Taylor Square.
"It's really all about two things: making the art more accessible to people, and making the public - and potential patrons - more accessible to the artists," she explained.
"There are similar studio visits held every year in the Marais district in Paris and in Berlin, and they're extraordinarily successful."
Luker said the artists would work in their studios throughout the day, on hand to discuss their work with anyone who popped in.
Participating artists work in a wide range of media, stretching from Brad Allen-Waters's metal sculpture to George and Ilza Burchett's large murals and frescos.
Those interested can pick up a map of the studio locations from the MCA in Circular Quay.
Caption: Illus: Show-offs ... from left, Faith McGirr, Constantine Nicholas, Gary Christian, Stuart Watters, George Burchett, Liz Miller, Simon Hartas, Joe Filshie, Maree Azzopardi, Brad Allen-Waters, Ilza Burchett, Jose Garcia-Negrette. Picture by DEAN SEWELL
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 4-9-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 15
Section: News and Features
Length: 417
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
In an innovative move, the Museum of Contemporary Art has linked up with six inner-city galleries to promote young contemporary artists.
Directors of the six galleries played host yesterday at an open day to museum members. Today, members and the public will be able to visit and view the work of 17 emerging artists in their studios.
"Originally, the event was exclusive to members," the museum's Natalia Bradshaw told Inside Sydney. "But, because the museum is still so new, we've decided to open up Saturday's studio walk to everyone, so people can experience the type of member benefits the museum offers.
"We want to be the catalyst for people to take an interest in, and learn more about, contemporary art. And these visits to artists' studios will be the perfect introduction."
The six galleries behind the venture are the Beatty Gallery, Kunst, Legge Gallery, Lime, ROM and Pendulum.
The idea for the visits came from Rosemary Luker, director of the ROM Gallery at Taylor Square.
"It's really all about two things: making the art more accessible to people, and making the public - and potential patrons - more accessible to the artists," she explained.
"There are similar studio visits held every year in the Marais district in Paris and in Berlin, and they're extraordinarily successful."
Luker said the artists would work in their studios throughout the day, on hand to discuss their work with anyone who popped in.
Participating artists work in a wide range of media, stretching from Brad Allen-Waters's metal sculpture to George and Ilza Burchett's large murals and frescos.
Those interested can pick up a map of the studio locations from the MCA in Circular Quay.
Caption: Illus: Show-offs ... from left, Faith McGirr, Constantine Nicholas, Gary Christian, Stuart Watters, George Burchett, Liz Miller, Simon Hartas, Joe Filshie, Maree Azzopardi, Brad Allen-Waters, Ilza Burchett, Jose Garcia-Negrette. Picture by DEAN SEWELL
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 4-9-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 15
Section: News and Features
Length: 417
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
28 August 1993
An injection of commonsense
Law enforcement temporarily reduces the drug supply and thus causes prices to rise. Higher prices draw new sources of supply and even new drugs onto the market, resulting in more drugs on the street. The Government reacts with more vigorous enforcement - and the cycle starts anew.
- Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate economist, New York Times, May 9, 1993.
As the illicit drug trade continues to exact its tragic social cost unabated, a sea-change in attitudes towards drug policy is beginning to sweep the international community. MICHAEL HUTAK sought some expert opinions.
As the illicit drug trade continues to exact its tragic social cost unabated, a sea-change in attitudes towards drug policy is beginning to sweep the international community.
That Milton Friedman - arguably the most influential right-wing economist of the postwar period - should be putting forward such views of the illicit drug trade would have been unthinkable in the Reagan/Thatcher years of the"war on drugs".
Friedman was speaking in favour of the Hoover Resolution calling on the Clinton Administration to end the United States' 20-year "war on drugs", a policy which concentrates on restricting drug supply through rigorous prohibition.
The resolution notes that the billions of dollars spent on the drug war -which escalated to $A64.4 billion under the Bush Administration - has led to widespread corruption and violence, and has undermined governments throughout the world without any reduction in drug abuse and drug-related crime. And the international drug trade continues to boom.
The ever more obvious failure of this unwinnable war is finally seeing the official tide turn in favour of a harm minimisation policy.
Harm minimisation aims to reduce the adverse health, social and economic consequences of drug abuse without necessarily eliminating drug use.
While the policy still attempts to limit illicit supply and use, it places equal emphasis on reducing drug demand in the community.
Officially, harm minimisation has been Australian policy since The Drug Offensive was launched in 1985.
And that commitment was reaffirmed last month when a National Drug Strategy was endorsed by all Australian governments at a meeting of the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy, the peak body through which the country's health and law enforcement ministers determine national drug policy.
But the professionals in the field - from policy analysts and lawmakers to police, health and social workers - are asking just how committed the Government is to harm minimisation, while Australian drug laws fill our prisons with drug offenders.
As a consequence, many are calling for new and radical solutions - such as the decriminalisation of marijuana, or even the open legalisation of all drugs of addiction.
MICHAEL HUTAK sought some expert opinions.
Dr Alex Wodak, director of the Drug & Alcohol Service, St Vincent's Hospital:
"It all boils down to this: once you recognise drug use is essentially here to stay, does the community want to preserve the present system where responsibility for selecting and supervising people who get heroin has been delegated to underworld criminals?
"Or do we want to see whether an imperfect medical system would be any less bad?
"Despite all our inadequacies in running the health system, I can't see how the possibility of providing clean drugs - of known concentration - could fail to be less evil than the present system.
"I think initially the community will only allow us to prescribe heroin within a program that encourages rehabilitation. Whether or not that's defendable is another question."
Peter Baume, Professor of Community Medicine at the University of NSW, and a former senator in the Fraser Government, who chaired the Senate select committee which produced the landmark 1977 report, Drug Problems in Australia- An Intoxicated Society:
"First, whether drugs are legal or illegal is a matter of fashion, not absolute knowledge. Second, drugs themselves are neutral - it's what people do with them. Third, prohibition has very major costs which, many believe, far outweigh the benefits.
"And of the deaths from drugs, 97 per cent are from the legal drugs. If we're worrying about drug policy, that's where our attention should be going. Ask yourself what the people in favour of prohibition are trying to achieve?They want a drug-free society - and there has never been one in all of history.
"It's a load of garbage, and we said as much in that very first report way back in 1977 - that a drug-free society is not an option. And that's why, on balance, I'm in favour of legalisation of all drugs. It's not desirable to use drugs but all we can do is work out ways that are accommodating to the reality that people do use drugs.
"At the moment all we are doing is filling our jails full of young offenders, making the drug producers and suppliers wealthy, and producing corruption in our police, our Customs, our magistracy and our prisons."
Justice Michael Kirby, the president of the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, who was recently invited to sit on a new international tribunal on drug policy, based in The Hague, The Netherlands:
"I don't know that Australia really has embraced harm minimisation. Ministers can, at meetings, agree on sensible policies. But getting national and State laws changed from the present supply-reduction strategy - not to mention the international conventions which bind Australia to that strategy -is much more complicated.
"Despite the very stern measures adopted, a large number of cases before the courts are still drugrelated. There is no easy solution to this problem. What we have to look for is the least worst solution.
"I support a strategy which treats the issue as a public health problem, rather than a law-and-order problem - because the latter is only of random, intermittent and unpredictable success. But I don't see myself as entitled to defy the law. And while it is as it is, I will enforce it.
"There's no doubt that if people are addicted, they are sick. And a civilised society will treat them as sick people not as criminals - that's the bottom line."
Jim Snow, the Labor MP for Eden-Monaro, now lobbying Federal Parliament to make drugs of addiction, such as heroin, cocaine and amphetamines, available on prescription:
"When I was apprenticed to a pharmacist in 1952 people were able to get linctus heroin, which was prescribed for a cough. We had to report suspected addicts. It was treated then as a health problem, rather than a legal problem
"My proposal will be better for poor people because it will be cheaper -you'd only have to find $50 rather than $2,000 - and purer.
"Currently, the wealthier you are, the better quality you can get and the more reliable your source. The poorer you are, the poorer the quality of drug, the less reliable your source and the more likelihood of contracting AIDS or hepatitis B.
"I'm not interested in hardened addicts - we've got to tolerate the fact they'll keep using. I'm interested in reducing crime and the number of new recruits.
"Both doctors and pharmacists should be entitled to prescribe and dispense for recreational use - as long as the users are prepared to be recorded. And I do think it should be kept out of pubs.
"It's just recognising that if people want to do it, it should be safe for them to do so.
"While it would still be illegal to supply drugs other than on prescription, I wouldn't prosecute for possession. But I think that's an issue which should be debated."
Frank Costigan, QC, whose Royal Commission into the Activities of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers' Union, 1980-84, revealed widespread organised crime on the waterfront:
"The 'war on drugs' as practised by the Reagan/Bush administrations was madness. And while there's not a lot of empirical evidence about, the argument that legalisation reduces the influence of organised crime is a strong one. Nobody could talk seriously about buying drugs at Woolworths, but the question is, shouldn't we be dealing with this in a different way?
"My view is, yes, you've got to pursue the people making immense profits from drugs - the criminal organisations involved in major trafficking and importing should be dealt with with the full severity of the law. But the problem of users should be treated as a health issue with rehabilitation, counselling, treatment and so on."
Tony and Judy Foley, whose son died from heroin use, and who vehemently oppose the decriminalisation of drugs of addiction:
Tony Foley: "Our memories will be of the people out there selling drugs and involving young people - and that to me is just so destroying. I hope one day the Government thinks about the influence drugs have on our society, and what drugs are doing to our children.
"Heroin is a destroyer and there are not too many survivors."
Judy Foley: "The regulations are very hard in countries like Thailand and Malaysia. I can't understand why we don't have a similar system in this country. Any person who's brought in millions of dollars of heroin or cocaine is nothing better than a mass murderer.
"I don't think legalising heroin or cocaine will ever fix this problem."
Milton Luger, the founder in 1977 of the Odyssey House McGrath Foundation rehabilitation program:
"There's been a big push to get heroin legalised. But it didn't take off, so now they're pushing decriminalisation as the first step. I believe this is a pay-off for all the board members who are snorting coke on weekends; for the yuppies who don't want to get busted with marijuana; and for everybody who's making money and using drugs recreationally ...
"None of this will help the kids who are in despair, who have nothing going for them in life, who only use drugs to block out their pain because they've been sexually or emotionally abused by their parents or whoever.
"These are the kids who won't be satisfied with a regular supply - they'll want to use more and more. They'll never get enough.
"Does harm minimisation mean telling young kids it's OK to use drugs? Does it mean you tell them it's normal to use mind-altering substances? Sure, the answer is not to send anybody to jail, but to give them a chance to get off the drugs - and then expunge their record after a year."
Ann Symonds, NSW Labor MLC, and member of the Australian Parliamentary Group on Drug Law Reform, a national bipartisan group, which in October will formulate a national charter on drug law reform.
"I belong to the group because I believe this is the way to declare publicly that the 'war on drugs' - which we've adopted from the Americans - is a failure, and it's not serving our society well.
"The bipartisanship between the major parties in support of the status quo really annoys me because what hope is there for change? These politicians are afraid of the media because this issue is usually dealt with in such a sensationalist way that nobody wants to be condemned for apparently being uncaring about the plight of drug users.
"Our National Charter will show another kind of bipartisanship exists for those who want change.
"What our more vocal supporters have in common is they're either independent or retired - people like Sir Rupert Hamer, Nick Greiner, Neville Wran, Frank Costigan, Don Dunstan and Sir John Gorton. And that's an indication of how vulnerable politicians feel about talking about drug law reform.
"If we can generate a wide-reaching, backbench movement, then we believe ministers might develop the courage to follow our lead."
Craig Thompson, a Sydney magistrate and the president of PRYDE (Parents Reaching Youth through Drug Education).
"The big missing factor is education. Advocating responsible use is a pro-drug message - it says use the drug, but do so responsibly. For kids to hook into that is not a good thing.
"Laws which stop kids getting legal drugs up to 21 years of age are there for a darn good reason - because the immature nature of growing cells makes them much more susceptible to harm than adults, particularly during puberty.
"Making drugs like marijuana and heroin more easily available to young kids is not good for them or society."
Gabriel Bammer, Australian National University fellow and the co-ordinator of a study investigating the feasibility of prescribing heroin to registered addicts:
"The ACT Government became alarmed at the spread of AIDS/HIV and decided new responses were needed. One such response is the provision of heroin to registered addicts in a controlled manner.
"So the Government asked the ANU's National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, and the Australian Institute of Criminology, jointly to conduct what has become known as 'the heroin trial'.
"It's a long way from legalisation. It's not about wholesale ready availability. It's a feasibility study about whether or not the ACT should implement a new method of treatment for people who are heroin-dependent.
"My fear is people will pre-empt the study. Once people take a position it's hard to get them to change - and I'm worried about prematurely polarising people's views."
Wesley Noffs, the director of the Ted Noffs Foundation:
"I can see the arguments for prescribing heroin. But just say you did. Some people would require the drug four times a day - because it's one of those substances which the more you have, the more you want.
"They would spend virtually all their time in a clinic using the substance. You'd get a situation where the addicts tended not to go home. Of course, you could argue they're not overdosing or using dirty needles. But let's see the models of how it would work.
"Anyone in drug and alcohol work would be watching the ACT 'heroin trial'with interest. I do support harm reduction completely. It's something which should be taken up by every drug and alcohol agency. And magistrates should make themselves aware of it - and I don't think they are.
"The very top echelon of the police is aware of the strategy, but I don't think it's filtered down yet."
Chris Puplick, former Liberal senator, commissioned by the NSW Minister of Health to investigate law reform appropriate to the National Strategy on HIV/AIDS:
"We'll be looking at things such as the operation of the needle exchange program, the methadone programs in prisons, and situations in general where people share needles - in essence, all aspects of drug policy as they impact on the way we manage the AIDS crisis.
"We'll also look at whether some drugs, particularly marijuana, have any relationship to the therapeutic treatment of HIV/AIDS conditions.
"There is a considerable body of evidence suggesting that in the later, almost terminal stages of the virus, marijuana does in fact offer some physical and psychological relief.
"Given that marijuana use constitutes a serious offence under NSW law, the question arises whether that is appropriate in this situation. But it's unlikely there will be a spate of prosecutions - after all, we're talking about people who are terminally ill.
"I expect to report to the minister by the end of November."
Tony Day, the NSW Police Association president:
"Of the drugs described as illicit, we would favour seeing them remain that way, from your soft drugs to your hard drugs. But we do see a need not to jail people for the use of marijuana, for instance, which could be treated by way of an infringement notice - as is done in South Australia."
Caption: Illus: Dr Alex Wodak ... "I can't see how the possibility of providing clean drugs could fail to be less evil." Picture by PALANI MOHAN
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 28-8-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 46
Section: Spectrum
Length: 2695
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
6 August 1993
The Day of Ascension*
"But it's not a sad death - it happens out in the fields, in the bright sunshine, bathed in a light of pure gold." 1
The constitution of the televisual image as a cinematic object, and of the surface of the monitor screen as the pro-filmic space are both still evident however where Frost used to write with the televisual, he now paints.
1 August 1993
AGNSW defends controversial donation scheme
AMID debate over the launch of the NSW Art Gallery's Contemporary Benefactors' Scheme, administrators defended the move yesterday as the only option to counter dwindling government support.
The controversial scheme - designed to entice younger, free-spending collectors into the gallery's circle - will be launched at a $75-a-head gala dinner in the gallery's main entrance hall next Saturday.
Amid debate over the launch of the NSW Art Gallery's Contemporary Benefactors' Scheme, administrators defended the move yesterday as the only option to counter dwindling government support.
The controversial scheme - designed to entice younger, free-spending collectors into the gallery's circle - will be launched at a $75-a-head gala dinner in the gallery's main entrance hall next Saturday.
At the heart of the art world's angst is a proposed auction on the night of works donated by Australia's leading contemporary artists, with the proceeds going back into buying more contemporary Australian art.
"Some artists have been a bit iffy about the idea," confirmed Sydney artist Rosemary Laing, who's donated one of her works now hanging in the gallery's"Strangers in Paradise" show.
"And I understand the argument: it's a disturbing trend, in that artists are always expected to make the work and mount the show for next to nothing, and now they're being asked to donate work to attract benefactors.
"This sort of thing has been going on for 10, 20 years. But this time it's the art gallery instead of, say, Artspace."
But the gallery's curator of contemporary art, Tony Bond, is adamant the move is a one-off.
He explained: "I've always been dead against the idea of getting artists to cough up in this manner. There's a lot of it goes on all the time at the alternative spaces but it's the first time we've done it here.
"However, these are modest works which don't compete with the artists'commercial practice.
"The real issue is we don't have any funds for buying contemporary Australian art because of government cutbacks."
Bond said a "massive gap" had emerged between State Government grants and the gallery's actual running costs. As a result, areas such as local acquisitions and maintenance of the collection have slowly had funds siphoned off simply to run the gallery.
The gallery's international programs had remained buoyant because they were supported by fixed bequests. But Bond says the Australian contemporary collection program has been starved of funds: "We have the Rudy Komon Memorial Fund, which produces about $25,000 a year. But that's it.
"We need at least $100,000 a year to get a decent program going."
Sydney galleries have been encouraged to book entire tables at the launch, and Roslyn Oxley and Gene Sherman are two directors who've already taken up the offer.
"I knew Roslyn and Gene would participate, but Stephen Mori has been a bit equivocal about it," Bond noted.
"I know one of his artists felt it was not an appropriate sort of thing for an artist to be doing, and I don't have any problem with that. It's a personal decision."
Mori declined to comment.
After a pre-dinner stroll around the Surrealism exhibition to the tones of a wind quartet, patrons will sit down to a menu designed by renowned Sydney chef Anders Ousbach.
Sotheby's Robert Bleakley will conduct the auction of the works of 16 of Australia's leading contemporary artists: Ian Burn, Debra Dawes, Anne Graham, Bill Henson, Michael Johnson, Janet Laurence, Rosemary Laing, Lindy Lee, Hilarie Mais, John Nixon, Bronwyn Oliver, Mike Parr, Julie Rrap, Imants Tillers, Mark Titmarsh and Ken Unsworth.
Bond expects the event to raise at least $20,000, but added: "During the evening we also hope to sign up patrons for the benefactors' program, which means a commitment of anything from $500 up."
Meanwhile, Laing sees the initiative as long overdue. "I support the event because, from a broader outlook, it's in my interest as a contemporary artist."
Caption: Illus: Art for auction...Tony Bond with a self-portrait by Mike Parr which will go under the hammer next Saturday. Picture by Ben Rushton.
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 31-7-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 15
Section: News and Features
Length: 765
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
The controversial scheme - designed to entice younger, free-spending collectors into the gallery's circle - will be launched at a $75-a-head gala dinner in the gallery's main entrance hall next Saturday.
Amid debate over the launch of the NSW Art Gallery's Contemporary Benefactors' Scheme, administrators defended the move yesterday as the only option to counter dwindling government support.
The controversial scheme - designed to entice younger, free-spending collectors into the gallery's circle - will be launched at a $75-a-head gala dinner in the gallery's main entrance hall next Saturday.
At the heart of the art world's angst is a proposed auction on the night of works donated by Australia's leading contemporary artists, with the proceeds going back into buying more contemporary Australian art.
"Some artists have been a bit iffy about the idea," confirmed Sydney artist Rosemary Laing, who's donated one of her works now hanging in the gallery's"Strangers in Paradise" show.
"And I understand the argument: it's a disturbing trend, in that artists are always expected to make the work and mount the show for next to nothing, and now they're being asked to donate work to attract benefactors.
"This sort of thing has been going on for 10, 20 years. But this time it's the art gallery instead of, say, Artspace."
But the gallery's curator of contemporary art, Tony Bond, is adamant the move is a one-off.
He explained: "I've always been dead against the idea of getting artists to cough up in this manner. There's a lot of it goes on all the time at the alternative spaces but it's the first time we've done it here.
"However, these are modest works which don't compete with the artists'commercial practice.
"The real issue is we don't have any funds for buying contemporary Australian art because of government cutbacks."
Bond said a "massive gap" had emerged between State Government grants and the gallery's actual running costs. As a result, areas such as local acquisitions and maintenance of the collection have slowly had funds siphoned off simply to run the gallery.
The gallery's international programs had remained buoyant because they were supported by fixed bequests. But Bond says the Australian contemporary collection program has been starved of funds: "We have the Rudy Komon Memorial Fund, which produces about $25,000 a year. But that's it.
"We need at least $100,000 a year to get a decent program going."
Sydney galleries have been encouraged to book entire tables at the launch, and Roslyn Oxley and Gene Sherman are two directors who've already taken up the offer.
"I knew Roslyn and Gene would participate, but Stephen Mori has been a bit equivocal about it," Bond noted.
"I know one of his artists felt it was not an appropriate sort of thing for an artist to be doing, and I don't have any problem with that. It's a personal decision."
Mori declined to comment.
After a pre-dinner stroll around the Surrealism exhibition to the tones of a wind quartet, patrons will sit down to a menu designed by renowned Sydney chef Anders Ousbach.
Sotheby's Robert Bleakley will conduct the auction of the works of 16 of Australia's leading contemporary artists: Ian Burn, Debra Dawes, Anne Graham, Bill Henson, Michael Johnson, Janet Laurence, Rosemary Laing, Lindy Lee, Hilarie Mais, John Nixon, Bronwyn Oliver, Mike Parr, Julie Rrap, Imants Tillers, Mark Titmarsh and Ken Unsworth.
Bond expects the event to raise at least $20,000, but added: "During the evening we also hope to sign up patrons for the benefactors' program, which means a commitment of anything from $500 up."
Meanwhile, Laing sees the initiative as long overdue. "I support the event because, from a broader outlook, it's in my interest as a contemporary artist."
Caption: Illus: Art for auction...Tony Bond with a self-portrait by Mike Parr which will go under the hammer next Saturday. Picture by Ben Rushton.
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 31-7-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 15
Section: News and Features
Length: 765
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
25 July 1993
Art college friction isn't fiction
Premier John Fahey's announcement this week that Sydney College of the Arts(SCA), now amalgamated with the University of Sydney, will be relocated to a new $19 million facility at Rozelle means, publicly, an end to 18 years of poor accommodation and inadequate funding. But behind the scenes the country's leading art school remains embroiled in a bitter power struggle among senior management.
At the end of last year, the friction became so intense that the university's vice-chancellor, Don McNichol, was forced to intervene.
He commissioned an inquiry and appointed an independent facilitator to bring the college back from the brink.
The inquiry's confidential report - Inside Sydney has obtained a copy -finds a prevailing climate of "distrust, side-taking, suspicion, low morale"resulting in a "lack of effective decision-making and action ... a climate not conducive to allowing an obviously talented and committed staff to give of their best".
In the eye of the storm is internationally recognised Sydney artist Richard Dunn.
SCA's director since 1988, he sees the genesis of the problem dating back to the college's amalgamation with Sydney University in 1990.
Dunn commented: "If you join an institution and they say 'this is how you must be' - and it's very different from how you were - then there are bound to be difficulties.
"The uni created a school within the college and then appointed a person to head the school. It hadn't been structured that way before and there was confusion about roles and duties."
And according to the vice-chancellor's own report, this led to escalating conflict between Dunn and the head of the school, Associate Professor Helge Larson.
As the acrimony grew, lines of communication collapsed and, notes the report, "previously neutral staff (were) being drawn into factionalism ..."
Inside Sydney was unable to contact Larson but, according to Dunn, his current job will no longer be there when he returns from holidays next month.
Dunn revealed: "He will be my deputy, now that the vice-chancellor has decided to remove the school from the college and adopt a structure where the director also has the duties and responsibilities of head of school."
Dunn said he was willing to work with Larson on his return.
"I'm sure we'll develop a good working relationship, but we need to sit down and talk about where we go from here.
"There are ongoing problems with a minority of people, but that's nothing surprising."
While the new structure is still to be ratified by the university's senate, the independent facilitator, former Dean of Arts Dr Pat Lahy, took up her role last month.
"I'm trying to move the college more into line with the way a faculty at the university works," Lahy explained.
"In a faculty there's more collegiality, people have more input into the decision-making process and some say in what happens.
"And I'd like it known that the process is working."
Constituted by the Whitlam Government in 1975, SCA has coped with sparse funding and poor accommodation ever since.
Scattered over three ramshackle campuses in Glebe and Balmain, it has produced a steady stream of graduates who have slotted straight into the vanguard of Australian contemporary art - such as Jane Campion, Lindy Lee, John Young, Janet Burchill and Dunn himself.
The acting vice-chancellor, Professor Susan Dorsch, told Inside Sydney SCA was an asset to the university, and the move to the heritage-listed, 19th-century Kirkbride buildings at Rozelle Hospital would go a long way to solving the college's problems.
She said: "They've been labouring in bad accommodation for such a long time that Kirkbride must have a positive effect, mainly because it removes that climate of uncertainty."
Dunn agreed that staff relations had improved since Lahy came on board.
"It's slowly being worked through," he said. "Essentially, we have a staff working under appalling conditions producing students who are incredibly good."
Caption: Illus: SCA director, Richard Dunn ... hoping for an end to the bickering. Picture by GARY McLEAN
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 24-7-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 15
Section: News and Features
Length: 808
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
At the end of last year, the friction became so intense that the university's vice-chancellor, Don McNichol, was forced to intervene.
He commissioned an inquiry and appointed an independent facilitator to bring the college back from the brink.
The inquiry's confidential report - Inside Sydney has obtained a copy -finds a prevailing climate of "distrust, side-taking, suspicion, low morale"resulting in a "lack of effective decision-making and action ... a climate not conducive to allowing an obviously talented and committed staff to give of their best".
In the eye of the storm is internationally recognised Sydney artist Richard Dunn.
SCA's director since 1988, he sees the genesis of the problem dating back to the college's amalgamation with Sydney University in 1990.
Dunn commented: "If you join an institution and they say 'this is how you must be' - and it's very different from how you were - then there are bound to be difficulties.
"The uni created a school within the college and then appointed a person to head the school. It hadn't been structured that way before and there was confusion about roles and duties."
And according to the vice-chancellor's own report, this led to escalating conflict between Dunn and the head of the school, Associate Professor Helge Larson.
As the acrimony grew, lines of communication collapsed and, notes the report, "previously neutral staff (were) being drawn into factionalism ..."
Inside Sydney was unable to contact Larson but, according to Dunn, his current job will no longer be there when he returns from holidays next month.
Dunn revealed: "He will be my deputy, now that the vice-chancellor has decided to remove the school from the college and adopt a structure where the director also has the duties and responsibilities of head of school."
Dunn said he was willing to work with Larson on his return.
"I'm sure we'll develop a good working relationship, but we need to sit down and talk about where we go from here.
"There are ongoing problems with a minority of people, but that's nothing surprising."
While the new structure is still to be ratified by the university's senate, the independent facilitator, former Dean of Arts Dr Pat Lahy, took up her role last month.
"I'm trying to move the college more into line with the way a faculty at the university works," Lahy explained.
"In a faculty there's more collegiality, people have more input into the decision-making process and some say in what happens.
"And I'd like it known that the process is working."
Constituted by the Whitlam Government in 1975, SCA has coped with sparse funding and poor accommodation ever since.
Scattered over three ramshackle campuses in Glebe and Balmain, it has produced a steady stream of graduates who have slotted straight into the vanguard of Australian contemporary art - such as Jane Campion, Lindy Lee, John Young, Janet Burchill and Dunn himself.
The acting vice-chancellor, Professor Susan Dorsch, told Inside Sydney SCA was an asset to the university, and the move to the heritage-listed, 19th-century Kirkbride buildings at Rozelle Hospital would go a long way to solving the college's problems.
She said: "They've been labouring in bad accommodation for such a long time that Kirkbride must have a positive effect, mainly because it removes that climate of uncertainty."
Dunn agreed that staff relations had improved since Lahy came on board.
"It's slowly being worked through," he said. "Essentially, we have a staff working under appalling conditions producing students who are incredibly good."
Caption: Illus: SCA director, Richard Dunn ... hoping for an end to the bickering. Picture by GARY McLEAN
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 24-7-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 15
Section: News and Features
Length: 808
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
18 July 1993
Artspace turns 10 as it changes its emphasis
INSIDE SYDNEY: Artspace, Sydney's first publicly funded contemporary art gallery, celebrates its first decade next week, culminating with a party at its expansive new home in Woolloomooloo on Saturday. Artspace, Sydney's first publicly funded contemporary art gallery, celebrates its first decade next week, culminating with a party at its expansive new home in Woolloomooloo on Saturday.
Gallery director Louise Pether recalled: "Looking back, there have been such phenomenal shifts in the last 10 years.
"Originally Artspace seemed a real 1970s concept, in that anybody could exhibit and it was catering for people straight out of art school.
"But gradually the artist-run galleries have become more numerous, to the point where today you have spaces like First Draft WEST, Arthaus, Black and Lime all filling that gap.
"That leaves us somewhere between them and the Museum of Contemporary Art or NSW Art Gallery."
Before shifting last year to the new $1.5 million Gunnery Visual Arts Centre at Woolloomooloo Bay, Artspace occupied the first floor of an aging Surry Hills warehouse for nine years.
"Artspace was important because it was the first space in Sydney to address contemporary art, as it was practised at the time," explained artist and former Artspace committee member Merilyn Fairskye. "It combined an international outlook with a commitment to local artists and writers. But, just as crucially, it provided a place where artists could learn to negotiate the art world and begin to take control of their careers."
Pether - who succeeded previous directors Judy Annear, Gary Sangster and Sally Couacaud - estimates that 550 artists have participated in more than 200 exhibitions since Artspace opened but said the Gunnery necessarily meant a shift in emphasis for the exhibition program.
"Suddenly, we're in these quite splendid premises. It's corporate - almost glamorous - and the art really has to look good, otherwise everything falls apart.
"So, in terms of experimentation and risk-taking, the sorts of shows we have here will be different to those we experienced at Surry Hills.
"We've decided we're no longer a place for first exhibitors. But we are still a place for emerging ideas, and these can come from any generation or an artist of any experience."
Caption: Ilus: Art of time ... Abby Mellick, Julianne Pierce and Louise Pether, of Artspace, ready to celebrate the gallery's 10th birthday.Picture by PETER RAE
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 17-7-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 15
Section: News and Features
Length: 476
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
Gallery director Louise Pether recalled: "Looking back, there have been such phenomenal shifts in the last 10 years.
"Originally Artspace seemed a real 1970s concept, in that anybody could exhibit and it was catering for people straight out of art school.
"But gradually the artist-run galleries have become more numerous, to the point where today you have spaces like First Draft WEST, Arthaus, Black and Lime all filling that gap.
"That leaves us somewhere between them and the Museum of Contemporary Art or NSW Art Gallery."
Before shifting last year to the new $1.5 million Gunnery Visual Arts Centre at Woolloomooloo Bay, Artspace occupied the first floor of an aging Surry Hills warehouse for nine years.
"Artspace was important because it was the first space in Sydney to address contemporary art, as it was practised at the time," explained artist and former Artspace committee member Merilyn Fairskye. "It combined an international outlook with a commitment to local artists and writers. But, just as crucially, it provided a place where artists could learn to negotiate the art world and begin to take control of their careers."
Pether - who succeeded previous directors Judy Annear, Gary Sangster and Sally Couacaud - estimates that 550 artists have participated in more than 200 exhibitions since Artspace opened but said the Gunnery necessarily meant a shift in emphasis for the exhibition program.
"Suddenly, we're in these quite splendid premises. It's corporate - almost glamorous - and the art really has to look good, otherwise everything falls apart.
"So, in terms of experimentation and risk-taking, the sorts of shows we have here will be different to those we experienced at Surry Hills.
"We've decided we're no longer a place for first exhibitors. But we are still a place for emerging ideas, and these can come from any generation or an artist of any experience."
Caption: Ilus: Art of time ... Abby Mellick, Julianne Pierce and Louise Pether, of Artspace, ready to celebrate the gallery's 10th birthday.Picture by PETER RAE
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 17-7-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 15
Section: News and Features
Length: 476
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
11 July 1993
Oxley makes plans on a fresh canvas
INSIDE SYDNEY: Leading Sydney gallery owner Roslyn Oxley yesterday confirmed major changes to her contemporary art business, including a dramatically smaller stable and plans to move from her Paddington landmark. "We had an offer for this space which really surprised us," she explained. "So we're considering the move because, economically, it's really too good an opportunity." With commercial galleries enduring a sluggish market, Oxley said she has no option but to meet the challenge.
"What we're doing is contracting. We're fairly small, in terms of personnel, and it's become very hard to manage artists properly. So we're paring down our stable.
"At McDonald Street (her earlier Paddington exhibition space) we could have five shows running at once. But in this gallery we can only have one or two at the most - and I find we're only concentrating on the artists we're really interested in.
"It's not fair to the others. So perhaps they'll get full attention somewhere else."
Oxley nominated 17 artists as a workable target - and said claims that she had 72 on her books at the height of the 1980s boom were "absolute garbage".
She added: "At our peak we probably had 35. But that's not full representation. At any one time you've only got the capacity to represent fully 12 or 15 people at a maximum."
In slashing numbers Oxley is echoing the trend set by new players on the Sydney scene such as Gene Sherman's Goodhope Gallery and the Sarah Cottier's new gallery in Newtown (scheduled for launch late this year).
Both are entering the market with small, select stables - and have secured representation of some of the biggest names in contemporary Australian art, including former leading lights from Oxley's gallery such as Dale Frank (now with Sherman Goodhope) and John Nixon (Sarah Cottier).
Oxley worked for 20 years as an interior designer (both in Australia and in New York) before returning to begin her gallery in an old rented warehouse in McDonald Street, Paddington, in early 1982.
Showcasing risky, emerging artists, Roslyn Oxley Gallery was an inst ant success.
Oxley had the foresight to buy a warehouse in Soudan Lane, Paddington, before the 1980s property boom - and relocated there in March 1990 after a lavish refurbishment.
"We always planned to move here, if we couldn't buy McDonald Street," she recalled.
"And we're not thinking of selling this place - just renting it out and relocating the gallery.
"But the whole thing is still under wraps, and I'm not going to tell you anymore until we've completed it."
On the current market, she summed up: "It's become more and more difficult... Quite frankly, I'd prefer to sell socks.
"But the art's the thing and, although it's hard, it's a fabulous business to be in.
"I'm very optimistic about the art that's coming out of Australia. It has a real edge that keeps coming through, and this is without doubt a very exiting time."
Caption: Illus: Roslyn Oxley ... "Quite frankly, I'd prefer to sell socks." Picture by DEAN SEWELL
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 10-7-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 15
Section: News and Features
Length: 605
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
"What we're doing is contracting. We're fairly small, in terms of personnel, and it's become very hard to manage artists properly. So we're paring down our stable.
"At McDonald Street (her earlier Paddington exhibition space) we could have five shows running at once. But in this gallery we can only have one or two at the most - and I find we're only concentrating on the artists we're really interested in.
"It's not fair to the others. So perhaps they'll get full attention somewhere else."
Oxley nominated 17 artists as a workable target - and said claims that she had 72 on her books at the height of the 1980s boom were "absolute garbage".
She added: "At our peak we probably had 35. But that's not full representation. At any one time you've only got the capacity to represent fully 12 or 15 people at a maximum."
In slashing numbers Oxley is echoing the trend set by new players on the Sydney scene such as Gene Sherman's Goodhope Gallery and the Sarah Cottier's new gallery in Newtown (scheduled for launch late this year).
Both are entering the market with small, select stables - and have secured representation of some of the biggest names in contemporary Australian art, including former leading lights from Oxley's gallery such as Dale Frank (now with Sherman Goodhope) and John Nixon (Sarah Cottier).
Oxley worked for 20 years as an interior designer (both in Australia and in New York) before returning to begin her gallery in an old rented warehouse in McDonald Street, Paddington, in early 1982.
Showcasing risky, emerging artists, Roslyn Oxley Gallery was an inst ant success.
Oxley had the foresight to buy a warehouse in Soudan Lane, Paddington, before the 1980s property boom - and relocated there in March 1990 after a lavish refurbishment.
"We always planned to move here, if we couldn't buy McDonald Street," she recalled.
"And we're not thinking of selling this place - just renting it out and relocating the gallery.
"But the whole thing is still under wraps, and I'm not going to tell you anymore until we've completed it."
On the current market, she summed up: "It's become more and more difficult... Quite frankly, I'd prefer to sell socks.
"But the art's the thing and, although it's hard, it's a fabulous business to be in.
"I'm very optimistic about the art that's coming out of Australia. It has a real edge that keeps coming through, and this is without doubt a very exiting time."
Caption: Illus: Roslyn Oxley ... "Quite frankly, I'd prefer to sell socks." Picture by DEAN SEWELL
------------------------------
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Publication date: 10-7-1993
Edition: Late
Page no: 15
Section: News and Features
Length: 605
---
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald
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