The 50th International Art Exhibition, Venice

Dreams and Conflicts - The Viewer’s Dictatorship
Curated by Francesco Bonami

Venice, Giardini della Biennale – Arsenale
Vernissage: 12-14 June
Official Opening: 14 June
Open to the public: 15 June to 2 November 2003

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At 36 years of age, Melbourne-based artist Patricia Piccinini, five times named by this publication as one of Australia’s 50 most collectable artists, has achieved another career milestone with her selection as Australia’s representative at the world’s most prestigious art fair, the Venice Biennale.

While Piccinini will join an elite club of antipodean luminaries that includes Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Howard Arkley and Bill Henson, she will be attending an event rejected by Robert Hughes last year when he was offered the coveted director’s role. Such is its stature, Venice will again attract 250,000 patrons to the Biennale, but after a restructure of the event’s management, indifferent reviews for the 49th stanza in 2001, and intrigue in the upper reaches of the Italian government (which almost single-handedly funds the exhibition), all eyes are on newly appointed curator/director, superstar critic, Francesco Bonami, who returns from a brilliant American career to take the reins.

The world’s oldest survey of modern art began in 1895, and this year again consists of three distinct sections: (1) Bonami’s curated international survey of an estimated 130 emerging and established artists; (2) the international exposition of 30 national pavilions; and (3) the scores of satellite exhibitions, both official and unofficial, scattered throughout the city.

The epicentre, though, is the eastern end of the Grand Canal, where Bonami’s survey is laid out across an 14,800 sq.m. area within the 500-year-old shipyards and warehouses of the Arsenale and the beautiful leafy grounds of the Giardini di Castello, where the permanent national pavilions are. The Australian pavilion, designed by Peter Cox and owned and maintained by the Australia Council for the Arts, will be the context for Piccinini’s exhibition.

We Are Family, says Piccinini,“will explore the changing relationship between what is considered natural and what is considered artificial” - which promises to continue her deeply disturbing sculptural simulations of genetically-modified human life.

After a string of important international shows over the past two years, Venice should cement Piccinini’s reputation as the most exciting and challenging Australian artist to emerge in a generation.
The hottest ticket as usual will be the Vernissage - or preview period – the international artworld’s most powerful networking opportunity as 10,000 invited VIPs, museum directors, art dealers, collectors, curators and artists join 10,000 accredited critics and media for three days of serious celebration of art. In 2001 there were no less than 4,766 accredited journalists in attendance, including 63 TV crews. More than 5500 reviews were published worldwide.

While Venice is one of the world’s great destinations, there appear to be no guided tours or travel packages to its Biennale that originate from Australia. The Art Gallery of New South Wales, however, organises a tour of collectors to attend through its Contemporary Collection Benefactors program. The only proviso is you must be a CCB member - not a bad idea anyway, considering its core mission is to raise funds to buy works for the gallery’s permanent collection of contemporary Australian art.

IF you’re planning to visit the Biennale for the opening or its first month and haven’t booked your accommodation yet, then you’re too late – all the best accommodation for this festival is typically booked out six months ahead. This can however be a blessing in disguise as the visitor is forced to stay outside the heavily-touristed city in the Veneto region, where the accommodation is much better value and the distractions from art range from breathtaking Alpine ambience to the historical gravitas of towns like Padova.

First published in Australian Art Collector, Issue 24, April-June 2003

History Never Repeats: ADS Donaldson

Australian Art Collector, Issue 24, Autumn 2003

Archibald 2003: Brush of the bushman

Geoffrey Dyer, Richard Flanagan,
oil on linen, 183 x 152.5 cm

The Archibald Prize went left field this year. Michael Hutak talks to the knockabout bloke from Tasmania who eclipsed a star-studded field. 

It was all a bit subdued at this year's announcement of Australia's pre-eminent art prize, the Archibald. For a start, convivial director Edmund Capon – who'd briefly become a NSW election issue when he took down the Australian flag from the Art Gallery of NSW in protest at the looming war – had been seemingly banished to a corner of the room instead of taking pride of place as MC on the podium.

Capon's void was filled by the earnest monotone of David Gonski, president of the AGNSW board of trustees, although we were assured the flag incident had nothing to do with Capon's "banishment". War, declared the day before, had quelled the media's customary boisterousness and Gonski's declaration of each winner – there are four in all, including the Wynn, the Sulman and a new photo-portrait prize – was greeted with dispersed gasps and muted applause followed by an exchange of polite but quizzical glances around the room: "Who?"

No darlings of the social set got the nod this year, nor did reclusive genii, enfants terrible or even idiots savant.

New panel for safer racing - Sun Herald

16 March 2003 -- AFTER a rash of horrific race falls, Racing NSW stewards have formed a Riders' Advisory Panel designed to help young jockeys become better riders.
The panel will aim to correct mistakes and errors of judgment by apprentices and inexperienced riders, under the guidance of high-profile members.
"We believe this is a stepping stone to helping young riders move up the ranks by receiving advice as to how and why a certain incident may have happened and how to prevent it in the future," said Racing NSW chairman of stewards Ray Murrihy.
"Once one of our stewards pinpoints an error with a youngster's riding which needs to be addressed, we will then refer the rider in the company of their master to the panel for corrective advice.
"We have been discussing this at length with the NSW Jockeys' Association and, at this stage, members would include Malcolm Fitzgerald [Racing NSW apprentice Mentor], jockeys like Darren Beadman, and even some former riders.
"It is an exciting initiative and is likely to be much less traumatic for a youngster than having to face a panel of stewards."
Paul Innes, secretary of the NSW Jockeys' Association, welcomed the panels implementation.
"This is an excellent initiative... it will go a long way to improving safety in our sport."

-- Michael Hutak

First published in:

Kelly's first stand

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

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

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

Collectables: Jeffrey Smart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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First published in The Bulletin

Global warning

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

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

Matthew Collings: Strictly modern

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

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

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

Australia grapples with its emotions in aftermath of Bali bombing

by Michael Hutak

672 words
17 October 2002
Agence France-Presse
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The crimes inflamed prejudice against the Lebanese community.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ENDS

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

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

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

ENDS

Ken Burns: oxymoronic hybrid

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

Consumers: A Matter of Trust

By Michael Hutak, 9 May 2002

Australian Financial Review
MARKETING 2002

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Boss: Visual Values

Michael Hutak

8 March 2002
Australian Financial Review

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

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

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

Tough Love For Queen Bees

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Boss Magazine, Australian Financial Review

Get The Message?

Boss Magazine

Michael Hutak
391 words
8 March 2002
Australian Financial Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Somewhere Man: Phillip Noyce on "Rabbit Proof Fence"

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

Gillian Armstrong: Shades of Gray

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

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

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

Collectables: Export vs. Heritage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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First published in The Bulletin

Letter to Australia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MICHAEL HUTAK

Easel Angles: Julian Schnabel on Before Night Falls

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

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

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

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