This week's Bulletin magazine goes into award territory with its presentation of Australia's 100 'best and brightest'.
Category 2# is dedicated to the Arts & Entertainment, judged by Adelaide Festival Director Brett Sheehy who is described by the magazine as an 'arts and entert
ainment expert'.
There is always a problem when the media throw in Arts AND Entertainment into the same category. The Sydney Morning Herald do it prolifically and all of sudden you have a community represented by TV, Film, Visual Arts, Ballet, Classical Music, Contemporary Music, Commercial Music, Dance, Theatre, Photography, Singing, New Media, Opera, Musical Theatre, Writing, Installation, Sculpture and so on and so on. You may as well lump Sport and Entertainment into the same category.
Even editor Jane Albert had difficulty coming to terms with these two very different industries. "The Australian arts and entertainment scene is facing a conundrum," she said. "There is an abundance of talent and the sector is in better shape financially following the federal government's recent overdue funding boost. But with a growing number of artists creating evocative, provocative, work and ongoing competition from cheap electronic home entertainment, audiences are spoilt for choice."
That's probably about as close as you are going to get to bridge the two together.
Albert explains that the final ten were chosen because they "weren't simply exploiting their natural talents but were using them to go that little bit further.., are all eager to collaborate.., [had] a sense of fun.., [and] who take a global view of art and Australia's place in the international scene".
Sheehy adds that he 'looked for courage, enterprise, people who aren't just handed things on a platter, artists who are being smart about how they create, how they get their work seen'.
The ten finalists were composer, violist and conductor Brett Dean, choreographer Kate Champion, artistic director Michael Kantor, writer and actor Chris Lilley, visual artist Callum Morton, lobbyist Sue Nattrass, actor Richard Roxburgh, rock musician Andrew Stockdale, designer Gabriela Tylesova and music director Antony Walker.
It was decided out of the pool and the shortlist that the most impressive achievement came from Brett Dean, presently a director at the Australian National Academy of Music. Sheehy explains that Dean "is a great polymath - violist, composer, artistic director, teacher, curator and collaborator."
He goes on to say that, "Brett is arguably Australia's best hope for contributing to the relevance and security of classical music in the immediate future, and with his keen interest in developing the next generation of musicians and composers, into decades beyond his own time".
Sound like a pretty worthy Arts recipient to me. Now, about that Entertainment category...
Image: demodungeon.com
1 comments:
Well...how do you pick ten out of the whole country? No disprespect to Richard Roxborough, but why him over twenty or so other actors who have made at least as much of an impact? Does he run his own company? No. Does he direct theatre? Not much. Does he write? No. Does he act on stage? Infrequently. It's really impossible to single out one performer when we could probably each name five who are equally significant.
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