The Wonderful New Era of Theatre Trailers

I absolutely love this new practice by theatre companies in Sydney to make trailers to help promote their shows. It was something that first emerged in the UK and the North American fringe but gradually the practice has filtered through other places around the world.

In some cases the trailer is better than the show - which can be slightly problematic for producers - but most of the time, an innovative theatre trailer often represents an innovative creative team.

Here's a pick of some of the best that have emerged in Sydney in recent times. And if there are any more you have come across send them my way and I'll post them up.

The Duel - Sydney Theatre Company




References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot - Griffin Independent




St Nicholas - Bondi Pavilion




Wicked - Capitol Theatre

Who's Who in Creative Sydney?

For your interest...

Creative Sydney is a new festival of ideas that gives creative people the platform to discuss how we can make Sydney the best place in the world to create new film, art, design, music, technology, events and more.

It is part of Vivid Sydney, a unique new public festival featuring Luminous music festival at Sydney Opera House, Smart Light Sydney and Fire Water. Vivid Sydney is one of five anchor events in the first ever NSW Master Events Calendar created by Events NSW on behalf of the NSW Government.

And there will be a festival celebrating the wealth and diversity of the city’s creative talents from May 27- June 13.

As part of that Creative Sydney will be recognising the outstanding talent we have in Sydney; artists, performers and producers, and the people working behind the scenes to build the culture of our city.

They’re applauding the work of 100 Creative Catalysts, individuals who have developed original projects, products or services within their creative field, and who inspire and support other creative people.

And they want your input. Who inspires you? Creative Sydney is open to suggestions as they compile the Creative Catalysts list. They could be friends or peers, people you admire or icons you want to emulate.

Post your nominations on Facebook by April 3.

Register for the newsletter for updates and full launch details at http://creativesydney.com.au/

Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/creativesydney


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For the purposes of Creative Sydney the creative industries include: advertising, architecture, visual art, computer software & web development, design (interior, graphic, object), fashion, photography, film, video, animation, performing arts, music, literature and publishing, radio and television, crafts and video games.

Right, it's official...

If you're not on Twitter, then you're no one. Get on it.

There's even an interesting list being compiled at The Social Pages of Australian creative organisations from film, the visual arts, broadcasting, performance and media already there.

There's Company B, Sydney Opera House, MCA, Carriageworks, Griffin Theatre, FBi, Sydney Writers Centre, Sydney Festival, The Art Life etc etc etc.

Facebook is dead. Twitter it.

In fact, anyone who tweets a decent 140 character review of a show in Sydney and sends it to me, I'll post it on the blog. (If you do it straight after the show, that's even better).

ABC Funding: Spread the Word

From our friends at the MEAA;






If you want to send your own email to the Ministers responsible, here are some email addresses to get you started. Otherwise you can send an email to all of them at once using our form at http://www.alliance.org.au/abcemail.html

*****

The Hon Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy

Email: senator.conroy@aph.gov.au

The Hon Peter Garrett, Minister for Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts,

Email: Peter.Garrett.MP@aph.gov.au

The Hon Wayne Swan MP, Treasurer,

Email: Wayne.Swan.mp@aph.gov.au

The Hon Lindsay Tanner MP,

Email: Lindsay.Tanner.MP@aph.gov.au.

If you are having trouble seeing this email visit http://www.alliance.org.au/abcemail.html

Every now and again

The Sydney Morning Herald doesn't upload reviews published in the Sun-Herald anymore. They used to, particularly when the Herald didn't have the time/resources/inclination to send a reviewer to a show themselves.

In one way it's a shame, because if you happened to miss last weekend's Sunday paper, you would have missed a review that only comes along every now and again - a review that went straight for the jugular.

Reviewers in the Fairfax stable don't often go to town on a production, often giving the benefit of the doubt to most of the shows they see - particularly the professional ones. Messrs Hallett and Hopkins are consistently far too kind and the closest the paper has to an attack dog reviewer is Stephen Dunne who gets let lose on those poor souls in the independent sector.

Even Mr Dunne has been rather mild of late. In fact the only bit of critical rage I have seen come out of his corner is to use the word 'ersatz' in describing a recent production.

Which makes Jason Blake's tirade on Sunday just beautiful. And so it begins;

The expression 'train wreck' is barely adequate when it comes to describing Las Vegas (Confidential). After all, there's always something grimly fascinating or educational to see in a train wreck.

Not since Stephen Dunne's review of the infamous The Nothing Men has such an opening to a review been such a corker. So, of course, I kept reading.

No, this is a fiasco, an embarrassment to all involved in its making and an insult to its audience.

Tell us what you really think Jason.

And so he does.

Based on 'previously untold true events', the plot revolves around Alexander 'The Great' Dean (Tamlyn Henderson), a stage illusionist and headline act at a Vegas Casino managed by mob figure Tony 'The Tool' Spitori (Tony Nikolakopoulos), to whom Dean owes a million bucks or more.

With encouragement from his personal Goddess of Fortune (a ludicrous role written for producer-writer James Karp's wife, Simone), a love affair blossoms between the feckless Dean and the undertandably wary Francesca, a singer. In order for it to survive, however, Dean must work out an exit strategy from the dangerous situation he finds himself in.

Responsibility for this mind-bendingly inept jukebox musical lies with Karp - a stage illusionist himself - and it bears all the hallmarks of a vanity project gone mad.

Without exception, the scenes are sketchy, the dialogue dull-witted and the characters hopelessly cliched. Humour only arises because Karp is unable to distinguish the funny from the laughable. Some episodes exist only as framing devices for magic tricks, all of which look silly in this context.

Design-wise, there's nothing to arrest the eye other than the migraine-inducing glare of the stadium-style jumbotron screen dominating the stage. Karp's choice of songs - ranging from Que Sera, Sera to an excruciating version of Robbie Williams's Me and My Monkey - is as strange as it is unappetising.

Director Christopher Hurrell struggles to make the basics - entrances, exits, scene changes - work and James Taylor's choreography is a mess of showgirl shapethrowing, Eurovision twizz and tawdry bump 'n' grind, much of inexpertly realised.

Rhythm and sass are what's needed and both are utterly absent. Henderson shows some determination in the lead role yet not for an instant do we care about dean or anything he does. Leading lady Katrina Retallick was indisposed on opening night and would do well to stay that way.

Our sympathies go to understudy Diana Holt, who gamely played the thankless role of Francesca. Tiffani Wood, of the late and unlamented pop act Bardot, is rather too obviously there as an audience drawcard but her role - a hooker-singer named Tiffany - is restricted to a couple of Shania Twain-style workouts in the second act. Garry Scale certainly earns his fee playing an elderly Mexican barman in what appears to be a tribute to Tattoo from Fantasy Island.

And if that wasn't enough, we have the closing to make sure you really understand what Blake is trying to say;

Tosh from top to tail, Las Vegas (Confidential) is rubbish and a rip-off.

That's enough to make me really want to go and see it now. Anyone up for it?

But what were the two points out of ten for Jason? The afterparty?

 

Interview with Daniel Brine - new Artistic Director of Performance Space

It's a journalist's worst nightmare. After organising a time, date and venue, reading background information, preparing questions and conducting an interview with a subject, you suddenly lose the recording due to some technological malfunction or misadventure.

The fact that I had flown all the way from Sydney to London to catch Daniel Brine, the newly appointed Artistic Director of Performance Space before his arrival in Australia made it that little bit more painful. The fact that I lost the recording on my MP3 player on the last leg of my journey after twenty-one days of keeping it safe made it just pure frustration.

Kindly, Daniel afforded me some extra time while he was in Sydney for a quick catch up during a handover week with the outgoing AD Fiona Winning who has left after nine years.

The changing of the guard at Performance Space and Brine's appointment to the role of Artistic Director is one of the biggest changes to occur in the contemporary arts scene internationally this year as he fills what he describes as 'Fiona's very, very large shoes'.

It's extraordinary that not one major newspaper in this country has reported on the change. But we've seen this laziness before and know that they are able to editorialise similar appointments. Performance Space is no small-to-medium organisation out the back of hickville. It is, quite simply, a company that is at the forefront of contemporary art experimentation and presentation with an international reputation in excellence. And not a single column inch was spared by any news outlet.

My first meeting with Brine found us at the headquarters of the Live Arts Development Agency UK where he is finishing up his role as Associate Director. Based in a converted old girls school, the headquarters couldn't be more English with a beautiful old lawn courtyard with a walled garden nestled behind one of those typical London squares with a canopy of leaves. It's quite an oasis in the Shoreditch area of London just ten minutes walk from the hustle and bustle of the Liverpool Street financial district.

The day I arrive the stock markets worldwide had lurched downwards, Halifax Bank of Scotland had collapsed and suits were loitering in office buildings reconsidering their career choices. Maybe it is a good time for Brine to get out of the UK.

An Australian, Brine has been based in the UK for over eleven years after working for Live Arts, the Arts Council England and the NOW Festival. His biography reads like a degustation menu of contemporary performance, curating Live Culture at the Tate Modern, You Are Here for the Liverpool Biennial, Performing Rights for Performance Studies International Tanzquartier and China Live at the Chinese Arts Centre. He has even worked with Forced Entertainment, La Ribot, Blast Theory and Janine Antoni.

A quiet and considered man, Brine has acquired that slight English accent despite his heritage. "My move back to Australia is not about returning home, it is about going to work at Performance Space," he explains.

The industries in Australia and the UK could not be more different. In a forward to one of the many books that Brine gives me he co-writes with Lois Keidan (of Live Arts as well) and David Micklem from the UK Arts Council;

"Over the last decade or so there has been a growing sense that artistic directors and programmers across the UK are expressing greater interest in work that pushes at the edges of our expectations of what theatre could be. Some venues are actively programming experimental works. Others are expressing a keenness to explorethe opportunities for taking their audiences on new journeys. Whilst it is acknowledged that this work is challenging, sometimes difficult, often compelling and engaging, it is also work that can attract new audiences, offer new experiences, and add bold new strands to a venue's programme. Whether it is the National Theatre collaborating with Shunt, Duckie's events at the Barbican, Noble & Silver at Soho Theatre, or Gob Squad working on the main stage of Nottingham Playhouse it is increasingly evident that theatres in the UK are excited about a new set of relationships with experimental artists and companies."

Maybe that is where he sees the future role of the company he is about to take over. His respect for Performance Space is immediately obvious. "The role of the company internationally places it as one of the top three organisations presenting inter-disciplinary practices. It's part of the international infrastructure of contemporary performance," he says.

What's most interesting about Brine's experience is his role in developing unique and tangible avenues for artists and the arts industry to have a dialogue. Whether it be through publications, conferences, events or library resources, it is clear that his greatest strength is the way he inspires conversations.

If he brings his experiences in creating dialogue to Australia's shores it will be a much needed element to an extremely fragmented and fractured industry. Do we have a situation where it is increasingly evident that theatres in Australia are excited about a new set of relationships with experimental artists and companies?

As he takes me on a tour of the agency's premises he explains that the three pillars of Live Arts work is based around offering resources, professional development services and projects. "As you can see, we are not a performance space and we do not present works. Live Arts is more a resource, an organisation that brings together artists and venues to expand the cultural sector," he says.

He escorts me to an astonishing library where from floor to ceiling, tapes, DVDs and books document years of performance and contemporary arts writing. It's the sort of place you could spend months in, pulling out one DVD and then another until your eye catches something else you have always wanted to watch.

"Working at Performance Space gives me a chance to build more resources and focus on professional development through consultation and strategic thinking. It will also allow me to bring together art form practices particularly in film and dance," he says emphasising that until he takes up his position and has time to listen to the staff at Performance Space, speak with artists and the industry, the future direction of the company could involve anything.

The role of Performance Space after their move two years ago from their home of twenty years on Cleveland Street in Redfern to Carriageworks is one of the greatest challenges Brine will face. Winning oversaw the transition but it is now Brine's role to consolidate. Performance Space no longer enjoy the privilege of being a stand alone performance and artist space, now sharing the converted train yards with a family of other similar minded arts organisations under the umbrella of the financially restricted Carriageworks management.

Seeing him a month later in the cavernous Carriageworks building and a world away from the well manicured lawns of the old girls school he is realistic about the challenges facing him.

"It's clear there is a challenge of making big things and there are big issues in the industry that need to be addressed," he says.

But it's not just the issues facing the fragmented industry, it is also the mere size of the Carriageworks space. "A lot of people told me that Carriageworks was big, but I had no idea it was this big," he says. "It is an enormous space to fill."

But you can see the excitement in his face ... and the adrenalin. Asking him about our conversation four weeks earlier in London and how he feels now that he is in Sydney he is comforted with the fact that the organisation feels 'familiar' to him.

Hopefully, before long, all of us engaged with the arts will also become familiar with Daniel Brine and the future path he will carve in inspiring creative dialogue between all the spheres of performance in the country. An enormous space to fill indeed.

Fairfax should strike more often

Since writers at Fairfax went on strike just over a week ago there has been a sudden increase in locally generated arts stories that are actually interesting. Maybe they should go on strike more often.

In Saturday's Spectrum, Bryce Hallett wrote a great feature on Barrie Kosky and Tom Wright (with a fantastic photo of Kosky standing outside a closet as Wright is coming out).

Relative newbie, Louise Schwartkoff gave us a great news item about the latest Performance Space show from a Perth based collective who put on street theatre based around an anti-civil disobedience taskforce.

Valerie Lawson did a great interview piece about poet Robert Gray, also in Spectrum over the weekend where Gray talks about 'the exhilaration of looking'. Unfortunately this article isn't online.

And today there was a great piece about Damien Millar's new play The Modern International Dead which is opening tonight at the Stables. I must admit to be quietly really looking forward to seeing this. Having just recently read Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures) which Millar also staged as a play, this production directed by Chris Mead and designed by Genevieve Blanchett should be a bit great. 

Now, if we can just sort out that Ravenhill piece, the SMH could very well be making a bit of a comeback. The scary question, however, is who out of the arts writers will get the chop in the latest round of Fairfax redundancies?

 

Christian Kerr, speak for yourself

Christian Kerr seems to be suffering a bit of the old Holt Street virus since making his recent move from Crikey to the opinion pages of The Australian.

The Holt Street virus can be quite debilitating and lead to narrowed vision, sweeping generalisations and a terribly inflated ego.

Recently, Mr Kerr had a wonderful old fashioned crack at those dastardly people who write blogs (without, mind you, naming any specific blog).

"Nuance is gone," he proclaims. "Instead, you enter the echo chamber where assertions are endlessly repeated. The talk in the new common rooms of the blogs is decidedly undergraduate intone."

That sounds remarkably similar to reading an opinion piece in The Australian doesn't it?

Today, he provides a less than nuanced piece having a go at the Senator Kim Carr speech which I gave a plug yesterday.

"KIM Carr has a beard just like Allen Ginsberg's. And the Industry, Innovation, Science and Research Minister appears to have been influenced by the beats in other ways," Kerr comically writes.

For the ex-Liberal Party political advisor, Christian Kerr probably prefers the world of Coalition front bench ranks greyed over by your compulsory degree in Commerce, Law or that other life killer - the MBA - than those with the streak of the humanities.

"Sound poets and performance artists rarely shape major government reports," Kerr groans on, "but yesterday's review of the national innovation system, the excitingly punctuated venturousaustralia, appears to have been written using the cut-up style popularised by William Burroughs."

No doubt, as an opinion writer for The Australian the shadow ministry in Canberra will no doubt take his cue just as they would have when he was working within their ranks and throw the Ginsberg line towards Carr.

Hopefully Carr will return the compliment to Kerr and the Coalition and describe them in a way that only Burroughs could;

"They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work."

Give me a beat poet any day to a columnist in The Oz.

Any suggestions?

Imagine you are the publicist for a theatre company with a production due to open in Sydney. The playwright happens to be happy and available to give the media an interview to assist you in publicising the show.

That playwright happens to be Mark Ravenhill - someone who you may very well not rate - but still, he is one of the most influential playwrights and arts writers currently engaged within the international theatre scene.

And not a single newspaper is interested in interviewing the man. Not the Sun Herald, not the Sydney Morning Herald, no one. And he'll even do a photo shoot if you want.

What do you do as the publicist? How do you generate articles in the local media when you have journalists and arts editors more interested in either copy and pasting second hand articles printed in The Guardian, the UK's Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times or writing about the latest non-event personality clash in an arts institution?

Are these editors and journalists ignoring the interview opportunities because you happen to be producing the show in an independent theatre? Would this same response be afforded to the mainstream?

This is quite an amazing situation which happened this week.

I'll put my hand up and interview him if no one else will.

Nothing like a bit of a re-hash

The Daily Telegraph must be short of arts articles as well as the Herald. Today they have decided to re-hash a news item that the SMH first broke in February.

Nearly seven months on and their film editor, Vicki Roach, pulls out a good old copy job as a news item on page 19.

This must be welcome news for arts and entertainment publicists, because it is now official - your target journalists are running out of ideas and stories. If they have room to reproduce old stories then they surely have room to get some fresh items out there as well.

If I were you, I would hit them up big time this week and next. You could even start your conversation along the lines of, "I hear you need some stuff to write about. Well, have I got a story for you... and better still, it's new!"

Opera Australia does its bit for the SMH arts pages

As first published in Crikey.

If you think the Brits' inferiority complex in sport was bad, you should see what’s going on in the world of opera. The Brits are quite displeased with the way that a certain antipodean singer is treating one of their own.

"There is more drama off-stage than on at Opera Australia as a serious rift is developing between the company's star singer and its British musical director," Roger Maynard wrote in the UK’s Independent.

At the centre of the affair is a letter from mezzo-soprano Fiona Janes which has been circulated to media outlets in Australia and the UK. First picked up by the Sydney Morning Herald, it alleges that the company is descending into "an abyss of mediocrity".

The letter also makes very serious allegations of ageism and discrimination within the company. For The Independent newspaper, it is all the more tense because of “the fact that there is a Briton at the centre of the row”.

Which, of course, is absolute garbage but this affair does bring into sharp focus the fragile relationship between media outlets and arts organisations.

The far more interesting story is how arts journalists at The Sydney Morning Herald have been put under the magnifying glass in the last few weeks. Ever since Rural Press took over the Fairfax management, there has been an order that they can no longer enjoy the freedom of working from home and that they need to put out more results.

A few noses are out of joint down at the Pyrmont headquarters in Sydney, which makes Opera Australia’s affair all the more tantalising for the arts desk at The Herald.

But arts organisations are generally not very good at dealing with public criticism at the best of times with so much sensitivity around their use of public funds. So as soon as a debate spills onto the pages of a local rag, organisations shrivel up quicker than you can throw a tomato.

As usual, this new affair with Opera Australia is primarily about personalities. It’s similar to recent public rows between disgruntled actor Colin Moody and the Sydney Theatre Company and arguments between Barrie Kosky and pretty much everyone else.

Janes’ letter is just another of these explosions. What’s interesting is that the letter was leaked to the media even after the Opera Australia board agreed to meet with the singer. The company certainly learnt a lot of lessons from the brouhaha that exploded in the media over conductor Simone Young in 2002.

But this debate is getting even more out of hand for the company as director Elke Neidhardt and singer Kirsti Harms get on board with further criticisms published in the Herald today.

Usually arts powerbrokers are unwilling to publicly open up and have a constructive debate about creative decisions, but in this case Opera Australia appears to be on the front foot and opening up communication channels.

They have sent a letter to The Herald which is yet to be published and they are re-starting a consultative committee to discuss future creative plans for the company.

The two positives out of this will of course mean that The Herald gets some more much needed arts content and the company will appear to be transparent in its dealings. As for the Brits and their sensitivities, maybe they should just concentrate on one thing at a time and keep shaming us Australians at the Olympics.

Wave that red flag

There is nothing like a bit of media driven controversy around a theatre production is there? And somehow, young Sydney-based theatre director Shannon Murphy seems to know how to pick them.

Yesterday, the Daily Telegraph published a pretty irresponsible and simplified article about a play that premiered at the Old Fitzroy theatre last night.

"THE murderers of British toddler Jamie Bulger are being given a sympathetic treatment in a controversial new comic play opening in Sydney tonight," it started.

"The play The Age of Consent presents a series of monologues by a character named Timmy, who is based on the two Jamie Bulger killers Robert Thompson and Jon Venables," it went on.

Ninemsn picked up on the story and paraphrased it a bit in an article entitled, "Bulger killers get sympathetic treatment".

(It's almost like something out of Media Watch.)

The article then goes on to say, "the boys who murdered a British toddler will be portrayed as victims in a theatre comedy that opens in Sydney tonight."

Aside from all the Hettyesque wowser reactions on the Daily Telegraph website which included statements like;

you have got to be sh%$$ing me, what is this world coming to when we start to 'pity' child killers! Posted by: Diana of penrith

Ok this is just a sick joke how distasteful to say the least.
Posted by: what the of brisvegas

Maybe she wouldn't be so sympathetic if it were her child that was beaten to death.Let's hope for her children's sake she never has to find out.Bring back hanging's I say.String them both up!
Posted by: mumof2 of sydney

This play should be banned. Oh but its 'art'! In a world where crimes against children are increasing at a frightening rate, I find it sickening beyond words that this black 'comedy' has been allowed.
Posted by: Rose

I think Shannon Murphy and Peter Morris are the victims here. Victims of their own stupidity and overblown egos.
Posted by: GJ of Glenfield

I am absolutely outraged! These killers be child or not don¿t deserve any recognition whatsoever. To create a black comedy play based on such a crime is morally wrong and plain insensitive.
Posted by: Esther Barndon of Perth


And in exactly in the same way as the Henson affair, ALL of these people made these comments without having either seen nor having read the play. What a pack of gullible fools.

Of course, it does nothing like what is alleged but frankly, the hyped up and misinformed article from the Telegraph and Ninemsn has now meant that the Old Fitzroy was inundated with hits to their website, emails and a sudden surge in bookings.

You couldn't have organised a better publicity stunt - especially for a play that is over seven years old and has already been performed in Australia.

And I saw it last night and my review is to come. But I can say it is an intriguing and excellently executed piece of theatre with absolutely brilliant performances from two actors I have never seen before. I highly recommend it, especially if you're a raving right wing lunatic.

What's the media playing at?

The below image was published in today's Sunday Telegraph on a story around 'pre-teens' getting 'fake tans'. I have blacked out certain parts in the event that any prosecution occurs and to keep the child in question anonymous.

It is naturally of some concern. I will be seeking some legal advice on whether to make a complaint to the NSW Police. The photo online is not as revealing as the paper version which shows most of the girls body in what could be called a 'blue swimsuit'.




Quoting the salon owner in the article it is said that "for the young, young ones under 10, it's for special occasions or going away for summer holidays, or photos or something where they want to be tanned." Just let kids be kids I say.

The very thought that 'pre-teens' getting 'fake tans' is endorsed by the newspaper is also of concern. Photographing them with large hoses pointed directly at them and putting them in the newspaper is of even greater concern. Particularly when we know that newspapers are so conscientious about pictures on display.

From the weekend...

I know I am a bit slow off the mark, but I am just catching up on some weekend newspaper reading and came across two articles of interest.

The first is an article from SAJ pin-up girl Miranda Devine as she puts her pen to paper about the troubled Federal Government back-bencher Belinda Neal.

This would make a welcome addition or scene for the film I proposed last week. (When will someone take up my idea??)

In the article, Devine goes on to defend Neal;

"We don't like to think of ourselves as bullies, but the pile-on demolition of Belinda Neal in recent weeks shows that the mob will always find a victim."

She then draws a bow the length of a rugby pitch to a letter that some poor kid wrote into the Geelong Advertiser who complains about the bullying he has to endure at school.

What a delicious irony when someone like Devine defends a person like Neal (who is a member of the NSW ALP no less) and then accuses the media and society of 'bullying'. Talk about rose-tinted glasses.

The second, and much more interesting column I discovered was one by David Malouf on the back-page of The Australian's Review section. It is the most sensible thing written about the whole Bill Henson-Hetty Johnson affair and is a timely review of what happened only a few weeks ago.

Malouf proffers a clear perspective of the role of art in society by stating that;

"We live in a complex society made up of people with different interests. Some of them, sport for instance, are majority interests. Others, like the high arts, are easily categorised and dismissed as elitist. But democracy, and egalitarianism too, is about spread, not the superior rights of the majority; government support of the arts is not an optional extra. It is a necessary fact of democracy, of egalitarianism and spread."

He then goes on to give a clear critique of the Henson's work;

"What we discover in ourselves after long contemplation of a Henson image for instance, after our original astonishment at its formal beauty, the subtle gradations of colour in the skin tones, the play with light and shade (and this will be only the first of many astonishments at Henson's technical virtuosity and the magic it produces), is the mixture of emotions all this arouses in us; especially if what we have before us is one of his tranquil but inward-looking nudes, or one of those images in which young people are lyrically engaged with one another in a moment of intimacy that commands our attention, is in fact mesmerising, but which we feel we ought not to be privy to. A sense, to begin with, of the immediacy and touching unknowableness of these familiar creatures; a sense of awe, too, at what the human animal, in all its otherness and essential mystery, may be, beyond the animal and physical; a sense, now that looking has triumphed over our inclination towards not-looking, of reverence, of being haunted by an image that, once we have fully experienced it, we cannot easily dismiss. But all this comes only after long looking and contemplating. Of giving ourselves over to the work."

And then the wonderful clincher, which I cannot help but feel is aimed like a bazooka directly at Hetty Johnston and Chairman Rudd;

"Of course we may still find a work unworthy of the artist, or simply bad; but we have first to do our own work of attending; of reading, looking, listening. To "know" that a work is bad, or revolting, before you have actually looked at it, is to show no regard for the artist and to say you have no interest in or regard for art. Henson's 13-year-old nude may well be erotic. So is a lot of the greatest art, and much else that we think of as belonging only to spirit and intellect. It is a sick mind whose only response to the erotic is disgust or shame, and a sick or hypocritical society that has no respect for Eros as one of the forces that makes us what we are."


It's interesting to look at Miranda Devine's new found issue of bullying and place it on the Bill Henson-Hetty Johnson debate.

Who was the bully in all of that? Was it Devine who started the debate with her article Moral backlash over sexing up of our children?

Or was it Hetty Johnston? She is about to move to Sydney to make sure she can keep hounding Henson who she believes his photos are "exploitative ... of children".

Or is it Henson? Or is it the arts community, yelling Johnston down at a recent arts forum at the Museum of Contemporary Art?

Maybe Henson should have just said from the outset, "Don't you know who I am?" But then again, Henson ain't no Belinda Neal (or even a member of the ALP Right).

No, Gerard

I'm sorry Gerard, but once again you are wrong. The arts community didn't get in a tizz because Kevin Rudd said, "That's the first time I've seen them. I think they're revolting."

Or because the Prime Minister went on to say "kids deserve to have the innocence of their childhood protected".

It was because he said something which you so convenientlty left out of today's 'opinion' piece;

"Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff - frankly I don't think there are any..."

(My goodness, how often do we have to explain ourselves? And he runs an 'institute'?!)

And then you freely call us 'condescending' because 40 odd representatives from the community say that politicians have "every right to their personal opinions; however, as political leaders they are influential in forming public opinion, and we believe their words should be well considered".

Gerard, your whole piece bases itself on a convenient omission and is undone when you complain about Michael Gow who "bemoaned the fact that 'the Prime Minister who invited us to Canberra has questioned the abilities and credentials of a major Australian artist'. In fact, Rudd had done neither. All he had done was to describe some Henson photos shown to him as 'revolting'."

No he didn't Gerard. No he didn't. Read the transcipt.

Hetty Johnston on Crikey

It is interesting that two big bits of information have come out today regarding Bill Henson. Firstly and as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Classification Board "assessed five Henson images taken from media websites and rated them all 'G' or 'very mild'".

And secondly, Hetty Johnston from Bravehearts has given her right of reply on Crikey after all the bollocksing last week.

I encourage you to read the entire article so that we don't get accused of 'taking he rout of context'. For me, her argument rests on this paragraph at the end of the piece;

What of the pedophiles who are watching this with great interest? Can they call themselves ‘artists’ too? Define an ‘artist’. Can they then take photos of naked children and call it art? What about their defense when they are caught with s-xual images of children and claim its research for their artistic endeavors? How do we prove this is not the case? This is a dangerous scenario for our children and families.

Her article is rational and well put and explains much of the good work she must do. But I tell you what - and I repeat something I said earlier - I absolutely refuse to live in a world dictated to by a fear of those with mental illnesses such as paedophilia. She may have been right about Hollingsworth, but that doesn't make right about this.

Leave me out of this nanny state. What if? What if? What if?

Enough already.

Which brings me to another petition that is now available if you share my sentiments on this issue. Apparently Theatre Notes "had many requests from people who would also like to put their names to the The Open Letter in Support of Bill Henson". If you would like to do so, go here.

And don't forget the other online petition that is gathering a big swell of support.

Go on, be a Braveheart like our Mel. To quote William Wallace, "they'll never take our freedom!"

Well, on the bright side

The magazine that pulped $100,000 worth of print because it contained images of Bill Henson's work had a job advertisement in yesterday's The Australian;

ART WORLD
A NEW ART MAGAZINE FOR AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND
Following our hugely successful launch in February, Art World magazine is looking for a number of talented people to join our enthusiastic and highly dedicated team based in East Sydney.
DEPUTY EDITOR
FEATURES EDITOR
Working closely with the Editor, both positions involve originating ideas, commissioning writers and photographers, liaising with curators, artists and galleries, and writing features, subbing and proof-reading. These positions would suit creative, ambitious and motivated people with relevant magazine experience and a keen interest in and knowledge of contemporary art... and a sense of humour.

A sense of humour indeed.

The State of Origami

For my dear Victorian readers, I should explain that tonight is the first of three State of Origin Rugby League matches.

I prefer to refer to it as State of Origami, which isn't meant to refer to the elegant simplicity of origami, but rather the sheer boredom you would suffer if you had to watch it for eighty minutes.

HG Nelson was interviewed on Radio National this morning and thanked the radio announcer for giving tonight's game a bit of publicity.

"There just hasn't been any media attention around this game," he said. "I am pouring over the newspapers today and not a damn thing about the game tonight."

The beautiful irony would not have been lost on those boring pinko lefty Radio National listeners.

Which brings me to the small fall-out from the article I wrote this week about a certain opinion piece by Michael Duffy that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday.

Published in Crikey on Monday, I had a good old fashioned rant that defended the role that the arts (and more particularly artists) play in our little corner of the world.

Central to my argument was that; "Art is going on all around you Michael, with or without the support of you and your colleagues in the media. Australians attend more theatre and live performance than they do sport. But one look at our media organisations and you'd never know it."

A comment to the article by 'Sandy' was a very interesting response to the article that I think a lot of people would have;

"I'd like to see the end of both of these wasteful elite slush buckets, but at least the sports people deliver some results and help large numbers of people feel good," he said.

"And really, Nick, if you were running the news, would you replace the sports coverage with analysis and previews of the high art scene? Not if you wanted anyone to keep watching," he said.

This is something that I have been thinking a lot about recently. Over the weekend I flew up to Brisbane to check out the Super 14 match between the Queensland Reds and the NSW Waratahs. And you know what, it was really quite boring.

And that wasn't just me. That was the response from the 20-odd thousand people in the stadium. At times it was so quiet, I wasn't sure whether I was in a museum or at a big and bright spectacle that we call 'sport'.

Indeed, the Queensland Rugby organisers practically pre-empted a boring match and hired drummers and musicians whose job it was to get the spectators cheering. And boy did they work hard.

And this isn't the first time that I have experienced a boring game of Rugby. I have experienced it at AFL matches, Rugby League matches and soccer matches. Sometimes you can get a really exciting game. In fact, odds on, you probably experience a really exciting footy match at about the same frequency as you experience a really exciting theatre production.

I am starting to think that the people in our little corner of the world are MADE to think that sport is this big, bright and beautiful thing all the time. The roaring graphics we see on television all the time, the hysterical commentators make you think that something really, really exciting is happening.

But it isn't really. It is sometimes but you need to fuel the interest with booze, cheerleaders, drummers and load sounds.

Feel good indeed. And yes, I would replace the sports coverage with analysis and previews of the arts. And I'd get Ray Warren, Eddie Maguire and Sam Newman to host the bloody thing too.

UPDATE: What a shock! Maybe people are catching on. This in Crikey today;

State of Origin suffering a popularity crisis in Sydney

For the first time in a long time -- perhaps a quarter of a century -- much of the build up to this year’s State of Origin series has focussed on the inability to get a capacity or near capacity crowd at tonight’s opening match at ANZ Stadium.

The ARL will need a good walk up crowd on the night to get anywhere near last year’s 75,000, which was still short of capacity. Ticket sales are reported to be in the region of 60,000, but anything less that 70,000 will raise further questions about the true state of the game of rugby league in Sydney ...

Why Michael Duffy's wrong about arts in Australia

As first published in Crikey.

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Michael Duffy needs to get out more. In Saturday’s op-ed pages Duffy wrote one of the more generalised and least researched pieces I have read from him in quite a while.

"One of the mysteries of my lifetime has been the disappearance of significant Australian artists, in any art form," Duffy starts.

"When I was at school, and an undergraduate in the 1970s, there was a pantheon of first-rate artists whose names were familiar to most Australians, at least among the middle class. Their work was widely taught or hung on walls or shown in cinemas: it was part of the national consciousness."

Duffy complains that he doesn’t know of any artists of any "significance". He longs for a time when there were names like Arthur Boyd, Patrick White and John Olsen. He even attempts to drag Australian culture to its glorious colonial past by quoting English writer John Betjeman who "visited Australia in the early '60s and wrote that we were experiencing a new Elizabethan age".

Unfortunately for Duffy, the artists out there creating and making and exploring -- and the audiences that see and experience and buy artistic work -- no longer need the approval of some authority from the motherland.

The fact is that Duffy ignores the great changes that have happened to artistic expression since he was a poor undergraduate. The time of the great exclusive artist who produces a "masterpiece" are thankfully gone as more and more people experience art in everyday situations. From community centres, to sold-out fringe theatres, inner city and regional galleries, alternative warehouse spaces, to street art and festivals, artists and their audiences are experiencing everything from cloth to film to dance and are making cities and towns come alive with colour and vibrancy.

Art is going on all around you Michael, with or without the support of you and your colleagues in the media. Australians attend more theatre and live performance than they do sport. But one look at our media organisations and you'd never know it.

I hope that Duffy took the time to read through to another section of the newspaper and he may have found the answer to why he doesn’t know any local artists. A quick glance at the Good Weekend magazine featured a very interesting article on the Australian Institute of Sport.

"The AIS produces the winners Australians love: by some counts, more than half the total medals at the last Olympics were associated with the AIS. And yet it produces them in exactly the way Australians like least: by creating a highly elite, exclusive, expensive system. So elite and exclusive in fact, it has to have a special mandate under the federal Anti-Discrimination Act to exist at all; and so expensive that its budget for 2007-08 is a cool $43 million, and each full-time scholarship is worth $30,000 a year," the article explains.

If you tried to have this type of funding model for an arts training program you could guarantee that media outlets across the country would have a field day. But for sports it’s ok.

The artists are there, but as far as the media is concerned, sport is what we care about. Each night, close to half of news bulletins is made up by sport. Each day in our newspapers, pages and pages and pages of analysis, reports, previews, articles and opinions are dedicated to sport.

The world that Duffy portrays makes you feel as though artists throughout the country are getting money left right and centre. If only that were true. The Sydney Theatre Company, as an example of funding, gets just under $7 per ticket in funding for theatre.

Duffy goes on to make the wild claim that he suspects that "government funding has had something to do with this drying up of major talent. An artist who depends substantially on subsidies, even if just in the early years, creates work for those who give out the subsidies rather than for the general public."

By that logic, if The Sydney Morning Herald stopped paying Duffy, we might get some better articles. Not a bad idea at all.

Bible stories can get on the nightly news

Salome got an ABC News plug as well... who would have thought.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2008/05/12/2242048.htm