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Images 1 & 2 Museum of Old an New Art (MONA); image 3 view through the tunnel to the Roundhouse (MONA) photos 1 & 2 Leigh Carmichael; image 3 Sean Fennessey; courtesy of MONA Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania |
synaesthesia, mona
David Walsh’s MONA has never been conventional. After a giddy free-entry-for-all honeymoon, there’s now a two-tiered system whereby if you’re a Tasmanian entry is free, while interstate and international visitors pay a $20 admission fee (given Walsh’s current tax battle with the ATO this seems rather reasonable). However the next project up at MONA requires quite a significant investment—$605—but, we are told, it’s well worth it.
Over the first weekend of November the gallery will be closed to the public while 400 exclusive ticket holders experience Synaesthesia. Walsh has long had a fascination with this sensory fusion and he and his team have put together a program of concerts, commissions and feasts exploring the concept from every angle. Performances will take place all round the gallery featuring Kate Miller-Heidke, Michael Kieran Harvey, Peter Hill, Meow Meow, Brian Ritchie, Allison Bell, ANAM, Danny Healy, Ken Young, Marc Hannaford and others. In collaboration with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and Chorus there will also be concerts of works by Messiaen, Ligeti and Mussorgsky. The gallery will be artfully lit by John Rayment (designer of the Opera Australia’s La Traviata on Sydney Harbour) and all meals will be created by MONA’s inhouse chefs. Prepare for sensory overload.
Synaethesia, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, Nov 3-4, 2012, http://mona.net.au/what's-on/events.aspx
crack theatre festival, this is not art
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Skye Gellman, Naomi Francis, Mothlight courtesy the artist |
All eras must eventually come to an end and it seems that with the move to independence by Sound Summit a few years back and now Electrofringe in 2012, the terrifying hydra that was This Is Not Art (TINA) in Newcastle has been scaled down into a more tameable three-headed beast. (Sound Summit still takes place in Newcastle over the same weekend, but Electrofringe has shifted to an annual program of events in different places). The National Young Writers’ Festival and Critical Animals have staunchly held their ground and, over the last three years, the Crack Theatre Festival has rapidly grown in scale and ambition. The fourth installment, led by co-artistic directors Gareth Hart and Jane Grimley, will present 50 events over four days.
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This is Kansas City, Sandra Carluccio courtesy the artist |
From the plentiful program it’s hard to spot the highlights, but given previous reviews of Skye Gellman’s work (see
RT100; &
RT97), Mothlight, an acrobatic piece made with Naomi Francis and set in a car park, certainly looks promising. As does This is Kansas City by Sandra Carluccio, who has recently been training with international mixed-media companies Il Pixel Rosso, PIPS-LAB and Gob Squad. She will conduct an MP3-led journey, creating an interactive work within Newcastle's cityscape "to unravel the story of a criminal known only as The Monster." Then there’s a large-scale theatre/circus community project, Home (facilitated by Katic Mackie) in which Hunter Valley residents reflect on their environment, Also local, Tantrum Theatre will present The Past is a Foreign Country with theatre-maker Tamara Gazzard. It's a verbatim work exploring “notions of truth and authenticity in history and memory” (press release). Investigating the complex territory of the atomisation of our existence, We Were Shadows Looking On looks intriguing. The creative team comprises a permaculturist (Adam Kennedy), a civil engineer who specialises in high voltage energy transmission and sewerage networks (Tom Morris) and a bunch of cross-disciplinary artists and musicians (Blake Kendall, Cleo Mees, Saha Jones, Tim Kent & Dave Rodriguez). In addition to the many performances, there is also a series of masterclasses including Strategies for creating Post Dramatic Theatre with Chris Ryan and Creating From/Through/With The Body with Brian Lucas, as well as panel discussions on blogging as criticism, fair representation and difference in the industry and even some self-producing tips.
Crack Theatre Festival, part of This Is Not Art, Sept 27- 30, 2012, http://cracktheatrefestival.com/
south australian film corporation, 40 year anniversary
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From Sunday Too Far Away, South Australian Film Corporation courtesy SAFC |
As the first screen agency to be established in this country, the South Australian Film Corporation has, over the last 40years, played an amazing role in nurturing not only the state’s film industry but also Australian screen culture as a whole. As part of their celebrations they will be presenting From a Sunday Too Far Away, an exhibition of behind the scenes photographs, posters, films and other ephemera from classics such as Sunday Too Far Away, Breaker Morant and Storm Boy. Concentrating on films from 1972-1994 (with a smaller selection of more recent projects) the materials for the exhibition have been drawn from the SAFC’s archive which was thoroughly catalogued last year and divided up between the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra and South Australia’s State Records. Other events to mark the anniversary include a showreel featuring excerpts from over 60 films; a 40-piece swap card collection; and a 50,000 word monograph penned by frequent RealTime contributor, Mike Walsh.
From a Sunday Too Far Away, Flinders University Art Museum & City Gallery, State Library of South Australia North Terrace, Adelaide, Oct 20-2 Dec 2; http://www.safilm.com.au/Content.aspx?p=207
the other film festival
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The Punk Syndrome (Kovasikajuttu), The Other Film Festival
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Not to be confused with OtherFilm (run by Joel Stern, Danni Zuvela and Sally Golding, concentrating on expanded cinema and taking place in Nov-Dec 2012 in Brisbane), The Other Film Festival, directed by Rick Randall and produced by Arts Access Victoria, celebrates “international cinema dedicated to the richness of the lived experience of disability” (website). It’s a biannual festival taking place this year at Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall where it will present five days of feature films, documentaries, shorts and panel discussions. Highlights include the documentary Warrior Champions (Craig Renaud, US/China, 2009), which follows the journey of four returned US service men and women who try to overcome the trauma of their physical injuries by attempting to join the US Paralympic team. Another documentary The Punk Syndrome (Kovasikajuttu) by J Kärkkäinen, JP Passai (Finland, 2012) focuses on two men with intellectual disabilities as they form a punk band which develops cult status across the country. Another highlight is Aphasia, a drama based on the real life experiences of Carl McIntyre, a filmmaker and actor who suffered a major stroke resulting in aphasia—the inability, to varying degrees, to be able to read, write or speak. In the film, made by his close friend Jim Gloster, McIntyre re-enacts his experiences. He has recovered some speech and now tours with his film, discussing his experiences following screenings.
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Warrior Champions, The Other Film Festival
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Among the shorts are several Australian offerings including Back to Back’s Democratic Set (10mins, 2012,
see previous coverage); Beautiful by Genevieve Clay (13mins, 2010) about two people with intellectual disabilities at a swimming pool; and 3.15 to Brunswick by Gemma Falk (3mins, 2012) a romantic moment between two people waiting for a train that never arrives. There’s also a range of talks including Sex, Love and Intimacy—“a robust, inclusive and long overdue public conversation” about issues of intimate and romantic connection facing people with disabilities (program). Priding itself on total accessibility—the festival “is both the message and the messenger”—all activities offer subtitles, Auslan sign language interpreters, audio description, assisted listening and viewing devices, wheelchair access and even water bowls for thirsty guide and companion dogs. There’s also a festival club for late night carousing including entertainment by Rose Ertler’s The Thoughtful Song Society who create melodies to order.
The Other Film Festival, Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall Sept 19-23, 2012, http://otherfilmfestival.com/program/
primavera, claire healy & sean cordeiro, mca
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Benjamin Forster, Discourse, 2010 photo TJ Phillipson, courtesy and © the artist |
When the expanded MCA was under construction, last year’s Primavera strategically offered an extroverted approach to artmaking, taking to the streets with a range of installations, interventions and live art experiences. This year Primavera returns to the gallery with a sense of introspection, presenting works from seven artists below the age of 35 who, according to exhibition curator Anna Davies, are “looking inside, into imaginary territories, spiritual landscapes and private interior realms” (press release). Katie Mitchell’s work, My life in Nuts (2012), consists of 11,109 unshelled peanuts the artist has arranged into a pile to represent the number of days she’s been alive. Anastasia Klose will inhabit the gallery for the length of the exhibition (during opening hours), re-enacting two months of unemployment—watching TV, dancing to video clips and eating junk food. Meanwhile Benjamin Foster will attempt to teach a computer to draw in a human way in Drawing Machine (Output = Plotter) (2008–2012). Another of his works, Discourse (2010), has computers simulating a conversation between Karl Marx and Adam Smith, the resulting printouts spooling into piles on the floor.
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Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Deceased Estate, 2004, lambda print, collection of Newcastle Art Gallery courtesy the artists and Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney, © the artists, photo Christian Schnur |
Running simultaneously will be a survey exhibition (also curated by Davis) featuring 18 works by Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro. Over the last eight years this artist couple has consistently produced work of impressive scale and endless ingenuity, literally reconfiguring ideas of home, place and space. In one of their earlier works, Cordial Home Project (2003), they bought an old house, painstakingly dismantled and re-constructed it in altered form in the gallery. Their 2011 work Par Avion had the couple cutting up a Cessna 172 into 70 pieces and sending it through the mail to the exhibition venue where it is reconfigured. Par Avion is clearly a precursor to their latest work, Stasis (2012), commissioned for this exhibition, in which a light aircraft will be suspended via metal scaffolding, positioned on the forecourt pointing in a collision course towards the gallery.
MCA: Primavera 2012, curator Anna Davis, artists Dion Beasley, Benjamin Forster, Anastasia Klose, Todd McMillan, Kate Mitchell, Teho Ropeyan, Justine Varga; Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro exhibition; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Oct 24-Dec 2, 2012; http://www.mca.com.au/
marco fusinato, institute of modern art
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Marco Fusinato, Aetheric Plexus, 2009 courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery |
September-October sees a rash of interesting activities at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane. There are still a few weeks left to experience Marco Fusinato’s The Color of the Sky Has Melted. Working across a range of media the centerpiece of this exhibition is Aetheric Plexus (2009), a scaffolding construction that, when triggered by a movement, blasts the viewer with 13,000 watts of blinding white light and 105 decibels of noise. An antidote is offered in the form of the silent works of Mass Black Implosions (2007) in which Fusinato graphically interferes with scores by avant garde masters, suggesting the creation of new compositions. From another angle comes Double Infinitives (2009) in which Fusinato upsizes newspaper images of rioters to a massive scale, freezing the perpetrators in the act of violence. (See Sally Anne McIntyre’s account of the work in
Sound Full.) Alas, Fusinato’s five-hour guitar noise onslaught has already taken place on September 13, but on October 4 you can catch a screening of his personal collection of riot films accompanied by 1980s Japanese noise. Curated by Charlotte Day, the exhibition is produced in collaboration with Artspace, Sydney where it will be presented Nov 1-Dec 9, with a durational sound performance November 3, 11am-5pm.
Also coming up at IMA is a lecture by renowned US photographer Geoffrey Crewdson (in association with Queensland Art Gallery), as well as Carolee Schneeman’s Meat Joy, a remarkable experimental performance video documenting cultural upheaval in the 1960s.
Marco Fusinato The Color of the Sky Has Melted, Aug 11- Oct 6; Geoffrey Crewdson lecture Oct 13; Carolee Schneemann: Meat Joy & Peter Cripps: Endless Space Oct 13 – Nov 24, www.ima.org.au/; www.marcofusinato.com/
RealTime issue #110 Aug-Sept 2012 pg. web
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