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In Grim Purpose, Liss Fenwick’s exhibition of photographic works recently shown at Darwin Visual Arts (DVA), the artist works with images that embody fear and alienation, displacement and discomfort. They make the skin crawl. Koulla Roussos writes that Fenwick’s dark surrealism is deeply autobiographical. The first thing one notices about Liss Fenwick’s Grim Purpose, is the imposing size of the
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We’re not in the Opera House anymore, Toto. It’s cold. The seats are uncomfortably plastic. And the opera is unlike any you’ve probably experienced before. In fact, the drafty, dusty setting – a warehouse in post-industrial Surry Hills, Opera Australia’s scenery workshop by day – befits the creepy nature of the work at hand. But
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A new exhibition in Melbourne and a book on the Bauhaus – the German art school of the 1920s – offer a new history of the avant-garde and art education in Australia, writes Darren Jorgensen. The influence of the Bauhaus is a diffuse one as emigres fled the Second World War to find their place slowly in the classrooms of
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As the lonely, sex-starved, pill-popping housewife Harper Pitt said to the mannequin in the Mormon Center diorama: “How do people change?” “Well,” the mannequin responds, “it has something to do with God so it’s not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy
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There’s a great scene in the often great Fosse/Verdon, the recent TV bio-series, if we’re to believe it, showing a tense rehearsal of Chicago’s final number before its Broadway debut in 1975. Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb have delivered a closing song for the character of Roxy, the cheeky Nowadays. It’s the perfect
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Rob Reid’s production of The Bacchae (a co-production of Melbourne’s La Mama, and Monash University Student Theatre) at the La Mama Courthouse last month was epic, writes Toby Manderson-Galvin… It was a production,”the likes of which has not appeared in Melbourne, at the very least, in the past couple of decades – but truly, I dare
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By Anders Furze
My experience of the Melbourne International Film Festival veers wildly from year to year. One year I’ll focus on retrospectives, the next I’ll see 30 films. The next, two. At a festival this large, it’s impossible to craft a comprehensive survey, at least for somebody who can’t spend two-and-a-half weeks watching four films a day.
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Subtle notes of angst, despair and deep yearning defined a powerful union of the work of musicians Nick Cave and Warren Ellis with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in several shows at Hamer Hall at the weekend. The unique pairing showcased six of Cave and Ellis’s notable film scores as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival,
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Australian theatre lovers would understandably get excited if a play’s title has the bonus of “written and directed by Joanna Murray-Smith” attached to it, so you go into this production with hopes high. Commissioned by Queensland Theatre, the world premiere production at QPAC’s cosy Cremorne Theatre hits most of the right notes and definitely doesn’t
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The recent ABC TV Four Corners two-;part special Hero or Villain: The prosecution of Julian Assange had many serious fails: here are four of them: (1) In almost an hour of reporting, reporter Michael Brissenden barely mentioned the crucial stories Assange published, which were and still are the reason he’s America’s most-wanted: * exposing US interference in the
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