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When COVID-19 was beginning it spread throughout the United States, President Donald Trump turned his ire on the World Health Organisation. The White House charged that the WHO was slow to respond to the threat and overly influenced by China. A new book, Play by the Rules: The Short Story of America’s Leadership: From Hiroshima to COVID-19, by Michael Pembroke puts the charges against WHO into a much broader context, seeing it as part of a pattern of irresponsible leadership, set against a long term decline of the United States.

Pembroke is an Australian writer who has written a biography of the first Governor of NSW, Arthur Phillip. More recently he wrote a blistering attack on the approach of the United States to Korea in Korea: Where the American Century Began (2018). Pembroke is a former Supreme Court judge and, not surprisingly, he presents his argument like a well-drilled barrister. Repeatedly he demonstrates that the United States has been a serial offender in ignoring treaties and international law. The book shows its foreign relations has been far too focused on resolving issues with military force, leading to millions of deaths and a less safe world.

Pembroke has presented a strong case that the United States is on a downward path, and China will continue to rise. The book puts many current political debates into context, such as the Victorian Government, accepting funds for infrastructure from the Belts and Road Initiative from the Chinese Government. It raises some real questions about the wisdom of the approach of the Australian Government to banning telecommunication companies such as Huawei.

It is a little unfair to criticise a book that looks at American history from the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, but a broader time-frame would have been useful. By stretching the scope of this history back to 1929, perhaps Pembroke might have been a bit more optimistic. By taking a longer-term view, it is clear that the United States has a strong capacity to revive and rebuild. The presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt represented a period where the United States went from economic basket case to world leader. It was not the first time as Lincoln steered the United States through an agonising and vicious Civil War. The United States has an astonishing capacity for renewal.

Pembroke shows the United States is in desperate need of fundamental reform and the present federal leadership is incapable of providing it.

Even
so, Pembroke shows the United States is in desperate need of fundamental reform
and the present federal leadership is incapable of providing it. Trump is compounding
the mistakes of the past. Nonetheless, just a hint of optimism would have been
welcome in this bleak assessment of American leadership. HE may have also
placed more emphasis on good examples of US leadership such President George H.
W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, where he worked with the United Nations, and had
general world support.

On the other side of the coin, the book does not dismiss China’s human rights record, but it shows that the debate concerning its role has often been hysterical. It is not a comfortable read, but it is a compelling one.

Play by the Rules: The Short Story of America’s Leadership: From Hiroshima to COVID-19 is out now through Hardie Grant books.

If not for the Covid-19 pandemic which has shut down live
performance around the world, May 2020 would be the perfect time for Sleaford
Mods to release a compilation album. This is because they have been getting increasingly
popular with each album release, which is largely due to word of mouth
following their blistering live shows. They managed to get their first
Australian tour in before the Covid-19 shutdown but their US tour has been
postponed.

Sleaford Mods have been called the “voice of Britain” for the
age of austerity and they are also the sound of modern Britain. They combine a
punk sensibility with mostly minimalist electronica. A modern punk band with
guitars a la The Sex Pistols would be unlikely to produce the same effect. They are also more articulate than many
punks. Sleaford Mods founder Jason Williamson’s attitude to popular music is
summed up in the 2017 documentary about the band, Bunch of Kunst.

“Young people are signing major record deals and they just
sing about love,” he says. “I’m a great believer in love. But for fuck’s sake,
there’s a lot going on! Who wants to hear that if you are on £15 a week? And
you turn the telly on and some fucker is spouting on about love.“

All that Glue contains some of their hard-to-find early singles that remain live favourites. Jolly Fucker and Jobseeker are both included and would feature on any Mods fan’s “best of”. Williamson began Sleaford Mods in Nottingham in 2007 but he says that the band was a different entity before Andrew Fearn joined him in 2012. All the material on All that Glue comes from the Williamson/Fearn era and they have certainly honed their craft and indeed expanded their musical palate (although all their tunes are still immediately recognisably by Sleaford Mods).

All that Glue
is most definitely a retrospective rather than a “best of” though. This is
because seven of the 22 tracks are previously unreleased and there are some
notable absences. Instead it serves as an overview of the evolution of their
sound from the minimalist electro punk heard on the first few tracks, most
notably McFlurry from 2013’s Austerity
Dogsalbum and the ultra
pissed off Fizzy through to the slow pulse of Tarantula Deadly Cargo
from 2015’s Key Markets and
finally the pop of When You Come Up to Me from last year’s masterpiece Eton Alive.

Most of the early era songs have been remastered with some
of the rough edge taken off the vocals. This helps the listener catch all
Williamson’s spitfire lyrics especially on Jolly Fucker and Jobseeker.

Some of the previously unreleased tracks are as good as
anything in their catalogue. Blog Maggot is hilarious and biting and
features a funkier groove than a lot of their material. Rich List is a great tune and Second
was released with a video as good as the song is. There are no frills at all on
Second, just a simple groove but Williamson’s lyrics and delivery are
inspired. The line “I’m in no state/just a state/for ranking!” blows your head
off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT09DGuXwYQ

Other tracks the uninitiated should look out for are Tweet
Tweet Tweet which has a cracking keyboard line that also adds to the
comedic effect. Tied Up in Nottz is a band favourite and TCR is earworm
material.

There are a few unnecessary inclusions on All that Glue – Revenue, Rochester
and Reef of Grief are standard issue Mods – but overall this is a
necessary album for serious fans, and a good one for people looking for a place
to start with them.

Crime novels are the most borrowed books in libraries. Ingenious plotting attracts readers and so too, it seems, does violence. And yet, crime fiction is no different from other writing: all the action, drama, mystery, revelations and violence in the world does not make up for a lack of structure or economy of style. Even with fast-paced stories where every page turns up a shocking development, every chapter a bloodied body, you can tell when a writer has the knack of sentence structure, of cadence, rhythm and detail selection. Even with the good crime writers, it can all get a bit formulaic, but those whose work is most popular usually have the writing skills alongside the ability to make up intriguing stories.

Katherine Kovacic is a good writer. Her latest crime novel,
the third featuring a woman who is an art consultant, is set in Hamilton in
Victoria’s western country, so it’s another in the current flourishing crop of
rural crime. This murder mystery may not be gruesome enough for those who only
read crime, and it may be too formulaic for those who don’t read crime at all.
For the rest of us, it’s just right.

Author Katherine Covacic

Let me first of all temper what might sound like a criticism
when I say it’s formulaic: the lead character, Alex Clayton, is smart, funny,
idiosyncratic and gets herself into more trouble than you’d ever imagine an art
consultant could attract. She’s got a romantic thing happening with a friend,
who works as a conservator, and this backstory hums along nicely alongside the
main plot. The story even follows that always-reliable Agatha Christie pattern:
a series of incidents that gradually reveal the prime suspects followed by a
drawing-room denouement. Kovacic has a very fine time with all these elements,
and she clearly understands why genre is attractive for readers.

Then, there’s the history, the landscape, and a dog. Very
fine combination.

The Shifting Landscape isn’t as weighty as Andrew McGahan’s gorgeously gothic The White Earth, which won him a Miles Franklin Award in 2005, but it does have similarities. McGahan was inspired by a colonial mansion on the Queensland plains and was also interested in uncovering the Indigenous history. In Kovacic’s The Shifting Landscape a house also holds centre stage. In an endnote, she says “Kinloch” doesn’t exist - but places like it certainly do and her story maps the territory very well. She also writes enthusiastically about the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape of this Western District and takes Alex out to visit the Tyrendarra Indigenous Protected Area, now famous for its eel traps. The way she weaves that landscape and history into her mystery story is very satisfying.

The plot is simple but strong. Alex is summonsed by Alasdair
McMillan to do a valuation on the family art collection at Kinloch, a sheep
station near Hamilton. With her dog, a wolfhound so magnificently clever and
obedient it isn’t fair (to those whose terriers are magnificently naughty), she
heads out of Melbourne, hoping, rather than expecting, to discover among the
sheep dung and canola fields a colonialist masterpiece. A Eugene von Guerard,
say, or a previously unknown Hugh Ramsay.

This murder mystery may not be gruesome enough for those who only read crime, and it may be too formulaic for those who don’t read crime at all. For the rest of us, it’s just right.

Her hopes are not in vain: the artworks are well worth her visit and one she values at an enormous sum while another, also valuable, needs restoring. Enter John, who readers of earlier Kovacics (The Portrait of Molly Dean, Painting in the Shadows) will remember is not just Alex’s colleague but a dear friend with a difficult personal life.

It’s not giving anything away to tell you Alasdair dies
(it’s on the cover blurb), in what at first seems like an accident. The plot
thickens when it becomes clear it was not, and, even as Alex tries to leave
behind this family drama about succession, money and land, she is drawn in so
deeply that her life is in danger.

Alex narrates the story, which is tricky because it means
she can only tell us what she knows or guesses. Using the present tense (“I
woke”… “he frowns”… “it’s eight in the morning”) allows Alex to cast herself as
the central character even while telling a story that is already complete, and
Kovacic’s control is pretty much faultless throughout. It does mean,
occasionally, Alex can sound a little pleased with herself, but it also means
she can confess both her vulnerability and yearnings.

As for the other characters, their portraits are necessarily
economical sketches but sufficient to keep the who, why and wherefores of the
plot interesting. The dog, Hogarth, is a little more fleshed out than the rest,
but he also has a crucial role to play, so that’s fair enough.

Kovacic’s bio note tells us she was a vet, before going back
to university to gain a PhD in art history. Both dog training and art valuation
are things she has in common with her Alex, it seems. They are both witty, too.
From the pastries in the Hamilton cake shop to the lava flow of the Stony
Rises, The Shifting Landscape is meticulously researched and what really
carries this along is the buoyancy, the joy in storytelling.

It is also an irresistible enticement to visit Budj Bim.

The Shifting Landscape by Katherine Kovacic is published by Echo.

Before the
airlines were grounded and our restaurants and cafes closed, thousands of jobs
were lost overnight when work for virtually all practicing artists and supporting
technicians, front-of-house staff, gallery attendants and allied workers
abruptly ceased.

With the shutdown
went all the active projects, along with those planned across the year and
beyond, and with them the ongoing wages for the majority of Australia’s freelance
artists.

For weeks, it
seems we were forgotten by the powers that be – until 10 days ago, when the
Federal Arts Minister Paul Fletcher announced that arts organisations may qualify for some measures available to businesses and apply to support their
staff through the Job Keeper allowance. Because, as Paul says:

“The cultural and creative sector plays a vital part in our economy, contributing $112 billion – just over 6 per cent to our Gross Domestic Product every year. Over 800,000 people work in cultural and creative occupations.”

Phew.

So our arts organisations may be spared collapse as a result of the pandemic if they’re eligible, and all arts employees, Fletcher implied in his statement, will be supported by the Job Keeper allowance. All the arts workers except, of course, the artists themselves. Because rather paradoxically the only workers in the arts that don’t qualify, the only ones that don’t have tenure, are the artists.

How did we artists come to be so dispensable?

If you make something, if you act, write, paint, dance compose, design or perform, you will have to apply for the Job Seeker allowance. This has been the way of the arts for the last 2 decades where the application of market economics to art has meant that artists scramble while our administrators take long service leave. The creators of the work that supports those 800,000 will join Australia’s other casual workers seeking support while our administrators and managers will keep getting paid, spared to manage another day.

And then just days ago we learned the truth of what Fletcher was really saying. Amid the chaos of the greatest challenge the arts community has faced since the Dark Ages, the Australia Council has, with impeccable timing, cut funding for a plethora of small-to-medium arts organisations across the country. It defies belief that at a time when our cultural industries are in crisis, when we are pouring billions into the economy to save businesses, our peak arts funding body, still struggling to claw back tends of millions George Brandis swiped from them several years ago, is being forced to shut arts organisations down through lack of support.

I guess we are the only $112 billion industry in this country the government has decided needs a kicking during a pandemic.

Of course Victoria’s Creative Industries Minister, Martin Foley, hasn’t even managed a press release during this cultural crisis or made a response to the cuts, which included the iconic La Mama, and that is hardly a surprise; he talked a big game when the Brandis cuts took place, then did nothing. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has suggested that people should access their super to pay the rent, forgetting that years of destructive cultural policy means that most artists have none.

How did we
artists come to be so dispensable?

If you look back, our standing, while never particularly secure, has been systematically under attack since 2001. A federal election year in which the complexion of the country seemingly changed overnight, when Australia decided to transform itself by jettisoning long-held humanitarian, cultural and social values in exchange for glibness. Truth and its attendant reality were summarily disregarded in favour of individualism, where the promise of prosperity for a large proportion of the population displaced our collective judgement, our memories and our capacity for compassion.

I guess we are the only $112 billion industry in this country the government has decided needs a kicking during a pandemic.

It was the year of the Tampa Crisis, an event leading public intellectual Robert Manne describes as having redefined our nation. According to Manne, it was the then Prime Minister John Howard’s handling of Tampa that exposed a moral gulf between Labor’s working-class supporters and the left-leaning middle-class, which resulted in a complete destabilisation of the party, cleaving it from its ideological base and rendering it rudderless.

And in treating the humanitarian considerations of old-style liberals with such complete disdain, in one fell swoop Howard converted the Liberal Party into the one of economic rationalism and populist conservatism in the American Republican tradition that it remains to this day. It wasn’t long before the Labor Party completely dumped its traditional values and followed suit and with that went anything that vaguely resembled ideological difference.

Howard’s public comments at the time of Tampa,
accusing refugees of deliberately throwing their children overboard from a
stricken boat, were early examples of what the American philosopher Harry Frankfurt has
referred to as Political Bullshit, bullshit which he contends is the most dangerous form
of deceit.

While a liar cares for the truth in
so far as his aim is to prevent others from learning it, the Political
Bullshitter doesn’t give a hoot about the truth or falsity of their assertions
as long as they sound good. They simply pick out ideas and create a story to
suit their purpose, which is almost exclusively political gain, while
remaining completely indifferent to the reality or the consequences.

Howard won that
election handsomely on the back of the Tampa Bullshit and so Political Bullshit
became the gilt edge standard of Australian politics regardless of what side
you’re on. It is ubiquitous, and we were handed a contemporary example of it in
the early days of this shutdown when the Department of Human Services system
crashed.

Rather than admit
the system couldn’t handle the strain, the minister responsible employed a
classic piece of Political Bullshit and deflected blame by claiming a
cyber-attack. Four weeks ago he would have got away with it. But these are
different times. It’s not just the dole bludgers that are strapped for cash and
ordinary Australians won’t stand for that bullshit, will they? Paul Fletcher
certainly thinks they will.

It is interesting too that Canberra began referring to itself as the Federal Government instead of the Commonwealth Government. Whether by coincidence or by design what followed has been a systematic stripping of our common wealth for close to two decades. The commons, the place where resources are traditionally held in trust for all of us in equal measure, where things are judged by their use value as opposed to market value began to get ransacked almost immediately as a new pattern emerged.

When the 2004 Free Trade Agreement with the US locked out our sugar growers, the Howard government responded with a $700 million industry compensation package. When that same free trade agreement froze and then re-imagined our local content rules for free-to-air television, prohibited local content rules on all forms of new media and set in motion a watering down of media ownership laws that stuck the knife into independent journalism, Howard responded by ignoring calls for industry assistance and instead diverted funds without consultation to build the National Portrait Gallery.

And for most of the past two decades many of us in the creative community have had a front row seat, forced to dangle on our perches like “canaries in the coalmine” as our little patch of the commons, the arts and independent journalism – two important cultural and natural resources that should be available to all of us, that have traditionally functioned as the defenders of truth and generators of social empathy, the unofficial guardians of democracy – have either been handed to business, corporatised or dispensed with.

And we have been forced to stand by as politicians have used market economics to discredited our social value and distort the impact of their policies, which have in truth amounted to nothing more than an ongoing series of cuts.

Artists, prevented from expressing
their concerns to the wider public by an increasingly populist mainstream media
that sees no market value in discussions of cultural policy, were forced
to watch unsupported as our governments, first right and then left, legislated to abandon
our cultural sovereignty without consideration or debate, completely destroying
any capacity we may have had for developing a national cultural policy.

Howard’s legacy
was a template for Australian public policy that continues. One in which substance
is exchanged for a focus on keeping business on side and the prosperous
majority emotionally satisfied. And successive governments of both colours have
followed his lead on arts, eschewing sustainability for the sector in favour of
baubles and sentiment.

And so despite
the bullshit from arts ministers prior to the current crisis that lauded a “healthy
and vibrant creative sector”, years of ideologically-driven policy making that
has bordered on hostility and has flown in the face of expert and industry
opinion has left the arts in tatters, so much so that now even some of its most
notable practitioners are standing on the precipice of penury. That is the
truth.

And now as if to
prove that we’re nothing more than a thorn in the side of governments we have
these cuts, the timing of which is frankly beyond gobsmacking. The country is
in lockdown, but it appears that as far as arts policy is concerned it’s
business as usual. And I can only imagine the lack of action at the state level
in NSW and Victoria is because ministers like Foley are worried they might have
to admit that they too have been publically bullshitting about the state of the
arts and their support for the sector for more than a decade.

Less than two years ago in Victoria, when a budget surplus made $100 million available to the arts, the minister didn’t ignore the advice of industry and experts who would have suggested directing a small portion toward artists. He simply diverted all of it elsewhere without telling them. So don’t think for a moment we don’t we have the money to support artists. We clearly do, we just don’t have the will, not even in a crisis.

What are we doing with this newly gifted spare time? I would guess we’re not all studying last year’s company reports or looking out the window for a fireworks display.

More than a quarter of
the world’s humans are stuck at home right now and if you’re reading this,
chances are you’re one of them. And yet, what are we doing with
this newly gifted spare time? I would guess we’re not all studying last year’s company
reports or looking out the window for a fireworks display. We’re streaming
the work of our artists in the hope that they will help us navigate this
isolation, and looking to our journalists to tell us the truth.

So, as you sit at
home, consider the human truth of the arts and independent journalism in
Australia. Much of what you will read, watch and listen to that is honest and
of substance is produced almost entirely on goodwill. Perhaps in this strange
nether world that is lockdown some of us are actually beginning to understand
what art and independent journalism actually do, that they have a social
purpose and a value that extends beyond Harry Potter and regurgitating
popular opinion. Common sense would see us throwing the arts a small bone so
that we can produce content in these extraordinary times but hey.

I don’t know what
the world will look like when this is all over, but unless we undertake to have
a wholesale rethink of our approach to supporting the independent arts and
journalistic communities in this country, unless we recommit to our common
wealth, we will surely have sounded their death knell. And what will happen if
there’s a next time?

This is the formula for a rock and roll memoir or biography: Start with the iconic moment – the day the timeless classic was conceived, the set at Altamont, the day the band came together.

In his book Life Keith Richards starts with, not unexpectedly, a near drug bust in a car full of illicit gear. In Chapter Two, it’s back to the beginning. “The Jaggers are listed in the Domesday Book”. Chapter Three covers the first guitar under the Christmas tree and Elvis on Ed Sullivan – “My dad hated it but I’d found my life’s work”. The next few chapters then lead the reader back to the iconic moment.

It seems an oddly teleological approach for a group of
famously chaotic individuals whose lives and careers are more likely to be a
series of missteps with a few lucky moments thrown in, than anything so
predictable as a traditional narrative.

I was trying to figure out which moment Douglas Galbraith
could have used in this fascinating biography of Kim Salmon, if he had chosen
to follow this formula. It wouldn’t have been easy. The obvious one would have
been something to do with his subject’s ‘invention’ of grunge music, as alluded
to in the clever title.

Years ago, I saw Kim Salmon on TV series Spicks and Specs.
The host asked him if he had, in fact, invented grunge, which is usually more
closely associated with Seattle than Embleton. He smiled and said something
like, “well, it’s not as though I was brushing my teeth one morning and thought,
yes, Alice in Chains!”.

One of the great myths is that playing rock and roll for a living is the last refuge of the indolent artist type.

Salmon, a witty and modest fellow, makes no such claim, but
there is a story there. It is, as the kids say, complicated. Galbraith wisely
does not attempt to explain it in a snappy first chapter but saves it for a
thoroughly satisfying section later in the book. The case is presented in great
detail, leaving the reader to judge if, indeed, we have Kim Salmon to thank for
Stone Temple Pilots.

Galbraith could have also started with just about anything
from Kim’s time in The Beasts of Bourbon. The ‘Beasts,’ for the uninitiated, are
the kind of act that are so legendary it’s hard to believe they ever existed. When
I first moved to Australia in the 1990s, I spent a bit of time in St Kilda dive
bars listening to tales of this band. It was like being in the Holy Land in the
first century: everybody had a story.

Their singer Tex Perkins used a good one to start his own recent memoir, Tex. One night at the Prince of Wales, he drunkenly joined the opening act on drums, yelled at the crowd, and got hit in the head with a flying beer bottle. He was then dragged off stage by the bouncers and ended up passed out on a hospital floor with a head wound. Not bad. It kept me reading!

One of the great myths is that playing rock and roll for a
living is the last refuge of the indolent artist type. Late in the book,
Galbraith makes the redundant statement that Kim Salmon works “really, really
hard”. As far as I can tell from the fairly comprehensive timeline presented
here, Kim hasn’t had a day off since 1975.

He’s in his 60s now. He helped to kick off the Australian punk scene, he invented grunge, he has four kids, and appears to be in a dozen different bands with a touring schedule that must look as though he is running for office somewhere. The man needs a vacation! Two weeks on a beach somewhere. It wouldn’t work. He’d come back with 25 new songs and a new group of musicians that he’d poached from the resort’s entertainment staff. Kim Salmon’s Vacation Band.

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5aaXzjhvnT7GTzsGYfdPYE

One of the many strengths of this book is that Galbraith manages to cover all of this without producing something akin to A Dance to the End of Time. If you are a big fan of a particular Surrealists album or would like to know more about his collaboration with Ron Peno in The Darling Downs, it is all here. Many rock biographies make the mistake of focusing on the subject’s personal life and bringing in the music where it is relevant. Galbraith puts Salmon’s considerable musical output (the ‘selected’ discography at the back of the book is nearly a book itself) at the heart of this story and uses Kim’s personal life and relationships where they are relevant.

It works well and he resists the temptation to overdo the links. A picture thus emerges of an artist who has relentlessly pursued a vision, or in Kim’s case a whole bunch of visions, throughout his adult life. Has this made his personal life a disaster? He’s been married a couple of times, has some kids, has made a mistake or two. Bu, let’s be clear, Salmon is not a rock and roll bad boy with a long trail of shattered hearts and broken promises behind him. In fact no one, including ex-wives and former colleagues, seems to hold any real enmity towards him. How many of us who have lived on this planet for more than half a century can say that?

I hope that doesn’t make the book sound dull. On the contrary,
dull for me is the sort of music memoir that is essentially a long score-settling
diatribe. Try Chris Hillman’s book about The Flying Burritos Brothers. Three
hundred pages devoted to his simmering resentment of Gram Parsons. Okay, we get
it!

No one, including ex-wives and former colleagues, seems to hold any real enmity towards him. How many of us who have lived on this planet for more than half a century can say that?

That said, Kim Salmon could hardly be blamed if he did harbour a few bitter feelings. The sad series of events that befell The Scientists in England is depressingly familiar and a cautionary tale for all bands. A simple dispute, a mild misunderstanding, and a missed opportunity that must occasionally still keep Kim up at night.

He has watched several generations of Australian musicians reach dizzying heights of fame. Members of his own demographic have become ‘national treasures’ while he remains essentially a cult figure, a musician’s musician. If he is angry about it, he didn’t mention it to Galbraith. Remarkably, he seems to treat both his successes and setbacks with Zen like acceptance and astonishing good grace. An example to us all!

So do you need to be a veteran ‘Salmon-iac’ (I just made
that up) to enjoy this biography? The answer is that Kim Salmon and the
Formula for Grunge is one of those glorious books that takes you to the
music. Galbraith somehow makes this book both an introduction to Kim’s work and
a deeply satisfying read for those who already know his stuff. Not an easy
trick. Much of the music is available on Spotify and I had a great time playing
the songs under discussion as I read. Some clever person could make a great
playlist using this book. I hope they do!

Douglas Galbraith's Kim Salmon and the Formula for Grunge ($39.99) is out now through Melbourne Books.

MORE OF THE LIST

WHATS ON

Over the weekend of 26 - 28 March, Albert Park Village will be transformed into an outdoor art gallery with sculptures exhibited in the windows of participating retailers and artists’ artworks enlarged and printed on boards erected in the parks and on residential fences along the route. Audiences can meander the length of Victoria Avenue to Bridport Street at their own self guided pace, or join one of the many guided walks and talks throughout the weekend – all while maintaining the physical distancing that keeps us all safe.

With Melbourne exhibitions rescheduled and many events cancelled due to Covid-19 restrictions, resourceful local artists and event planners are bringing art out of galleries and onto to the streets for Albert Park’s first ever Art Walk.

Celebrating Creativity in the Community

The idea came to Albert Park artist Carolyn Menzies while walking the deserted streets of her local village during lockdown. “What I missed most during the lockdown was connecting with other artists but what I really appreciated was reconnecting with my neighbours and local retailers. With a grant from the City of Port Phillip and sponsorship from local estate agents Greg Hocking, I created Albert Park Art Walk as an exhibition opportunity for artists and a way of giving something beautiful and joyful to the neighbourhood.”

Art Walk Artists

Carla O’Brien, the artist responsible for creating the infamous masked ‘Quarantrees' that kept us all amused during the lockdown, is exhibiting some of her joyful neon art pieces, reflecting the more optimistic tone in the city these days.

Featuring Melbourne Artists Kitty Calvert, Carolyn Menzies, Hayley Millar-Baker, Kent Morris, Josh Muir, Carla O’Brien, Julie Ramsden, Janita Ryan, Tania Samuel, Josh Simpson, Tinky and Troy Mendham the Albert Park Art Walk Weekend promises to be a beautiful gentle reawakening of the local art scene.

Art Walk Events

Weekend events include artists talks, curator lead tours and a progressive art lunch. See website for more details.

Nine lives. Four infidelities. Two missing persons. One abandoned stiletto.

“A play of shimmering, iridescent beauty, revealing the marvelous in the everyday.” — FINANCIAL TIMES

Under the oppressive heat of an Australian summer, a chance encounter triggers a series of events that cause nine lives to intersect, four lovers to contemplate infidelity, and two people to meet an unknown end.

Andrew Bovell’s Speaking in Tongues, which inspired the hit 2011 film Lantana, is an intriguing tale of estrangement, dangerous obsession and unspoken truths.

Directed by Glen Hamilton

With David Hodgkins, Melinda Jensen, Stephanie Reeves and Mark J Wilson

13 - 22 November 2020

Darlo Drama Studio Theatre, Level 1, 16-18 Oxford St, Darlinghurst NSW 2010

Adult: $35

Concession: $30

https://www.darkmatterstheatre.com/

https://www.facebook.com/events/412883966341953

https://www.instagram.com/darkmatterstheatreco/

Staying COVID-Safe

This production is presented to a limited audience with physical distancing in accordance with government guidelines. Please do not visit the venue if you are feeling unwell. The venue will be open 15 minutes before showtime. There are no ticket sales available on the door for this production. Each audience member will be required to sign into the venue upon entry. You will be directed through to the studio theatre to take your seats. Wearing of personal protective masks is highly recommended. We have masks on sale for $2. Hand sanitiser is provided at the venue.

Exhibiting Artists include: Bela Ivanyi, Daniel Pata, David Asher Brook, Edith Cowlishaw, Erika Beck, Freda Teamay, Graham Marchant, John Edwards, Judith Trick, Kerry Johns, Kerwayne Berry, Lisa Carrett, Lucinda James, Madeleine Tuckfield-Carrano, Mike Buick, Nikki Suebewongpat, Rachael Morris, Ross Skinner, Sarah Dalby, Victoria Peel & Yong Kang Gao.

Open: Saturday & Sunday 11am - 5pm
By Appointment: Monday - Friday.

Browse online or in person

Appointments can be made directly on 02 80959678 or 02 95199677

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