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meetiNG art gallery RUA DA MISERICÓRDIA, 12-20

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121 View StreetBendigo, VIC, 3550+61 3 5441 8724latrobe.edu.au/vacentre

La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre

121 View StreetBendigo, VIC, 3550+61 3 5441 8724latrobe.edu.au/vacentre

La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre

La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre 121 View Street, Bendigo, VIC, 3550T: 03 5441 8724 E: vac@latrobe.edu.au W: latrobe.edu.au/vac Gallery hours: Tue – Fri 10am-5pm. Weekends 12-5pm

Image: Jan Hendrik Bruggemeier, Scott Lewis & Renuka Rajiv, It’s local time, 2012, video still.

ANGIE BLACK, JAN HENDRIK BRÜGGEMEIER & SCOTT LEWIS & RENUKA RAJIV, ELIZABETH DUNN, SIRI HAYES, TIMOTHY NOHE, JOSEPHINE STARRS & LEON CMIELEWSKI and STEPHEN TURPIE : Nature in the Dark, 14 August – 5 October

LA TROBE ART INSTITUTE : Cicatrix: Altered Perceptions of Beauty as a Perfection of Form, 6 August – 28 September

LA TROBE UNIVERSITY ALUMNI : Exhibit C(hina), 5 September – 5 October

JULIAN DAY : Lovers, 5 September – 5 October

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meetiNG art gallery RUA DA MISERICÓRDIA, 12-20

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DIS IS DE DISCLAIMER! The views and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the publisher. To the best of our knowledge all details in this magazine were correct at the time of publication. The publisher does not accept responsibility for errors or omissions. All content in this publication is copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without prior permission of the publisher. Trouble is distributed online from the first of every month of publication but accepts no responsibility for any inconvenience or financial loss in the event of delays. Phew!

Issue 116: SEPTEMBER 2014 trouble is an independent monthly mag for promotion of arts and culture Published by Trouble Magazine Pty Ltd. ISSN 1449-3926 CONTRIBUTORS Ive Sorocuk, Jim Kempner, Klare Lanson, Naima Morelli, Courtney Symes, Inga Walton, Darby Hudson, Ben Laycock, love.

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READER ADVICE: Trouble magazine contains artistic content that may include nudity, adult concepts, coarse language, and the names, images or artworks of deceased Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. Treat Trouble intelligently, as you expect to be treated by others. Collect or dispose of thoughtfully.

COVER: Christina-HAYES, Curses like Chickens come home to roost (detail) 2013, oil-on-linen. Future Now, Punctum, Halford Street Castlemaine (VIC), until 11 October 2014 - punctum.com.au Future Now - cargocollective.com/futurenow

FEATURES

(11) COMICS FACE Ive Sorocuk

(14) THE MADNESS OF ART Jim Kempner

(16) FUTURE NOW Like the future, but now

(32) LITTLE ACHES & PAINS: DAVID FRAZER & PAUL KELLY Klare Lanson

(40) JAKE WALKER: INTERVIEW Naima Morelli

(51) SEPTEMBER SALON A blender

(62) WE ARE DOOKIE Klare Lanson

(72) ACTEASE Courtney Symes

(80) MELBURNIN’ Inga Walton

(99) WRITING A POEM IS HARD WORK Darby Hudson

(100) GREETINGS FROM BEYOND THE PALE Ben Laycock

http://www.troublemag.com/%E6%BD%AE%E6%B3%A2-little-trouble-in-big-china/

Reproduced with the permission of the Sidney Nolan Trust / Bridgeman Images

season 3, episode 3: Where’s the Art?Jim is seeing red when his mom, Harriet, gives the gallery the Matt Lauer test!

art comedy series

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season 3, episode 4: The Art HandlerMOMA bought the Rauschenberg Box! Now it’s time to find a Professional Art Handler. Interns and Office Managers can apply.

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Since 2012 The Substation and the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) have worked together to present Future Now, an annual award exhibition of VCA Honours graduates. Showcasing a range of artistic practice by seven of the newest talents in Melbourne’s contemporary art scene each year, Future Now tours regional Victoria, connecting artists and communities across the State.

The seven artists, selected by The Substation’s visual art curator, Will Foster, present new work throughout the centre’s expansive gallery spaces. This presents a significant opportunity to participate in one of Melbourne’s most dynamic contemporary art programs. The exhibition is then restaged at three regional art spaces, allowing the artists to continue developing their work, and reshape the show at each venue.

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ALEX PURCHASE constructs architectural spaces that create convincing portals into alternate realities within the gallery space. With reference to theatre, cinema and virtual reality, her work explores the psychological effects of our built environments and the construction of atmosphere, acknowledging the interplay between fantasy and reality.

What artistic references or attitudes are important for your work?

A.P. I am interested in the work of ‘total-installationists’ such as, Mike Nelson, Gregor Schneider, Robert Kusmirowski, and others. Science fiction seems to have had a re-emergence recently, authors like JG Ballard and Philip K. Dick are getting a lot of airtime which is exciting but also I watch a lot of horror films (horror is one genre where set design is relied on quite heavily to create atmosphere) and I loved stories about explorers and detectives when I was a bit younger; although a lot of them have dated quite badly. I’m still playing videogames and I can’t emphasise enough how much they should not be overlooked in terms of cultural influence.

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Alex Purchase, Loft 2014

CHRISTINA HAYES’ paintings reflect her work as a theatre designer and her ongoing collaborative practice with The Sisters Hayes. Family drama and shared histories relating to place and identity weave their way into Hayes’s large-scale paintings that involve storytelling, play-acting and dress-ups.

Can you tell me about your process; do you start with a particular plan in mind or do you develop work intuitively?

C.H. For me, a painting starts with a bit of a story, often something I heard or knew in the context of my family and cultural heritage. So it begins in my head and I think it’s apretty intuitive process from there. This part of the process is quite private but it isn’t long before I start involving other people as well – either as listeners, character interpreters or models, assistants and sometimes photographers. I like working with people, and also work in theatre, so I’ve come to see the photo shoot as a sort of production or staged tableaux vivant. I welcome a lot of input at this stage from the model as I am curious to how they

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pose or physically express the character I’ve told them about. When I’m alone in the studio I use a projector to collage images and draw up a scene and draw it directly onto the canvas with paint. There is a plan after the photo shoot to develop a scene but it isn’t until I am painting that I know if it’s working.

Christina Hayes, (L) Little Red Wing (R) Blood Is Thicker Than Water 2013

DAN PETER PETERSEN works with text, kinetic sculpture and appropriated imagery. His installations group semiotic references that form a personal interpretation of information – idealised versions of familiar things that attempt to dissolve the anxiety of problematic concepts.

Do you have any particular expectations of the public when they see your work?

D.P. I wouldn’t say that I have particular expectations of the public. For the most part my work is very personal. When it comes to exhibiting it’s often that I have magnified something that’s been on my mind; magnified it in the sense that it has gone from a note somewhere to being a piece of work that may be able to communicate an idea to an audience. But I really don’t expect the audience to interpret my work exactly as I had the original thought – in fact, the original thought has most likely been altered by the time of the exhibition, so it really is open ended.

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Dan Peter Petersen, SWF (detail) 2014

DANIEL BELFIELD’s recent work in video and installation manipulates logic to create alternative systems of time. Poetic and laced with humour, his works draw attention to our attempts to rationalise and index time while highlighting the inherent absurdities and inaccuracies of this process.

For many artists the exhibition space is the last workspace where they make final decisions. How important is the gallery space and installation process for you?

D.B. I tend to have a particular space in mind when I begin to think of a project and its outcome. While I was studying this would usually be limited by the size or conventions of the spaces available. I believe the existing features of a space alter the visual language you’re trying to communicate, and reorder some of its grammar. With most white-cube spaces this doesn’t pose much of a problem due to their inherent homogeneity, but in buildings with a bit more personality – like The Substation – I think this is a consideration most artists should, and often do, take into account.

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Daniel Belfield, (L) Time Relative to the Sun (6-6) (R) Dateline Isle 2013 (installation view)

Isabelle Sully’s practice relies on the notion of transformations and often explores the translation between visual and verbal language. Her work in Future Now emerges from the memory of a lost artwork that is remade and reconfigured to fit the different sites of the exhibition tour.

What has been the biggest change for your practice since graduating?

I.S. Probably the feeling that I actually do have a practice now – that would be a start! I often questioned what I was doing throughout art school, and always had the framework of an education or an institution to make me feel as though it was something I didn’t have to know the answer to yet. Or moreover, shouldn’t know the answer to. Of course, I still question the relevance of art (etcetera to the nth degree) but I feel much more comfortable thinking of myself as an artist now. I suppose this is because I have realised that, for me, it is as much as way of living as it is a way of

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working. So I have found this happy balance between working for money and working for free; one that allows me to think of being an artist as something I do, rather than something I am – a part of the main.

Isabelle Sully, (front) This Time Around (back) Take Two 2014 (details)

Working site-responsively, SARAH DUYSHART navigates architectural boundaries with her kinetic ‘spatial drawings’ of string and pulley systems. Developed from sketches and sound field recordings, Duyshart’s installations describe and refer to hidden and inaccessible spaces.

Do you have an ideal place or context to work in?

S.D. I carry my visual diary with me everywhere. It’s taken years to develop this discipline but it’s the core of my practice. It’s during the ‘in-between’ moments as I course through my day that significant observations andrealisations occur. UnlessI’m specifically drawing or painting I don’t benefit from being in my studio for long periods, unless I’m working on a particular project in which case I’ll barely leave. There is one café I frequent that ceaselessly delivers generative conversation with the stranger next to me. People’s experiences and their specific body of knowledge, especially engineers, historians, geologists and scientists, fascinate me. I prefer to venture outdoors and always

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accept invitations to be shown through a flour mill or laboratory for example, exposing myself to the inner workings of what happens behind the scenes. I’ll invest in these environments and conversations for months at a time. Returning to my studio I’ll look for interesting patterns or cross-pollinations whilst experimenting with new mediums.

Sarah Duyshart, Shift Beneath 2014

KENNY PITTOCK’s work engages with contemporary Australian life and culture through humour and sentimentality. His observational practice includes drawing, sculpture, installation and video, and focuses on common sites of everyday experience.

What music are you listening to now?

K.P. Right now I’m listening to a podcast, but I listen to a lot of either folk music, like Bob Dylan and Paul Kelly, or rap music, like Eminem and Kanye. I guess the reason I really like folk and rap is because both styles of songwriting are usually very clever with words and wordplay. I’m going to Italy very soon so I’ve also been listening to a lot of “Con te partiro” and the soundtrack to The Godfather.

Photography by Kirsty MillikenFor more info on Future Now and the full interviews - cargocollective.com/futurenow

Following tours to The Substation (12 June – 6 July) & The Artery (6 - 24 August) in Warrnambool, Future Now sets up at Punctum, Halford Street Castlemaine (VIC), 11 September – 11 October 2014 - punctum.com.au/

Kenny Pittock, (L) Dan (R) Isabelle 2014

Klare Lanson

Little Aches & Pains: an artist book

by David Frazer & Paul Kelly

‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger’

Little Aches & Pains / Klare Lanson 4

I’ve always been captivated with ideas around scratching, cutting, digging. Any kind of mark making for that matter. Luckily I’m in Castlemaine, which has a solid Colonialist history that involved scratching and digging on a daily basis. Not really the kind of digger I’m attracted to as a rule, but nonetheless, my current location certainly evokes depth on a variety of levels; layers of local history, industry, art making, literature, hot rod building, sustainable living; not unlike the layers of rock we hacked into all those years ago. Everything about this place has a dark filmic tone; everyone has a story to tell.

Little Aches & Pains / Klare Lanson 4

Visual storytellers are among my favourite kind. When I heard that local artist David Frazer had teamed up with Paul Kelly to tell a tale through the traditional and laborious process of wood block printing, I made the call and knocked on his studio door.

It’s a new collaboration, quite simple really; Kelly provided the words of his song Little Aches & Pains from his 2012 Spring and Fall album and Frazer created the wood blocked imagery; together it became a high-end hand-printed artist book. It’s often these simple relationships that work best in the world of art making, where roles are clearly defined, bringing ease to the process and freeing up time to focus on the work itself.

David Frazer has an 18-year history of creating woodcuts for his artist books and formed Unstable Press as the publishing vehicle. His personal history, like most of us, is a combination of both stability and instability — being the son of a school teacher, he was always seen as a bit of a blow-in, and grew up in the Wimmera, that farming area in Western Victoria. His visible markers were Mallee scrubland and desolate plains, with the distant Great Dividing Range as a backdrop. It’s these flat, endless, wide open spaces that drew Frazer to concentrate on elements of landscape in his work. Landscape was his driest companion, and becomes the remote background for his archetypical melancholic misfit. There’s a deep love of his environment but also the desperate need to escape.

Mark making symbolises history, and suggests the possibility of our destiny, the measure of our life. It can be in the form of the written word, the song, or embodied within visual art. When Frazer first discovered wood engraving, he immediately felt that it was the closest thing to his companion love of songwriting, and the act of putting all of these prints together to make a book added to the song-like quality he was looking for. It’s become his personal take on songlines.

Little Aches & Pains / Klare Lanson 4

In Little Aches & Pains, Frazer begins to scratch and cut raw figures into English boxwood, and through the words of Paul Kelly, brings his other thematic into play: the emotional terrain of the human condition. It’s a beautiful story of love and loss, full of quirky paraphrases of clichéd expressions (‘what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker’). It’s likely that Nietzsche had no idea he would inspire artists across the globe when he coined the phrase ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger’ whilst penning Twilight Of The Idols (1889). Or maybe he did.

Little Aches & Pains / Klare Lanson 4

There’s an intimate quality to Frazer’s work that reflects our close relationships perfectly, in both word and image. The scale of the work enforces a private viewing. “Wood engravings are very intimate, that’s what I love about them, you’ve got to get up close to them, you have to read them. They’re very suitable to narrative and storytelling, which I particularly like,” says David.

“There’s a lot of yearning involved,” he says. In common with Kelly’s songs, David Frazer composes in various codes of isolation, loss and melancholic love

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Klare Lanson is a writer, poet, performance maker, and sound artist, and currently presents Turn Left at the Baco every Saturday night on Castlemaine’s community radio MAINfm. Her current project is called #wanderingcloud.

of landscape and humanity. His work almost always exists on the fringes of darkness, the places we consciously try to stay away from, where we struggle to find the beauty. His subjects yearn to escape or yearn for the past. The heart he draws is disorientated in shape, leaning more towards a topographical study, showing us the terrain we travel. The book invites thinking around environment, whilst also drawing you into close forms of communication and connectivity. It’s a beautiful contrast. The story has a certain edge to it, lots of conflicting thoughts and deterioration. You want to be alone, yet there is a yearning to connect with people. The intense desire for the landscape whilst being desperate to be free of it. The desire to be famous coupled with the fear of success. Craving a happy home life at the same time that you want to burn it down and run away. These contrasts create an energy that’s apparent in all of David’s art; it’s this brooding tension that gives it a masterful depth of quality.

This book and the many forms of printmaking and painting by David Frazer is reflective of deep thinking and high technical proficiency. Talent pours out through the cracks of the murky places he likes to travel. Frazer is an artist who doesn’t need to say a word; his work says it all for him.

Little Aches & Pains is David Frazer’s seventh artist book and was launched mid-July as part of the solo exhibition HUG, at fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne. It’s a hand-made book of only 20 limited editions. The National Library of Australia, State Libraries of New South Wales and Victoria, and Monash and Melbourne universities have already purchased copies. David’s printmaking has won him major art prizes, including one at the International Print Biennial in Guanlan, China. He’s had honourable mentions in Taiwan and has exhibited all over Australia, UK, Europe and Asia, including the 5th Beijing International Art Biennale at the National Museum of China. You can see and purchase this book and other work via his website - dfrazer.com

INTERVIEW

Naima Morelli

I came to know about Jake Walker’s work indirectly. I first contacted him because of his blog “Studio Visit”, where he portrays artists working in their studios, and interviews them about their artistic process. But Jake, as I soon found out, is also an artist himself, represented by Utopian Slumps in Melbourne and Gallery 9 in Sydney. His paintings are primarily focused around landscape and tend toward abstraction. His process, as he explained it to me, is often to begin painting on a board that has previously been used for a palette, to mix colours.

“My approach is just to start without an idea, put some paint down and see what the paint tells me to do next. I try to play around with it until something works out,” he says.

4Jake Walker / Naima Morelli

Jake moved to Australia from Wellington in early 2000. Back then there were very few artist run initiatives in New Zealand, and a gap had opened between ending art school and finding a commercial space. Despite the overall excellent quality of the art, asserted Jake, it was nearly impossible to be discovered, or even to have a show that wasn’t completely self-funded and held in a makeshift venue. In Australia he was surprised to find people being exhibited while they were still in art school, or soon after.

“Things have changed now in New Zealand, largely thanks to the internet and increasing connections with the rest of the world,” he explained. “In Wellington recently heaps of artist run initiatives have started up and been very successful alongside the more established art spaces. It has been happening a lot!”

But while the increasing speed and ease of global connection bears plentiful fruit for artists in New Zealand and Australia, it is not without its drawbacks according to Jake.

“I’m a huge fan of New Zealand and Australian art from the fifties, sixties and seventies,” he said. “It felt very odd and unique and slightly wrong: just the right amount of wrong. I think that has to do with the fact that we are a long ride away from the rest of world, and back then we didn’t have the opportunity to look at what was made overseas on a regular basis. We were outsiders. That’s not the case today, because you can see virtually everything that is happening in the world on an hourly basis if you want to. What that means in terms of art, I think, is at the moment it is becoming more homogenised. There is an International art look going on now, which is not necessarily as interesting as the outsider thing.”

Do you think that Australian and New Zealand artists are becoming more conformist? Are they just reproducing a Berlin or London style?

J.W. It’s not about copying. I think Australia and New Zealand are part of the international dialogue now in a way we’ve never been before. There is still a hint of originality in Australia and New Zealand, but it use to be far stronger. There was this particular sort of look. Painters were coping things from low res photographs. There was a lot of flat art being made, and people used to say that was because they couldn’t tell the paint thickness in photographs. There were also particular sounds, musically, that used to come out of Australia and New Zealand, and now music has become more commodified as well, with an International sound.

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< Assemblage 2014, acrylic, oil, wood, paint, jute, brush glazed stoneware frame.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Jake Walker in the Athfield tower, Wellington, NZ.

NEXT SPREAD: Black Painting 1 2012-13, oil on board.

Jake Walker / Naima Morelli

Jake Walker / Naima Morelli 4

In your own paintings though you seem not to be interested in flatness …

J.W. Yes, my painting is getting incrementally thicker over the last five years, I build it up in stages as a way of creating something that is irreproducible. There are so many imitators and if you make painting that is flat it looks too much like them. That’s why I became more interested in thicker surfaces, I guess … the same reason why sculpture has experienced a huge resurgence worldwide.

I particularly like your paintings on laptops. Do you consider them more as paintings, sculptures or video-installations?

J.W. (laughs) I guess I can feel it has been a piece of video art, and a sculpture, and a painting of it. I made a few of those and I’m still working with that idea. Initially I made one of those because I visited a friend’s studio, and I saw that he was sourcing images from an office laptop for his paintings. The laptop was completely dirty with paint and finger marks. I liked the slightly abusive and disrespectful relationship that he had with technology. People think technology is so important, they don’t break it or scratch it. At the same time technology becomes obsolete so fast that even half-decent machines can be turned to junk. For my painting on laptops people said: ‘oh that’s a sort of commentary on people looking at art on the internet’. I hadn’t actually considered that, so I guess it was a reading. What I had considered was that I thought it was a good trick to make people look at a painting for longer than one second. Nowadays people seem to look at paintings very quickly. That’s because they are used to looking at photographic images online and in magazines, where they can flick through them fast. But people look at video art for longer because they expect some sort of narrative, or they know they have to engage with it for a while to see what’s happening. So I was playing some video on top of my laptop-paintings in order to kind of ‘force’ people to look at some paint for a little longer than a few seconds.

I agree that people tend only to glance at artworks now, especially during openings. For the artist it can be excruciating, because you spend a long time on a work and there are people at the opening lying around on your paintings …

J.W. Exactly! Or even: ‘Let’s make some deco for this party! Put some decorations out for this party’, but you know, if it reaches a few people during the show, they will came back to look at it harder. I myself prefer to look at the work when there is nobody else around. Good art is often pretty quiet and sometimes it’s very hard to notice what it is trying to say when there is a room full of nicely dressed, beautiful people to look at and listen to. At openings it’s fairly evident that people are more interesting than art ultimately. That is a nice kind of thing that has been going on for thousands of years and I love it. People are always more interesting than the art, no matter how good the art is. (laughs)

Jake Walker / Naima Morelli 4

In Melbourne in particular everyone is trying very hard with their outfits!

J.W. For sure! But I have noticed something; if I go to openings of mid-career artists where the demographic is older - baby boomers generation - they tend to look at the art a little bit harder than GenY does. That’s probably due to how they were taught to look at art. I think that we are so saturated by images now that it’s almost impossible to look at anything for long enough. We look at things quickly and our minds are made up. Sometimes I think I’m part of that problem, and whenever I put something on the internet it feels like, yes, I’ve added one more image to an already overwhelmed world; but what are you going to do? If you can’t fight them join them!

In your early paintings did you follow the same mental process and approach you are using now?

J.W. My very early paintings were similar to the ones I’m doing now, but a lot of stuff has happened in between. That happens because as you are learning you notice other artists that you like, and they influence you. These days the abstract paintings that I’m making are very similar to the abstract paintings that I was making when I was eighteen, nineteen years old. It has turned a full circle. Though they are taking a long time to finish these days. The paintings at my last solo show I’ve been working on for a couple of years. Not continuously, but I work them up to a point, then let them dry and work on something else, and then return to working on them twelve months later. There is a lot of history in the surface of the work. That’s what I want.

How do you decide when a painting is finished? Is it something you just feel?

J.W. I just have to be in a good mood, I think. A painting looks finished to me sometimes because I might have been in a positive mood that day. But when I’m coming to the studio in a more critical mood, I may decide I have to do more on them. It’s pretty tricky. It’s a cliché, but the hardest thing is to know when to stop. At an artist studio show a couple of years ago in Gertrude Street I showed quite a few paintings. One of them struck me as unfinished halfway through the exhibition, and I started painting it again as soon as it came down. So some paintings will never be finished. But that’s okay. When someone owns it I can’t paint on them anymore anyway. Most of my paintings are in collections now so I don’t have the chance to keep on painting them …

Unless you sneak into the collection …

J.W. … and steal them back! There was one painting I sold on the last day of my show that I thought I was going to get back, and I really wanted to have it back just because it was a good painting. It still looks like a very good painting to me, and I can’t work out how I made it. I tried to make something like it for

Brick Floors 2014, acrylic on jute, glazed stoneware frame, 38 x 34cm.

Naima Morelli is a freelance ar ts writer and journalist with a particular interest in contemporary ar t from Italy, the Asia Pacific region and art in a global context. She is also an independent curator focusing on Italian, Indonesian and Australian emerging ar tists. At the moment she is working on a book about contemporary ar t in Indonesia.

six months following, and I haven’t made anything that is quite like it yet. But then all I think is that the universe doesn’t want to let me make me the same painting twice. I think it’s punishing me for trying to do the same work.

You are working with ceramics as well, yes?

J.W. Yes, I’m interested in the relationship between ceramic frames and the painted surface. Ceramic frames activate the painted surface in a particular way … in a slightly creepy way, I think. I took a ceramic course with my girlfriend three or four years ago. It is a more logical learning process with ceramics, because you have mandatory passages. You go in a straight direction compared to painting, which can be frustrating because I don’t know exactly what I’m after. So then painting and ceramics just ended coming together, I guess because they were both hanging around in my studio at the same time. It is logical that they might end up as closer allies.

So now that the whole world is closer to the whole world than ever before, and everything’s moving so fast that a painting can be sold before it is even finished, and no one’s got the time to stop and just look at things for a while, what can art do to help?

J.W. There are a lot of people out there that have no engagement with art whatsoever. I think there is still a degree of scepticism about it as a lifestyle choice, practice or profession, and I’d be nice if there were more paths to getting new people to pay attention to art. There are some people who take groups around to commercial spaces on tours and show them work. It takes people a while to look at artwork before they feel comfortable to go into a commercial space. I mean, there are just the most unfriendly shops in the world, basically. For starters, galleries tend to hide their own existence with very subtle signage, and sometimes nothing at all! And they tend to be tucked away in laneways or places that are not immediately obvious to the general public. I think there is a lot of people out there who enjoy art, and who would probably enjoy art collecting if they tried it. There is a lot of money kicking around Australia and the pool of people that are engaging with art and collecting art is still incredibly small. Art is just another thing to be interested in, like football, or food, or anything; it’s not a rarefied area that only the privileged few will ever understand. I do think that art needs to broaden its reach, that’s important.

Jake Walker is represented by Utopian Slumps, Melbourne - utopianslumps.com - and Gallery 9, Sydney - gallery9.com.au Artist site - jake--walker.blogspot.com.au Studio Visit - artstudiovisit.blogspot.com.au

september salon

PREVIOUS SPREAD: (L) KATE BECKINGHAM, Action in studio for Base Camp, 2014, documentation image. Base Camp, MOP Projects, 2 / 39 Abercrombie Street, Chippendale (NSW), 17 September – 12 October - mop.org.au (R) Kate JUST, Armour of Hope 2012, hand knitted metal and silk. Photo: John Brash. Material Edge: Contemporary Textiles’, Wangaratta Art Gallery, 56 Ovens Street, Wangaratta (VIC), 6 September – 19 October - wangaratta.vic.gov.au

THIS SPREAD: 1. Chinese Poster, circa 1980, from the La Trobe University Stuart Fraser Collection. LA TROBE UNIVERSITY ALUMNI Exhibit C(hina), La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre (VAC), 121 View Street, Bendigo (VIC), 5 September – 5 October - latrobe.edu.au/vac 2. George BALDESSIN, Performers with bicycles 1964, etching and aquatint, 17.1 x 24.8cm. Image courtesy Australian Galleries. Creative Power: The Art of GEORGE BALDESSIN, Manningham Art Gallery, Manningham City Square (MC²), 687 Doncaster Road, Doncaster (VIC), until 27 September - manningham.vic.gov.au/gallery

NEXT TWO SPREADS: 3. Darren SYLVESTER, When will I learn 2014, chromogenic print, 160.0 x 120.0 cm. Courtesy of the artist. & 4. Aldona KMIEC, J, South Sudan 2013, from the series Australia, a new chapter, chromogenic print, 100.0 x 76.0 cm. Courtesy of the artist. & 5. Ashlee LAING, F(l)ag man (swan-esq) 2013, chromogenic print, 100.0 x 150.0 cm. Courtesy of the artist. All from the 2014 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize ($25 000 non-acquisitive first prize), Monash Gallery of Art, 860 Ferntree Gully Road Wheelers Hill (VIC), 4 September – 12 October 2014 - mga.org.au

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6. Sonja HINDRUM, the crowd, machine embroidery on calico. Sawtooth ARI, Project Gallery, Level 1, 160 Cimitiere St, Launceston (TAS), 5 – 27 September - sawtooth.org.au 7. Desmond JOHNSON, Sunshine HV Mackay offices 1991, photograph. Click of the West!’ photographs by DESMOND JOHNSON, artwork by DEBBIE HARMAN and words by CHRISTOPHER HAWKES, Sunshine Art Spaces Studio and Gallery, 2 City Place & 11 Sun Crescent, Sunshine (VIC), 4 to 13 September - sunshineartspaces.com.au 8. Mike MacGregor, Ice Floe 2014, white chillagoe marble , LED strip, 8x40x36cm. Ice Floes and Growlers, M16 Artspace, 21 Blaxland Crescent Griffith (ACT), 11 – 28 September - m16artspace.com.au

september salon

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Amanda PARER (Launceston), Intrude 2014. Presented as part of Junction Arts Festival, Launceston (TAS). Dates: 5pm – 10pm, Wednesday 10 – Saturday 13 September, 2014. Venue:

Various sites, incl. The Junc Room, The Cataract Gorge, QVMAG Royal Park, Hotel Grand Chancellor Launceston, Civic Square. FREE - junctionartsfestival.com.au

september salon

WE AREDOOKIE

Klare Lanson

4Photo by Serana Hunt

I’m driving through central Victoria and whilst traveling between Violet Town and Shepparton I land in a town called Dookie. The surrounds there are a saturation of yellow painted in fields of canola crops, wildflowers, gumtrees, big skies, and brighter-than-bright sunshine. This is the gorgeous and surreal quality of a town about to step into the limelight.

On the main street you’ll find the Memorial Hall, the pub, the Dookie Emporium, the Post Office, another road with the footy club on the left, and a quarry on the right. Then you’re out of town. With no more than 350 people, Dookie is a small farming community in the Goulburn Valley region with strong links to the Yorta Yorta people, book-ended by the mountains of Major and Saddleback.

Within this juxtaposed history of place there’s most definitely a tale or three to tell. Personal stories that connect with Dookie are seen as central to the vibrancy of the town. The Dookie Arts collective recognised this and after securing funding through the Regional Arts Victoria’s Small Town Transformations grant they employed artist and community worker Helen Kelly to direct the upcoming major art event Dookie Earthed. Kelly was born and bred in the area and has been welcomed back to work with the town towards a new phase of creative growth,

We Are Dookie / Klare Lanson 4

Serana Hunt, The Hamiltons from the series Dookie Behind Doors 2014, photograph.

We Are Dookie / Klare Lanson 4

a celebration of multi art practice, using film as the springboard and a theme that’s linked to geology and our relationship to the land.

The beauty of making real time community based art is that it forges new links with both the general public and it’s immediate environment. Helen Kelly is passionate about sharing interesting ways of making art and presenting cultural practice for and with people. She’s known for responding to place in ways that are a little left of centre, and her work on this project is amplified to eleven because of her personal history. Helen Kelly grew up just outside the town and has now come full circle.

Helen’s personal story is as concrete as it can be for a white Australian. She’s a fifth generation Kelly from the area; her dad’s family came out in the first fleets as free settlers, becoming farmers in St James. She lived on a farm just behind Mount Saddleback, north east of Dookie. Economic hardship took the family off the land and into the agriculturally based Dookie College. As a toddler, agriculture was her creative play. Her connection to the area is solid as a rock. I ask her how art fits in.

Helen exclaims, “What’s art? I didn’t even know what art was!” Art practice was not named in this world. Playing with the honey on her toast at breakfast is her most vivid memory, linked to the influence of having a foodie for a mother, where only the best local honey would do. The slow drip of this sweet viscid fluid was her first experience of art as play. The patterning and swirls activated a creativity that has stayed with her ever since.

Living on the campus of the agricultural college kept Helen’s family linked to farming, and during the holidays the kids did the jobs that agricultural students usually did, so she grew up working in the poultry, the piggery, the dairy, and the horticultural area. Helen was grafting fruit trees at twelve years old, and also worked in the local shop. Vegies, meat, eggs and milk all came from where she lived. From the age of nine she would travel north to work on her brother’s share farms. Art was no part of her childhood, but community and the land certainly were.

The resilience and flexibility learned from this kind of hands on upbringing cannot be found in books, and it rings true through her current art practice. Kelly is an artist who has worked with different mediums over the past ten or so years, and as such her practice continues to defy labelling. She’s worked as an artist in glass, sculpture, installation, and also worked in collaboration with Paddy O’Sullivan and her children on a travelling circus to the South Australian town, Maree. Recently she’s collaborated on video works, predominantly with Jim Coad’s Video Architecture projects. Her arts-based business is called unqualified, and delves into conceptually based solo and collaborative artworks.

Still from Flowing Earth Fertile Land 2014, dir. Davide Michielin 4

Serana Hunt, Di Feldtman from the series Dookie Behind Doors 2014, photograph. 4

Helen’s thinking lends itself well to collaboration, and she’s been inspired by many artists, significantly by a work she made with Tasmanian light artist Jasper Da Seymour, where place was investigated using abstraction. When I first met Helen she was working in glass, but even then her work was driven by ideas connected to landscape. I discovered different ways of seeing through glass, but also through the etching and lines on its worked surface. In her adopted home town of Castlemaine, Helen maintains the honour of renting the near-legendary inaugural studio space at Lot 19, and in some ways her work forms a legacy for the artists who currently reside there. It’s hands on, celebrates beauty, follows the heart, and connects meaningfully with environment.

Although Kelly has worked with many regional festivals in the past, including Junction Arts in Launceston, the Alice Desert Festival and the Castlemaine State Festival, it’s rare for someone to grow up in a small town in regional Australia and then come back as the Artistic Director of a large-scale art event. It’s empowering and very much a symbiotic relationship. Even though the personal history is already established, it’s been over twenty years since Helen’s been to Dookie.

“It’s incredibly interesting being able to come back as an artist and help to create this event,” she says. “I’ve had a lot of experience at a lot of different levels, but I’ve never done anything quite like this! At first I didn’t know how I was going to approach it, but to my surprise it’s been exactly the same process as I use when making a commissioned glass window or a sculpture. An amazing experience so far.”

Dookie Earthed is a meandering twelve hour art event that will start at high noon to finish on the last strike of midnight. It will explore new ways of experiencing theatre and art, primarily through use of a natural amphitheatre, being the terrain of the local quarry. “The quarry hasn’t seen action like this since it closed down eighty-odd years ago”, muses quarry owner Paul Tricky, and Helen likens Dookie Earthed to that quarry, where the materials to be extracted from the land are creative. Focus will be on the history of the town, the art making process, hidden stories, and the psychology of environment. There will be a festival quality, aiming for an ethereal, gentle overall tone.

They’re digging up the town symbolically and physically. The people who live here are responsible for reinvigorating this town. The community is the self appointed medium for this artwork, and Kelly supports this in her own role. She’s fascinated by geology, different stories, and the links that emerge. She is using these ideas to enhance the strong sense of community that already exists. She’s celebrating art as language. Recent experience working in aboriginal communities has fed this passion. “I’m starting to understand the ways that indigenous culture is based on language. We have such a linear view of time; I’m fascinated by what is actually created with language. It’s all about where you put your intention and energy.”

We Are Dookie / Klare Lanson 4

Helen is bringing in a few artists to work alongside the locals; it’s a very small town full of very busy people. This is the nature of regional towns, where resources are stretched and local artists are often in demand, with their fingers in a few different pies. Yet there’s a symbiotic relationship between workshop activity (including ABC Open) and the final event happening on October 4th. The artists are feeding each other, and feeding into the skills of the town.

An example is provided by a group of filmmakers who are working on a very special project entitled Flowing Earth Fertile Land - Impressions of the resources & community of Dookie. It’s directed by Davide Michielin and produced by Denise Martin, with Clive Willman also part of the team. They’re working in collaboration with Yorta Yorta people, exploring the geology of place. This short film was specifically commissioned to inform the rest of the artwork and will have its world premiere at Dookie Earthed.

For such a small town, there’s a myriad of interesting tales to tell. Projects being showcased during Dookie Earthed are zoning in on these stories through digital telling. One project involves the kids from Currawa and Dookie Primary Schools, who are investigating and drawing work based on native seeds, that will be animated by David Jones and Jillian Pearce. Then there’s a brilliant collaboration between students from Dookie College, sound designer Russell Goldsmith, and the Dookie Men’s Shed, called The Cashel Industrial Orchestra. These projects and an intriguing photographic exhibition by local artist Serana Hunt have tapped into some incredible people, from a famous 1950s fashion model through to a charming Italian monk from a monastery based in Dookie. Serana’s project is called Dookie Behind Doors and she’s been knocking on every single door to make photographic portraiture that will be projected onto the silo in the middle of town during the event. Flame food will be available on the main street, and Jamie Lee has programmed live ‘dirt music’ on the Skate Park Stage. There’s a walk with unexpected art that will lead us to the quarry, where a program directed by Ian Pidd called Theatre of the Earth will unfold into the night. It’s all about movement and conversation. Good times.

Dookie Earthed promises to fully embody the town on the first weekend of October. This concept, combined with the dynamics and connectivity of a small town is going to make for an incredible experience. Grab your map, pack your tent and head on up there.

Dookie Earthed is brought to you by Dookie Arts with support from the Yorta Yorta corporation, Connect Integrated Systems, the community of Dookie and the Regional Arts Fund on Saturday 4 October 2014 - dookiearts.com

Regional Arts Victoria’s Small Town Transformations - smalltowns.rav.net.au/

Klare Lanson is a writer, poet, performance maker, and sound artist, and currently presents Turn Left at the Baco every Saturday night on Castlemaine’s community radio MAINfm. Her current project is called #wanderingcloud.

ACTeaseDATELINE: SEPT 2014

by Courtney Symes

It was with a heavy heart that I put fingers to keyboard for this final ACTease instalment. I have thoroughly enjoyed compiling this column each month and have never been short of amazing exhibitions to cover. I am ashamed to admit that after writing the Melburnin’ column I was nervous about writing ACTease. After being spoilt for choice with Melbourne exhibitions each month, would there be enough exhibitions to write about in Canberra? After moving to Canberra, all of my fears were swiftly allayed. Of course there were enough exhibitions, in fact, there were too many!

One thing I’ve learned about Canberrans is that they have high expectations. And so they should – this is Australia’s Capital! In the same way that Canberrans expect good coffee, fine dining, high quality shops and leisure facilities in their city, the same can be said for art and culture. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed checking out the array of galleries in this evolving city – from established institutions that pull the ‘blockbuster’ shows, to the independent galleries that showcase the talented emerging artists. This city really has it all.

Canberra-based artist, Graham Eadie “explores the semiotics of painting, particularly the relationship between indexical and iconic elements” in his latest exhibition, Argonautica at ANCA this month. Eadie’s works tell the story of Jason and his boat, the Argo and his adventures of “seeking a golden prize in a distant land full of unknown challenges”. Throughout this journey, Eadie explores numerous themes such as relationships, pursuing something you’re passionate about, as well as death and despair. Runs until 7 Sept 2014 - anca.net.au

What do you get when you cross a visual artist and a writer? Find out this month at M16’s Wordsmith exhibition. Curated by Sarah Norris, this collaborative project “has brought together visual artists (Gina Wyatt, Jacklyn Peters, Julian Laffan, Ian Robertson, Caren Florance, and Sarah Rice) and writers (Nigel Featherstone, Sarah Rice, CJ Bowerbird, and Yolande Norris) in a creative interaction that explores the common ground between differing, but inextricably linked, mediums”. Runs until 7 September 2014. The exhibition will conclude with a special public event, A Thousand Words, where writers consider and discuss the artworks on display by calling upon their storytelling skills at 2pm on 7 September 2014.

Antarctica is a fascinating place. Its remote location and inhospitable surroundings make it a place that many of us will only dream of visiting. Mike MacGregor and Kerry McInnis were fortunate enough to visit the Antarctic Peninsula in November 2012. They travelled 1,100km via ship from Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, crossing Drake’s Passage. After arriving at the Peninsula, they “explored craggy shores of black granite and frazil ice” via use of zodiac craft, snowshoes and sea kayaks. The landscape they encountered was “unfamiliar and threatening – stark and magnificent”. The resulting M16 exhibition, Ice Floes and Growlers (Antarctica),

ACTease / Courtney Symes 4Kerry McInnis, First Impression 2014, acrylic on canvas, 100x150cm.

Nick Wirdnam, bowl of plenty (gold) 2014, blown & hot sculpted glass, 23 x 50 x 53cm. 4

ACTease / Courtney Symes 4

showcases a collection of plein air sketches (made on site) as well as studio paintings and sculptures. “By presenting their interpretations of Antarctica, MacGregor and McInnis hope to enrich the public’s visual understanding of this wondrous place.” Runs from 11 – 28 September. Join guest speaker, Wendy Teakel, Head of Sculpture, School of Art, Australian National University, for the exhibition opening on Thursday 11 September at 6pm - m16artspace.com.au

This month Beaver Galleries present a couple of beautiful exhibitions, from Nick Wirdnam and Dianne Fogwell. Wirdnam’s studio glass exhibition, beliefs, focuses on “recurring symbols and motifs often associated with good fortune, hope and consolation” and more specifically, “the power we attribute to these objects”. Pieces featured in the exhibition have been created from hot sculpted and carved glass in an array of beautiful colours. In particular, bowl of plenty (gold) crafted from blown and hot sculpted glass showcases perfectly formed fruit and other types of food in stunning gold and amber tones.

Daily observations of Australian flora and fauna are the inspiration behind Dianne Fogwell’s latest exhibition, Inflorescence. This collection of paintings and works on paper “are a contemplation on the cycle of pollination, revealing the beauty of this natural choreography”. I am particularly taken by Fogwell’s skill in capturing the small details, such as the stamen of a flower or the pattern on an insect’s wing. Fogwell has a unique ability to create “almost hallucinatory and dreamlike imagery of often unnoticed elements in the landscape”. She is a true master of her subject matter. Both exhibitions run until 9 September - beavergalleries.com.au

Kabuki actors were the equivalent of movie stars during the 1920s and 30s in Japan. Artist Natori Shunsen (1886–1960) created a number of actor portraits throughout the 20s and 30s, which have been bought together in NGA exhibition, Stars of the Tokyo stage: Natori Shunsen’s kabuki actor prints. In addition to being flamboyant and dynamic, kabuki serves as a source of inspiration for artists because it reflects Japanese culture (folklore, literature and history), “, as well as violent, romantic and scandalous events”. “Shunsen’s prints provide a fascinating glimpse into this glamorous world, while demonstrating consummate mastery of traditional Japanese printmaking techniques.” In addition to this unique collection of prints, a selection of kabuki robes have also been included in the exhibition. This exhibition presents a special opportunity to view a collection of pieces exclusively from the NGA collection. Runs until 12 October 2014.

“Arthur Boyd: agony and ecstasy will showcase many works from Boyd’s great Gift to the National Gallery in 1975 among others, and will provide a rare opportunity to consider in depth works from diverse series,” says Deborah Hart, Senior Curator, Australian Painting and Sculpture at NGA. “In its totality across an array of media it is a chance to contemplate images of considerable daring and passion and to rediscover Boyd as you have never seen him before.”

Whilst this is a major exhibition of Boyd’s art (more than 100 works across a variety of media), this is not a retrospective. This show aims to showcase the ‘underdog’ pieces “that have never or rarely been previously exhibited”. Keep an eye out for works such as: Nebuchadnezzar making a cloud (1968); Self portrait in red shirt (1937), and the tapestry The lady and the unicorn: invocation (1974) - nga.gov.au

There’s something alluring about the ‘surfer lifestyle’ - the freedom, the refreshing salt water and ocean breezes, the exhilaration of catching the ‘perfect wave’. National Portrait Gallery exhibition, Arcadia Sound of the Sea offers a snapshot of Australian surf culture during the 1970s. Arcadia features photographs by John Witzig (co-founder of Tracks magazine and founder of SeaNotes), as well as drawings by Nicholas Harding and film footage by Albert Falzon.

In her exhibition introduction essay, Sarah Engledow explains that “the show isn’t a history of Australian surfing; there are key figures who aren’t in it, and minor figures who are. It’s not an exercise in where-are-they-now. It’s not a history of Australian self-sufficiency or cottage industry, or the urge to leave the cities for a more fundamental, healthy life. It’s not a social history of Australia in the seventies … If it’s about anything, Arcadia is about how it feels to be lean, male, strong, untrammeled and irresponsible: to be a slacker with immense discretionary energy.” Arcadia aims to capture the “sensual” aspect of this lifestyle – it isn’t simply about life by the beach and ocean. “The ocean may not appear in all of the images; in fact, it’s absent from at least half of them, as well as from most of the film footage; but you can hear it, as it were … The works in Arcadia have been brought together not so much to evoke ideas, as to evoke a sensual response: to salt and fresh water, wet and dry sand, dune vegetation, undergrowth, tent canvas, floors of vans and shacks, weatherboards, hand-knitted jumpers, thin old t-shirts, corduroy, spongy neoprene, stiff hair, dog fur, noses and claws, banksia pods, firewood, seaweed and rocks. If you can feel any of those textures, if you can smell or taste any of those odours - and if, senses sharpened, you can feel a seed of independence germinating within you - Arcadia lives in you,” says Engledow. Runs until 19 October - portrait.gov.au

ACTease / Courtney Symes 4

Courtney Symes is a Canberra-based writer, small business owner, and mother. When she’s not writing, you will find her enjoying a run around one of Canberra’s beautiful parks and seeking out Canberra’s best coffee and cheesecake haunts with the family. Read more at - alittlepinkbook.blogspot.com.au

J.W. Power is considered to be “one of Australia’s most successful and accomplished expatriate painters of the inter-war years”. The National Library of Australia and the University of Sydney are celebrating this talented artist with an exhibition of his work, Abstraction–Création. This is the first time Power’s paintings and sketchbooks have been exhibited together (the University of Sydney and the National Library are both custodians of Power’s collection). Power was born in Sydney in 1881 and trained as a Doctor. To further his studies, Power moved to Europe and then joined the Royal Army Medical Corps throughout the Great War. However, Power’s artistic calling was stronger than his medical career, which he abandoned to study art with Fernand Léger in his Académie Moderne in Paris. He then joined the international group of artists known as Abstraction-Création.

Power’s work was included in a number of exhibitions between 1921-1938 in London, Paris and Amsterdam as he forged a career as an avant-garde artist. Sadly, Power’s work is less known in Australia and he is perhaps better known as a benefactor to the University of Sydney. Hopefully this exhibition will introduce a new audience to Power’s unique contemporary style. Runs until 26 October at the National Library - nla.gov.au

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Arthur Boyd, Paintings in the studio: ‘Figuresupporting back legs’and ‘Interior with black rabbit’ (detail) 1973, oil on canvas. The Arthur Boyd gift 1975. THIS SPREAD: John Witzig, Ted Spencer at Bells Beach 1971, pigment print.

TRH. Crown Prince Pavlos & Crown Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece, 1 July 1995. Wedding dress by Valentino SpA, Milan (est. 1959, fashion house), Valentino Garavani (designer, 1959-2007). Photo: David Seidner © International Center of Photography, New York.

DATELINE: SEPT 2014

by Inga Walton

Currently on display within the historic Rippon Lea House, Love, Desire & Riches – The Fashion of Weddings (until 30 September) capitalises on the enduring appeal of the wedding dress as an object of personal expression, a testament to the fluctuations of style and taste, and a signifier of wider cultural and social mores. Elizabeth Anya-Petrivna, Cultural Collections curator of the National Trust, has assembled over sixty examples of wedding, bridesmaid and formal gowns, ‘going away’ dresses, lingerie and menswear, complemented by numerous smaller items of matrimonial ephemera such as footwear, wreaths, photographs, and invitations. Rarely seen dresses from the National Trust Collection range in date from a silk pelisse worn by the teenage Clara Matilda Hamilton in 1827, to a silk Ottoman hooded ensemble worn by Australian actress Elizabeth Harris in 1968.

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Recently presented as the finale to the exhibition Valentino: Master of Couture (2012-13) at Somerset House, London, the exhibition includes the bridal gown worn by Marie-Chantal Miller when she married HRH. Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece on July 1, 1995, at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral, London. Pavlos is the eldest son of King Constantine II who fled Greece in December, 1967, and was deposed as monarch by the military junta in June, 1973. The abolition of the monarchy was confirmed by a referendum held in December, 1974, which established the so-called ‘Third Hellenic Republic’. Greek monarchists and various political parties there still support the restoration of a constitutional monarchy, and Melbourne’s large Greek population offers some context for the loan. “We wanted gowns with local interest and the Princess is much loved by the Greek community”, remarks Anya-Petrivna.

The magnificent couture gown, unyielding in its structured formality and perhaps over-burdened with expectation, took the Valentino atelier four months to complete, at a reported £140,000 (around $248,000). Twenty-five seamstresses worked on the dense embroidery of appliqué roses on the skirt and train, with smaller floral motifs echoed on the lace bodice and sleeves. The dress incorporates twelve different kinds of lace, and was anchored by a 4.5 metre long veil of Chantilly lace with a scalloped edge, the interior featuring floral sprays and butterflies. Crown Princess Marie-Chantal has said of its inception, “I had known Valentino [Garavani] for a while, and I always had told him he would be designing my dress at my wedding. I think a week after our engagement I went to see him and he already had a few sketches. They were all beautiful and very original. What struck me most was the detail he wanted me to have on the gown and veil. It has been such an honour to have the dress exhibited in public and be able to share it, seeing it on display makes me appreciate the workmanship even more”.

The extravagant nuptials of the American heiress and the Prince with no kingdom seemed reminiscent of the plotline from an Edith Wharton novel. Although Walter Bagehot’s sage observation in The English Constitution (1867) still retains its pertinence.

The women- one half the human race at least- care fifty times more for a marriage than a ministry. All but a few cynics like to see a pretty novel touching for a moment the dry scenes of the grave world. A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and as such, it rivets mankind.

The ‘princely’ Valentino shares space in the Drawing Room with three extraordinarily ornate dresses from the Trust’s collection. Two are by the fashionable French house of Maugas, much patronised by royalty and high society in Paris, and both worn by local brides in 1889. The third dress, attributed

Melburnin / Inga Walton 4

Valentino SpA, Milan (est. 1959, fashion house), Valentino Garavani (designer, 1959-2007), silk, chiffon, tulle, embroidery, appliqué roses, Chantilly lace (veil), wedding dress worn by Marie-Chantal Claire Miller (1995). (Loaned by HRH. Crown Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece). Photography Inga Walton

(L to R) Barbara Baum (designer), satin crêpe, silk, embroidered tulle, mother-of-pearl, wedding dress worn by Meryl Streep as ‘Clara del Valle’ in The House of the Spirits (1993), Best Costume Design (Preis für Kostümdesign) Bavarian Film Awards (1994). (Loaned by Cosprop, London). & Collette Dinnigan, Sydney (est. 1990, fashion house), Collette Dinnigan (designer), Swarovski Crystal Gown (2004), hand-beaded Swarovski crystals on tulle with silk satin. (Loaned by Collette Dinnigan, Surry Hills). Photography Inga Walton

Melburnin / Inga Walton 4

to dressmaker Mrs Chapman of Grosvenor Square, was worn for a London wedding in 1888, the central panel of the moiré silk skirt is smothered in loops of nacre pearls and glass beading.

More recent examples of ‘statement’ dresses include Toni Matičevski’s 2013 creation for model Jennifer Hawkins of soft white millefeuille silk layers draped from a structured corset bodice and pooling out to a sweeping train. For her 2012 wedding, model Kyly Boldy collaborated with designer Alex Perry to create a dress that would take his workroom four months to complete. The bodice is covered with closely formed swirls of silver sequins, beads and Swarovski crystal flowers that took 150 hours of hand-beading to realise, while the ruffled skirt of 150 meters of satin backed with silk organza is interspersed with ostrich feathers. Two contemporary dresses by Collette Dinnigan use the same hand-beaded elements, but are a study in contrasts. The slinky Swarovski Crystal Gown (2004), with its sinuous line and plunging décolletage has arrangements of large crystals in an Art Deco geometric formation fanning out across the tulle. Her Crystal Queen Swarovski Gown (2007), is a one-off extravaganza of silk and tulle included in the touring exhibition Swarovski Crytallised. Very much in the ‘fantasy princess’ genre, the dress has a strapless bodice embroidered with lace and spattered with crystals, which extends down the back to form a flaring train over a sea of tulle.

Rippon Lea was presumably the sentimental choice to host the exhibition, since it is partially maintained by its pre-eminent position as a wedding venue. Other income from corporate events, concerts, theatre productions, and as a filmic location, is in keeping with the previous owners’ use of the property for entertainment and charitable events. The much-beloved residence became the thirty-third site to be included on the National Heritage List in August, 2006. Its history, as one of the finest surviving examples of a large late nineteenth century private suburban estate, is intimately entwined with the economic boom brought by the Victorian gold rush period from around 1851 to the late 1880s. Melbourne had rapidly become one of the richest cities in the world, and the mercantile middle class had grown in wealth and proportion to the rapid expansion of Victoria’s population, and the need for all manner of equipment and supplies.

The story of this imposing estate begins, as many do, with a wedding: this one in October, 1830. Frederick James Sargood (1805-73), a draper working in Walworth, married one of his customers Emma Rippon (1799-1884). Thereafter, Frederick James opened his own drapery business in London, but grew disillusioned by the conditions in England, and decided to move with Emma and their family of six to the Australian colonies. Following the Sargoods’ arrival in February, 1850, Frederick James opened a draper’s store in Collins Street, and the next year established a clothing and drapery wholesale import firm based in

(L to R) Alex Perry, Sydney (est. 1992, fashion house), Alex Perry (Alexandros Pertsinidis), designer, silk organza, satin, Swarovski crystals, ostrich feathers, wedding dress worn by Kyly Boldy (2012). (Loaned by Kyly Clarke). & Unknown maker, St. Kilda, beading by La Petite, Melbourne, silk, tulle, glass, wedding dress worn by Lesley James (1948). Gift of Mrs Lesley Barnes. (National Trust Costume Collection, Australia). & La Petite, Melbourne (fashion house, 1940-86) Pat Rodgers (designer), peau de soie, silk, beads, diamantes, wedding dress worn by Jeannie Margaret Watts (1957),Gift of Mrs Jeannie Corlett. (National Trust Costume Collection, Australia). & Matičevski, Melbourne (est. 1999, fashion house), Toni Matičevski, designer, silk organza, silk crêpe, silk tulle, wedding dress worn by Jennifer Hawkins (2013). (Loaned by Jennifer Hawkins). Photography Inga Walton.

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Flinders Street. When gold was discovered, Frederick James shrewdly extended his business to supply wholesale soft goods to the prospectors on the goldfields, as Sargood, King & Co., and soon reaped the rewards. His rising civic profile saw Frederick James emerge as a leading Liberal-nonconformist figure. He served in the unicameral Victorian Legislative Council as the Member for City of Melbourne (1853-56), and in the inaugural Victorian Legislative Assembly as the Member for St. Kilda (1856-57). Frederick James resigned his seat in December, 1857 and returned to England the next year in order to manage the London branch of his expanding company.

Meanwhile, the Sargoods’ only son, Frederick Thomas (1834-1903), started his professional life as a clerk in the Melbourne Public Works Department, before joining his father’s firm. Between 1852 and 1854 the young man helped to manage the family business, initially from a tent in the Bendigo-Castlemaine district. In 1858, the year of his father’s departure, Frederick Thomas married Marian Australia Rolfe (1839-79), only daughter of Hon. George Rolfe (1808-71), MLC, another prominent Melbourne merchant-turned-politician. Frederick Thomas became a junior partner in the family business in 1859, and joined the Victorian Volunteer Artillery, thus establishing his credentials as a man of rising influence in the Colony. Two years after their marriage, the couple made a visit to Frederick James and Emma, then living at the grand 1830s house Broad Green Lodge in Croydon, Surrey, with its landscaped grounds and lake. This property almost certainly inspired Frederick Thomas to build his own gracious family seat when he returned to Melbourne, and in 1868 he bought 11.3 hectares (34 acres) of scrubland at Elsternwick.

To realise his vision, Frederick Thomas turned to Joseph Reed (c.1823-90), probably the most influential and prolific architect in Victoria of his time. After initial success working under his own name, including commissions for the State Library of Victoria (1854), Geelong Town Hall (1855), and Wesley Church at 148 Lonsdale Street (1857-58), he founded a practice with Frederick Barnes (1824-84), Reed and Barnes in 1862. The firm was responsible for numerous municipal and ecclesiastical buildings, including Melbourne Town Hall (1869), the Royal Exhibition Building (1879), and Ormond College at Melbourne University (1881). Reed completed the building of St Paul’s Cathedral (1891) after the distinguished English architect William Butterfield (1814-1900) resigned from the project in 1884.

In 1863, Reed travelled to Europe whereupon he became enamoured of the polychrome brick architecture of Lombardy. Upon his return, Reed designed the mansion ‘Canally’ (1864) at 41-49 Powlett Street, East Melbourne for the Reverend James Taylor, the earliest documented example in Victoria of a building in that idiom. (Coincidentally, Taylor was pastor of the Baptist Church

Melburnin / Inga Walton 4

Melburnin / Inga Walton 4

at 174 Collins Street, also designed by Reed in 1862). Reed’s penchant for polychrome extended to his designs for St Jude’s Church at 235 Palmerston Street, Carlton (1866-67), and the National School (now the Kathleen Syme Education Centre) at 249-251 Faraday Street, Carlton (1876-77). However, it was Reed’s work on the Independent Church (now St. Michael’s Uniting) at 120 Collins Street (1866), which appealed to Frederick Thomas and secured Reed the commission for the new property.

Rippon Lea would be named in honour of the Sargood family matriarch and the English poetic term for a meadow. Frederick Thomas kept himself appraised of engineering and technological developments overseas. It was his intention that Rippon Lea be self-sufficient like the great English stately homes, a daunting prospect given the flat, sandy waste at Elsternwick. It seems likely that the design for what was to become a brilliant and productive garden was Sargood’s own. An elaborate underground watering system was installed, and further extended in the 1880s to maintain the vegetable gardens, orchards and formal gardens.

While the Sargood family grew and flourished in Victoria, one of the most popular works in English literature had been published, Charles Dickens’ thirteenth novel Great Expectations (1861). Dickens was keenly interested in Australia, and had numerous friends and acquaintances who settled here; in the novel, the character of Abel Magwitch is deported to the colony of New South Wales. In tribute to Dickens, Anya-Petrivna has transformed the Dining Room into that of Satis House where the wealthy but embittered Miss Havisham broods about her aborted marriage to the swindler Compeyson, while the wedding breakfast and cake continues to decay.

One of the great literary archetypes, Miss Havisham may have been partially based on the story of Eliza Emily Donnithorne (1827-86) of Camperdown. Eliza was jilted by her groom and left the wedding cake to go stale, the house in darkness, and the door permanently ajar, in case her fiancé returned. Joyce Hammond’s dress for Maxine Audley from the miniseries Great Expectations (Alan Bridges, 1967), is joined by two worn by Gillian Anderson in a more recent version (Brian Kirk, 2011). Designer Annie Symons made a set of eight dresses to illustrate the deterioration of the wedding gown Miss Havisham never removes, but also to indicate her fraying mental state and the desolation of her ruined life.

The rise of Frederick Thomas Sargood as a public figure continued apace. His election to the Legislative Council in May, 1874 as the member for Central Province came the year after Frederick James’ death in England. His wife Marian oversaw a busy household at Rippon Lea and at Ellerslie, the Sargoods’ beach house at Mornington. In January, 1879, pregnant with her twelfth child, both Marian and her newborn son died as a result of the birth. Having merged his company with the firm of Martin, Butler and Nichol, Frederick Thomas resigned

4Rippon Lea, photo by Inga Walton

his parliamentary seat in March, 1880 and left for England with his surviving five sons and four daughters. His mother Emma was still living at Broad Green Lodge with her great-niece, Julia Tomlin (1847-1941), acting as a companion. Frederick Thomas married his second cousin Julia in December, 1880, and they had one child, Julia Charlotte (1882-1969).

Like her predecessor, Julia Sargood proved herself an impressive hostess, presiding over an expanding property and an increasingly public role. Rippon Lea was extended and altered from the early 1880s to 1897; the later 1880s work by architect Lloyd Tayler (1830-1900), and then under Taylor and his partner Frederick A. Fitts (1866-1902). The covered carriage entry (porte cochère), and the entry hall with its marble columns and fine stained-glass windows are from this period. The drawing room Conservatory was another addition completed by 1897, and where a more optimistic wedding breakfast display has been installed. Prominent local horticulturist William Sangster, who redeveloped Carlton Gardens and worked on Como House, was retained to create a more picturesque landscape.

Frederick Thomas re-entered parliament in November, 1882, representing South Yarra until March, 1901. During those years he served in a variety of roles, notably as the first Minister of Defence (1883-86), Commissioner for Water Supply (1884-86), and Leader of the Legislative Council (1888). He was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel in Volunteer Artillery, made a Commander of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (CMG) in 1885, and knighted (KCMG) in 1890. Sir Frederick resigned his seat to run in the first federal election, becoming a Senator for Victoria. He was also the first serving Australian Senator to die, suddenly on January 2, 1903, while in New Zealand. Following a private memorial service held in the ballroom at Rippon Lea, his funeral, with full military honours, was one of the largest and most impressive ever seen in Melbourne. Sir Frederick was interred with Marian, their unnamed baby son, and their second son Norman Rippon Sargood (1862-76) at St. Kilda cemetery.

Lady Sargood was distraught following her husband’s death and decided to return to England with their daughter Julia Charlotte. She sold Rippon Lea in 1904 for a modest recession-era price of £20,000 (approximately £1.8 million today) to a syndicate headed by the twenty-second Premier of Victoria, Sir Thomas Bent (1838-1909). The appropriately named Bent was notorious for his unscrupulous land deals and electoral rigging. He never lived at Rippon Lea, but used it for entertaining, and began selling off parcels of the estate almost immediately in 1904 and 1905. Bent’s death prevented any further subdivisions of the property, and in December, 1910 Rippon Lea was bought by Benjamin Nathan (1864-1935), the son of a gold-rush immigrant.

Melburnin / Inga Walton 4

Melburnin / Inga Walton 4

Nathan had prospered as the co-founder of the South Melbourne Furnishing Company (1887), and after changing the name to Maples, the chain of furniture stores numbered thirteen in Victoria and two in Tasmania by the time of his death. Nathan moved to Rippon Lea with his wife Agnes and daughters, Louisa and Lorna. He shared Sir Frederick’s passion for the gardens, and in about 1929 Nathan built a large conservatory and fourteen glasshouses to accommodate his specimen collection. The same year, an entrance building off Hotham Street was added, designed by Percy A. Oakley and Stanley T. Parkes (who had recently completed The Lodge in Canberra). Louisa Nathan (1894-1972) married barrister Timothy Jones in January, 1921, and inherited Rippon Lea on the death of her father.

Mrs Jones set about modernising the home to suit the lifestyle of the couple and their four children, retaining architect, and later the MLA for Toorak, Robert Bell Hamilton (1892-1948) to supervise the work. From 1938 to 1939 the entrance hall was substantially altered, the dining room remodelled, modern bathrooms installed, electric radiators and gas heating supplemented open fires, the original ballroom was removed to make way for an in-ground swimming pool, and the billiard-room and museum converted into a new ballroom. In the 1940s more of the land was subdivided and sold, as well as the paddocks on the eastern boundary. The sale of 0.8 hectares (2 acres) of paddock at the southern tip of the Rippon Lea grounds to the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in 1954 (to build television studios in time for the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne) reduced the size of the land further, to its present 5.7 hectares (17 acres).

In March, 1963, Jones made public her intention to give Rippon Lea to the National Trust, subject to her right to live there during her lifetime. This precipitated an extraordinary act of bureaucratic interference and avarice when, just weeks later, the Federal Postmaster-General announced the compulsory acquisition of a further 1.7 hectares (5 acres) of the property, ostensibly because the ABC wanted more studios and access for trucks from Hotham Street. The area to be taken over included the lake, lookout tower, waterfall and grotto, all vital features, not only of the property’s landscape, but of its irrigation system, without which the gardens would be ruined. Public outcry ensued; Jones challenged the Government in the High Court and lost, but battled on for eleven years to preserve her own property for the people of Victoria. On her death, Rippon Lea passed to the National Trust with the condition that the Commonwealth Government return the compulsorily acquired land, which it did. Sir Henry Bolte (1908-90), Premier of Victoria throughout the struggle, observed of the intrepid Jones, “few people have worked so hard to give so much away.”

As a family home for most of its history, Rippon Lea has seen many weddings, including that of Clara Wordsworth Sargood (1864-1955), Sir Frederick and Marian’s

eldest surviving daughter, to Henry Bunting Webster on November 29,1889. The exhibition includes the wedding dress and shoes worn by Nancy Julia Sargood (1890-1974), daughter of Frederick George Sargood (1861-1932), the eldest surviving child of Sir Frederick and Marian. Nancy visited Rippon Lea as a child, until her parents moved to Wahroonga, NSW to live in a property known as Rippon Grange. She married John Graham Antill Pockley (1891-1918) on January 22, 1915 at St. Paul’s Church, Hornsby. Nancy’s first marriage was cut short by the tragedy that decimated a generation. Like so many promising and vital young men of his time, First Lieutenant Pockley was killed in action in World War I, at Villers-Bretonneux in northern France.

Some of this melancholy seems reflected in a display of six veils from the Trust collection evocatively arranged to float over the staircase with its black marble pillars and ornamental urn; in the evening, they take on a decidedly spectral quality. The three large pictorial windows depict ‘Morning, Noon and Night’, and have been attributed to the premier stained glass firm of the day, Ferguson & Urie (1853-99). An orange tree features prominently in the design, as a symbol of longevity, abundance and generosity. As an English immigrant, Sir Frederick would probably have also associated oranges with wealth and affluence. Orange blossom has long been a traditional flower for brides; from a plant that blooms and bears fruit at the same time, it became symbolic of virtue and fertility. If fresh flowers were not available, or too costly, often wax replicas were used as a bridal headdress, two of which are on display.

In terms of shaping fashion trends, designers draw on numerous influences, including those within popular culture. Widely seen filmic and television narratives can also play a part in determining wedding fashion, and filter down to bridal salons. Two dresses worn by singer and actress Kylie Minogue during her television career will be fondly recalled by many viewers. When ‘Charlene Mitchell’ married ‘Scott Robinson’ (Jason Donovan) in Neighbours (1987) it was watched by a global audience of millions. The fussy blush pink gown with satin rosettes by Jocelyn Amanda Creed has all the 1980s hallmarks: puffed sleeves, a sweetheart neckline, net panels, and a dropped waist. Comedy duo Jane Turner and Gina Riley invited Minogue to guest star in season three of their series Kath & Kim in 2004 as ‘Epponnee-Rae Craig’ where she gleefully parodied her previous soap opera incarnation in a riotous polyester and lace ‘mullet dress’, thigh-high white boots, and huge hair dotted with baby’s-breath (as Charlene’s was). The cast of the popular series have their own association with the venue, as parts of the feature film Kath & Kimderella (Ted Emery, 2012) were shot at Rippon Lea.

Designer John Bright founded Cosprop in 1965 as a resource to assist film and television industry professionals in realising their creative aims. The firm specialises in period costumes for hire, also employing in-house costumiers

Melburnin / Inga Walton 4

to make new ensembles to serve a particular designer’s brief. More recently, Cosprop has branched out into lending its costumes to themed exhibitions such as this, and has contributed eleven outfits to the show. Bright shared the Academy Award for Best Costume Design with his long-term collaborator Jenny Beaven for their work on A Room With A View (James Ivory, 1985). The duo has been nominated for the Oscar a further five times, including for their work on Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995). The wedding ensembles worn by Kate Winslet as ‘Marianne Dashwood’ and Alan Rickman as ‘Colonel Christopher Brandon’ seen briefly at the end of the film can be enjoyed in more detail here.

Bright also did the costumes for Twelfth Night (Sir Trevor Nunn, 1996), and the pink dress of silk and self-figured satin worn by Helena Bonham-Carter as ‘Olivia’ in the Shakespeare adaptation is also included. Another gown worn by Bonham-Carter, this time playing ‘Elizabeth Lavenza’, the doomed bride of Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Sir Kenneth Branagh, 1994), is topped by an oversize paper wig by Cristina Re. Designed by James Acheson, a three-time Academy Award winner for Best Costume Design, the two-piece dress reflects the fashions of the 1770s. It comprises a gown and petticoat of cream moiré silk, with the attached stomacher and the front borders of the skirt richly embroidered with stylised foliage motifs in metallic thread. Other wedding dresses from literary adaptations include The House of the Spirits (Bille August, 1993), Daniel Deronda (Tom Hooper, 2002), Madame Bovary (Tim Fywell, 2000), Tess (Roman Polanski, 1979), and Emma (Douglas McGrath, 1996). The British television series The House of Eliott (1991-94) is centred on two sisters in 1920s London who establish a dressmaking business and eventually launch their own fashion house. Series costume designer Joan Wadge came up with a demure wedding gown with a beaded ‘Juliet cap’ for actress Louise Lombard playing ‘Evangeline Eliott’.

The tradition of the white wedding dress, instituted by Queen Victoria when she married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840 was, for a long time, an option only for the wealthy. The relative expense of the wedding dress often resulted in more versatile elements being factored into the design to extend its usefulness, or it might be reused within a family. Many brides still chose a coloured dress, which could then be worn again for formal or evening wear. The exhibition contains an example of both circumstances, with a dress of bright blue silk taffeta worn by Margaret Hadden in 1866 and then by her daughter Rebecca Elizabeth Graham in 1896. It was remodelled, with the wide oval crinoline of the 1860s cut down to make a gored skirt, and the excess fabric repurposed to form the large balloon sleeves fashionable in the late 1890s. Other coloured dresses seem to have been more a matter of personal taste, like one chosen by Jane Louise Sanderson in 1875 of lilac striped silk taffeta. Lilac was an acceptable shade for half-mourning, but there is no evidence to suggest any deaths in

Melburnin / Inga Walton 4

(L) Cristina Re, Paper Couture Dress (2014) hand-crafted using ‘Designer DIY Papers and Tools’ from the Cristina Re range. (Collection, Cristina Re, Collingwood) (R) James Acheson (designer), moiré silk, satin, metallic thread, embroidery, wedding dress worn by Helena Bonham-Carter as ‘Elizabeth Lavenza’ in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), (Loaned by Cosprop, London). & Cristina Re, Paper wig headdress (2014). Photography Inga Walton.

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Inga Walton is a writer and arts consultant based in Melbourne who contributes to numerous Australian and international publications. She has submitted copy, of an inceasingly verbose nature, to Trouble since 2008. She is under the impression that readers are not morons with a short attention span, and would like to know lots of things.

Sanderson’s family at that time. She must simply have liked the colour, which extends in playful ruffles down the skirt and in bands around the sleeves. The Japanese-Australian designer Akira Isogawa is represented by six dresses and a show-room prototype, the largest grouping from any fashion house. Coming from a non-Western background, but steeped in the idea of the ritual garment, Isogawa makes a distinctive contribution to bridal fashion, commenting, “My ideal for bridal design is that you don’t have to become someone else on your wedding day”. He is certainly in favour of the coloured wedding dress, “I attract a woman with a very strong sense of her personal style. It’s terrible to say it but some brides feel like white is a bit wimpy and they look more beautiful, more forceful in colour”.

Whereas four of Isogawa’s contributions fall within in the more expected tonal palette, Strapless Silk Organza Dress (2011) is dark purple and embroidered with botanical motifs that reference antique kimono prints. The vivid red Spiral Shibori Strapless Gown (2009) has tightly bunched hand-sewn spiral shibori knots along the bust-line, and gold embroidery interspersed with large flowers cascading down one side. Regardless of the hue, Isogawa’s overall design philosophy prevails, “My dresses are always subverting tradition. Sometimes I will deliberately choose a fabric that has a crushed appearance and this destroys the idea of the pristine bride”.

Cristina Re, whose firm specialises in fine stationery and lifestyle goods, has provided floral installations and head-dresses to accessorise many of the outfits. For the entrance hall, she has created a witty life-size Paper Couture Dress (2014) using materials from her range, thus insuring the scope of the exhibition conforms to the traditional rhyme: old, new, borrowed, blue (though the ‘silver sixpence in her shoe’ was not in evidence). Other dresses on display come from design houses both past and present such as Mariana Hardwick, Gwendolynne (with a headband and veil by Richard Nylon), Doake & Beattie, La Petite, Robert Fritzlaff, Lilium, Tedd Dunn, and Comtesse.

Love, Desire & Riches – The Fashion of Weddings, Rippon Lea House & Gardens, 192 Hotham Street, Elsternwick (VIC) - ripponleaestate.com.au Historical background on the Rippon Lea Estate is partially derived from The Story of Rippon Lea (1995) by Mary Ryllis Clark and Dr. Celestia Sagazio, from The National Trust (VIC).

Editor’s note: Due to a change in editorial direction this will be the last appearance of Melburnin’ & ACTease. Simon Gregg was the original writer of the Melburnin’ column (2005 to 2008). It was rested until Courtney Symes took over in May, 2010. When Courtney moved to Canberra and began contributing ACTease, feature writer Inga Walton commenced working on Melburnin’ in February, 2013. Both Inga and Courtney will continue to write feature editorials for Trouble on a regular basis.

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GREETINGS FROM BEYOND THE PALE

Ben Laycock

PART 1 – NOT CLIMBING ULURU

To set the scene for my escape, I am an artist, starving in a garret in St. Kilda, back in the days when stragglers in the rat race could still afford to live there. I am having women trouble. I thought l was splitting up with one woman, having a little fling, then starting a relationship with another woman, but somehow, what are meant to be consecutive affairs, take place concurrently, causing no end of bother. l do the only sensible thing in the situation; I run away, as far as l can go from human society, especially the female version of it.

I fill my rucksack with dried foods and stick out my thumb. Nothing to report ‘til we leave Port Augusta. I find myself in a truck next to a young English woman. I feign complete indifference to her feminine charms.

The monotony of the landscape has a soporific effect until the English woman says, “Wow, look at that”.

I open my eyes to the sight of a barren plain. “There is nothing there”. I say.

“Yeah, isn’t it amazing, I have never encounted such emptiness in all my life,” she says.

There are a certain number of people who have spent their entire lives in the confines of a metropolis, but when surrounded by the vast emptiness of the outback, feel a resonance deep within their soul, as if they have come home at last. She was one such person. As it turned out, ‘Kate’ had whiled away many hours of boredom in some nondescript suburb of some nondescript regional English city, dreaming of one day climbing that big red rock she once glimpsed in an episode of Skippy. I and several others we had gathered along the way, while away many more hours of boredom on the road in convincing her not to do it. The effort takes all of our collective wits, as she will not easily abandon her cherished childhood dream.

Greetings From / Ben Laycock 4

< BoreTrack by Kdliss - Own work.Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

NEXT SPREAD: Ben Laycock, Big River Bend 2013, hand coloured etching, 15x20cm.

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Ben Laycock grew up in the country on the outskirts of Melbourne, surrounded by bush. He began drawing the natural world around him from a very early age. He has travelled extensively throughout Australia, seeking to capture the essence of this vast empty land. In between journeys he lives in a hand-made house in the bush at Barkers Creek in central Victoria - benlaycock.com.au

Apparently the local blackfellas don’t like us climbing Uluru. Apart from it showing a lack of respect, they also feel a duty of care to all who visit their country. They get quite upset when people fall off, as they tend to do on a regular basis.

The most common cause of this phenomenon is attributed to the taking of happy snaps; often whilst stepping backwards to get the entire family in shot … whoops-a-daisy, over they go, tumble, tumble, tumble to their doom. If the camera survives that last fateful shot turns out, more often than not, to be a most beautiful picture of a clear blue sky. Perhaps a premonition of the afterlife so soon to be encountered?

So we head off, brimming with pride at our respect for the local culture, to circumnavigate the vast edifice. It is a long way, the day is hot, we are escorted by many flies. We lunch in a cool, dark cave looking out upon the endless plain, and imagine ourselves natives in the stone age, gnawing on a kangaroo bone 40,000 years ago. We find an idyllic rock pool in a shady glade and spontaneously shed our sweaty clothes and frolic in our delicious nakedness and newfound affinity with the cosmos, blissfully unaware we have stumbled upon a sacred birthing pool that is not to be seen by men under pain of death, let alone nude white people whooping and squealing and cavorting about.

Sorry!

IN THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE your intrepid wayfarer meets his very first real live Aborigine, in the flesh!

IMAGE: ”Ayers Rock - Kuniya walk (Rock climbing)”. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons