GOOD WORKS BY GREAT TALENT

For its size, Canberra is a dynamic and exciting place. Yet it can be criticised for a perceived lack of opportunity for the relatively massive pool of creative talent nestled within our valleys. Venues close, audiences stay home and watch Netflix – it can be disheartening for an artist.

So I’m chuffed to the gills to learn that Canberra has a (relatively) recently opened performance space.

The Mill Theatre, around the corner from Capital Brewery on Dairy Road, opened mid 2022 and is playing host to an Australian Classic – Nick Enright’s Good Works, presented by Lexi Sekuless Productions. Several cast members for the upcoming run had a chat to BMA about the play, the venue, and their craft. Oliver Bailey, Martin Everett, and Neil Pigot indulged me as I navigated and made sense of an art-form I’m only somewhat familiar with.

“At its core, this is an Australian play. We as Australians see things through a particular lens that resonates with our audiences. The Aussie social milieu is intangible but relatable to us.

“So, despite this play being written in 1995, there’s no necessity to update the text because it’s as relevant today as it ever was. “That doesn’t mean someone without that background wouldn’t enjoy or learn things

By Morgan Quinn

from the play. Australian audience members will relate strongly to the ideas, the language, and even the mannerisms and nuances of the characters.”

The play explores themes of morality within the context of two families and their relationships with each other. Catholicism, and the way Australians of certain generations adhere to the religion’s dogma, is used within the plot to drive the themes of morality and choice.

“The story takes place across several generations and is told in a non-linear way –it jumps between these different periods –and although Catholicism is important in the story, you could replace it with other religions, beliefs, or social constructs.

“Catholicism itself is not a fundamental aspect of the story. Good Works, and I’d say a lot of great theatre, is about humans, our interactions, our relationships. Nick Enright is a great writer of both stage and screen.

“Anyone who knows his work knows that, if anything, his work becomes more relevant as time goes on.”

The Mill Theatre is a new, intimate venue for Canberra. Seating 67, and converted from a cool room, it is the first private enterprise theatre in the ACT. The technical fit out for a new space is always intriguing; does this play incorporate audio or video to tell this story?

“This is a stage play in the classic sense –actors performing characters. There are basic costumes and sets, but we don’t rely on bells and whistles to entertain the audience.

“It seems to be the trend in the mainstream, now, that live theatre includes video projections, complicated sound cues, and audience participation. Everyone involved in this production is focused on sharing what a great stage play can be; a story, well told, by people who are dedicated to their craft.”

With this stripped back ethos stated, my mind goes in another direction; one it goes in anytime I talk to a talented, creative person. Why are you dedicated to the craft?

“I’m too old to do anything else.”

“We’re story tellers, this is what we do.”

“Why not?”

All great answers to this typically broad question. As our time draws to a close I’m provided one last nugget of wisdom.

“It’s fascinating to me that we seem to be puzzled by the choice of reviving an Australian play, yet we don’t even blink when another Shakespeare or Ibsen is rolled out yet again.

“We do it because it’s a challenge. As I look at our society, I think telling our stories and reflecting on ourselves seems more important than ever.

“Without a sense of collective self, how can we hope to move forward?”

Good Works will be performed at Mill Theatre from 12 July to 12 August. Tickets are $25 - $50 + bf and are available online via Humanitix.

By Anthony Plevey

Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran is the second in a trilogy of award winning shows by the Javaad Alipoor Company—co-created by the eponymous British Iranian artist and Kristy Housely— and is described as a darkly comic, interactional digital presentation that explores the growing gap between the rich and the poor, climate change, and the way we imagine ourselves.

It’s a lofty description, sure, but simplicity lays at its core.

“I am a political artist,” declares Javaad Alipoor. “I am aware that political art is both incredibly ambitious and talks about big chunky ideas. As such, it is best made clear and simple.”

Rich Kids is a three hander, where Alipoor and Peyvand Sadeghian emulate the social media influencer/follower paradigm, leading the audience—whom Alipoor prefers as “interlocutors”—on an interactive, deep dive into the third player - a fictionalised version of the Instagram account of a rich kid.

A rich kid, the 'useless' child of a leader in an oppressive dictatorship, visible both in Alipoor's ancestral homeland and in regimes across the global south; places where human rights are minimised and abused in the service of the ruling elite. Rich kids who, rather than adhering to the tenets of the official ideology, flaunt the wealth and power of their parents' corrupt finances, laundered in the global north, to live out their extravagant lifestyles via drug-fuelled parties, fast cars, and hyper-consumerism.

“Rich Kids has a documentary/post documentary feel,” says Alipoor. “Holding a space for the contradictions, the stuck points, which we have an instinct about, but are not sure what the exact answer is.

“Very typical of these kinds of questions is an urge for simplification; an urge to flatten discussions and seek simple solutions in a sort of fairy tale narrative which, for instance, is certainly true of Brexit.

“We know in our heads that there is a growing gap between the rich and the poor,” Alipoor continues.

“We know this is an unsustainable world, and feel a little bit like rich kids ourselves, hurtling off the edge of a cliff in a Lamborghini we can't control.

“And the job of this kind of work, in times like these, is to take that away from the intellectual and into being something that is attached to your heart and guts as well.”

Rich Kids embraces multimedia and social media. But Alipoor claims it is not trapped in big-tech like other emerging Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence based work.

“For this trilogy of shows, we have consciously used only the technology in your pocket,” Javaad says. “The interactivity is not like a computer game. It’s about the space in the show where the audience talks about what's going on over on Instagram. Then, if you really get what we are trying to do, again in the bar after the show.”

A key element of Rich Kids for Alipoor is the 'time travel’ nature of social media.

“If you look at someone's Instagram feed, the first thing that hits you is the way a story works backwards,” he explains. “You click on the first [most recent] photo and scroll down, going further back into the photos they posted.

“One of the things we do with the story is to say: imagine what would happen if you could scroll so deeply in Instagram that you could break it, and come out the other side and see the things underneath it, that got us to this point.”

In this reversing timeline, Alipoor also sees the emergence of these rich kids as canaries in the coal mine, mapping regime entropy and signalling their society’s decline.

“A key aspect of the show, for me, is the feeling of things falling apart,” Alipoor said. “We're not that good at thinking about decline, about how a society might degenerate.”

Internationalist art that is not Eurocentric, anti-racist, and consciously post-colonial is central to the company's manifesto. Whilst acknowledging that the digital space has huge power in terms of money and information, Alipoor sees it as a kind of public good.

“The question for me becomes - how do we think about reforming the digital space in a way that's useful and sustainable for democratic society?” Alipoor says.

“Using digital connectivity to make this kind of show means that some people in the places we've made it about get to engage with it. During the pandemic, we partnered with art centres and theatres all over the world, and streamed through their websites to their audiences.

“We had folks from Hong Kong, from Iran, from all kinds of countries where there are specific parallels with the story we are telling.

“I wanted the structure of Instagram for the story to be able to explore how living in that structure consciously orders how we make meaning,” he explains. “Looking at the intersection of social media, technology, and politics, and at the habits that shape us and the world.

“Ultimately, it’s a look at how people around the world make meaning about themselves.”

It is clear that the show not only deals with big ideas told through a modern, elegant narrative form, but it is delivered by people with a fiery passion for the world.

“Text theatre is going through its “prog rock” phase, somewhat in love with their own artistry,” Alipoor states. “What it needs is some punk rock immersion, for a different 21st Century.

“A 21st Century I very much want.”

Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran plays at The Street Theatre for an exclusive, one-off show on Saturday, 12 August at 7:30pm. Tickets are $25 + bf and are available via thestreet.org.au

Moving through the galleries is like being introduced to friends of friends at a party. The absent, but vitally present, photographers are the ones with the motioning hands, saying ‘over here! come meet my mother, my hero, my son, my mate, my neighbour…’

No one feels removed from us; everyone feels a part of the gathering. Welcomed and welcoming.

This is not to suggest that all the images are all feel-good and happy days. Many are confronting, poignant, and uncomfortable.

As diverse as they are in mood, style, and influences, what each has in common is the notion of invitation – come closer, let me tell you my story, they say.

The narrative that struck me again and again, was that of tender vulnerability, coexisting—in wonderful and perplexing human fashion—with profound strength.

The overwhelming sense I was left with was a ‘come as you are’ feel.

Every story here goes far beyond the frame, no matter how humble the sense of the image.

Such as with Jay Hyne’s Dave, and Adam Ferguson’s painterly image Ukrzaliznytsia (Ukrainian Railways) employee, Sumy Oblast, Ukraine: both of these photos capture their pensive sitters in muted tones, inhabiting rooms that are plain, unextraordinary.

Yet, it is clear, partly from the finely considered composition and incoming light, reminiscent of a Vermeer painting, what lies outside of this humble space is of greatest significance.

Visiting the exhibition in NAIDOC Week, I was pleased to see so many First Nations people as part of the storytelling, both as subjects and photographers. Although, I would have been better pleased to see more representation behind the camera. Most of the images of Indigenous Australians were taken by non-Indigenous people. This is not, in and of itself, necessarily problematic—respect is clearly evident—but it feels to me like a disconnect. An imbalanced gaze.

But I am utterly absorbed by the Indigenous women especially. There is a directness, a sense of intricate and deep knowledge being protected and continued. This is no more beautifully expressed than in Brenda Croft and Prue Hazelgrove’s blood/memory: Brenda and Christopher I, where the two appear immediately connected in love, learning, and a shared journey. Referencing Croft’s long and diverse family history is the use of tintype to create an image that speaks of other times and places.

It is important to acknowledge the disquiet present, in different ways, in some of the portraits of Indigenous Australians, as with Charlie Bliss’s The Bamugura, where we meet Susan Balbunga, Warrawarra cultural leader and master weaver. The bamugura (conical mat) she is weaving takes months to construct but will last decades. The setting, the craft, her slender hands, are all richly seductive.

But this initially heartwarming image carries a sorrowful tale. Susan Balbunga is one of the few remaining people with the knowledge and skill to make a bamugura, so there is also a terrible sense of loss here. Of disappearance.

There are other images that touch on everyday concurrences of joy and grief.

Such as Sarah Enticknap’s gentle image Mum helping with canvas, where the almost childlike quality of the expression is devastatingly explained by the artist sharing that her mother has Alzheimer’s. We know, now, this person is in the process of slowly disappearing, and the artist is in the process of slowly grieving.

It is so intimate: the backyard gum, the early evening light, galah pink.

We must never forget what artists gift of themselves to us, the viewer. It sometimes costs a lot.

Family, and family history, is another pervasive thread throughout the exhibition. And it is a broad family brush we see at work. From the clearly related Anne Moffat’s Self portrait with my mother and sister, the three of them charmingly serious under their eucalypt; Charlie Ford’s graceful Aunty Helen; and Sammaneh Pourshafighi’s psychedelic celebration in Portrait of My Mother As An EthnoFuturist Icon, a fabulous illustration of a matriarch well in command of herself.

To the broader family represented, our chosen family, to the ones whose lived experience includes being othered.

Bruce Agnew’s KAHA, David Cossini’s

Ugandan Ssebabi, and photographer/ costume designer Gerwyn Davies’ Mirror II are just some of the entries that speak for the advantages and necessity of Inclusion.

Ugandan Ssebabi won the Art Handlers Award, and it certainly is one worth spending time with; the story is just as powerful as the image.

There’s much in here that celebrates queer culture, honours cultural heritage and diversity, honours age, and resists social awkwardness around difference. It’s the best part of this chosen family.

One of the portraits that poses questions about what we do, and do not, celebrate effectively but without fuss, is the winner of the 2023 Portrait Prize, Shea Kirk’s Ruby (left view)

The image is one half of a pair, capturing Kirk’s friend and photographer, Emma Armstrong-Porter (a finalist themselves in the prize; I’ll leave you to go and find their work). The piece is part of an ongoing series from Kirk, showing ‘simple’ portraits that convey an intimate trust between photographer and subject.

There is a Diane Arbus type quality to his work, both in the raw way the images are developed and presented, and the frankness of his subjects. Kirk’s use of the large format camera provides a strikingly detailed image, where the subtleties of the skin take on a mesmeric quality. The nakedness creates all kinds and ways of being unsure.

It’s an image that will not allow itself to be easily read. It demands our participation. As always, it is difficult to highlight several works when there are so many noteworthy images in the exhibition.

The aforementioned are ones that spoke to me personally, but my exhibition companion and I voted very differently in our People’s Choice.

I will happily reveal I voted for Renae Saxby’s Bangardidjan, which won the Highly Commended prize. It is at first unassuming. Yet the young woman at the image centre is commanding and vital.

Who will speak to you?

The National Photographic Portrait Prize runs daily from 10am - 5pm until Monday, 2 October at the National Portrait Gallery. Tickets are $15 Adult, $12 Concession, $10 Circle of Friends (Under 18s free) and are available via portrait.gov.au

Clocking in at just one minute and forty-eight seconds, Hydranaut’s Give ‘Em A Drink is one of the surprises of the band’s debut self-titled album, which was mixed and mastered by Jason Fuller (Nick Oliveri, King Parrot, Witchskull), and released in late 2022.

The track features an opening metal-based guitar riff that segues into a verse with a post-punk ‘race against time’ accompaniment underscoring a vocal line that employs a stabbing, incendiary energy. It’s an energy—and this is where some of the surprises of the track come in—that is menacingly infectious.

It’s an easy hook to latch on to—or rather, scream along to.

From here, the verse transforms into a musical interlude that utilises a descending chord progression to make the best of creating a sense of tension and impending upheaval. What transpires is the song’s chorus, the one-line title which becomes strangely anthemic when filtered through the staccato fire of the gang vocal.

CT&TDM dish out another unyielding serve of speed death metal that follows the equally unrelenting stand-alone track, Beerpocalypse.

There are similarities between the two tracks, as one would expect. Yet, State of the World reveals a few intriguing musical possibilities for the outfit that might open up its typical aural assault approach.

We are still treated to the technical assiduity, whether that’s the guitars, drums, or overall focus, but there are other textures and additions present that shift the style—or rather expand it—albeit in an incremental way.

We are first met by a gunfire drum fill that explodes into the as-expected fast riff land. We are quickly submerged into the verses and the grit of the death metal grunt. This continues until a build that incorporates variations of that vocal growl until we arrive at what can only be determined as a chorus.

We can perhaps ascertain it is, in fact, a chorus by the chantlike melodic lines that hover above that growl as it directs us to the end proclamation of the ‘state of the world’. This melodic anomaly, although it only sounds like one when pitted against the dungeon wall of sound that comprises the instrumentation, is present for the remaining chorus sections.

Once the first chorus is done, we’re thrust back into the verses, which contain the same melodic arrangement and performance energy levels, leading us to believe that we will be taken once again through a repeat arrangement.

But this is where the other surprise awaits.

We get another serving of that plunging alternate guitar part, and one last reiteration of the song’s bellowed proclamation: give ‘em a drink, and we’re done.

In some sense, the track’s brevity, and its open-fire application, have the same concentrated efficiency as an accessible pop track. It’s an easily digestible series of musical flourishes alongside an identifiable, instantly communicable sing-along line. And there is a tincture of the humorous to it all. When experienced with the accompanying video, this idea is reinforced. Give ‘Em A Drink is an over-beforeyou-know-it, post-punk-rockmetal whirlwind; an amusing and entertaining kind.

VINCE LEIGH

It acts as transformative climax that not only appeases the listener’s ears (while being shaken by the track’s tumult) but adds a reverberative layer above the controlled chaos.

It’s our signpost for the track, a very satisfying one, as it deviates and swerves around us, with its myriad of accents and pauses and maniacal thrusts. The band were perhaps conscious of the effect this particular element might have, even going further than merely ending the track on its subtle power but incorporating a key change to intensify both its dynamic and importance.

That being said, State of the World does not let up. It’s fire and brimstone and, therefore, another fine musical display of joyful metal proficiency.

VINCE LEIGH