DINING / Gang Gang Café, Downer
Hidden gem at the local shops CANBERRA loves its local shops. As much as we can be attached to our own, it’s worth exploring the ACT’s local shop landscape to see what you can uncover. Recently, that landed me in a sunny spot at the Gang Gang Café, a hidden gem in Downer (Frencham Place). The place has a strong, friendly community vibe and couldn’t be more relaxed if it tried. Bricks are exposed on inside walls, concrete floors polished, the furniture a medley of pieces with some individual tables and some communal. And a café with the name Gang Gang wouldn’t be complete without at least one piece of artwork on the wall featuring a shy gang gang cockatoo, this one a male with a crimson red head and fluffy light-grey, feathered body. Gang Gang is a neighbour to the Downer Community Centre and the local oval is just across the road. The shop’s bronze kangaroo sculpture, unveiled in 2019 to replace a previous sculpture that went missing (who knows where?) adds character. The breakfast menu kicks off with simple toast and choice of jam, Vegemite or peanut butter ($9). I was peckish but couldn’t decide sweet or savoury. The berry and banana buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup caught my eye ($18) and so did the ricotta and berry raisin toast ($16). Hmmm. In the end I settled, as I so often do with my first meal of the day, on savoury, ordering the baked eggs shakshuka ($20). Who doesn’t love a piping hot serve of a hearty Mediterranean dish to take away the tummy grumbles? Shakshuka means ‘mixture’ and the dish was just that.
ARTS IN THE CITY
Telling stories of ‘place’ in portraiture By Helen
MUSA
Baked eggs shakshuka… smoky baked beans, two baked eggs, tomatoes, onions, and a secret mix of spices all oven baked in a large, flat skillet. Photo: Wendy Johnson Smoky baked beans, two baked eggs, tomatoes, onions, and a secret mix of spices all oven baked in a large, flat skillet. The dish arrived piping hot and was served with white sourdough toast smothered with butter. It was a huge serve and super tasty. It truly did hit the spot, although my eggs were a tad overcooked for my liking. Other items on Gang Gang Café’s all-day breakfast menu include an intriguing and healthy-sounding bircher muesli ($15), eggs Benedict, which comes with salmon, ham or bacon ($18), and avo and feta smash on toasted sourdough ($14).
Both inside and outside dining areas are quite large and Gang Gang Café is dog friendly. You order at the counter and food is served at your table. The coffee is good. Covid-style, Gang Gang’s full menu is now available for pick up and delivery. A new pizza menu has been introduced, with delivery available from 3pm to 8pm. Open seven days. Free wifi. Gang Gang Café, 4/2 Frencham Place, Downer, open Monday to Sunday (7am to 8pm).
OPENING soon at the National Portrait Gallery is “This Is My Place”, which will take a fresh look at the places that define who we are. Featuring over 100 works in painting, photography, drawing, printmaking and sculpture from the NPG collection, it travels from coast to coast via the rivers, streets, mountains, studios and sportsgrounds to tell stories of “place” in portraiture. September 19-February 28. Pre-bookings essential at portrait.gov.au THE Q, Queanbeyan, is once again hosting the Manhattan Short Film Festival, which this year features nine finalists out of 971 entries from Australia, Finland, Iran, Russia, Israel, North Macedonia, State of Palestine and USA. “Best Film” and “Best Actor” awards are determined by ballots cast by the audiences in each participating venue. September 24-26, bookings online only, strictly by 4pm, September 25 at theq.net.au “RICHES to Rags in Covid Time,” composed by the head of the ANU School of Music, Kim Cunio, has been recorded on virtual instruments at
the ANU. The track is inspired by ragtime music popular during the Spanish flu in the early 20th century. Cunio and sound technician Matthew Barnes used a USB to play a digital file of the music on a Yamaha C7 Disklavier virtual piano. Accessible at soundcloud.com/anumusic-1/ THE 8th Queer Screen Film Fest is now running online, featuring more than 40 feature films, documentaries and shorts, with 29 Australian premieres. “Breaking Fast” is a romantic comedy about Mo, a practicing Muslim, who is pleasantly surprised when all-American Kal offers to join him in his nightly fast-breaking Iftar meals. The festival is offering three differently-themed short film packages free of charge for 11 days from September 17-27, bookings at queerscreen.org.au or 9280 1533. TWO live performances of “Maîtres de la Composition” will see Dan Russell on violin and Edward “Teddy” Neeman on piano playing colourful and “almost jazzy” soundscapes of French compositions by Ravel, Debussy, Poulenc and Fauré. Wesley Music Centre on Sunday, September 27 at 2pm and 3.30pm. Seating capped at 30 people per concert. Bookings online only at phoenixcollective.com.au
ART
Game Nancy’s new gallery By Helen Musa
WITH news that art gallery owner Nancy Sever is about to open a new space called the City Walk Gallery, you’d have to call her game. After all, businesses everywhere have been contracting, not expanding during the COVID-19 crisis and after not one, not two, but three goes (the last one successful) at staging an exhibition by veteran expressionist painter Michael Taylor at her Gorman Arts Centre gallery, one might have expected her to draw her horns in. Not a bit of it. With support from Canberra business owner and arts patron, Peter Barclay, she’s found a new space in Civic which will open on September 24. “[Peter is] a great supporter of School of Art graduates and we’d been discussing how a gallery for collectors would work… I was thinking of a space for all the artists I exhibit and then everything came to a stop,” she says. Then Barclay alerted her to a space on the first floor of an office block next door to King O’Malley‘s pub, of which he is managing director and after looking at it, Sever decided it was “a nice space”. Although the new gallery is not visible from the street, you can access it from inside the pub if you want to, another interesting vibe, and there’s a simpatico landscape design service facing. When we catch up, Nancy has been busy bringing across paintings by South Australian surrealist artist Andrew Baines. His striking exhibition had to close suddenly because of COVID-19, so pretty well nobody saw it. Now’s the chance to rectify that. She also has four Michael Taylor paintings not showing in the exhibition now running at Gorman and a couple of paintings by in-demand Braidwood artist and ANU School of Art graduate, Kate Stevens. In what she calls “a nice twist”, she’ll also bring in some of her Janet Dawson paintings. It was Dawson’s
A work by veteran expressionist painter Michael Taylor, January 2020. late husband Michael Boddy who, with Bob Ellis, co-wrote “The Legend of King O’Malley” about the politician after whom the pub was named. Sever will also have changing exhibitions and things are getting exciting for October when Neil Hobbs’ free public art biennial ‘Contour 556’ takes place. The City Walk Gallery will exhibit sculptures by South Australian artist Greg Jones for that and there’ll be a bigger sculpture outside too. So why is she doing it? “Well I just feel I have to, we can’t just see businesses closing down,” she says. “The artists haven’t stopped working but have had very little support and I think they need as many professional exhibitions as possible.” Husband Adrian seems very philosophical about her new gallery venture and the Sorbonne-educated Nancy, well, she’s taking the Gallic view, saying “As long as I have the energy I want to keep doing it – it’s a very existentialist view”. CityNews September 17-23, 2020 29
