The PM’s Reading Room : Week 02
02
Billy Hughes
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Ryan Robertson
// Arts & Crafts
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Local/International Context //
Reading Machine
Billy Hughes The story of William Morris Hughes begins in Pimlico, a suburb of London where he was born on 25 September 1862. At the age of six, he moved to Llandudno, Wales where he attended grammar school and lived with an Aunt. He returned to Pimlico in 1874 to complete his schooling at St Stephens Grammar School. In October 1884 Hughes boarded a ship to Brisbane, Australia.
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Between the years of 1884 and 1886, Hughes worked his way around Queensland and New South Wales finding employment where he could; as a pineapple picker, a rali worker, a swagman, stockman and a drover. By 1890, Hughes had settled in Balmain, NSW where he lived with his first common law wife Elizabeth Cutts, and made a living mending umbrellas and locks, and selling political pamphlets.
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Billy.
Billy.
Billy.
Billy. Billy.
Billy.
Billy. Billy.
Billy.
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No Australian Prime Minister has been, nor ever will be, as well-traveled as Billy Hughes. Hughes joined the Labor Party as the member of West Sydney at the first federal election of 1901, and became Prime Minister in 1915. After being booted out of the party for his failed conscription referendum in 1917 (the first of four occasions this happened), Hughes declared: "I did not leave the party. The party left me".
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Hughes served the Labor Party (19011917, West Sydney); The Nationalist Party (1917-1929, Bendigo); as an Independant (1929-1934, North Sydney); the United Australia Party (1934-1943, North Sydney); and the Liberal Party (1946-1952, Bradfield). His record of 51 consectutive years in federal parliament has never been surpassed.
After that first dismissal, Hughes went on to serve a further five political parties, including helping establish two of them. It was his time as a Nationalist in the Federal seat of Bendigo from which his greatest political achievements are remembered. THE PM's READING ROOM // 02
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. 1917 Labor Party Split
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I did not leave the party. The party left me.”
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zeitgeist /’tsīt.gīst/ [Noun]
The defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.
During Billy Hughes' tenure as Prime Minister public sentiment was concerned with war brooding overseas, and the threat of invasion back home. The White Australia policy was in place, generating an irrational fear of foreigners within the populace. Hughes' tenacious attempts to pass a conscription referendum through public vote came close to succeeding once, and was soundly defeated a second time; but both times caused fissures within Parliament and Party. THE PM's READING ROOM // 02
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Returning home 1919
Versailles Treaty 1919
Hughes enjoyed a healthy rapport with the australian wartime soldiers after visiting them on the front`line in france in 1915. After the end of the First World War in 1919, Hughes attend the Paris Peace Conference, where amongst the world's most influential leaders, he stood up for Australian interests internationally in achieving independent membership of the League of Nations, and assuming control over the former german territory of new Guinea. It was seen as a watershed moment for Australian independance from Britain.Hughes' wartime and international exploits earnt him the affectionate nickname 'Little Digger'.
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Addressing the Troops- France 1915
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Local & International Art and Design Culture.
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Discovering Australia’s identity
Poetry
Art
Art
Dorothea Mackeller ‘My Country’
Frederick McCubbin ‘The Pioneer’
Sidney Nolan ‘Ned Kelly Series’
Literature
Architecture
Henry Lawson ‘Short Stories’
Harold Desbrowe-Annear ‘Arts and Crafts’
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Developing modernity
Theatre
Dance
Gilbert & Sullivan ‘The Mikado’
Peter Tchaikovsky ‘The Nutcracker’
Design
Architecture
Bauhaus Movement
Empire State Building, New York Art Deco
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Billy Hughes’ Reading Machine
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Chairs like this were common place in Australia in the early 1920's during Billy Hughes' tenure as Prime Minister. The style is Arts & Craft, also known as 'Mission' style, which was imported from Mid-west America and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prarie School in the early twentieth century , and was a response to what was seen as the over-furnishing of, and disconnection between the furniture and the home. In effect, the Arts & Crafts style was a return to fundamental living; with it came a DIY culture and values of honesty, good workmanship and simplicity . Timber was the material of choice, specifically Oak or Beech. This example, which is characteristic of Mission furniture, illustrates ‘mortise and tenon’ joints throughout the chair frame which allow lengths of timber to be joined without the need for nails. The end of one piece of timber (the tenon) is carefully carved to precisely fit into a square or rectangular hole made for it in another piece of timber at a 90° angle. The unadorned functionality of this type of chair speaks of the designer’s ability to think freely, uninhibited by preceding styles. The simplicity of its form demonstrates a boldness; optimism for a future of cohesion amongst design fields. The deliberate use of timber as a primary material refuses to acknowledge the technological and material advances of the industrial revolution, instead referencing the uncomplicated lifestyle of periods past. The workmanship illustrated in the joints and vertical slats beneath the chair arms demonstrate a pride.. THE PM's READING ROOM // 02
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END WEEK TWO//