ARTS ZINE MARCH 2022 by Robyn Werkhoven

s t u d i o

L A P R I M I T I V E

arts zine

issue 45 march 2022

CHRIS BYRNES Coloured light emanating from the lighthouse - Chris Byrnes.

www.chrisbyrnesartist.com/

TRACIE BERTRAM

https:// traciebertram.wixsite.com/mysite

Gordian Knot, 2021 Ceramic Tracie Bertram Photo: Lauren O’Brien.

B R A D page

F R A N K S

HELLEN ROSE

Hellen Rose performing at the Evening Star Hotel with Adrian Gore- Symes and Louis Burdet circa 1987 photo unknown.

www.hellenrose.com

GRAHAM LANG

Black Dog, oil on card, H51 x W74 cm. Graham Lang 2016.

www.grahamlang-artist.com

seigar.wordpress.com

STUDIO LA PRIMITIVE

MAD MOMENTS EXHIBITION - ERIC AND ROBYN WERKHOVEN 10 - 26 JUNE 2022 ART SYSTEMS WICKHAM GALLERY,

40 ANNIE ST. WICKHAM, NEWCASTLE NSW.

GEORGE GITTOES L

M George Gittoes under water filming the Rainbow Way images 1975. Photo courtesy of artist.

www.gittoes.com

slp studio la primitive CONTRIBUTORS

Yacaba - soft pastel on Canson paper - Deb Ansell.

Graham Lang

Geoffrey Lennie

George Gittoes

Eric Werkhoven

Hellen Rose

Robyn Werkhoven

Brad Franks

Helene Leane

Tracie Bertram

Jeanne Harrison

Chris Byrnes

Barbara Nanshe

Lorraine Fildes

Art Systems Wickham Gallery

Bernadette Meyers

Art Quill Studio

SEIGAR

Timeless Textiles

Brad Evans

Newcastle Potters Gallery

Reese North

Dungog by Design

Peter J Brown

Studio La Primitive

INDEX Editorial …………

Robyn Werkhoven

Studio La Primitive ……

E & R Werkhoven

Feature Artist ………..

Graham Lang

14 - 35

Poetry ………………..

Peter J Brown

36 - 37

Feature Artist …………

George Gittoes

38 - 53

Feature Artist ………...

Hellen Rose

54 - 67

Poetry …………………

Eric Werkhoven

68 - 69

Feature Artist ………..

Brad Franks

70 - 93

Feature Artist …………..

Tracie Bertram

Poetry …………………

Reese North

94 - 117 118 - 121

Feature Artist …………… SEIGAR

122 - 135

Featured Artist ………….

Bernadette Meyers

136 - 141

Feature Artist …………

Chris Byrnes

142 - 159

Poetry …………………

Brad Evans

160 - 163

Feature Article …………… Lorraine Fildes

164 - 187

Poetry …………………..

188 - 189

ART NEWS……………….

Geoffrey Lennie

190 - 215

FRONT COVER : Green, oil on board, 91.5 X 122 cm. Graham Lang 2017. Devil's Marbles, Northern Territory, Australia, 2008. Photo by Brad Franks.

EDITORIAL

This month Sydney artist, photographer and writer Bernadette Meyers contributes another delightful article - Wattle Story.

Greetings to ARTS ZINE readers. This is the first issue for 2022, we are now in our ninth year of publication.

Interdisciplinary photographer Chris Byrnes lives and works in Newcastle. Byrnes writes about her recent Light House Arts

The March Arts Zine features a selection of dynamic and intriguing Australian

Residency 2021 in Newcastle, NSW.

and international contemporary artists, photographers and writers.

Lorraine Fildes, our resident travel photographer and writer

Graham Lang accomplished artist, sculptor and author. His artistic career

features Bridges Enhancing the Sydney Landscape.

spans three decades during which he has exhibited extensively in Australia

International Spanish artist and photographer SEIGAR features

and overseas.

a series of his recent works with collage, exploring the concepts

The indomitable artist and film maker George Gittoes presents Lux

of cancel culture, censorship, control, propaganda, and the

Mysterium, exploring his journey with filming the beauty of light.

manipulation of the media and social networks.

Performance artist and film maker Hellen Rose features a confronting article -

Don’t miss out reading new works by resident poets Brad Evans,

Obscenity, Generation X & Fear of Sex.

Reese North, Peter J Brown, Geoffrey Lennie and Eric

Arts Zine congratulates Hellen for her film The

Haunted Burqa

being

Werkhoven.

selected as a Finalist in the Berlin Short Film Festival and the Indie Short

ART NEWS and information on forthcoming art exhibitions.

Fest, Los Angeles International Film Festival 2022.

Submissions welcomed, we would love to have your words

Photographer and former Director of Muswellbrook Regional Art Gallery Brad Franks tells us about his life and passion for photography. Newcastle based Ceramic artist and teacher Tracie Bertram writes about her works exploring clay with colour, texture and forms inspired by nature.

and art works in future editions in 2022. Deadline for articles 15th APRIL for MAY issue 46, 2022. Email: werkhovenr@bigpond.com

Regards - your editor Robyn Werkhoven

The publisher will not accept responsibility or any liability for the correctness of information or opinions expressed in the publication. Copyright © 2021 Studio La Primitive. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced , in whole or in part, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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We Love You! Acrylic on canvas,

www.studiolaprimitive.net

S T U D I O

L A P R I M I T I V E

H90 x W60cm. E&R Werkhoven 2011.

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GRAHAM LANG Issue 45 - March 2022

GRAHAM LANG Graham Lang is a Zimbabwe-born artist and writer. He studied Fine Art at Durban University of Technology and Rhodes University, South Africa. He taught in several art schools and exhibited widely in South Africa before emigrating to Australia in

1990, where he began a 20 - year teaching career at the University of Newcastle. Graham was active as a sculptor and painter in the Newcastle arts community before serious illness forced his retirement from teaching in 2011 and he moved to Tasmania. Much of his early practice centres on themes relating to migration, identity and cultural dislocation. Since moving to Tasmania, his art has tended toward a more intuitive approach, exploring a diverse array of subjects, many derived from his literary interests. As a writer, Graham has explored associated themes of land and African identity in the three novels, Clouds like Black Dogs (2003), Place of Birth (2006) and Lettah’s Gift (2011). His novella, A Fulcrum of Infinities, was a winner of the prestigious Griffith Review Novella Competition in 2016. Graham now lives and works in Tasmania’s Far South, and is currently represented by Despard Gallery, Hobart.

Page 14 : Blink, oil on board, H91.5 x W122cm. Graham Lang 2018. Above : Strange Lovebirds Jackson Lee, oil on board, H91.5 x W61cm.

Graham Lang 2019.

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The Lazarus Paradox Oil on maxi Tboard H122 Xx W122 cm. Graham Lang 2016.

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GRAHAM LANG - INTERVIEW What attracted you to the world of Art? I discovered early on that I had a gift for drawing. This was encouraged by influential family members. Perhaps most influential was an old WWI veteran uncle who was an excellent watercolourist, and an aunt who was one of the first Fine Art graduates from Rhodes University – she instilled in me a love for both Western and non-Western art forms and literature. And then there were the teachers. The South African sculptor Peter Shütz was a huge influence – I took up sculpture because of him.

Describe your work and influences. I’m drawn to art that evokes feeling and perhaps a sense of existential precariousness. I admire Turner and I’ve always enjoyed expressionism in its myriad forms – hence, my early leaning toward Picasso, Egon Schiele, Käthe Kollwitz, George Grosz, Willem de Kooning and figurative sculptors like Rodin, Marini, Giacometti and Elizabeth Frink. Later influences might include the raw aesthetic of Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer and Jenny Saville. Of course, Africa is also there in the mix. While Rodin and Beuys are perhaps distantly visible in my sculpture, the origin of my painting technique is more obscure. People have pointed to Sydney Nolan as my inspiration but in truth I was using oils in a translucent, subtractive manner long before I came to Australia and encountered Nolan. The technical epiphany came while doing some monoprints at Rhodes University in 1985. I was entranced by the exquisite textural effects resulting from painting directly onto an etching plate and running it through a press. To emulate those effects, I started painting on a very smooth white ground – card or board. Issue 45 - March 2022

Exodus (For Better or For Worse), oil on board, H91.5 x W122 cm. Graham Lang 2020.

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Do you have a set method/routine of working? No hard and fast routine, as my dotage looms – certainly not the ridiculous regimen I imposed on myself during my teaching years where it was not unusual to start the day at 4 a.m., just to keep my art and writing alive while teaching. A typical day now might include a few hours writing first thing in the morning before heading to the studio at around 10 to paint. I no longer sculpt, for health reasons. I’ve always regarded drawing as fundamental. As a younger artist, I put in many hours honing my drawing skills in figure and landscape studies. I routinely went on sketching trips. Much of my earlier work, too, embodied drawing and painting in combination. I was

never precious about keeping sketchbooks and the vast bulk of my preparatory work has been lost or destroyed – something I now regret. These days I rarely draw in the conventional sense, preferring instead to draw directly with paint. My approach is simply to use the

brush as a sort of divining rod, probing an idea until something special happens and then I run with that, bringing whatever conceptual ideas to bear. Art has always tended to lead me rather than me it. My hope is that the results can be enjoyed in the relatively unharnessed way they were created. Pigheaded, oil on board, H91.5 x W 61 cm. Graham Lang 2019.

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Graham Lang Photo by Marika Osmotherly 2006

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What is the philosophy behind your work? Contrary to what some may suppose, given my background, I am not an especially political person. I don’t presume to change the world with my art – I am simply trying, through the mysterious alchemy of paint, brush and brain, to somehow evoke the world as I feel it, and hope that resonates with others. While teaching at university it was necessary to align my art and writing with a research field (in my case, postcolonial studies) but since leaving academia I’ve basically allowed my imagination free reign. Hence, my recent work owes much to raw impulse. More often than not a painting is started with an idea in mind only to see the paint steer me to those far more interesting revelations where memory, intuition and chance randomly collide. Never far from mind is the Surrealist idea of the ‘marvellous’ whereby sudden and seemingly coincidental juxtapositions can activate powerful new associations. The basic conceptual impulse behind my painting is to imagine the seemingly irreconcilable as inseparably together. Contradiction wields a paradoxical power in its capacity to reveal the essential connectedness of things. Hence, my love for strange appositions – humans festooned with fellow-creatures, wandering the wilderness they are biologically part of yet seek to transcend, nemeses locked in the endless tango of life. Even with technique, contradiction prevails in wild, gestural swathes contrasting with moments of minute detail. Such juxtapositions remind us that opposites are, for the most part,

complementary, interconnected and interdependent. They allow us a glimpse into what is hidden, into the workings of a deeper, universal truth. How, for instance, Leonard Cohen’s Take this Waltz led me to lonely lovers dancing in the dark, to Adam and Eve forever searching for their lost Eden, to refugees holding on to the past as they look to the future. All part of one thing, one miraculous gestalt.

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Looking back, what are your career highpoints? My most rewarding accomplishment came not from painting or sculpture – it came when I held my first legitimately published novel in my hands. Writing is the hardest creative medium I’ve ever embraced, and it would take me a month to describe the enormous struggle that led to that moment. As far as art is concerned, I’m not the most collaborative of artists, and yet after four decades of practice it’s the collaborations that seem to stand out, when I joined forces with Ross Woodrow and with Peter Tilley, Trevor Weekes and the late Peter Speight. The exhibitions I had with Ross in Newcastle and Broken Hill pushed me into territories I might never have ventured, and I greatly value what we managed to achieve together. The two sabbaticals I spent at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop were an absolute blast – to be among sculptors from all around the world, working and partying hard. Also, from an old teacher’s perspective, it’s always a joy to see former students achieve success. This last decade in Tasmania has been especially important because for the first time in my life I’ve been able to work fulltime as an artist and writer. I’m happy with the work I’ve done here, and thankful for my hermit existence amid such natural splendour, doing what I love.

What are you working on at present?

I’m working towards another solo show at Despard Gallery, Hobart. My current work has been quite autobiographical – for instance, Matobo, featuring a self-portrait superimposed on a landscape vista of a boyhood haunt in Zimbabwe. The idea was to have the head emerge from the land, as if from a sea, or to suggest transience through transparency – either way, it was an attempt to give form to nostalgia and mortality. Also, there are two unpublished novels gathering dust on the shelf that need rescuing.

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Matobo, Oil on board, H53 x W 63 cm. Graham Lang 2021.

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G A L L E R Y

G R

A H A

M L

A N G Issue 45 - March 2022

Page 24 : Whisper oil on board H91.5 x W61 cm. Graham Lang 2019

Left : Guru oil on card H73 x W 61 cm. Graham Lang 2017.

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An Unbearable Lightness Mixed-media Construction 300 X 300 X 150 cm. approx. Graham Lang 2006.

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An Unbearable Lightness (detail) Graham Lang 2006.

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Adam's Dark Night Oil on board H61 x W 61 cm. Graham Lang 2020.

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Conflict Oil on card H33.5 x W 29.5cm. Graham Lang 2020.

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Force of Nature Oil on board H122 x W91.5cm. Graham Lang 2018.

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Janus Dogman Oil on board H122 x W 91.5 cm. Graham Lang 2017.

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Membrane, oil on card, H51.5 x W77cm. Graham Lang 2021.

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A Fulcrum of Infinities, Oil on canvas, H120 x W 180 cm. Graham Lang 2016.

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Samsara (Take this Waltz) Oil on board H122 x W91.5 cm. Graham Lang 2020.

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www.grahamlang-artist.com

Thousand Yard Stare, Oil on board, H91.5 x W61 cm. Graham Lang 2019.

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P E T

E R

Ti-Tree Flowers All day we worked on a horse fence, ‘till yard-arm sunset now, and as the last wire strands were to wood connected I saw how Ti-tree flowers spurt forth from the maze of their plant, white and pointed pentagrams, mirroring the exact pattern of the quite irrational universe and earth, then home I came to my own dream, reading Macleish’s “Hamlet” and his “Einstein”, all the scheme of dark creation and the maths of love reduced to girls dragged screaming into skin tents with hammered metal at their throats all seeming

like symbols of subjection or delight, and MacLeish on his knees at his younger brother’s thrice-buried grave in Belgium: these things keep the man awake at night and spark the chaos of the stars

R O W

while he stands at windows mirroring black ice; galahs spring forth into the tangled Ti-tree bush; hawks swoop on little things seen clearly in those eyes of theirs, so sharp; At yard-arm sunset I’m amazed how I make this rhyme and most amazed at Einstein contemplating finite time And that beyond it, round as an eye, which theologians contemplate but cannot quite to the mind of the average man relate

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in terms a folk tune could catch, and reaching out my hand I scratch on that more delicate than life, harsh as that Hiroshima watch which told of a time we all have come to hate, and hide from, though we can hide from it no more than from our own end-final tomb. Yard-arm sunset flashes by, against that first circle which is the eye

in those unbroken dynamics which Picasso sharded, cosecant and pi, amid shards of songs I have not made, like ‘Jim Brown from Rooty Hill, the man who was taken to a killer’s trade and then refused to kill’ or ‘Oh! Good Debbie, to the airport come and we’ll say goodbye to Bali’ and other madness made of folk song, like ‘Those Brave Women at Roxby’;

now the sun has come to certain doom, filling gold my little room (though grander than Honneker’s hunting lodge) with little gloom, while I sing ‘They’ve come to South Australia’; heave away my arrogant hearties, all good things endure but a day, but those Ti-tree flowers they leave me rhyming in the middle of winter,

half mad and alone on the alien clay. I’ll come now home to my dreams, where the night is steel, and love is a starry dome. - Peter J Brown. Reprinted out of Visions From the Valley: Poetry of the Hunter Valley, 1960-2000. Ed. Donald Moore, Catchfire Press, Newcastle, 2001.

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GEORGE GITTOES

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LUX MYSTERIUM George Gittoes

The last exhibition I saw before leaving NYC in 1969 was at the Whitney Museum and featured Earth art, with documentation of projects

created outdoors on a large scale or delivered in piles to the gallery floor. I had come to New York the previous year, a bright eyed eighteen year old, hoping to submerge myself in everything that was new in art. I felt like I had stumbled on the movement I had come to find. The following year, 1970, Robert Smithson constructed his environmental art masterpiece, Spiral Jetty, on a shallow lake in Utah. I wanted to make environmental works of this kind as soon as I got home to Australia but got caught up in the very indoor Potts Point terrace rooms of the Yellow House Project with Martin Sharp.

Back then works that are now called installations were called ‘environments and performance art pieces

were called ‘happenings’.

The Yellow House drained all my resources and left me broke. I borrowed an old egg shaped, plywood a caravanette which was like a bed on wheels. It was only to lie in. For standing up there was a small annex on one side and an outdoor gas bottle stove with no refrigeration. I used a Hurricane Lamp for light. The annex became my canvas studio and my launching point to do EARTH ART. I positioned the van on the edge of a sand flat at Bonnyvale in the Royal National Park and designed geometric drawings to scribe into sand with a pointed stick. Under the soft beige colour of the surface sand was black mangrove mud making my drawings stand out. To my delight thousands of blue soldier crabs would make their own moving shapes over mine. I would climb a tree and photograph the work from above before the tide came in and dissolved these large environmental etchings. As the tide crept up, I would photograph the moving golden patterns made by sunlight passing through the ripples of the saltwater surface. Analysing the geometry of the light I made some large paintings with links back to the minimalism that had originally taken me to New York.

Page 38 : Light and Sea Geometry, enamel on canvas, George Gittoes 1973.

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I fell in love with this outdoor work – it fitted with my post Yellow House lifestyle of surfing and snorkelling. I felt a kinship with the Impressionists when they broke away from studio painting and took their canvases out to paint directly from nature. I had some glass prisms which I mounted on a tripod and began mixing the rainbows of spectral sunlight on the moving surface of the ocean rocks during the hour-long window when the tide was going out and the sun was setting in the west. This was the beginning of the abstract colour photographs and films that I called the ‘Rainbow Way’ series. When Australian Centre for Photography opened in Paddington I was invited to show abstract colour slides projected on a continuously turning carousel. These projections were surrounded by the polaroid photographs of fellow Yellow House artist, Jonny Lewis. For Jonny and I this was our first breakthrough into mainstream establishment art after the Yellow House.

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970 (Great Salt Lake, Utah) (photo Gianfranco Gorgoni) .

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Prior to that, however, the Contemporary Art Society had been a venue for my experiments in their annual show. My funniest memory was when I exhibited two works inspired by the show I had seen at the Whitney. In the first I used a plastic welder to package some soil filled with worms, spiders, slaters, ants and weeds around white plaster moulds of my and my mother’s faces. In the second I collected a school of blue bottles from the ocean’s edge and welded them onto a sheet of plastic. A bit like the way meat is now packaged in supermarkets. They looked beautiful, like calligraphy in blue ink. Betty Kelly, bravely, hung them on the gallery wall. I had delivered them on my way to Melbourne to perform with the White Company at the Pram Factory, in a show in which we projected my rainbow film

and slides over the performers as they danced and played instruments. I called Betty to see how the show was going to hear her embarrassed voice telling me that the blue bottles had produced a terrible smell which filled the gallery and caused her to place them on the wall of the outside backyard toilet. Later, when I came to collect them, I learnt that James Gleeson had come to review the show for the Herald and when visiting the toilet had discovered my decomposing blue bottles. Apparently, he loved the colours of putrefaction and insisted Betty put my piece back on display, stink and all!

Visitors had to cover their

noses and mouths with a handkerchief while viewing other works. Left : George Gittoes filming under water, the Rainbow Way images 1975.

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The sparkles on the water led me to seek a way to paint with reflective colour. I had used glitter when mixing it in resin on surfboards. I had taught myself to shape foam and use fibre glass while making surfboards for myself and my mates. I used the same materials to create the puppets for my theatre at the Yellow House. All these wonderful materials were available from Daystar (a plastics supplier on Princes Highway Rockdale) near where I lived. I had used them in my art since I was a teenager. I began doing large canvases using Feast Watson clear lacquer mixed with Daystar Metal Flake to represent the light patterns made on the ocean. I painted over the glitter with fine geometric patterns using, mainly white, enamel paint. The cross hatching resembled the fine lines in Arnhem Land paintings on bark, representing the Rainbow Serpent and Dreamtime mythical figures. I was well aware that polite society and the fine arts establishment would see glitter as vulgar and in poor taste but believed this prejudice could be overcome by the purity of my intension. I decided to enter one of these glitter paintings in the Kings Cross Art Prize and tied it onto my father’s box trailer . On my way into the city my dad told me how he had read about a new gallery called Coventry and suggested we stop and see if the owner, Chandler Coventry, would give an opinion. It was a dark winter’s night, and the gallery lights were on, and the doors open. We, brazenly and uninvited, carried the work in and leaned it up against one of the works on exhibition. Chandler was busy with clients in his office, and I was very nervous about the cheek of interrupting him while doing business. When he emerged with the clients, I expected him to tell us to get out and remove my painting but to my surprise the clients pointed to my work and asked for the price, not knowing I was unrepresented. Chandler turned to them and announced, “It is already sold”. My father was delighted – I had not only gained my first one man show in a classy Sutherland St. Paddington gallery but sold my first work to a serious collector. The resulting show had my glitter paintings upstairs and colour prints of my abstract photo’s downstairs. Both sold well and launched my career in 1975 as an exhibiting artist at 25 years of age.

Around the same time, I showed a Super 8 film I had made and edited to the annual exhibition of the Professional Photographers Association and gained such an enthusiastic response I applied for a grant to Vincent O’Donnell at the film branch of the Arts Council and got $2,000 to upgrade the film from Super 8 to 16mm film. I used the money to purchase a Beaulieu R16, 16 mm camera and taught myself how to use it from the instruction manual that came with it. The most exciting times were driving from Bundeena where I had been filming in my wet suite above and below the ocean, with the 100 ft. rolls of negative film in little aluminium cans, to ATLAB in Artarmon and waiting in my car to have the film processed and printed. The lab would then project my experiments in light in their theatrette treating me with the same respect they would give to a professional like Russel Boyd (Picnic at Hanging Rock). Issue 45 - March 2022

George Gittoes - Rainbow Serpent , Bundeena Beach, Shore break refractions - 1975. Oil paint and metal flakes on canvas. Gift of the artist 1977. The Armidale City Collection.

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I would rush back and the next day, if the sun shining, I would be back out in the water in my wet suite and with my tripod, camera and prisms on the great light adventure that became the film ‘Rainbow Way.’ I could not afford an editor or even the rental of an editing machine so purchased a film splicer and would hold up lengths of film to the light and match the colours and splice them together. Then run up to the local Primary School, where they allowed me to use their 16 mm projector, to view the film as it came together. The soundtrack for the film was recorded underwater with a hydrophone on a long lead attached to an above water reel-toreel tape recorder. I had shown my film work at Alexander Mackey Art College and been introduced to the electronic composer Martin Wesley Smith by my friend the multimedia lecturer, Eric Gidney. Martin lectured at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and had access to a Steinbeck editing deck, enabling him to cut my hydrophone music merged with his electronic effects to make the soundtrack. We entered the film into to the Greater Union Awards at the Sydney Film Festival where it was shown and won a prize.

Left : Underwater looking up to the surface of George Gittoes filming the Rainbow Way images 1975.

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At the reception I went up to the judges and asked them what they thought, and they said, “We were most impressed by the daring way you did not use fades or dissolves between cuts.” I was confused and asked, naively “what are fades and dissolves.”

The film gained a theatrical release with two short

features ‘Love Letters from Teralba Road’ and ‘Singer and Dancer’. The Film Makers Cooperative showed Rainbow Way for a long season in their Darlinghurst Cinema where some of the audience would drop acid and trip on what they decided was the ultimate psychedelic film experience. Zoltan Hegedus, and Achim Leistner , from the Department of Optics of the CSIRO, based at Sydney University, invited me to show my abstract experiments with light and optics to the scientists developing Laser Holograms. This led to a fruitful collaboration where we developed abstract rainbow-coloured holograms together using diffraction gratings. The Holograms gained a lot of publicity when shown firstly at Macquarie Galleries in King Street and then later in Lower Sydney Town Hall as part of an International Photography Expo.

Right : George Gittoes in 1975 age 25 setting out to work off the beach at Bundeena, NSW working on Rainbow Way with tripod and camera in an underwater housing.

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All these strands came together in the vast outdoor TREE shows with Martin Westley Smith and WATT performing the music and Ronaldo Cameron choreographing the dance. The first was in Sydney Harbour for the Ashes of Sydney Festival followed by ‘Sunfish’ at the Dawn Fraser Baths in Balmain. By then Department of Fisheries and CSIRO divers had joined in with underwater dance and lights. These environmental shows grew into huge outdoor events at Wattamolla in the Royal National Park that used film projections onto the rocks, Martin and Ian Fredricks music, lasers, underwater dance with CSIRO divers, community and professional dancers on pontoons, rock ledges, the beach and exploding flares from flying foxes and some scaling nets on the cliff face. Audiences averaging 7,000 happily drove from Sydney through the National Park to participate. It was an early manifestation of what has now become the Vivid Festival of Light around Sydney Harbour and Opera House.

What I had taught myself about filmmaking, while making ‘Rainbow Way’, led to my first documentary film ‘Tracks of the Rainbow’ where I took a group of aboriginal teenagers on a journey up through the Northern Territory as they followed the steps in the story of the Rainbow Serpent. A lot of my prismatic rainbow effects were used in illustrating this journey of youthful discovery. But ‘Tracks of the Rainbow’ ended this period of

my life, as front-line documentary making took control.

Many wars later, including Nicaragua, Philippines, Somalia, Rwanda, Mozambique , Cambodia , Western Sahara , Southern Lebanon, Palestine , Bosnia , Northern Ireland , South Africa, Tibet , Bougainville, Congo, Tribal Belt of Pakistan , Iraq , Afghanistan and Southside Chicago I have returned to shooting my spectral rainbow abstract films and photographs. Returning home from the tension of Afghanistan or Southside Chicago ,to the Werri Beach studio, which I share with my wife Hellen Rose, is like returning to Paradise. We feel incredibly grateful

and lucky to have this sanctuary.

And there is no greater joy, for me, than to immerse again in the other dimensional world of rainbow light. I trot off to the sea rock ledges with a pair of tripods, prisms, and my cameras while Hellen fills the sound waves with her singing and music.

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George Gittoes - Rainbow Way stills 1975. Taken from 35mm Kodak Colour Slides.

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George Gittoes - Rainbow Way stills 1975. Taken from 35mm Kodak Colour Slides.

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George Gittoes - Rainbow Way stills 1975. Taken from 35mm Kodak Colour Slides.

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All life springs from the movement of sunlight over the ocean. When I position my overlapping spectral rainbows on and under the surface of the moving ocean it is like opening a portal to other dimensions. My viewfinder is suddenly filled with dancing flocks of fairy like flying spirits or fiery red demons, processions of pilgrims on their way across Paradise terrain and visions beyond verbal description. I am attaching a link to LUX MYSTERIUM for readers to gain a glimpse of what I’ve been capturing. These are early days and I hope that by the end of 2022 I will have made a full one-hour abstract feature and perhaps Vivid will allow me to project it over the Opera House and Sydney Harbour.

I am using the same 4K Sony Camera which I use when filming documentaries in places like Afghanistan and Southside Chicago. The camera shoots at 24 frames per second but what I am filming manifests so rapidly every frame is unique and different. If you press pause at any point when watching Lux Mysterium you will capture a unique image totally different to the next frame you pause. In 10 seconds, I am making 240 abstract light paintings which adds up to 1,440 per minute. Any one of these frames can be printed, framed, and hung on the wall as an abstract work.

My next investment will be in a high-speed camera that can shoot ten times the number of frames per second. I will be

fascinated to see if I can capture the way the light shapes spring into being. It will be the opposite of how stop frame time lapse photography makes it possible for see a flower open or seedling spiral up from the soil.

I have always believed that while we inhabit a solid material world, we should attempt to access multiple other dimensions. A spirit world crowds around us and if it is possible to create windows into it our lives will be richer for it. I come away from every session of capturing these mysterious dancing lights feeling especially privileged to have witnessed such beauty. - George Gittoes © 2022.

LUX MYSTERIUM VIEW LINK: https://vimeo.com/664097192 Issue 45 - March 2022

George Gittoes - Rainbow Way stills 1975. Taken from 35mm Kodak Colour Slides.

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Light Breaking, enamel on canvas, 9ft X 5ft 6 ins and was a Finalist in the Blake Prize 1974. It was in the Coventry Show. George Gittoes.

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GEORGE GITTOES George Gittoes is a celebrated Australian artist, an internationally acclaimed film producer, director and writer. Gittoes’ work has consistently expressed his social, political and humanitarian concern and the effects of injustice and conflict

"I believe there is a role for contemporary art to challenge, rather than entertain. My work is confronting humanity with the darker side of itself." As an artist Gittoes has received critical acclaim including the Blake Prize for Religious Art (Twice) and Wynn Prize. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of NSW. His films have won many International Awards and in 2015 he was bestowed the Sydney Peace Prize, in

recognition of his life’s work in

contributing to the peace-making process.

Photo by Christine Pike.

Issue 45 - March 2022

H E L L E N

R O S E

OBSCENITY, GENERATION X & FEAR OF SEX Issue 45 - March 2022

OBSCENITY, GENERATION X & FEAR OF SEX. Hellen Rose I dedicate this story to the Sydney musicians, artists, burlesque dancers, women and men, transgender and rent boys who stood up and fought and to Mark Van Krevell who still languishes in prison today who at 17 years old tragically murdered David O Hearn and Lord Mayor Frank

Arkell and to the children of Wollongong from the class of 1975 and onwards.

Young Shaved Pissing Boys- Virgin Prunes - Stink Fist- Fresh Rectum - In My Gash - Machine Gun Fellatio, Discharge, Lubricated Goat, Fatha Fukkka and Boyette - google any of these ‘phrases’ and you could possibly now days end up on some sad and twisted online porn site. These were all band names as in Punk Bands, or the names of Performance Art Works from the 80’s and early 90’s, Generation X. The Punk movement officially happened from the late 70’s into Industrial Punk of the early 90’s. Images of Sid Vicious with a syringe hanging out of his arm, Iggy Pop supposedly taking a crap onstage, Chrissy Amphlette rumoured squatting and pissing mid song, the cream enema shower of the ‘God’ Performance created and performed by me and colleague Mia Mortal in the early 90’s – the disgust, the outrage; none of this was meant to be turning anybody on… the opposite; confrontation, repulsion and shock was the goal.

These were the days just before computers ruled the world, when band posters were handmade, collages of politicians faces, war images from contemporary magazines and newspapers mixed with cheap images from the magazine stands, bottom row ‘porn section’ at the local service station, (internet porn was years from being invented and for some reason ‘titty’ mags were sold at petrol stations, harder porn was sold in ‘Adult Shops’) Posters were a mashup of the evening news where people like Frank Arkell or Justice Yeldham ruled and Cardinal Pell pontificated righteously and the whole horror show of what ‘everyone knew was happening, but nobody told’, was yet to be revealed. Generation X, my generation refused to take it anymore at that time and fought back!

Page 54 : Hellen Rose performing at the Evening Star Hotel with Adrian Gore- Symes and Louis Burdet circa 1987 photo unknown.

Issue 45 - March 2022

Being in our late teens and early 20’s we were and had been fair game for every pervert and predator out there and including in our own homes, most of us were artist runaways from messed up families who rejected their gay sons and daughters or who were aggressively opposed to their sons being in rock n roll bands, unthinkable then for girls to be in rock bands… but that’s another story. Many of us were from state schools in my case or private schools whose hair-raising stories about sports masters or priests and nuns were disbelieved by their parents, we were ‘victim blamed’ with no Grace Tame to get on the news and tell it how it is. Seventeen year old Mark Van Krevell from the southern suburbs went into town and killed Alderman Arkell in 1994 the longest serving Mayor in the country of 50 years and who was up on 29 known counts of paedophilia – Arkell had somehow got off the charges, he worked on every Rotary, Apex and Lions Club and was in predator position where every young boy from a broken home or worse was prey. The adult men of the town had done nothing for 50 years, many were involved themselves. Many of my generation X were the generation that finally ‘outed’ paedophiles, we were the ones who stood up to homophobes, realised the mental illness, childhood PTSD and drug self - medication, resultant from child abuse and were at the forefront of the new wave of feminism that raged and screamed and produced the ‘Angry Woman’ ethos that was worn as a badge of honour. Diamante Gala, Lydia Lunch, Karen Finlay, Annie Sprinkle, Linda Dement, Jasmine Hirst and I were responsible for creating some of the most confronting performance works ever created in this country or overseas. Several of my performance events were raided by police or written about as ‘shocking acts’ when all the while we maintained that the truly shocking acts were being committed by those in power who covered up child abuse and homophobia and who punished those who survived by ‘victim blaming them’, jailing them (which is what happened to me at 15) often resulting in their deaths. ‘Pornography and pornographic terminology was used by this movement to bring ‘it all out’ into the open – no more ‘in the closet hidden abuse’, the wearing of old op shop 50’s underwear and ripped up fisher net stockings as street clothing was part of this – ‘reveal’. Seeing our mother’s ‘liberation’ meant that they were making themselves available for ‘free love’ yet lumbered with the responsibility of bringing up the ‘love children’. Generation X women had abortions. Johnny Rotten sneered and sung in our faces ”She was a

girl from Birmingham, she just had an abortion”, or, “Anger is an energy”. Diamante Gala said, “All men should be anally penetrated so that they know what penetration feels like”. Lydia Lunch said, “Women should be the only ones allowed to use or carry guns” and Yoko Ono said and sang “Woman is the ‘Nigger’ of the World.” The 80’s was a time where it wasn’t safe to walk past a building site without a barrage of men cat calling, wolf whistling, and harassing women and young girls, it was frightening, men would beep their horns when passing you on the street, if you gave them the finger or stood up for yourself you were then confronted by up to 10 angry men calling you a slut and posturing violently. Issue 45 - March 2022

If you were transgender in the 90’s and actually walked around Sydney dressed as you pleased the street abuse was manifold. My girlfriend ‘Holly’ and I would have to run a gauntlet of the Woolloomooloo Bay Hotel every other day when we lived at The Gunnery next door where the bouncers would have to hold back literally 100’s of drunken men screaming and spitting at us through the doors of the hotel. The Gunnery created a float every year in the Gay Mardi Gras which in 1985 was rough and dangerous, Westies would come in especially to ‘gay bash’ and we bashed back.

1994 Performance by Young Shaved Pissing Boys 'Meets Hornidad' at Roland Hump Galleries Crown St Surry Hills.

1994 Performance by Young Shaved Pissing Boys 'Meets

This image has Hellen Rose and Jules Kim. Performance Director Hellen Rose. Participants - Jules Kim, Philip

Hornidad' at Roland Hump Galleries Crown St Surry Hills.

Barnes, Mark Mort, Renee Goodman, Fiona McGregor.

This image has Hellen Rose displaying a page from Janes

Manuel of Heavy Artillery.

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Recently driving along in the taxi’s in downtown Peshawar and

Islamabad,

during

the

Taliban

reclaiming

Afghanistan, in the now progressive Capital, Islamabad, I saw women riding on the back of motorbikes behind, usually, young men. They ride in side saddle, perfectly balanced and wear their diaphanous scarves and clothing, somehow never blowing off, riding like Genii on magic carpets, swanning past under the starry skies the crescent moon reflecting in their

shining, hope filled eyes, their

jewelled shoes twinkling likes sparks flying up off the asphalt. In Peshawar (a 30min drive across the border from Jalalabad) where the rules are stricter, the women ride wearing their burqas, billowing at speed, usually with a young baby in their arms, once I saw a burqa clad woman riding with a new born in her lap, fast asleep, head bobbing in the breeze, you would never see this in Jalalabad,

women are always in burqas in rickshaws or strictly the backseats of cars, you would never see a woman in the front seat.

Right : Peshawar, image by Hellen Rose 2021.

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In George’s book Blood Mystic, he insisted that a picture from my ‘Fresh Pelt’ performance from 1994 be included. It shows a young me wearing a WW2 Helmet with a woman (my co performer) Mia Mortal flung over my shoulder revealing very scanty ‘panties’ actually a bandaged crotch, a tiny ‘cheek’ part of her vagina visible- ‘shocking and vulgar’! We decided to paint over that image in the book when showing it to our friends at the Yellow Houses Peshawar and Jalalabad but then George realised that the drawings he had done of Mapplethorpe with the whip up his arse and the Mine Field Bar with the image of a Cambodian stripper, leg in the air with no nickers on were also scattered through the book- the image of a real person ‘me’ and Mia was infinitely more ‘shocking’ because of my gender and because it was me a ‘real person’ not a fictitious entity portrayed.

CONCLUSION: Human in action art is much more powerful/confronting than painted/drawn image, like committing a crime; similarly, to audiences in the early days of Shakespeare who leapt onto the stage to get involved in ‘killing villains’, who couldn’t tell the difference between physical reference and reality.

With the Tora Bora Circus Cinema, we would take our YHJ Troupe out to remote villages in Tora Bora where many had never seen a film before and didn’t understand that the sound and picture went together.

One day at the YHJ I just got tired of my female translators forced disposition of ‘I’m the perfectly well-mannered and behaved girl’ routine, especially after the time the boys at the YHJ had declared that she was a witch and were trying to convince us that the local Mullah should come and exorcise her, I decided that I would teach her to sneer ‘Billy Idol style’ and say, “why don’t you just fuuuuck off” and “You make me

fuuuuken sick!”. The footage of her trying to manoeuvre her top lip is hilarious. I’m sure she can quietly, all alone, let out the most natural of sneering bile when no one is looking. She took me aside and showed me a short video she had taken on her iPhone just recently, telling me, “Imran Khan is making life easier for women in Islamabad”. She now has a flat here all on her own where she can buy illicit beer on the black market which she loves! The video footage was of herself dressed as a boy riding a motorbike through the crazy streets of Islamabad, with a girl on the back, grinning faces relishing the night breeze rushing past, amazing. She would still never publish the video on her social media sites.

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These days in Islamabad there are many trans women strolling the streets, it reminds me of the late 80’s and 90’s Sydney where the only employment for Trans people was sex work. Another girlfriend of mine who lived at the Gunnery and fellow Co- Founder of the Gunnery, Nadine Stranson was one of the first trans people to work in a government position and lobbied parliament for the change to gender definition on all government forms and buildings which meant that any individual had to be legally recognised by the gender that individual chose, now we have things like ‘identifies as she/her’ at the bottom of emails, I wish Nadine was alive today to see that, but her life was one of a constant battle with the public at large and her own agony at being rejected and abused by that public from the day she was born, she died alone in an apartment in kings cross in the bath, no one has bothered investigating how. I used to often visit the ‘Trannies’ at work selling themselves to the upstanding men of our community, it was strange dangerous and exciting. William Street Stairs, Kings Cross was the location, there were $10 dollar a half hour rooms nearby. The mugs would crawl along in the shadows of their cars assessing the glamorous young bodies. The girls were all dressed to the maximum in the most wonderful outrageous clothing and hair, they shimmered and glittered under the street lights awash with multi colours like Kirchner paintings, hollering hilarious jokes and prancing like Spanish horses, cajoling the ‘mugs’ and sometimes teasing the hell out of me on my visits, some looked at me with spite and I guess now I understand that they saw me as having everything they could never have, even though I was just a teenage runaway who had very little, I was a girl, at least I was accepted by the world as who I am, I

could get a ‘normal’ job as a waitress or in a bar or even a hotel cleaner( so long as I dressed straight). For them every day, every moment was a battle, even an internal battle of doubt wondering if they really were who they thought they were. Holly would jump between being a girl and a boy or a different girl or boy, we’d laugh and say, “I can feel a new character coming on! I’m so excited’! I loved it when she suddenly became a boy with a 3 ft. high Mohawk and Doc Martins then back to a super model girl in long satin dress and hair, She/he was 6ft 2 without heels.

When working as a school teacher over in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney in the early 2000’s, one girl in my class of Samoan decent was

transgender and I walked into a staff room where I found her being yelled at by a very sour little English teacher virtually spitting into her face, “you are a boy, do you understand, you are a boy, stop wearing those shoes and nails!”. I quietly asked the student to leave where I then read the ‘teacher’ the riot act and threatened to have Nadine and friends pay a visit to the Department of Education and the School principal – that teacher was moved on. I remember years later driving in that neighbourhood when I hear Ms Rose! Ms Rose! And there was my beautiful Samoan student waiving to me, she ran across the street and grabbed my hand through the car window, her smile said everything, she kept smiling and waving as I drove off, I can still see an image of her in the rear vision mirror of my car, still standing and waving.

Issue 45 - March 2022

1994

1st

Performance

Young

Shaved Pissing Boys 'Meets Hornidad' at Roland Hump Galleries Crown St Surry Hills. This image - Hellen Rose.

Performance Director Hellen Rose. Participants - Jules Kim, Philip Barnes, Mark Mort, Renee Goodman, Fiona McGregor.

Issue 45 - March 2022

It’s actually a very weird sensation arriving back in Australia from Central Asia, where the exposure of female flesh is not a sensational shock, unless your Elle McPherson in a bikini, high heels and gold chains strolling the shop fronts of Bondi beach. After wearing the bourka and scarves for, at times up to a year, I find I go through a kind of psychological ‘mini self-conscious moment’ usually at Dubai Airport or Abu Dhabi, ready to head back to the west either Australia, LA or Chicago. Its about how ‘others’ look at me when I have taken my scarf off and am cruising around in jeans and a T shirt – virtually like being naked to the strict Muslim world.

The first time I met up with George in Afghanistan I sat in the waiting area at Dubai awaiting the flight to Kabul. It was winter, and I had on my over the knee-high heal leather boots, a wool body-hugging dress – not a mini, with a long black stretch cardigan to the ankle – all in black. As I sat there I started to notice some of the Afghan men opposite staring at me and one in particular really had it in for me, sneering and making lewd faces. I ignored him and gave him my ‘dead eyes’ look. Boarding the plane he made his way up the stairs behind me and grabbed my bottom just as I stepped onto the plane, I turned on him and yelled at him violently and kicked him hard so that he nearly fell down the stairs backwards, people pretended to ignore what happened but the air hostesses grabbed me and protected me putting me in first class while the embarrassed little man was ushered down the back. As the plane got close to landing I changed into my Afghan clothes ready to meet George at the airport – in the ground transport bus the creepy little man appeared again but didn’t come near me, instead satisfied himself by grabbing his crotch as a way of further insulting me. Finally, I walk through the arrivals area at Kabul Airport and there is George, it was hard to recognise him at first, I thought he was a Shinwari War Lord, dressed in Turban and traditional Khamis Shalwar, he was flanked by two Western clothed toughs who turned out to be the famous Afghan movies stars, Marshooq Shadab and Amir Sha Talash, both had large bunches of roses for me and were dressed to the max; aviators, 5 o’clock shadow whiskers and ragged cut jeans. George suddenly grabbed me and kissed me as the people around us gasped but secretly loved the display of forbidden romance – Marshooq and Amir Shar are as tough in real life as they are in the movies and certainly nobody messes with George Gittoes in the field, there wasn’t a soul that gave us any trouble, suddenly in the corner of my eye I saw the creepy little man running as fast as he could out of the airport.

Issue 45 - March 2022

‘Holly', Transgender Super Diva and Super Human attending the performance event and filming 'Young Shaved Pissing Boys Meets Hornidad'. 1994.

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Works like ‘The Haunted Burqa’ series of performances, writings and films are a direct catharsis of my personal experiences. They are healing experiences. A friend of mine who advises the Government regarding policy on adult survivors of child abuse, asked me in particular about the Haunted Burqa at the Surf Shack Show, George and I put on in the neighbour’s old fibro shack that had been lived in by a group of local surfies before it was being demolished back in 2020 during the early COVID phase. “How did you feel Hellen, personally, wearing the Burqa around your own street at Werri?” My performance involved my wearing a Burqa and ‘Haunting’ the house and the area of the beach and road outside. I often see women in dirty and ragged Burqa’s begging in the middle of the roads in Kabul and Jalalabad. I told her that in that context, the burqa made me feel ‘invisible’ even though it caused such controversy wearing it in the site specific contradiction of Werri Beach and how in one house there are happy families and nurtured children but right next door the children are living in a secret hell and nobody can ‘see’ or ‘hear’ you yet somehow like the burqa wearing woman you are a target over and over, someone to be repulsed by, hated a figure of ridicule. The burqa also becomes a symbol of a shroud of false shame and feeling ‘outside’ of ‘normalcy’ being ‘rejected’ ‘disbelieved’. I remember a western journalist whom we had given safe passage to visit us at the Yellow House once asking me with disgust, “ how could you wear the burqa, how could you do it as a ‘free’ western woman?” I replied, “because I can leave and take it off”.

This month of February my film titled The Haunted Burqa was selected for Best Short Experimental Documentary in the International Berlin Art Film Awards as well as Best Short Documentary and Best Experimental Documentary, Best Original Soundtrack in the International Independent Short Film Festival Los Angeles. The Haunted Burqa developed as an extension of my Diary a place where fantasy and reality started to merge through the long hot days of Jalalabad summers or the snowy ice of Kabul winters, a way of explaining the many strange and magical occurrences that seem illogical, fantasies or illusions, life exaggerated and distorted developed in my underground chambers, my bomb shelter studio. I have decided to publish these stories as musical narratives. Episode 1, The White Burqa is currently on the Artist Profile online magazine site here :

https://artistprofile.com.au/hellen-rose-haunted-burqa/?fbclid=IwAR16u3EjlZpQRiajxZVRaLDfRcDlYMrGGJa2Gt05tGADLqVTsX1oBZiELME

Haunted Burqa performance at The Surf Shack Show Aug-Sep 2020. Werri Beach, NSW. Hellen Rose photographed by George Gittoes.

Issue 45 - November 2022

Left : Young Shaved Pissing Boys playing live at the Union Hotel Pyrmont 1995. Hellen Rose Guitar and Vocals, Jules Kim Drums and Back Up Vocals

Page 67 : Hellen Rose performing at the Evening Star Hotel with Adrian GoreSymes and Louis Burdet circa 1987 photo unknown. Hand made Metal outfit created by wearer from a sheet of insulation iron torn from the walls of The Gunnery.

Issue 45 - March 2022

HELLEN ROSE Singer and performer. Awarded BVA Hons, M Teach, Grad Cert Arts and NSW Premier's Award 2014. Manager/Co founder The Yellow House Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Rose is Co Producer and Music Director at Gittoes Films Pty. Ltd. George Gittoes and Hellen Rose make documentary films, often in and about war zones.

Their latest film White Light

deals with the gun

violence that's rampant in the Englewood neighbourhood of South Side Chicago, USA.

Hellen Rose’s short film "Haunted Burqa," has been selected as a semi finalist for Best Short in the Berlin International Art Film Festival 2022

Issue 45 - March 2022

E R

BEATING WINGS

C W E R K H

O V E

BEATING WINGS Today I will again beat the drum. This boom boom instrument, as in comparing notes. How it happened and came to pass, it’s nearly a year ago a timeless acquisition Xochipilli* and Tlazoleotl*, deities of Mexico, birthplace of eternal markings. I should tattoo you on my arm, my chest, now that Yoga has come to stay, and you are also there, I will be your guard to watch over you, that no harm will come to you. In the very essence of beating wings, cooling our feverish foreheads. Man it’s happening our lives are closing in! The need to know you better, makes these probes more urgently (necessary). As a written document, signed and sealed, and sent on its way. All we know, contained in these voluminous descriptions - bodily functions and spiritual atonements. What we have heard, we will now see before us. To embody our thoughts, keep the dialogue going, and so another day unravels.

* Xōchipilli is the god of art, games, dance, flowers, and song in Aztec mythology. * Tlazoleotl Aztec Goddess of vice, purification.

BRAD FRANKS

Issue 45 - March 2022

BRAD FRANKS Artist and photographer Brad Franks lives and works in rural Denman NSW. From 1974 to the present

he has been

involved in teaching,

presenting, exhibiting, administering and other activities within the arts. Since 2008 to 2018 Franks has been employed as the Director of the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, NSW., curating and overseeing major

exhibitions and publications. His work has been published in various books, magazines and journals including: Muswellbrook & Districts Camera Club: 50 Years by Roger Skinner, MDCC 2018. Snaps Crack Pop! By John Foy & Jim Paton, Past Present Future Art 2018.

Page 70 : Old Pool Hall, Muswellbrook 2014 - Brad Franks. Right : Old House, Denman 2019 - Brad Franks.

Issue 45 - March 2022

The Professors, Union Theatre, Sydney University, 1978 - Brad Franks.

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BRAD FRANKS - INTERVIEW I was born in Melbourne but spent most of my childhood and teenage years in the Parramatta suburb of Carlingford essentially northwest of Sydney. It was still a largely semi-rural area in the 1960’s and as suburbs go pretty good. I was able to attend James Ruse Agricultural High School until my family relocated to Gladesville and I finished high school at the progressive Chiron College, then under the patronage of Barbara and Charles Blackman and located in Birchgrove by the harbour. These two rather diverse educational experiences certainly provided me with an academically privileged education, an introduction to the arts and in the case of Chiron College a taste of the inner city and its possibilities. My high school art teachers included David Hull and James Willebrant and I wanted to be an artist from around the age of twelve (I also desired to fly).

After leaving high school I took a job working at the State Library of NSW in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. It was here that I developed a passion for collecting and was first introduced to the concept of curation, which was eventually to lead to my fifteen years with the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre. After the Mitchell Library I attended the Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education School of Art in Sydney for three years prior to first exhibiting photographic works in a group exhibition entitled Sly Pictures as part of the Studio Access Project for the 5 th Festival of Sydney in 1981. From this point on until its closure in the mid 90’s I exhibited regularly as part of the stable of artists associated with the NSG (Nicholson Street Gallery) in East Balmain one of Sydney’s earlier artist run spaces. In 1984 I left Sydney permanently and came to the Upper Hunter living in a number of locals before settling down at Glen Gallic in the Martindale Valley nestled in against Wollemi National Park. Over time I have exhibited art work in a wide variety of mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking and installations however the medium which has remained constant has always been photography. Issue 45 - March 2022

I first fell in love with photography at high school. James Ruse had a video film lab and a film society while Chiron College a darkroom and it is a great advantage to young students to have such facilities available and teachers who encouraged their use. In my first year at high school my English teacher Peter Franey, an amateur photographer, showed the class his colour slides from a Central Australia trip. The slideshow still being a great Australian tradition at this point in time. They were a revelation to me: extraordinary colour of red deserts and blue cloudless skies, the use of wide angle lenses’ brilliant framing and composition. I had an uncle and aunt who were keen slide photographers and film shooters but it was mostly family stuff. Peter Franey’s photographs were art. Franey went on two years later to shoot the debut album cover photos for another James Ruse English/History teacher, the folk and country singer composer Mike McClellan. It was a real world example of photography being both art and a possible profession even for a “weekend” photographer. I began experimenting with my parents old cameras including a Kodak ‘620’ bellows that my father had obtained from a U.S. soldier during WWII. Concurrently I became obsessed with film making during these years shooting standard and super eight and

collaging “found” sixteen ml. news and advertising footage (one of the advantages of living in Carlingford was that the Channel 7 studios were close by at Epping).

Eventually still photography won out and it was through the discovery of the work of Man Ray (1890-1976). The great Dadaist and Surrealist photographer’s work peppered the books on surrealism that my friends and I studied incessantly. I came to realise that Man Ray’s work was both art and photo-journalism, that he could produce a Rayograph (a photographic image made without a camera) on the one hand and a portrait of a fellow artist on the other. His best portraits and his work in fashion photography combine both strands such as his famous solarised portraits of Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Dora Marr, Lee Miller, Kiki de Montparnasse, Meret Oppenheim and Pablo Picasso. When I got to art school in the late 1970’s it was photography that I chose to major in.

Issue 45 - March 2022

Liz Croll, Showground Sydney, 1978 - Brad Franks.

Narelle Kearns, Nickson St. Surry Hills, 1979 - Brad Franks.

Issue 45 - March 2022

My photographic work has changed over the years – I hope like all artists that it has improved, become deeper and technically better. Of course this is not always the case but with photography one of the constant challenges that has helped keep the artist on their toes had been the constant developments in the tools. The single greatest event during my practice being the move from the darkroom to the computer. Personally while I loved the magic of the darkroom I have been happy to say goodbye to the poisonous chemicals involved. This change has continued to evolve with the expansion of the internet and the improvement to mobile phone cameras. It has given almost everyone the opportunity and platform to display their work from snapshots to films.

My own work began as almost universally b/w inspired not only by Man Ray but by some of my international heroes of the photographic image like Diane Arbus, Anton Corbijn, Robert Frank, Ralph Gibson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Duane Michals, Ed Ruscha, Pennie Smith; and the great Australian photographers Olive Cotton, Max Dupain, Frank Hurley and Grant Mudford. Later I was influenced to work in colour by the great U.S. photographer William Eggleston. The other great formative influence is one’s contemporaries and fellow traveller’s, in my case fellow students from art school such as Jude Kuepper (aka Judi Dransfield), Brent Legge, Kathleen O’Brien, Geoffrey Perrin, Paul White and other photographers met along the way such as Caroline Gutt and Bruce Tindale. Working at the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre from 2003 to 2018, long-time home of the Muswellbrook Photographic Award and the holder of a large photographic collection has also exposed me to a vast amount of contemporary Australian photography but probably more importantly, after first moving to the Upper Hunter I became a member of the Muswellbrook and Districts Camera Club. This was a wonderful inspiration and a way of keeping in touch with photography while living in a rural area. Many influential photographers were met through the Club’s activities but in particular the work and enthusiasm of local members John Hodges and Roger Skinner were a constant source of joy and an inspiration.

Issue 45 - March 2022

Johnny Kannis on stage 1979 - Brad Franks.

Jenny Keir, Jersey Road, Paddington 1979 - Brad Franks.

Issue 45 - March 2022

I have come to view my own work as stills from the film of my life. When a photograph is successful it attains a universality that finds wide appeal with the audience. While I still photograph people I have become more and more interested and inspired by landscape. Documenting and interpreting the Upper Hunter has become an obsession although again these photos work best when they capture something that sparks a recognition in the viewer, regardless as to whether they have ever physically visited the place depicted. I believe that I am often searching in my work for the images that are locked inside my own memory and if found these are the images that resound to other people because I think we all carry the same shared experiences - the same images within us. I think you can find these images in your own backyard.

To quote the great British landscape photographer Charlie Waite “I have often wondered what induces me to stop at a particular place and to realise that it is a photograph. …a feeling of closeness of the perfect and the decayed in the landscape; an appreciation of how the earth’s surface relates to and is influenced by the sky above it; …The camera itself becomes no more than a channel along which I and the landscape can pass, …communicating.” That said I always carry some form of camera with me where ever I go because you can find your own backyard anywhere. Most recently this camera may simply be an iPhone (of course these days the mobile phone is more like a camera with a phone attached).

Like all art forms photography requires constant attention. By this I mean looking, looking at the work of other artists and constantly being aware of the moment when an image appears. This might be in physical world or the internal world. Either way it requires constant diligence to the imagination, to the senses, to the possibilities of seeing.

Issue 45 - March 2022

Technically I like to rub my ambitions against the paucity of my skills. To do this I will often experiment with cameras that have varying degrees of limitations such as antique box cameras or no camera at all. In recent years I have restricted myself to the Instagram although lately I have begun to experiment again with film cameras. In closing I strongly recommend the following books The Photographer’s Eye by John Szarkowski 1966, On Photography by Susan Sontag 1977 and The Photograph as Contemporary Art by Charlotte Cotton 2004. I am currently looking to my retrospective exhibition which will feature photography along with a variety of other art forms. The exhibition is scheduled to open on Saturday 3rd September 2022 and run until 22nd October 2022 at the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, Muswellbrook NSW. - Brad Franks © 2022.

Right : Brad Franks, Waverley Cemetery, Bronte 2022. photo by Sally Bassett.

Issue 45 - March 2022

P H O T O G R A P H

G A L L E R Y Issue 45 - March 2022

B R

A D

F R A

N K S Page 80 : Rombo Hill, Martindale 2018 - Brad Franks.

Above : The Elbow Martindale Valley, 2015 - Brad Franks.

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Box Ridge, Martindale 2015 - Brad Franks.

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House, White Cliffs 2013 - Brad Franks.

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Martindale 2013 - Brad Franks.

Mt Manooka, Manooka Park, Glen Gallic 2012 - Brad Franks.

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Mt Yengo, Finchley 2006 - Brad Franks.

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Reflected Tree Glen Gallic 2019 - Brad Franks

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B R

A D

F R A

N K

Golf Ball Broadmeadow

NSW 2018 - Brad Franks.

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Cairn Culloden Scotland UK 2017 - Brad Franks.

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Cloud Study ,Glen Gallic 2014 - Brad Franks.

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Loch Ness Urquhart Castle, Scotland UK 2017 - Brad Franks.

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County Donegal, Ireland 2017 - Brad Franks.

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Newcastle Beach Newcastle, NSW 2019 - Brad Franks.

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Right : The Rocks, Sydney 2018 - Brad Franks.

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TRACIE BERTRAM Issue 45 - March 2022

TRACIE BERTRAM Based in Newcastle, NSW, Tracie Bertram has been a practicing

artist for over thirty years. Bertram works mainly as a ceramicist, exploring clay with colour, texture and forms inspired by nature. Creating hand built forms for exhibitions and commissions, and discovering a passion for making pieces for the garden.

Handmade mosaic tiles have become a feature of these outdoor sculptures.

Tracie has been exhibiting regularly and has

taken on many

public and private commissions. For the past twenty years she has taught Ceramics and Design at TAFE in Newcastle, NSW.

Page 94 : Flame 2012 – ceramic 50 x 30 x 30 cm. Tracie Bertram. Photo: Lauren O’Brien. Right : Convolution 2021 – ceramic 62 x 28 x 28cm. Tracie Bertram. Photo: Lauren O’Brien

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TRACIE BERTRAM - INTERVIEW Making stuff has always been my thing – a way to make sense of the world, a dreamy distraction and a physical work-out. Looking back, as a kid I was always compelled to create my own little studio space wherever we lived - in my bedroom, the backyard or a garden shed. A cubby/pseudo science lab where I could experiment with different materials and literally make mud-pies, with no-one telling me what to do!! Now I’m lucky enough to live in a beautiful rainforest hinterland area north of Newcastle, and have a proper studio with a few pieces of real equipment - not too many though – my hands are my main tools! Clay is such a beguiling medium – so seductive, immediate, and so damned difficult at the same time! It’s both 2D and 3D, functional and sculptural, serious and playful. I feel like I’m just scratching the surface (yes, pun intended) and there will never be enough time to fully explore this complex medium.

I have a BAVA and MFA both from the University of Newcastle, NSW. I really got into clay during my BAVA under the enthusiastic encouragement of my ceramics lecturer - the late, great Ken Leveson. Studying art in the mid to late eighties was a fantastic experience with unlimited art supplies, access to well appointed studios, lots of community arts projects happening and non-stop parties! It was an exciting time when ceramics was breaking away from the Brown Pottery mould and finding its place as a valid and subversive art form. Sadly, the University of Newcastle shut its Fine Arts department in 2020 – another casualty of the recent education sector cuts. Page 96 : Tanglewood 2007 -ceramic, 130 x 90 x 90cm. Tracie Bertram. Photo: Jenny King.

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My work has always been a series of technical and aesthetic experiments – how can I make the clay stand up by itself in that shape? How can I make this sculpture REALLY BIG without it collapsing? Stuff like that. I’ve always been fascinated by sculptural monuments from the Ancient world – especially Ancient Egypt. I was lucky enough to travel there when I was 17 with my Mum and it really blew my mind seeing the truly awe-inspiring sculpture and temples in real life. Favorite artists who have inspired me include Niki De Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely and Antoni Gaudi, all who worked on a monumental scale. Relationships between humans and animals, nature, music, literature, politics and every-day life also infiltrate my work.

I have been teaching ceramics and design at the Hunter TAFE for the last 25 years, so am constantly trying out new ways of working to help my students. This can sometimes distract my natural creative flow and force me in other directions, which can be both good and bad. Consequently I have worked in quite a few different techniques and genres, never really being fully satisfied with the same “look”. Overall though, there are recurring themes of abstracted organic form and texture, referencing animals, plants, the microscopic world, and landscapes (animal, vegetable, mineral). Colour is a language that I love using in the most effective way possible. Evoking a connection between content, form, colour, light and shadow are my main concerns, but I’m also looking for a sense of fun and play in my work.

Soon after finishing my BAVA in 1988 I started a slip-casting business called Trickdog Ceramics. It began with a few requests to make cat and dog bowls for people’s pets, and it quickly evolved into a hectic, full-time occupation where I was designing, hand-making and decorating hundreds of ceramic items every month for markets, shops and galleries, as well as taking on large corporate gift commissions. There were also a few pretty whacky private commissions for dinnerware and garden sculpture too, plus regular solo and group exhibitions.

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Galaxy Plates – detail: ceramic various sizes Photo: Tracie Bertram.

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After about 8 years of constant production I developed RSI in my wrists. I was at a crossroads and needed to either to employ and train people to help me keep up with the demand or take a break from production. I chose the latter, and started teaching Ceramics at the Newcastle Art School Hunter St TAFE. After a couple of years I was offered a fulltime position at Newcastle TAFE Design Centre and worked there for about 20 years.

In 2007 I completed my MFA at UoN and produced a body of work specifically designed for the Hunter Region Botanic Gardens Cacti and Succulent Garden, at Heatherbrae, NSW. I first visited this garden a few years previously, and was in awe of their amazing collection of exotic cacti and succulents, having been a collector of these plants for many years myself. The amazing variety of shapes, colours, growth habits

and sheer scale of the plants gave me the inspiration for this group of large sculptures that were installed in amongst the garden and stayed there for about 12 months due to popular demand. Right : Zygote, 2007 - ceramic shell with hand-made tiles, 160 x 60 x 52 cm. Photo: Ian Hobbs

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These works were mostly hand-built hollow forms using paper-clay, with hand-made mosaic tiles covering their surfaces. I chose mosaic as I wanted a more pronounced and segmented surface to emulate the unique features of the catci and succulents plant forms. I also used mirror and coloured glass to reflect light and add some bling!

Right : Core 2007-ceramic and mirror 94 x 54 x54cm. Photo: Jenny King

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Making the tiles became a bit of an obsession and a few years later led me to working on a series of large public artworks in Blacktown NSW in 2010. This commission consisted of 2 x 10 m long mosaic wall murals and 3 splash ponds/fountains designed for kids to play in. This was a large and complicated commission, and I learnt much from this experience. I collaborated with the project coordinator and fellow artist Nerine Martini (sadly no longer with us) who created the bronze sculptures and concrete murals for the project, and local Darug artist Robyn Coughlan whose designs were licensed to us to use in our artworks. Twelve months and thousands of hand made tiles later the Blacktown Village Green or Warami Ngallawah Mittigar, translated as “Come friend, sit down” was complete. I haven’t been back to Blacktown for many years but I hear that the artwork is still very much intact and well used and loved by the locals.

In more recent times I’ve been interested in opening up the three-dimensional form, for both aesthetic and practical reasons. Negative space is so powerful; it’s the space that we inhabit. I love being able to see through a sculpture - it’s like looking into a forest and being able to mentally “walk through”, take time to see the details from multiple angles. Much of my work now is connected to that idea. I’m surrounded by forest at home and am drawn to recreating the sense of being immersed into a world of the macro and the micro. Small details in the bush can provide the seed for a larger work, and large forms or landscapes can be expressed as tiny details. The possibilities are endless.

Now days, without regular access to a large kiln my work has shrunk in scale, which I do find limiting. I often have to chop bits off my work in order for it to fit in the smaller kiln I’m using at the moment. I thought maybe I was ready to downsize but evidently not!

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Wall detail - handmade tiles. Photo: Jenny Pollak

Blacktown Village Green - left wall 2010- handmade tiles 10m x 90cm. approx.

Photo: Jenny Pollak

Blacktown Village Green – Ponds install 2010 – handmade tiles.

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Blacktown Village Green Ponds 2010 – sizes vary from 2.4m to 1m. Photo: Jenny Pollak

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Covid 19 has obviously had a devastating effect on the art world and opportunities to regularly exhibit and sell work have become less and less for many artists. Sadly just being able to meet and collaborate with other creatives has taken a dive during the Great Damn Panic! Isolation is an issue for many creative people at the best of times, and is exacerbated even more now. Social media can help with this but I think it also creates new problems for artists……

My most recent group of work was for an exhibition with 3 friends titled Earth Works at Back to Back Galleries in Newcastle. This show opened just before the Lockdown – sadly not many visitors were able to attend. My work took on a very tangled and convoluted form – it felt like I was literally going around in circles!

I’m not exactly sure where to go next with my art practice but I am currently enjoying the freedom of no exhibition deadlines or pressure to perform like a Trickdog! - Tracie Bertram © 2022. Relic 2021 - ceramic 40 x 30 x 30cm. Photo: Lauren O’Brien

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T R A

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Page : 106 Clash Exhibition 2010

Newcastle Region Gallery

Shapeshifter.

R A M

L to R: Zygote, Ariocarpus,

All ceramic, varying sizes. Photo: Tobias Spitzer.

Left : Bubbles II 2012 Ceramic 50 x 50 x 30cm. Photo: Lauren O’Brien.

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Bloom 2007 - ceramic with mirror 110 x 80 x 50cm,

Photo: Ian Hobbs

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Havelock 2007 - ceramic with handmade tiles 160 x 110 x 50cm. Photo: Jenny King

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Succulent Tree, 2007 – ceramic, 155 x 60 x 50cm. Tracie Bertram.

Photo: Jenny King.

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Euphorobia, 2007 ceramic with handmade & glass tiles 170 x 75 x 70cm. Tracie Bertram. Photo: Jenny King

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Ceramica Botanica 2021 Ceramic 42 x 30 x 30cm. Tracie Bertram. Photo: Lauren O’Brien

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T R A

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T R A

Fling 2021 Ceramic 32 x 20 x 20cm. Tracie Bertram. Photo: Lauren O’Brien

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Pink Poodle Puffs, 2022, ceramic 35 x 18 x 15cm. Tracie Bertram.

Photo: Lauren O’Brien

Black and White 2022 – ceramic 38 x 26 x 12cm each, Tracie Bertram. Photo: Lauren O’Brien

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Isle Of White Ceramic 40 x 30 x 30cm. Photo: Tracie Bertram.

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Bubbles I, 2007 Ceramic and mirror . Tracie Bertram. Photo: Lauren O’Brien

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https://traciebertram.wixsite.com/mysite

Left : Breathe, 2019 – ceramic 60 x 30 x 30cm. Photo: Tracie Bertram.

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R E

E S E

GEMS Moon, a wild crystal embedded in the sea of night Star, a rough diamond outside my orbit of time

N O

Galaxy, a milky wilderness spirals

around its centre

Cosmos,

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KOAN Cross-legged on the footpath outside the clinic Kirby

consults silence.

“You remind me of Gautama,” I say. “No I’m not!” “Of course you’re not.” He watches the ballet of a Dandelion Clock caught

in the currents of a breeze.

“Before time

dandelions were inevitable,” he muses.

“Are you Bodhidharma?” Cross-legged on the footpath outside the clinic Kirby

becomes silence.

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ANOMALY

R E

A firefly burns

and leaves

in air

E N

shapes the nature of its being somewhere outside a flower

a humming bee

honey things

T H

attends to

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CHANGING FORMS (i.m. Glenn Henderson & Bill Iden) A fallen river tree floated away from land

fat with loam

and green.

Shaped by hands of the moon (which are the colours of stars and as strong as stone) it turned into a skeleton. Tides that rise and wane and rise again flung it onto shores that shift and change like wind around a sculptor’s hands. On the shore an aged man gazed at the ripples in changing forms he sighed for worlds he’d never know, and cried “I go to join Ageless sea!” Reese North © 2022 Issue 45 - March 2022

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Atmosfear by Seigar

This collage series explores the concepts of cancel culture, censorship, control, propaganda, and the manipulation of the media and social networks. The intention is to show, expose and denounce these dangerous issues, and the need to fight for freedom. The inspiration can be found in the situations people

are experiencing in their everyday life and the vigilant processes of personal data. Pop images of hard oppressions and clear statements were used to reinforce the atmosphere of fear. Stop it! Everybody should live with no fear. The world is in our hands. Together and free.

Atmosfear Full Gallery: flickr.com/photos/theblueheartbeat/albums/72177720296326467 Page 122 : Atmosfear, collage series by Seigar 2022.

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Atmosfear, collage series by Seigar 2022.

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SEIGAR Biography: Seigar is a passionate travel, street, social-documentary, conceptual, and pop visual artist based in Tenerife, Spain. He feels obsessed with the pop culture that he shows in his works. He has explored photography, video art, writing, and collage. He writes for some media. His main inspirations are traveling and people. His aim as an artist is to tell tales with his camera, creating a continuous storyline from his trips and encounters. He is a philologist and works as a secondary school teacher. He is a self-taught visual artist, though he has done a two years course in advanced photography and one in cinema and television. He has participated in several international exhibitions, festivals, and cultural events. His works have been featured in numerous publications worldwide. His last interests are documenting identity and spreading the message of the Latin phrase: Carpe Diem. Recently, he received the Rafael Ramos García International Photography Award. He shares art and culture in his blog: Pop Sonality.

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Page 40 and above : Atmosfear, collage series by Seigar 2022. Issue 45 - March 2022

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