The Melbourne Review August 2013 by The Melbourne Review

THE MELBOURNE

REVIEW ISSUE 22 AUGUST 2013

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MELANCHOLIA AND MEMORIES Photographic artist Bronek Kozka shows new work at MARS Gallery

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4 The Melbourne Review August 2013

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Tali Lavi meets Professor Fiona Stanley as she prepares for the 2013 Festival of Ideas

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THE MEANING OF CHINA

IMMUNITY

VALE BETTY BURSTALL

Michael Wesley provides a broader context to understand our present and future relationship

Professor Avni Sali on the many ways lifestyle can boost the body’s immune systems

Daniel Nellor looks back fondly on the rich cultural legacy of the founder of La Mama

INSIDE

Disclaimer Opinions published in this paper are not necessarily those of the editor nor the publisher. All material subject to copyright.

Profile 06 Politics 08 Business 12 Health & Research 16 Columnists 20 Books 24

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A-Z OF CONTEMPORARY ART

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The best venues for parties and functions as we head towards spring and the end of the year

review

Performing Arts 26 Visual Arts 32 Food.Wine.Coffee 39 Venue Guide 44 FORM 51

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WELCOME CONTRIBUTORS

OUR COVER Bronek Kozka, Ritual, 2013 Digital video installation, dimensions variable See page 33.

WIN!

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Wendy Cavenett

Noè Harsel

Peter Singline

William Charles

David Knight

Anna Snoekstra

Ashley Crawford

Stephen Koukoulas

David Sornig

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Michael Wesley

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6 The Melbourne Review August 2013

PROFILE

Fiona Stanley

Advocate for a healthier society; Director of the 2013 Festival of Ideas at the University of Melbourne by Tali Lavi

here is a gift for Melbournians currently being laboriously constructed. Not a statue, edifice or highway. Being of a more ephemeral nature it is, in some ways, the very antithesis of these things. The University of Melbourne’s third Festival of Ideas is being orchestrated from the Gatekeeper’s Cottage. Perched on the periphery of its Parkville campus it is a lovely gabled building of the type one imagines might have housed a parish priest in nineteenth century rural England. Inside it sits Professor Fiona Stanley, an inspired choice for this year’s director. As she explains it, “what the concept is... is Melbourne University’s gift to the City of Melbourne to really challenge and debate the things that are affecting us a society.” These ‘things that are affecting us’ happen to be those with which she has been tirelessly involved for several decades. Stanley is formidable on paper: achievements in maternal child health, Indigenous health, epidemiological innovations, her over three hundred and fifty-strong publication history. In researching her life, her Australian of the Year accolade of 2003 seems perversely minor compared with the rest of her accomplishments. This is not a woman who rests upon her laurels, but neither does she have the cocksure nature that other highly proficient people sometimes acquire. A poise and graciousness exists alongside an uncompromising honesty about things that matter to her. She is, as she says, ‘deadly serious’ about the present and future of this planet. Words and phrases that have been watered down or distorted in mainstream discourse are reclaimed with potency, inquisitiveness and insight: climate change, obesity, Indigenous respect and health, the scourge of alcohol amongst our young. She is a natural advocate. Today her skills of promotion are focused on the Festival of Ideas which is themed around projects close to her heart: science, society, self and wellbeing. The festival, which is completely gratis, distinguishes itself from the Festival of Dangerous Ideas which takes place at the Sydney Opera House and has become known for its glamorous keynote speakers flown in from overseas; think Slavoj Žižek, Germaine Greer, the late Christopher Hitchens, to name

a few. It is evident that Stanley is not attracted to hype; although she is attracted to thinkers. She keeps bringing the festival back to its grass roots, referring to the team of people involved in its planning, including ‘a lot of young people’ who preferred to have a more actively involving platform rather than ‘just a talkfest’.

Words and phrases that have been watered down or distorted in mainstream discourse are reclaimed with potency, inquisitiveness and insight: climate change, obesity, Indigenous respect and health, the scourge of alcohol amongst our young.” The festival is to be streamed online, inviting tweets which will be edited by students to then “go to a question and answer session and debate... At the end of each day we hope that there would be a set of major ideas almost like a manifesto and on the last day [the ‘Democracy Day’] these will be debated. What do these ideas mean for us? And what are we going to do about them?” From this woman of science, these seeming questions, which are actually clarion calls for public engagement and civic empowerment sans the hyperbole and mindless jargon that has become everyday currency, are utterly convincing. It is critical to Stanley that people have a sense of their own control and potency. She believes that many people “don’t need their minds changed but what they need to do is to realise that they have the power to change things”, to realign where society seems to be headed. “You know many of us feel paralysed and apathetic about climate change, about environmental degradation, about the

workplace and how it undervalues us as parents. We feel absolutely paralysed by the fact that the financial bottom line rules everything.” She makes reference to Robert Kennedy’s profound statement regarding the GDP - ‘It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile’ -

and it is an adage which might well explain her own trajectory. It has been a life spent in inquiry regarding some of the world’s ills and how they might be righted, from birth defects (she was one of the researchers responsible for discovering that folate can greatly reduce instances of spina bifida), to the gaping disparity in Aboriginal health and wellbeing compared to the rest of the population.

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PROFILE The seeds for this kind of life were planted in her childhood; her father was one of the world’s first virologists who worked on the polio vaccine and her mother was a classics scholar with a bent for human justice issues. Amidst this intellectual engagement with the world was an early childhood spent around La Perouse in Sydney, exploring the natural world before her family moved to Perth. In a telling 2000 interview on Radio National she termed it ‘a very exciting, wonderful magic childhood’. She attributes many of her childhood role models to introductions through much-loved books: George Washington Carver, botanist and inventor born into slavery, Nobel Prize winning scientist Marie Curie, missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer. All devoted their work to the advancement of others and interestingly, are of the same epoch. One suspects that Stanley would think it too much to be aligned with this list of notables. But together with her determination to find the best data in the search for disease prevention, there is a deeply embedded care for others, regardless of circumstances. In conversation she is naturally solicitous and inquisitive, asking questions unrelated to her task at hand. She has said before that Sir Gustav Nossal once told her that ‘one of the most important characteristics of an institute director was generosity’ and it is a quality she espouses. She champions the role of mentor and credits others with facilitating her work. Although married to immuno-virologist Professor Geoffrey Shellam, their two grown daughters have not followed them into the sphere of science; one is a theatre director and the other a first-contact historian. For Stanley, there is a palpable recognition of history as a vital force. She ‘adores’ the work of Inga Clendinnen, a formidable historian and thinker. This link to Australia’s foundations will be featured in the festival’s opening night through the ‘Bunjil’s Nest’ ceremony wherein foundation sticks will be laid by Wurundijeri elder Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin and University of Melbourne Chancellor, Ms Elizabeth Alexander AM. Derived from the Kulin Kulin Dreaming around Bunjil the Eagle, a nest will be created over the duration of the

festival. Attendees will be invited to write messages on eucalyptus sticks which will then be sculpted by Brian McKinnon of the National Gallery of Victoria and placed permanently on the grounds of the university campus. The symbolic nest serves as both a repository of desires, messages and hopes and a tribute to the traditional landowners. When Stanley says, “we wanted to have something a bit more controversial”, you know this is said in a spirit of genuine willingness to engage with variance in opinion. She wants to write more; she feels impelled to communicate the truths that she holds. There is an essay on Aboriginal services in the current Grifﬁth REVIEW but she’d also like to write a piece on the overmedicalisation of childhood and current Australian rates of Caesarean sections; it’s 33 percent and, according to Stanley, “unnecessary and worrying”. She thinks it

imperative that positive developments are acknowledged, like the current ﬁgures of parity for Aboriginal students in medical degrees in Australia, orchestrated by the efforts of Monash researcher Gregory Phillips, a Waanyi and Jaru man, in collaboration with universities across the nation. It is a remarkable, little known accomplishment, one which should have longreaching effects. It also acts as evidence for Stanley’s conviction that if Aboriginal people are seriously consulted about services, much can be done, if only bureaucrats would “start funding things which work... we could turn around things pretty rapidly.” This is a very different portrait to the one we are accustomed to hearing about intractable situations and yet, one could hardly call this evidence-driven woman a Pollyanna. She retired a couple of years ago from being Director of the Telethon Institute for Child

Health Research in Perth after founding it in 1990 but is still a Patron today and is aligned to the University of Western Australia. One senses that the steeliness in her mission is underpinned by a low level of tolerance for stalling and ineffectiveness. Her rallying cry is ‘Can’t we get our act together?’ There is emotion in her voice but it is a digniﬁed, restrained demeanour that Stanley presents. October’s Festival of Ideas should set Melbourne alight in all the right ways, if Melbournians will take up this most meaningful of endowments.

» The 2013 University of Melbourne Festival of Ideas runs from October 1 - October 6. ideas.unimelb.edu.au

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8 The Melbourne Review August 2013

POLITICS

The meaning of China Reinterpreting the Middle Kingdom by Michael Wesley

odern China has discovered a strange new world, in which good things can give rise to bad consequences, and setbacks can have surprisingly positive aspects; in which the goods and the bads overlap and contradict each other. It’s revealed in a contradiction in which China’s growing economic dynamism and integration has resulted not in respect and deference among China’s neighbours and trading partners, but a growing nervousness about China and a renewed eagerness to stitch up security relations with the US. It’s revealed in the disturbing fact that China’s remarkable economic development has violently tipped the terms of trade against itself, leaving Beijing to deal with escalating inflation pressures. It’s revealed in the confounding development whereby the lifting of over 400 million out of poverty has brought not calm

and contentment but rising social discontent that results in over 100,000 protests each year. Imperial China knew how power and order worked. Power and order flowed through imperial architecture and ritual, through scholarship and the sacred, through language and exchange. Power and order flowed from the centre outwards; deference and emulation flowed back from the outer barbarians and frontiers towards the Emperor. At times power alternated, and barbarians overpowered the centre, but ultimately order was restored, and power and order flowed serenely out from the centre again. Modern China has not yet worked out how power and order work. Neither has any other twenty-first century state. Modern China lives in an interdependent world – it is a crucial source of dynamism for many countries in its

region and beyond. It holds huge amounts of the debt of its principal strategic competitor, the United States.

tractor beam: that the more powerful it gets, the more vulnerable it feels, and the more power it feels it needs.

And yet Beijing is unsure how to use this leverage to get what it wants at acceptable cost. Its rogue ally, North Korea, can provoke tension in the region and isolate China at will. Beijing believes this is a game also being played by its close trading partners in South-east Asia.

* * * *

And even if China could figure out how to convert interdependence into leverage, an even greater conundrum awaits: what does it want the international order to look like? Arguably no state is benefiting more from the current international order than China – and yet it is viscerally unhappy with the way the world works. How can the world be reshaped in ways that China is more comfortable with, while preserving those aspects of it that are so good for China? China is the only modern great power with prior experience of having been a great power. But the great paradox of Chinese power is that it is more disoriented and less prepared for its sudden empowerment than any of its recent contemporary great powers. The power that China has long yearned for has caught it by surprise and it is deeply disconcerted by it. It has found its power met not with respect but with expectations and demands. And despite its deep study of the trajectories of other great powers, it finds itself trapped in the great power

China’s rise has always carried deep and complex meanings for Australia. From the earliest decades of European colonisation, China has been an uncomfortable source of unsettling change for Australian society. Originally it was the ultimate source of coloured perils: first yellow and then red. It was the cause of some of the deepest tensions between our old mentor, Britain, and our new champion, the US. When China became the fastest growing market for Australian wheat, even before Canberra recognised Mao’s regime, it shook the foundations of Australian politics to their core. More recently, China has delivered an unprecedented boom, the biggest terms of trade shift in Australian history. No country in this region is as economically complementary to China, and China’s rise has delivered a wave of prosperity no one could have imagined twenty years ago. Back then, the China trade comprised less than one-twentieth of our total trade; today it’s over a quarter and building towards a third. No one can doubt that the gravitational pull of China’s size and dynamism has reshaped Australia’s economy in ways that we are uncomfortable with, despite the tide of growth and prosperity. According to the Reserve Bank,

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POLITICS / EXTRACT the Australian dollar has risen to a high of 25 percent above its post-float average on a tradeweighted basis. The strength of our currency has remained even after global commodity prices have started to fall. The result has been to reverse the growth in the Australian manufacturing sector that we were so proud of in the 1990s. Back then, our manufacturing successes were taken as tributes to the clever country that had taken the painful reforms of the 1980s and was out competing hard in the global marketplace. Now, as factories shut and ‘restructuring packages’ are announced regularly, the clever country pride seems to have been washed away in the tide of prosperity. Most unsettling, though, is that the rise of China is taking us out of a two-century comfort zone. From the First Fleet’s arrival, the premier power in our part of the world has been just like us: Britain, then America. It has meant that Australia has always lived in a protective bubble: British/American fleets, global leadership, economic dynamism, trading and investment frameworks. For two centuries, all good things flowed together: we traded with and enriched those we relied on for safety; and they invested in and protected us. Now, our biggest trading partner and the biggest source of new investment is the country set to contest American supremacy in the waters around Australia. The new economic epicentre

of the region we so depend on is China; other regional countries are also being drawn into and reshaped by China’s gravitational pull. So China’s rise is not only profoundly disconcerting for China; it is profoundly disconcerting for Australia. Australia, along with New Zealand, is the only country in this region that has never before lived with a powerful China. For Australia, the implications of China’s rise are complex and still unfolding. They include Beijing’s increasing sensitivity about our choices, from offering a landing pad to American Marines in Darwin, to publicly ruling out a tender by China’s largest telecommunications company in our National Broadband Network. They include welcoming, on the one hand, hundreds of thousands of Chinese students to our schools and universities, but on the other prohibiting collaboration between Australian and Chinese researchers on certain ‘strategic’ research projects. They include China’s emergence as the biggest threat to our manufacturing sector but the saviour of our tourism sector, which has also been hit by the high value of the dollar. They include the growing trend of wealthy Chinese, worried about the strains of China’s rapid growth at home, buying residential property as an escape option if Xi Jinping’s China Dream turns sour. None of this complexity is acknowledged by the flurry of White Papers released in 2012 and 2013. China’s rise is welcomed. It is

anticipated as a source of future enrichment and stability. And all of the ofﬁcial optimism has been rewarded by Beijing with the granting of annual leader’s level meetings between Australia and China. What the White Papers don’t say – because they can’t – is that the meaning of China is ultimately a maturation of Australia’s position and role in the world. No longer can Australia enjoy the luxury of simplicity and remoteness from the world’s great contests. The new world that China’s rise has called forth will be one in which momentous choices occur weekly, monthly; unlike in the past, when they ran to three: alliance loyalty, institutional enthusiasm and neighbourly sobriety. The real challenge of China will lie in our capacity to empathise – not to condone, to excuse or to ignore, but to understand through a striving of imagination and intellect – with how profoundly unsettling the world is for this fast-rising behemoth. And our new capacity for empathy in this sense needs also to extend to the other societies in our region and ultimately to the United States, which are also deeply disconcerted by the challenge of China. Making sense of this world, not just for ourselves but for our neighbours, our ally, and for China itself, is the greatest challenge we have ever faced. It is a challenge we need. It is a challenge we shall meet.

» This is an extract from The Meaning of China: Reinterpreting the Middle Kingdom by Michael Wesley, published in Griffith REVIEW: Now We Are Ten, RRP $27.95. Available now in all good bookshops or griffithreview.com. » Michael Wesley is Professor of National Security at the Australian National University. His most recent book, There Goes the Neighbourhood: Australia and the Rise of Asia (New South) won the 2011 John Button Prize.

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10 The Melbourne Review August 2013

POLITICS

Opposition leader Tony Abbott is also campaigning on a promise to create one million jobs in the first five years of a Coalition government. This sounds grand until one realises that this would merely absorb population growth and do nothing to reduce the unemployment rate or increase workforce participation.”

The election history over the past four decades or so shows that the hard facts on jobs and the unemployment rate do not always sway voters.

Elections and Employment The historic record shows there is often no connection between levels of unemployment and a Federal election victory by Stephen Koukoulas

ontrary to conventional wisdom, changes in the unemployment rate in the six to twelve months before an election do not determine who wins government. Perhaps voters are a little more selfish and less altruistic than they are often believed to be. The last two changes in government – 1996 and 2007 – occurred with the unemployment rate flat or falling, which reversed the trend of 1975 and 1983 where a rising unemployment rate coincided with a change of government. There have been several occasions where a high and rising unemployment rate has not hurt the incumbent which should be of some comfort to the Rudd government in the wake of the recent labour force data which confirmed a gentle uptrend in the unemployment rate over the past year.

In what are the only labour force data to be released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics during the current election campaign, the unemployment rate was confirmed at 5.7 percent in July, unchanged from June but up from levels around 5.0 percent a year ago. History shows that in November 2001, in the face of the unemployment rate rising from 6.0 percent to nearly 7.0 percent, the Howard government was comfortably returned. Conversely, the Keating government lost office in 1996 with the unemployment edging down to around 8.5 percent from just under 9.0 percent a year earlier and 11.0 percent during the early 1990s recession. It was a similar story in 2007 when voters comprehensively tossed out the Howard government, and Mr Howard in his own seat, despite the fact the unemployment rate had

This is clearly because other issues are often at play. Asylum seekers, industrial relations, tax, schools, education and health policies can loom large and work to offset what may be occurring in the jobs market. fallen from around 5.0 percent in 2006 to 4.3 percent when the election was called. There are a few examples where a reduction the unemployment rate coincided with the return of the incumbent. In 1984, 1998, 2004 and 2010, the incumbent was returned to office with the unemployment rate falling. There were other instances, namely in 1980, 1987 and 1990 where a broadly steady unemployment rate saw the incumbent returned. Even the level of unemployment does not help explain election results. Keating won the 1993 election with the unemployment rate near a post-Great Depression high of 11.0 percent, while Howard lost the 2007 with the unemployment rate at a three decade low, just above 4 percent. For the 2013 election campaign, there is a lot of discussion about jobs with the Opposition highlighting the Treasury forecast for the unemployment rate to peak at 6.25 percent next year. The government, on the other hand, is noting that 950,000 jobs have been created while it has been in power and noting that it protected around 200,000 jobs with its policy measures as the global banking and financial crisis loomed large in the period from 2008 to 2010. Opposition leader Tony Abbott is also campaigning on a promise to create one million jobs in the first five years of a Coalition government. This sounds grand until one realises that this would merely absorb population growth and do nothing to reduce the unemployment rate or increase workforce participation.

For 2013, it seems other issues will complement if not overwhelm the news of a rising unemployment rate. Voters seem more concerned with the ephemeral issue of trust, while education, health and aged care, tax policy, interest rates and perceptions of overall economic management issues loom large. The Labor Party and Kevin Rudd will be hoping that it can repeat the performance of John Howard in 2001, when he won the election with a rising unemployment rate. At that time the Tampa asylum seeker issue, the aftermath of the terrorist attack in the US just two months before and some befuddled campaigning from Labor about its approach to the goods and services tax saw Howard record a solid victory. In 2013, Labor is aiming to overcome the issue of rising unemployment with the focus on a deeply unpopular Opposition leader, a progressive platform on education and health, an infrastructure investment agenda including the NBN, and the fact that interest rates are incredibly low. It makes for a fascinating election, as always, with the likely winner still unclear.

»»Stephen Koukoulas is Managing Director of Market Economics. He writes a daily column for Business Spectator. marketeconomics.com.au

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POLITICS

Why Societies Fail BY Alexander Downer

here’s been a lot of talk about Papua New Guinea recently. It’s a lovely place in many respects and it has a wealth of natural resources. It’s also a democracy and has been since independence in 1975. Since then, Australian taxpayers must have pumped around $15 billion into the PNG economy through our aid program. Yet for all that, PNG remains a poor country. It begs a very important question. Why are some countries poor while others have become rich? If we can’t answer that question then there’s every chance much of our foreign aid is a huge waste of money. The most prosperous societies throughout the last 3,000 years have one common characteristic: strong institutions. Whether it was the ancient Greeks, the Romans and their successors the Byzantines, renaissance Italy, the British Empire or modern America, they’ve all had a strong system of governance which made their societies work.

A strong system of governance is not always democratic of course. Indeed, the foundations of successful societies have more to do with the rule of law than with how the law makers get into power. Here are four examples of strong governance which are usually found in successful and prosperous societies. First, there’s a clearly defined set of laws which everyone – governed and governors alike – are expected to adhere to. If they don’t, there’s a credible judicial system regarded as reasonably respectable by the public, which administers justice. And that judiciary has to be seen to be fair to all, rich and poor alike. Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China and much of the Arab world over the last 500 years have suffered because too often authority has been exercised in an arbitrary and unpredictable way. Stalin and Mao both had millions put to death not on the basis of clearly defined laws but because it suited their revolutionary causes. And Arab leaders like former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak imposed one set of rules on the public and another more beneficial set for themselves and their cronies. Yet in modern Europe and to a growing extent in modern China, laws are universally applied and courts are seen to be relatively fair. They’re not perfect of course. But in both cases, power is exercised in a less arbitrary way by leaders than in failed or weak states. The second characteristic of successful

societies – and it relates to the first – is that there is a system of recognised and impartially administered individual property rights which can be protected by the rule of law. After all, who is going to invest in a society which arbitrarily might confiscate property or where property is lost because the judiciary receives a healthy bribe from an acquisitive local businessperson? In countries like Britain and America property is protected. However, in Venezuela, for example, the reason foreigners are hesitant to invest there is because there is serious doubt about the state’s respect for property rights and the impartiality and incorruptibility of the legal system. Thirdly, the political system itself has to be stable. That is, the people who make the laws have to retain their credibility with the public. Now, while democracy may be the most moral system, undemocratic states can be sensitive to public concerns. No government whether it is democratic or not should be merely populist, but it has to be careful to maintain a degree of social stability. So the new president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, was democratically elected but he showed no interest in governing in the interests of social stability and economic reform. He merely wanted to carry out the wishes of the Muslim Brotherhood, thereby inciting social unrest. The rest is history. By contrast, the unelected rulers of China read a summary every day of public concerns expressed on

the internet. They do it because they believe one of their most basic responsibilities is to maintain social stability. To do that, they need to understand public opinion and appreciate the broad direction of public thinking. Fourthly, there is the issue of succession. There is a plethora of examples of popular and successful leaders who are replaced by everything from civil chaos to incompetence. In a mature democracy, this issue is handled by regular elections. Monarchical systems solved the problem through heredity. That usually worked unless there was a lack of clarity over who should inherit the throne. Autocrats can set up their own succession schemes which work. But they are fragile. The Arab world’s decline since the 15th century has partly been the result of internecine struggles over succession. That is still going on. They want to get rid of President Assad but who is to replace him? The Tunisian, Libyan and Egyptian autocrats were disposed of by the Arab Spring but they have been replaced by a chaotic loss of authority. Now those four characteristics – rule of law, private property, responsive leaders and smooth leadership successions – all help to create strong societies. There are other issues as well. But those four really matter. An aid program should focus much more on strengthening institutions than digging water wells. That should be the focus of our aid program in PNG.

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12 The Melbourne Review August 2013

BUSINESS The ten brands people are most likely to tattoo on their body 1. Harley-Davidson: (where 18.9% of users would tattoo the brand on their body) 2. Disney (14.8%) 3. Coke (7.7%) 4. Google (6.6%) 5. Pepsi (6.1%) 6. Rolex (5.6%) 7. Nike (4.6%) 8. Adidas (3.1%) 9. Absolut (2.6%) 10. Nintendo (1.5%)

I Brand Therefore I Am Are brands the tribes of our generation? by David Ansett & Peter Singline

rom ‘day dot’ man has longed to belong. Initially, increasing the odds of survival was significant enough motivation for belonging to a group of like-minded souls, but as the centuries rolled by and man’s life expectancy increased, our primal need to belong has not diminished. Social evolution has brought many changes to our tribal structures. Geographically founded tribes have given way to religion, sport, fashion, and brands. As brands have evolved, they’ve morphed closer in nature to more traditional institutions such as religion, sporting clubs and even nations. Brands no longer simply make and do things for us to purchase; they consciously set out to draw communities around them by standing for an ideal and a set of values which they demonstrate through their deeds. Harley-Davidson is the brand that provides the most powerful example of this phenomenon.

Following the 1985 buyback that all but saved the company, Harley-Davidson re-set their entire competitive strategy and business model around a ‘brand community’ philosophy. Harley re-tooled every aspect of its organisation to drive its community strategy. Harley‘s community – the ‘brotherhood’ of riders – was united by a shared ethos providing the basis for the brand proposition as the only manufacturer that truly understood bikers on their own terms. Many Harley employees became riders, and many riders became Harley employees as the company genuinely acknowledged the community as the rightful owner of the brand. The tribe and the brand became one. This trend only accelerated as we switched onto the World Wide Web; the internet had the power to facilitate tribes like nothing before. As entrepreneur, blogger and author Seth Godin writes: “The internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values.”

Whilst we’re no longer drawn to traditional tribal symbols such as heraldry, they’ve been replaced in our lives by contemporary icons including the banners of brands. And like tribal art, brands are increasingly displayed in the most personal manner possible, through tattoos – perhaps the greatest expression of brand alignment. A University of Louisville study found that “the increasing popularity of logo tattoos is a product of the commodification of culture via the culture industry. Findings show that the majority of the sample was motivated by brand loyalty and self-identification with a brand philosophy or lifestyle”. Like tribes of old, brands often have a charismatic leader at their helm – someone to whom the tribe aspire and associate. Brands such as Apple and Virgin have legions of tribal followers who hold their leaders in almost godlike regard. Author and social commentator Seth Godin believes the job of a CMO should stand for ‘Chief Movement Officer’ and not chief marketing officer: “In short: don’t market – inspire, lead, tap into your brand’s passions and you’ll tap into consumers’ passions and build a small and committed following that will scale through word-of-mouth.” This mindset for brands reflects an understanding and focus on building a relationship with greater meaning, depth and relevance in the lives of their followers. In her book; No Logo, Canadian author and social commentator Naomi Klein sums up the new brand-tribe paradigm: “It is about you, not the brand being of good quality, but you being of good quality because you buy that brand.” The case Klein sets out in No Logo that brand = commerce, and therefore all things brand are antisocial is simplistic and misunderstands the base human instincts that brands appeal to.

People are intrinsically tribal. For better or worse, people have always been and will always be driven towards belonging. However, the defining trait of brand tribes is that unlike all other tribes, membership and currency is gained through a commercial interaction, rather than through participation in community. Arguably the common good of a brand tribe is only for the benefit of the brand, and not the tribe itself. Author Malcolm Gladwell describes the conflicted relationship we have as tribal followers of brands in an article for the Harvard Business Review: “Our material choices as consumers are no longer trivial. They are now amongst the most important choices we make. They have consequences well beyond our own selves... They have consequences on our economy, on the community we live in. When you eat a McDonald’s hamburger, you are casting a vote for a certain kind of agricultural system, and for a certain kind of climate. In a sense, everything we do casts a vote for a certain kind of world. And this isn’t true in the same way it was one hundred years ago, or if it was, we weren’t aware of it. We weren’t forced to make that connection because our world wasn’t being driven on this macro level by the sum total of consumer choices... So it makes perfect sense that when you decide what car you’re going to buy, you think long and hard about the choice, and when you drive a Nissan Leaf, or a Chevy Volt, you’re saying to the world, “These are my values. This is the kind of world I want.”

»»Peter Singline and David Ansett are co-founders and directors of Truly Deeply, a Melbourne based brand strategy and design consultancy. trulydeeply.com.au

The Melbourne Review August 2013 13

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BUSINESS / PROFILE

Albert Li Albert Li combines his Air BP business development role with direct action on behalf of the homeless

by Nina Bertok

here is nothing more important in life than leaving behind a positive legacy, whether at work or in the community, according to Albert Li. As the Business Development Manager for Air BP’s Australian and New Zealand Business Unit, outside his day job Li kick-started the national homeless employment initiative, Project New Dawn, and it is this the Melbourne businessman and social entrepreneur considers his biggest achievement. Founded in 2007, Project New Dawn has been responsible for helping to break the cycle of those experiencing homelessness by providing jobs and housing opportunities to the less fortunate, while at the same time creating tangible value to corporates, NFPs, philanthropists and others involved.

“I live in North Melbourne and walking to work I would see the same homeless man every single day,” Li recalls. “I would give him a gold coin every time or I’d buy him a sandwich, but I knew that it wasn’t the solution to the problem. So I thought about how I could help that one man, it was never far from my mind. On the way to the cinema one night in late 2006, my wife and I saw the same man again and I just felt I needed to take action and get him back into society. “I believe it is up to people like myself, who can create change, to take on the personal responsibility to act and help in some way. I didn’t really have the expertise in dealing with the social and personal aspects associated with the homeless and I wasn’t equipped to deal with that. So when I met Brendan Nottle from the Salvation Army who’d had experience in this field, I presented him the idea and he saw merit in it. We shaped it into Project New Dawn.” In the last six years, the initiative has gone national, spreading to Brisbane, Perth and Newcastle. For Li, the experience has been priceless, helping the Melbourne businessman’s personal development in ways he claims he never could have imagined. What began with helping just one man on the streets start again in life has now evolved into a project that brings together remarkable individuals while giving homeless people the chance to regain selfesteem and break out of their circumstances.

“The way it works is each participant is offered a real job with at least 30 hours of employment a week,” Li explains. “BP has been providing jobs up until now, but now Bunnings has also come on board. The participants are enrolled in the project 12 to 18 months and offered a room in a three-bedroom house so they’re able to pay their own rent and utilities. The houses they live in are furnished by Radio Rentals who provide beds and whitegoods, everything that makes a home more liveable. There are two participants per house and a lead tenant who is there to be a role model and show the guys what it means to lead a normal life. If you’ve been homeless for a while the concept of getting out of bed early in the morning and working is something you have to get used to. No alcohol or drugs are allowed either. After 18 months, they have to transition into independent living which is possible because they now have very good references and a rental record allowing them to rent a house.” As a result of Project New Dawn’s national success, Li claims that one of his core beliefs – ‘the art of the possible’ – has been even further strengthened. If there is one word in the English language he despises the most, it is ‘can’t’. Born in Hong Kong and resident in Australia since 1988, Li started his first business, a lawn mowing company, at age 18 with a few mates.

He has since gone on to work around the world. “I understand and have personally experienced that in making critical business or personal decisions we can find many reasons for why something ‘can’t’ be done,” he says. “For me, if there is one possible path forward – and as long as that path is aligned with corporate goals or personal passions – if after weighing up the risks and benefits that path is still worth pursuing, then we owe it to ourselves to pursue it with conviction.”

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14 The Melbourne Review August 2013

FEATURE

Welcome to Curtin IDC In this extract from his recently-released Profits of Doom, Antony Loewenstein visits the remote and jealously guarded Curtin Immigration Detention Centre by Antony Loewenstein

t’s a 30-minute drive through the desert from Derby to the Curtin Air Base. A number of signs warn us to turn back because it is ‘Private Property’. We approach the first checkpoint, where a logo on a fence with a forward arrow reads ‘Serco’. Even here in the Kimberley, Serco branding is slapped on infrastructure. A dark-skinned man asks us for ID and the Serco entry forms that we faxed to Curtin a few days earlier – we were asked to list our professions and the names of the detainees we want to visit. I open my window and feel a rush of hot air. It is close to 40 degrees Celsius. We are allowed to proceed. Curtin is surrounded by scrubby desert as far as the eye can see. I can’t imagine a more isolated place to be detained. Demountables are scattered beside the road near the car park and high barbed-wire fences surround the detention compound. We can see new houses being constructed nearby, and a freshly laid concrete pathway leads to the main entrance. The last years have seen the construction at the centre of gymnasiums, religious rooms and classrooms. The Serco sign hanging over the reception area reads, ‘Welcome to Curtin IDC’. Staff, including a subcontractor from MSS Security, smile as we enter the heavily air-conditioned room. They ask to see our faxed Serco forms so they can confirm they received the documents at least 24 hours before the visit. Caroline says that, uncharacteristically, a Serco manager from Curtin rang her a few days ago and said they were looking forward to welcoming us. It was an unprecedented move, without any discernible reason behind it. ‘It’s impossible to understand how this system truly works’, Caroline routinely tells me during our time together.

Serco posters and signs advertising the company are ubiquitous in the reception area. They display the smiling faces of happy staff and multicultural imagery that includes a Muslim imam. A colour brochure emblazoned with four grinning faces from various racial backgrounds sits on a small table near some lockers. ‘Bringing service to life’ is the company’s motto. The pamphlet says

that Serco ‘promotes the inherent dignity of people in detention in line with the Australian government’s new immigration detention values’. A number of other pieces of Serco literature are scattered around reception. ‘Visitor Conditions of Entry’ states that there are three visiting periods every day, including between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., but also says that arrival after 5 p.m. will not be permitted. There are dozens of rules and regulations on the sheet, including: ‘Respect the privacy and dignity of all people in the centre’. It’s a noble goal, but one that staff routinely breach, detainees later tell me. We are given keys for a locker in which to store our personal items. I am not allowed to carry a camera or a mobile phone, but I can bring a pen and notepad. I am surprised. I have been told it’s common for journalists to be denied even these basics here. Usually a cap and bottled water suffice. The site’s operation manager, who is decked out in the Serco uniform of shirt, shorts and black shoes, says he’ll take us to a holding area to wait for the refugees we’ve asked to see. Normally, Caroline, who has been to Curtin many times before, meets detainees under a large tree inside the compound, but we’re informed that this isn’t possible today. No reason is given. We enter the centre and walk near the perimeter fence. We come to a large metal gate, 4 metres high, and stand there silently in the soaring heat. The gate slowly opens to reveal a narrow no-man’s-land – 150 metres of earth bookended by fences. There’s an eerie silence in the compound. It’s mid-afternoon and it’s simply too hot for anyone to be outside at this time of the day. We walk along dusty paths for five minutes, moving through locked gates that require authorisation via walkie-talkie to open. There are a few male asylum seekers behind a nearby fence, defying the heat, but we aren’t allowed to go near them. They wave and we reciprocate. The banality of the process is dehumanising. This is no different to a high-security prison in a remote area where escape is close to impossible.

The aim is clearly to make detainees feel isolated, cut off from the millions of Australians who have no idea, or who don’t care, about what is being done in their name. We finally enter the holding area. The Serco guard accompanying us points out the TV and DVD player in the room and says to ‘use it if you like’. A DVD case for the Jackie Chan movie Rush Hour 3 sits on a low cabinet. Tea, coffee and hot water are available, and there are fridges with ‘Staff Only’ signs. The air-conditioning is so effective I start to feel a chill. The room is anodyne, resembling a claustrophobic airport holding cell.

While a few male Serco staff sit nearby, looking bored, a number of refugees from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan warmly welcome us. They are all men in their twenties and they include a few Hazara from Afghanistan who have recently achieved refugee status and shortly will be released into the Australian community. As Caroline and I start talking to them, I see a young Serco guard washing his hands with disinfectant – he had just shaken the hands of the detainees. Two Tamil men, Agilan and Ajinth, both of whom speak good English, have been in detention for 19 months and 22 months,

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FEATURE / EXTRACT being transferred directly to Papua New Guinea and indeﬁnite detention in terrible conditions. British multinational G4S, already running Manus Island detention centre with daily reports of rape and abuse, would be licking their lips at the prospect of Australian plans to massively expand detention facilities. When we leave the compound, the refugees come as far as they can with us, down to the locked gate, before taking a dusty road to their cabins while we backtrack to the detention centre entrance. As we walk slowly with our Serco guard, who looks about thirty, I ask about his life. He says he has a child in Perth and misses home. He’s on the six-weeks-on, three-weeks-off shift, living in Derby. ‘It’s good money’, he says, and admits that ‘this job is alright’, but he avoids sharing his views about the refugees.

Photos: Antony Loewenstein

We pass a small oval around which a few bearded men in tracksuit tops and shorts are running. The weather is cooler than when we arrived, but it’s still humid. On another small ﬁeld alongside our path, twenty or so men play soccer. Without the high fences, guards and the desert, the scene could be taking place anywhere in suburban Australia.

‘Bringing service to life’ is the company’s motto. The pamphlet says that Serco ‘promotes the inherent dignity of people in detention in line with the Australian government’s new immigration detention values’.”

respectively. They both wear silver studs in their ears and one has a trendy haircut, with a partly shaved head. Agilan has some family in Germany, where his father lives, but a sister and his daughter remain in Colombo. Detention centre food soon comes up as an issue. Both men ﬁnd the food very bland and they desperately want to be able to cook their own ingredients with spices, but it’s something they can only do covertly. I ask Agilan and Ajinth about their treatment by Serco staff. Some are very kind, they say, while others tell them to go back to their home countries. They tell me that Serco has organized a cricket series with the Derby cricket team.

Their outings include the old Derby jail, which we all think is strange because the men are already in detention. They also tell us that Serco staff learn swear words from refugees and curse each other in various languages. We talk about the reasons they left Sri Lanka, mainly because Tamils still face widespread discrimination there, and why they can’t go back – they would face imprisonment, interrogation and possibly torture if they did. We also discuss the stultifying boredom of doing nothing day after day. Caroline and I chat to the refugees for two hours, with Serco staff constantly looking at us. The detainees seemed to like the distraction of different company, and there was some flirty playfulness with Caroline. There are 1000 men in detention here and only a few female guards. In 2013, the federal government brought refugee children and families to Curtin into a section called ‘Alternative Place of Detention’. In a further Orwellian move in May 2013, the Federal Parliament legislated to remove the Australian mainland from its migration zone, meaning that any asylum seekers arriving on the mainland could be sent to offshore facilities in Nauru or Papua New Guinea. In July 2013, the policy under the new but old Prime Minister Kevin Rudd worsened. No asylum seekers arriving by boat to Australia would ever be allowed to settle there, instead

As we prepare to leave, the magic sunset hour arrives and the sun drapes its last blistering light over the detention centre.

» Antony Loewenstein’s Profits of Doom: How Vulture Capitalism is Swallowing the World is available now from Melbourne University Press, RRP $32.99 mup.com.au

16 The Melbourne Review August 2013

HEALTH St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research (SVI), Melbourne Fast facts: - SVI is one of Melbourne’s oldest medical research institutes - SVI scientists conduct medical research into the cause, prevention and treatment of diseases that are common and affect all Australians - Type 1 (childhood) diabetes, type 2 diabetes (adult onset) and heart disease, bone diseases such as arthritis and osteoporosis, cancer, infectious diseases, Alzheimer’s and other neurological disorders are major areas of research - SVI is regularly amongst the most successful medical research institutes in the annual round of National Health and Medical Council (NHMRC) peer-reviewed funding Putting research into practice: - SVI plays a pivotal role in the Australian Islet Transplantation Program. The Program involves the isolation of insulinproducing islets from organ donors and transplantation into people with difficult to control type 1 diabetes. The Victorian arm of the Program, headed by SVI, has resulted in four recipients becoming insulin independent to date - SVI is developing therapies to prevent bone break-down and assist with bone building in osteoporosis, arthritis and bone cancer. Existing therapies do not build bone and are of limited use due to side effects The impact of common diseases: • Six Australians are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes every day, many of them children • 1 million Australians have type 2 diabetes and 1 in 5 adults are overweight or obese • Heart disease claims the lives of 1 in 3 Australians • Arthritis affects almost 4 million Australians and a over 2 million Australians have osteoporosis • 1 in 3 men and 1 in 4 women will be affected by cancer by the age of 75 • All these diseases lead to an increased burden on Australia’s health system The next generation of researchers: SVI is home to 170 staff. The Institute has a major focus on nurturing the next generation of researchers. Dr Andrew Deans returned to SVI after carrying out his postdoctoral studies at Cancer Research UK, the largest independent research organisation in the world dedicated to fighting cancer. He is currently head of SVI’s Genomic Stability Unit and a Fellow of the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Donations are gratefully accepted. Please call (03) 9288 2480 or visit svi. edu.au for more information.

Breast cancer in the family

For researchers at Melbourne’s St. Vincent’s Institute, finding a way to non-surgical early prevention remains the ultimate goal. by Andrew Deans

ne in 10 Australian women will develop breast cancer. The National Breast Cancer Foundation tells us that 89% of these women survive beyond five years, but still, on average seven Australian women die of breast cancer each day. Much of the improvement in survival over the last decade has come from early detection through services such as Breastscreen. However, Angelina Jolie recently brought to public attention the plight of some women who are almost certain that they will get breast cancer before it could ever be detected by a mammogram.

After preventative surgery to remove her breast tissue, Jolie wrote of the fear and powerlessness that comes from knowing you have the ‘breast cancer gene’. This included watching her mother succumb to cancer at the age of 56. So what does it really mean when someone says they have “breast cancer in the family” and does genetics cause all breast cancer? What causes cancer? As a cancer researcher this is always one of the first questions I am asked. It’s easy

to answer: a whole lot of bad luck. This is not always a satisfying answer, given most people have read newspaper headlines such as: “Obesity-linked cancer on rise” or have seen graphic images of tumours linked to smoking on cigarette packets. Yet we also hear of stories of smokers who live to 100 and overweight people with no signs of ill health. The reason for this is that things that ‘cause cancer’ actually just amplify your risk – or to put it simply, make it considerably more likely you will have bad luck. So why would a scientist discuss a concept as vague as luck when talking about a disease as serious as cancer? Because, luck in this case governs the processes that I study in my laboratory – the process of DNA damage. Every cell in your body contains a copy of the DNA that you inherited from your mother and father. Each time a cell divides the DNA has to be copied and sometimes, if the DNA is damaged, it is copied wrongly. These incorrect copies are called mutations. By ‘bad luck’, some of these mutations lead to the cell losing normal control – and a cancer is born. This is a background risk that really can’t be attributed to anything other than just being alive. But on top of this, things like tobacco smoke, UV from the sun, ionizing radiation and being overweight cause cancer by increasing damage to our DNA and therefore increase the probability (a more scientific word for luck) of cancer.

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MEDICAL RESEARCH What causes breast cancer? Breast cancer originates from a single normal breast cell that has accumulated DNA damage, leading to a loss of control over cell growth. A normal cell is programmed to stop growing when it encounters the cell next-door, but DNA damage can corrupt this program so that the signal to stop growing is lost. This cell then divides, its daughter cells divide, and so on, until there is a clump of cells that form a tumour. Each tumour cell originated from that one rogue that has now perpetuated its mutant program. These cells can also gain the ability to escape from the breast tissue and grow in other parts of the body. This spread, or metastasis, to places such as the liver, brain and bone is the ultimate cause of most breast cancer mortality. So things that cause DNA damage will increase the probability of breast cancer by turning a normal cell into a disease that can invade other organs. It seems that one reason breast cancer is more common than other forms of cancer is that the hormones that regulate breast development, such as estrogen, are a promoter of damage to DNA. Pregnancy is associated with a decreased risk of breast cancer, by somehow playing a protective role in preventing mutations accumulating. But this hasn’t yet explained why one family has more ‘bad luck’ than the next. Breast cancer families have two or more siblings or three individuals across several generations that develop the disease. And it often appears at a young age. How do you inherit luck? The breast cancer genes Genetic analysis of breast cancer families led to discovery of the breast cancer genes (called BRCA1 and BRCA2) in the mid-1990s. After 20 years of intensive research we now know that these genes play an important role in fixing DNA damage. They regulate DNA repair, the process that finds damage and fixes it. In families with a faulty BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, this DNA repair process is less efficient and DNA damage accumulates more

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quickly over time. All this extra DNA damage increases the probability of developing breast cancer – it’s like an amplification of all the normal risk factors in one hit. So faulty BRCA1 or BRCA2 leads to a 70 percent lifetime breast cancer risk – seven out of 10 of these people will get breast cancer: not great odds. Interestingly, these genes are also linked with higher ovarian cancer risk, perhaps suggesting a special role in protection from DNA damage in estrogen-sensitive organs. How much of cancer is genetic? A recent overturning of a patent that covered BRCA1 means that testing for the faulty gene should hopefully become more accessible. However, this will only help the small percentage of women who have inherited harmful mutations in these genes. The remaining 90-95 percent of breast cancer cases are not due to inheritance of faulty genes. When high-profile young women like Kylie Minogue and Angelina Jolie bravely share their breast cancer stories in the media there is a surge in awareness but also potentially a corresponding rise in fear. By simple rules of statistics an individual can have several relatives with cancer without being linked by a genetic basis. This is a major cause of the public’s overestimation of ‘cancer in the family’. Despite their newfound infamy, faulty BRCA1 or BRCA2 are not the only genes that cause familial breast cancer. There must be other genes! Work in laboratories worldwide, including my own at St Vincent’s Institute in Melbourne, is proving that the majority of these other genes are also involved in fixing DNA damage. And this gives us hope that we can turn this feature into a weakness, and actively begin to target family-associated cancers with new specific chemotherapies. Therapies for cancer families PARP inhibitors are one such class of drug, being trialled in treatment of breast cancers in BRCA1 carriers. They kill cancer by overwhelming the residual DNA repair ability

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of tumour cells from these patients. These drugs are a major success story of modern cancer research and have limited side-effects in many BRCA1 patients. Currently these drugs are only utilised in treatment but not prevention of cancer. Angelina Jolie identiﬁed a faulty copy of BRCA1 as her burden and decided on a preventative double mastectomy. Explained simply, she opted for this radical procedure based on the fact that you can’t get breast cancer if you don’t have breasts. Singer Melissa Etheridge, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, also carries the BRCA1 mutation but has elected instead for regular breast screening to allow prompt detection and intervention. Preventative surgery and high level screening have both been proven to work in reducing cancer risk. However, a proactive measure – non-surgical prevention of a tumour in the ﬁrst place – is the ultimate goal of researchers such as our team at St Vincent’s Institute. Because in an ideal world, we would not only have a genetic test that predicts when a woman is at high risk of developing breast cancer, but we would be able to give those women an option that does not involve radical surgery.

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18 The Melbourne Review August 2013

HEALTH

Immunity Lifestyle is your best defence

by Professor Avni Sali

n the quest for good health, one of the most fundamental wellness strategies we can consider is the development and maintenance of a strong immune system. Especially in winter, with its typical increase in the incidence of colds and ‘flus, we can be proactive with regards to our immunity. However, a healthy immune system is also an essential consideration every day of the year, as immunity plays an important role in the prevention and treatment of cancer and other immune disorders such as autoimmune illness. It also plays a major role in allergy disorders. The immune system is a complex composite of tissues, cells and molecules with specialised roles in the defence against infection, and is vital in the body’s maintenance of health. Its complex interrelationship with the psychological, neurological, endocrinological, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular systems has provided many medical insights into the nature of disease and its pathology. Immune dysfunction may appear as an immune inactivity, such as cancer, or hyperactivity as in various allergies such as asthma or autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Our immunity is also linked to recurrent infections of which the common cold and influenza are perhaps the most well known examples. There are two types of immunity: the innate immune system (non-specific) and the adaptive (acquired) immune system. The innate system refers to our body’s first line of defence and includes physical barriers such as the skin and other mechanisms. We see the effect of innate immunity when, for example, redness occurs around a cut in the skin. The innate system releases cells that are responsible for inflammation (an initial part of the body’s

protective mechanism) and natural killer cells which can destroy viruses, bacteria or cancer cells. This immune response will occur to the same extent regardless of how many times the infectious agent or trauma is encountered. The second type of immunity is adaptive immunity. Adaptive immune responses improve on repeated exposures to a given infection or antigen. An antigen is any substance that causes the immune system to produce antibodies against it. An antigen may be a foreign substance from the environment such as chemicals, bacteria, viruses or pollen, or formed within the body, as with bacterial toxins. The body will produce either a cellular (T-cells, B-cells) or humoral (antibody) response. T-cells help B-cells make antibodies (produced in the bone marrow and thymus), which kill virally infected cells. After initial antigen exposure, immune memory develops and results in early recognition and stronger reactions to fight the antigen on subsequent exposure. This process of acquired immunity is the basis of vaccination. The innate and adaptive immune systems are not exclusive of one another – indeed they cooperate to remove pathogens and restore balance in the body. Strategies for better health should ideally begin with taking care of the gut. Gastrointestinal mucosa is the major contact area between the human body and the external world of micro flora and is over 400 square metres in size. Gut bacteria (flora), of which there are approximately 100 trillion, are in constant communication with our immune cells with 70-80 percent of all immune cells in the human body located in the gastrointestinal-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT). Research now provides us with a better understanding of the interaction of bacterial species and the immune system. This

represents a somewhat paradoxical shift – from the belief that the immune system controls microorganisms to the understanding that it is the microorganisms that control the immune system. Supporting GALT with optimised micro flora is therefore key to our ability to fight diseases and ward off common infections. A key problem with antibiotics and chemotherapy drugs is that they destroy the normal gut flora, which in turn leads to immune disturbance. The gut flora not only influences the immune system, but can also influence virtually all body systems, for example the brain and weight (metabolism).

disease. The connection between stress and depression and health is best explained through the disciplines of Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) and Psychoneuroendocrinology (PNE). Stress and depression influence the body through the brain – PNI is the study of how the mind influences the immune system (to be normal, abnormal or hyperactive) and PNE describes how the mind influences the body’s hormones. How is lifestyle influencing your immune system today? Key risk factors for immunity include:

All of the systems in the body, including the gastrointestinal system, are influenced by lifestyle, hence how we live affects how well our body responds to the threat of pathogens and

• Stress – chronic stress and depression • Lack of sleep • Lack of sunshine – vitamin D deficiency

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HEALTH • Nutrient deficiencies, for example, vitamins A, C, D, E, B6, B12, folate, zinc, iron and copper. However, all micronutrients are important for proper immune function. Any change in lifestyle that modifies the above risk factors will enhance immunity. Some general immunity tips include: Manage your immune system with food Many foods are immune-modulating based on whether they have an anti-inflammatory or proinflammatory effect. You can boost your antiinflammatory food intake with: omega 3 EFA, as found in seafood; low-GI foods; antioxidant rich foods (especially those high in vitamins A, C and E); high fibre foods; increased monounsaturated fats (nuts and avocados are good); restricted total calorie intake; more fruit and vegetables; lean game meats; herbs such as garlic, ginger and turmeric; and drinking green tea. Pro-inflammatory foods are those with: excess energy (high calories), high-GI, high trans fats, saturated fats, excessive salt and refined carbohydrates, as found in most processed and fast foods. Also excessive alcohol consumption, some dairy foods and food additives such as artificial colours, flavours and preservatives can be pro-inflammatory.

• Exercise – too little or too much (extreme) exercise • Obesity or being underweight • Poor nutritional intake and poor diets generally • Environment – climate changes including overheating, poor housing and/or living conditions such as overcrowding • Environmental syndromes including chemical sensitivities • Chemical exposure and pollutants – occupational, industrial, pollution, smoking • Medications – especially immuno-supressors and chemotherapy medications • Exposure to infections – through poor water and food quality, and poor hygiene. Also exposure to bacterial, fungal, viral and parasitic infections

Make quality sleep a priority Poor sleep is associated with a greater susceptibility to the common cold and most other illnesses. The natural sleep hormone melatonin is immune-modulating, so sleep disruptions have an immediate effect on the complex interrelationship between hormones and the immune system. Poor sleep is associated with a multitude of health problems and is a common complaint for Australians today. Over 50 percent of adults aged 65 and over have at least one sleep complaint. Sleep is essential for good physical and mental health. Immunity can be enhanced by ensuring regular and restorative sleep patterns are maintained. In some cases melatonin supplementation may also be of therapeutic benefit for the immune system. Take a probiotic every day It is understood that daily replenishment of gut bacteria is important for immunity. Supplements

are ideal ways to ensure measured doses are taken; however, there are many foods that can be added to the diet that feed or replenish gut bacteria, such as yoghurt and fermented foods. (See July issue of The Melbourne Review for more information on gastrointestinal health.) Vitamin D and the sunshine effect Originally vitamin D deficiency was only regarded to be important for bone health. However, it is now understood that this vitamin is actually a complex vitamin that is intricately involved in the integrity of the innate immune system, plus every other body system. Vitamin D receptors exist in all tissue to regulate cell growth and decrease the risk of cells becoming malignant. Vitamin D deficiency has now been linked to numerous types of cancer, auto-immune diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis and many other chronic illnesses. Of course at this time of year, there are additional immune strategies that may help us meet the challenges of the season. Research reveals several herbal, vitamin and mineral supplements that may be of particular benefit for boosting immunity in the cold and flu season. Season Specific Supplements Zinc Zinc is critical for cell function and directly influences the GALT and the mucosal barrier to inflammatory cells. It regulates the immune system and even a mild deficiency can result in immune dysfunction. Many studies have demonstrated the beneficial effects of zinc supplementation in the management of the common cold, cold sores, influenza and acute respiratory infections. Vitamin C Vitamin C can reduce the duration of a viral infection such as a cold. It is possible that a high dose of vitamin C may also prevent the onset of a cold. It has been found to improve components of the immune system such as antimicrobial and natural killer cell activities. Plus it can be antibacterial and antiviral at high doses. Echinacea There is preliminary evidence that echinacea may be beneficial in the early treatment of the

common cold. The purple flower is a traditional cold remedy that has been used by Indigenous Americans for centuries. Studies indicate echinacea can decrease the length of a flu-like illness, as well as reduce the frequency and severity of upper respiratory tract infections. It can be used for both prevention and treatment. Astralagus Astralagus is a 2000-year-old Traditional Chinese Medicine herb used to enhance immunity and rejuvenate the body and its vitality in the recovery of illness. It is antioxidant, anti-viral and helps rebalance gut flora. Clinical trials showed astralagus reduced the incidence and duration of colds. Olive Leaf Extract Olive leaf extract can suppress a number of viruses, including those that cause the common cold. It has been reported to improve immunity by increasing natural killer cell function, and to be effective against viruses such as HIV, hepatitis B and C, and herpes. Preliminary research also shows benefits for artery disease, dementia prevention and other disorders. The immune system changes as we age and has different demands placed upon it during different seasons. It is disturbed by malnutrition, the normal process of ageing, physical and mental stress and undesirable lifestyles. There are many ways we can improve our immunity, and effective changes can start today by improving dietary intake of immune-modulating foods and supporting the diet with proven immune boosting supplements. A strong immune system is a mirror of a healthy lifestyle. Preventative measures in the cold and ‘flu season will also support optimal health and wellbeing.

»»Professor Avni Sali is Founding Director of the National Institute of Integrative Medicine (NIIM). He oversees the facilitation of the practice of Integrative Medicine at the NIIM Clinic in Hawthorn, as well as the promotion of education and research. niim.com.au

20 The Melbourne Review August 2013

COLUMNISTS Irregular Writings Byron in July BY Dave Graney

yron Bay in July? Just as the Melbourne winter really kicks into gear and the days roll into one long, windy, wet, dark afternoon? Just talk at a sideshow at Splendour in the Grass, have a rest and then amble over to the Writers’ Festival? Why, I think I can clear a week or so in my diary, yeah! Why ever not? Duties were to include being part of a panel based around “drugs and creativity” with musician Ben Lee who has a new album out much inspired by a South American plant called ayahuasca. Clare Moore, Lisa Mitchell, and myself, along with Scott Owen from the Living End, Nadav Kahn, writer/filmmaker Rak Razaman and neuroscientist Professor Bulent Turman. Sounded like a well rounded bunch. I saw my role as to be sceptical, because I couldn’t really see any other way to look at it. Drugs are for recreation and all the great casualties in music and literature made their work in spite of the destruction wreaked upon their talents and judgement by hallucinogens, opiates, downers and booze rather than because of them. We talked around it as best we could. Eventually I cracked and asked where anybody got the time to take a few days or a week out to get wasted. Being a musician is 95% admin! It would help to have servants. For when you nod off in the middle of the moat where you paddled out to shoot some water rats. A young man in the audience accused me of being a “big musician” and asked what was the matter with a young person like him using ayahuasca so he could write. A total whinger. I told him to write and write some more first. And if he was a musician to play and play any music first as well. Get your skills and your legs before going ten rounds with dope and booze. A woman got up to say she’d never felt comfortable in the immediate world and “that’s why I use DMT”. She wanted to know if ayahuasca would be any good for her. Ben Lee had pretty much begun by warning people

that it should only be used with an experienced HOLY MAN present. Where a regulation Northern Rivers stoner could grab one of these might be a difficult one. I just tried not to insult anyone too harshly. The writers’ festival was set in another specially zoned precinct closer to the town. It found me doing panels with authors, academics as well as performing artists (like myself) who had turned to scribbling and wandered into the room. I have been hearing a lot of talk from writers internationally, voicing their discomfort with being pressured to becoming performers in the NEW DIGITAL WORLD. This disquiet was in effect here for a moment, but only a moment , for there were many great sessions that weren’t all for laffs. Anne Summers, Peter Carey, Michael Leunig, DBC Pierre, Tony Birch, Robert Drewe, Catherine Deveny. Many talented people involved. I had the most enjoyable time at a launch of Australian Love Poems 2013 in a lovely old house by a lake. George Megalogenis launched the volume with two mock poems from Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott. He felt he should play to his strengths – economics (the poems were two words each) and politics. He saluted the publisher, Inkerman and Blunt, and its head, Donna Ward for the polish and, yes, LOVE, that had obviously gone into the book’s editing and production. The editor, Mark Tredinnick, spoke and six of the featured poets read. All kinds of ages, genders, tempos and sizes. Softly spoken and hand flashing performance rhymers. The book is indeed a beautifully put together volume. It was inspiring. I had to be a part of a panel with the Bedroom Philosopher, Denise Scott and Judith Lucy. We made a pact to keep it highbrow but that went out the window as soon as the mics were turned on. Scott and Lucy traded one liners all across the footlights, working the crowd like Al Jolson and Henny Youngman back in the Vaudeville days. I was so ashamed for our profession. Whatever that was. The next day I did a panel on improvisation with Lucky Oceans and Bedroom. It ended with Lucky and I jamming on an old folk tune while Bedroom did a pole dance in front of the stage. The tent was actually rocking. Then we ran to catch the bus to the airport. We’d gotten away with something, again!

@davegraney

Six Square Metres An impudent embrace of possibility BY Margaret Simons

am rather irritable at the moment. Perhaps it is the election campaign, but I am blaming the daffodils. The first of the season are sprouting on my pocket handkerchief sundeck – bursts of yellow on sappy stems. It seems almost wrong for them to be so yellow and so confident of the coming of spring. I am quite annoyed with them, which is perverse. I planted the bulbs very late in autumn, thanks to the endless round of general busyness that prevents me from getting on with the real business of life, such as my garden, in a timely manner. I remember digging in to the pots on the sundeck using a trowel with a wonky handle, and muttering under my breath about Wordsworth. “I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd,

Longneck Post-physical: AFL’s whole new world BY Patrick Allington

ustralian Rules Football stands on the cusp of a great and historic revolution – more innovative than white shorts for away games, more desperate than Ron Barassi at half time of the 1970 Grand Final pleading with his players to handball handball handball, more chic than the tattoos that adorn the arms, legs, torsos and necks of all self-respecting modern midfielders. The AFL is a handball into space away from becoming the world’s first post-physical activity sport. It’s true: they’re going to cancel the game itself.

A host, of golden daffodils” Not much chance of loneliness around here, with the family shrubbery running riot through the place most evenings. I remember it was raining, too, but I was determined to get those bulbs in. I was thinking of myself, weary from winter, a few months’ hence. I know from experience that in early spring the view from my lounge room windows can be depressing. The compost bin is sulking. The silverbeet looks surly. There are no flowers, and in place of vales and hills I have the view of the McDonald’s drive-through with its host of golden arches. I wanted daffodils as well, to make me feel like a good gardener, a husbander of cheer. Normally my garden plans are made only in order to go astray. Things don’t grow as I plan, or other things grow faster. But this

And not before time. Think about what really matters in 2013. It’s not Buddy Franklin grabbing a loose ball on the wing, bouncing twice through heavy traffic and – pinned hard up against the boundary line, on the wrong side for a left-footer, opponents hanging off him like oars on a boat – letting fly from 60 metres and splitting the middle. What matters is that Buddy’s heroics provoke conversation. What’s the best goal he ever kicked? Is his best better than, say, a Peter Daicos special (Daics used to ease them off his big toe, making the ball meander as if following a creek bed until, like a dribble of water defying a drought by reaching the sea, it crossed the goal line)? Can Daics or Buddy top the winning goal Malcolm Blight kicked after the siren in 1976, North Melbourne v Carlton, a screw punt that caught a thermal current and came down six months later? Why bother with any more twelve-goal maulings, Hawthorn v Anybody, when there are enough topics to keep footy chat going for decades. Who was the better centre-

The Melbourne Review August 2013 21

melbournereview.com.au

COLUMNISTS plan worked. Daffodils are so bloody reliable. So now the pots on the sundeck are studded with strappy leaves and stems topped with furled yellow buds and, until I cut it a few minutes ago, there was this one arrogant or self-confident bloom ahead of all the rest, with its open-hearted, imprudent embrace of possibility. ‘Hey, look at me,’ it said, seemingly quite unaware of how easily it could be kicked from the ground or shat upon by the pigeons, or gnawed by the rats. It was defying imperfection, and frailty. Damn it. Daffodils are uniform, and bright as paint. A fitting subject for an Andy Warhol painting, repeating and repeating and repeating. They have none of the quirkiness or individuality of trees or roses or parsnips. Although there are different types (King Alfred, Hoop Petticoat, and so forth) within each variety they are alike, which is why we plant them in drifts and groups. Let me describe this one, this pioneer. The green of the stem is topped with a brown papery sheath, like a reverse dunce’s cap. Then there is the yellow canopy of six petals, each with a shading of green at the base, and the tops slightly curly, like a newspaper just unrolled. At the centre of these petals is another round of yellow forming a cylinder with a serrated top, and inside the cylinder are the sexual parts of the daffodil, there for all to see, the furry stamen and pistil reaching up and out in the hope of gentle touch. Daffy daffodils. They open themselves in this way to light and sun and rain, exposing their innards, advertising their vulnerability with a splash of colour in the grey shaded prespring garden. Spring is coming, the daffodils say. Hope springs eternal. And all that. I am going to cut more of the furled yellow buds, put them in a vase, and watch them open in the warmth of my living room.

@margaretsimons

half-forward, Dermott Brereton or Wayne Carey? And who partied harder? Who rivals Nathan Buckley as the game’s most overrated champion? And never forget the disputational value of the AFL’s ‘we really care’ community engagement: Indigenous round; women’s round; multicultural round; endangered species round (with a nod to pandas, those loyal Collingwood fans, but with a principal concern for the decline of the pure full-forward, the second ruckman, the shirtfront). The Essendon supplements saga has shown the AFL what’s really possible. I don’t know who’s playing who this weekend but I can picture James Hird’s driveway, where he meets the media to periodically deliver an alpha maledipped ‘no comment’. That’s why Essendon’s predicament isn’t a once-in-a-generation crisis but the tipping point the AFL has been craving – a political, legal and moral controversy that, all going well, will simmer like a volcano. At the moment, Dalai Lama-Hird and his

Third Age Days of Azure not forgotten BY Shirley Stott Despoja

ome of us had childhoods waiting for the war to be over. I ask my friends of the same age if they remember that impatience that was our lot as children in the 1940s. Yes, they say. We were forever being told, if we dared to ask for something, that there was a war on, to eat vegetables because the starving Belgian children would be grateful for them, and we listened in to adults talking, it seemed interminably, about after the “duration,” what it would be like, as though it would be as it had been before. For me, a Sydney child, it meant looking longingly at chocolate-coated ice-creams on a stick in the advertisement in Hawkins’s shop that was never taken down; there to torment me with what I was missing because of the war. I was impatient for my soldier sister to return from New Guinea, to become our resident hero. I was impatient for her to meet my dog, to hear about the English sailors we’d looked after when their ships berthed in Sydney Harbour. Meanwhile, not realising how lucky we were, we ran free in the streets or bush, and in backyard orchards. We memorised half a lifetime’s worth of poems in our schools, along with our times tables, and learnt to write a fair hand. My friend Jane, in a one-room, oneteacher school without heating, cooling, water or light, remembers how “Learning can flow with just four walls,/Desks with inkwells, backless benches, paper and pen/ Maps, books and a gifted teacher….” To those who even then had a great deal more than those amenities, she writes “you will never know/ How privileged we were.” And then one day we were told the war was over. We struggled to feel what we thought we

spin doctors, along with Essendon’s board and administrators, the evil sports scientists and the childlike playing group, must all deflect and deny. But in time, after the punishments and the court cases, after the UN human rights delegation come and goes, a grateful nation will laud Essendon. That’s when Hird, who on the field appeared out of nowhere to perform magical and brave deeds, will seize the moment. He’ll give an interview to Bruce McAvaney, Australia’s Oprah Winfrey, but instead of weeping with shame and begging forgiveness he’ll claim credit for reinventing the game. Quite right too. The champions of the future AFL will come from all walks of life. I anticipate rousing oratorical jousts, like Bill Clinton on the togetherwe-can-save-Africa qualities of Eddie McGuire’s worldview versus J.K. Rowling on whether footy or Quidditch is the grander spectator sport. Physicist Paul Davies will answer the question ‘Is Gary Ablett Senior really God?’ Ballet Australia will choreograph the pack mark Leo Barry took

ought to feel, just as, throughout childhood, we struggled to feel the right things when people died. It was tricky. All that impatience and now… what? The answer came quickly for Jane whose mother takes her into the kitchen (“She’s troubled,/And needs to talk”) to tell her about Hiroshima. Jane slinks off to her thinking place by the tank stand “with a dull pain in the gut. For I see/That after all, the war’s not over...” It’s hard not to shout with recognition and sharp pleasure when one reads a recreation of a childhood shared. Jane and I were together at St George Girls High School, Kogarah, until 1953, and then at university. We both lived as children in the Illawarra district of NSW. Jane taught literature and languages in Australia and overseas for 40 years. She did post-graduate research and study at the universities of Iceland and Sheffield. The girl of whom we were a bit in awe as kids, we continued to admire as we grew older, and then – as we grew old. Jane now lives in Canberra. Days of Azure is her first book of poems. I think many of her friends have been waiting for it a long time, but it is the greater pleasure now because our old age makes us particularly receptive to a childhood recreated as beautifully as it is in this small book. There are great treats within, whether you had a Sydney, Adelaide or Melbourne childhood. First hearing Beethoven’s Seventh on a stack of 78s, the young children of the family “In nighties and pyjamas began to leap/Like small, striped dervishes, all about the house…” “…For the few minutes it took our mother/To find the wooden spoon, we circled the planet,/Spun in space, flew into the moon,/And broke all bans…” Later, “Tucked up in bed… We were still rocked and ringing/ with the golden key of A.” Fast forward to motherhood, a grownup son now overseas… “his cello lies/Inert and mute. It used to fill the house/With its warm tenor voice…” Here is that feeling so many of us share when children leave home and ghosts behind them. There is an imagined meeting with her mother that echoes a dream I have often: “Oh, you’re here. You’re well again!” Jane is not sentimental. She simply writes

to save the 2005 Grand Final. The Australian Society for Medical Research will convene a panel to determine any correlation between ugliness and hardness at the ball. The poet Les Murray will ponder the elegiac qualities of Richmond forever finishing ninth; Clare Bowditch will sing Murray’s words at Covent Garden. And after a lifetime of research, the eminent historian Geoffrey Blainey will publish his 18-volume masterpiece, Use and Abuse of the Holding the Ball Rule, 1877-2013. This new AFL will be truly egalitarian. Anybody and everybody – men, women, children, even outcasts with unreconstructable knees – will participate. The nation will embark on a journey of lifelong learning, footy transformed from the greatest game on earth into a philosophy of everything. Like Alex Jesaulenko taking the mark of the century in the 1970 Grand Final, the broadcast rights will soar.

@PatrAllington

Meanwhile, not realising how lucky we were, we ran free in the streets or bush, and in backyard orchards. We memorised half a lifetime’s worth of poems in our schools, along with our times tables, and learnt to write a fair hand. about what many of us experience about days long past and memories worth revisiting, as well as darker times (both Jane and I had Great War-damaged, angry fathers). There is a sharp, sometimes funny exactitude that makes this Jane worthy of her namesake. I am pleased she has been published by Ginninderra Press which is now at Port Adelaide. And I love the title’s reference to Christopher Brennan, the Sydney poet our English teacher, Hilda Mackaness, knew and spoke to us about often (he died in 1932). Clive James may not be a fan of his, but we thrilled to the story of Brennan’s thwarted ambition and his no-hoper end. How wrong people are who speak as though Australian literature hardly existed or was not appreciated until the 60s or 70s. Our teachers made us aware of contemporary Australian writers, even while we ploughed through English ancients for our exams. To quote Jane (almost), the young people of today will never know how privileged we were.

» Days of Azure, by Jane Vaughan Donnelly. Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide. ginninderrapress.com.au

22 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW AUGUST 2013

FEATURE

PREVIEWS BY WENDY M. CAVENETT AND WILLIAM CHARLES. FOR ALL EVENT INFO GO TO MWF.COM.AU

OVERVIEW

CHRIS WOMERSLEY

MARINA WARNER

ALEXIS WRIGHT

A ‘city of literature’ – what does that really mean? In her first MWF, Director and CEO Lisa Dempster has sought to consolidate Melbourne’s position as one of the world’s leading cities of literature, building on to the UNESCO designation, the splendid Wheeler Centre, and the vibrant world of small independent publishing that exists in Melbourne. Tapping into the Word Alliance, a global network of the ‘eight best writers’ festivals in the world’, Dempster hopes this year’s MWF will, more than ever, prompt Melbournians to ask questions of, to recognise, and to celebrate their literary culture. This has involved putting together an unashamedly international, outward-looking program that confirms Melbourne on the world literary festival route. “In-depth, global and literary discussions,” Dempster assures us will be the order of the day. Star recruits Boris Johnson and Tavi Gevison have added a wow factor, but it’s not all bells and whistles; the breadth of programming and the absolute commitment to social media take Dempster’s first festival right into the hyper-engaged present. WC

Described as an ‘unrepentantly daring and original talent’, Melbourne author Chris Womersley’s first two novels, The Low Road and Bereft, took out a veritable swag of awards – the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, the Australian Book Industry Award for Literary Fiction and the Indie Award for Fiction included – and in September his new novel, Cairo, will be on the shelves. Set in 1986 – at the height of a period in Australian cultural history recently celebrated in full exhibition mode by the NGV – it delves into that strange decade’s counter-cultural world of poets, musicians, painters and eccentricities. It is a novel about the betrayals experienced on the road to growing up, via an Art Deco apartment block in Fitzroy, and an amazing art heist. Appropriately, it is to the NGV that Womersley returns on August 24, to the Theatrette at Ian Potter Centre in conversation with Roger Taylor. In a session titled ‘The Stolen Picasso’ – not unrelated to events that unfold in Cairo – Womersley will discuss Melbourne’s underground art scene and associated milieu of that time. WC

Academics, students, fans of The Hunger Games; lovers of folklore and fairytales, of feminism, language and the imagination – Marina Warner’s following is as vast as it is loyal, and they are keenly passionate about the British writer, scholar and mythographer’s growing legacy. Warner, who is part of the London Review of Books distinguished team featured at this year’s MWF, makes three appearances – on August 30 at the Warwick Prize Shortlist launch, on August 31 at The Morning Read and, as the chosen orator for the closing night address, on September 1, where she will recast ancient stories to prove that reading literally can save your life. A talk inspired by her most recent book, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, Warner’s offering seems the perfect bookend to a festival that promises to bring the world to Melbourne, and continue the great live storytelling tradition, with its emphasis on the ‘pleasures of language’ and the ‘faculties of the imagination’ that, writes Warner, “are bound up with the faculties of reasoning and [are] essential to making the leap beyond the known into the unknown.” WMC

“Upstairs in my brain, there lives this kind of cut snake virus in its doll’s house. Little stars shining over the moonscape garden twinkle endlessly in a crisp sky. The crazy virus just sits there on the couch and keeps a good old qui vive out the window for intruders. It ignores all the eviction notices stacked on the door. The virus thinks it is the only pure full-blood virus left in the land. Everything else is just half-caste.” This is the magical opening passage of The Swan Book, Alexis Wright’s magnificent third novel, and like her awarding-winning Carpentaria, it’s another enigmatic, sprawling tome – a state of mind, a strange dream, an ancestral language writ large. Wright – who is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria – once again engages the expressive power of the imagination to staggering effect. To celebrate the release of The Swan Book, Wright joins fellow author, Arnold Zable In Conversation on August 31 to discuss her writing life and how the support of her own people help her shape and write her stories. WMC

CHRIS WOMERSLEY From the award-winning author of Bereft

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW AUGUST 2013 23

MELBOURNEREVIEW.COM.AU

MELBOURNE WRITERS’ FESTIVAL

THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS It’s one of the world’s most revered literary journals – scholarly, topical, a powerhouse of great writing and critical rigour. The London Review of Books is a place for readers who simply love language and ideas; the historic, the anthropological; the agency of human experience. It offers some of the best contemporary literary and intellectual essay writing you’re likely to read. This year, the MWF welcomes an illustrious team of essayists, journalists, academics and writers from this distinguished publication for a series of talks and presentations that form a mini-festival within the 2013 program. Join LRB editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers, publisher Nicholas Spice, and regular contributors Andrew O’Hagan, Jeremy Harding, Jacqueline Rose, Colm Tóibin and Marina Warner in discussions about writing, language, the arts, and issues that are both divisive and compelling. Learn about women in dark times with Jacqueline Rose or find out about the strange allure of Wagner with Nicholas Spice. A particular highlight – a Saturday seminar: the art of literary criticism with Wilmers and Harding on August 31. WMC

CHRIS RUEN

THE MOTH MAINSTAGE

NEW NEWS

One of New York’s smartest young music writers, Chris Ruen is well known for his work Freeloading (Scribe) in which he confronted his own indulgence in the copyright- and payment-free world of downloads and file sharing. On August 31 at 5:30pm, Ruen will discuss this work and the New York music scene with Triple R’s Vanessa Toholka. Does music criticism still have the ability to influence taste and sales it once did? The standard bearers of popular music journalism of years past have faded into senescent quietude, if not disappeared altogether. On August 30 at 4pm join Ruen, London-based rock critic Andrew Mueller and writer and broadcaster Elmo Keep to discuss contemporary music criticism and its challenges – session chaired by Penny Modra. Meanwhile on Sunday September 1 at the NGV Theatrette, Ian Potter Centre, Ruen will discuss the DIY ethos with the UK’s Simon Reynolds (Rip It Up and Start Again, Bring the Noise, Retromania). Chaired by Jon Thjia, the two writers will examine the way the means of musical production, first blown wide open by punk, is back on the agenda. WC

Touted as New York’s ‘hottest and hippest literary ticket’, The Moth hits our shores for the highly anticipated, The Moth Mainstage MWF event. Raw, bold and thrillingly unpredictable, master storytellers will ‘breath fire’ into everyday stories that may have otherwise remained untold. Featuring Canadian comedian and host Ophira Eisenberg and Australia’s Magda Szubanski, Tony Wheeler and Melissa Lucashenko, the theme of courage will be explored at the Melbourne Town Hall on August 22. So what is The Moth? Founder, George Dawes Green, says he wanted to recreate in NY the many sultry evenings he spent with friends in Georgia sharing stories on his friend Wanda’s porch. He recalls moths being drawn to the light, entering through a small hole in the screen – the insects became the group’s namesake. Since its NY launch in 1997, The Moth has presented thousands of stories around the world, each told live, and each eliciting a range of human emotions and reactions. What makes a good story? How does storytelling affect and shape human experience? The Moth knows… WMC

Few industries have changed over the last decade as radically as media; digital technology has thrown aside traditional business models, and with them the authority (if not always the power) of the big corporates. Everybody now does media in their own way, on their own platforms, and in their own time. Navigating through this tectonic shift, and for the second year running, the Centre for Advancing Journalism at University of Melbourne partners with MWF to bring together a selection of media industry experts and disruptionists who together will debate the core dilemmas: the nature of truth, the reach and role of ethical standards, the role of the citizen, the all-terrain, all-seeing, all-recording mobile phone, the relationship of the new media environment to democracy, the multiplicity of start-up ventures and even, finally, does it all matter? Margaret Simons, Katharine Viner, Greg Jericho, Gideon Haigh, Sophie Black, Pamela Williams and Eyal Halamish are some of the names you can join on August 30 and 31 at ACMI. A live performance also, at 6:30pm on August 31 at the Wheeler Centre: The New Newsroom. WC

When nothing is as it seems, how can you know what is real?

‘One of the unrepentantly daring and original talents in the landscape of Australian fiction.’ Sydney Morning Herald

Seriously good books.

scribepublications.com.au

24 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW AUGUST 2013

BOOKS

GARDENS OF FIRE: AN INVESTIGATIVE MEMOIR Robert Kenny / UWAP

BY DAVID SORNIG

In the aftermath of the destruction of his Redesdale home in the Black Saturday fires of 2009, historian Robert Kenny’s life was consumed by a chain of experiences and emotions that left him struggling to find a place to settle physically, emotionally and intellectually. Gardens of Fire is Kenny’s response to his loss. It is in turns critical, provocative and sometimes just plain bitter. While the perspective of Kenny’s personal narrative is fairly narrow, limiting itself in the main to his own dramatic experience of the fire through to the quotidian turmoil of the months and years that followed, his historical and cultural sweep is broad. Kenny’s account of Black Saturday takes on a certain slow-motion quality, as he reaches into an exploration of Western civilisation’s understanding of fire from its Promethean mythology through to Gaston Bachelard’s

psychoanalytics, its practical agricultural use in pre-colonial Australia, its symbolic place in the colonial experience and the mundane place of building materials and codes. Fire to Kenny is the thing that makes us human. Through the narrative, Kenny picks especially hard at the way the binary of the natural versus the human has been deployed to present fire as an unstoppable force. He finds a particularly insidious, if sometimes unconscious, seam in ecological discourse that views pre-colonial Australia as ‘pristine’. The effect of this, he argues, has been to place ‘Aboriginal Australians in the category nature, and thus deny them humanity.’ Kenny traces a connection through early evolutionary theory about the Aboriginal as ‘primitive’ to settler/migrant myths about the natural elements that have had to be overcome to properly colonise the land. Themes familiar to the public record emerge over and again, particularly around the overly-bland Teague Royal Commission and the lack of leadership shown by State authorities. What surfaces most strikingly through Kenny’s bitterness and his sharp critical analysis of events around the willingness of some to claim trauma when they suffered none, and the glib psycho-babble of art-therapy, is his clear-eyed conclusion that what the fire revealed was a distinct lack of depth in his own community. ‘I was witnessing how fluid a thing community can be, particularly in the aftermath of an event like the fire – and particularly as time went on. For those of us who had lost much, the fire was a continuing present, for those who had not but had been engaged in it, it was part of a past, alive as that might be. For still others, less engaged on the day, the experience of the day could become an odd object of desire.’ In Gardens of Fire Kenny wants to reset something of our relationship to fire, to go beyond the historical and contemporary mythologising that is done about it, and to recognise the very real human agency involved in its making and, afterwards, in the rebuilding of the places we inhabit.

THE REVENGE OF ALL THE BIRDS, HISTORY SINGING Seumas Milne / Verso

Evie Wyld / Vintage

BY WILLIAM CHARLES

BY TALI LAVI

Guardian columnist Seumas Milne has been a morally and politically persuasive voice over the last decade, providing a counter-narrative to western triumphalism and an explanatory voice through its end-of-empire days. In this collection of his essays from 1999 – 2012, Milne pulls back the winding sheet to reveal a neoliberal corpse, detailing how, post-Communism, the promise of a new era of global cooperation turned into a train wreck of imperial over-reach, surveillance paranoia and capitalist meltdown. What began as the New World Order has collapsed in discredit; Milne analyses the ﬂow-on effects of that collapse across the globe. While celebrating victory over History, western neoliberals remained wedded to outdated mindframes; ill-judged wars on terror left the US bankrupt while across the water, UK banks danced merrily down an unregulated path to social devastation. Inevitably, History came for its revenge; around the globe, victims of excess are still picking up the pieces. Other forms of doing capitalism are called for: the battle for the twenty-ﬁrst century is served.

Evie Wyld’s writing resonates with the sound of her name; often preoccupied with the latent, confronting wildness of nature and humanity, even as it is tightly, exactingly constructed. Her style is reminiscent of sinew and bone as life is stripped away of extraneous matter and protagonists are left with intense reckonings. In this sure-footed second novel, sheep farmer Jake lives on a remote, unforgiving island, bristling at any social interaction. When her sheep begin to die in terrible ways, the threat of an unidentiﬁable monster rears. Wyld’s tale is insistently unsettling; a febrile telling of what has driven Jake to take up this reclusive life, with past and present in continual motion. The uncanny is employed in unexpected and multifarious ways, `The way the land seemed to be watching me, feeling my foreignness in it, holding its breath until I passed by.’ This deft telling of birth, death and the violence that might occur in between is relieved from its starkness by its engagement of humour and deep, entangled empathy for all beings in the natural world.

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BOOKS

THE SWAN BOOK Alexis Wright / Giramondo BY TALI LAVI

THE CORPORAL’S WIFE

HOLY BIBLE Vanessa Russell / Sleepers

Gerald Seymour / Hodder & Stoughton BY DAVID SORNIG BY WILLIAM CHARLES

As western powers rattle sabres with Iran over its nuclear program and support of certain regional regimes, we may see more and more spy thrillers set in the lands of Persia. Gerald Seymour returns with his masterful ability to juggle multiple narrative lines all of which, tense individually, move towards a thrilling common centre point of collision. Here in his latest, an MI6 sting in a Dubai brothel has landed the agency a low-level Iranian subject who turns out to be the driver for one of the regime’s top military ﬁgures. Surely he would have knowledge of movements, installations, strategies, from within the theocratic sanctum? Indeed he does, but will only reveal these details if MI6 can bring his wife out from Teheran to join him. Hardened secret forces refuse the job as far too dangerous, hence a rag-tag team of phlegmatic Brit mercenaries, along with an innocent-abroad Persian language student dragged from a London building site are sent in on a mission – with everything to lose. The wife they are seeking turns out to be anything but easy prey, and a series of edge-of-seat pursuits across the unfamiliar terrain of western Iran follows in true Seymour style.

The Holy Bible is at the centre of the world for the Blooms of Ballarat and their fellow Brothers and Sisters in a splinter Christadelphian-like sect, known here as The Truth. As the ﬁrst Gulf War begins and the group waits (again) for Jesus to return, Tranquility, the only Bloom daughter, opts out of the baptism expected of her to break out into the wider world. It’s just one of a number of coincident crises that forces the family to split open its own long-repressed fault lines. While the novel, Vanessa Russell’s debut, sets out to lampoon, there is something uncertain about its intent, as if, like so many of its characters, it doesn’t know whether it wants to belong to the community or to divorce itself from it. Indeed, its most savage satire is reserved for a professional sect deprogrammer, who disturbingly conﬁnes the group’s only outsider to a ‘Safe House’ where her allegiance to the sect pitches and rolls. While The Truth is clearly claustrophobic, it’s still family. It’s a moment of unexpected, but vital, reframing that lifts the novel out of what can sometimes feel a little unreal, and into a more believable level of complexity.

Swans glide through putrefying swamps, arrive as saviours and inhabit the artistic imagination in The Swan Book. The beating of their wings layer the complex soundscape of this multi-sensory work. In an essay published in the regrettably now-defunct literary journal Heat, Alexis Wright (best known for her sublime Miles Franklin winning Carpentaria) described contemporary Indigenous storytelling as `a spinning multi-stranded helix of stories . . . forever moving, entwining all stories together’. It is an image that elucidates so much of her writing: its dynamism; its dangerous, unpredictable, even dissident qualities; the evocations of spirituality, politics and myths and, in her latest book, the strong presence of the Waanyi language. It would be folly to describe the plot, much as it would be to constrain this novel to a particular genre. Set in a near-future Australia ravaged, alongside the rest of the world, by climate change, it is both a familiar and changed world. Following an army intervention most Indigenous people live in a fenced camp alongside a stinking swamp littered with the relics of wars; they have been relegated to being refugees on their own land. Oblivia resides in the midst of this swamp amongst the black swans, immigrants to this northern geography, after being taken in by the extraordinary Bella Donna of the Champions, herself a European refugee. Although mute, and at pains to suppress memories of childhood violence, Oblivia’s mind freewheels unrestrained. When Warren Finch, soon to be the ﬁrst Aboriginal President, arrives claiming her as his promised bride, her connection to the swans seems to be ruptured. Wright’s characters are wondrous and enigmatic beings. Unlike in Carpentaria, where Norm and Will Phantom were somewhat unadulterated heroes to emulate or fall for, Finch is a false messiah as all those touted as

messiahs must prove themselves. Bella Donna and the Harbour Master, a spiritual leader of mixed Aboriginal and Asian ancestry, are sparring partners par excellence. The three genies, Dr Snip Hart, Dr Edgar Mail and Dr Bones Doom are quintessential Wright inventions; eccentrics, owners of both Indigenous and wider knowledge. As Edgar plays his violin, `the sounds floated away like moths ﬂying off softly to clear away any residue of hardness in the room, and with their little hair-coated legs, to coax gentleness back on the faces of those gazing on the musician angel... The sweet violin music kept blurring the here and now, and more of the fantastical escaped from minds usually locked in despair... The heads of old spirits popped up from the manholes in their minds to see the travelling music passing by the cornerstones of memory.’ In this singular passage, Wright encompasses the Aboriginal notion of time, harsh realities of experience and the transformational power of artistic expression, all through prose so beautiful it makes one want to weep. There is room for weeping in this novel, as there is for chortling at the author’s audacious humour including a funeral cavalcade conducted in a `Fresh Food People’ semitrailer. Wright is a literary prophet of sorts, stitching truths to fabulism. Without doubt, she is one of the ﬁnest novelists and minds in this country.

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26 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW AUGUST 2013

PERFORMING ARTS

A TRIBUTE TO BETTY BURSTALL BY DANIEL NELLOR

n June this year a play that I wrote was performed at La Mama, the tiny theatre on Faraday Street in Carlton. One afternoon as I approached the theatre I was stopped by some words on the chalkboard out front: ‘Vale Betty Burstall.’ And beneath: ‘Our glorious founder.’ Betty Burstall died in Melbourne on June 14, aged 87. Tributes have rightly flowed. They are mostly from those who knew her personally, and by all accounts she was indeed glorious: a fierce, tenacious woman, but warm and hospitable to artists, their hopes and their ideas. A maverick. A mentor. A life lived well.

I did not know Betty. But I am one of countless Melbournians who have benefited from what she gave to the city. It seems fitting to reflect on her gift. In the mid-1960s Betty Burstall, an English teacher from Eltham High, spent two years in New York on a grant with her filmmaker husband, Tim. The grant did not extend to the high price of Broadway shows, but she was able to indulge her love of theatre in a little basement venue called ‘La MaMa’. Entry was free. Coffee was served and a hat passed around for donations. “I saw some awful stuff, and some good stuff,” she later said. “I found it very stimulating altogether.”

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Stimulating enough to organise a meeting back home to gauge interest in a similar venture for Melbourne. She knew the need was there. Fortunately for the city’s cultural and artistic future, the interest was there too. Betty had soon rented, with her own money, a disused factory on Faraday Street; painted it, got the fire going, and then opened it up to writers and actors and audiences who were willing to try something new. She built it and they came. La Mama was, in its beginning, an act of faith – or rather, two acts of faith: one that the talent was out there, and another that what it produced would be any good. “She lived on nerve and altruism,” wrote the actor Graeme Blundell, an early participant, in his memoirs, “with a steely grace.” It’s sometimes difficult for people born in the late seventies, as I was, to fully appreciate what the sixties were all about. We experienced some of the fruits of that period – the questioning of assumed norms, the sense of experimentation in art and life, the search for authenticity and meaning – but find it hard to imagine what things were truly like before. La Mama was more than just a new theatre. It was a claim about what theatre, at its heart, really is: actor and audience, word and movement, raw and unrepeatable. La Mama was a rebuke to the staid stage of 1950s Melbourne. It was a cry (in Australian accent) for something more than the latest drawing room comedy from England; for a taste of what could be accomplished beyond big budgets and small ambitions. (Incidentally, I have just calculated that the rumoured budget for the King Kong musical in Melbourne could fund La Mama for the next 500 years.) Artists approaching Betty Burstall at La Mama did not need money, power or even

reputation. All she required of them was the thing that really powers a culture and a city: ideas. These were not, and nor are they today, the sole preserve of the university down the road. A university is the conscious brain of a city; but in its theatre thinking takes a different form. It is less analytical and more dream-like – and we all know the importance of dreams. Betty understood that a city needs a theatre. La Mama was, and is, a place where the city can dream. It is also, importantly, a place where artists can fail. (The real sin in theatre is not to fail – it is to reach too low in the first place.) It is a showcase for theatre-makers of all stripes. It is a place of community and hospitality, where actors and audience gather together after the show around the fire in the courtyard. Wine is drunk; the play dissected. People who are financially disadvantaged are let in cheap or for free. It’s fitting, I think, that the first tribute to Betty Burstall was written in chalk in front of the theatre. It is a tribute as temporary as what goes on inside. Theatre does not have the permanence of film. Plays come and go. No two performances are the same. At the end of a show at La Mama the applause of an audience of 30 (often less) rings out for that night’s attempt to express – in language and story and movement and song – something of what it means to be human. I hope that, for some time to come, the applause at La Mama will also be thought of as belonging to Betty Burstall and her achievement. Because thanks to her, the show can go on.

lamama.com.au

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PERFORMING ARTS

Lally Katz: Herself & the Psychics Award winning playwright Lally Katz’s one-hander, Stories I Want to Tell You in Person, in which she stars, is now coming to the playwright’s hometown of Melbourne for Malthouse following a run in Sydney at Belvoir St.

ommissioned by Belvoir St to write a play about a fortune teller, Katz spent the money visiting several psychics in New York and ended up penning a humorous work about herself and her experiences.

“So that story then became the ending when I eventually got to go on stage,” Katz says. “And because I’d been over to New York messing around with some psychics who form a big part of the show, I thought they may have put some kind of curse on me. I was actually pretty sure of that. So I had to go back to New York and ask about that and while there I also got some new stories to add to the show. “Because I live in Melbourne, most of it is set here,” she then adds. “Doing it here will actually give me more room to include even more stuff about Melbourne.” Katz, who says her Wikipedia entry is full of incorrect information that drives her father crazy, says she is often prone to procrastination when writing. “My director, Anne-Louise Sarks, is always asking if I’ve done the re-writes yet,” she laughs. “And while it drives me crazy and makes me feel really guilty, I think that while I’m doing stuff like cleaning the house, my subconscious is still working. So by doing all the actual writing at the very last minute, it’s like I’m just getting out what I’ve been working on in my head for days on end. “But you never know because I always worry

that I won’t get something ﬁnished on time,” Katz continues. “But when I was younger I thought the world would end if I missed a deadline. You know what, it doesn’t. So deadlines are now a little bit more elastic in my head.” Katz is enjoying her new-found experience of treading the boards. “Even when I was just the playwright I would be at the theatre every night taking it all in,” she enthuses. “And I’ve always loved public speaking and acting is a bit like that except that it’s a performance. But it’s not as if I’m doing Shakespeare – I don’t ever think I could do anything like that – because I’m actually just being myself on stage.”

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A deliciously fresh take on the classic Chekhov comedy

She is of the opinion that Stories I Want to Tell You in Person may have longevity as it’s the kind of work she can add to and subtract from as the occasion demands. “There’s now talk of it going to New York later in the year,” Katz concludes. “It would be an easy show to tour because it’s basically just me. Oh, but there is a bear in it which the stage manager plays.”

» Stories I Want to Tell You in Person shows at the Malthouse, Beckett Theatre, until August 25.

Book now mtc.com.au Playing until 25 Sept

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28 The Melbourne Review August 2013

Photos: Pia Johnson

PERFORMING ARTS

Conversations With Ghosts by Noè Harsel

wo years of cross-country emailing, compositional workshopping and reconfiguring poetry resulted in the moving song-cycle, Conversations With Ghosts, now returning for its 2013 encore season. Artist Paul Kelly and composer James Ledger, alongside recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey, wove Kelly’s own words, and the poetry of WB Yeats, Lord Tennyson, Judith Wright, Les Murray and Kenneth Slessor in a wandering path between reality and fantasy. The challenge of bringing some of the best English poetry to life through music and then creating a cohesive whole was “a journey into uncharted territory,” explained Paul Kelly. “I thought of Genevieve Lacey’s recorder as our guide, the voice of an unseen world.” The process was very collaborative, with communication between the words and music requiring mutual input and understanding from both Kelly and Ledger. “When the

opportunity arose to work with a songwriter – a real songwriter who is so spectacularly good with words,” says Ledger of Kelly, “I jumped at the chance and we hit a groove almost immediately in the way we worked.” The experience of working with Paul Kelly was initially awe-inspiring for the students, some of whom grew up listening to his music. Eventually though, the real collaborative nature of the workshops enabled students to participate in the compositions, bringing elements to life through their own expertise in their instruments. “They opened up when they realised that we were up for their own ideas and suggestions,” says Ledger. “It’s very exciting to sit amongst people who work in all sorts of different ways and genres,” says Lacey of the song-cycle. “Just hearing the palette of colours possible between these instruments and Paul’s incredibly eloquent voice … the combination feels like it’s one of

Just hearing the palette of colours possible between these instruments and Paul’s incredibly eloquent voice … the combination feels like it’s one of those cases where it’s greater than the sum of its parts.” those cases where it’s greater than the sum of its parts.” Experiencing the song-cycle in performance enables an appreciation of the complexity and richness of the evocative instrumentation and the power of the re-imagined poetry. Tied together with themes of time, mortality, friendship and love, it is a haunting and emotional experience. Paul Kelly, James Ledger, Genevieve Lacey and students from the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) will be touring Conversations With Ghosts nationally, a Finalist in the 2013 APRA awards. The CD recording of Conversations With Ghosts, featuring Kelly, Ledger, Lacey and ANAM musicians is available now from ABC Classics.

»»Conversations With Ghosts is performed at Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre on Wednesday September 4 at 8pm. anam.com.au melbournerecital.com.au

The Melbourne Review August 2013 29

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30 The Melbourne Review August 2013

PERFORMING ARTS

FROM THE WRITER/DIRECTOR OF PRIMER

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PLUNGES AUDIENCES INTO A REALM OF UNKNOWN PLEASURES.” STEVE DOLLAR, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Out In the Dark.

A Decade of Israeli Film The AICE Israeli Film Festival has expanded to seven cities across the country for its 10th anniversary, which includes a number of films by Israeli directors exploring Palestinian life by David Knight

eaded by the festival’s big ticket items, the Academy Award nominated documentary The Gatekeepers and the opening night feature The Ballad of the Weeping Spring, Co-Curator Keith Lawrence says around half of this year’s films explore Palestine with films such as the documentary Good Garbage, the Stephen Dorff starring Zaytoun, Inheritance and Out in the Dark. “The Israeli filmmakers have really taken on board the slightly more humane or human perspective of the conflict,” Lawrence explains. “With Zaytoun it’s very much a... it’s not polemic, it’s not trying to be overtly political. The politics are there, as with any film made in Israel or the Palestinian Authority, the politics are always going to be there. With Zaytoun it’s softer, it’s not tying to beat you over the head with politics.

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Starting as a single screen festival with less than 10 films in Sydney and Melbourne a decade ago, the festival expanded to Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane in 2012 with Byron Bay and Canberra added this year. Lawrence says the core audience is Australia’s Jewish community but that the festival’s target audience is much wider. “When it was first launched it was very much about introducing Australian audiences to not only the Israeli film industry but also Israeli culture.”

A decade ago it was rare to see Israeli films commercially released in Australia or anywhere other than Israel for that matter. That has changed in the last few years with acclaimed recent films including Waltz With Bashir, The Band’s Visit and Beaufort. “That’s an indication that Australian audiences are embracing and are interested in film that is coming out of Israel. In the same way that we talk about the French Film Festival, the Italian Film Festival, the Russian Film Festival, the Italian Film festival etc, at the end of the day, the French Film Festival is not just targeting French speaking Australians, it’s targeting people that like continental foreign films.” While the controversial Academy Award nominated documentary about Israel’s secret service the Shin Bet, The Gatekeepers, is the film that has everyone talking Lawrence says Slower than a Heartbeat is another must-see. “The beauty of Slower than a Heartbeat is that it hasn’t got an Israeli aesthetic to it, it’s more of a French/European aesthetic. It’s about people who populate the night and early dawn. When I say night, I don’t mean streetwalkers, it’s people that go to bars and cafes in their late 20s early 30s. They’re writers and artists, there’s a drag queen in there, an orthodox drag queen, which is quite interesting, by day he is religious and by

The Melbourne Review August 2013 31

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PERFORMING ARTS melb review 305hx81.e$S_Layout 1 8/08/13 10:49 AM Page 1

The Bayside Film Festival The Bayside Film Festival gives a camera, and a voice, to the great Australian filmmakers of tomorrow by Anna Snoekstra

R While Inheritance is very much about an Israeli Arab family living within Israel, they don’t actually refer to themselves as Palestinians – they are Israeli-Arabs. That’s a whole film just about the extended family and culture and traditions of that particular family.” night is a drag queen. Only in Israel would you find an ultra orthodox drag queen. It’s almost black and white, it’s not black and white but because it’s shot late at night, in the early dawn, it’s just has this moody romanticised (rather than romantic) feel to it. I was really bowled over by it. It took me completely off guard because I’ve been involved in the festival for 10 years and I’m very used to Israeli film. This one came out of nowhere because of its soft, gentle aesthetic.” While Lawrence says there isn’t a film movement in Israel as such, what he believes is a common thread through good Israeli film is believability.

unning from August 28 – 31, the 10th Bayside Film Festival promises to be very different to previous years. Richard Moore, who directed the Melbourne International Film Festival from 2007 – 2010, has taken on the role of Artistic Director. The festival now boasts an extended program of local and international premieres, as well as a strong youth focus.

The red carpet opening night film An Iceberger With The Lot – From Bury to Brighton, tells a hilarious local history story, with Brighton personality David Brookes telling of his journey from Britain to Australia and the politics of cold water swimming in winter temperatures, in this premiere documentary. Alongside the curated program is Jump Cut and the Youth Documentary Project. Jump Cut offers the all too rare opportunity for young filmmakers between the ages of 10 and 26 to show their films in a festival setting. You would never guess the age parameters, however. From the funny and quirky animations from students of Wild@heART to the experimental take on bullying in Gay Goth Scene, these films offer

“It’s about those characters. The narrative and dialogue doesn’t seem fictional, it’s almost that you believe that those people are sitting there having conversations like it hasn’t been written for them.”

»»The AICE Israeli Film Festival shows at Kino Cinemas, 45 Collins St, Melbourne, from Thursday, August 15 to Tuesday, August 27. palacecinemas.com.au aiceisraelifilmfestival.com

The City Is Mine

audiences something very different from the average short film festival. The Youth Documentary Project allows high school students the new experience of being behind the camera. The director of this initiative, Sam Hoffman, believes the project “gives young people the tools to express themselves. Film is a particularly powerful way of doing that.” The project partnered students from nine different high schools and secondary colleges, two of which are special schools, with established Australian filmmakers to create their own short documentaries. “I call it joyous amateurishness,” Hoffman says. “A professional knows exactly what they are doing but if you think about the amateur, they don’t always know what they are doing so you are watching someone explore a medium. That can be really exciting, you are watching something a bit rawer and it’s authentic to the participants themselves.” Held at Palace Brighton Bay, the festival also includes a pitching competition on Opening Night, providing yet another opportunity for young filmmakers. Australian industry professionals will create a board to judge the ideas of local unestablished filmmakers about a Bayside story.

2013.baysidefilmfestival.com.au bayside.vic.gov.au/arts_jump_cut.htm bayside.vic.gov.au/arts_youth_ documentary_project.htm

32 The Melbourne Review August 2013

VISUAL ARTS

Photo: Yang Yuguang

by the tiny space between life and death when the concept is infinite,” says Laurence. Here we can identify a further theme of the exhibition: how ecological and environmental voices can be heard and understood within the context of contemporary art.

Lin Tianmiao, All the Same 2011. Coloured silk threads, synthetic skeletons and metal constructions.

Extending Life W Animate/Inanimate at TarraWarra Museum of Art by Suzanne Fraser

hile performance art has a limited presence in contemporary art environments, the principal function of museum exhibitions continues to be the display of inanimate works of visual art and historic artefacts. In the current

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exhibition at TarraWarra Museum of Art, the issue of how an inanimate object might have agency – or the ability to influence a situation and in turn gain animation – is explored through the work of six contemporary international artists. In this exhibition, entitled Animate/Inanimate, curator Victoria Lynn examines how a work of art can be imbued with the livingness of its subject matter and how a once living subject matter can be reborn through mediums of the visual arts. The continual interaction between inanimate objects, the living world, and the context of the museum display represents the primary dialogue of this exhibition. In particular, as the curator notes, there is an ambition in this show to open up the word ‘animate’, to be deliberately ambiguous, and to amalgamate the diverse life forms that negotiate for influence in our global territories (including human). This concept originally came about through Lynn’s familiarity with the work of Sydney-based artist Janet Laurence, who is included in the current exhibition at TarraWarra. Laurence’s installation Fugitive (2013) is composed of several mesh-enclosed environments, each of which includes an array of animal specimens, videos, mirrors, and x-rays. As Lynn states, “Janet’s work calls for an empathic engagement with the animal world; the visitor is invited to stand amongst the assemblage of objects and to consider themselves as not at the centre of the world.” The animal specimens in Laurence’s work were loaned for the purpose of this installation by Museum Victoria, the majority of which are endangered species originally found in the north east region of Victoria. Taking these specimens from the dark shelves of a museum storage space and introducing them into the light of a contemporary art installation offers them an alternative form of life, according to the artist. “These specimens exist somewhere between the living and the dead. They have this incredible presence and yet they’re long past. I’m intrigued

This conservationist narrative is not an authoritarian note in the exhibition – the concerns of the animal world are set alongside the concerns of humanity and society. In a new work by Chinese artist Lin Tianmiao, entitled Reaction (2013), the artist presents twelve synthetic human skulls that have been wrapped in two shades of lustrous pink thread – “the colours are just stunning”, says Victoria Lynn. Affixed to these skulls are various everyday implements, which, combined with the skulls, serve as vaguely abject depictions of human experience, toil, and the demands of having agency whilst being constrained by social obligations. These are beautiful objects, graceful and yet uncanny, which may conceivably lead the viewer to feel around for the shovel attached to their own jaw. Amongst the six artist installations included in this exhibition are two works of video, one by Puerto Rican duo Allora and Calzadilla and one by Indian artist Amar Kanwar. From the former is presented a new video entitled Raptor’s Rapture (2012), in which a 35,000 year old flute unearthed in Germany in 2009, which was whittled from the bone of a griffin vulture, is played by flautist Bernadette Käfer. In the video, and in the presence of the musician, instrument and music, stands a living griffon vulture, a species currently threatened with extinction. What results is a haunting and slightly inconceivable commentary on the ancient interaction between humans and animals. Alongside the current exhibition is a series of tours run in conjunction with the nearby Healesville Sanctuary, in which visitors will be able to experience some of Australia’s most threatened species alive and in the flesh. In addition, a forum will be held at the Healesville Sanctuary on Sunday September 1 with speakers including Barbara Creed and Deborah Bird Rose, which will serve to bring contemporary art and environmental research into lively conversation. The topic of whether an inanimate object – particularly one which was once living, such as a stuffed bird or a carved flute – can exercise agency to influence a situation in which it is placed will hopefully be a topic of conversation at the upcoming forum. After viewing this exhibition, it becomes apparent that the state of being alive cannot easily be regarded as one half of a binary concern. There are various stages and participants that extend the formula, a point which is brought to life in the current display at TarraWarra Museum of Art.

»»Animate/Inanimate shows at the TarraWarra Museum of Art until October 6. twma.com.au

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW AUGUST 2013 33

MELBOURNEREVIEW.COM.AU

VISUAL ARTS histories that weave and overlap with other individuals, events, popular culture and a raft of individual but still collective experiences,” Kozka says. “My intention is to connect with the viewer, to create an image or series of images that engage them and invite them to enter the image.”

ﬁlm on so many levels. The implanting of memories (someone else’s) in the character Rachel is interesting, as is the character Leon’s attachment to his photographs. It is this small detail that really gives insight to his humanity and the tragic nature of these characters.

This, he says, serves as a springboard into his viewers’ own recollections or memories. While some of his work clearly tackles the notion of manufacturing nostalgia, this is not his intention. “I believe that through the re-examination, reframing and re-construction of memories and remembered events we can shed light on who we are. While I believe this works on a personal level, I feel it is also true on a broader cultural level.”

“As you suggest, my work is about illustration, more speciﬁcally an illustration of a memory, rather than, or in addition to, an illustration of an event. I have no desire to make my images into something they are not; they are photographs, they are not paintings, nor do they want to be (no I’m not a frustrated painter).”

Kozka says that his approach is to ‘construct’ a space, an environment, which best evokes the memory he is grasping for.

Bronek Kozka At Home Alone 2013.

Melancholia and Memories Bronek Kozka at MARS Gallery BY ASHLEY CRAWFORD

or an artist who works in the ﬁeld of photography, Bronek Kozka is something of a maverick. His work, quite simply, doesn’t ‘look’ like photography. His subjects often border on the mundane; an ofﬁce worker, a dishevelled retiree, a nosy neighbour, but somehow he imbues each and every one with a lingering sense of mystery, as though we have entered

into a scene mid-narrative or blundered into the midst of someone else’s memories. Kozka says that his work was once described as existing in a ‘half light,’ somewhere between reality and dreams and memories, a description that he says appeals. “We are deﬁned by our past, our personal

“I use the term ‘construct’ loosely,” he says. “I may build a set or it may involve ‘dressing’ a location… either way what you see was not there prior, it was constructed for the purpose of making the image. I believe that this very intentional ‘filtering’ of what is in the image and what is not, and the fact things are often built specifically, partially answers the question of why my work has a different feel to other types of photography. “Lighting is crucial,” he adds. “Probably stating the obvious, but I don’t just mean the lighting of my images; lighting is crucial to our lives, behaviour, well being and understanding. I use lighting to create an understanding that is at once familiar yet somehow removed. The colour, quality, tone, intensity are all-important in shaping the experience.” There is an extraordinary moment in the 1982 science fiction classic Blade Runner when the main protagonist, Deckard says: “Memories, you’re talkin’ about memories.” Kozka responds enthusiastically to the reference. “A brilliant

TarraWarra International 2013

Animate/Inanimate Until 6 October Curator: Victoria Lynn › Allora & Calzadilla (USA) › Amar Kanwar (India) › Janet Laurence (Australia) › Lin Tianmiao (China) › Louise Weaver (Australia) Book now for combined tours of the exhibition and Healesville Sanctuary Forthcoming: Animate/Inanimate Symposium, Sunday 1 September featuring: Professor Barbara Creed, Prue Gibson, Janet Laurence, Professor Deborah Bird Rose and Louise Weaver. See website for details. 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Rd Healesville, Victoria, Australia museum@twma.com.au Telephone (03) 5957 3100

OPENING HOURS Tue to Sun 11am – 5pm www.twma.com.au

Lin Tianmiao All the Same (detail) 2011, coloured silk threads, synthetic skeletons and metal constructions, edition 1/3, length: approx. 2200 cm. Photo by Yang Yuguang. Courtesy of Lin Tianmiao. © Lin Tianmiao

That said, Kozka does not shy away from a comparison with the melancholia of a painter such as Rick Amor. “There is something very still and considered about Rick Amor’s work. I think, in our advertising and signage saturated existence stillness can sometimes be confused with melancholy. In social circles if you not ‘chatting’ something must be wrong… comments like ‘you’re very quiet, is everything okay?’ are not uncommon. While I see my work as very still, a stillness that holds a tension, I won’t shy away from melancholy. There is a reluctance to allow one’s self to be sad or melancholy or lugubrious, we must always appear to be happy (grinning idiots). “This is a social expectation, however it is there, it is in me, it’s in all of us and, fortunately, art gives a ‘socially acceptable’ avenue for this expression.”

» Bronek Kozka’s Peering Through the Blinds: Stories from Suburbia shows at MARS Gallery, 418 Bay Street, Port Melbourne, from August 13 to September 8. marsgallery.com.au

34 The Melbourne Review August 2013

VISUAL ARTS

Photo: John Brash Fotograffiti

decided upon and altered by curators to create specific visions of the previous occupants of the house. At The Johnston Collection, guest curators such as Piggott are invited to embrace this fictional format and create temporary interior installations using the possessions of the occupants.

Rosslynd Piggot at the Johnston Collection William Johnston’s Workshop.

Murmur Rosslynd Piggott at The Johnston Collection by Suzanne Fraser

ucked away in the quiet streets of East Melbourne is one of the city’s most interesting and least wellknown cultural institutions, The Johnston Collection. This small house museum displays elegant bits and pieces of decorative and fine arts from splendid places in the world, originally collected together in Melbourne by antique dealer William Johnston in the midtwentieth century. This format, of a museum

based around the collection of a great man and displayed within the great man’s place of residence, is rather run of the mill, although undoubtedly it can still offer an entertaining visitor experience. Yet what sets Melbourne’s house museum apart from this traditional arrangement is a commitment to banning mustiness from the premises, by regularly letting in fresh gusts of

creativity. This is achieved by inviting guest curators – drawn from the fields of fashion, design and the visual arts – to reinterpret the collection and completely rearrange the interior displays accordingly. Previous guest curators have included fashion designer Akira Isogawa, local architect Pascale Gomes-McNabb, and the fantastically eccentric design duo Romance Was Born. From early July until late October this year, The Johnston Collection houses the creative vision of Melbourne artist Rosslynd Piggott in an exhibition she entitles Murmur. It seems unlikely that the tucked-away nature of this house museum is the cause of its anonymity. Melbourne, after all, has increasingly determined itself as a domain of warren-like and gentrified laneways, to the extent that ‘difficult to get to’ is the inner city’s preferred modus operandi. The Johnston Collection, however, is additionally set apart on account of its highbrow subject matter, which partly accounts for its obscure placement in the contemporary cultural landscape of Melbourne. Being situated in a residential area, moreover, its exact location in unadvertised – visitors are asked to book into a tour and meet a museum representative at a nearby public location. This set-up generates an alluring air of the clandestine for visitors, who thus commence their experience well before they have stepped through the mansion’s front door. For artist Rosslynd Piggott, the air of secrecy and privacy that surrounds The Johnston Collection is a central factor in understanding how the house functions as a narrative display. As she explains, “house museums are works of fiction, installed to cater to the visitors’ tastes”. In other words, elements such as the wallpaper, drapery, furniture arrangements, and the lack of cornflakes packets on the kitchen table are

Interestingly enough, the narrative told by Piggott might best be described as an ode to reality. After approaching the museum to propose the present collaboration, the artist then set about conceptualising her exhibition. As she states, “I became interested in the lives of the three men who lived in the house… the least talked about area of its history.” These men were the collector William Johnston, costume designer Angus Winnecke, and Johnston’s friend and assistant Ahmed Moussa. Throughout her display, the artist incorporates these three characters: in the setting of the dining room table, in the arrangement of their individual bedrooms, in the holiday snaps placed around an upstairs sitting room. The close relationship between Johnston and Moussa is especially noted by Piggott; across their two bedrooms she has created a new work entitled From B to A in Colonial Knot (2013), which incorporates a pillowcase in each room embroidered with the other’s initial and connected between the rooms by a pink thread. As part of Murmur, the artist also introduces contemporary pieces of furniture to the display, highlighting the mid-twentieth century life of the house which otherwise includes largely Georgian and Regency pieces collected by Johnston. She has included a tassel covered multi-tiered bookcase by Edra and a shag and chrome armchair in the lower sitting room. Resting on the floor beside the bookcase is an elegant teacup that has been knocked over and a splash of playing cards across the floor. In such nuanced details, Piggott builds up a kinetic story of Johnston across the spaces of the house. We see that he was charming, a keen entertainer, active, and prone to bouts of temper. He was also a keen horticulturalist, which the artist references in a glittering light installation using the chandelier above the dining room table. In her curatorial role, Piggott sees herself as a “hunter, as a collector of stories”. Amongst her own art works positioned around the house is a series of nine new prints created using archival negatives featuring the three men and the house itself. Layering these negatives, Piggott creates large “membranes of memory” which are hung on the walls of the stately rooms – ethereal and yet prosaic scenes from the house’s biographical narrative. In one such image, the visitor can faintly identify the three men skinny-dipping at Johnston’s property in country Victoria. Whether there is such a thing as an ‘average’ house museum is a point of contention. But if there is such a thing, The Johnston Collection is certainly not one.

johnstoncollection.org

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW AUGUST 2013 35

MELBOURNEREVIEW.COM.AU

VISUAL ARTS lot for Strickland’s ability to draw them into this portrait, personal and revealing, of how to administer the legend and the legacy. For there is both a reputation to uphold – or further enhance – and with it, market prices. Nowhere is this more painfully evident than in the neglect into which George Baldessin’s reputation fell when his partner departed Melbourne for Paris, abandoning both the pain of loss and a warehouse full of art. Only recently has the reputation of Baldessin begun to recover; it’s not just, as critic Sebastian Smee suggests here, that as a printmaker and sculptor Baldessin was working in less glamorous media that his contemporary Brett Whiteley; Whiteley also carried on longer, despite his early death, and has since been supported by a dedicated ‘industry’ that has propped up the name and value of the artist. By focussing on the afterlife of the works of some of Australia’s recent greats – Brack, Williams, Whiteley, Baldessin, Arkley, Tucker and Oliver – Affairs of the Art also doubles as a primer on Australian modernism; this is a passing generation that laid claim to the status of ‘culturally deﬁning’ in the period 1950 – 1990, but which has been, despite the soaring auction prices Strickland documents, in gradual decline, taking the ﬁrst quiet steps from volatile present into the long and sometimes unlit spaces of history; coming generations might have trouble understanding the mythologies, and wonder what all the fuss was about.

Art and its Afterlife Katrina Strickland tracks the changing fortunes of Australian artists’ legacies, and finds their loved ones – often widows – calling the shots

BY WILLIAM CHARLES

t is perhaps only in an age where art has become inextricably linked with investment portfolios and capital ﬂows that a book such as former Australian Financial Review arts editor Katrina Strickland’s Affairs of the Art becomes possible. For centuries past, art rose and fell in estimation at the whim of passing fashions (plus ça change...), at the behest of monarchs, popes and patrons, and for its adherence to technical and ideological principles. Often the identity of the artist was of secondary importance, but such modesty will not do in our age of celebrity; investment portfolios and family livelihoods demand an artwork and its creator form a bond – part myth, part value-add. Fine art (especially painting) has, over the last few decades, ﬁrmly entered this domain.

Affairs of the Art is unique both for the territory it (un)covers – digging into the machinations of how surviving family members (in these cases, mostly canny widows) play this game both alongside and against the art dealers and the evershifting market – and for its cast of characters, a kind of rambunctious coterie of Australian art’s best and fairest, its creators and wheeling dealers, its lovers and admirers, its affairs and its sometimes violent tempers, its fakes and crooks and bitter failures. All add up to make this a brilliantly constructed and engaging read. The central question posed is: how does the reputation of an artist carry on after his or her death? What factors affect the subsequent academic reputation, the cultural esteem and (by no means always the same thing) monetary value of the legacy? In the case of some of Australia’s great modernist painters, Strickland reveals, it has much to do with how the widows control access, market ﬂow and scholarship. This is a potential mineﬁeld – we’re talking artists’ reputations and sometimes colossal egos – but Strickland’s book is a galloping narrative, and provides an intimacy with the artists that is skilfully handled, given all the information on them here is via second-hand reports, albeit from those who knew them well. Yet those left behind to administer the estate – of special focus here are Helen Brack, Lyn Williams, Wendy Whiteley etc – are perfectly open and candid, which says a

Brett Whiteley is a case in point. His pop star life, for instance, seems inseparable from the extravagant brilliance of his art – not least because he, along with Howard Arkley, sold paintings ‘out the back door’ to pay for heroin habits. But this inability to separate the man from the myth is perhaps a greater problem for those who knew him as an artist in his prime – many of whom are quoted here by Strickland. A later generation who barely knew of Whiteley while he was alive (or who weren’t brought up in that wonderfully self-regarding Sydney milieu) would presumably be more dispassionate about his place in Australia’s cultural pantheon, if that is indeed where he belongs. Personal anecdotes aside, Whiteley was ultimately just another brilliant Australian artist who died too young with substance abuse hovering like a cloud – ﬁle alongside Bon Scott and Howard Arkley or, more recently, Rowland S. Howard.

» Katrina Strickland is deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review Magazine. » Affairs of the Art is available now from Melbourne University Press, RRP $34.99; e-Book $19.99. mup.com.au

4 SepTember — 19 OcTOber 2013

The Door in the Dark The Cunningham Dax Collection, housed at The Dax Centre, comprises over 15,000 works of art made by people who have an experience of mental illness and psychological trauma. Kallena Kucers The Sense of Self: Substance #3 2010 (detail) 97 x 68 cm archival print on silver rag The Cunningham Dax Collection RMIT Gallery 344 Swanston Street Melbourne 3000 Telephone 03 9925 1717 / www.rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery Monday – Friday 11 – 5 / Thursday 11 – 7 / Saturday 12 – 5 / Closed Sundays Free entry / Public Programs / Like RMIT Gallery on Facebook / Follow RMIT Gallery on Twitter

36 The Melbourne Review August 2013

VISUAL ARTS

RMIT Gallery

The Door in the Dark: Selected Works from the Cunningham Dax Collection Sound Bites City: The Inaugural exhibition of RMIT University’s new Sound Art Collection Sound Bites City features the specially designed Torus - a circular structure inviting visitors to stroll through a 16 channel speaker system, finishing on a raised mini landscape offering the best aural vantage point to hear the works by leading Australian and International sound artists. September 4 – October 19 Storey Hall, Swanston St, Melbourne rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre

Various Artists Illuminate Until September 22 7-27 Snake Gully Drive, Bundoora bundoorahomestead.com

REPRESENTS Roger Arnall Yury Avi Neil Duncan Glenn Gibson Liam Lynch Ric Wallis 1140 Malvern Road, Malvern, VIC 3144 T 03 8823 1140

ELEVEN40 COM AU

Monash Gallery of Art

Carol Jerrems: photographic artist Until September 28 860 Ferntree Gully Rd, Wheelers Hill mga.org.au

Geelong Gallery

Impressions of Geelong – a portrait of the city and its region Until August 25 Little Malop St, Geelong geelonggallery.org.au

Lauraine Diggins Fine Art

From Van Diemen’s Land to the MCG: Images from Colonial Hobart Town to Melbourne Now Including painting, works on paper and sculpture by Beckett, Conder, Gleeson, McCubbin, Pease, Roberts, von Guerard (illustrated) and many others. Catalogue available upon request. Until August 24 5 Malakoff St, North Caulfield diggins.com.au

Cambridge Studio Gallery

Beatrice Magalotti and Sharyn Madder “a number of things…” Until August 24 52 Cambridge Street, Collingwood cambridgestudiogallery.com.au

McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park NEST: The Art of Birds Air Born Until October 6 360 - 390 McClelland Drive, Langwarrin mcclellandgallery.com

James Makin Gallery

Ian Parry Recent Paintings Until September 8 Opening Thursday August 15, 6.00 8.00pm 67 Cambridge St, Collingwood jamesmakingallery.com

Bayside Arts & Cultural Centre

Various Artists NO BOUNDARIES, feat. John BURSILL, Helen EAGER, Christopher HODGES, Emily Kame KNGWARREYE, Peter MALONEY, Wintjiya NAPALTJARRI, Makinti NAPANANGKA, Yukultji NAPANGATI, Angus NIVISON, Gloria PETYARRE, Kylie STILLMAN, Rover THOMAS, Joseph, Jurra TJAPALTJARRI, George TJUNGURRAYI & John R WALKER August 24 – October 6 cnr Carpenter & Wilson Sts, Brighton bayside.vic.gov.au

Melbourne Art Rooms Bronek Kozka Peering Though the Blinds: Stories from Suburbia Until September 8 418 Bay St, Port Melbourne marsgallery.com.au

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW AUGUST 2013 37

MELBOURNEREVIEW.COM.AU

GALLERY LISTINGS 9

FLINDERS LANE GALLERY

Karlee Rawkins Honey Gully Sarah Amos Above & Below Until August 24 137 Flinders Lane, Melbourne flg.com.au

Rachel Rovay Footpath Forest August 25 – September 8 320 Bay Road, Cheltenham withoutpier.com.au

WHITEHORSE ART SPACE

Jo Reitze The Artist’s Garden Artist Jo Reitze’s works are a joyous celebration of nature and the restorative quality of gardens. Until September 7 Waterholes Celebrating the International Year of Water Cooperation. Images will be exhibited alongside works from Box Hill and Whitehorse Historical Societies. Until October 5 Box Hill Town Hall, 1022 Whitehorse Road, Box Hill boxhilltownhall.com.au

WITHOUT PIER GALLERY

HAWTHORN STUDIO & GALLERY

Graeme Foote Book Memories Until September 10 635 Burwood Road, Hawthorn East hawthornstudiogallery.com.au

TARRAWARRA MUSEUM OF ART TarraWarra International 2013 Animate / Inanimate Until October 6 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road Healesville twma.com.au

THE JOHNSTON COLLECTION, EAST MELBOURNE

Murmur (mûr’mûr) An installation by guest curator, Rosslynd Piggott, as part of the annual ‘house of ideas’ series, evoking facets of William Johnston as a person, collector and gardener. Piggott recaptures the spirit of Fairhall as Johnston might have lived in it. Mon-Fri 10 am, 12 pm, 2.15 pm. Bookings essential Until October 23 johnstoncollection.org

EDMUND PEARCE GALLERY

Paul Batt A Single Line Kerry Pryor Sight Unseen Meredith Squires Homely Unhomely August 21 – September 7 Level 2 Nicholas Building 37 Swanston St, Melbourne edmundpearce.com.au

HEIDE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

The Sometimes Chaotic World of Mike Brown Until October 13 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen heide.com.au

ART GALLERY OF BALLARAT Ballarat International Foto Biennale At multiple sites and galleries from August 17 40 Lydiard St. North, Ballarat artgalleryofballarat.com.au

NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA Ian Strange Suburban Until September 15 NGV International 180 St Kilda Rd NGV Australia Federation Square ngv.vic.gov.au

38 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW AUGUST 2013

A-Z OF CONTEMPORARY ART

Helpful hints on how to make your art say NOW. Plus ARTSPEAK Bonus Pack BY JOHN NEYLON

ANIMALS Running with creatures as a contemporary artist involves a little (animal) cunning. Bestknown acts include Hokusai letting a paintdipped cockerel trot across a roll of paper to the tune of ‘Autumn leaves ﬂoat by my kimono’ and Joseph Beuys having deep and meaningful dialogue with a coyote. Choice of ‘wild dog’ excellent as encourages critical interpretation with atavistic referents. Dead dogs (or ﬁsh) can’t talk back so consider taking a leaf out of Damien Hirst’s playbook. His 1991 shark in formaldehyde may be a big yawn in 2013 but freak factor a big value-add.

ARTSPEAK BONUS PACK

Risk factor Irate animal liberationists looking to tan your hide. Simulation is safer Consider the work of (another Belgian) artist, Berlinde De Bruyckere (see We Are All Flesh, at the Art Gallery of South Australia). Trompe’l’oeil on the hoof. Value add Charnel house appurtenance of gallows pole provoking viewer anxiety (desirable). Alternative to abject connotations of hair and hide is post-market retro-skinning with synthetic overlays. Knitted or crocheted leotards for lemurs or any creature for that matter a good strategy provided colours bright and sequins applied liberally for high camp resonance. Lesson Too much cuteness is never enough. Best laced with irony in case viewer misunderstands your emotional state of mind. Hard to beat Jeff Koons puppy dogs. Moist muzzle heaven. Value add with a Patricia Piccinini-like foray into bio-cybernetic kawaii. Trend (worrying) Artists knitting life-size facsimiles of endangered species skins and pelts. If you are

Must be something to do with current obsession with ‘materiality’.

ABSTRACTION Has been declared dead and buried on several occasions but refuses to go away.

ABJECT Used extensively by subaltern curators. Do not use ‘abject’ and visceral’ in the same sentence. Messy.

Photo: Sam Noonan

Hard to beat Belgian artist Wim (“I am a tennis player playing on both sides of the net”) Delvoye who tattoos pigs (living) then displays their skins when (dead). The fact that some tattoos have been inspired by patterns found on Russian prison inmates may be lost on their porcine hosts.

Installation view Melrose Wing of European Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, 2013, featuring Berlinde De Bruyckere, We are all flesh.

one (artist who knits) don’t forget that stobie poles can get very cold in winter. Trend (Australiana) Forget low-hanging trophy animals (e.g. kangaroos, emus and eagles). Consider more art resistant (but niche market prospective) species such as fruit bats or cane toads. Trend (spotting) Camels are big and getting bigger. You read it here ﬁrst. Can animals make art? Siri the elephant at

ATAVISTIC Get in touch with your Palaeolithic muse. Inside every artist is a suppressed atavistic howl. Singing lessons recommended for serious performance.

Syracuse Zoo is entitled to think so. Abstract expressionist. Willem de Kooning on seeing some of Siri’s drawings declared, “That’s a damned talented elephant. I look forward to following his career.” Be warned Ethics committees. Some animal rights groups may see exploitation (even torture) in letting animals into the studio. Tip Stick to insects. Cockroaches sell well and honour contracts.

APPROPRIATION Always clunky. Now post date. Put in yellow lid Sulo bin next Tuesday. ABJECT D’ART Try it at your next dinner party. You’ll like it and so will your friends.

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Food.Wine.Coﬀee F I N E D I N I N G • S U S TA I N A B L E F O O D • C O F F E E • W I N E

BANGPOP

For a city with such a mass of food establishments, it hasn’t been that easy to get really great Thai food in Melbourne. Enter Bangpop – inspired by traditional Thai street food. REVIEW BY LOU PARDI / PHOTOS BY MATTHEW WREN

40 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW AUGUST 2013

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

Bellota When the owners of the Prince Wine Store come together with Gerald Diffey (Gerald’s Bar), and Brigitte Hafner and Stephanie Briton (Gertrude Street Enoteca) it’s bound to produce something fantastic

BY LOU PARDI

BANGPOP

It hasn’t been easy to get really great Thai food in Melbourne. Enter Bangpop – inspired by traditional Thai street food. BY LOU PARDI

n the old cargo sheds that line up along the Yarra River beside Polly Woodside and the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre you’ll ﬁnd any number of cuisines, from pub grub to Japanese and Spanish. The latest addition is Bangpop, a Thai street food dining room by restaurateur Paul Mathis (who does still own Bangpop, despite recent reports to the contrary). The unique Lego (Meccano) bar that was the centrepiece of previous resident, The Sharing House, remains, but otherwise Bangpop is its own beast, with rows of tables for diners to sit elbow-to-elbow and a consistent bicycle theme, with brightly coloured bikes forming a fence along the outdoor area which looks onto the Yarra River and Seafarers Bridge. Bangpop makes no apologies for the fact that Thai street food can be spicy – but there’s plenty here for those with milder palates too. A stand-out is the pork neck starter (Koo Moo Yang – marinated chargrilled pork neck with dipping sauce and sticky rice - $13.90) – a tender tasty number with about three or four pieces. You might be ordering another serve. For pure indulgence soak yourself in the Gaeng Daeng Phed – slow cooked duck leg red curry with thai basil, red chilli and roasted coconut. It’s perfect if you don’t like things too spicy – and if you do, there are condiments on each table to push your dishes towards spicier or sweeter territory. If you’re after a table centerpiece, try the Gaeng Bpaa Kai – half a free range chicken in jungle curry with wood ear mushrooms and bamboo ($28.90).

There’s plenty for vegetarians, vegans and the gluten unfriendly too with deep fried tofu and curries to suit. You’ll find the drinks list on the back of your menu placemat, and whilst not extensive there’s something to suit most – from house cocktails with plenty of Thai influence, to Singha and Beer Lao. The beers may be Thai but the wines are from closer to home – with plenty of Australian drops together with a few from France, New Zealand and South Africa. No matter how full you are (very) it’s best not to miss sweets. These delicate little numbers are mild and refreshing. For wow factor it’s the Saku Song Kreuang (tapioca and pandan pudding with mango sorbet - $10.90) – a bright green sea bobbing with tapioca pearls and topped with a scoop of mango sorbet. Kanom Tuy takes my vote – delicate smooth sweet steamed coconut pudding with lychee sorbet and toddy palm-jackfruit salad ($10.90). A little symphony of low-key flavours that I would quite prefer never ended. If you’re in a larger group, Bangpop does a tasting menu for $45 per head.

» Bangpop 35 South Wharf Promenade (behind Hilton South Wharf), Melbourne 03 9245 9800 Lunch and dinner: Monday – Sunday bangpop.com.au

he Prince Wine Store’s Philip Rich, Michael McNamara and Alex Wilcox were after a training room when they first started looking at the site next door to their wine shop. What they now have is a training room or function space for 40, a private dining room for 12, and one of Melbourne’s most promising wine bars south of the river. The name Bellota is Spanish for acorn, and is best known as the name of the jamón made from acorn-eating Spanish pigs. Philip, Michael and Alex have spent much of their lives travelling the world finding great wine. Their discoveries are in part reflected in the over 3,500 wines available at Prince Wine Store, and in the European experience at Bellota. The extensive wine list is updated regularly and each of the gentlemen is responsible for it on rotation. If you can’t find what you want on the list, then choose a bottle from next door – corkage is free for bottles over $80.

At front of house you’ll find Giacomo Romagnoli, lending a fantastic feel – fine dining service without the fuss. He’s joined by some cheeky ﬂoor staff who are good fun and perhaps a little too sharp-witted. In the kitchen is Stephanie Briton (who is overseen for the ﬁrst year by Gertrude Street Enoteca’s Brigitte Hafner). Whether you’re in for a small nibble and a glass of wine or a three course meal, there’s plenty on the menu to sate you. The

charcuterie menu offers up salumi, jamón and prosciutto alongside cheeses from Adelaide’s Cheese Culture. For those fond of molluscs you won’t be disappointed with the oysters ($4 each) – they’re served with a simple vinaigrette but are tasty enough nude. For starters, the white anchovies are like no anchovy you’ve ever met. Fresh and flavoursome without the full-on fishy flavour often associated with anchovies. The croquetas are a sophisticated take on ham and cheese, stuffed with jamón and oozing cheese. The mains are simple fare and the surprise hero is the minute steak – a slither of scotch fillet cooked to perfection with simple salad leaves, fries and a side of horseradish ($25). The pork schnitzel special ($26) brings together a perfectly crumbed schnitzel with its life partner coleslaw ($26). The dessert menu is short and sweet – pannacotta, fondant or tart, with the chocolate fondant ($12) probably the best of the three. Overall it’s a pleasant food experience but starters and wine are certainly the highlights. Out the back you’ll find a small courtyard and upstairs, facilities, the training room and dining room with a rotating parade of artworks from Niagara Galleries (who represent Angela Brennan, Noel McKenna, Rick Amor and more). Prince Wine Store is licensed to deliver Wine and Spirit Education Trust of the United Kingdom (WSET) courses, which are suitable for professionals and keen amateurs. Bellota is stuffed with rejoicing locals who for a long time haven’t had a place like this. It just might be worth moving to the area to call it your own local.

» Bellota 181 Bank Street, South Melbourne Lunch and dinner: Tuesday - Saturday 03 9078 8381 bellota.com.au

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW AUGUST 2013 41

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42 The Melbourne Review August 2013

WINE

Drinking I Well

n wine circles, we talk a lot about what qualities make a good wine but more recently, I have wondered what qualities make a good wine drinker? Writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Tis the good reader that makes the good book,” referring to those personal traits we bring to the object in order to better appreciate it. Food

writer M.F.K Fisher also mused that the way in which a wine is consumed is “an indication of a man’s spirit as well as of his general attitude toward the rest of the world”. I got to thinking about what are those qualities that make us not so much technical tasters or ideal show judges but good wine

drinkers? If I had to choose, I’d say the qualities include traits similar to those that make a good traveller, reader or person and include but are not limited to being adventurous, the ability to revisit ideas, showing patience and being responsible. Here are a few of the wines you might get to try with these traits in mind.

Yalumba The Virgilius Viognier 2010

Stefano Lubiana Pinot Gris 2012

Montalto Main Ridge Block Pinot Noir 2012

Peter Lehmann Lyndoch Shiraz 2011

Barossa Valley RRP $49 yalumba.com

Tasmania RRP $29 slw.com.au

Mornington Peninsula RRP $65 montalto.com.au

Barossa Valley RRP $30 peterlehmannwines.com

When it comes to wine drinking, an adventurous streak will take you places – literally and metaphorically. New varieties, regions, countries, styles and ideas all open up when you embrace adventure. Start your wine drinking adventure right here with Yalumba The Virgilius Viognier. One of the most scarcely planted varieties on earth, Viognier hails from the France’s Northern Rhone and has been championed in Australia by Yalumba’s Louisa Rose to exquisite results; the 2008 vintage of this wine won the 2010 Adelaide Review Hot 100 SA Wines. If you have been raised on the white wines prolific in Australia – Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc – this is both a mini adventure in flavour and pronunciation. “Vee-on-yeah” brims with exotic notes of ginger, peaches, apricots and white florals; this, Yalumba’s flagship Viognier, is also one of Australia’s best – aromatic, textural, complex, and layered. And don’t forget that even virtues need exercising so be sure to drink adventurously regularly and as Mark Twain said, “throw off the bow lines … explore, dream, discover”.

“The care of the earth is our most ancient and after all, our most pleasing responsibility,” wrote American poet Wendell Berry. We are now more aware of the impact we have on the environment and of our responsibility to care for it. Happily, many parts of the wine industry are taking strides toward more sustainable farming that are better for the environment, the vineyards and the wine. Actions include improved vineyard management, fewer to no chemical introductions, organic farming and, like Stefano and Monique of Stefano Lubiana Wines in Tasmania, biodynamic farming. As well as better quality fruit and wine, their key objective with the certification was to work with nature not against it, leaving their site in a better state than they found it. The 2012 Stefano Lubiana Pinot Gris shows how good being good can be. An alluring nose of pear, apple and spice aromas that continue on the palate wrapped in a textural, oily and sensuous offering; it’s a beautiful wine from a considerate project.

Patience is indeed a virtue in both wine and life. Without it we would fail to reap many of the delights of wine that take time to shine. New regions need time to flourish, wine takes time to age, a winemaker needs time to understand a place; if we didn’t have patience, we might overlook great wines and regions. Aristotle said, “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” I suspect he was referring to the grapes of Pinot Noir. A famously fickle variety, Pinot Noir is the reason many are enchanted by wine; difficult to grow in the vineyard, easy to upset in the winery, Pinot Noir can give you nothing or offer a glimpse of beauty that borders on biblical. Mornington Peninsula’s endurance with Pinot Noir is being rewarded with a reputation as one of the country’s finest regions for growing Pinot Noir. This wine is one of the Montalto’s single vineyard wines of which there are three, all exquisite examples expressing the effects of various sites on the variety. It’s a lovely fragrant wine brimming with bright berry fruits, a hint of spice and excellent structure and length.

A good wine drinker has the capacity to revisit things, particularly ideas you were once certain about. As ever, this applies as much to life as it does to wine but by revisiting your prejudices, confronting your biases and maybe throwing old ideas out the cellar door, you remain open to the changes occurring thanks to the natural evolution of the world. Barossa Shiraz was both famous and lauded for making a style of Shiraz that was big and powerful. These days, the evolution of the wine from the region has given rise to many and varied expressions of the variety; wines reflecting nuances of site, showcasing new blending partnerships, new winemaking philosophies and viticultural approaches. The District Range of the late great Peter Lehmann wines bring this evolution to light by aiming to highlight the 13 individual sub-regions of the Barossa. This wine from the Lyndoch sub-region is but one expression, brimming with dark berry fruits, spice and chocolate. No man steps in the same river twice, and when it comes to wine drinking, this makes for wonderful diversity.

by Andrea Frost

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CAFÉS

A1 Lebanese Bakery by Lou Pardi

he bottom half of Sydney Road in Brunswick seems to be experiencing the gentrification which has been forecast for the last decade. All along Union Road eateries are popping up with hipster interiors and fancy coffee beans. Take a wander up the top end of Sydney Road though, and it’s business as usual. A destination on the strip for about the past 20 years, A1 Lebanese Bakery is as busy as ever. Walk in on a weekend lunchtime and you’ll be lining up behind families, cyclists and couples from all walks of life. There’s a fair range of groceries on offer, but it’s the bakery that’s attracted these hungry folk. A range of Lebanese-style pizzas, cheese pies and hot dogs churn out of the kitchen at rapid pace. My favourite is the simple herb pizza, but the cheese pies are also good, and the A1 Pizza is the choice if you’re super-hungry. Chunks of sausage, capsicum and vegetables struggle to see light under a generous dump of cheese. It’s probably not good for you, but it’s so fresh, you can almost convince yourself it is.

Top Paddock by Lou Pardi

n the no-man’s-land part of Richmond that Baby Pizza stuck a flag in not too long ago, a mega-café has sprung up named Top Paddock. It’s a darker, larger version of its sister-café, Two Birds One Stone, with the blonde wood-upon-wood fit out of Two Birds recreated in deep brown.

The coffee is just as good as Two Birds’ and the menu presents the same level of sophisticated but accessible dishes with quality produce.

Gin and lime cured trout, with pickled baby beetroot, potato galette, poached eggs, and Boatshed goats curd ($18.50) is a generous dish with a warm wedge of trout flaking away from crispy skin. The elements are strange bedfellows and whilst it doesn’t sing, they don’t clash either. Worth a try. The purple potato and buffalo ash brie omelette with padron peppers ($16 or $19 with chorizo) is a plump, joyful affair with a smattering of tasty bright purple potatoes and enough heat to wake you from your morning haze.

»»Top Paddock 658 Church Street, Richmond 03 9429 4332 Breakfast and lunch: Monday – Sunday toppaddockcafe.com

»»A1 Lebanese Bakery 643-645 Sydney Road, Brunswick 03 9386 0440 Breakfast, lunch and dinner: Monday – Sunday a1bakery.com.au

44 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW AUGUST 2013

FEATURE

2013 VENUE GUIDE

t’s once again time to look beyond the darkened skies of winter and think about the coming spring. Grand Final season, Spring Fashion Week, the Melbourne Festival, the Spring Racing Carnival and a host of other re-awakenings lead us right through until Christmas. As always, Melbourne will be celebrating to the full. Apart from the seasonal good cheer, it’s also a time when businesses all across the city think about ﬁnding that perfect place for an end-of-year ofﬁce party, for a grand

final celebration, Melbourne Cup Day event, or any other special occasion with friends and family. Whether for corporate or private functions, businesses are well advised to book now, getting spaces reserved well ahead of time. To help you find the venue that has just the right kind of style, ambience, cheer, or has the finest food, or the best cocktails, or is simply the most perfect place to be, The Melbourne Review begins our guide to the best of venues across the city. There is absolutely no excuse not to celebrate in style!

A CITY TO CELEBRATE

THE BIG GROUP PRESENTS A CONTEMPORARY LOFT STYLE VENUE WITH SPECTACULAR CITY VIEWS For corporate & private enquiries please visit www.luminare.net.au Phone 03 9661 1546 or email office@luminare.net.au

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VENUE GUIDE

The Great Den

bbotsford based Melbourne catering and events company, Ed Dixon Food Design, consists of a passionate and energetic team of professionals who work closely and flexibly with clients to create memorable events, big and small. Their passion for food is celebrated with the use of the best ethically sourced ingredients, seasonal menus and a simple and fresh food philosophy. In every way they encourage food as a celebration. With twelve years’ experience Ed Dixon Food Design caters daily for its corporate clients including meeting catering, boardroom lunches, cocktail parties, product launches and gala dinners. Now, Ed Dixon Food Design would like to introduce their newest Melbourne venue, The Great Den, a hidden delight of an event space at the rear of Great Dane Furniture’s Fitzroy Showroom. With soft lighting, a classic record player buzzing and whiskey flowing freely at a vintage timber bar, The Great Den is filled with a collection of authentic, immaculate and rare 20th century treasures.

Suitable for cocktail parties from 30-200 and seated events for up to 80 people, The Great Den offers a wide variety of options as well as a huge range of Danish furniture, including rose wood dining tables and chairs. Winner of the 2013 Boutique Caterer of the Year Award, the team at Ed Dixon Food Design can create the spark to leave an impression with you and your clients. They offer the highest

middle brighton

The Baths Middle Brighton is a historic landmark housing a Cafe & Bar, Restaurant, Kiosk and one of Australia’s only remaining open water sea baths. The Cafe has an outdoor decking situated right over the waters edge whilst the Restaurant upstairs and Private Dining Room have panoramic views of the city and Port Phillip Bay. The Baths Middle Brighton offers many reasons to visit... Come and discover them for yourself! 251 Esplanade, Brighton T: 03 9539 7000 F: 03 9539 7017 www.middlebrightonbaths.com.au

commitment to the design of all event elements including venue sourcing, menu, furniture and décor Contact Ed Dixon Food Design today to discuss your next event at the Great Den (it might just be the perfect venue for your work Christmas drinks!) or for more information about our range of venues and creative catering services.

Ed Dixon Food Design info@eddixonfooddesign.com 03 9419 4502 The Great Den info@greatdanefurniture.com 03 9682 2777

46 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW AUGUST 2013

VENUE GUIDE

MURAL HALL

n the heart of Melbourne lies a chic European ballroom with soaring ceilings, sweeping stairs and city views peeking through original leadlight windows. Never before seen by the public, this hidden treasure is now available for corporate and private events. Located on the top floor of the iconic Myer city store, Mural Hall is so named for its impressive collection of 10 original Napier Waller murals displaying influential figures from the arts, opera, literature, dance and fashion. Filled with lavish stories from the past, the space was originally designed by businessman extraordinaire Sidney Myer to host private fashion parades and exclusive events for the Melbourne elite. Mural Hall offers a sense of modernity with a vintage overlay, and is truly one of the most unique spaces in Melbourne. With capacity for up to 750 for cocktail events, or anywhere from 100 – 550 for seated events, the Mural Hall is able to host almost any kind of event: it works as an exhibition and performance space; for fashion and product launches; gala dinners; private celebrations

and weddings; corporate Christmas events and of course sponsored and charity events The Big Group have teamed with Harry the Hirer to provide a professional and seamless solution to all your audio visual, lighting, production and post-production needs. Mural Hall hosts a series of elegant afternoon teas which are open to the public, in order for everyone to experience the beautifully restored, heritage listed Myer Mural Hall. Be entertained by the delightful Kenneth Parks, who maintains a passionate professional interest in the history of Australian art and that of Napier Waller famous for painting the 10 amazing murals. Enjoy a live performance whilst you dine on exquisite pastries, delicate

ﬁngers sandwiches, savoury tartlets, scones and sparkling wine. To view dates and ticket information please go to on muralhall.net.au For all corporate and private enquiries or to arrange a site inspection of Mural Hall please contact The Big Group event managers.

Mural Hall Level 6, Myer Melbourne 314 Bourke Street, Melbourne 03 9661 1547 office@muralhall.net.au Managed exclusively by The Big Group. muralhall.net.au

SANDRINGHAM YACHT CLUB

E ed dixon food design introduces their newest melbourne venue

The Great Den Fitzroy’s new home for vintage Scandinavian luxury… for truly great events… Follow the narrow candle lit laneway and be blown away by a hidden delight of an event space, filled with rare 20th Century Danish treasures. Creatively catered for by Melbourne’s award winning boutique caterer ed dixon food design. Whether it’s a modernist degustation dinner around the rosewood dining table or a sizzling cocktail party for 200 complete with Danish smorgasbord; there’s no limit to the creativity in this inspiring space. Live the great life and enjoy the perfect night with ed dixon food design at The Great Den.

(03) 9419 4502 info@eddixonfooddesign.com rear of Great Dane Furniture 175 Johnston Street Fitzroy

scape the hustle and bustle of the city and captivate your guests with breathtaking sea views. Sandringham Yacht Club is located right on the water’s edge of Port Phillip Bay’s foreshore and 15km South East of Melbourne’s CBD. Guests to the Sandringham Yacht Club [SYC] surrender to spectacular views of Port Phillip Bay and the venue’s stunning contemporary decor. The Club offers three versatile venues at the one premier location, ensuring the perfect destination for events of any size. Together with their professionally trained staff and world-class cuisine, SYC creates the ideal ambience for any event. Host an elegant dinner dance in the Port Phillip Room, with ﬂoor to ceiling windows overlooking the bay and adjoining balconies for pre-dinner drinks. Throw a corporate cocktail event in the intimate surrounds of the Olympic Room overlooking the boat yard, or impress your business partners with a seminar in the Auditorium in the heart of the clubhouse. SYC’s food promise means that by hosting your event at the Club gives you instant access to our ﬁrstclass chefs. With more than 20 years’ experience in Melbourne’s top kitchens, their executive chef

brings to the venue a depth of flavour and quality that’s missing from many function venues today. A professional approach sees the foodies at SYC invest a great deal of time sourcing fresh produce and designing our menus. From scrumptious finger food and three course meals to light lunches, they promise their food is creative yet able to fulfil its purpose – to satiate and delight guests’ appetites! Utilising only the best audio visual equipment, this guarantees the highest level of professionalism in presentation and event staging. Audiovisual and multimedia services are state of the art and help to create exceptional events. Boasting extensive industry experience and knowledge, the audiovisual professionals at SYC can deliver on any presentation, conference or event requirements. Ensuring that you have technical support on-hand during your event is just one way SYC ensures things run exactly as planned.

Sandringham Yacht Club Jetty Road, Sandringham 03 9599 0999 reception@syc.com.au syc.com.au

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A CELEBRATION OF STYLE

THE BIG GROUP PRESENTS ICONIC MURAL HALL AS A PRESTIGIOUS CORPORATE & PRIVATE EVENT VENUE For all enquiries please visit www.muralhall.net.au Phone 03 9661 1546 or email office@muralhall.net.au

HEADER2

48 The Melbourne Review August 2013

VENUE GUIDE

Mill & Bakery

ill & Bakery, a charming artisan bread house, is located on the stunning waterfront of Central Pier, Docklands. Born from the progressive vision of hospitality experts Atlantic Group [v], it delights residents, workers and visitors alike with delicious tastes of Europe daily. The only bakery in Melbourne to mill its own flour, the bakery is privileged to create its beautiful bread products from scratch, onsite. Its adorable interior, inspired by the European countryside and completed with an assortment of vintage knick-knacks sourced from around Australia, is complemented by these bespoke artisan breads, pastries and cakes that are designed daily from the best local and seasonal ingredients. For visitors, sipping coffee amongst the bakery’s decorative treasures and homely ambience is the pinnacle of pleasantry. Then again, it could also be a result of the mouthwatering aromas wafting from the mini-ovens that sit beside the communal dining table and lunch treats such as homemade pizzas, savory brioches and gourmet filled focaccias.

The head Baker, Alessandro Urilli, is a sculptor, world renowned patissiere and artisan baker with an emphasis on sustainable, innovative and quality bread and pastries. Those who have had the pleasure of sampling his work know that there is nothing as comforting as a beautiful bowl of the bakery’s daily homemade soup served with his freshly baked bread that has been made with the passion and excellence synonymous with the Atlantic Group [v] brand. You can expect a daily rotation of loaves, pizzas, gourmet sandwiches, scones, muffins, slices and an extensive collection of sweet snacks and take away treats – with new recipes popping up daily to keep tastebuds curious. Baking and cooking classes are also regularly

The Willows

T EXCLUSIVE PENTHOUSE FUNCTION SPACE Level 10, 187 Flinders Lane Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia +61 (3) 8199 3734 monbijou.com.au

he Willows has graced St Kilda Road for over 120 years and has been a fine dining establishment since 1972. Its reputation, whilst ever changing, has remained steadfast. “Throughout our 40 year history there have been many culinary changes,” says Director of Sales & Operations at The Willows, Bridee McMahon. “Over the decades The Willows has transformed in order to tailor to the demands of time. In the 80s we were known as the place to wine and dine. In the 90s we were the home of business deals and the long lunch. The millennium saw the advent of events and celebrations. Today The Willows is not only a well-regarded wedding venue but a fresh alternative for the ever-savvy corporate market.”

held at Mill & Bakery for friends, corporate groups and even kids. These master-classes are aimed at sharing techniques and passion for the craft of artisan baking. Participants can leave with their baked goods as well as the satisfaction of creating something that is great quality, innovative and made using the best ingredients made onsite. To enquire about our master classes please call Dayle 8623 9693. Bakery opens from 7am4pm 7 days a week.

Mill & Bakery Shed 9, Central Pier 03 8623 9693 millandbakery.com.au

The Willows strives to create an event experience like no other in Melbourne. “We pride ourselves on offering an a la carte service to all guests, as a standard,” says McMahon. “Our roots are in fine dining and we want to ensure that this is reflected in all of our events. “We are lucky enough to be spoilt for choice when it comes to impressive dining in Melbourne. If a business isn’t meeting the mark quality & service wise, there are just too many other impressive options to consider. Consequently, diners have become more discerning and less forgiving. In this market we are proud to continually offer exceptional food & service. These elements have established us as a market leader in the events industry.”

The Willows 462 St Kilda Road Melbourne 03 9867 5252 thewillows.com.au

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VENUE GUIDE

THE BATHS MIDDLE BRIGHTON

he Baths Middle Brighton is a historic landmark housing a café & bar, restaurant, kiosk and one of the only remaining caged open water sea baths in Australia. With organic textures, a nature inspired colour palette and ambient lighting, The Baths Restaurant exudes balance and harmony by creating an elegantly sophisticated mood. Highlights include the quality, seasonal produce based menus, extensive wine lists and breathtaking views of Port Phillip Bay. The Restaurant offers a 2 and 3 course lunch special from Monday through to Saturday priced at $38 and $45 including a glass of wine. Try the 5 course degustation menu for $85pp. The Restaurant has a concise, interesting and ever-changing wine list that features popular and lesser known producers, from Australia and around the world. Open 7 days 12pm -3pm for lunch and 6pm until late for dinner.

The Café & Bar decor is complemented by the views, sea breezes & lapping water. With indoor, outdoor & bar seating there are many menu delights to tempt you throughout the day. Weekly specials are on offer - $20 steak night (Tuesday evenings) $20 parma and pot night (Thursday evenings) and $18 daily evening pasta specials. All specials include a glass of wine or beer. The Café & Bar is open 7 days a week serving breakfast lunch and dinner from 7am until late. In addition to the restaurant and café & bar, there are also exclusive and private dining room options for hire. Whether for breakfast, lunch or dinner, corporate or private celebrations, engagement parties and weddings, special orders can be made and menus tailored to your individual needs. Book now for your end-of-year and Christmas functions.

The Baths Middle Brighton 251 Esplanade Brighton T: 03 9539 7000 middlebrightonbaths.com.au

50 The Melbourne Review August 2013

VENUE GUIDE

Luminare

ity lights glitter against velvet black night – Luminare on the edge of the Melbourne CBD is the most gorgeous and exciting urban rooftop venue available for evening functions you could imagine. Managed exclusively by The Big Group this contemporary loft style setting, enhanced by sweeping wrap-around balconies and stunning views of Melbourne’s city skyline, is just made for all style of events. Add fantastic food, fabulous staff and brilliant views, and Luminare presents a venue made in heaven. This exciting urban rooftop venue is available for evening and weekend functions, with a private entrance ensuring your guest experience is exclusive. As with all Big Group locations, the company’s culinary headquarters tailor menus for Luminare, providing the perfect seasonal food, beverages, staff and decorative flourishes for any occasion. Car parking facilities are available on site, and in addition there is ample street parking located in close proximity. The Big Group have teamed with Harry the Hirer to provide a professional and seamless solution to all your audio visual, lighting, production and post-production needs.

Including stunning Bayside terrace for predinner drinks, smaller dinner parties and wedding ceremonies, Luminare can accommodate 80 – 250 guests for a seated dinner and 100 – 450 guests for cocktail and more informal gatherings. Corporate events, product launches, business presentations, anniversaries, Christmas parties, along with private and wedding events can all be catered for.

The sleek, subtle tone of the interior allows the space to be embellished to reflect all manner of themes, colour schemes and characteristics. The Big Group Event Managers work directly with clients to develop menus, creative approaches and ensure from start to finish that your corporate or private event exceeds expectations. For further details and information on any style of event at Luminare please contact The

MON BIJOU

S Looking for a unique event space this Christmas? Consider The Willows A La Carte inspired and memorable time after time.

462 St Kilda Road, Melbourne Vic 3000 | 03 9867 5252 | www.thewillows.com.au

et amongst the clouds above Melbourne’s vibrant CBD, this stunning penthouse captures the beautiful city skyline as its backdrop. When you exit the lift on level 10, you will be overwhelmed with the mirrored ceiling panels, which reflect every inch of this amazing venue – guaranteed to be nothing short of exotic and elegant, from floor to ceiling. This unique space extends over two levels, with the top level boasting a retractable roof, for those who enjoy a cigar with their glass of Black Pearl or Remy Martin. Mon Bijou’s Chef, Nicolas Poleaert from the hatted restaurant Brook’s in Melbourne’s CBD, awarded Young Chef of the Year 2010 by The Age Good Food Guide and Chef of the Year

Big Group event managers on 03 9661 1546, or email office@luminare.net.au

Luminare Corner Browns Lane & York Street South Melbourne 03 9429 0910 luminare.net.au

Award 2010 by Savour Award for Excellence, selects the freshest seasonal and local products to prepare a selection of canapés influenced and using techniques from his country of origin, France of course! Mon Bijou is ideal for exclusive corporate functions, engagements, weddings and for something extra special. With French inspired extravagance and exemplary standards of service and style, Mon Bijou will exceed even the highest of expectations, immediately raising this stylish sky-high scene well above the rest.

Mon Bijou 187 Flinders Lane, Melbourne 03 8199 3734 functions@monbijou.com.au monbijou.com.au

THE MELB OUR NE R EVIEW AUGUST 2013

FORM D E S I G N • P L A N N I N G • I N N OVAT I O N

Multiplicity Sheltershed. Photo: Emma Cross

2013 VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE AWARDS EDITION

52 The Melbourne Review August 2013

FORM

Grand plans Completed in May 2013 the Bates Smartdesigned 171 Collins Street development offers a positive contribution to Melbourne’s bold architectural landscape. by Leanne Amodeo

his year’s recently awarded Victorian Architecture Medal reinforces the level of innovation that has come to be expected from Melbourne’s newest buildings. Any jury would have been hard pressed to overlook Sean Godsell’s RMIT Design Hub for the top prize. Its facade lends the CBD yet another architectural point of interest and helps to define a skyline that is as dynamic as it is curious.

Opinion on this building and the many other new additions to Melbourne’s architectural landscape are often divided. But there are certain criticisms that just can’t be levelled at any of them. These buildings may be many things but two things they’re not are shy or retiring.

Melbourne has fast gained a reputation for unabashed architecture. It is a melting pot of experimentation and its architects are not afraid to take risks. The city’s resulting mix of bold design expressions rightly deserves its local accolades. Under such a bright spotlight Melbourne is also garnering strong international attention. It has quickly become a destination city and the cultural diversity of the people who call it home also adds to its international flavour.

171 COLLINS STREET ARCHITECT: BATES SMART

www.bgeeng.com +61 3 9652 3900 MELBOURNE • SYDNEY • BRISBANE • PERTH • RIYADH

The CBD’s progress has necessitated new ways of thinking about its architecture; traditional office buildings are being reimagined. In its place stand developments such as the recently completed 171 Collins Street. For Bates Smart Architects’ Melbourne office it is yet another impressive project in their commercial portfolio and for owners Cbus Property and Charter Hall it is reason to celebrate after eight long years of development. A level of creative thinking usually reserved

for civic buildings has been applied here and the outcome instantly appeals. “One can either overly embellish a building and ignore the functionality or you can have an overly functional building that ignores the aesthetics,” says Bates Smart’s Design Director Kristen Whittle. “But what our work on 171 shows is a concern for both aspects and it’s this cohesion that makes a positive contribution to the city’s architecture.” It was not without its challenges, however, as Charter Hall’s Development Manager Mark van Miltenburg explains: “There were actually five different parcels of land that we needed to amalgamate and so there were five different buildings that needed to be demolished to make way for the new 171 Collins Street precinct.” The 3000sqm site sits between Collins Street and Flinders Lane in close proximity to Swanston Street. A large part of the project’s undoubted charm is the rich character it imparts the so-called Paris end of Collins Street. Interestingly, a

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FORM planning requirement from Heritage Victoria obliged the developers to maintain the Mayfair Cinema’s Collins Street facade. “One of the early challenges was how to incorporate a 1913 heritage facade into a very contemporary way of thinking about office buildings,” explains van Miltenburg. “And this was something that we asked Bates Smart to address.” In theory it sounds like it was never going to work. But Bates Smart was diligent in trying not to ignore the history of the site. “We actually said yes to the positive aspects of the surrounding fabric and worked with it,” says Whittle. The outcome produced an elegant response that seamlessly melds the old with the new. At nine storeys high the renamed Mayfair Building is approximately the same height as the original building. It functions as the main entry and leads occupants through to the adjoining atrium and new office tower that rises 20 storeys high on Flinders Lane. It’s this tower that has been the topic of much discussion. The building’s credentials are unquestionable in that it is the first Premium Grade office building, as defined by the Property Council of Australia, with 6 Star Green Star rating to be developed in Melbourne in over 20 years. It is also the only building in Melbourne that can boast those two criteria. Not only does it stand out at an urban level because it is respectful of its historic position in the city but it also stands out for its detailed craftsmanship. “We ended up using cut glass on the laneway’s facade that was sourced from the Freedom Tower project in New York,” says Whittle. “It enhanced the building at those lower levels and made it more interesting visually; more tactile.” The tower’s driving design concept was that it appears jewel-like. This was in homage to the high-end jewellery retailers who used to operate in Collins Street’s Paris end during the 19th century.

The glass facade has an angular sharpness and pristine finish easily associated with quality and reﬁnement. It readily lends the building its own identity but also reﬂects its surrounds. The facade echoes the forms found in the neighbouring St Paul’s Cathedral spires as well as the fractal geometry of Federation Square. It also changes with the weather and the way the facade catches the light determines its predominant hue at any given time on any particular day. This element of grandeur has been carried into the nine-storey atrium, which features imported Travertine and hundreds of pieces of glass inclined and declined at different angles. The atrium’s height contributes to the interior’s grand welcoming gesture and befits the calibre of currently confirmed tenants. BHP Billiton has moved its new global headquarters to 171 Collins Street and the first Australian retail store for Dolce & Gabbana is soon to open. Early 2014 will also see the opening of chef Andrew McConnell’s new restaurant. The prominent restaurateur chose 171 Collins Street as the location for his new venture because of its “interesting internal space, positive outward aspect and wonderful ‘big city’ dynamic”. For Kristen Whittle 171 Collins Street represents Bates Smart Architects’ ambition to design a building that “was part of the new world; part of the 21st century”. In so doing they hoped to surprise with a development that is as historically sensitive as it is boldly modern. What it offers the CBD is statement and splendour without the ego. Whittle might very well have a 2014 Victorian Architecture Medal contender on his hands.

batessmart.com.au 171collins.com.au

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54 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW AUGUST 2013

FEATURE COMMERCIAL ARCHITECTURE 2 0 1 3

VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE

Bates Smart Crown Mahogany Room Expansion. Photo: JohnGollings.

AWA R D S

SIR OSBORN MCCUTCHEON AWARD FOR COMMERCIAL ARCHITECTURE Crown Mahogany Room Expansion – Bates Smart Award - National Centre for Synchrotron Science – Bates Smart Commendation - South Melbourne Market Roof – Paul Morgan Architects Commendation - Spring Street Grocer – KGA Architecture

AN EXTRACT FROM JON CLEMENT’S OPENING ADDRESS AT THE 2013 AIA AWARDS

t is encouraging to note that in a period of economic turmoil the Victorian Awards program continues to expand, this year attracting a record 240 entries across eleven national and three state categories, in addition we had 21 entries to the Bates Smart Award for Architecture in the Media. During an ongoing global ﬁnancial crisis the Victorian Architecture Awards

program has continued to grow. The standard of work across all categories is truly exceptional and it reﬂects the fact that, in the face of adversity, our members continue to demonstrate an undivided commitment to improving the quality of our built environment. Our legacy is judged by the built work we leave behind. The results demonstrate that the public face of architecture in Victoria

is in excellent shape – and on behalf of all our members I would like to congratulate the winners of awards and commendations. Our celebrations should also recognise the extensive professional commitments from the private face of architecture and the many people who collaborate in the interests of delivering a successful project. We can be optimistic about the fact that architecture continues to

CPM...Third Generation Building Contractors CPM Building Contractors is a diverse company with an expansive scope of construction in Commercial, Residential and Urban landscape. CPM Building has stood for three generations, established in 1988 and founded by Mr Grahame Blaby. The company is centred in the Mildura region, however maintains a comprehensive project base throughout Victoria and New South Wales.

18a Madden Avenue MIldura Victoria 3500 Telephone: (03) 5022 1320 Facsimile: (03) 5022 1571 Mobile: 0408 372 229 Email: cpmbuilders@cpmbuilders.com.au

Category: Awarded: For: Designer:

URBAN DESIGN Commendation Langtree Mall Pavilion Bellemo + Cat

www.cpmbuilders.com.au

be embraced in a wider range of spaces; however, it is clear that our profession also faces many challenges. In the current environment you can be assured that the Institute is working hard to protect our territory and to advocate for the value of architecture, but signiﬁcant change and advancement for our profession cannot be achieved without change from the architects.

The Melbourne Review August 2013 55

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AIA AWARDS Public Architecture William Wardell Award for Public Architecture - RMIT Design Hub – Sean Godsell Architects in association with Peddle Thorp Architects Award - Penleigh and Essendon Grammar Senior School– McBride Charles Ryan Award - South Morang Rail Extension – Cox Architecture Award - Swanston Academic Building – Lyons Commendation - Bayside Police Station, Sandringham – fmjt (Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp) Commendation - La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science - Lyons Commendation - The Richard & Elizabeth Tudor Centre for Contemporary Learning, Trinity Grammar – McIntyre Partnership

Sean Godsell Architects in association with Peddle Thorp Architects RMIT Design Hub. Photo: EarlCarter.

Heritage Architecture John George Knight Award for Heritage - Hamer Hall – ARM Architecture Award - Good Shepherd Chapel, Abbotsford – Robert Simeoni Architects Award - Maryborough Railway Station Conservation works – RBA Architects + Conservation Consultants Commendation - Ormond College, Main Building Gables – Lovell Chen ARM Architecture Hamer Hall. Photo: JohnGollings.

BKKTCL Partnership Revitalising Central Dandenong. Photo: John Gollings.

Sustainable Architecture Allan and Beth Coldicutt Award for Sustainable Architecture Crofthouse – James Stockwell Architect

James Stockwell Architect Crofthouse. Photo: JamesArchibald.

Kerstin Thompson Architects Marysville 16 Hour Police Stat. Photo: TrevorMein.

Regional Prize Winner - Marysville 16 Hour Police Station – Kerstin Thompson Architects

Urban Design Joseph Reed Award for Urban Design - Revitalising Central Dandenong: Lonsdale Street Redevelopment – BKK/TCL Partnership Award - Serrata Docklands – Hayball Pty Ltd Award - South Morang Rail Extension – Cox Architecture Commendation - Langtree Mall Pavilion – Bellemo & Cat

Interior Architecture

ARM Architecture Hamer Hall. Photo: Peter Bennetts.

Marion Mahony Award for Interior Architecture Hamer Hall – ARM Architecture Award - Footscray Nicholson Learning Commons – Cox Architecture Award - Move-In – Elenberg Fraser Architects Commendation - Captain Melville – Breathe Architecture Commendation - National Centre for Synchrotron Science – Bates Smart

The Australian Institute of Architects extends congratulations to the exemplary field of 55 winning projects recognized with Victorian Architecture Awards and Commendations in 2013. The Australian Institute of Architect’s Awards are the highest accolade for architectural achievement within the State of Victoria.

www.vicawards.architecture.com.au Proudly sponsored by

56 The Melbourne Review August 2013

FEATURE Residential Architecture – Houses (New)

Public Architecture (Alterations & Additions) Award - Hamer Hall – ARM Architecture Award - Institute of Koorie Education, Deakin University – Gregory Burgess Architects

Harold Desbrowe-Annear Award for Residential Architecture - Edward Street House – Sean Godsell Architects Award - Fairhaven Residence – John Wardle Architects Award - Merricks Beach House – Kennedy Nolan Award - Sorrento Blue House – Neeson Murcutt Architects Commendation - Crofthouse – James Stockwell Architect Commendation - Merricks House – Robson Rak Architects Pty Ltd

Award - HOUSE House – Andrew Maynard Architects Award - The Mullet – March Studio Commendation - Ferrars Place – antarctica Commendation - shelter shed – multiplicity Commendation - Victoria Road House – Fiona Winzar Architects

Small Project Architecture Kevin Borland Award for Small Project Architecture - Seventh Heaven – Nest Architects Award - Abbotsford Convent Breezeway – Jackson Clements Burrows Award - Third Wave Kiosk – Tony Hobba Architects Commendation - Move-In – Elenberg Fraser Architects Commendation - Penny Wise – Marc Dixon Architect Commendation - The Purple Rose of Cairo – Architecture Architecture

Sean Godsell Architects Edward Street House. Photo: Earl Carter.

Melbourne Prize Winner - Revitalising Central Dandenong: Lonsdale Street Redevelopment – BKK/TCL Partnership

Nest Architects Seventh Heaven. Photo: Jesse Marlow.

COLORBOND® Award for Steel Architecture - RMIT Design Hub – Sean Godsell Architects in association with Peddle Thorp Architects Commendation - shelter shed – multiplicity

BKKTCL Partnership Revitalising Central Dandenong. Photo: John Gollings.

Sean Godsell Architects in association with Peddle Thorp Architects RMIT Design Hub. Photo: Earl Carter.

COLORBOND® Award for Steel Architecture

Residential Architecture – Houses (Alterations & Additions)

March Studio The Mullet. Photo: John Gollings.

ARM Architecture Hamer Hall. Photo: John Gollings.

Exhibition of Entries This year, the Exhibition of Entries celebrated and made accessible to the public the projects entered into the 2013 Victorian Architecture Awards. The initial brief from the Institute to Monash Art Design & Architecture (MADA) was simple: to design an exhibition which expands the ambition of the annual awards exhibition from a simple predictable arrangement of the traditional A2 display board submissions. The higher objective was to make an interesting show intended to open a new dialogue with the architectural community.

Photos Warren Taylor

» TO SEE MORE SOCIAL IMAGES VISIT MELBOURNEREVIEW.COM.AU

The Melbourne Review August 2013 57

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AIA AWARDS MGS Architects McIntyre Drive Social Housing. Photo: Trevor Mein.

RMIT Design Hub Photo: Earl Carter

Architect’s Statement by Sean Godsell

Residential Architecture – Multiple Housing Best Overend Award for Residential Architecture – Multiple Housing - McIntyre Drive Social Housing, Altona – MGS Architects Award - Serrata Docklands – Hayball Pty Ltd Commendation - Aerial Apartments – Wood/ Marsh Pty Ltd Architecture Commendation - Leopold – SJB Architects & Fender Katsalidis Architects Commendation - Malvern Hill – SJB Architects

Bates Smart Award for Architecture in the Media Award – Dream Build – ABC TV (National) Award – Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture – Rory Hyde (National) Award – Parlour: women, architecture, equity – Justine Clark (State) Commendation – Cities of Hope: Remembered/Rehearsed – Conrad Hamann Commendation – Designer Suburbs: Architects and Affordable Homes in Australia – Judith O’Callaghan and Charles Pickett

he purpose of the Design Hub is to provide accommodation in one building for a diverse range of design research and post-graduate education. RMIT is a world leader in design research; however post-graduates are currently dissipated across various campuses and facilities. The Hub provides a collegial research base where postgraduates in fields such as fabric and fashion design will work alongside those involved in architecture, aeronautical engineering, industrial design, landscape architecture, urban design and so on. Research groups have the ability to locate and fine tune their accommodation within ‘warehouses’ – open plan spaces where research teams can set up and tailor their work environment to suit their particular needs. Teams may stay for anywhere from six months to three years depending on the nature of and funding limits to their research and education programs. Research may include the need for workshops to make physical models to be located alongside computer studios, three dimensional printing, virtual reality modelling and so on. Given the time frames associated with research projects all the warehouses require a high level of adaptability and flexibility. In that sense these spaces are designed to accommodate the organic nature of research – ever evolving, adapting, changing and growing. Each of the warehouses is a 60m x 10m column free space with a raised floor which houses air, power and data distribution. The warehouses are configured and re-configured by researchers using a ‘kit of parts’ system of mobile furniture. The plan of the Design Hub acknowledges the desire for incidental cross pollination where researchers from one field encounter those from other (often completely unrelated) fields as part of their day-to-day use of the building. Two public exhibition spaces and Design Archive provide a public interface with both industry and research outcomes. The Design Archive is housed in the steel framed pavilion to the west of the main tower. These spaces, combined with a variety of lecture, seminar and multi-purpose rooms facilitate high level exchanges in a number of forums. Researchers also have access to state of the art sound studios, model making and robotics workshops.

The Design Hub has a number of ESD features and incorporates strategies of water, waste and recycling management that are the equal of any ESD focussed building on the planet.

and RMIT. The entire building façade, in other words, has the capacity to be upgraded as solar technology evolves and it may one day generate enough electricity to run the whole building.

The façade of the Design Hub incorporates automated sun shading that includes the capacity for the incorporation of solar cells along with fresh air intakes that improve the internal air quality and reduce running costs. The cells have been designed so that they can be easily replaced as research into solar energy results in improved technology and part of the northern façade is actually dedicated to ongoing research into solar cells to be conducted jointly by industry

The façade is made up of 600 mm diameter sandblasted glass disks, which are fixed to either a horizontal or vertical aluminium axle. The discs are controlled through a centralised building management system (BMS) and are automated to open and close based on the time of day, time of year and orientation.

designhub.rmit.edu.au

MADA would like to thank the Architecture profession for their ongoing support and contribution to our Architecture program. monash.edu/mada/architecture Image: Design<>Make project - Stawell Steps, 2012, MADA Architecture students, Hiroshi Nakao and Professor Nigel Bertram. The project was made possible through the generous support of the profession, Krause Bricks, Northern Grampians Shire Council, Rural Councils Victoria and the Country Education Project, and Monash University Museum of Art. Photographer: Peter Bennetts.

58 The Melbourne Review August 2013

SOMEBODY DREW THAT

Brasilia Congresso Nacional.

Organisation and Chaos by Byron George

ategorising and organising things can be a great Sunday pastime, particularly if you are a bit of a nerd like me. Folding the towels a particular way, arranging the spoons in the cutlery drawer so the soup spoons and dessert spoons are grouped together, colour coordinating the 35 sponge cloths in the cupboard under the sink. If I haven’t lost you already, (I can feel a collective eye-rolling of those who know me well) I’m getting to the point. We’re taught that order and organisation are good things. They make businesses work more effectively, they give certainty to those who we engage with and allow others to see the point of what we are doing.

are so resolved they feel effortless, fresh and timeless at the same time.

The problem is, people see this as a way of solving all problems.

In the early half of the 20th century this kind of logic was applied to cities. Places that make architects wet their pants. Great plazas, monolithic facades, elevated roadways and cars racing on multiple levels. Places that take your breath away. It reminds me of a time I drove out to the end of the Gordon River Road in South West Tasmania to see the Gordon Dam. I was completely alone, terrified and exhilarated at the same time. Standing on a narrow concrete structure, a 140m drop of sheer concrete on one side, and mirror finish black water surface on the other. No sound but the trickling of water through the rocks. Nothing but wilderness and this beautiful, overwhelming and austere piece of engineering.

You can see this in design all the time. The catch in the breath that comes from resolving a particular detail on a building or object; the new tapware for Caroma designed by Marc Newson; the entry sequence through an Alvar Aalto building in Finland; what it feels like to sink into a Pierre Lissoni sofa. Things that

This was absolute resolution on an awesome scale. A singular engineering gesture, the minimum amount of concrete necessary to hold back a massive amount of water. Put in just the right place to minimise the amount of concrete and maximise the amount of water retained behind.

Great modernism often does this. The city of Brasilia by Oscar Niemeyer, Lucio Costa and Roberto Burle Marx. The United States Air Force Force Academy by Skidmore Owings and Merrill. Both of these are modernism writ large and designed to make you feel something (generally power and authority). The irony is, they work the best when they are absent of people. This is the problem with singular gestures on an urban scale. They take away the very things great cities need to be great cities. Ruthless organisation and spatial planning work really well in a 35 square metre apartment or when designing a door handle, but not so well when applied to cities or whole suburbs. Despite what politicians and traffic planners would have you believe, cities are not about efficient movement of goods and bodies, they are about people. Look at any 20th century new town plan and see how it was initially presented and sold to the relevant authority. The standard image is usually a room full of older men, one in a bow tie (the architect), pointing and staring at a large model of row after row of little rectangular blocks. Blocks are arranged in a square to form the town centre or local school, in rows for housing, and elegant ribbons connect blocks from one new town to the other. Maximum efficiency with minimal contact between one ant going about their business and another. The problem is that we don’t experience our cities when in aeroplanes, we experience them on the ground. This kind of planning works only when the subtle nuance of sunlight, proportion and scale are manipulated in a way that responds directly to the human condition and chance encounters can occur. Unfortunately this was the exception rather than the rule.

Our own city is littered with mistakes like this. St Kilda Junction was once a thriving, if seedy, shopping centre. It was the interchange for several tram lines, and was a centre for shopping and entertainment. Unfortunately, it was also where six major roads came together, including the two major arterial routes to the south-eastern suburbs. After a drastic intervention in the 1960s, it is now a highway running under a vast slab of asphalt with a disconnected sunken tram interchange and a series of dingy tunnels. Sure, the traffic problem was solved, but at what cost? Traffic planners would say that St Kilda shopping was relocated to a more appropriate location near the water. I would say that a great urban centre was lost for the sake of moving a few cars. Bringing order and organisation into the urban realm might seem like a good idea, but too often ends up destroying the very character that attracted people in the first place. Sometimes cities need a little congestion or disorganisation to keep them vital and interesting. After all, the type of thinking that leads you to organise your sock draw not only leads to boring conversation; if applied to the urban realm it makes for rather dull cities.

»»Byron George and partner Ryan Russell are directors of Russell & George, a design and architecture practice with offices in Melbourne and Rome. russellandgeorge.com