The Melbourne Review December 2012

THE MELBOURNE

review

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW

A LIFE IN WRITING

An exclusive extract from the newly published biography of J. M. Coetzee

ISSUE 14 DECEMBER 2012

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THE 20-MINUTE CITY

Creating new hubs for work-life balance in Melbourne’s future

www.melbournereview.com.au

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ASIAN CULTURAL EXCHANGE Lesley Alway looks at the White Paper implications for arts engagement

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4 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Welcome Contents Profile

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Business

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Feature

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Politics

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Columnists

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Health

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Books

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Performing Arts

26

Visual Arts

32

Food. Wine. Coffee.

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FORM

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36 RECREATIONAL ACTIVITES Suzanne Fraser looks at two contemporary masters – Jeff Wall and Thomas Demand – at the NGV

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ACTORS AND CAUSES

HEALTHY WEIGHT

SUMMER READING

Alexander Downer is skeptical about the value of celebrities pushing causes

Professor Avni Sali on maintaining a healthy weight throughout your life

A cross-section of Melbournians pick their best reads for the year

Audited average monthly circulation: 64,856 (Oct 11 – March 12) This publication is printed on 100% Australian made Norstar, containing 20% recycled fibre. All wood fibre used in this paper originates from sustainably managed forest resources or waste resources.

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HOW TO MAKE GRAVY

A TENDER CHAOS

ROSETTA

Phil Kakulas on Paul Kelly’s heartfelt Australian Christmas classic

The Art Gallery of NSW unveils an overwhelming Francis Bacon retrospective

Arabella Forge on Neil Perry’s inaugural foray into Italian food

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 5

THE MELBOURNE

review

General Manager Publishing & Editorial Luke Stegemann luke@melbournereview.com.au

Contributors

Andrea Frost

Jane Raffan

Lesley Alway

Byron George

Nigel Randall

Art Director Sabas Renteria sabas@melbournereview.com.au

David Ansett

Dave Graney

Avni Sali

National Sales and Marketing Manager Tamrah Petruzzelli tamrah@melbournereview.com.au 0411 229 640

Nina Bertok

Phil Kakulas

Peter Singline

D.M. Bradley

J. C. Kannemeyer

David Sornig

Wendy Cavenett

Simone Keenan

Shirley Stott Despoja

William Charles

Stephen Koukoulas

Peter Tregear

Jennifer Cunich

Tali Lavi

Alexander Downer

Bernard McNamara

Photography

Arabella Forge

Lou Pardi

Matthew Wren

Suzanne Fraser

Barry Pearce

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Our cover Portrait of David Malouf 1980, Jeffrey Smart.

Oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 100.00 x 100.00 cm.

Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth © Jeffrey Smart.

See page 34

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Profile

John Denton Wendy Cavenett

A

saltwater pool cantilevers over Flinders Lane. The bold abstraction of the Melbourne Gateway disrupts urban repetition, and the Manchester Civil Justice Centre offers a distinct materiality in the town’s community setting.

For John Denton, these are just some of the many highlights that define a career spanning more than 40 years in architecture and design. Known for his ability to lead major institutional and civic building projects, he is also recognised for his capacity to foster international relations while creating beautiful buildings. “It’s one of the most fulfilling aspects of my creative life,” he says. It’s a true obsession.

“In architecture you become involved in a continuum of debate about what’s right and what’s wrong, and about what’s good and what’s bad. I think that’s a very stimulating place to be.”

Denton – who has lived in Melbourne’s CBD for 30 years – marvels at the city’s diverse architectural history: its ambivalence and incongruity, the stimulating debate, the testing of ideas. In 1972, he founded the architecture and design practice, Denton Corker Marshall with fellow graduates, Bill Corker and Barrie Marshall. Look at their website and discover the incredible range of projects undertaken so far: from masterplanning and urban design to hotels, residential spaces, research centres and various embassies. So far, Denton Corker Marshall has completed more than 480 projects in 37 countries, its reputation for distinctive, finely detailed designs highly sought after both here and abroad.

In 2011, Denton reported that 75% of all Denton Corker Marshall work was conducted outside Australia. It’s a figure that constantly changes, he says, but this globally recognised brand – with offices in Melbourne, London, Manchester and Jakarta – requires an international team of 13 Directors and more than 150 staff to oversee a variety of

architectural and design projects. In 1996, Denton, Corker and Marshall were the Royal Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medallists for that year, the most prestigious award the Institute offers.

When I arrive at their Melbourne office on Exhibition Street, I realise it is located on the fifth floor of an impressive modernist Bates Smart building (built in 1966, Denton says later). Once inside, I cannot help but admire the quality of space, and the pleasure I feel from just being here.

In the waiting area, there are photographs of past projects tastefully mounted on internal columns making for a rather interesting gallery.

Denton, dressed in casual black, soon appears.

He is friendly and engaging, possibly the calmest person I have encountered all week. Soon we are sitting in a white, square room with a large round table in its centre. Outside, the sounds of construction echo down city streets. Melbourne’s CBD seems to have redevelopment fever, but it is not the sound of construction that dominates our conversation, but rather the ideas behind it.

Denton, who was born in Fiji in 1945, remembers living in an undeveloped landscape in a house “by the sea”. He didn’t wear shoes until the age of three or four, and recalls many “little memories” – the freshness of the beach at night, the fragrance of the frangipani trees, and the smell of the mangroves that dominated Fiji’s coastline that were often inundated by tidal waters.

Denton’s family returned to Melbourne in 1950.

They initially lived with his grandparents in Elwood.

“I remember the house there, the pomegranate trees,” he says, but it was when his parents decided to build their own home that Denton was first exposed to the idea of creating a space in which to live. “I used to make my father take me to the site so I could watch the draughtsman draw,” he says. “I was about seven or eight but my interest waned because I thought, ‘No, maybe I’m not good enough to be an architect’.”

In Year 12, the careers person at his school advised him to become a diplomat. “I don’t think that ever really interested me,” he says, “but it has been intriguing in the sense that we’ve done lots of embassies.”

By the end of high school, Denton decided to “go for architecture” despite his reservations, and studied at the University of Melbourne from 1963 to 1969. At the end of third year, students were encouraged to take a year off to travel, so in 1966, Denton and two friends (including Marshall), took a ship from Port Melbourne to Italy and hitchhiked around Europe for three months.

They worked, and ended up driving through Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, studying the architecture as they went. “It fired up my interest in many things,” he says, “including working overseas.” Denton completed a Diploma in Town and Regional Planning at the University of Melbourne in 1971 before setting up Denton Corker Marshall the following year.

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 7

Profile I used to make my father take me to the site so I could watch the draughtsman draw,” he says. “I was about seven or eight but my interest waned because I thought, ‘No, maybe I’m not good enough to be an architect.”

The three graduates, who were trained as Modernists, were strongly influenced by Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe (both considered pioneers in modern architecture).

It explains the elegant functionalism of Denton Corker Marshall’s designs, and their continuing interest in materiality and “reading the way things are built”. From the very beginning, they sat in the same room together and developed an operational methodology that incorporated “how we designed things” and “the best techniques to develop ideas”. They talked, they discovered how things worked and literally fell into a “three-brain system” of designing.

“We then established what we each did and how we worked,” Denton says. “It just seemed to work out all right. You know, we had good years and bad years, but we have lasted the distance.”

Today, Denton sits on various government boards and has been a member of several organisations

including the Expert Advisory Panel on Cities for the Council of Australian Governments Reform Council (COAG). He is also Chairman of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. His interest in architecture and design has influenced many Australian and international projects, including in the past as Director in Charge of several redevelopments for Monash University’s Caulfield Campus. Certainly, the undulating plate (or “ribbon that hangs or sits on sticks”) that faces Dandenong Road, gives the Art + Design Building a truly memorable presence (of movement especially) in the area’s urban setting.

Denton believes architecture has become more complex over the last 20 years. It used to be simple, he says, but computers have complicated everything.

“There’s much more diversity and architecture is much harder to comprehend, and it’s harder to see it all, and to try and understand what is good and what is not good.” For him, an example of good architecture is Sean Godsell’s recently opened Design Hub. “It’s an absolutely exquisite minimalist

building, so radically different in detail and approach than say the Lyons-designed [RMIT] Swanston Academic Building.

“I guess we’re closer to the Godsell end of architecture rather than the Lyons end of architecture,” he says, “but it’s Melbourne and it’s the way Melbourne works. It’s what makes Melbourne interesting. I think Sydney has a far more bland continuity about it. I mean there aren’t those sorts of radical buildings that confront or question.”

We talk about beauty and aesthetics in architecture, and how buildings affect people, and what they might mean in a future dominated by computer technology and our changing sense of time and place. I wonder what happens when we encounter beauty in architecture.

“It’s not beauty as you might traditionally think of as beauty,” he says, “but it’s a sense of being delighted by the way things are, by how – in architecture – a structure is put together, what the spaces are like, what the materiality’s like. It’s the detail, the quality of space, the colour and the type of materials that are used. So it’s something that satisfies you physically and compositionally in all sorts of ways. So I wouldn’t necessarily label it as beautiful – it’s all part of a sense of aesthetics.

But this is not necessarily a popular view.”

Outside the sounds of construction work whirr and clank with surprising consistency. It’s hard to imagine Denton amidst the wild Fijian landscape

as a boy after a life spent in dense cityscapes and high-rise apartments. He is amazingly tranquil though – like the calm of the beach on a hot summer night.

“I think it’s important to pursue ideas and things you think you are good at, and things you want to do,” he concludes, “and pursue them obsessively by doing the very best you can. Never take second best. That’s really the creative process of living, and, most importantly, you should enjoy life alongside it too.”

8 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Business Likewise, from a wider architectural perspective, there is the opportunity with the remaining development to explore how to create a more unique and dynamic architectural landscape.

Throughout the world place branders have leveraged the concept of ‘starchitect’ (celebrity architects) to great effect.” good enough, but since this extra funding (from City of Melbourne), there is a lot more we can do.’

However, what is required for Docklands relates more to the need to re-think its core proposition to residents, workers and tourists, and less to how it is currently marketed. The vision for Docklands articulated on the website of Places Victoria, the Government Authority responsible for its development, suggests that the end game is to be a place made up of 44% commercial, 44% residential, 7% retail, 1% hotel and 4% other. Simply same-old same-old, but with more scale – unless there is a big wow factor in the unknown 4%?

Docklands Needs more than marketing

Peter Singline & David Ansett

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he news that 15 restaurants at Melbourne Docklands, or 40%, have closed their doors in the past 10 months brings into stark focus the challenges associated with place branding endeavours. Importantly, it is a reminder that place branding will only be successful if the ‘place making’ efforts that underpin it add up to a compelling proposition to the target audience. Sadly, from a place making perspective, Docklands is an underachiever. It has no sense of community and a complete lack of soul. However, for this article we wish to park the issue of a huge ‘community void’ and focus for a moment on the wasted opportunity to create a signature dimension that is world class.

In 2011/12 Docklands experienced the most

development in its 12-year history with more than $2.4 billion worth of private development (commercial and residential) under construction.

To date some $8.5 billion of development has been completed or is currently under construction which represents over 50% of the planned development of docklands. This has manifested itself in a community made up of about 8,000 residents and 30,000 workers but a rapidly declining dining precinct and place brand reputation.

When the media picked up on the recent restaurant closures we were disappointed to see that the responses from key stakeholders simply revolved around the marketing (or lack of ) of Docklands. Anita Donnelly, the newly appointed CEO of Destination Docklands, was reported as saying in the Sydney Morning Herald that ‘…for the past two years it (the marketing) hasn’t been

Their ambition from a place branding and place making perspective should be to create a number of stand-out dimensions that truly distinguish the Docklands. When it comes to creating an enduring drawcard, the forever under re-construction Southern Star Observation Wheel, a sporting stadium and a Costco store are hardly breathtaking.

Interestingly, we do not need to look far for inspiration for what is possible. In Tasmania, Hobart has been re-energised as a must-visit place through the development of the extraordinary MONA (Museum of Old & New Art). It has been described as the most important cultural site in recent Australian history. The inspiration of the eccentric art lover and professional gambler David Walsh, it is innovative and unorthodox.

The museum has drawn 600,000 visitors in its first 18 months and won the 2012 Australian Tourism Award for best new development. It is Tasmania’s single most visited attraction.

In contrast to the Docklands, the restaurants in Hobart are basking in the halo effect of MONA. Booked out, with many reporting that on weekends the proportion of their customers from outside Tasmania is as high as 75%.

MONA provides many lessons for the future development of Docklands. One of the most striking is the need to understand the target market to which it wishes to appeal. Social scientist and

author, Ross Honeywell, believes there is a huge market opportunity amongst consumers who he calls NEOs (new economic order), and he thinks MONA appeals massively to this segment.

Honeywell describes NEOs as cultural explorers, well educated with progressive social views. They like sport (tick for Etihad Stadium), but love the arts and believe food is a celebration of life. In Australia and the US he suggests they make up some 24% of the population but account for 54% of all discretionary spending. NEOs spend more, earn more, read more, know more, and are better educated. For the Docklands, it would seem that they represent an excellent target market on which to focus and to imaginatively explore how it might appeal to them. The challenge for Docklands is that NEOs value experiences that directly touch the human mind and feed the human spirit. As such perhaps one would be better off to simply leave the Southern Star Observation Wheel as it is, and claim it as a much loved art installation called the ‘Dock’s Folly’.

On a more serious note, MONA’s success makes evident the need to create a signature experience that is bold, imaginative and different. In the world of place branding, this is an excellent example of what is often referred to as the Bilbao Effect, a term coined to capture the transformational impact of developments such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Our recommendation to Places Victoria is to re-think what is planned for Docklands. From a brand framework perspective, we believe the problems being experienced are simply not ones of scale. There is a need to draw on the best creative minds in the world to assist with defining a transformational element that will act as a beacon to NEOs and put Docklands on the global map. Likewise, from a wider architectural perspective, there is the opportunity with the remaining development to explore how to create a more unique and dynamic architectural landscape.

Throughout the world place branders have leveraged the concept of ‘starchitect’ (celebrity architects) to great effect.

If there is a sense within Places Victoria that there are budget constraints then think again.

MONA cost something in the order of $175 million to create, with $100 million of that being the art collection. In Melbourne each year the Victorian Government contributes approximately $50 million in subsidies to the Grand Prix. We greatly appreciate the power of staging world-class events in a place branding sense, but the opportunity cost of such an event is high.

Docklands presents a unique opportunity for Melbourne to create something that is capable of becoming a world famous landmark. Let’s seize it with greater imaginative gusto.

INFORMATION 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 DECEMBER 2012 9

Feature

A question of regeneration

I think the most important question is how would our healthcare system be affected if humans were able to increase our ability to regenerate on our own?”

Nina Bertok

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merican-born molecular medicine expert Nadia Rosenthal will be among a number of professional, medical, scientific and industry leaders attending the business events taking place at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre over 2013 and 2014. Involved in securing the International Conference on Systems Biology (ICSB 2014), Professor Rosenthal spoke to The Melbourne Review about her research, which focuses on developmental genetics of heart and skeletal muscles, the molecular biology of ageing and the role of growth factors and stem cells in tissue regeneration.

“Regenerative medicine is still a fairly new way of focusing on health and it’s more about prevention rather than waiting for the problem – a disease – to occur and then having to treat it afterwards,” Professor Rosenthal explains.

“It’s basically about looking at medicine from a different point of view. The question we are asking is ‘why don’t humans regenerate as well as some other species?’ We’ve actually gone out and looked at other animals in the animal kingdom to try and figure this out. We’ve found that it’s an obvious fact that there are some organisms that can regenerate extraordinarily well – like the starfish, for example. The starfish can actually grow back limbs, which is something we’re clearly not capable of doing – so, why is that?”

Professor Rosenthal claims that asking such questions and continuing with the research is becoming particularly important given that we have a major social crisis approaching. Faced

What would happen? They may seem like pretty abstract questions at the moment but a lot of them are relevant in terms of the ways that medicine will come to be practiced in the next century.”

Professor Rosenthal adds that the issue is not necessarily about finding ways for humans to live ‘forever’, but rather about keeping our species healthy, functional and active for as long as it is possible. A complete reversal in ageing is highly unlikely at this stage, she claims.

Nadia Rosenthal

with an increasingly aging community – the socalled Baby Boomer generation – Australia is set to experience somewhat of a crisis in its health care unless we figure out solutions to address regenerative diseases that plague ageing humans.

“This field of research is not yet something that Australia is necessarily particularly known for, however,” Professor Rosenthal points out.

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“It isn’t an area that is very well represented in Australia just yet, which is a big reason why we are so very excited that this conference will be held in this part of the world, in Melbourne. There are many different questions we can ask about this topic, in terms of basic science anyway, but I think the most important question is how would our healthcare system be affected if humans were able to increase our ability to regenerate on our own?

“But we would be likely to be able to make changes in our ability to increase the regenerative process in some tissues where it’s been proven that regeneration is possible. We don’t believe that stem cells can fix the entire problem, but they are very good at doing those things that they can do. At this point in time, we’re understanding more and more about what this is exactly. All the mysteries about stem cells are being unravelled now and I think this will present some major surprises as we continue our research. I don’t know whether we will ever be able to explain the whole of the natural world, at least not in our lifetime, but at the same time, I think just the amount of progress that we have made in the last century alone, is extremely exciting and something to be positive about.”

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10 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Feature

A Life in Writing

An extract from the first biography of Nobel prize-winning author J. M. Coetzee, written by J. C. Kannemeyer with the full co-operation of Coetzee.

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he research for my biography of J.M. Coetzee began in July 2008. I was fully aware that I was dealing with a renowned author, a central figure in English studies at universities worldwide.

About 500 M.A. and doctoral dissertations on his work have been completed, while new books on his novels are appearing all the time in various languages.

In March 2009 I visited Coetzee in Adelaide, where I interviewed him extensively for two weeks.

From the outset, Coetzee cooperated unstintingly and even enthusiastically. He answered all my questions succinctly, but did not want to be drawn into speculations and opinions, especially not on interpretations of his work. Even when I asked him which critics he felt had most nearly approached saying something fundamental about his work, he adroitly redirected the question, avoiding a reply. Questions on sensitive topics – such as the estrangement and divorce from his wife, Philippa Jubber; the death of their son, Nicolas; and the illness of his daughter, Gisela – he answered in detail, succinctly, directly, and as objectively as possible, however unsettling the facts.

The significance of biographical information in dealing with a writer like J.M. Coetzee is a moot point. In her 1990 introduction to a bibliography of his writings, Teresa Dovey, the author of The Novels of J.M. Coetzee, states that in dealing with somebody like Coetzee, personal biography is of lesser importance. Dovey made this pronouncement before the publication of the triptych of autobiographical works initiated by Boyhood (1997) and followed by Youth (2002) and Summertime (2009). But even before publication of this trilogy, researchers might have discerned

autobiographical moments in Coetzee’s work.

In his very first novel, Dusklands (1974), for instance, he makes play with his ancestors and with his own history.

Coetzee himself on more than one occasion commented on autobiography as a genre, and chose it as the subject of his inaugural professorial address at the University of Cape Town. According to him, all the writings of an author, including his literary criticism, are autobiographical, since he often comments on traditions with which he aligns himself or from which he consciously diverges, and on writers who have ‘influenced’ him or whose work speaks to him with particular urgency. When a writer commits himself to recording his own life, he selects from a whole reservoir of memories.

Autobiography, as Coetzee puts it in one of his interviews with David Attwell, ‘is a kind of selfwriting in which you are constrained to respect the facts of your history. But which facts? All the facts? No. All the facts are too many facts. You choose the facts insofar as they fall in with your evolving purpose.’

For Coetzee, then, the question of selection is crucial in autobiographical writing. Even when he is being absolutely faithful to the facts, the author makes a selection from the many facts at his disposal, so that the relation between a true biography and a fictional biography is by no means as clear-cut as one might think. That’s why Coetzee tells Attwell: ‘All autobiography is storytelling, all writing is autobiography.’ It is not the aim of the artist to reproduce reality faithfully, but to use and process reality. Through ordering and selecting, the artist arrives at a more complete truth than the historian, who is bound by facts. An autobiography

is, in truth, as Martin van Amerongen says, not a verifiable curriculum vitae, but an interpretation, sometimes even a complete, self-sufficient work of art with its own laws and criteria. Indeed, James Olney claims that ‘the autobiographer half discovers, half creates a deeper design and truth than adherence to historical and factual truth could ever make claim to.’

With the publication of Boyhood, Youth, and Summertime, the autobiographical element in Coetzee’s work became more conspicuous, but also in some respects more deceptive.

In pronouncements on Boyhood and Youth, Coetzee stressed that the books were fictionalised autobiographies, though he may have exaggerated the fictional aspects of the first two books. The factual details of Coetzee’s life correspond to a large degree with their rendering in Boyhood and Youth, even though the experiences of the boy and the young man are recounted from maturity by a distanced narrator. The most elusive of the autobiographies, from an historical point of view, is Summertime, where the character Sophie rightly says to the prospective biographer: ‘What Coetzee writes there cannot be trusted, not as a

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 11

Feature

autobiography could lead to an engrossing relation between biographer and author, or between the biographer and the author’s work. The biographer is, of course, peculiarly prone to the perils of the ‘biographical fallacy’, the distortion of the meaning of the novels through biographical projections. He has to guard against being misled by the writer’s creative reworking of the facts of his own life; he must not take fictions for truths, but needs to search for true facts outside or beyond the novels.

If he can do this, he can report on the life in writing, the way through the world that the

factual record – not because he was a liar, but because he was a fictioneer.’ In Summertime Coetzee rearranges the historical record with a view to arriving at a deeper account of the truth.

Any biographer of Coetzee would have to take careful account of this uncommon relation between fact and fiction, and of his relativising and elusive narrative strategies. He would have to consider the writer’s evident shying away from authorial responsibility, and be wary of appropriating Summertime, in particular, to his project. Even in a work like Diary of a Bad Year, the narrative strategy does not allow the reader invariably to ascribe the pronouncements of the fictionalised writer to the author, J.M. Coetzee.

In an essay on Joseph Frank’s comprehensive biography of Dostoevsky, it is clear that Coetzee prizes the Russian writer precisely for his execution of what he calls the dialogical novel. ‘A fully dialogical novel,’ Coetzee writes in Stranger Shores, ‘is one in which there is no dominating central authorial consciousness, and therefore no claim to truth or authority, only competing voices and discourses.’ It is this narrative strategy that Coetzee adopts in a major part of his oeuvre.

Coetzee could thus, with Roland Barthes, assert that the birth of the reader must occur at the cost of the death of the author. Keats’s concept of the chameleon writer, in essence identityless and bereft of fixed opinions or ideas, has never, to my knowledge, been taken to such extremes as in the case of Coetzee. This, too, complicates

Even when he is being absolutely faithful to the facts, the author makes a selection from the many facts at his disposal, so that the relation between a true biography and a fictional biography is by no means as clear-cut as one might think.” the task of the biographer, however seductive the challenge of capturing the life of such a writer.

A Coetzee biography, however, need not draw its meaning primarily from the light it sheds on the author’s creative output, or from its relevance to literary criticism. The life story of this writer with his exceptional achievements is valuable in its own right, and his extraordinary novels stimulate an interest in him as a person.

That he uses autobiographical elements in his work does not in itself justify a biography, even though the special creative game he plays with the

’s re n d l i h

author, as both a writer and a human being, has made for himself. This is where the biographer’s task differs most from that of the novelist, and from this a biography derives the authority of such truth as is in its power to convey.

INFORMATION This is an edited extract from J. M. Coetzee: a life in writing, by J. C. Kannemeyer. (Scribe, $59.95)

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12 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Politics The 2013 election is looming Stephen Koukoulas

O

n all measures, Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott is deeply unpopular. His disapproval rating is among the lowest recorded for an Opposition leader and his policy agenda is universally seen as shallow. Former colleagues of Abbott and Liberal Party elders are on the record saying “he has no interest in economics – he has no feeling for it”, he is “innumerate” and that his future “was not in economics”.

Darfur

Letter from DUBAI Alexander Downer

T

he other day I caught the new dire ct flight from Adelaide to Dubai. I arrived, Dubai time, at 5 am in the morning fresh and lively having had a nine-hour sleep on the way. Plane travel these days is an opportunity to escape from emails, SMS messages and phone calls for hours. It’s not as hard as it once was.

In Dubai I had one of those chance encounters which sets your pulse racing.

Sitting just two metres from me was 007.

There was James Bond! Well, to be more accurate it was Daniel Craig. So I did what any of you would do. I asked him if my friend who was travelling with me could take photos of us all together.

A firm “no” was the answer! He said he was tired! Too tired for a photo? Well, I left it at that.

It was true; Craig looked washed out. I found out why. He had been in Afghanistan cheering up the British troops. That was laudable. It’s always good to see rich and successful people doing their bit for the community. But I’m not all that sympathetic.

The best actors earn huge amounts of money from the public so they owe it to the public to share their fame around.

But it did make me think of the few encounters I have had with actors. On the whole, it’s been a mixed bag. There was the time I hosted a dinner in Los Angeles as part of the Australian celebration known as G’Day LA. Nicole Kidman arrived to a battery of flashing cameras. I had a brief conversation with her when another star appeared: Keith Urban, the country singer.

woman, no doubt about that. She started to tell me she was off to a demonstration the next day on Darfur. I approved, until she told me the target of the demonstration was President Bush. I wondered whether President Bush was massacring people in Darfur. Er, no, he wasn’t. But she didn’t know who was. I told her it was President Bashir of Sudan.

No, he wasn’t known to her.

So I did the honourable thing. I introduced them to each other. This was an important moment in the history of global gossip. They hadn’t met before but were all eyes for each other. If ever there is such a thing as love at first sight, that was it. They went on to get married and remain so to this day.

But, she argued, President Bush should intervene and stop the killing. “Invade, you mean?” I asked. After all, Deborra-Lee had opposed the invasion of Iraq. She was flummoxed. She didn’t know.

Tragically, the happy couple have never recognised my cupidic role. I was not invited to the wedding, for example. I’ve not even received a thank you! But I do claim this as one of my significant diplomatic achievements.

Actors are used relentlessly for political purposes, as you know. Political leaders wheel them out to support their causes. I suspect their support means nothing to the public. The public are too smart. They know actors are people who learn lines written by other people and have the skill to interpret those words effectively. But the public know that actors are not experts on macroeconomic policies or geopolitical strategy.

I’ve often thought of Clint Eastwood as a bit of a hero. But the reason I’ve thought that is because I’ve liked the characters he’s played; people like Dirty Harry. But when I saw him bumbling along at the Republican Party convention in support of Mitt Romney, it confirmed my hunch; these people don’t win votes for candidates they support.

I was at a dinner in New York a few years ago and sat next to Deborra-Lee Furness. She’s a nice

Look, that’s fair enough but my point is this: her fame was being used to support a cause but she didn’t really understand much about the cause. There’s no reason why she should. She’s an actress not a professional diplomat. But it says something about our era. PR people think the public are dumb and that they will listen to actors – not experts – on serious public issues.

They won’t. And the public are not dumb.

The truth is there’s a huge gulf opening up between the culture of celebrity and reality. We put actors on a pedestal not because of what they know or their wisdom. We put them on a pedestal because we know who they are.

Nothing more and nothing less.

I’ve met only one actor who has struck me as a real thinker; as someone who reads and learns and can argue her case. That’s Cate Blanchett.

I don’t really buy her politics but I respect her intellect and her learning.

It’s about time political parties and other promoters of political causes understood a simple point: the public would no more listen to an actor on public issues than accept the advice of actors on health issues. Unless, of course, it’s a face lift.

Against Abbott is Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard. She leads Abbott by around 10 points in polls as the preferred Prime Minister. Gillard will be heading into the election year with the economy entering a 22nd year of unbroken economic growth. The unemployment rate is around 5.5 percent, one of the lowest in the industrialised world and real wages have been rising for 10 straight years. At the same time, mortgage interest rates are 6.6 percent, well below historical averages and 2 percent below the level of the Coalition government.

The Gillard Government has a policy agenda that includes education reform, a national disability insurance scheme and the national broadband network, all very popular policy proposals according to public opinion polling.

Despite these economic drivers being so very favourable for the Gillard Government, the common wisdom from political pundits is that the 2013 election is unloseable for Abbott.

Indeed, most opinion polls have the Coalition well ahead of Labor in two-party preferred terms.

Now look back 20 years.

Common wisdom from the pundits is that the then Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating should have been soundly beaten in the 1993 election.

Unemployment was 11 per cent, the highest since the 1930s Great Depression. The economy was barely climbing out of a deep recession and real wages had been falling for the bulk of the prior five years. At the same time, mortgage interest rates were around 10 percent, although this was down from the 17 percent experienced a few years before.

Confronting Keating was the Liberal Party leader, Dr John Hewson, a well credentialed economist with a blueprint for economic reform.

Hewson’s so-called Fightback! manifesto included tax reform, establishing independence for the Reserve Bank and a range of other microeconomic changes designed to boost productivity.

Hewson was popular and credible; Keating was seen as arrogant and carried the weight of the recession which started under his watch as Treasurer.

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 13

Politics seats are in Queensland and Victoria where there are increasingly unpopular State Coalition Governments. All eight seats are at risk. The Labor Party has only nine seats with a margin of 2.5 percent or less and while those seats and others are obviously at risk, in the absence of a uniform swing some Coalition seats could easily move back to Labor and some Labor seats will move to the Coalition making the election outcome impossible to call.

It was an unloseable election for Hewson on these facts and perceptions. Yet there was a 1.54 percent swing in the two-party preferred vote to Labor and Hewson was humiliated.

There are obviously chalk and cheese differences between the economic fundamentals now and back in 1993. They massively favour the incumbent Labor Party. There are also differences in the relative credibility of Opposition leaders Hewson and Abbott which again undoubtedly favour Labor.

That said, the polls show the Coalition with a solid lead based, it seems, on Gillard’s comment prior to the 2010 election that “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”, the vexed issue of asylum seekers and some of the policy compromises that have been an inevitable consequence of the minority government arrangements entered into as a result of the hung Parliament.

On the contrary, the hard facts on the economy, rising living standards and a policy agenda of popular and decent reforms make the election a very winnable one for Labor. As 2013 unfolds and the election campaigning focuses electors’ minds on the things that matter for them, it is more than just conceivable that Labor will win.

It seems a stretch to think that for Abbott and the Coalition parties the 2013 election is “unloseable”.

This point is even more apparent with the Coalition currently holding 14 seats with a margin of 2.5 percent or less. Eight of those

All of which suggest the 2013 election is up for grabs. It is no forgone conclusion. It will be the Labor Party fighting on its economic record and agenda for social reform versus the Coalition fighting it on the perceptions of trust for Gillard and the promise to revoke the carbon and mining taxes. With close to a year to go until polling day, there will be many events that might sway voters one way or the other. This seems obvious, but try pointing that out to the pundits declaring Abbott home and hosed in another unloseable election.

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

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14 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Feature Living locally: The ‘20 minute’ city Bernard McNamara

T

ravelling from home to work and having access to a range of services all within 20 minutes should be a reality for everyone in metropolitan Melbourne. If we are to improve liveability then serious thought needs to be given to the future of middle and outer suburbs.

Planning safe, accessible, convenient and attractive local areas where people can meet most of their needs is one of the key principles we are using to prepare the new Metropolitan Planning Strategy for Melbourne. Rethinking our longterm planning approach and supporting healthy, liveable and more inclusive communities will pay dividends for decades to come.

By locally we mean that travel distances of 20 minutes or less as a rule of thumb should be the norm for accessing most things we need. We should not need to travel by car. Local shops, the primary school and the GP should be accessible within this time by walking, cycling or catching local public transport.

Creating a ‘20 minute’ city with community facilities and public spaces can stimulate contact within a community, create a sense of place as well as support local services, businesses and organisations. Local places that encourage connections and street activity are more vibrant, safer and can be designed to provide more choice in accommodation and reduce energy use.

Living locally and building up areas of

employment concentration can change our city, support suburban job growth and reduce disadvantage. This approach is a departure from the way planning has historically occurred. But it will be critical if we are to cater for a growing population and provide more choice and opportunity. Importantly a ‘20 minute’ city sets a measurable objective for local area planning, including the location of community facilities.

New accessible local areas will become more important as our population ages and household structures change. Today many of our suburbs are not well designed for access to daily services by those with limited mobility. Making our local environments more walkable, better connected and environmentally friendly should be our aim.

We can make Melbourne a ‘20 minute’ city by implementing three fundamental strategies: delivering more jobs and services to outer areas, providing diverse housing in the right locations at reasonable prices and improving the environmental performance of our suburbs.

Planning our city around major job locations will increase local access to jobs and provide momentum for the location of higher density housing and for additional investment. This change will put more people in contact with jobs, particularly if they are living in the growth areas where job opportunities are more narrowly-based. We know that moving jobs to where people live is hard to achieve. The combination of growing main job clusters and improving local area access promises to be more effective, working closer with the market.

Planning for these new areas needs to be more than just urban design and traditional land use planning and requires stronger partnerships

between government and developers to support growth of viable local communities. However, not all jobs for the growth area residents will be provided in growth areas themselves. Some employment might be better encouraged towards existing middle and outer areas of Melbourne that are convenient to people living in a growth area.

Local planning policies and zone reforms could encourage new neighbourhood centres and small supermarkets to fill the gaps in existing networks and help bring services closer to people.

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Bringing local services closer to people requires our planners and decision makers to be more flexible and creative.

Local areas should allow people to change house without changing their local networks.

We need more diverse housing in more locations at reasonable prices, particularly in established areas of Melbourne. The ongoing and often predictable debate about infill housing must move beyond the impact of villa units on suburban streets. Neighbourhood character is certainly

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 15

Feature FROM HERE

a ‘vertical village’ where a number of land uses are delivered in one building of multiple storeys, not just apartments.

We need to open up our planning approach to accept innovative approaches. These approaches could involve private developers accessing underused public land and returning value by way of increased public facilities along with new high density housing including social housing. important and areas identified as having valued characteristics should be protected. However, neighbourhoods that are in need of, and will benefit from, urban regeneration, as well as former industrial areas suitable for renewal should also be identified.

being built in the inner areas are predominantly one and two bedroom units because of the costs of land and construction. New family housing, affordable to most, is not available. We need to find new cost-effective ways of providing housing choice.

Ask yourself: “How and where would I like to live in the future?” and “Can my children/parents afford to live nearby?” This will mean generating more local housing choice in most inner and middle suburbs. Today new dwellings that are

We should set ourselves a target of delivering a three bedroom townhouse or apartment in the middle suburbs that is affordable to a median income household. One idea might be to support a mix of uses in new developments – for example,

There is also a need to devise appropriate planning tools to deliver more affordable and diverse housing choices. Even if housing affordability is dramatically improved, there will still be a need for more effort to deliver social housing, and below market price housing, across a range of locations. We will also need to avoid concentrations of disadvantage and ensure that key workers such as police officers, nurses and teachers can afford to live locally in expensive areas.

Melbourne is a suburban city and that will not change, but our city’s environmental performance

must be dramatically improved. Local area planning should incorporate efforts towards making Melbourne more resilient and sustainable through a host of small-scale locally driven initiatives. This can avoid the need for large infrastructure investment and save people money. For example, rainwater reuse systems, public vegetable gardens and recycling centres with community involvement can increase local responsibility and ownership. Improving the energy efficiency of existing homes will require retrofitting and renovation and this can be best achieved by shared community knowledge and a building industry familiar with the challenges.

Trees are highly valued in Melbourne’s suburbs and therefore the tree canopy of our city could be increased with significant environmental and aesthetic benefits. There is the potential for Melbourne to increase tree cover in parkland and along waterways and by planning more street trees, including fruit bearing trees throughout its neighbourhoods. A program of ‘green neighbourhoods’ could help address all aspects of sustainability. Much of this effort could be community-based, with activities to bring together people of diverse ages and backgrounds.

Melbourne needs to be more environmentally resilient. We need to be able to respond to changing environmental and climate conditions and ensure development does not undermine natural values.

To implement the concept of a ‘20 minute city’ and make ‘living locally’ work will require a partnership approach from governments, citizens and private investors in Victoria. If we focus more on living locally and on the variety of services required to meet our needs, all Melburnians will be able to experience the benefits of a ‘20 minute’ city while safeguarding jobs, financial security and liveability.

INFORMATION Bernard McNamara is a member of the Metropolitan Planning Strategy Ministerial Advisory Committee.

The discussion paper, “Melbourne, let’s talk about the future” is available at planmelbourne.vic.gov.au

16 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Columnists Sort of but not exactly An open letter to Santa Claus Patrick Allington

D

THIRD AGE She knows when you’ve been bad or good Shirley Stott Despoja

H

ullo, Santa here.

Hi and that.

Pumped and stoked for the Christmas season, are we? Well, let me tell you that Santa doesn’t like those words. Unless you drop them from your answers, especially when interviewed on TV, Santa will ensure that your great-aunt gives you one of those presents that can never, for fear of lightning visits, be stashed away. Something that will really upset your Ikea décor of blackand-white with a single red poinsettia painting.

A bronze bust of Shakespeare, perhaps.

I am bringing Tony Abbott a lovely selection of purple ribbons for making women aware this year that they are feminists after all. This was a good thing. The Prime Minister must also have a great gift from me in her stocking, something real to match the real-me that broke out on an October day in the House of Representatives. The Press Gallery will get nothing of value from me, to match their hopeless coverage of the incidents that have forced me to shell out gifts to unlikely people this year. They don’t believe in me, anyway.

What do they believe in, I wonder, if they can’t give a bit of praise where it’s due?

I have agonised over the States this Christmas.

I know that in this festive and vaguely religious season they are struggling with their failure to share. Water again. An encouragement award rather than a punitive one suggests itself, but what? My grandchildren need sharing models in their childhood (yes, Santa has grandchildren, perpetually young. How else do I know that trash trucks are good presents and that Barbie’s divorcewear might be the latest thing?).

In her big jubilee year, the Queen is a girl who has everything. Alas, she has an heir about her, and it’s not the one the subjects want. Now Santa

thinks she has probs thinking up good presents and bribes, but what about Elizabeth trying to think what the something special is that she could whisper in Charles’s ear to make him give up the throne to William? No chance. So Santa has for the Queen a nice Target frock for relaxing days at Sandringham. I think Charles would like Kylie under his tree, but again, no chance. I haven’t forgiven him yet.

There is something quite attractive about James Packer, since he lost some weight. Let’s give him Australia for Christmas before Gina gets it. It’s hard thinking up pressies for rich people, but Clive Palmer is easy. A boiled fruit cake.

I am bringing a tie to the man outside my library who, seeing me (well disguised) on the steps, tells me to “smile, because it costs nothing.” He should wear my gift while he can because someone with depression or even a seriously bad mood is going to kill him soon.

I suppose I have to hand out a year’s supply of sorries, as is the custom now. Perhaps I will say sorry to the social workers who got caught up in the forced removal of babies. Some of these highly educated, nice people – mostly women and now Third Agers – never did a thing wrong, yet their careers in retrospect have been smeared.

If we are going to say sorry, we should be more specific about who exactly is to blame.

To city and local councils everywhere, I am bringing a tree. Just a tree. It’s a tiny hint that planting trees is the single most beautifying thing for any city. Look overseas. Avenues, even common streets of green this and that. I know the general taste here is for cutting them down, but be brave, be different, plant trees. And no, gifts cannot be exchanged. Put that ridiculous statue down.

Santa doesn’t get presents. For me it is all give, give, give. But if anyone feels like offering a badly dressed, chubby woman with a white beard a thank you, I would like a picnic. A long walk, then sandwiches, cake and fruit on a red-checked tablecloth pinned with stones from the creek.

Talk: happy, desultory, no phones. Then home before dark. Memories, eh?

Now I’m off. A long, tiring trip ahead. Mr. S says I have only myself to blame for resisting sleighdrones. His heart never was in the job, was it?

ear Santa, H e r e ’s m y Christmas wish list. You want to know, I suppose, that I’ve been a good boy. But how do you define ‘good’ and ‘bad’? And how bad do I have to get before you withhold my pressies? Have you devised a formula to calculate degrees of goodness? Is it Quality Assured? Did you consult all relevant stakeholders? Don’t mess with me, I know my rights. I’ve got lawyers in the family.

I’ve heard rumours that you won’t be giving General Petraeus any socks and jocks this year.

That’s rough justice. Sure, Dave-o cheated on his wife but why do you care? I’d understand if he’d exchanged bodily secrets with some triple agent employed by Iran and funded by the ghost of Stalin, but his biographer? Ease up there, big fella, everybody’s got egos and urges.

While you’re at it, cut Kristen Stewart some slack. What’s a snog or two with a dashing director when you’re rich and famous and beautiful and 22? Mind you, she did parade her guilt to the whole world, apologising to all seven billion of us, one hand-wring at a time. I had to take leave without pay just to monitor Twitter. Still, massaging a wholesome public profile is a tough gig: surely she’s earned herself a Vampire Barbie Doll. And a bloodless Ken. The real question, Santa, is have you been good? I’m not insinuating some buried scandal but I do wonder if your standards have slipped.

That whole fat Elvis persona is tired. It’s time you got yourself a makeover and cast aside confused history: Santa Claus or Father Christmas, red suit or green, Coke or Pepsi, North Pole or Finland, it’s old news. Yes, I know, you feed on nostalgia. People love your predictability. But never take the kid population for granted – they get more sophisticated by the hour. Just last night, my three-year-old finished A Christmas Carol in one sitting and then explained to her proud parents that Charles Dickens uses way too

many words (she’s terribly advanced for her age).

Never mind children: stop neglecting adults.

For starters, be a better role model. I’m not just talking about your weight, although you could drop a few kilos … and make some extra cash along the way. With your international profile, you could pitch ‘Santa’s Skinfold Challenge’ to Channel 10 (coming in 2013, 7.30pm Mondays to Thursdays). Think of the cross-promotional possibilities: you could put a free pedometer in every Christmas stocking – you’ll make a killing on replacement batteries – and a discount voucher to any gymnasium willing to give you a kickback. But hurry up: Russell Brand is gagging for your job. He’s already wearing his costume, jeans tight as a water balloon, flame-red shirt unbuttoned to the navel, beard wild yet ornate.

Seize the moment. Even if you don’t exist, you’re the man to defy that whole ‘true meaning of Christmas’ mantra. I’m not proposing that you trash Christianity’s good name – that’s George Pell’s job – but I dream of a jolly old grandpa telling us straight that Christmas is a secular celebration of family and friends and booze, a time to dimly sense that force-fed joy and peace and goodwill to all humankind sounds lovely but might, just might, be a grubby salve.

Instead of sneaking down chimneys and disappearing into the night like a thief, transform yourself into a human prawn cocktail, the prawns the size and colour and consistency of a big toe, the sauce hot pink and flowing like lava. Stick fast to our tongues and resist all our efforts to rinse you away. Every time we brush our teeth, serenade us with that faint but unmistakable lament ‘what about the starving masses in Africa?’

That’s what I want: Kristen Stewart levels of guilt. Oh, and world peace (of course) and gender equality (except when it inconveniences me) and a humble Lance Armstrong (even though there’s something sexy about his absolute arrogance). I’d love a permanently angry Julia Gillard. I wish Malcolm Turnbull would stop jogging laps and start running an actual race.

I’d be grateful if the slipped disc in my spine magically reinserted itself. And – on behalf my family, who adore Christmas just the way it is – maybe you could help me lighten up.

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 17

Columnists

IRREGULAR WRITINGS Thrills, Anarchy and Neighbours Dave Graney

I

n 2 0 1 2 I enj oy e d being lost to successive American TV series, HBO or FX mostly, shows that g rabbe d you and sucked you in and you found yourself watching several episodes at a time. Of course, if you were lucky enough to have a partner to share it all with, it gave the experience an extra kick. Affirmed your thrills and your laughs.

There was Justified which is a vehicle produced and starring Timothy Olyphant, the uptight sheriff from Deadwood. In Justified he is a Federal Marshall in present day Tennessee. Dealing with the local and state levels of police forces as well as the ‘Dixie mafia’ who generally live out in the woods, eat badly and either cook meth or grow weed.

I’m not writing this to tell you what to watch – these shows work really well if you find your own way into them. Some, like Shield were even on free-to-air TV for a while but at such crazily irregular times that it was difficult to catch them. Shield had seven series and the writing and the acting held up for all of it. I mention it because one of the police in that show, Walton Goggins, is a major character in Justified. A terrific player, totally watchable in whatever role he takes on. Sometimes looks a wreck, sometimes looks a star. He even turned up in Sons of Anarchy as a transgender prostitute.

Sons of Anarchy is on my mind at the moment. It has terrible music and one of the lead actors is far too buff and handsome to be (a) an outlaw biker and (b) a consumer of so much weed, booze and cigarettes. But the whole show fairly whizzes along. The show has many flaws but, again, the story and the actors pull it off. Ron Pearlman and Katy Sagall are the King and Queen of the gang. Gradually, all the gang members come into focus: Chips, Juicy, Tigg, Opey, Bobby Elvis, Halfsack and Otto. This show has me in its grip and I am busting a friend’s balls to download the latest episodes for me. I then hand them on to fellow SAMCRO twitchers who are waiting in line.

(I don’t do that torrent stuff myself ). I feel bad copping it on the street but I am hanging out for the next instalment.

One thing I have noticed is that they are not afraid of killing off very central characters in a lot of these shows. It’s shocking. Probably become a predictable thing. Brought up on regulation storylines and narrative arcs, you never got played like that before now.

A show that hit every note it could in just two seasons was the incredible Rome. Filmed on a purpose-built set in Rome, it again has brilliant actors revelling in roles that give them time and space to wander through the story. This is the story of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony and all those crazy bitches back in the day. Civil war and murder. It is seen from street level with two blue collar (well, blue tunic) centurions and in the palaces with the senators and the nobility. The last episode of this came far too quickly. The actress who plays Cleopatra is not curvaceous or overtly sexual in any modern way but she is so absolutely carnal that it’s otherworldly. Young Octavius is so high in the social strata he might as well have stepped out of a space ship. He is right into the politics and the show of power and thinks nothing of a pleb getting sliced along the way. Doesn’t blink.

Ideal has had almost as many seasons as Shield but I have only ever seen it here on

free-to-air TV. At odd hours when I am in the best state to experience it. I mean, I can tune into it best. It stars Johnny Vegas as a pot dealer in a flat in Manchester. The world

comes to his door. Psycho Paul and Cartoon Head menace everybody. Barry Adamson turned up in it one night as a nightclub assassin. The gangsters turned away from pot to dealing in human body parts. The gay character bought a penis from them “for best”. Japes ensued. Like many UK comedies, it doesn’t sound like it, but if you are in the right state of mind it is even funnier.

Through the mail I got to see Series Two of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. These last two years have seen Stewart Lee back on British television and he destroys the joint!

Anarchy! I had to get it through the mail because Australia is a TV country that has ignored the work of people like Harry Enfield for their entire careers. Only this year have we seen his show with Paul Whitehouse.

More please!

Of course there’s great Australian comedy like Lowdown and, even though I’ve only seen the first episode, Sam Simmons Problems. Sam is a freak!

(I mean that as a compliment).

The only other free-to-air show that I care for is Neighbours. Paul Robinson has been on fire this year, doing that straight-laced Indian school principal at Lassiter’s while her husband works late at the office. “You want danger! Thrills! I can give you all that stuff !” Paul hissed at her as she fell into his rich, evil arms. Meanwhile, her teen daughter was seeing Kyle’s juvie nephew.

How could she tell her daughter what not to do anymore?

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18 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Health Weight Loss and Happiness The Pleasure Principle

Professor Avni Sali

A

s the weather warms up and the holiday season approaches, many people renew their focus on their excess weight and what is needed in order to correct this problem. Most people understand that healthy eating and increasing outdoor exercise is essential for achieving their goal.

This is often done with the mission in mind of losing some kilograms and is as much influenced by the variation of season as it is our desire to shape up. We are more than conscious of the fact that summer clothing exposes our extra kilos.

There is no shortage of information when it comes to weight loss plans and products.

The weight loss industry is estimated to be worth over $30-50 billion in the US alone.

But with Australians spending $827 million on weight loss in 2012, and over 60% of Australian adults currently being classed as overweight or obese (a Body Mass Index of greater than 25 as measured by weight divided by height squared), something is clearly amiss. With each generation, Australians are getting fatter.

Being overweight or obese has more impact on our health than we may realise. Obesity as a risk factor for most other chronic diseases is, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2010), the major preventable cause of disease – it has even overtaken smoking in recent years. Excess weight can therefore be seen to be a major cause for mortality and reduced life spans in individuals – cardiovascular disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes can all be attributed to

obesity. The good news is that by losing as little as five percent of your body weight (if overweight) you can significantly improve your risk factor profile.

We know that weight is a more complex arrangement than just energy in and energy out, and that the body is a highly adaptive and complex system of interrelated parts and functions.

In order to deal with all of the factors that are responsible for increased weight, an integrative approach is essential. Within the integrative medicine model, health creation is a major focus with an emphasis on why the problem has arisen. When a patient is overweight, one of the first considerations is to review their lifestyle, behavioural and socioeconomic factors to determine what might be causing weight gain or weight retention. There is more to each person’s weight story than just food and exercise. Recent research is pointing us to a range of factors, including biomedical, environmental, motivational and genetic influences, that affect how food is processed and the way our bodies utilise energy.

There are many lifestyle factors that impact on our body’s ability to function in a peak way (i.e. at optimal weight). Recent research is offering us some major insights into the role of stress, sleep disorders and personality factors and highlighting new strategies for managing weight from a total lifestyle perspective. One of the most important findings has been the value of pleasure in life, which is clearly related to stress but also to our general sense of wellness and our sense of joy and aliveness in the world. The less pleasure you derive from other aspects of life, the more likely you may be to consume excess food for pleasure.

The stress effect Chronic stress and anxiety can have direct effects on the body that can result in weight gain.

Whilst we may eat more, or make poorer food choices when we are stressed, there is also a series of biochemical responses that come into play when the body is experiencing persistent stress.

Stressors actually increase our intake of palatable (rather than bland) high fat and high sugar foods as a means of activating a pleasure response in the brain in an attempt to reduce stress, e.g. desserts. The ‘flight or fight’ mechanism which is associated with stress results in increased

cortisol, which not only increases our appetites, but leads to increased fat storage as a result of biochemical changes. Fat cells then produce the hormone adiponectin, which then in turn affects the cells’ response to insulin causing insulin resistance, which promotes weight gain. The cycle of stress is clearly one that could offset our best efforts with diet and exercise.

In contrast, feel great and seek pleasure and the body will create biochemicals that support our weight management endeavours. The pleasure effect is the stress effect in reverse.

“At the end of a great night spare a thought for tomorrow.”

Geoff Huegill Commonwealth Games Gold Medallist, Swimming.

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 19

Health Exercise is one way to create endorphins in the brain, but there are also many other opportunities for us to seek pleasure and pleasurable activities in life that will benefit our weight loss plans.”

In a recent study in the Journal of Obesity, mastering simple mindful eating and stressreduction techniques helped prevent weight gain without even dieting. As the stress hormone cortisol is linked to eating behaviour, anything we can do to manage stress will have far reaching benefits on the body and mind. Managing stress through meditation and body awareness gave participants a deeper understanding of the signals their body was giving with regards to fullness and vitality.

Endorphins are powerful neurotransmitters in the brain that create feelings of pleasure and delight by acting on the opiate receptors, also in our brain. Exercise is one way to create endorphins in the brain, but there are also many other opportunities for us to seek pleasure and pleasurable activities in life that will benefit our weight loss plans. Research shows endorphins are a powerful appetite suppressant, especially when combined with elevated oxytocin levels.

Oxytocin has a number of functions including the binding of humans to one another as well as improving our feelings of contentment.

The journal Science recently found that obese people may have fewer pleasure receptors in the brain, which diminishes their ability to experience the pleasure of eating.

Overindulgence may result in an attempt to boost their satisfaction – or dopamine levels – which is a hard-wired program in the brain designed to reward the body for consuming life-sustaining nutrition. Overeating and high fat food has also been shown in some studies (in mice) to disrupt a complex network of genes related to the fatty tissues.

Poor sleep can make you fat If you are regularly getting less than six or seven hours sleep each night, your body will respond by decreasing the sensitivity of your insulin receptors. This means your insulin levels will increase and with that compromise your body’s ability to burn and digest fat. Sleep deprivation will alter metabolism and stimulate appetite.

Behaviourally, you may look for high energy (high calorie) low-nutrition snacks to get through the day. Biomedically, a lack of sleep will reduce leptin, the hormone that signals fullness, to the brain, and decrease ghrelin which makes you hungry.

The rate of obesity is higher in those who are sleep deprived. Include adequate sleep in your weight loss plan. Waking up grumpy does more than cloud your day.

Personality and a tailored approach US researchers from the National Institute of Ageing found people who are impulsive (by

far that most prevalent characteristic), cynical, competitive or aggressive were more likely to be overweight. This long-term study suggests that behavioural therapies are vital for people facing the weight loss challenge. By understanding these traits with the help of a counsellor or other health professional, achieving a more profound and lasting lifestyle-orientated change to eating habits may be possible – and a psychological robustness that has positive effects in other areas of life.

A study in the American Psychological Science journal, found that women who write for 15 minutes each day about their most important values (relationships, children, music, and so on) lost more weight that those who did not.

Self-integrity and how we feel about ourselves can have a significant effect on weight. Feeling good and seeking pleasure is a weight loss strategy that can have many beneficial effects.

Real pleasure comes from treating the body with upmost respect and supporting it to function at its optimal level. Looking after the body by eating well and exercising can foster a sense of joy and create a positive spiral upwards that is both sustaining and supportive of your weight loss goals. Research shows a happy person tends to make better food choices overall and treating life as a source of pleasure is a wonderful way not only to enjoy a healthy weight, but also make the most of each day. Healthy food need not be boring; dark chocolate consumed regularly leads to a healthier weight. What you eat occasionally such as foods of the festive season need not be a problem, provided you have a healthy diet generally. Enjoyment can be viewed as a necessary part of any weight loss program, and integral to a healthy lifestyle.

INFORMATION 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

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20 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Books

How Music Works David Byrne Canongate David Sornig I developed my music listening habits as a teenager back in the 1980s in western-suburban Melbourne around the idea that the most authentic kind of music was hard rock played with electric guitars, wooden drumsticks beating on pigskin and an unmediated human voice. To me that music had an integrity that the newlyemergent synth-pop of the time would never be able to match. It’s an attitude that sounds embarrassingly conservative now. It certainly limited the kinds of sounds I allowed myself to listen to. Now, from time to time when I discover some of the beautiful things I missed out on that I will never experience in their most authentic moment, I can’t help but feel some regret. Yet sometimes that conservatism, rooted as it is in the complex relationship between technology and music, and the search for authenticity, persists.

I recognise it especially in my easy dismissal of the kind of auto-tuned, corporate kiddy-pop that dominates the charts my kids like to listen to. One Direction. Katy Perry. That’s not really

singing, is it? It’s not really real music. Or is it?

In a more ancient form, this is the question that asks directly: what is music? In How Music Works David Byrne, best known as the lead singer for the band Talking Heads, but who is also a thoughtful artist and writer, uses ten essays to more-or-less explore how he approaches the question. It’s a book written for any contemporary participant in music, whether composer, player, listener or something of all three.

The key shift in musical technology for Byrne was the rise of recording technology over a century ago. It was a change that profoundly altered the way we experience music. With recording, Byrne writes, music was no longer so profoundly ephemeral, ‘it came to be regarded as a product – a thing that could be bought, sold, traded, and replayed endlessly in any context.’

It’s this contextual aspect of music that seems to fascinate Byrne most of all. He writes about music in different cultural and physical spaces, his distinct experiences as both a performance and recording artist, the importance of amateurism and collaboration, the contribution of a ‘scene’ to musical movements and some very large ideas about its physical and even cosmic significance.

Byrne’s early experiences at New York’s legendary CBGBs features a fair bit too. He even maps the shifting layout of the venue over the years in a way that links across chapters into a very frank and practical analysis of the business and finance of music-making for the digital age.

The most interesting chapters are on the role of analog and digital technologies in the shaping of music. Byrne’s writing about the sometimes strange tradition of hi-fi evangelists, like the 1920s technicians from ERPI who saw their job of wiring theatres around the world for sound as a force for spreading democracy, capitalism and free-speech (just like today’s digital crusaderentrepreneurs) is offset by his exploration of the logic of movements of lo-fi artists, people like tUnE-yArDs’ Merrill Garbus.

Byrne is an erudite, curious, gentle and transparent essayist, who writes plainly yet intelligently about what he has learned from his long experience as a musician and, on the back of his Bicycle Diaries (2009) about the experience of cycling as his principal means of transportation, it builds his reputation as a prominent public thinker about the wonder of the everyday.

Salvation of a Saint

New Finnish Grammar

Keigo Higashino Little, Brown

Diego Marani Text Publishing

William Charles

David Sornig

Keigo Higashino’s first novel, The Devotion of Suspect X was a huge hit in Japan. This reviewer, sadly, missed it, but won’t be missing any further instalments, if the fiendishly brilliant Salvation of a Saint is any guide to Higashino’s talents. When a Tokyo businessman is poisoned in his own home, all leads point to his beautiful wife who, unfortunately for the police, has a water-tight alibi, having spent the weekend with family and friends in Hokkaido.

Facing the conundrum are Detective Kusanagi and his sidekick Kaoru Utsumi, teaming up – reluctantly – with eccentric physicist Professor Yukawa in order to unravel a deeply complex problem of time and place. The dialogue and unravelling of the intricate plot are simply masterful, brimming with superbly realised, everyday Japanese characters, including suspect wife Ayane Mita and her employee Hiromi Wakayama. A thriller with virtually no violence and a body count of only one, this novel revolves around depth of character and a minute dissection of the physical possibilities of constructing a crime and an alibi. Dostoyevsky would have loved it. Five stars.

Trieste 1943. A man wakes on a German hospital ship without language, without memory. The only apparent clue to his identity is the name sewn inside his navy sailor’s jacket: Sampo Karjalainen. Recognising the name as Finnish, his doctor, Friari, who is also a Finn, sends the man to Helsinki, the only place he might ever find a language and an identity to which he belongs.

The premise, married as it is to the Finnish national myth of the Kalevala, and to Finland’s dramatic involvement in WW2, is desperately appealing. But the result, oddly for such a short book, seems long-winded.

‘Finnish syntax is thorny but delicate,’ says a Kalevala-obsessed priest, the man’s only friend in Finland, ‘instead of starting from the centre of things, it surrounds and envelops them from without.’

Yes, we do find our shape in the spaces words do not fill; and language and memory are insubstantial, but Marani labours this central thesis through repetition. His sin, which is not the fault of the translation from the original Italian, is simply one of dullness.

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 21

Books THE BEST 100 POEMS of LES MURRAY Les Murray Black Inc. William Charles

The 2013 Voiceless Anthology Allen & Unwin Tali Lavi The Voiceless Writing Prize which professes a desire ‘to advance public understanding of animal sentience’ might engender the suspicion that these shortlisted essays and stories are a homogenous mass of either emotional manipulation or a vegetarian militancy. But then its selection committee is composed largely of impeccable literary pedigree.

And so, thankfully, it shimmers with a playfulness that is sometimes deadly serious; of ideas, language and philosophical questionings alongside recognition of Indigenous thinking.

There are pieces of great resonance and dexterity.

Anne Coombs, writer and social activist turned farmer, teases out complexities implicit in an ethical life and her acute observations are alternately joyful and steeped in pathos. Hilary Key’s accomplished tones of irony present as a kind of literary trench warfare, whilst Liana Joy Christenson’s intellectual interrogation is eccentrically inventive alongside Darren Chard’s muscular tale of foreboding. A piece by a collective from Bawaka Country is stunningly lyrical. Alphabetically arranged, it might be read any way, as long as it is read sentiently.

I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen Sylvie Simmons Jonathan Cape Tali Lavi For those not yet enamoured of Leonard Cohen, your time is up. Sylvie Simmons weaves this riveting personal history using numerous interviews – Cohen included – together with the settings of Montreal (first its leafy suburbs, then its poets), New York (the Chelsea Hotel and Warhol’s set), alongside myriad lovers and the trajectory of musical stardom. She then layers it with Cohen’s own literary and musical poeticism to produce a textured and enigmatic study.

Her subject is magnetic, self-exacting and abundant in conundrums: a committed Jew of rabbinic stock who loves Jesus and attains the title of Zen Buddhist monk; a poet cowed by his search for truth and beauty, and yet sure of his genius. But invariably it is to his offerings of the sublime, his ‘rags of light’, that we are drawn. As Simmons notes, Cohen has always been brilliant at the art of deflection, but it is in his art that notes of ambivalence, struggle and pleasure take form. And it is to his work, with its dark staggering grandeur, that we turn at the end of this wild ride.

‘Why write poetry?’ Les Murray asks in his poem The Instrument. ‘For working always beyond / your own intelligence. For not needing to rise / and betray the poor to do it. For a nondevouring fame.’ He goes on, and never was this line truer: ‘Little in politics resembles it...’

Coming just a few years after 2006’s monumental Collected Poems and 2007’s Selected Poems, this slim volume has about it the intimation of finality that can accompany a retrospective – and it may well be that Les Murray is moving towards the final phase of his extraordinary poetic career. In it, he has carved out a place in the hearts of many Australians, and added an intellectually complex yet also distinctly sympathetic rural labouring voice to the layered history of Australian poetry. His is a voice that has travelled beyond these shores like no other poet, a voice that proudly throws up into relief all the teeming life, tenderness, cruelty, fire, possession, dispossession, animal force and sheer strange wonder of this land.

Slim though the volume is, it packs a weight per page many other poetry collections lack – there is not an ounce of filler, with the 100 poems having been selected by Murray himself.

From the opening line of this selection ‘In the high cool country...’ from Driving Through Sawmill Towns, to the intimate observation of Natal Grass, we are witness once again to Murray’s remarkable dexterity and range; his voice has become, despite all manner of obstacles and the occasional grumbling detractor, something of a national voice. The language crackles like bushfire; the rhythms sweep like the curves of ancient rivers; word collocations and vocal experiments explode; there are jokes aplenty, casual yet acute observations and whimsies; ideas bounce and jostle each other from poem to poem, searching for God, for justice, for personal dignity, for the voice of the dispossessed or ignored –

Reader’s Feast Bookstore - The store with a story......

human and animal – in this inherited, adopted continent. His attempts to find a language to ‘write’ the natural world are courageous, brilliant experiments to extend the English language, and have the added value of being a unique gift to our national consciousness. Everyone will have a favourite: from long-established classics such as An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow to The Buladelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle, to The Hanging Gardens to Eucalypts in Exile, from Bats’ Ultrasound and Lyrebird to The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever or High-Speed Bird – all are brimming with humour and play, with wonder, with a sense of how immediate, tactile and present the world is to us, while also remaining partly beyond, sacred and intangible.

Murray writes always well outside the prescribed guidelines of urban fashion, yet his self-classification as ‘redneck’ is more about an oppositional politics, a championing of the dignity and wisdom of rural Australians, than it is an accurate description of Murray himself, for his entire body of work is informed by deep levels of intellectual and spiritual searching.

A critical appreciation of Murray in The New York Review of Books, by J. M. Coetzee, is concurrently reproduced in The Best Australian Essays 2012 (Black Inc.) and will encourage even closer reading and enjoyment, of this – yes – unequivocal national treasure.

Our Christmas and summer reading Book Guide is out now. Our buyers and booksellers choose all the books and the reviews are written by our staff and manager.

Please call or email us if you would like a copy mailed to you, or collect a copy in-store.

162 Collins Street Melbourne 3000 Entry also via 195 Lt. Collins Street Phone: 9662 4699 readersfeast.com.au

22 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Features Summer Reading

F

rom classic Australian fiction to sharp political essays, the fine thinking and writing doesn’t stop coming. The proliferating need for knowledge of the present; the constant re-interpretation of the past; the light thrown into even the most obscure corners of personal and national histories; the continued cultivation of the imagination; the boundaries of popular science and the interface between new technologies and the human soul; and the shifting prospect of the future – the reader is faced with the contemporary curse of too much choice and too little time.

Here at The Melbourne Review we asked a selection of friends to guide us through 2012’s vast array of books with an eye to the summer months ahead. We hope these lists will be useful as a guide – it’s always a good thing to give a book for Christmas, or indeed at any time.

TONI JORDAN Writer

Best of 2012 1. Michelle de Kretser, Questions of Travel (Allen & Unwin) 2. Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate) 3. Carrie Tiffany, Mateship with Birds (Picador)

Summer Reading • Zane Lovitt, The Midnight Promise (Text) • Anne Enright, The Forgotten Waltz ( Jonathon Cape) • Cate Kennedy, Like a House on Fire (Scribe)

ROBERT MURRAY Director of Marketing & Customer Relations Melbourne Recital Centre

Best of 2012 1. Camille Paglia, Glittering Images (Pantheon) 2. Oliver Sacks, Hallucinations (Knopf ) 3. Julian Green, Paris (Penguin)

Summer Reading • Paul Elie, Reinventing Bach (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) • Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet (Granta Books) • Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah (Penguin)

RAMONA KOVAL Writer, editor and broadcaster

Best of 2012 1. Elizabeth Harrower, The Long Prospect (Text Classics) 2. Elizabeth Harrower, The Watch Tower (Text Classics) 3. Colm Toibin, The Testament of Mary (Penguin)

Summer Reading • Sonya Hartnett (ed.), Best Australian Short Stories 2012 (Black Inc.) • Elizabeth Finkel, The Genome Generation (Melbourne University Publishing) • Hermann Langbein, People in Auschwitz (University of North Carolina Press)

NICHOLAS GRUEN CEO, Lateral Economics, Chairman Australian Centre for Social Innovation

EMILY HARMS Marketing Manager, Readings Bookshops

Best of 2012 1. A.M Homes, May we be Forgiven (Granta) 2. James Meek, The Heart Broke In (Canongate) 3. Cate Kennedy, Like a House on Fire (Scribe)

BRETT SHEEHY AO Artistic Director, Melbourne Theatre Company

Best of 2012 1. The Presidential Recordings: Lyndon Johnson (W.W. Norton) 2. Christopher Hitchens, Mortality (Allen & Unwin) 3. Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Diaries 1963-1981 (Hamish Hamilton)

Summer Reading • Dan Wakefield (ed.) Kurt Vonnegut: Letters (Delacorte Press) • David Hare, Obedience, Struggle and Revolt (Faber & Faber) David Byrne, How Music Works (Canongate)

MAREE COOTE Melbourne Style

Summer Reading • Benjamin Law, Gaysia (Black Inc.) • Neil Young, Waging Heavy Peace (Viking) • Alice Munro, Dear Life (Chatto & Windus)

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Best of 2012 1. Graham Freudenberg, Churchill and Australia (McMillan) 2. David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity (Viking) 3. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind (Pantheon) Summer Reading • William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life (Oxford UP) • William H. Chafe, Bill and Hillary: The Politics of the Personal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) • Molly Ringwald, When It Happens to You (It Books)

Best of 2012 1. John Lahr, Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization (Farrar Straus Giroux) 2. Matthew Benns, Fixed (Ebury Australia) 3. Russell Hoban, Ridley Walker (Bloomsbury) Summer Reading • John Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (Random House USA) • Hanna Rosin, The End of Men and the Rise of Women (Penguin Viking) • Neil McGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects (Allen Lane)

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 23

Summer Reading

MAXINE McKEW Author, Tales from the Political Trenches

Best of 2012 1. Drew Weston, The Political Brain (Perseus Books) 2. Arthur Herman, The Scottish Enlightenment (Harper Perennial) 3. James Button, Speechless - A Year in My Father’s Business (Melbourne University Press)

Summer Reading • Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate) • Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety (Modern Library) • Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behaviour (Faber and Faber)

CHRIS FEIK Editor, Quarterly Essay; Publisher, Black Inc.

CLIVE SCOTT General Manager, Sofitel Melbourne On Collins

Best of 2012 1. Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl (Orbit Books) 2. Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life (Virgin Books) 3. Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns (Harper Voyager)

Summer Reading • Lily Chan, Toyo: A Memoir (Black Inc.) • Isobelle Carmody, Green Monkey Dreams (Allen & Unwin) • Austin Ratner, The Jump Artist (Penguin Viking)

ALICE PUNG Author, Her Father’s Daughter and Unpolished Gem

Best of 2012 1. Susan Cain, Quiet (Penguin Viking) 2. Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife (Random House) 3. Marieke Hardy, You’ll Be Sorry When I’m Dead (Allen & Unwin)

Summer Reading • Tom Wolfe, Back to Blood ( Jonathan Cape) • Chester Eagle, The Pilgrims (Trojan Press) • Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project (Harper Perennial)

Best of 2012 1. Tony Judt/Timothy Snyder, Thinking the Twentieth Century (Heinemann) 2. Tim Soutphommasane, Don’t Go Back To Where You Came From (New South) 3. Albert O. Hirschman, Shifting Involvements (Princeton UP)

Summer Reading • Chloe Hooper, The Engagement (Penguin) • Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle (Princeton UP) • Leszek Kolakowski, Is God Happy? (Penguin UK)

SUZANNE DAVIES Director and Chief Curator, RMIT Gallery

Best of 2012 1. Anna Funder, All That I Am (Hamish Hamilton) 2. Kiran Nagarkar, God’s Little Soldier (Harper Collins) 3. Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf (Granta)

Summer Reading • Kiran Nagarkar, Cuckold (Harper Collins) • Nile Green, Sufism (Wiley-Blackwell) • PJ Keating, Last Words (Allen & Unwin)

ANGELIQUE DINGLE Communications Manager, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre Best of 2012 1. Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence (Faber & Faber) 2. Anna Funder, All That I Am (Hamish Hamilton) 3. Mario Calabresi, Pushing Past the Night (Other Press) Summer Reading • Michelle de Kretser, Questions of Travel (Allen & Unwin) • Joachim Fest, Not Me (Atlantic Books) • Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate)

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24 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Socials MELBOURNE PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2012 On November 7, the Melbourne Prize Trust held the awards for the $60,000 Melbourne Prize for Literature 2012, which was won by Alex Miller and the $30,000 Best Writing Award 2012, which was won by Craig Sherborne for The Amateur Science of Love (Text Publishing, 2011). The awards, held at BMW Edge, Federation Square, were attended by many wellknown figures from the literature sector, heads of publishing houses and overseas dignitaries, all enjoying the abundant literary talent we have in Victoria. For further information please visit melbourneprize.org

Alison Cleary and Jane Sydenham-Clarke.

Clare Forster and Anna Goldsworthy.

Lucas Maddock and Tess Cullity.

Rob Liley, Joan Liley and Alex Miller.

Brian Matthews and Jane Arms.

Jane Chisolm and Leo Ribeiro.

John van Tiggelen and Robert Manne.

Jane Phillips and Katie Crawford.

Tony Faccenda and Erica Moloney.

Photos: Matthew Wren

Giatomina Pradolin and Stuart Koop.

Infinite Value Awards

D’Ato Isahak and Peter NG (Centre) AIQS International Chapter with members of the Australian AIQS team.

James Soares and Steve Ellis.

The Australian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (AIQS) in partnership with Brookfield MULTIPLEX revealed the 2012 Infinite Value Award winners at a glittering gala dinner held in Melbourne’s Docklands in November.

Recognising, the significant value that Australian construction professionals add to millions of projects and developments both nationally and around the globe on a daily basis, the event demonstrated the diversity of the Australian construction industry and attracted over 220 industry leaders from Australia, New Zealand, Asia and the Middle East.

Photos: Laura Manariti

Steven Johnson.

Peter Maddison.

Steve Ellis , Julie Christie Dela Cruz and Anthony Duarte.

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 25

Socials EPICURE MARQUEE ON STAKES DAY Leading Australian caterer and major events specialist EPICURE hosted a number of high-profile clients at its marquee in the Birdcage on Stakes Day. During the Melbourne Cup Carnival, EPICURE provided world-class hospitality to over 8,000 guests in some of most elite marquees in the Birdcage; EMIRATES, SWISSE, TABCORP and SOFITEL as well as The Home Straight, VRC’s Champions and IBM. Photos: Matthew Wren

James Gilham and Rebecca Coomes.

Kelly Barwon, Tiffany Allen, Claire Bazeley and Monika Duric.

Libby Sexton and Tim Sexton.

Donna Demaio and Michael Wooldridge.

Susie Norton and Geoff Bettenay.

Steve Webber and Robert Clifford.

Vicki Beaumont and Luanda D’ant.

Mark Anderson, Lisa Trainor and Rebecca Harvey.

Sydney Dance Company’

Janine Collins, Colin Golvan, Debbie Golvan, Ian Forbes and Rosemary Forbes.

Jacquie Davidson and Avalee Weir.

Sydney Dance Company’s new work, 2 One Another had its Melbourne premiere at the Arts Centre Melbourne Playhouse on Wednesday November 21.

Featuring 16 of the best contemporary dancers in Australia, 2 One Another features Rafael Bonachela’s breathtaking choreography, designer Tony Assness’ visionary set and costumes, and Nick Wales’ unique sound design. All have been sculpted though poetry, personal stories and emotional responses, creating a work that is dynamic, deeply personal and highly physical.

Photos: Matthew Wren

June Marks and Suellen Wilkie.

Giselle Lloyd and Keith Lloyd.

Sophie Parr and Olivia Crane.

Janice Burke and Aaron Burke.

Daniel Telfer and David Thomson.

26 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Performing Arts Music of its time, and ours Peter Tregear

The Electorate of Brandenburg was in fact a principality of the Holy Roman Empire that today circles the city of Berlin but which unflatteringly used to be referred to as the ‘sandbox of Europe’. It suffered particularly badly during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), where it is estimated that over half of the population fell victim to marauding armies. By the time of Bach’s death, however, Brandenburg had become fully incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia, now led by a flute-playing composer and military genius we know as Frederick the Great. ‘Brandenburg’ should remind us, then, not just of those six miraculous concertos, but also that Baroque music more generally comes out of,

and indeed reflects, a deeply troubled and tragic, but also extraordinary, age of transformation. In this sense, not least, it is not a world away from our own.

In putting together programs of music from this time and leading an ensemble of our finest early music specialists, the Orchestra’s Artistic Director Paul Dyer has one of the more enviable music jobs in Australia. The tone of the Orchestra’s 2013 brochure, however, tends to emphasise the repertoire’s charm over its context. This is, I think, a missed opportunity for, while the attractiveness of this music requires no special pleading to those already familiar with it, for a younger audience it risks becoming, as it were, more about powdered wigs than powerful gigs.

Next year the orchestra is bringing to the Melbourne Recital Centre another five-concert season. The opening concert in March presents the French ‘superstar’ countertenor Philippe Jaroussky who will sing a program of arias by Handel and the lesser-known Nicola Porpora, works that were originally weapons of choice in musical duels fought

by Giovanni Carestini and Farinelli, two rival castrati of the day. The timbre of the countertenor (which is the closest we can get to the sound of a castrato without unpleasant medical intervention...) seems to hold an ongoing fascination, whether because of the apparent supernatural quality of such a high pitch emanating from the body of a grown man, or whether because, like the spectacular dresses and thick makeup of a modern drag queen, it deep down helps us recognise and celebrate the idea that gender itself is similarly a staged phenomenon, a constructed social truth.

The ABO’s second concert is an all-Mozart program crowned by a performance of what is generally considered to be his finest liturgical composition, the ‘Great’ Mass in C Minor (KV 427). In it Mozart evidently paid homage to music of J. S. Bach that he had recently encountered in Vienna; it inspired some of his most technically accomplished and vocally demanding music. In so doing he also created a masterpiece that

Photo by Jorg Strehlau

...like the spectacular dresses and thick makeup of a modern drag queen, it deep down helps us recognise and celebrate the idea that gender itself is similarly a staged phenomenon, a constructed social truth.”

Photo by Steven Godbee

‘T

he Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’ is an odd name for a group when you first think about it. ‘Brandenburg’ no doubt was coined to evoke the eponymously named concertos that Johann Sebastian Bach presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721. Initially forgotten, they were recognised as a towering creative achievement soon after their rediscovery and publication in 1850, and have helped cement Bach’s reputation as the undisputed master of what we call the ‘Baroque’ style. The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra is, of course, a period orchestra specialising in music from this period, but the orchestra, as does the Baroque era itself, encompasses a much broader horizon of ideas and influences, as indeed does the name ‘Brandenburg’.

foreshadows in scale and scope the grand romantic vision of Beethoven’s ‘Missa Solemnis’ written some thirty-five years later. Like the Requiem, however, Mozart’s setting was left incomplete at the composer’s death in 1791. Lacking a Süssmayr to complete it (though there are now some worthwhile modern completions), the work has yet to become as famous.

It unquestionably deserves to be.

A further two concerts in July and September focus respectively on Stefano Montanari the Italian violin virtuoso who will be both soloist and director in a program of early eighteenth-century Italian concertos, and German soprano Simone Kermes, a Baroque vocal specialist. Kermes will share the stage with resident concertmaster Matt Bruce, who will deliver a rarely performed concerto by Vivaldi (RV 190). This work is an appropriate companion piece for being, like the arias Kermes will perform, extraordinarily virtuosic, but one also cannot help noticing that Kermes and Vivaldi share striking red hair (it was for that reason that Vivaldi’s nickname was ‘il Prete Rosso’—the Red Priest).

The ABO’s season in Melbourne concludes, as it does for the first time this year, with ‘Noël! Noël!’, their program of music themed for the Christmas season. The accompanying press release tells us that this concert is ‘beloved for its timeless and ageless appeal’. I can’t help thinking, however, that precisely the opposite is true. It is beloved because it is music of a very particular time and place that can, and evidently does, speak powerfully to our own.

INFORMATION The full details of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s 2013 Season can be found at brandenburg.com.au/site. Noël! Noël! is performed at the Melbourne Recital Centre on December 8 at 5pm and 7pm. brandenburg.com.au melbournerecital.com.au

Performing Arts

Escaping from Godot Nina Bertok

I

t’s a story that never fails to be relevant – a bunch of young adults in their early 20s facing a crossroads and pondering what to do with the rest of their lives... To stay in a small town and be reconciled to a dull life of routine and comfort, or take the plunge and leap into the unknown that’s somewhere far away from home? Featuring a cast mostly made up of ex-pats – like director, Adam Spellicy – theatre company Exhibit A’s production of Eric Bogosian’s SubUrbia is not unlike Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting For Godot – with the exception that in the end ‘Godot’ actually shows up, as Spellicy explains.

“This group of characters just hangs around the carpark at the local 7/11, coming to grips with adulthood and indulging in nostalgia of their high school years,” says Spellicy. “They’re just trying to get a sense of themselves and what they want to do with their lives. In the meantime, they’re waiting for a visit from one of their friends who was unpopular at school but left town and became this big rockstar. He’s now touring back in his hometown and this group is waiting in anticipation of his visit which ends up being a catalyst for change in these young people.”

The fact that most of the actors themselves are not Melbourne natives has been an added bonus, according to Spellicy, injecting unmistakable authenticity into the performances and making the actors all the more convincing in their individual roles. Originally hailing from Adelaide, the director himself claims he is able to pinpoint aspects of himself in a number of the characters in SubUrbia, and says the audience will probably be able to do the same.

“Having creative aspirations, most of the cast are actually from other states around Australia,” he says. “They’ve decided to leave their home states and move to Melbourne to pursue acting as a way of escaping their own background. Even I can relate to this personally with my own life-story. I spent my teens and early 20s in Adelaide which is a nice place to come from but it can easily lead to procrastination. If you come from a small town

and you have aspirations, it does take some courage to actually make good on those things. It takes courage to leap into the unknown and leave the comfort and habit that you’re used to. I certainly felt that. The problem was that the town I came from started to feel constricting and I started to feel like I’d outgrown the place. I think it’s also about just having a natural curiosity about the rest of the world combined with a bit of a terror about the unknown.”

Much like the rockstar friend who left the small town to become a famous musician, Spellicy says he too left Adelaide and moved to Melbourne with his own band in pursuit of bigger and better things.

And while he jokes that he wouldn’t necessarily label himself a ‘rockstar’, he does claim that the smaller the town the bigger the case of ‘tall poppy syndrome’ when one decides to move to ‘the big smoke’.

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“I understand that frustration and I’ve seen it too,” he says. “Adelaide is pretty much the suburbs and there is a lot of pot-smoking and people just resigning themselves to their habit and comforts.

When you ask people why they stay, they get defensive about it. Not that it’s necessarily good or bad to make that decision to stay – it’s just a question and yet people get offended!”

The problem, however, is that “wherever you go, there you are”, as far as Spellicy sees it, anyway.

Leaving your old life behind is all good and well, but you can never truly escape yourself – which is something a lot of the characters don’t seem to comprehend.

“Sooze is a good example. She’s made the decision that she has to leave and she’s already starting to create a new persona for herself. The thing is, though, you can try to run away from a place but you can never really run away from yourself, and yet she feels like she has to run away from her hometown, thinking that’s going to fix things. It’s actually a funny play but it’s also a tragedy. Eric Bogosian really portrays human nature in a very honest way.

It’s almost impossible not to identify with this group of people or at least take something away from it.”

INFORMATION Exhibit A: Theatre’s SubUrbia shows from December 3 to 7 at the Abbotsford Convent, 1 St Heliers Street, Abbotsford. abbotsfordconvent.com.au facebook.com/ExhibitATheatre

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Performing Arts

WORDS & MUSIC Paul Kelly How To Make Gravy

Phil Kakulas

W

hether it’s as an accompaniment to the Christmas roast or as a metaphor for writing songs, for Paul Kelly the art of making gravy resides in taking a few simple ingredients and transforming them into something magical.

In the song How To Make Gravy, Kelly uses little more than three chords and a storyteller’s eye for detail to express the anguish of a prisoner separated from his loved ones at Christmas time.

The result is a secular Christmas carol about traditional Christian values.

In his recent memoir, also called How To Make Gravy, Kelly describes how he came to write the song after receiving an invitation to contribute a track to a charity Christmas record in 1996. Musing over what sort of Christmas song to write, Kelly turned to mad genius producer Phil Spector’s Christmas album for inspiration.

The record opens with Darlene Love’s stunning version of White Christmas, leading Kelly to the realisation that it was in the feelings of loss and longing for Christmas that its true emotional value might be most readily expressed.

The song’s prison setting, although unusual for a Christmas tune, was not without precedent with both Tom Waits’ Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis and John Prine’s Christmas In Prison having dealt with the subject before it. Like the Waits song, Kelly’s lyric is presented in letter form. It’s the 21st of December and inmate Joe is writing to his brother about the forthcoming celebrations: I guess the brothers are driving down from Queensland And Stella’s flying in from the coast They say it’s gonna be a hundred degrees, even more maybe But that won’t stop the roast

The lyrics are more prose than poetry, half sung and half spoken in a casual manner that captures the cadence of the Australian vernacular. Accompanied at first by a lone electric guitar, they ramble along with the logic of someone thinking out aloud: Who’s gonna make the gravy now?

I bet it won’t taste the same Just add flour, salt, a little red wine And don’t forget a dollop of tomato sauce For sweetness and that extra tang The band kicks in as the tone becomes more anguished, the music building in intensity as Joe’s train of thought leads him into ever-darker places: And you’ll dance with Rita, I know you really like her Just don’t hold her too close, oh brother please don’t stab me in the back

I didn’t mean to say that, it’s just my mind it plays up Multiplies each matter, turns imagination into fact Paul Kelly’s long time drummer, Pete Luscombe, says that working up an arrangement for the song was relatively easy. ‘Paul had it more or less complete, we worked on it for a few days and then recorded it in the first or second take.’

With no chorus and an unchanging threechord progression, the potent arrangement depends on a strong anchored feel and a powerful dynamic to bring drama to the song. Eventually melody gives way to agony, as Joe’s admission that he ‘really screwed up this time’ turns into a plea for forgiveness and a promise to put things right: Tell her that I’m sorry, yeah I love her badly, tell ‘em all I’m sorry,

And kiss the sleepy children for me You know one of these days, I’ll be making gravy, I’ll be making plenty, I’m gonna pay ‘em all back.

Paul Kelly has said that the character of Joe appears in a number of his songs, most notably To Her Door.

He’s the sort of everyman we might recognise as our neighbour, husband or best mate. In How To Make Gravy, Kelly challenges us to embrace the character – flaws and all. Our sympathies are won over by Joe’s passage from sin to redemption through the power of love. Simple ingredients that once combined reveal the true spirit of Christmas.

INFORMATION Phil Kakulas is a songwriter and musician who plays double bass in The Blackeyed Susans.

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Cinema PARIS-MANHATTAN D.M. Bradley While the title, overall mood and ads suggest that this is to be rather like Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979), it’s actually, and somewhat oddly, more reminiscent of the Woody-pennedand-starring, Herbert-Ross-directed Play It Again, Sam, only suitably Frenched-up and with Woody himself, seen on a poster taken from his 60s/70s prime and heard in dialogue grabs borrowed mostly from Manhattan, instead of a trench-coated Bogart lookalike.

Terminally single français pharmacist Alice (Alice Taglioni), preparing to take over her Jewish-French Dad’s business, is the one here obsessed with Allen’s body of work and seeking his pseudo-supernatural advice about personal matters (“You know what Freud said about life?”). Feature-débuting writer/director

Sophie Lellouche searches for what exactly to do with her curious heroine (including a fairly risible flashback or two) for quite a while, before Alice finally meets the guy you just know is her perfect match, Victor (Patrick Bruel, a popular actor and singer in Europe, and underplaying nicely). And, although Victor is heroically undaunted by Alice’s assorted neuroses, and doesn’t seem concerned that she, for example, advises that criminals watch Woody classics to get over their anger issues, and proves to be a security expert too (get it?), the pair have to keep on not quite connecting for the increasingly frustrating narrative to work properly, and Lellouche, it must be said, tends to noticeably draw out the proceedings – even though, in the end, this one’s barely feature length.

Obviously, and unsurprisingly, operating in something of a fantasy world (the hyphenated title appears in the opening credits sequence over a shaken snow globe, which seems appropriate here), much like almost any other given romantic comedy, French or otherwise, Lellouche’s watchable, if at times twitty, effort doesn’t really bother answering the big questions – like why Alice, a highly intelligent, sensitive and spirited femme who looks like a Parisian Elle Macpherson, could possibly have trouble getting a date, and prefers to just go with fluffy gags, the stars’ charms and various cute Woody references (including a lengthy clip from Hannah And Her Sisters with daft French subtitles). And if, at this late moment, you don’t know, or somehow can’t guess, the ‘twists’ here,

Skyfall Nigel Randall The challenge for this review is the same that was possibly faced by Sam Mendes in tackling the newest and 23rd Bond film in the 50-year-old franchise (and incidentally by another institution of British pop culture celebrating their Golden Jubilee) – namely to provide a new perspective on something known to the point of over familiarity. I could be overstating my case, but hopefully just as Mendes and the Stones succeed, so too will I in proving my case.

Skyfall more than succeeds, it triumphs. Daniel Craig picks himself up after the mess that was Quantum of Solace and promptly places himself in the hands of a character focused, yet wry minded and mature director. This is Bond as we haven’t seen him before. Yes there’s topless shots galore as is assumedly written into Craig’s contract, but we see much more than his bloody, well defined torso. In one scene he takes to one of his pumped up pecs with a knife, literally digging deeper into what makes Bond tick. He is weary, embittered, embattled and even vulnerable and Craig plays it with the perfect balance of grunt and grimace. Javier Bardem’s appealingly creepy villain is the perfect encapsulation of a present day cyber terrorist and evil incarnate mirroring Bond to intriguing effect.

Ben Whishaw is also cast as Gen Y’s choice for Q.

This is a Bond for now. The narrative revolves around questions of both Bond and M’s aging ability to uphold their service; the baddies are from within and there’s a self-conscious embellishment and simultaneous abandonment of Bond-esque trademarks. Least of these is the character of M herself ( Judi Dench), who is fore grounded in the story as a Freudian focus for both ‘tagonists. It’s a strange and compelling mix of elements. The comic book capers are all there, together with the bombs and babes, but are tempered by the more modern plot points and character back-story. It at once propels Skyfall forward into a new Bond era yet takes us back to his previously unseen roots.

Ultimately what are stripped away are the emblems of modernity, the gadgetry and even guns, resulting in a deliberately slowed down and drawn out finale that is less concerned with the snappy style of action blockbusters and more with intelligence, grace and wit. And that’s saying nothing of the other heroes, namely cinematographer Roger Deakins, writers John Logan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, composer Thomas Newman and so on and so on…

then maybe you should make this the only review of Paris-Manhattan that you read or, alternatively, pat yourself on the back for not having had to suffer through the other 6378 romantic comedies that got us here. Formidable!

INFORMATION Rated PG. Opens December 13.

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30 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Performing Arts Part library, part art installation, the bookcases were used for public events and a collection of Australian books were donated to universities and local libraries along the way.” examples from Asialink’s recent projects illustrate how and why cultural engagement can be so effective at building networks and trust over time.

(Sharing) Cultural Knowledge is Power Cultural engagement is crucial to building effective relationships with Asia

Lesley Alway

T

he White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century launched by Prime Minister Gillard in late October has provided a framework for debate and discussion across a variety of sectors including business, education, trade and security. Asialink Arts is delighted that the White Paper also endorsed the vital role of cultural engagement in contributing to our future in Asia, particularly through developing Asia-capable leaders and institutions, closer peopleto-people links and vibrant cultural connections.

This demonstrates that the Government is taking a highly sophisticated approach to strategies for developing regional relationships and will be applauded in Asia where cultural knowledge and relationships are embedded and integral to society.

It is worthwhile making the point that, as with the business sector, Australian artists and cultural organisations have been highly active in much of Asia for many years.

Much of the recent interest in the region has been stimulated by such landmark initiatives as the Asia Pacific Triennial, launched by the Queensland Art Gallery in 1993 and by the Asialink arts residency,

touring exhibition and author programs that have sent over 900 artists and arts managers into Asia since 1991. But over the last three years, the level of activity and exchange between Australia and Asia has accelerated. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have supported special cultural programs and festivals in China (2010), Korea (2011) and this year in India. The focus on Asia will continue in Vietnam in 2013 and Indonesia in 2014.

and focus on ‘export’ to the development of partnerships and collaborative relationships.

These values were highlighted in the White Paper as being key priorities for future cultural engagement strategies in Asia. In particular, we are pleased to see the emphasis on reciprocal opportunities as a key pathway to building stronger, deeper and broader cultural links with Asian nations. This endorses Asialink’s experience over twenty years of working to develop cultural relationships in the region – that what Asia wants is reciprocity and partnerships to build a strong mutual understanding.

Cultural engagement has at least three dimensions: commercial exchange and the associated opportunities to tap new markets and audiences; cultural diplomacy as an educator and builder of relationships with the region; as well as professional development as inspiration for the artists and arts managers involved. It is often difficult to compartmentalise these elements as all three might be active in any particular cultural project.

As an overarching rule, the most successful projects are always and inevitably underpinned by strong people-to-people relationships. Indeed, working on arts projects together and engaging with local audiences is a highly effective means of building long-term relationships in the region.

India is one of the key priorities for Asialink’s cultural exchange programs. Over the last couple of years we have partnered with a number of other organisations to build a long-term engagement strategy based on the search for ‘common ground’ – a notion inspired by the mythical lost continent of Lemuria that supposedly linked Australia and India. A rich group of collaborative projects has evolved including the Asialink Bookwallah project, which took a group of Indian and Australian writers across India by train. Indian writers Annie Zaidi, Chandrahas Choundhury, Sundeep Sen accompanied Australian writers Benjamin Law and Kirsty Murray along with designer Georgia Hutchinson and Asialink’s Nic Low and Catriona Mitchell on a 2000km train journey. The trip started at the Mumbai LitFest and ended in Pondicherry, travelling via Goa, Bangalore and Chennai. The Bookwallah team participated in a variety of public and private events in each city, sharing books, ideas and experiences along the way. The writers were accompanied by unique luggage: a portable pop-up library designed in partnership with RMIT that comprised a series of exquisite custom-made suitcases covered in coloured kangaroo hide that open and transform into bookcases. Part library, part art installation, the bookcases were used for public events and a collection of Australian books were donated to universities and local libraries along the way.

In Goa, the Bookwallah team had dinner with interdisciplinary Indian artist Nikhil Chopra, who had recently returned from the inaugural Asialink Roving Residency, which travelled between Carriageworks in Sydney to Fremantle in Perth, via Melbourne. Nikhil participated in a public forum with fellow Indian artists Jittish Kallat and Gigi Scaria who were both exhibiting in separate exhibitions at the Ian Potter Museum at the University of Melbourne through a collaborative

Likewise the rise of Asia-focused festivals in Australia such as OzAsia (Adelaide), Parramasala (Parramatta, NSW) and the Asia Pacific Film Awards in Queensland has provided a greater depth and richness to the experiences of Australian audiences. Numerous other initiatives such as the Australia Council support for Australian galleries and artists’ participation in the explosion of Asian Art Fairs such as Hong Kong, Seoul, New Delhi and regional Performing Arts Markets in Korea and Japan have provided expanded opportunities.

Many performing arts companies such as Snuff Puppets, Polyglot, Strange Fruit and the Tony Yapp Company have been very active in the region, particularly in South East Asia.

However, whilst there is much rhetoric about the importance of people-to-people relationships, what does this mean in practice and on the ground? Some

During the last few years, the nature of the engagement has shifted from one of ‘presentation’

The Asialink Bookwallah crew arriving by train in Pondicherry. L-R: Benjamin Law, Sundeep Sen, Annie Zaidi, Chandrahas Choundhury & Kirsty Murray. Photography: Catriona Mitchell

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 31

Performing Arts of these encounters are planned, but many are accidental but fortuitous. There are many, many other examples that result in a rich tapestry of encounters, connections and communication, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of each other’s culture as well as an accumulation of rich personal relationships that have ongoing value for the community.

on December 12. Dylan and Gigi will reconnect when Dylan returns to India in December; following his initial recent residency there to develop his site specific works “Soundtracks”.

A key question posed by the White Paper asks whether Australia has the requisite skills and knowledge to operate effectively in the region.

This applies as much to the arts as any other sector. Australia certainly has highly qualified artists, managers, producers and policymakers and excellent education and training courses.

However, currently and in the future, given the growth projections and emerging opportunities in Asia, Australians must have skills and experience of working in and with Asia. We need to be training the next generation of specialists to be ‘Asia capable’. The Asialink Arts programs as well as other agencies and organisations provide various project opportunities for staff to get ‘onthe-job’ experience by working on particular projects. However, we have barely scratched the surface in terms of preparing the current and next generation of cultural leaders to work effectively and with confidence with Asian partners. There is currently no overall strategy or dedicated resources to effectively skill our arts workers and cultural leaders for the future.

These projects are just one example of the extended networks and relationships that can develop and evolve from cultural projects – some

Organisations might have the skills and projects to do this, but lack resources to do the job properly.

Opportunities exist to develop intern programs,

Nikhil Chopra, Blackening IV: Bay 19, Carriageworks, Sydney (Three day site-specific performance commissioned

by Carriageworks). Costume: Louise Braganza Photography: Zan Wimberley

Dylan Martorell’s Kerals installation taking shape. Each object is activated by touch.

Utopia @ Asialink and Ian Potter Museum project as part of the 2012 Melbourne Festival.

Evidently, the opportunities for collaboration grow with every introduction. In Melbourne Gigi Scaria also met Australian artist Dylan Martorell, who has been supported by Asialink to participate in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale opening in Kerala India

delegations and training programs to skill our next generation of arts workers – and this investment would be recouped through the opportunities provided by working in the region and sharing and exporting these skills to Asia. Asialink has previously proposed a two-year intern scheme to train up to 25 Asia-specialist arts managers and producers over the next ten years, but this is dependent on funding from government, philanthropic and corporate partners.

The White Paper provides a roadmap for the cultural sector to navigate the Asia Century and equip our artists, producers, curators, arts managers, organisations and institutions to both contribute and learn from the opportunities emerging in the region. As the paper also notes, these challenges will require further community conversation. Asialink Arts looks forward to being part of this conversation and working with the Government to identify specific initiatives and resources in the forthcoming National Cultural Policy to implement the vision outlined by the Prime Minister.

INFORMATION Lesley Alway is Director, Asialink Arts. Her previous roles include Managing Director of Sotheby’s Australia, Director / CEO of Heide Museum of Modern Art, Director of Arts Victoria and Director of Artbank (Sydney). asialink.unimelb.edu.au

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32 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Visual Arts

Three studies of the male back, triptych 1970, Francis Bacon, Oil on canvas, each 198 x 147.5cm.

A tender chaos

Francis Bacon: Five Decades at the Art Gallery of NSW William Charles

T

ime is beginning to afford us the distance with which to evaluate major artistic figures of the latter half of the twentieth century, most of whom have now either passed away or – dare we say it – entered the final phase of their creative careers. In current retrospective we find Francis Bacon and so too Jeffrey Smart; on these pages this month we also look at careerlong appreciations of J. M. Coetzee and Les Murray; Leonard Cohen is doing farewell concerts; Phillip Roth recently put down his pen. These are but some famous examples; an entire generation, shaped largely by the postwar years and the long golden afternoon of the West, is bidding farewell.

It is twenty years since the death in Madrid in 1992 of Francis Bacon. Having died before communications technology transformed our world, and before the absolute commodification of contemporary art, he seems to belong to a world already lost in the distance; a world in which he stood with Picasso as an undeniable link back to the Old Masters with their painterly genius and their overwhelming dominance of the canvas as locus of expression. Bacon is very much of his century, the twentieth, a guide to its contortions and its triumphs. The surfaces of a Bacon canvas, seen here in sensual three dimensional detail, hold every nuance and texture imaginable; their

contours map the pain and ecstatic pleasure of life, of its chance and whim, its unexpected turns; its bold truths and smooth lies. In chaos is both trauma and delight; Francis Bacon, operating beyond the guidelines laid down by an art school education – belonging rather to the ‘sacred monster’ school of artists, as Jim Sharman put it in a sparkling opening address to inaugurate this exhibition – mapped this chaos and gave us an entirely unique oeuvre, some of the highlights of which are now on display in Francis Bacon: Five Decades, at the Art Gallery of NSW. Enter here and take a deep breath. Not because you will be shocked – Bacon was outrageous in the twentieth century but we are now well into the unshockable twenty-first – but because you will be thrilled by what lies in store. Curator Anthony Bond, in his last major show for the AGNSW, has pulled off a curatorial coup, arranging 50 of Bacon’s best and most representative works into a sequence of five decades, an arrangement that nevertheless transcends the typical strictures of chronology.

Bacon comes alive through the overwhelming power of the hanging itself. It allows the viewer to follow Bacon past the charred waste of the postwar years, into the censorious and pallid 1950s before the breakout, via 1961, of the exuberant 60s, the creative peak of the 70s – one of the 70s rooms, while small, is collectively as visually and emotionally monumental as anything seen in any recent exhibition – and

Self Portrait, 1973, Francis Bacon, Oil on canvas, 35.5 x 30.5cm.

then the final, more sobering works of the 80s when Bacon, without knowing all there was to know, nevertheless had come to know his physical and stylistic limits, had explored his formal constraints to the very edges of pain, love, abuse and beauty, and came back from that journey, full of knowledge and life lived, stepping into the space marked ‘legend’ he now occupies.

Bacon is conveniently, and quite accurately, seen as a personification of the themes of the wracked century in which he lived – particularly its British iteration. Emerging out of the smoking chaos of war came images of modernism crucified, of despair and beauty, before plunging into the strictures of the 1950s – this period of repression, want and furtive sexuality is brilliantly portrayed

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 33

Visual Arts into a corner, is barely three or four brushstrokes swirling on a pale green background, but is a genuine highlight for being so unexpected. Just as in many of Velázquez’s royal portraits, it is sometimes the hunting or parlour dog that steals the show. No doubt, despite a change in direction hinted at by one of the early works on display here, van Gogh was also a constant presence.

...chaos, as Bacon himself noted, breeds images, and the gambler he was walked the fine line in his art, the tight balance between formal skill, composition, and chance.”

Prominent too are a series of arresting portraits.

One of Bacon’s hopes was that a portrait would magically emerge from the creative thrust: “just to pick up a handful of paint and throw it at the canvas and hope that the portrait was there,” he commented. His lover George Dyer or friends such as Henrietta Moraes, Isabel Rawsthorne, Reinhard Hassert or Eddy Batache – quite apart from the self-portraits – were treated in this less than literal way which, as Bacon found, provided a means of revealing the subject more truthfully.

Of special interest is a portrait of Lucian Freud based, improbably, on a photo of Franz Kafka.

by one of the exhibition highlights, a very long wall of caged figures, the background hanging curtains turning to blood and to prison bars, the entrapped figures ever more anxious while over and around all is an ongoing and ever-present uncertainty, not just as regards our own sudden mortality, but of the lumbering century itself, as it staggered from crisis to crisis, finding flower only for a brief decade or two before sliding back once again, as Bacon reached his final years, into the convulsive period that leads to now. But chaos, as Bacon himself noted, breeds images, and the gambler he was walked the fine line in his art, the tight balance between formal skill, composition, and chance – or, as the gallery notes accurately describe it, brinkmanship.

This exhibition allows slow study of the texture and volume of paint, the thick and the thin, the expanses of empty canvas used as colouring device. There are canvasses with paint applied in up to fifteen ways, surfaces that repay very close inspection. Many of Bacon’s subjects find themselves framed within some kind of arena, a sumo or boxing ring, a stage, a cage, a box, a gallows, a spot-lit theatre, and here at the AGNSW that role may be reversed: outside the glass and looking in, the spectator is alone, surrounded by the twisting surfaces of paint, the play of light on canvas or sand, the furious semi-circular brushstrokes that provide the emotional experience Bacon sought to provoke – an awakening to the glorious possibilities of life.

The visual material displayed along with the main exhibition is limited, allowing the paintings

Study for self-portrait, 1976, Francis Bacon, Oil and pastel on canvas, 198 x 147.5cm.

themselves to speak, largely unencumbered by parallel narratives, yet they clearly indicate the wealth of mass media material from which Bacon drew ideas and inspiration. Supplementary materials – such as items from Bacon’s studio – are left to a minimum, and they are all the more effective for that. Bacon’s subjects were drawn from popular magazines of every imaginable source – from gay fanzines of the time to gaudy 70s trucking magazines, from cricket almanacs to documentary photography and nature documentaries, from classical art references (most infamously, Velázquez) and from medical reference books. He was fascinated

by the virility of the (male) body in movement, and drew heavily from the early photographic studies of human movement pioneered by Eadweard Muybridge. Athletic males leap from mass media origin into the frame – wrestlers/ lovers, cricketers and boxers.

Much has been made of Bacon’s debt to Velázquez, discernible in the famous popes and here too in a seated dwarf figure. Perhaps this debt to the Spanish master is an over-laboured trope for art historians, but certainly, like Velázquez, Bacon could pull off a remarkable painting of a dog: one of the pieces here (Untitled [dog]), tucked

Get to Sydney and witness Francis Bacon, and the way he witnessed a turbulent life. These paintings burst with energy; they twist and leap off the walls. Individually they are superb; as a cleverly curated collective they overwhelm. There is none of the darkness some might be expecting.

Curator Tony Bond has been at pains to frame Bacon’s tenderness, understanding that behind the made-for-popular-consumption figure of the wild and violent artist, the cruel vivisector (as portrayed by Patrick White), lay the fragility of one searching for meaning and form amidst the chaos of a war-ravaged world, a furtive sexuality, a gambler’s turn and a lover’s all-or-nothing instinct. For that attitude to life alone, Bacon is worthy of our renewed and continued attention.

INFORMATION Francis Bacon: Five Decades shows at the Art Gallery of NSW until February 24 as part of the Sydney International Art Series. A second exhibition, Anish Kapoor, opens on December 20 and runs until April 1 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. artgallery.nsw.gov.au mca.com.au

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34 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Visual Arts

Departure And return of the prodigal painter Barry Pearce

I

n 2011 the University of South Australia conferred an honorary degree on the South Australian School of Art’s greatest alumnus, Jeffrey Smart. That distinction was followed with a retrospective of the artist, perhaps the last within his lifetime. Symbolically, it was a return to where it all began for him, shown in two parts: his early South Australian work of the 1940s at Carrick Hill; and paintings following his departure from Adelaide in 1951 at the Samstag Art Museum.

The second part, summarising the mature imagery for which Smart is best known, will tour to the TarraWarra Art Museum of Art from December 21.

During his formative years of the 1940s in Adelaide, where as a young teacher Smart impressed his students by claiming brazenly he would soon spend a period in Sydney, and then

live in Italy, probably for good, he surprised them with his certainty. It seemed as if he had mapped out a journey of his entire future. Somehow, he felt, he was not going to get anywhere as an artist by staying put in the city of his birth, and he was determined to carry out his intention.

In 1948 he took his first adult trip abroad, arriving in London, then travelling to Paris the following year, studying at La Grande Chaumière, and Academie Montmartre under Fernand Léger, his first direct acquaintance with a living European master. He visited Cezanne’s studio in the south of France, and spent some time in Holland where he encountered the works of Vermeer and Mondrian, whose measured spaces, in conjunction with Léger, appealed to his innate sensibility. In Florence he was entranced by the frescoes of Fra Angelico, in Rome overwhelmed by the Raphael Stanze in the Vatican, and of course the works of Piero della Francesca in Cahill Expressway 1962, Jeffrey Smart, oil on plywood, 81.9 x 111.3 cm. Purchased 1963 National Gallery of Victoria,

Near Knossos 1973, Jeffrey Smart, oil and acrylic on canvas, 81.0 x 100.0 cm. University of South Australia Art Collection, Adelaide © Jeffrey Smart.

Tuscany. He went to Naples, and joined two fellow South Australian artists on the island of Ischia.

Two years later he was back in Adelaide, having soaked up the great works of Europe, classical and modern, sharing a feeling amongst fellow Australians that they lived too far away from the great art of the world, but who were themselves hesitant about leaving their homeland forever. Financially constrained, he was more fiercely determined.

Moving to Sydney in 1951, he became a teacher of repute and a media star – famous Phidias of the ABC program The Argonauts – and at the same time began to evolve a distinctive otherworldly, architectonic style. It is from this crucial period

we may see at TarraWarra his vision unfold over the next sixty years. Just as he had declared nearly two decades earlier, he departed Sydney in 1963 to paint full-time, and live close to the inspiration he had long yearned for, in Italy.

But this kind of wilful immersion in the world at large by Australia’s master of the urban vision may distract us from appreciating the influence of his hometown well before he got to Europe. Adelaide has a particular topography which embedded itself in Smart’s visual life as a child. In the still light of a city set out on a grid with long straight lines and vanishing points, couched by hills that appear as in a painting by Piero – fertile ground for a metaphysical

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 35

Visual Arts ...it was the view from the kitchen at rooftops, lanes, backyards and distant high rise buildings that became his child’s heavenly labyrinth, hard-wired in him for the painter he would turn out to be.” of the artist’s career, depicting a man on his back balancing a cube flooded in glorious eternal daylight in a precinct that was once an ancient flesh-pot on the Bay of Naples, Smart has long considered this may be his most important work.

The other is his last recorded, Labyrinth 2011.

A vast stone maze stretches as far as the eye can see, calculus for the continuum of the universe. Within it a portrait of H.G. Wells, prophet of tomorrow, stands in the cross-hairs of the Golden Mean, evoking for Smart his discovery of the poetry of T.S. Eliot that fired his intellectual life in Adelaide all those decades ago when he began to ponder the conundrum of time and movement and stillness, and the significance of dreams. But the esoteric geometry of this intriguing last masterpiece transports us back even further, to a childhood immersion in the inner city that set his spiritual compass.

Melbourne © Jeffrey Smart.

vision – is where Jeffrey Smart was born in 1921 and substantially formed as a painter.

Indeed if we were to identify one influence above all others that shaped his way forward, it would be during the Depression when his parents were forced to move from their comfortable home in Hawthorn to a small flat in South Terrace. It was not the view of lush parklands seen from the front balcony that arrested Smart’s interest. Rather it was the view from the kitchen at rooftops, lanes, backyards and distant high rise buildings that became his child’s heavenly labyrinth, hard-wired in him for the painter he would turn out to be.

Now is the perfect moment to survey his work and bring some kind of conclusive reflection to the vision

Holiday 1971, Jeffrey Smart, oil on canvas, 100.0 x 81.0 cm. Private collection © Jeffrey Smartt.

of one of Australia’s most important living painters.

For at the age of ninety-one he has recently retired from painting, and for the first time it is possible to define his career from beginning to end through a broad selection including many of Smart’s most iconic masterpieces.

His period in Sydney from 1951-63 for example is crowned by the majestic Cahill Expressway, with its inscrutable fat, balding man standing at Sydney’s crucial traffic nexus between the State Library and the Harbour Bridge. Then follows a sequence of compositions across his last five decades in Italy, painted in Rome, and Tuscany, where he still resides near Arezzo. We follow his crusade, inspired by the geometric patterns of apartment blocks complemented by brilliantly coloured squares, circles

and letters of road signs and construction sites – all emanating from a wave of brilliant industrial design in a country at last recovering from the debilitations of a World War – to create an entirely new vernacular of modern painting, and a new kind of aesthetic.

He confronted this universe of technology and architecture anywhere his travels took him, declaring it was beautiful, and became its most passionate poet.

Amongst many paintings in this retrospective which have not had public airing for a very long time, there are two in particular of note; one not seen in Australia for over forty years; the other never before exhibited. The first is Morning practice, Baia 1969, first shown in Sydney, then London where it was acquired by a collector who eventually took it to the United States. Painted at the pivotal centre

For most of his life Jeffrey Smart has pursued an elusive Holy Grail of the ideal painting. Never satisfied with the one just completed, he always wondered if the next on his easel would represent the end of the chase. Perhaps now, at last, Labyrinth is the one that says it all, and which brings his vision full circle.

INFORMATION Barry Pearce is Emeritus Curator, Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Master of Stillness: Jeffrey Smart paintings 19402012 opens at TarraWarra Museum of Art on December 21 and runs to March 31, 2013. twma.com.au

36 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Visual Arts

Untangling (1994, printed 2006), Jeff Wall, transparency in light box, AP. 189.0 x 223.5 cm. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. 2006 © Jeff Wall

Recreational Activities Jeff Wall and Thomas Demand at the NGV Suzanne Fraser

T

he past year has witnessed a changing of the guard at the National Gallery of Victoria: out with the old and in with the contemporary. Tony Ellwood, the recently appointed Director of the NGV, has been heralded as a bringer of both fashionable contemporary art and engaging new media devices (or “delivery platforms”), the introduction of which is set to progressively shake-up Melbourne’s gilded bastion of historic art. And so it begins. The forthcoming summer season at the NGV presents two independent yet complimentary exhibitions of contemporary photography across the museum’s two premises.

On display at Federation Square, Jeff Wall Photographs is the first survey exhibition of Wall’s work to be staged in Australia. It would be presumptuous to suggest that this exhibition is symptomatic of the fresh gusto for contemporary art currently blowing a gale through the NGV. The exhibition is in fact the result of a three-year preparatory project undertaken by the NGV in conjunction with the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA). The exhibition was originally envisioned in 2007 by the Deputy Director of the AGWA Gary Dufour. Yet the timing of the exhibition’s opening in Melbourne is impeccable; the Canadian artist typifies the tenor of innovation

championed by Ellwood, both with respect to Wall’s conceptual approach to photography and his employment of new media advancements in conceiving his practice. His triumphant tableaux A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) (1993) is an intricate digital amalgamation of over a hundred images. The artist has commented on the “generosity” of the Tate, London, in lending this work to the current show.

it doesn’t disappear.” Instead the artist recreates the scene from memory and then photographs the performance. In the fourth century BC, Aristotle conceived that something can only be potential if it also has the potential to not happen.

However inadvertently, Wall’s photographs seem to celebrate this formula. Where a photograph has the potential to exist, the artist fulfils this condition by intercepting the potentiality and facilitating a different photograph (or actuality) in its place. In turn, Wall’s practice seems to question the power of potential in our lives: whether something could happen is ultimately immaterial, what matters is the actual process of human intervention. The role of subjective experience is also emphasised. Wall’s art is drawn from memory and reflects his partial vision of the world, complete with biases, aspirations and interests.

The exhibition consists of twenty-six works spanning the artist’s career from 1978 to 2010.

While the curatorial responsibility fell principally to Gary Dufour at the AGWA and Isobel Crombie at the NGV, the curators have been keen to emphasise the hands-on role of the artist also, particularly in selecting works to be included.

Former Senior Curator of Photography Isobel Crombie – who was recently appointed Assistant Director of the NGV – notes that, through this approach, “we get a sense of the artist looking at his own history.” According to Crombie, Wall’s curatorial efforts offer “an added inflection” to the exhibition, which seems to parallel the concepts of partiality and subjectivity explored in his photographs.

With respect to the relevance of partiality in art and life, Jeff Wall Photographs provides a stimulating compliment to the NGV’s second contemporary exhibition of the summer. On display at the St Kilda Road gallery, Thomas Demand incorporates fourteen photographs and three 35mm films by the Berlin-based artist.

Demand’s practice begins when the artist observes an existing image – in a newspaper or advert, for instance – and then recreates the scene using paper and cardboard. He then takes a photograph of the recreation, but not necessarily from the same physical perspective as the original image.

The paper sculpture is then dismantled. As Susan van Wyk, Curator of Photography at the NGV, observes, “it is a fascinating intellectual exercise” – as well as an immersive and engaging aesthetic experience.

A key aspect of Wall’s practice involves the artist observing a scene and then actively “not photographing” it. As Wall states, “it vanishes as a potential photograph, it doesn’t happen. But

Jeff Wall has stated of his recreation works: “They can be done in real places quickly and simply. I think of them as being constructed pictorially and performed without any method.”

Badezimmer / Bathroom 1997. Thomas Demand. C-Print / Perspex. 160.0 × 122.0 cm. Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery, Sprüth Magers Berlin London, Esther Schipper, Berlin, Matthew Marks Gallery © Thomas Demand.

Thomas Demand’s works, on the other hand, are vigorously staged. He recreates documented sites using impermanent materials, removes any figural presence from the scene, and then makes the site visually durable through the medium of photography. The staging process is thus central to the resultant work, as is the intersection between reality and fabrication. The images are also subtly comical. In Poll from 2001, Demand incorporates paper representations of… paper. Through this work he presents a self-referential and highly political study of contemporary society.

In presenting the works of Jeff Wall and Thomas Demand concurrently (and on the same ticket), the NGV offers the visitor a rare opportunity to compare and contrast the practices of two distinct contemporary artists. Unquestionably their bodies of work deserve independent consideration. Yet the conceptual cross-pollination between the art of Wall and Demand will undoubtedly make for a perceptually bracing gallery experience. Both artists offer shiny visual experiences that engulf the viewer through their large-scale formats and uncannily recreated subject matters. These two exhibitions also announce a new phase in the NGV’s history, one with Tony Ellwood at the helm. With these exhibitions, the old guard can no longer ignore the writing on the wall, or on the newly featured touchscreens in the gallery spaces.

It is digitally-enhanced and spells contemporary.

INFORMATION Jeff Wall Photographs shows at NGV Australia, Fed Square; Thomas Demand shows at NGV International, St. Kilda Rd, both from November 30 – March 17. ngv.vic.gov.au

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 37

Visual Arts

Power + Colour: Law and Country

birthplaces and ngura, home, as well as traditional country belonging to an artist’s forebears. Country is also depicted as microcosms: from desert rockholes to coastal rockpools, from rivers cutting inland to rocky outcrops and mountain ranges, from campsite to claypan, from dance lines in the sand to secret places filled with the whispers of spirits. Country is filled with ancestor beings, sorcery, song and ceremony. And country is memory. In many ways an Aboriginal painting is like a palimpsest; old worlds and past lives retraced and visible beneath the painted dots and lines making them anew.

Jane Raffan

T

wo key elements at work in Aboriginal contemporary art, the power of Aboriginal law, or Tjukurpa and the mesmerising array of colour used to depict country and culture, are showcased in Power + Colour: New Painting from the Corrigan Collection of 21st Century Aboriginal Art. These contemporary works offer an aesthetic that fuses visual dynamism with a powerful connection to the primal through living links to a complex spiritual practice that is intricately and intimately tied to law and land.

Power For many people, art is the key signifier of Aboriginal culture, but art is much more than a by-product of Aboriginal culture and Aboriginal painting offers much more than representations of country.

In depicting country and Tjukurpa, the works of art in Power + Colour reveal a thriving Aboriginal art/law nexus. This first part of this essay, Power, looks at the growth in awareness of this nexus since the 1970s and its impact on Australian law relating to Indigenous rights, revealing moments in history where Aboriginal art has been successful in propelling challenges and changes to Australia’s legal landscape. It also canvasses the influence of the rights agenda on the commercial art market over the same period wherein, and not by coincidence, a demise in the popular term ‘dreaming’ in titles of books and exhibitions is evident in favour of Tjukurpa.

The title of Power + Colour pays homage to the vision of Judith Ryan, whose 2004 groundbreaking exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Colour Power: Aboriginal Art Post 1984 advocated the cultural and political power of Aboriginal art. While many

Dingkarri, 2010. Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori. Synthetic polymer paint on linen, 198 x 305 cm, pp 102-103.

Courtesy of the artist and Mornington Island Arts & Craft, Mornington Island, Queensland.

Australian art world operators had long promoted the contemporary nature of Aboriginal art practice, Colour Power was the first exhibition by a major public institution to theorise that the contemporary use of “switched-on colour” was a pivotal counter to “fossilised notions of what constitutes ‘traditional’ and ‘authentic’ Indigenous art”.

Colour Power championed the phenomenon of Aboriginal contemporary art and introduced the emergent work of the Anangu and Ngaanyatjarra artists. Less than eight years later, their art has come to dominate the focus of museum curators and has captivated collectors, including Patrick Corrigan, whose collection, and this book, features a significant core of this painting. The power and colour of Aboriginal painting of Tjukurpa and country has enthralled the art world, both here and abroad, and has brought Aboriginal art to the forefront of contemporary art practice in Australia.

The Colour of Country Long before the doctrine of terra nullius was overturned by Mabo, Australians recognised that this country was not empty prior to colonial settlement, but too few Australians as yet understand the complexity and richness of the Aboriginal concept of country:

Country … is not only a common noun but also a proper noun. People talk about country in the same way that they would talk about a person; they speak to country, sing to country, visit country, feel sorry for country, and long for country. People say that country knows, hears, smells, takes notice, takes care, is sorry or happy. Country is not a generalised or undifferentiated type of place, such as one might indicate with terms like ‘spending a day in the country’ ... Rather, country is a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and a will toward life. Because of this richness, country is home, and peace; nourishment for the body, mind, and spirit; heart’s ease [Deborah Bird Rose, Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness, Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra, 1996].

The complexity and richness of the Aboriginal sense of country is apparent in the works in this book. Power + Colour features one hundred and twenty-seven works from more than twenty remote art-making regions, from the deserts of Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory, to coastal communities of the Top End, the Gulf of Carpentaria and Far North Queensland.

Power + Colour is about new painting that radiates power: the interconnected power of law and country, Tjukurpa and an Aboriginal sense of self, which is inseparable from country. And it is about beautiful painting.

Note Tjukurpa is defined as the foundation of Aboriginal peoples’ belief systems and society and is the most commonly used Aboriginal term translated into English as ‘dreaming’ and the ‘dreamtime’. In English, however, there is no single word that conveys the complex meaning of Tjukurpa, which encompasses religion, law and moral systems that are interwoven in the past, present and future.

Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara is often abbreviated to APY or Anangu, which is a Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara word for person or people, as well as the Pitjantjatjara/ Yankunytjatjara speaking people themselves.

Ngaanyatjarra is a closely related Western Desert dialect from Western Australia. Ngaanyatjarra people use the word Yanangu, but Anangu is also used to refer to Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara peoples as well as the Ngaanyatjarra people.

INFORMATION This is an edited extract from Power + Colour: New Painting from the Corrigan Collection of 21st Century Aboriginal Art, by Jane Raffan, published by Macmillan Art Publishing. RRP $125.00

The myriad depictions of country encompass

Master of Stillness: Jeffrey Smart paintings 1940-2011 21 December 2012 – 31 March 2013 CURATOR: Barry Pearce A Samstag Museum of Art exhibition in partnership with TarraWarra Museum of Art

PUBLIC PROGRAMS: (Visit website for details) Sunday 10 February 2013, lecture by Barry Pearce Sunday 10 March 2013, lecture by Leon van Schaik 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Rd, Healesville Open 11am – 5pm, Tuesday – Sunday Exhibition open 7 days a week from Boxing Day to Australia Day Phone: (03) 5957 3100 Email: museum@twma.com.au Web: www.twma.com.au ADMISSION: Adult – $12.00 Concession – $8.00

11834 TMA JeffreySmart_ad_MelbReview_FA.indd 1

PRINCIPAL SPONSOR

TWMA MAJOR PARTNER

EXHIBITION PARTNER

Indemnification for this exhibition is provided by the Victorian Government

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38 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Gallery Listings

RMIT Gallery

New Olds – Design between Tradition and Innovation From December 7 Storey Hall, Swanston St, Melbourne rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery

Gold and Silver

G

ray Reid Gallery is proud to showcase some thirty of Australia’s most unique and exciting jewellers as part of their annual Gold and Silversmiths Guild of Australia jeweller’s exhibition.

whose submission of a jewel encrusted dragonfly exemplifies the attention to detail the Guild jewellers achieve. Doherty’s piece won the award for excellence at the 25th International Cloisonné jewellery contest in Japan.

Founded almost 25 years ago, the Australian Gold and Silversmiths Guild was set up to provide consumers with a mark or stamp that signifies manufacturing and design excellence.

The guild mark is used by members of the guild to stamp precious metals to ensure the workmanship and quality of each individual piece created.

New South Wales Jeweller Lucas Blacker has drawn from the four seasons to inspire his submission. Using an interesting mix of fine gems, Lucas achieves palettes of cool rose quartz and aquamarine, while the cool silver tones of natural Broome pearls give a blast of style cool on a hot summer’s day. A splash of summer colour is perfect as temperatures heat up with vibrant pink tourmaline and yellow sapphires – this ring is perfect for a festive cocktail in the afternoon sun.

The diverse collection on display ranges from exquisite classic fine jewellery to contemporary and thought provoking designs. With jewellers from throughout Australia the variety of choice is immense, with a particularly fine example of Piqué a Jour and cloisonné enamelling by Victorian Guild Member Bernard Doherty,

If you are struggling for that unique gift then Gray Reid Jewellery Gallery will undoubtedly have something for you or a loved one. With gifts starting from as little as $50.00 every budget is catered for.

Melbourne Art Rooms Saffron Newey Overprocessed December 5 – 20

Zoe Amor Life on Earth - Cross-Pollination December 4 – 20 418 Bay St, Port Melbourne marsgallery.com.au

Anna Pappas Gallery

Elisabeth Weissensteiner Mirror Brain Michael Carolan Hey you Until December 22 2-4 Carlton Street, Prahran annapappasgallery.com

Gallerysmith

PREVIEW A group exhibition of new works direct from the artists’ studios December 15 – 22, with a champagne viewing on December 15, 2-4pm 170 – 174 Abbotsford St North Melbourne gallerysmith.com.au

Gray Reid Gallery

McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park

Until December 25 156 Collins St, Melbourne grayreidgallery.com.au

From November 3 360 - 390 McClelland Drive, Langwarrin mcclellandgallery.com

Gold & Silversmiths Guild of Australia Exhibition

Janet Laurence The Alchemical Garden of Desire

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 39

Gallery Listings

TarraWarra Museum of Art

Master of Stillness: Jeffrey Smart paintings 1940 – 2011

From December 21 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road, Healesville twma.com.au

Catherine Asquith Gallery Selected Artists Festivité 2012

Until December 22 48 Oxford St, Collingwood catherineasquithgallery.com

Heide Museum of Modern Art Until March 11

Monash Gallery of Art

Until April 14 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen heide.com.au

Until February 3 860 Ferntree Gully Rd, Wheelers Hill mga.org.au

Louise Bourgeois Late Works

Louise Bourgeois & Australian Artists

Pat Brassington It’s just a heartbeat away

Arts Centre Melbourne

War Horse and The Breath of Life From November 10 St. Kilda Rd, Melbourne artscentremelbourne.com.au

BIG-GAME

(Switzerland) Moose, plywood hunting trophy

The Dax Centre

Inspired Lives: Discovering Life in Imagination Until January 11

Kenneth Myer Building

The University of Melbourne Royal Parade, Melbourne daxcentre.org

National Gallery of Victoria Negotiating this world

Hawthorn Studio & Gallery Helen Christophidis Memory of Place

December 6 – 22; Opening December 8, 4-6pm 635 Burwood Road, Hawthorn East hawthornstudiogallery.com.au

design between tradition & innovation —

Until February 25

Radiance: The Neo-Impressionists From November 16 NGV International 180 St Kilda Rd NGV Australia Federation Square ngv.vic.gov.au

45 designers & studios from europe, usa & australia

9 december 2012 – 7 march 2013 RMIT Gallery 344 Swanston Street Melbourne 3000 / www.rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery Tel 03 9925 1717 / Monday – Friday 11– 5 / Thursday 11– 7 / Saturday 12 – 5 / Closed Sundays Free entry / Like RMIT Gallery on Facebook / Follow RMIT Gallery on Twitter

40 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Feature

Captain Baxter

S

t Kilda’s first beachside cocktail and lounge bar, Captain Baxter, is named after one of St Kilda’s founding fathers, Captain Benjamin Baxter. It is the brainchild of coowners Angela and Matthew Dawson, and Tom and Amara Doolan, the team responsible for the celebrated function space Encore and restaurant Republica located downstairs.

TarraWarra Estate or a perfect day out in the beautiful surrounds of Healesville, TarraWarra Estate will be open 7 days from Wednesday December 26 through to Sunday February 3.

F

Pinot Noir Rosé and the 2011 Viognier Roussanne Marsanne; both of which are fresh, approachable and food friendly wines perfect for sunny days on the sweeping lawns at TarraWarra Estate.

The restaurant will feature a seasonal summer menu with produce from the estate’s own kitchen garden, matched to TarraWarra Estate wine.

And not forgetting, of course, the art collection on offer at TarraWarra Museum of Art – going perfectly hand-in-hand with a visit to the Estate.

In our Tasting Room, you can sit down for an informative wine flight with our staff or taste through the range at the counter.

The feature wines of this summer are the 2011

TARRAWARRA ESTATE restaurant@tarrawarra.com.au 03 5962 3311 tarrawarra.com.au

Captain Baxter is a blend of St Kilda’s history and elegant resort-styled glamour. The grand entrance is vibrant with street graffiti by local artist Dan Wenn; once inside, the elegant bar is long and lean offering booth seating, art-deco detailing and marble and bronze finishes. Floor

to ceiling windows bring the beach indoors; the resort-styled outdoor space is flush with sun, ocean views, refreshing sea breeze and its very own cocktail bar.

The Captain Baxter cocktail, bar and a la carte menus feature dishes designed to share – an unpretentious but deeply flavoursome menu with its roots in European tradition and a strong commitment to fresh seafood with influences of the best street foods from global port cities. The food is designed to eaten by the water whilst sipping cocktails or a glass of vino and listening to laid back tunes. Captain Baxter is all about taking in the ocean views from a space offering a chic beachside vibe.

CAPTAIN BAXTER Facebook.com/CaptainBaxter 03 8534 8999 captainbaxter.com.au

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 41

Summer Dining

Waterfront

F Optic

O

ptic Kitchen + Bar is the newest place to eat and meet at Federation Square.

Located adjacent to ACMI, Optic can be accessed via Main Square or internally from ACMI, making it the ideal spot to meet before or after a visit to ACMI, a quick lunch for CBD workers and a great place to meet after work or on the way to the theatre, the arts precinct or the “G”.

The decor is modern with a choice of bar seating, tables & chairs, lounge areas and private booths. The menus are equally as innovative – with meal choices divided into Minis, Minors, Boards and Majors. Venue Manager John Kanis

says the tasting boards – which include a selection of charcuterie, cheese and vegetarian options – are proving to be one of the most popular choices to share.

or an experience that is truly Melbourne, spend an afternoon or evening looking out onto the Yarra River and CBD from Waterfront Southgate. With a terrace enclosed by greenery but still very much immersed in the life of Southbank, Waterfront is the perfect location to enjoy good food and wine in a relaxed yet refined atmosphere.

to plate without compromising their natural brilliance. The seafood paella for two ($65) can be found on several surrounding tables at any given service, and the beverage list is equally impressive, with wines to compliment every meal as well as a delicious range of cocktails that are sure to beat the summer heat.

The restaurant’s design, detail and architecture reads like its menu; classically fine and impressively fresh. In the center of the restaurant stands a dedicated sushi/oyster bar, shucking oysters for order and delivering a unique offering within the stretch of Southbank restaurants.

You might come for the view, you might stay for the delicious food and ambience, but one thing’s for sure – you will be back again this summer.

The menu highlights Waterfront’s philosophy of respecting local ingredients from sea and farm

WATERFRONT 03 9686 9766 waterfrontsouthgate.com.au

Optic is fully licensed with cider and beers on tap and an extensive wine list. It offers all day dining from mid-morning until late.

Optic is operated by Peter Rowland Catering, which also manages functions at ACMI. OPTIC optic@peterrowland.com.au 03 8663 2277 fedsquare.com/eatdrink/optic-kitchen-bar

Welcome to a

TA R R A W A R R A

summer

middle brighton

The Baths Middle Brighton is a historic landmark housing a Cafe & Bar, Restaurant, Private Dining Room and Kiosk and one of Australia’s only remaining open water sea baths.

The Restaurant offers a $45pp 2 course and $55pp 3 course December lunch special menu including a glass of wine, Monday – Saturday The Baths Middle Brighton has many reasons to visit come and discover them for yourselves!

251 Esplanade, Brighton T: 03 9539 7000 F: 03 9539 7017 www.middlebrightonbaths.com.au

pa r i s i a n

AfternoonTea

Shared platter of French sweet & savoury pastries with a coffee or tea

$40 per person

Veuve Clicquot

ADD A GLASS OF

$50 per person

Bookings Essential

Shop 10, 530 Collins St, Melbourne 3000 (Enter via Little Collins St) FRENCH INSPIRED RESTAURANT & BAR

P 03 9614 4500 | www.mrmason.com.au

THE MELB OU R N E R EVIEW DE CEMBER 201 2

Food.Wine.Coffee FI NE DI NI NG

SUSTA I NABLE FOOD

COFFEE

WI NE

Rosetta Ristorante Neil Perry makes an inaugural foray into Italian food at Rosetta Ristorante

LADRO Lou Pardi sees a family business in a rough part of town mature into sophisticated Italian dining.

44

What’s the Alternative?

Andrea Frost looks at interesting new varieties being grown and enjoyed in Australia

46

CAFÉS Two cafés in the CBD and Fitzroy cross Lou Pardi’s path this month

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44 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Food.Wine.Coffee

Ladro What started out as a family business in a rough part of town has matured into sophisticated Italian dining.

Lou Pardi

Y

ou’ll often find Ingrid Langtry, one half of the husband and wife team behind Ladro, greeting guests at the Gertrude Street restaurant. Ingrid and husband Sean Kierce have been there since 2003, when Ladro opened and Gertrude Street wasn’t the gentrified go-to dinner destination it now is.

“It was beautiful ugly as they say... A bit grungy but exuding a ‘village’ atmosphere with pretty much a baker, bookshop, a cool record store, costume shop, a few galleries, old pubs and artisan businesses – all of which were owner-operated just like us. It is a small street frequented by a very broad demographic,” says Langtry.

“We would see cars being stolen at the end of service, junkies shooting up… it was pretty grungy 10 years back. But the locals were so great and beaming with good energy and creativity.”

Over the years, the business has grown, but Langtry says at its heart it’s still a family business.

“We are a ‘husband and wife duo’ and still remain very hands on, working on the floor. We have a very high staff retention rate for the industry and feel this is due to the family style of business we have developed. We have children of our own now and those family values are more important than ever for us.”

The clean interiors of Ladro hint at Langtry’s other profession. “I was a full time designer with an Industrial / Interiors background. I still do this work and graphic design work for Ladro and other external clients when time permits. Food and design go hand in hand for me,” she shares.

Ingrid believes the key to a good restaurant is simple. “You need to have people who care. Care about food and its provenance, care about the guests and care about providing the best level of service no matter the level it is pitched. We feel our duty is to serve our neighbours and try to instill that in our staff. A good restaurant to me feels authentic.”

Ladro’s new(ish) head chef, Niko Pizzimenti fits this approach. He was born in Sicily, in a small village called San Vito where his family are fishmongers – and have been for more than four generations. This is evident in the Ladro menu with octopus, Moreton Bay Bugs and prawns making an appearance. The seppie e asparagi – risotto with Victorian asparagus and cuttlefish ragu ($23) is a stand-out dish.

Ladro’s own adopted zia (Italian aunt), Piera Pagnoni has recently joined the Ladro family and makes pasta daily.

Seafood and pasta aside, Ladro is known for its pizza – with good reason. Ladro has committed to sourcing 75% of ingredients locally, including honey from Melbourne City Rooftop Bees, whose hives they host at Gertrude Street. But they’re also serious about making traditional-tasting pizza. “We have a huge Italian following and find they say there is no difference.

Ladro’s flour and sugo is from Campagnia and we purify our water so its Ph level is similar to that of Campagnia,” says Ingrid – noting that within Italy itself there are many variations on ‘traditional’ pizza.

For budding young chefs, there are kids’ pizza making classes on the first and third Saturdays of each month. Fun for all the family.

Rosetta Ristorante Neil Perry makes an inaugural foray into Italian food at Rosetta Ristorante

INFORMATION Ladro Fitzroy 224 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy 9415 7575 Lunch: Sun 12 – 3pm Dinner: Mon – Fri 6-11pm, Sat + Sun 5:30 – 11pm ladro.com.au

Arabella Forge

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eil Perry is a man with more than a few tricks up his sleeve. A busy few years with several restaurant openings, a Qantas menu and a handful of cookbooks – it’s enough to fluster even the busiest of chefs. His latest project ventures into the newly chartered territory of Italian food – a surprising shift from his previous successes with Asian and Modern Australian. But, surprise us he does, with a menu rich with cultural flavour and a heartfelt accolade to one of the world’s most beloved food regions.

The food is not regionally specific – it covers the seaside and rural localities, and there is a subtle emphasis on fine dining over rustic peasant fare.

Starting somewhere along the Italian coast, the appetiser of Tonno (tuna) consists of delicately thin slices of tuna; fleshy, fresh and deliciously rare and speckled with sharp-tasting grapefruit and a smattering of pine nuts and dill. Similarly, a salad of Carciofi (artichokes) that are tender and sweet, and fresh from the cooking pot are accompanied by chunks of pickled lemon zest – a traditional treat from to the Amalfi coast where they are in abundance throughout the summertime.

Pasta is the draw card, and with sixteen varieties on the menu there are more than a handful of options. The Cavatelli – a specialty of the Avellino

region – are tiny hand rolled shells that resemble miniature hot dog buns. With zucchini and garlic – two simple but often overlooked little beauties – it turns the humble into heartfelt and you might find yourself swooning the last mouthful of buttery garlic clove.

But don’t stop there. When in Rome… Try a Cremoso di Arachidi – golden-toasted coconut atop a mound of a honey-nougat ice cream, filled with crunchy peanut clusters and a frozen chocolate slab. The surrounding moat of can’t-put-my-fingeron-it-creamy-deliciousness is worth an extra spoon, or perhaps just the wise decision not to share.

In homage to the well-spanned food regions, the wine list is an extensive collection of Italian varieties, organised by region and inclusive of a handful of Australian drops. There is also a good selection of wines by the glass and a fabulous assortment of cocktails that may make you feel a little like you are sitting in Cipriani’s or Harry’s Bar. The design by Iain Halliday is sumptuous and beautiful, but bordering on clichéd – retro black and white photographs of celebrities adorn the feature wall and the main area is decked in rich mahogany wood panels. The bar top and entrance foyer is booming with marble – to the extent that it looks like the local quarry has been gutted, and the dining chairs are generously big and comfortable. You could be forgiven for falling asleep in them.

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 45

Food.Wine.Coffee

La Svolta Down an alleyway off Chapel Street in Prahran, you’ll find La Svolta, the latest restaurant from Valerio Calabro and Giuessepe ‘Pino’ Russo.

Lou Pardi

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he new La Svolta is the second of the same name, with the first La Svolta having been serving slices of delectable pizza to the people of Hampton for some time now.

But there is a genuine charm about the place – it might be the well-heeled wait staff in their crisply ironed waistcoats or the exquisite opera music that blares throughout the entirety of your meal – small touches of elegance that make it that little bit special.

Food, wine and Italianisms aside, the real draw card at Rosetta is the alfresco terrace overlooking the promenade. Perfect for the warm, balmy summer nights ahead. It’s the prime posse at Crown and a perfect way to spend a night out in Melbourne.

INFORMATION Rosetta 8 Whiteman St. Southbank Phone: 8648 1999 Open: Daily 6:00 pm - 12:00 am Tue to Sun 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm crownmelbourne.com.au/rosetta-ristorante

Behind a large glass frontage, the fit-out of La Svolta Prahran may be new, and the polished floors hardly scuffed, but the dining room and kitchen are steeped in tradition, and affection – for food and guests alike.

The staff always seem delighted to see you, and to meet your every need. It’s not stuffy hospitality-style either – they take genuine pleasure in sharing their food and drink with you, whether you’re a party of 10 or a table for one.

The menu offers up antipasti, pizze rosse (with tomato sauce) and pizze bianche (without tomato sauce). Some of the real stars of this place though aren’t on the menu.

All of the pastas are on the specials board, and if you’re lucky enough to find the buffalo mozzarella ravioli (usually with a sage and butter sauce) you’d be well-advised to try this fantastic indulgence.

I asked Valerio and Giuessepe what inspires the dishes at La Svolta. “We are inspired by many things, but it usually starts as an idea, a dream, a taste in our mouths... and we set about recreating that flavour and deliver that feeling onto the plate. That’s how we created the buffalo mozzarella ravioli,” they say. Thank goodness for their imaginations.

The Prahran team includes some familiar faces from the Hampton team, together with some new ones. “We source staff from our local community and through the Italian community as well,” say the owners and this

is evident in the staff ’s genuine interest in sharing traditional food with diners.

The pizza at La Svolta is truly outstanding.

With a base which is just crisp and just chewy enough, and a range of sparsely (by Aussie standards) applied but perfectly selected toppings, they (almost) steal the show. The owners say the secret to the dough is “good quality flour and the flour/water/yeast ratio. Also time to allow the dough to rise (24 hours is best).”

I generally don’t like my food to be betterqualified than me, but in the case of La Svolta’s pizzas I’ll make an exception. These pizzas are accredited by the Associazione Versace Pizza Napoletana and well-awarded locally at Melbourne Pizza Festival.

Whilst it’s now not too hard to find good traditional pizza in Italian styles in Melbourne, the Australian and American versions haven’t gone away. “Definitely more toppings on Australian pizza... strange ones too. Pineapple?! You can find all different kinds of pizzas in Italy, however we make our pizza in the traditional way,” say the owners.

Valerio Calabro and Giuessepe’s current favourite pizzas are the Porcini e Taleggio (fior di

latte mozzarella, porcini mushrooms and taleggio cheese - $24.50) and the Bufala (mozzarella di bufala - $11). Favourites amongst guests include the Linda (tomato, bocconcini, cherry tomatoes, rocket, prosciutto di Parma, shaved parmigiano $26.50) and the Signor George (tomato, fior di latte mozzarella, salame, olives, chilli - $19.50).

The desserts are presented on a map on the chalkboard – and you’ll find that the waiters’ recommendation will often vary depending on their own homeland. “There is a basic recipe but each region adds their own twist,” say the owners of the dessert recipes. La Svolta’s take on Tiramisu is a weighty one. So much so that you might find yourself muttering ‘challenge accepted’ when this creamy slab lands in front of you, swathed in a smooth cape of icing.

INFORMATION La Svolta 3-5 Cecil Place, Prahran 9510 3001 Lunch: Monday - Sunday Dinner: Tuesday - Sunday lasvolta.com.au

46 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Wine

WINE REVIEWS by ANDREA FROST

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he Australian wine industry is largely based on the French varieties that thrilled the world at the time the industry was being established.

Varieties such as pinot noir, chardonnay, shiraz and cabernet sauvignon, wines that made the great wines of Burgundy, Bordeaux and others.

What’s the Alternative?

When produced in Australia, these varieties have made some remarkable wines over the years and will continue to do so for many more to come.

in the same place as tempranillo, no matter how much we would like it to.

But not everywhere. And not all of the time.

You see, varieties – like most things on earth – can be quite particular. Not all varieties grow well in the same areas; pinot noir does not thrive

What’s more, when there is drought, water shortages, extreme weather, rising temperatures or a combination of the lot, varieties that are planted in marginally appropriate places suffer; it’s the

2011 Montevecchio Bianco

2012 Saltram Winemaker’s Selection Fiano

Heathcote RRP $23

Barossa RRP $22

difference between being able to cope with a mild sunny afternoon and struggling in the extremes of the desert. It takes a lot of precious resources to survive and if you do, you won’t necessarily come out looking your best.

As a result many winemakers are now being

2011 Brash Higgins ‘NDV’ Nero d’Avola McLaren Vale RRP $37

guided by what Mother Nature will allow them to grow, rather than what they would like to grow.

Now, in addition to those well known French varieties being grown in Australia, there is a line up of new and interesting varieties being planted, grown and guzzled with great success in areas better suited to, and putting less strain on, the environment.

Varieties from southern Italy, Portugal and Spain are grown with great success in warm and dry places such as Mildura, the Riverland, McLaren Vale, the Barossa, Clare Valley and other parts of the wine-growing country.

Here are a few:

2008 S.C. Pannell Nebbiolo Adelaide Hills RRP $50

montevecchio.com.au

saltramwines.com.au

brashhiggins.com

pannell.com.au

Bruce Chalmers, of Chalmers Vineyards in Mildura, has been instrumental in exploring and cultivating alternative varieties and sustainable viticultural techniques. In addition, he helped create the Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show (AAVWS); held annually in Mildura since 2001, the AAVWS is the incubator of alternative varieties in Australia. The Montevecchio Bianco is from the Montevecchio range made from the Chalmers Heathcote vineyard and managed largely by daughters Kim and Tennille Chalmers. A field blend of Vermentino, Fiano and a small amount of Moscato Giallo, the wine is a beautiful summer white featuring a mingling of floral with savoury notes, texture with weight, freshness and fruit with lively acidity to end. Perfect summer drinking.

Fiano is a white grape variety that comes from southern Italy and produces an intense and generous white wine. The variety is being taken up in Australia for its suitability in many warm and dry areas including the Barossa Valley. The 2012 Saltram Winemaker’s Selection Fiano was the winner of the best white wine at the 2012 Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show and testament to the seriousness with which many Australian winegrowers are taking this variety.

This wine is a lovely example of the variety showing citrus notes, a little spice and a generous and textural finish.

“I liked the way it tasted,” said Brad Hickey, winemaker and creator of McLaren Vale-based wine label Brash Higgins, on his reasons for making Nero d’Avola, the red variety that comes from Sicily where warm and dry summers require certain stamina from its grape varieties. Nero d’Avola is heat and drought tolerant and thus well suited to the Mediterranean climes in parts of South Australia. Adding another layer of ‘alternative’ to the proposition, Hickey made this wine using ceramic amphoras. The result is an ethereal and wonderful wine experience; a complex and perfumed nose of orange and violet notes; the palate is light to medium-bodied offering savoury, sour cherry and herbal nuances.

A full wine experience.

This wine, which is made from the nebbiolo grape that makes the lauded Barolo and Barbaresco wines of Northern Italy, won three trophies at the AAVWS including Best Nebbiolo, Best Red Wine and The Dr. Rod Bonfiglioli Trophy for Best Wine of Show. “I try to create wines that suit our climate and way of life – wines to drink with the food we grow, make and eat in Australia,” says winemaker Stephen Pannell of his trophy winning wine, a “light to medium bodied red which I believe will be the next trend in Australian wine drinking.”

The wine is brimming with all the wonders of the nebbiolo grape; intense perfume, tannins, complexity and acidity. A wonderful wine and sign of things to come.

Join us for Happy Hour Thursday + Friday from 5-7pm

$5 sparkling $10 pimm’s cocktail $25 pimm’s jug

St Kilda Sea Baths Jacka Blvd, St Kilda

Facebook.com/CaptainBaxter @CaptainBaxterSK

48 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

Cafés

Back Street Eating Off the main drag in Fitzroy, under an apartment block, you’ll find Back Street Eating.

Intended as a local place for local people – their very own ‘second living room’, as owner Timothy Tehan (Birdman Eating) puts it, it’s a darkly fitted out cavern, complete with basement dining room for private functions.

To a great extent Tehan has achieved his vision of comfort, even if it is a luxurious version where you can start the day with French toast with chocolate mascarpone and end it with duck confit.

The music matches the mood, “I wanted Edith

Piaf and sensual jazz with my espresso... a bit of soul or funk with my steak,” says Tehan.

The talk of the town is the Golden Muffin.

Aside from a healthy fat content, Tehan says the muffin’s secrets lie in that it’s “all made in-house: the sausage patty, muffin, sauce, fried ‘Green Eggs’,” together with scamorza (a close cousin of mozzarella) from La Latteria.

INFORMATION Back Street Eating 152 Kerr Street, Fitzroy 9417 1212 Weekdays: 7am - 11pm Weekends: 8am - 11pm backstreeteating.com.au

Self Preservation Lou Pardi

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ou’d be forgiven for whizzing past Self Preservation, at the top end of Bourke Street. The understated window of pastries and loaves of cake isn’t dazzlingly lit, and the glass frontage is on the narrow side. If you open the door though, oh what a treat.

There’s something about the vibe at Self Preservation that’s like no other city café. It’s quietly welcoming, sophisticated but friendly, and, if this is possible, time seems to slow down.

Not in a ye-olde fashion (although there is an antique feel), but in that the pace seems to slow.

Whilst the city swarms past outside, this is a safe place to take a breath.

Simple fare, good coffee, excellent service and welcoming of tables for one, Self Preservation does exactly what it proclaims.

INFORMATION SELF PRESERVATION 70 Bourke St, Melbourne 9650 0523 selfpreservation.com.au

LOVE FOOD, WINE AND COFFEE? V I S I T M E L B O U R N E R E V I E W. C O M . A U

THE MELB OU R N E R EVIEW DE CEMBER 201 2

FORM DE SI GN

PLANNI NG

S PO N S O R E D BY

I NNOVATI ON

Collect Home Colour is back this season – limes, tangerine, pinks and greens have taken over white minimalism

SWINBURNE Students and researchers set to benefit from the new Advanced Manufacturing and Design Centre

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SOMEBODY DREW THAT Byron George explains why judgement is often how we define ourselves and others

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Positioning for success Jennifer Cunich claims Melbourne needs a business enviroment more conducive to foreign investment

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50 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

FORM manufacturing and design excellence Swinburne’s new Advanced Manufacturing and Design Centre will bring state-of-the-art facilities for students and researchers with energy efficiency and a reduced carbon footprint at its core.

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awthorn will soon be home to Swinburne University of Technolog y ’s state-of-theart Advanced Manufacturing and Design Centre (AMDC). Located on Burwood Road, the new building will be a hub of excellence in manufacturing and design innovation and collaborative learning. Currently under construction the AMDC is scheduled to be completed by December 2013.

The $100 million AMDC has been designed

by Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) Architects and Engineers, and one of the UK’s leading architectural practices Wilkinson Eyre Architects (WEA). Both SKM and WEA have strong track records in education projects in Australia and internationally.

The state-of-the-art designed building will be approximately 17,000 squares metres in size spread over eleven storeys. Six of the floors will float above a retained Victorian façade, which faces Burwood Road. The building includes open study areas, an auditorium spanning two floors, research laboratories, academic offices, as well as sky gardens.

The bold design, which will be a landmark for Swinburne’s Hawthorn campus, features sculpted vertical panels that are inspired by engine turbine blades. The fins on the north and south elevation have a purpose beyond making the impressive design; they are modeled to achieve optimum solar shading while achieving transparency and a delicate three-dimensional shape to the outer skin of the building.

Partially funded by a $40 million contribution from the federal government, the AMDC will house a Factory of the Future where students will be trained in the latest manufacturing techniques, transforming engineering education at Swinburne.

Swinburne’s Faculty of Design will be moving back to the Hawthorn campus in early 2014 and will share residency in the AMDC. The move gives Design the opportunity to embed itself at the heart of Swinburne’s vision to be a leader in science, technology and innovation.

For students in business, engineering , information and communication technologies, and design, the new space will support new multidisciplinary programs to produce graduates who

can work across boundaries and solve complex problems.

“Employers are increasingly telling us that they want graduates who can tackle business problems creatively and from a range of perspectives,” Swinburne Vice-Chancellor Professor Linda Kristjanson said. “We’re planning to make the most of the new collaborative opportunities for students and researchers that this new facility will create.”

Swinburne is also working to reduce its carbon footprint, not only in the design of this new building but elsewhere across the university.

Simons Green Energy has been contracted to supply and install a 230kWe natural gas fired trigeneration plant at Swinburne.

The trigeneration plant consists of a 230kW Ener-G Cogeneration Plant and a 250kW absorption chiller supplied by Shuangliang.

Trigeneration is the simultaneous production of three forms of energy – electricity, heating and cooling from a single fuel source (natural gas). The systems have a total efficiency of 85 percent compared to the 25-30 percent efficiency of grid-supplied electricity.

The trigeneration system is the first of its kind to be installed at Swinburne and will offer significant energy savings. It will provide a large portion of the university’s electricity demand and will utilise the waste heat generated by the engines to provide space heating and cooling.

The electricity generated is also cleaner than coalfired grid-supplied electricity thereby producing a substantial reduction in carbon emissions.

Associate Director, Major Projects, at Swinburne Vince Persi said the university has ambitious targets to reduce its carbon footprint and enhance its environmental management by embedding sustainability into every facet of its activities.

“One of our major milestones is to achieve a Five-star Green Star rating with the Green Building Council of Australia, and trigeneration will be a major factor in achieving this rating,” Mr Persi said. “As a university, it is important that our students, researchers and maintenance team are exposed to these new technologies so that they can learn about them and implement them in future projects.”

New pathway to a career in Design

T

he new Associate Degree of Applied Graphic Design at Swinburne University of Technology is a two-year full-time undergraduate program that can also be studied part time.

Students are taught the technical and theoretical fundamentals of graphic design and graduate with a highly practical, skills-rich qualification.

“The Associate Degree blends the vocational skills and knowledge associated with the Diploma of Graphic Design with the academic rigour and creative thinking that the Bachelor of Communication Design is renowned for,” Course Convenor Mary Miceli said.

“The course has been offered since mid2012 and is designed to help students broaden knowledge and skills in specialist areas and develop theoretical graphic design concepts.

Students learn how to demonstrate these concepts while developing their skills in drawing, design, management and business.”

Class sizes in the Associate Degree are small, which allows more contact time with teaching

staff. Dale Cwiklinski, 25, is one of the first cohort of Associate Degree of Applied Graphic Design students. Having worked in the banking industry while playing guitar with a local band, he was looking for something different where he could develop his creative skills.

“I was completing the Certificate IV in design but was looking for a higher-level qualification,” Cwiklinski said. “I like the mixture of hands-on practical work and understanding the theory behind it.”

He has just finished the first semester of the Associate Degree and plans to start his own graphic design business when he has completed the course.

Graduates can also find employment in multimedia design, web design, illustration, advertising, retail merchandising, and packaging design. Successful completion of the Associate Degree gives students a guaranteed pathway into the third year of the Bachelor of Design (Communication Design) at Swinburne, with the option to move into an industry placement.

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 51

FORM

Ugandan outreach design project aids science education

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pioneering partnership between Swinburne University of Technology’s Faculty of Design and a Ugandan primary school aims to increase global understanding of science.

Swinburne design lecturers James Marshall and Bill Trikojus developed the innovative project with the Kasese Humanist Primary School (KHPS) in Uganda to help build the school’s technology infrastructure and develop science-based learning materials that can be shared on the internet.

The Kasese school is a science-based school whose motto is ‘with science we can progress’. Earlier this year it had 360 students, but only three computers.

“Uganda is an incredibly poor country with teachers only making around $50 per month,” Marshall said.

Swinburne and industry partner onlinegalleries. com.au – owned by Marshall and Trikojus – provided funding to purchase another ten computers, a scanner and data projector. A secure computer lab was also set up at the school with broadband internet access and after-hours security.

Swinburne’s design courses provide first-hand knowledge of what’s needed in the workplace.

Whether they aspire to design advertising campaigns, publications, interiors, animations, games, packaging , consumer products, transportation systems or pop-up shops, students learn how to harness their natural creativity and apply it in industry.

Prospective students can choose from: Certificate IV in Design Diploma of Graphic Design Diploma of Interior Design and Decoration

Diploma of Visual Merchandising Bachelor of Design (Communication Design) Bachelor of Design (Digital Media Design) Bachelor of Design (Industrial Design) Bachelor of Design (Interior Design) Bachelor of Design/Bachelor of Business Associate Degree of Applied Graphic Design Bachelor of Engineering (Product Design Engineering) Design degrees can also be combined with an engineering or business course to enhance employability or prepare graduates to run their own business.

“Computer literacy is very necessary in helping our students to learn more,” School Project Director at Kasese Bwambale Robert said. “The donated items and funds are being put to good use so that our students are exposed to modern technologies in the field of learning.”

The project, known as Curly Questions, involves creating digital media to promote critical thinking.

“Our target market is primary school children, specifically in developing countries,” Marshall said.

Sixth grade Kasese students have come up with 40 science-based questions to which 50 students

from Swinburne’s Digital Media Design program are providing answers. The responses have been developed in collaboration with world leading scientists – including ten astrophysicists from Swinburne – and are communicated through animation. The end result will be a children’s book and a three-minute animation for each question.

“We’re aiming to provide resources for the Kasese staff and other teachers globally to answer these questions in a fun and engaging way,” Marshall said. “The Swinburne design students are passionate about the project which will teach evidence-based thinking to students globally and increase public communication of science.

“All of the students have found doing real-world projects much more rewarding than developing prototypes.”

For each of the questions asked, the design students have partnered with scientists to make sure the answers are accurate. The answers have been posted on the website curlyquestions.com.au Anyone interested in participating in the project or sponsoring children from KHPS can contact James Marshall at jgmarshall@swin.edu.au

INFORMATION For entry requirements to all Swinburne Design courses visit swinburne.edu.au

52 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

FORM

Somebody Drew That Byron George

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abels, names, pigeon holes. Common devices we use to categorise people.

“You’re like that because you fit into this box.” I was a little affronted the other day when a flight attendant said “welcome home” to me when I left a Melbourne bound flight from Sydney. She had made a snap judgement I’m assuming based on what I was wearing. I looked around embarrassed at the time, and saw a lady in white pants and a colourful blouse, a man in scuffed square toed shoes and an ill-fitting microfibre shirt and other frequent flyer types barking into their mobile phones and wondered what other judgements she would make.

Collect Home Simone Keenan

J

ohn Pawson has traded on the white, off-white and slightly off-white styling for decades and currently finds himself in a conundrum as laboratory white minimalism faces a slippery slide of a downward trend.

Fortunately for the Melbourne designers at Collect Home, colour is back in the interior – popping fashion hues from prêt a porter and injecting melon, limes, tangerine, pinks, greens, cobalt, and jewel palettes into their recycled glass vessels, vases, bottles – and even handwoven laundry baskets in this season’s neon colours.

From now until Christmas Eve, Collect Home’s pop-up store is showcasing colour to its full advantage, shimmering into the holiday season with recycled glass from Spain and Egypt, hand-woven baskets from Vietnam, French Biot glass from south of France, Latino brights in silk flowers from French company Sia, and a collection of bottles like you’ve never seen before – a truly ‘Aladdin’s Cave’ of jewels for the home.

Collect Home’s pop-up store at 524 Malvern Road Hawksburn injects spring/summer fashion hues in small vignettes within the store – how about pastels in soft shell pink, sweet rose, chartreuse and coastal turquoise and water blues?

Gorgeous hydrangea blooms the size of footballs, striking orange and red poppies, vivid Latino flowers in recycled glass milk bottles and sprigs of sweet country blossom in colourful vintage perfume bottles from Egypt.

Then there are the hand-made door wreaths made exclusively with these blooms, vintage styled

We all do it. One of my favourite games as a teenager was guessing what train station people would get off on my line.

Short haired, masculine ladies would get off between Alphington and Fairfield.

Polished shoes would alight at Ivanhoe or Eaglemont. The black stocking/white trainer combo (usually on a pair of sturdy legs) would almost always be Watsonia or Greensborough. I was of course, the uptight and judgemental bogan leaving the train at Diamond Creek.

table settings with organic shaped hand-thrown ceramics in deep grey, pink and white mixed back with fiesta chairs in pinks, Santorini blues and navy – perfect for outdoor seating or children’s rooms.

This judgement is often how we define ourselves and others. Worse is when it is by where we live. Armadale mums, the Carlton Chardonnay set, Fitzroyalty, Scumshine, Braaaaahton. Then it comes down to that most natural of barriers. The Yarra River.

Co-owner of Collect Home, Penny van Schaik, agrees that injecting colour either in glassware, dinnerware, flowers and napery onto a tabletop can create a completely new and different ambience for this holiday season’s entertaining, particularly with the relaxed Australian lifestyle.

Co-owners and designers van Schaik and Erica Solomon travel frequently to Paris, Spain, Italy and Vietnam to get a feel for colour trends , styles, designs and concepts, drawn to pieces that fit into Collect Homes’ branding philosophy of ‘Form, Nature and Hand-Made’.

“Collect Home pop-up shop in Malvern Road opened at the perfect time of the year.

We’ve taken this into consideration prewrapping beautiful formed pieces such as organic stone shaped glass and ceramic vessels, Christmas decorations in horn and cinnamon, even our essential white cotton tops are only $25.00 each,” she commented.

Fashion leads the way into interiors this season, capturing the trend of neon in zesty limes, tangerine, edgy Chartreuse, hot pink and vibrant purples, while the other side of fashion reflects the softer romance of icy pinks, coastal watery blues. Translating these colour palettes into functional and beautiful accessories for the indoor and outdoor is seamless for the Collect Home brand. Jugs and candlesticks in neon, while the outdoors is covered with their hand-made bamboo side tables and beautifully

proportioned ‘Alfie’ bench designed by the team at Collect Home.

While white will never date, colour can add pop, zest and oomph to an environment – bringing a smattering of pure delight into homes and gardens.

INFORMATION Visit Collect Home’s pop-up shop at 524 Malvern Road, Hawksburn. Open Monday to Thursday 10 – 5pm, Friday 10am – 7pm, Saturday 10am – 5pm and Sundays 11am – 4pm.

Collect Homes’ online shop is also available by visiting collecthome.com.au

Northside and Southside. The arbitrary Mason – Dixon Line separating “us” and “them”. Who would have thought a muddy little river could be such a powerful signifier of allegiance. The stereotype is probably best summed up by two “old guard” venues in their respective corners. For the north, we have Atomica cafe in Fitzroy, in tattoos and black skinny jeans. Artisan roasted coffee (on the premises), good food but an assault of attitude and loud music. The coffee is (or was – it’s been a while since I’ve been there), better than what you get in most places in Rome. For the south, we have Scullerymade in Malvern, in a twin set and Alice band. If you don’t know it, this is the place to buy homewares in Melbourne.

Copper pots (“Darling a STEEEEAL at $495 for the mini roaster”), a thousand different types of cheese knife and some of the best French porcelain money can buy. I have a sneaking suspicion that this store may have been the original inspiration for Prue and Trude from Kath ‘n Kim. Of course, both of these stereotypes are fairly meaningless, as are most categorisations like this. They do create a kind of picture – one is edgy, earthy, responsible and hip. The other is exclusive, time honoured and inherently capitalist. These are mostly positive takes and

the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012 53

FORM There are, of course, the stayers. People and businesses that have been there so long they are institutions in their own right. These businesses focus on doing something consistently well rather than following what’s cool on the streets around them. France Soir on Toorak Road is still delightfully rude and French, while the Vegie Bar and Mario’s on Brunswick Street haven’t really changed much in the last twenty years. They are still full of people though.

These venues represent the real culture of a place. One that lasts and is not just about the latest fashion or “trends” (my favourite word).

“The Brandenburg Gate after the border was closed” - Copyright - Mark B. Anstendig.

there are many negative ones, usually from those on the other side.

I sit on the fence, or in the river in these instances because I love both (both places described above too). I’ve spent an equal amount of my adult life living north and south, and probably the most interesting thing recently is that the poles appear to be shifting. Today Carlton looks a little like Armadale. Fitzroy has more fine dining eating options than South Yarra. And it’s cheaper to rent an apartment in Toorak than Brunswick.

It’s that magical word that is revered and reviled at the same time. The bringer of prosperity and the breaker of culture. Gentrification. It’s spread across our inner city, blurring the poles and turning our once diverse suburbs into a sea of recycled timber, retro bicycles, white tiles and Edison bulbs. Casualties in the north include live music, affordable housing and cultural diversity.

The south has lost its retail and food edge.

Does anyone remember when Chapel Street was at the cutting edge of Australian fashion?

Or when the Builders Arms on Gertrude Street had sticky carpet, that fabulous sunset mural and a pool table? Today, the roles have reversed. On a Saturday morning Chapel Street is awash with vomit and broken glass, while Gertrude Street is busy with organic coffee, artisanal bread and BMWs looking for a park.

The north has become predictable while the south has become more affordable. If ever there is a reason for a pole shift, this is it.

As a city and culture I think it’s time we grew up. Melbourne is not Berlin. Our divide was not born of war, it was created by those seeking to differentiate themselves. Cities in this way are a bit like people – everyone has something to offer, but it’s a rare and delightful thing when you meet someone who doesn’t measure what that is, by comparing it with others.

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

54 the MELBOURNE REVIEW DECEMBER 2012

FORM

Positioning for success in the Asian Century Jennifer Cunich

T

he Fe dera l Government’s Australia in the Asian Century White Paper is a wakeup call for all of Australia’s cities.

As the gravity of the world economy shifts to the Asia Pacific, Australia’s centres of economic and social capital (our cities), will be in the box seat to benefit.

Throughout the Government’s White Paper, we are constantly reminded that not only do we need to be ready to capture the opportunities which Asia’s growth generates, but also to widen the scope of our engagement. Our proximity to the region, well-educated population, high standard

of living and stable political and economic systems mean Australia has much more to offer than just minerals, energy and agriculture. If the White Paper serves as a roadmap to guide us towards a prosperous future in the Asian Century, then our skills, knowledge and cultural institutions will be the vehicles which take us there.

With this in mind, Melbourne is best placed amongst all of Australia’s cities to capitalise.

Despite being the furthest away, we are in fact the closest to what the region actually needs. Evidence of this can be seen already in the large numbers of Asian tourists we attract every year (eight percent every year since 2006), our booming international education sector and the high number of Asian developers investing in our city. Underpinning this of course is Melbourne’s cultural attractiveness.

Despite the flourishes of activity in the cities to our north, Melbourne continues to remain the cultural capital of Australia.

Engaging successfully with our Asian neighbours will require a firm understanding of their needs and what we must change in order to secure their attention. For those who come here to do business, we will need to ensure we offer a business environment more conducive to foreign investment. This will require a review of our tax laws (federal and state) and a lower regulatory burden on business operations. Improvements will also be required in terms of transport connectivity, affordable housing and language and culturally sensitive service delivery. If we are to attract the lion’s share of Asia’s tourists, foreign students and business visitors, we need to make sure we have a city worth visiting.

For those who come here to do business, we will need to ensure we offer a business environment more conducive to foreign investment.”

As has often been said, Melbourne is one of the most liveable cities in the world. This means that naturally, we are in a good position to benefit from its rise. Over the years ahead, all of Victoria’s business sectors need to work together to ensure our capital becomes the ‘go to’ place for Asian investment, education, socialising and learning. Success such as that requires planning. Good planning always takes time. It’s time we got started.

INFORMATION Jennifer Cunich is Victorian Executive Director, Property Council of Australia propertyoz.com.au/vic

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