The Melbourne Review - February Issue 2014 by The Melbourne Review

THE Melbourne

REVIEW Issue 28 February 2014

melbournereview.com.au

United by Style Lisa Gorman, Romance Was Born and Dulux team up for an exciting design, colour and fashion collaboration, set to be a highlight of VAMFF

Hot Rod Heaven

The Government Inspector

Craft Brews

Dave Graney visits the annual Australia Day weekend hot rod show in Carlton

Theatre wunderkind Simon Stone celebrates the art of theatre with his new play, which will open Malthouse Theatreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 2014 season

The rise of Australian craft beers is celebrated with a feature on some of this countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s finest artisan brews

4 The Melbourne Review February 2014

WELCOME

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ISSUE 28

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Cock The Melbourne Theatre Company’s latest play from Mike Bartlett, with music by Missy Higgins, deals with one young man trying to find his place in society via a homo-hetero love triangle.

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MANAGING DIRECTOR Manuel Ortigosa

Jason Smith

Urban Paradox

ANAM’s 2014 opener

The Heide Museum of Modern Art’s CEO and Director is this month’s profile subject

When it comes to Fishermans Bend it might be best to not over plan the district

Composer, conductor and musician Brett Dean returns to ANAM to open its 2014 season

Publisher The Melbourne Review Pty Ltd Level 13, 200 Queen Street, Melbourne Vic 3000 Phone (03) 8648 6482 Fax (03) 8648 6480

INSIDE Profile 06

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

Finance 08 Politics 09 Business 10 Travel 11 Health 12

Audited average monthly circulation: 25,739 (1 April to 30 September 2013)

THE MELBOURNE

review

Columnists 14

Project 14

Women in Design

Visual Arts 29

Anna Pappas Gallery’s annual group exhibition asks questions of the universe - and art

Fourteen of Melbourne’s leading female designers come together for this group exhibition

Food.Wine.Coffee 32

Books 16 Performing Arts 22

FORM 43

The Melbourne Review February 2014 5

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WELCOME CONTRIBUTORS

OUR COVER

WIN!

Hannah Bambra

Dave Graney

Christopher Sanders

D.M. Bradley

Noe Harsel

Margaret Simons

Daniella Casamento

Phil Kakulas

David Sornig

Wendy Cavenett

Stephen Koukoulas

Katherine Smyrk

John Dexter

Tali Lavi

Anna Snoekstra

Alexander Downer

John Neylon

Shirley Stott Despoja

Marianne Duluk

Fiona O’Brien

Ilona Wallace

Robert Dunstan

Lou Pardi

Grant Wyeth

United by Style Lisa Gorman and Dulux team up for a collaboration for Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival.

Suzanne Fraser

Gabriel Presutto

See page 20.

Andrea Frost

Avni Sali

FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN, ENTER YOUR DETAILS AT MELBOURNEREVIEW.COM.AU

Gloria Selected cinemas From Thursday, February 27 A story set in Santiago and centred on Gloria, a free-spirited older woman, and the realities of her whirlwind relationship with a former naval officer whom she meets out in the clubs. Directed by Sebastian Lelio. Stars Paulina Garcia.

Shen Yun Melbourne Arts Centre, State Theatre Friday, March 28, 7.30pm Discover the glory of a fantastically rich culture - that of classical China - brought to life through brilliantly choreographed dance and mesmerising all original orchestral compositions. Magnificently costumed dancers - the world’s elite - move in poetic arrangements that evoke pastoral beauty, imperial drama and the glory of an ancient civilisation.

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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6 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW FEBRUARY 2014

PROFILE

JASON SMITH

and stiﬂing heat. In the distance, couples are strolling around the grounds, and friends are eating a picnic brunch in the shade of a big old oak tree. Looking around, it’s not difﬁcult to imagine Sunday tending to what is now lovingly referred to as Heide’s living museum. Soon, a relaxed Smith, dressed in black, appears from behind the great sliding glass door of Heide III. We shake hands: Smith is immediately engaging. He says he likes working with artists and remains fascinated with the “primary act of making”. For Smith, there has always been an unanswerable question: “What is the mysterious drive that propels artists to give us external realities in either two-dimensional or three-dimensional form? It’s a wonderfully unanswerable question,” he says. “It’s the mystery of what drives people to be artists.”

CEO & Director, Heide Museum of Modern Art BY WENDY CAVENETT

n August 1993, Jason Smith applied for an assistant curator position at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). He was interviewed by then director, James Mollison, one of the most inﬂuential ﬁgures in Australian art. During the interview, however, Smith found himself at odds with the formidable Mollison, and as expected, he did not get the job. But several days later, there was a phone call, a dinner party invite, and a surprising offer. “James said ‘you need to come and work with me’,” Smith says, “so I was employed as his curatorial assistant.” Smith pauses, and then adds: “As my heart soared, it simultaneously sank because I knew I would be signing up for some hard yards. But James was the making of me, and I carry his standards to this day.”

Born in Frankston, Victoria in 1966, Smith – the eldest of six children – grew up helping his mother care for his brothers and sisters. “She liked my fastidiousness,” he says laughing. “I would come home from school and before I could even think about watching TV, I had to clean the living room of all the toys!” We both laugh. Aesthetics were important to you even then, I offer. “Yes, deﬁnitely,” he says. “My friends say, ‘that explains everything!’” The family moved from Victoria to Sydney and finally settled in Canberra in the late 1970s. Smith’s father, a navy man and then a public servant, was incredibly hard working. Smith’s mother, a “very practically driven, loving, no-nonsense” individual, led the household and managed to raise six incredibly different, independent children who had great educations, and were encouraged to follow their dreams and ambitions. There wasn’t much money, Smith says, but the children always had what they needed.

Fast forward to 2014. Smith has been CEO and Director of the Heide Museum of Modern Art since June 2008. Purchased in 1934 by art patrons John and Sunday Reed, the site became the home of various modernist painters who produced many of their most famous works there. Artists such as Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, John Perceval and Danila Vassilieff would live or work at Heide – their personal and professional lives often entwined. French émigrés, Georges and Mirka Mora became close friends with the Reeds soon after they arrived in Australia in the early 1950s. The Reeds were the ﬁrst collectors of Mirka’s work. “They would be very happy that you are here,” she once told Smith as they walked through the Heide gardens, arm in arm. “They would have loved you.” It was an important moment for Smith. “Mirka was one of the Reeds’ closest friends,” he says. “If Mirka didn’t think they would be happy, she would have told me… Mirka is such a vital part of Heide.” Established in 1981, the museum and park was only open for a few weeks when John and Sunday Reed died within a fortnight of each other. Today, the 15-acre landscaped property features a sculpture park (with works by artists including Rick Amor, Inge King and Anish Kapoor) and three distinct gallery spaces: the original farmhouse (known as Heide I, with its stunning Mirka Mora-painted windows), the David McGlashan-designed modernist building, Heide II (commissioned in 1963 as a gallery ‘to be lived in’) and ﬁnally, Heide III,

its black titanium zinc exterior an impressive contrast to the white Mt Gambier limestone of Heide II. There’s also the Sidney Myer Education Centre, a valuable ‘art cabin’ for educators and students, and ﬁnally, the glassencased Café Vue, which opened in 2009. “It’s the very special qualities of occupying this landscape that John and Sunday Reed inhabited and constructed,” Smith says of the Heide legacy. “It’s the Reeds’ commitment to contemporary art, to innovation and radical gestures, to politics, to humanism and architecture – these were things they were really passionate about, and it is our motivating force, a legacy we honour.” Smith says the organisation, with the highly respected Linda Michaels as deputy director

and senior curator, has strong artistic direction, with a series of exhibitions planned to celebrate the fact that 2014 marks 80 years since John and Sunday Reed purchased Heide. Planned are exhibitions focusing on the story as well as the art. These include From the home of Mirka Mora (with treasures from the artist’s home), Being Human: The graphic work of George Baldessin, and Arthur Boyd: Brides. There’s also We are the Dead Men: Albert Tucker’s War, and performance-based contemporary art projects such as Lehte, a site-specific dance piece featuring piano and archival ﬁlm responding to the architecture of Heide II. It’s an exciting program. The day we meet, it’s 36 degrees in Melbourne, and the grounds of Heide seem somehow more alive in the bright sunlight

This included knowing their familial home – the small, country town of Junee, which is located in the Riverina region in New South Wales. Smith’s parents were born there – “my mother is one of eight children, my father was one of 10 children.” Later Smith admits he has 56 ﬁrst cousins. From the age of seven, he spent time with his cousins and grandparents during school holidays. “It instilled in me a great love of my family’s stomping ground,” he says, “and with a great love for my huge, extended family.” Then he adds in his relaxed, gentle way: “I have an enormous commitment to the concept of family and maintaining links and communications.” In the late 1980s, Smith graduated from the Australian National University School of Art (BA, Visual Art) after studying under the great printmaker, Jörg Schmeisser, and Canberra-based artist, Mandy Martin. As a curator and now director, Smith believes his relationships with artists continue to be informed by his experiences in art school. He says he knows what it is like to be in that “strange space of the studio making work where time is different”, and where “your sense of

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW FEBRUARY 2014 7

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PROFILE resolution is fundamentally changed”. It also gives him a practical language to talk about materials and processes rather than using a purely art historical or academic approach. Again he mentions the “mysterious” drive of the artist, which he continues to be “admiring of and mystiﬁed by”, and being mystiﬁed, he adds, keeps him going back. He soon moved to Melbourne, working various jobs and completing a Post Graduate Diploma in Museum Studies in 1992, and, as they say, the rest is history. He stayed at the NGV for 14 years, working with three directors (Mollison, Timothy Potts, and Gerard Vaughan) and curating 35 exhibitions – including Louise Bourgeois in 1995, the Peter Booth survey, HUMAN | NATURE, Howard Arkley’s retrospective, and the 2005 Gwyn Hanssen Piggot exhibition. “I had extraordinary experiences working with some of my great art historical heroes,” he says, “But it was tough. The NGV is a big machine, and I started there in my late 20s, so I did a lot of maturing.” At Heide, Smith works closely with a strong curatorial team and he has realised several objectives: to feature international content (he mentions the highly successful and beautifully curated Louise Bourgeois: Late Works), while seeking senior Australian artists who need to be “brought out from the shadows” (like Gunter Christmann). There’s also a renewed focus

MORE THAN BEAUTIFUL FLOORS

on the Heide Collection (“it’s just on 2,500 objects”), as well as Australian artists with signiﬁcant international reputations (Callum Morton: In Memoriam, 2011). Smith says he’s always looking for “new gestures in contemporary practice” and believes that it’s important for art history and for the record to “go out on a limb” with some exhibitions knowing that they might not be very popular.

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Smith says he remains committed to his work in public art museums, while quietly pursuing his own art practice. He believes you should never underestimate the audience and their degrees of sophistication. He’s thought this from the earliest phase of his career. He also believes that people love new ideas, even if they don’t end up agreeing with the position put forward.

“We want people coming back to Heide,” he concludes. “We don’t want people just walking in and walking out – we want transformation. As subtle as it might be, that’s what we want.”

For the full program of 2014 exhibitions, visit: heide.com.au

8 The Melbourne Review February 2014

FINANCE The move to a budget surplus will be a very straightforward process. It will make Mr Hockey look like a fiscal hero, even if the surpluses he will be trumpeting owe little to his fundamental policy prowess and more to political trickery.” Next year, when Treasury plugs in an even slight upgrade to the forecasts based on stronger hard data for the economy and the forecasts for 2016-17 are fine-tuned, the budget spreadsheet will be at least $10 billion better off than the numbers presented in the 2013 MYEFO. Such is the petty nature of the budget problem that on these two issues alone, the budget deficit for 2016-17 is all but gone.

Rabbit out of a Hat In the move to a budget surplus, how much is Joe Hockey’s prowess as Treasurer and how much is trickery? by Stephen Koukoulas

he Abbott government’s chances of re-election in 2016 will be driven by the budget next year.

On 12 May 2015, Treasurer Joe Hockey will deliver his second budget and in doing so, he will announce that the budget is back on track, the Labor mess has been cleaned up and that for 2016-17 and beyond, there will be budget surpluses. The 2016-17 surplus will be the result of the unwinding of the disingenuous forecasts and spending distortions that were contained in Mr Hockey’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook document, released in December 2013, plus some fiscal policy tightening that will start with this year’s budget on May 13.

In delivering the surplus in next year’s budget, Mr Hockey will have created the

political calling card for the Coalition’s 2016 election campaign. It will use the budget surplus as its self-assessed benchmark of competent economic management. It will be an oft-repeated catch phrase from the Coalition between May 2015 and whenever the election is held in the latter part of 2016 that “we got the budget back in the black and that the long hard task of paying off Labor’s debt has begun”, or words to that effect. It is likely to be a winning strategy, given the poor understanding of economic matters in much of the electorate. The move to a budget surplus will be a very straightforward process. It will make Mr Hockey look like a fiscal hero, even if the surpluses he will be trumpeting owe little to his fundamental policy prowess and more to political trickery.

The current starting point for the 2016-17 budget bottom line presented in last month’s MYEFO is a budget deficit of $17.7 billion. This seems a large amount but it is just 1 percent of GDP.

Then of course there are the policy decisions that will be taken between now and May 2015, most of which are likely to involve cuts to spending and measures to raise revenue. If the government tightens fiscal policy by even 0.5 percent of GDP (which is small beer in the scheme of budgeting), there will be an extra $8 billion or so for the bottom line which means a surplus of at least $5 billion. A tougher fiscal stance and the surplus could be near $10 billion.

The first step in moving from a $17 billion deficit to a surplus number is the reversal of some of the smoke, mirrors and accounting measures presented in the MYEFO.

While there are many risks to economic forecasts and anticipating election issues, the stars are aligning for a quick and quite dramatic return to budget surplus.

One important step will be the payment of dividends from the Reserve Bank of Australia to the government as it gives back part of the $8.8 billion that Mr Hockey unnecessarily gave the Bank this year. Further, with the Australian dollar low and interest rates rising, the RBA has more than enough money in reserves that a strong lift in its profits will see it start to give some of the excess cash back. If history is any guide, the RBA dividend in 2016-17 should be around $4 to $5 billion. That’s a nice instalment on the road to surplus.

It is important to note that this profile will parlay into the forward estimates so that for every year in the so-called out years through to 2025-26, there will be budget surpluses and a profile where net government debt is eliminated.

Another critical element will be the fact that MYEFO presented an unrealistically down beat view of the economy over the three years to 2016-17 which in budgeting terms slices about $10 billion from the budget bottom line in 2016-17 alone. The level of nominal GDP will be higher, inflation will be higher and the unemployment rate lower than the MYEFO projections, all of which means that even a do-nothing policy approach will see the government pocket at least $10 billion. A stronger upswing will of course mean even more revenue.

Mr Hockey knows this good news awaits him, but he will continue to play it tough, at least until the start of 2015. For the budget in three months’ time, Treasury is likely to err on the downside in terms of its economic forecasts and we will see some significant fiscal tightening, but not enough to return to surplus in 2016-17. That rabbit out of the hat is for next year’s budget.

»»Stephen Koukoulas is Managing Director of Market Economics. marketeconomics.com.au

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW FEBRUARY 2014 9

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POLITICS LETTER FROM EUROPE BY ALEXANDER DOWNER

any, many years ago, before I became an MP, I began my diplomatic career as a junior diplomat at the Australian Embassy to the EU. I was given the interesting job of covering the European Parliament for the Embassy. No-one else thought it important but I loved the job. Politics was in my blood and I relished travelling monthly to Strasbourg, the seat of the parliament, to meet MEPs as they’re called and report to Canberra on anything I thought relevant.

parliament a serious institution and as its powers have expanded so its signiﬁcance to the success of the European Union continues to grow. That’s why the European parliamentary elections in May are important. Historically, these elections have followed the standard format of elections in most modern Western countries: the centre left and the centre right take the lion’s share of the seats leaving a small handful for extreme parties of the left and right like the Greens, Communists and neo-fascists. This time, things are looking different. The European public is becoming cynical about the EU and particular its single currency, the euro. Although things aren’t as bad as they were a year ago, the euro is still in crisis and European economic growth is at near stagnation. And above all, unemployment in the EU is close to historic highs.

that the anti-EU UK Independence Party is actually ahead of the governing Conservative Party as anti-EU Conservative voters desert their traditional political home to express their hostility to Britain’s membership of the EU. There are similar movements in other EU countries, most significantly the right wing National Front in France led by Marine Le Pen. At the moment, the National Front is polling about 24 percent of the vote while in the Netherlands the like-minded party of the controversial Geert Wilders is running close to 20 percent. Late last year, Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders announced a new Europe-wide coalition called the European Alliance for Freedom. This intends to bring together most if not all of the right wing anti EU parties in the European Parliament.

In those days the European Parliament was made up of national MPs from the member states but in 1979 there was an exciting development: there were direct elections to the parliament. The European public en masse were able to choose their MEPs. Our Speaker, Billy Snedden, came to the opening of the parliament and presented its new president with a gavel.

It might be unfair to blame all this on the EU itself. After all, it’s the proﬂigacy of the member states more than anything which has caused the budget crises which in turn have threatened the euro. But whatever the real causes of the European economic crisis, the public has turned right off the concept of European integration.

So why do we care about all of this? Well, the EU collectively is the largest single economic entity on earth, bigger than the United States’ economy. If it starts to fall apart, that will have signiﬁcant implications for our exports and investment into Australia. In a way, what could be worse would be the turmoil a disintegrating EU would cause on world ﬁnancial markets.

As the years have passed, the European Parliament has acquired the power to control the European Union’s budget which is a sizeable $300 billion or so every year. That makes the

This sentiment could lead to a sizeable proportion of the seats in the European Parliament being won by anti-EU parties of both the left and right. In the UK, polls suggest

Given the degree of integration which has occurred in Europe already, the unravelling of the EU would be more than an economic crisis: it would generate signiﬁcant political

Well, don’t worry. I don’t predict this is going to happen. The new European Parliament will have a minority of anti-EU nationalists but their inevitable obstructionism and the forging of opportunistic alliances with anti-EU far left parties could cause the parliament to be a more difficult institution for the pro-EU institutions and politicians. Established EU politicians should be careful, all the same. The European model is suffering from two problems. First, it’s hard to make a single currency work in the medium term for as long as the fiscal and economic policies of its member states are not integrated. But to force one tax regime and one fiscal regime on all members of the euro would be deeply unpopular with voters. That’s quite a dilemma. And secondly, the EU social model of ever-growing entitlements is unsustainable. Already the budgets of several EU member states have collapsed and others are reaching troubling levels of indebtedness. But you know how popular cuts are! So the way ahead for Europe is for centre right and centre left politicians to take unpopular decisions. And that will strengthen the extremists. So there should be no complacency about the European elections in May.

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Cock by Mike Bartlett

strains in Europe. To say, as some do, that it could lead to wars is silly talk but it could certainly drive European nations apart, driven by re-emerging nationalism.

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10 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW FEBRUARY 2014

BUSINESS access. If the government is serious about their ‘Grand CBD’ vision, they need to accompany it with a grand transport vision. Fishermans Bend requires a Docklands Loop. From Yarraville or Spotswood across the river, with two or three stations in the Fishermans Bend, and into Southern Cross. Or linking up to the potential Melbourne Metro 2 ﬂoated in the recent Plan Melbourne study. This circular, or multiple entry access is essential to the success of the area.

URBAN PARADOX BY GRANT WYETH

hen the Victorian government announced that Fishermans Bend would be opened up to increased development as part of the vision for a ‘Grand CBD’, there was much gnashing of teeth amongst Melbourne’s urban enthusiasts. The primary concern was that Fishermans Bend would become ‘another Docklands’. ‘Plan it properly’ was the mantra. However, ‘properly’ planning the area was not actually the problem with the Docklands; counterintuitively, over-planning it was. In the modern era in Western cities we don’t like anything that looks a bit messy, and our governments have a difficult time turning a blind eye to anything deemed unseemly. ‘Think of the children’ tabloid hysterics permeate the psyche of all our decision makers. Loosening control is not considered an option. Governments desire enticing, vibrant and unique areas to make a city attractive, but fear how they actually are created.

Broadly there are two types of creators that a city requires. There are the macro-creators who are the developers, large companies and governments who produce buildings and infrastructure and mass employment; the creators who deal in large scale. Then there are the micro-creators. Those who create life, vibrancy, community. They are the artists and artisans from across the spectrum, the event organisers and facilitators, the small business owners of exotic wares, small-scale entrepreneurs and the hotch-potch of chancers who inhabit the edges of society. There is a natural suspicion between the two, but they are both essential to each other, and to a city’s success. Unfortunately, our modern liberal/conservative philosophical alliance (which I attribute to both major parties) has the impulse to both create and stiﬂe simultaneously. It has fused one half of liberal creation – the macro – with conservative distrust of the micro. It was this, combined

Without this transport Fishermans Bend risks becoming little more than a suburban office park. The young and dynamic microcreators need efficient and direct public transport connections to create the street-level, foot-friendly vibrancy that will enhance the area’s cultural charm. with the progressive and bureaucratic impulse of excessive administration, that gave birth to the Docklands as its inanimate bastard child. For Fishermans Bend to be a success this Coalition of the Commonplace needs to be demolished. The dynamic and diverse CBD and inner suburbs emerged in eras with a less omnipresent government. As difficult as it is for progressives to accept in the current big vs small government populist narrative, vibrancy cannot be imposed. It is spontaneous, unadministered – and maybe even a little dangerous. There is no such thing as government-sponsored cool. Progressive good intentions and conservative fear are both its enemies. There’s an odd tension that has arisen in our culture where those who would be considered micro-creators who require freedom and latitude, gravitate towards parties like The Greens, whose rhetoric may support their values, but whose methodologies would restrict their abilities. It’s an amusing modern irony that the micro-management of progressives creates the sterility that conservatives don’t feel threatened by. However, one area where the government’s hands are necessary and creative is with public transport. The most essential influence government can have to an area’s vitality is

The over-planning of the Docklands, through this Liberal/Conservative prism, assumed that by simply enticing in major companies the area would becoming alluring. Attracting major companies in order to provide mass employment is important. But part of that attraction comes from the city’s social capital. Suspicion of the organic way that an interesting and engaging culture is created made the Docklands’ development backwards; and characterless as a result. What the area needs is for the government to relax its eyes and ﬁngers. Roll back the entanglement of permits and provisos that predominantly restrict the creative abilities of the less ﬁnancially secure micro-creators, and focus its morality detector towards real harm, not subjective distaste. There needs to be some trust and faith shown in the public to interact and create with each other without this overbearing combination of conservative judgement and progressive condescension.

» Grant Wyeth is a Melbourne-based writer. @grantwyeth

A National Awards Program The Awards recognise those businesses, local governments, individuals, commnity organisations, schools and the media whose work serves to protect, manage or restore the environment. United Nations Association of Australia

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The Melbourne Review February 2014 11

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TRAVEL explains the history of each culinary choice as you take in the colour and surrounds of Dubai’s most authentic food district, which is off the tourist map. Even if you’re in Dubai for just a night – book this in. Along with traditional Arabic food, new restaurants are popping up in recently completed hotels such as the Conrad, which includes celebrity chef brands such as the Marco Pierre White Grill and the brand new Latin American themed supper club Izel.

Discovering Dubai With its reputation as the Las Vegas of the Middle East minus the sin, it’s refreshing to discover there’s more to Dubai than shopping and a quick escalator ride up the world’s tallest building. by David Knight

ubai never interested me as a travel destination but the desert oasis of building sites, mammoth towers, mega malls and high-end fashion is discovering (or more correctly discovering how to promote) its culture through new arts precincts, food tours and Emirati culture programs. The regional port rapidly

evolved into a city some 40 years ago and the cosmopolitan metropolis is one of the world’s major flight stopovers. The most populated city in the United Arab Emirates is of more interest than just a brief overnight layover as it is now a destination worth exploring and is growing into its title as the centre of the arts in the UAE.

The key tourist attractions are still worth a visit – the shopping (that includes the mustvisit world’s largest mall, The Dubai Mall with its ice rink and aquarium) is brilliant, as is the rapid 163-floor escalator ride up the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa for breathtaking views of the city. (The best time to visit is when evening breaks to view the Dubai Fountain water display.) Not everything worth visiting in Dubai needs to come with a ‘world’s biggest’ tag. Which brings us to the food. Given that a lot of the Middle East’s great food destinations are located in war-torn or hard-to-visit countries and regions such as Iran, Palestine and Lebanon, Frying Pan Adventures boss and guide Arva believes the Old Town of Dubai is the easiest way to experience authentic Middle Eastern food. An enthusiastic, charming and knowledgeable host, Arva grew up in the Old Town and her five-hour walking tour through her neighbourhood is more than just a food fest – it is an all-senses degustation, as the food blogger picks each destination’s (and there are a heap of restaurants, corner shops and cafés on this visit) highlight dish (or dishes) and

Recently announced as the 2020 World Expo’s host city, Dubai’s Modern Art Museum and Opera House is scheduled to open five years before Dubai hosts the expo and will be the hub of the city’s art and culture with galleries and design studios joining the opera house and art museum. But you don’t have to wait until 2015 to explore exciting arts precincts in Dubai. With a Los Angeles-like creative district feel, Alserkal Avenue is a warehouse strip home to more than 20 art galleries and design spaces, including brilliant modern art galleries such as Grey Noise and Showcase Gallery. With developments underway, the district will become more impressive when the expansion is completed later this year and coupled with the Modern Art Museum and Opera House precinct will make a powerful arts double-header. The ideal way to appreciate Emirati culture is by partaking in a traditional brunch at the Sheikh Mohamed Centre for Cultural Understanding. While you eat a beautiful traditional brunch complete with Arabic coffee, your host pleasantly guides you through Emirati and Islamic traditions with grace and humour and is open to religious and cultural questions (no matter how trivial or uncomfortable) from her guests. Even if you don’t agree with everything that the host says, this is an eye-opening experience, which dispels many visitors’ myths.

»»The writer was a guest of Emirates and Dubai Tourism. definitelydubai.com emirates.com.au

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12 The Melbourne Review February 2014

Health

In search of sunshine The essential nature of vitamin D by Professor Avni Sali

re you constantly fatigued? Do you experience muscle pain and weakness, or are you finding it difficult to lose weight? Have you been suffering from insomnia or experiencing difficulties with concentrating? Have you recently been diagnosed with bone disease or musculoskeletal weakness? Feeling depressed? Before you order another double shot latte to pep up, or reach for a medication to treat discomfort, a look at the potential causes may be useful. Recent research shows that one-third of Australians are currently – yes, right now – deficient in vitamin D. A vitamin D deficiency in the human body can result in all of these symptoms, and many other chronic health problems, so it’s possible low vitamin D levels could be your real issue. The good news is treatment and further prevention through supplementation, diet and prudent sun exposure is one of the easiest and healthiest health reforms we can make. Australia’s long-held reputation as a nation of sun lovers has been challenged in past decades by the important need to protect the skin from harmful rays and the dangers of skin cancer. Public health researchers, in light of recent research into the dangers of low vitamin D levels, are now calling for a revisit of sensible sun exposure, fearing that deficiency has the potential to become a major public health issue. A Deakin University Study in 2012 found that 42 percent of Australian women are vitamin D deficient in the summer – and this figure rose to 58 percent in winter – while for men, the rate was 27 percent in summer and 35 percent in winter. The same study found the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency increases with age, especially for women, and that obese or inactive people were twice as likely to be deficient. Australians of non-European origin were four to five times more likely to be vitamin D deficient. Four percent of Australians are severely deficient. Who is most at risk of v itamin D deficiency? Anyone can be susceptible to a lack of vitamin D especially as we have become more conscious of sun protection. However, low vitamin D levels are more likely in the following groups: the elderly, as the skin’s ability to synthesise

vitamin D decreases with age; indoor/office and shift workers; people who through choice and/ or culture wear clothing that covers most of the skin; dark skinned people as pigmentation can make the skin less absorbing of vitamin D; fair skinned people as they are more likely to avoid the sun altogether; inactive people especially those exercising less than 2.5 hours a week outdoors; and people in areas of economic hardship where dietary needs may be hard to meet. What is vitamin D? Vitamin D3 is also known as cholecalciferol. More than 90 percent of our vitamin D needs are produced by the skin using ultra violet B (also known as UVB). UVB cannot penetrate glass, so there is no vitamin D benefit for sunlight exposure through a window or glass enclosure. It is stored in our fat cells and the body cannot produce too much as it is self-regulating. Vitamin D is measured in international units (IU). Most supplements are 1000IU per capsule, which is suitable for daily maintenance doses, but may be insufficient in restoring adequate levels in those who are deficient. This vitamin has always been understood as important in maintaining bone health via its supportive function of maintaining calcium and phosphate levels for bone formation. Lesser known is vitamin D’s essential role in supporting the function of the parathyroid hormone that influences calcium metabolism. It is also an essential vitamin in the body used for blood clotting, inflammation reduction and regulation of the immune system. According to The Lancet, vitamin D is a low toxicity vitamin that is very difficult to overdose on unless very high serum vitamin D is already present and there are pre-existing liver, kidney or vascular problems. As a supplement, vitamin D is readily available and inexpensive. It is present in many foods and, in its purest and most natural form – as direct sunlight – it is available at zero cost and maximum convenience! How do you know if you are deficient? A blood test will give you an exact measure of your vitamin D levels. Low vitamin D status can be viewed as a marker for ill health and an alert for further investigation. Research published in the Medical Observer suggests that the inflammatory processes involved

in many diseases reduces vitamin D levels, which would also explain why low vitamin D is reported in a wide range of disorders. Vitamin D therapy may therefore be a necessary part of treatment plans for many illnesses. Vitamin D for treatment and management of chronic illness Most people know of the importance of vitamin D in preventing and treating osteoporosis but did you know vitamin D is also necessary for organ health and brain functioning? It prevents damage in the brain and low vitamin D has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease. New research has also linked low vitamin D levels to depression and schizophrenia. Vitamin D has been found to reduce the severity of asthma attacks and help in the treatment of periodontal disease. It is a valuable supplement in the management of diabetes and in one major study was found to be protective against type 1 diabetes in children. Researchers of Multiple Sclerosis report less incidence rates in those living closer to the equator. Research by Harvard School of Public Health indicates vitamin D therapy can stave off the speed of progression and disease severity in the early stages of the disease. Psoriasis, a skin condition, is an auto-immune illness. Sunlight is known to be beneficial for this condition and now it has been shown that vitamin D supplementation can also be of benefit. In general vitamin D modulates immunity – a deficiency can cause damage to the body, such as occurs with auto-immune illness. A vitamin D deficiency in children can predispose them to respiratory illness as this vitamin is critical for a healthy functioning immune system. Pregnancy is also another phase of life where vitamin D intake is vital for both mother and baby’s general health and development. Cardiovascular disease and vitamin D deficiency are causally related. In one study low vitamin D was associated with a 67 percent increase in the risk for hypertension. A research study also found that high vitamin D intake was associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer. Teenage girls with low vitamin D levels have also been found to have an increased risk of breast cancer later in life. These findings illustrate vitamin D’s incredible role in health throughout every cell and system in the body, and throughout the lifecyle. Three recommendations for vitamin D therapy PRUDENT SUN EXPOSURE To restore or maintain vitamin D in the body we need more than just casual exposure – daily sessions for timed periods are necessary to keep our bodies in a steady and supported state of vitamin D production. The ideal time periods will depend on personal circumstance

but the following protocols and conditions will be helpful in determining what is most suitable for you. An Integrative Medicine practitioner is also able to ‘prescribe’ the right combination of vitamin D therapy needed for your situation. Here are some recommendations: • Take time out in the sun every day (for fair people six minutes in summer, 15 minutes in winter) until skin is slightly pink. Build up to ideal exposure times slowly. • Expose at least 15 percent of your body, especially large limbs including the torso, and parts of the body not normally exposed. (Skin cancers are most often found on areas of the body with high sun exposure such as the face and hands so it’s wise to always protect these areas.) • Account for time of day and the season. The optimal vitamin D times are midday in winter, and mid-morning or mid-afternoon in summer. • Apply sunscreen immediately after your timed exposure session if you plan to be outside longer. • Remember UVB, the vitamin D rays, cannot penetrate glass/windows (but UVA rays, the ones that can cause real damage can). • Where you live will also affect optimal sun exposure dependant on how close you are to the equator – Melbourne residents may need more time in the sun than Brisbane residents, for example. • Vitamin D therapy is appropriate for every age, and particularly relevant in older age groups. Ensuring adequate vitamin D levels in young children is a terrific proactive measure that can bring about long-term health benefits.

The Melbourne Review February 2014 13

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HEALTH ADD VITAMIN D-RICH FOODS TO YOUR DIET In an Integrative Medicine-based approach to health, diet is one of the most vital ways in which we can achieve optimal health and prevent disease. Fruits and vegetables, quality grains and a regular intake of good proteins including oily fish and other omega 3 rich foods will help us achieve our health goals. Some foods are a rich source of vitamin D (and other essential nutrients) so it is useful to plan your menus so that each meal includes something from the following list: Eggs (including the yoke), vitamin fortified cereals, full fat cheeses and fortified dairy products, plain yoghurt, oily fish such as salmon, tuna, mackerel, sardines, oysters and black caviar – especially if raw. Mushrooms especially shitakes (but also button mushrooms) are good sources of vitamin D if grown in sunlight. Last year, a study showed that mushrooms grown indoors could be put in sunlight for about two hours and this produced a very high vitamin D content in the mushrooms. Keep an eye out for other vitamin D fortified foods that appeal as long as they are not overly processed. TAKE A QUALITY SUPPLEMENT Supplements (liquid, capsule and other forms) are readily available in health food shops, supermarkets and pharmacies. Health

practitioners can also direct you toward quality supplements and online retailers can be a terrific source. If extremely low levels are found that need a boost, or you have a particular condition, you may be advised to take more than 1000IU daily. An Integrative Medicine health practitioner can guide you on a correct protocol and ensure you are also getting the other necessary vitamins and minerals such as magnesium for vitamin D absorption. People with bowel issues might also need extra guidance regarding absorption. Remember old-fashioned cod liver oil is also an effective source of vitamin D. Vitamin D is a potential antidote to the current epidemic of autoimmune diseases and a key strategy for public health. Taken consistently, it can provide a foundation for good health throughout the entire lifecycle. Let sunshine, vitamin D’s most efficient delivery system, be a daily element of your health strategy.

»»Professor Avni Sali is Founding Director of the National Institute of Integrative Medicine (NIIM). niim.com.au

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14 The Melbourne Review February 2014

COLUMNISTS Irregular Writings Hot Rod Heaven BY Dave Graney

here’s a hot rod show every Australia Day weekend at the Royal Exhibition Buildings in Carlton. Inside the buildings there is a display of classic old rides driven in by enthusiasts from all over the state. Maybe they drove it from the back of a trailer truck parked outside the doors to the big room, listening anxiously for any stray metallic ticking as the rarely-used engine struggled to idle. I jest, there’s all kinds of people and attitudes here in this immediate area. All dedicated to classic cars. Dream rides too. Fantasy objects. Nostalgic shapes and attitudes frozen in sculpted metal, glass and rubber. People live for these cars. They pour their lives into them. Stock standard Holdens , Valiants and Fords from the Family-rated 1960s and the R-rated muscled up 70s. Also American muscle cars of the same periods. Outrageous fins and dimensions. Some more like boats than land cruising automobiles. There are also hot rods with 1934 Ford chassis carrying V8 engines from other periods and dressed with mad fibreglass bodies. Kit projects, you know, the sort of lascivious, tongue dragging, chopped and lowered, bare engined cartoonish coaches from ZZ Top videos and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth illustrations. These are people you can’t really argue with. The crowd is so into it – so melded to the cause and the dream – that they need to show the rides they came in on as well. The whole garden area around the building is a gallery, a rolling display of hot rod heaven. People amble about, taking photos and greeting old friends. Comparing paint jobs and daring tricks around any roadworthy laws that might have to be taken into consideration. Some of the cars are so lowered at the front it’s hard to believe they can actually move. Must be some hydraulics in action. Perhaps powered by a boot full of extra batteries. Some people are there to network, handing out business cards for their trade or particular service. Some cornered the market in tiny period decorations and glove box mountings years ago and have the manner of smug dealers who know how addictive their

product is to this crowd. After all, they’re one of them too! They all need that one extra thing to complete the dream. Upholstery circa 1948 or 1962. Vinyl or leather of a certain hue. Paint likewise. Memorabilia, photography. Lots of soldiers and lots of camp followers. A community radio station has set up a van and is blaring out some rock ‘n’ roll hits. There’s a big crossover with the Rockabilly scene. Lots of tattoos, 50s dresses in the crowd. Young women with outrageously coloured hair and milk white (tattooed) skin. T-shirts emblazoned with car products or strong alcohol abounds too. It’s still a bit of an underworld. Even though the attitudes and looks come from the far outer suburbs. (Where a man can indulge himself in an immaculate and spacious garage). These people are lifers really. For the last four years I’ve made the shows and caught up with an old friend from Mt Gambier who drives the 400kms with a mate that morning and drives back after a few hours of socialising. He has a Holden EK Panel van (quite rare), painted white with a V8 Chev engine off of the chrome of which you could eat your proverbial dinner. This is just his workday vehicle though. For actual work he has his van. Then there is the 34 Ford Rod (a Bob Dylan nut – ‘Desolation Row’ is painted in sweet cursive writing on the side of the bonnet) and another, ongoing kit project. Which cars did I fancy? Well I used to think it was something you grew out of but with Holden and Ford closures, how valuable are these cars going to get now? They are total period pieces. Glimpses of a lost world. It would be cool if some catastrophe happened and we had to become like Cuba and preserve our fleet of muscle cars and vans. I don’t think we’re that sort of country any more though. I do love the shape and persona of a Holden EH. Immaculately simple cars. Earlier models like the FC or FB are great, solid steel fat-bodied machines too but hard to wrestle around corners. Bench seats on all of them. I’m puddling up! I have ridden in a Ford Falcon GTHO when they were current. The driver was 17 and we wore air craft seatbelts – harnessed over each shoulder. Crazy! Torana V8s of that period were all engine and no brakes. I would love one of those too! But I think my dream ride would be a 1974 Valiant Regal. Brown with a vinyl, cream roof. Automatic. Just for long drives on country roads.

@davegraney

Six Square Metres Of Readers and Writers BY Margaret Simons

walked out in to the garden this morning in order to recover from some news. I had heard that a friend of mine had died. I had known she was ill. I had intended to visit. I left it too late. She had one of those cruel, wasting diseases that leave the mind intact while the body gradually ceases to work. She knew she was dying. Her husband Peter told me that in the last few days there was a sense of peace, and of permission having been given for her to leave this life. Her children were grown and well. Her husband was resigned to losing her. Peter recalled his mother’s death. Apparently, her last words were “I never knew it could be so wonderful.” She meant death. Peter’s wife didn’t say these words, but the feeling, he said, was similar. The leaving of life was as it should be – except too soon. The news, and my long conversation with Peter, carried me back to an earlier time in my life. This couple were crucial to me. It was largely through my friendship with them that I first dared to call myself a writer. I had already published one book when I met them, but I was not a writer. I had merely written. It takes readers to make a writer, and their great talent was reading. Peter and Libby were the best, most instinctive, perceptive and careful readers I have ever met. They saw your intention, and they saw the things you didn’t know you were trying to achieve. They told you what you were doing in such a way that you could see it for yourself. They could fulfill that profound imperative of E.M Forster’s – only connect. “Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.”

It takes great readers to achieve that kind of connection. No writer can do it on their own, or at all. Sometimes I think the talent of reading is rarer than the ability to write. And so I walked into the garden to reflect on this loss. It is about three years since I last saw Peter and Libby. While they are frequently in my thoughts, I hadn’t rung, I hadn’t written. I had made plans to visit, but I left it all too late. And in the garden the lettuce has all run to seed, the leaves on the purple king beans have the mottled look that comes with stress, and the passionfruit vine is putting out small, wrinkled fruit. It seems incapable of getting sufficient water to its extremities to combat the effects of forty degree heat. Midsummer is, in the pagan tradition, the time of full fruit. It is the tipping point of the year, when one prepares for harvest and the preservation of bounty. I wish. Instead, my garden is ragged and the weekends have been so hot that I have not had the will to get out there and repair, replant and recoup. Someone once wrote a poem about Libby. I remember it being shared with the small group of writers that, at that time in my life, gathered around the Varuna Writers’ Centre in the Blue Mountains. It was an observation of her in the garden, travelling back and forth to the garden beds on a crisp, cold day with her wheelbarrow. It was an observation of her beauty. And so, too late, I have booked my air fares and will go back to that place and visit my remaining friend, and we will reflect on the past, the present and the future.

@MargaretSimons

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COLUMNISTS

THIRD AGE Wanted: A Wonderful Word For Us BY SHIRLEY STOTT DESPOJA

am searching for a word. No dementia jokes please. A word: glamorous, rich, evocative, that we can appropriate to give old age a better tint. Just as Gays did, and forever improved the image and the language. We need something to distinguish us, for example, as the last generation that experienced life in the home without computers, while being the generation that helped the invention to reach its present sophisticated state. The man who invented the mouse, Douglas Engelbart, died only last year at the age of 88. I wonder if, in his later years, any patronising young git asked him if he knew what a mouse was. I was thrilled to see that my generation’s intimacy and expertise with computers were recognised by The Guardian UK in December when it asked actor Sheila Hancock, aged 80, to give advice on online privacy and security. She brought to bear on the subject of privacy her earlier life experience: “I grew up in a generation where we kept things private, where a letter was a lovely little very private thing that arrived. Suddenly we can send messages that could

misfire, that anybody can see. My grandchildren have a completely different attitude to privacy, but I feel I have to assume that everybody can see what I am doing on the web.” (“Spot on,” said the security expert who worked with The Guardian on the Snowden stories.) Is there a word that describes people with this sort of applied, hands-on knowledge of life – all aspects of life – who happen to be 80-ish? Who are live wires, contributors to life and the gaiety, song and dance of it? Elderly will not do. ‘Elderly’ has a shakiness about it, don’t you think? As though the frail person thus described might expire if the word ‘old’ were used to her or his face. I use it to get the electricity back on or the phone fixed. That is, when I am not in actual view. But I couldn’t use it face-to-face. I would find it impossible to talk face-to-face with someone whom I knew thought I was elderly. When the word ‘frail’ came up in a discussion about one of my bones, I made the rheumatologist erase it from his Dictaphone-thingy. He obliged. Good chap. ‘Senior’ is in wide use; very popular in public service sort of communications. It seems to confer some privilege, but we know it doesn’t. It makes me feel like a Girl Guide, responsible but not powerful or glam. “Oldster” is terrible. Don’t even go there. Makes me feel I should have four wheels. ‘Ageing’ is

ridiculous. As though we all aren’t. It does have a certain levelling quality though. Like hats that make everyone look middle aged. Except those saucers that women fashionably wear to the races or royal weddings. They make women look demented. We don’t want that association. Ageing is used for people who are old, but its connotation is ‘actively crumbling’. It will not do. ‘Old’ is okay: Old English, but no glamour. Even old objects have to be called ‘antiques’ to become interesting. Perhaps it could acquire jollier associations in its archaic form ‘olden.’ Would I mind being an olden if the image were brushed up a bit? Olden has some mystery to it. Elder is not bad, but it has a hierarchical ring. There is work to be done here. Some good spinning: quite useful if it makes us feel valued and takes account of our wisdom and all-round attractiveness. It will come. Meanwhile I take enormous satisfaction from the SA government’s decision to abandon annual compulsory medical tests for drivers aged 70 and over. Victoria, which doesn’t have age-based testing, helped to show SA the way. There was no evidence that such tests lowered crash rates. They just made us feel bad. I liked what Health and Ageing Minister Jack Snelling had to say, no doubt advised by some oldens (getting to like it better?) and

Sheila Hancock

elders: “People are living longer and fuller lives and we need to have more relevant policies that do not discriminate by age and support our older population.” So there. When I was young we would have added for the beneﬁt of those who say bad things about olden/ senior/drivers: “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.” These days we know that even put-downs shouldn’t be smoked. But it’s an excellent blow to discrimination. All the ‘buts’ have been considered and chased out the door. Old people, call them what you like, are as responsible as any in the community. And when we ﬁnd the proper word for us, it will be evident to all. Perhaps ‘majority’? Just joking. Oldens do that.

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16 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW FEBRUARY 2014

BOOKS

PLAGUE AND CHOLERA Patrick Deville / Hachette

BY TALI LAVI

History can be ﬁckle. Or rather, the way we choose to chronicle events and select people to be lionised may seem disturbingly arbitrary. These quandaries are considered by French writer Patrick Deville whose seven other novels remain untranslated into English, but whose three most recent have entailed the kind of historic resuscitation that we experience here. The narrator of Plague and Cholera keenly distils the possibilities of what is both gained and lost; ‘A simple sum: if we [people inhabiting the world today] each wrote a mere ten Lives during the course of our own, no life would be forgotten. None would be erased. They would all attain posterity, and justice would be done.’ It is, of course, an unrealistic, perhaps even a fallacious proposition but the words used are telling: ‘erased’ and ‘justice’ speak of the high stakes involved. Plague and Cholera is, at once, a story of life’s enigmas, a revelation of an idiosyncratic genius’s life and a foray into an epoch of change,

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war and discovery that straddles both East and West. Swiss-born Alexandre Yersin, scientist, expert on tuberculosis, founder of the vaccine for bubonic plague, traveller, polymath, cultivator, civil engineer, botanist, the ‘last survivor of the Pasteur crowd’ forever in pursuit of the modern, makes for a fascinating study. A man inspired by Livingstone whose journeys, if mapped, evoke the kind of scope of celebrated explorers, taking in Berlin, Paris, Marseilles, Saigon, Phnom Penh, Hong Kong, Canton, Bombay and Nha Trang but whose legacy today is most recognised in his chosen place of idyll, the South of Vietnam. It is a quietly dazzling book. We are introduced to Yersin as a septuagenarian, boarding the last Air France plane out of a soon-to-be Naziinvaded Paris, returning to the community he has established in Nha Trang. His story unfolds ever so elegantly, like the accordion pleats of a fan. We are guided by the narrator, ‘the ghost of the future’, who interrupts the narrative and thrusts himself into the action, even audaciously imagining himself leaving his mobile on as he places himself into a scene in the 1930s and consequently being arrested as a spy and madman. This spirit of playfulness abounds; the hero refers to what is undeniably the novelist’s own world as ‘painting and literature and all that crap’ or ‘that filth of History and Politics’. Countering this somewhat cavalier tone is the urgency of History breathing down our necks as World War II advances upon us. Questions contemplated are philosophical. Is it possible to remain apolitical at a time of war? The interlocutor interrogates the mercurial nature of fate, asking what if Yersin had stayed Swiss, or taken German citizenship instead of the French that he gained when a young member of the Pasteur set. Several battles animate the pages: those for dominion over territories as played out by the global powers of the time, the compelling and highly competitive pursuit of scientific discoveries engaged in by countries and political alliances, and one waged between the spheres of art and science. Rimbaud and Céline are some of the artistic personalities whose trajectories are juxtaposed against Yersin’s. A mesmerising story; one which channels W.G. Sebald’s blending of fiction and history.

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THE POET’S WIFE

THE GREAT UNKNOWN

Mandy Sayer / Allen & Unwin

Angela Meyer (ed.) / Spineless Wonders BY TALI LAVI BY DAVID SORNIG

The possessive noun in the title is telling. This is a memoir but its subjects are twofold; Mandy Sayer, Sydney writer, novelist and twotime memoirist and her ex-husband Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. Different in rhythm to its predecessor, Dreamtime Alice, which channelled into the manic energy of tap dancing and street performing in New York and New Orleans, The Poet’s Wife interchanges from the quieter register of academic/ literary life to a claustrophobic tempo evocative of mental instability and dependency. The problematic relationship central to the narrative has moved from one between Sayer and her charismatic but feckless musician father, Gerry, to her erratic but gifted husband. Interestingly, even as their relationship was fragmenting, their writing careers developed in a kind of symbiosis, with Sayer editing many of his poems. Readers might ﬁnd themselves desirous of more engagement with themes raised, such as the effects of racism on an individual psyche, but the depths excavated here are particular to the author’s troubled but ultimately resilient psyche. It is a personal, very frank memoir.

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In Krissy Kneen’s ‘Sleepwalk’, the opening story in this anthology of the strange and unsettled, a woman wanders the house every night in her slumber taking photographs that reveal a haunted other world in the midst of the mundane and the domestic. It’s a truly creepy signature piece that reveals the premise of the rest of the collection as its writers show how the normal can be so easily disturbed. Chris Somerville develops the collection’s implicit political colour in ‘The Rift’, a simultaneously very real and surreal story of disconnection and violence in the wake of modern war. Carmel Bird’s ‘Hare’ delivers all and none of the answers to a whodunit murder mystery. While there are a few less-polished stories that hint that this is also a testing ground for less-experienced writers, the collection is dominated by strong work from some of Australia’s best contemporary ﬁction writers: Ryan O’Neil, Ali Alizadeh, P.M. Newton, Paddy O’Reilly. Even philosopher Damon Young expertly turns his hand to ﬁction. Editor Angela Meyer has assembled an entertaining, disturbing and thought-provoking collection.

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BOOKS

The Best of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency Chris Monks and John Warner (eds) / McSweeney’s

BY David Sornig

The Road to Middlemarch

The Raven’s Eye Barry Maitland / Allen & Unwin

Rebecca Mead / Text Publishing BY William Charles BY Fiona O’Brien

Rebecca Mead first read Middlemarch at the age of seventeen, surrounded by countryside in the southwest of England. Like its young protagonist Dorothea Brooke, she is discontent with “provincial life”, and longs to explore life beyond the familiar “narrow roads and hedgerowed lanes that discretely delineate the ancestral holdings of landed families”. Similarly, the narrative, a lively and detailed insight into the interconnected lives of a small town, immediately resonated with Mead, who has read the book every five years since. Now in her midforties, Mead looks back at how Middlemarch has shaped her understanding of her own life, and how her reading of many of the characters has evolved to take on new significance in relation to her own ambitions, dreams and relationships. Mead weaves her reflections on adolescence, love and marriage into her beautifully nuanced reading of the text, along with details of Eliot’s own life that appear to inform the vastly different characters of this much-loved Victorian novel. Mead suggests it not only teaches us to be grown-ups, but how to value and accept the limitations of our ordinary lives.

Former architecture professor Barry Maitland continues his entertaining series featuring DCI Brock and DI Kathy Kolla, this time amid the mazy canals and private clinics of the UK. When Vicky Hawke is found dead on a London canal houseboat, the first anomaly is that this is not her real name. She was in fact Gudrun Kite, daughter of a grieving Cambridge professor of Scandinavian mythology whose other daughter, Freyja, had also died in mysterious circumstances not long before. Both daughters had been working in the fields of hitech encryption and surveillance technology and, following their noses, Kolla and Brock are soon sniffing around a private medical clinic where secret operations on animals and humans are taking place; Kolla also falls into the perilous web of Jack Bragg, cleaver-wielding gangster and butcher – and unwilling patient at said clinic. Throw in a group of houseboat-dwelling anarcho-greenies and, within the police ranks, new brass enforcing managementspeak and organisational rationalism upon the spontaneous Brock and Kolla, and the fuse is lit. Smart characterisation and beautifully paced the whole way through, this is once again high quality crime fiction from Maitland.

Dear McSweeney’s Internet Tendency Writer. I know the recent ‘Best Of’ anthology which celebrating the Tendency’s fifteen years as a humorous online adjunct to the well-known McSweeney’s literary journal says that all its articles are written by different people, some of whom, like Megan Amram, are actually famous memes on Twitter, but I know the truth. There’s just one of you. If you weren’t one person, how else would you keep chugging out pieces that so hilariously manage to mash up styles and pop-culture references for humorous effect? I mean just look at ‘Bono Gives the Rush-hour Traffic Report’, ‘A Letter to Elton John from the Office of the NASA Administrator’, and the magnificent ‘Toto’s “Africa” by Ernest Hemingway.’ You know when you’re on to a good thing. You’re not just witty, Tendency Writer, but you’re blazing with intelligence too. Go on, admit it. I bet you’re pretty much burdened with unused degrees. And at least one of them is an MFA in Creative Writing, probably from Iowa. Am I right? I thought so. To be honest, if I wasn’t already married, I think I’d like to marry you. We have so much in common. We even share gender politics and liberal social views. I totally get your irony in ‘Hello Stranger on the Street, Could You Please Tell Me How to Take Care of My Baby’. And I can see myself being parodied all over ‘A post-gender-normative Man Tries to Pick Up a Woman at A Bar.’ But I do have a few concerns. Mostly I worry that our similar, but slightly-different pop-culture references might come between us. As an Australian, I have no problems

of course in making sense of most of what you’re talking about. While I’ve never actually watched a box set television series, I do know Deadwood, and I think I’ve seen most of the movies you use as comic fodder: The Sound of Music, the Indiana Jones franchise. But there’s stuff I make fun of that you just wouldn’t get. Do you even know about Zombie Peter Carey on Twitter? Clive Palmer? Mamma Mia clickbait? And what about Northcote? Is everyone wearing beards in America too? What I worry about most, though, is that we’re both writers. I especially worry that you’ll think less of me for writing this ‘meta’ review of your anthology. In fact I probably shouldn’t even have signposted it like that, should I? I only figured that with pieces like ‘A Personal Essay by a Personal Essay’ and ‘The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do,’ you wouldn’t mind one bit. Oh, man. This is such a crush. You’d really like me. We’d laugh together at your longrunning debate on the practical viability of the Death Star’s trash compactor, or the Facebook newsfeed edition of Hamlet (‘The king poked the queen.’ I get it. I really get it!). I do hope we can at least hang out together one day, Tendency Writer. Maybe you could email me. We should definitely live-tweet Portlandia together. What do you think?

18 The Melbourne Review February 2014

FEATURE

Graeme Lewsey

The Artisan’s Touch

A new look VAMFF has a focus on artisan ethical sourcing.

Australian designer Megan Park has built more than an internationally renowned label – she has sculpted a family of craftspeople embroidering and designing around the world, including Designer Meg Rumbold.

by Ilona Wallace

“

There’s always a little bit of playing the conductor of the orchestra, always a bit of last minute creative tweaks and ideas, always a bit of firefighting, always a bit of support, but generally it’s a whole lot of passion and adrenaline, really.” Graeme Lewsey, CEO of Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival, is excited to talk about what he calls a “curated fashion, beauty and business experience for everyone to enjoy”. He’s been running the world’s largest consumer-focused fashion festival since 2011, and last year the program brought in a record 380,000 visitors. With hopes to push that number higher than ever, the 2014 program aims to thrill and educate at every turn. The Business Events Series tackles challenges that face the creative industries, with Lewsey recommending the sessions not only for designers but for all.

“It’s just as important, I believe, for a really solid architectural practice to attend our business seminar,” he says. “I mean, how insightful! They’re learning about retail, they’re learning about retail design, they’re learning about consumer behaviours, they’re learning about fashion trends.” VAMFF aims to look beyond fashion in a range of ways this year, with the guiding theme of “awakening the senses”. Lewsey explains that this is an encouragement for retailers to embrace new approaches to customer service, considering the scent of the shop and the music playing in store. “It’s just about those really thought-provoking concepts, and getting the best people from all around the world to talk about them. That really does harness those marketing devices and presents them with credibility,” Lewsey says. The festival is also continuing its ethical programing, expanding on last year’s landmark decision to ban fur on the runways. “That’s a really big, bold statement from us,” he says. But this year the focus is ‘artisan ethical sourcing’: obtaining traditional crafts and materials in a responsible, circumspect manner. VAMFF has drawn in a tremendous bill of speakers to discuss the issue’s complexities and resolutions.

by Hannah Bambra

year after Meg Rumbold embarked on an internship in textile design, she found herself crouching over an embroidery frame in India, re-arranging beads by hand with local craftsmen.

Limedrop

“We’ve got Paul van Zyl, who’s an international human rights lawyer and founder of Maiyet, which is a brand out of New York, which is all built on artisan ethical sourcing. We’ve also got Simone Cipriani, who’s the Chief Technical Adviser of the Ethical Fashion Initiative of the International Trade Centre. So you can imagine, with those two leading the discussion around ethics and sustainability, you’d never get a stronger line-up.” While the festival has a worldly outlook, and aims to draw interstate and international visitors (particularly with Virgin Australia signing on as major sponsor), Lewsey says he has never lost his Melbourne heart – and neither will the festival. “Melbourne is a creative city; Melbournians have a great sense of style; we have great architecture … We just generally create this really great ‘hot pot’ of ideas. We bring Melbourne together and we also bring regional Victoria alive. They’re really robust, clever, immediately available, immediately accessible events for consumers. That reach is really terrific and that creates a buzz.” Indeed, if last year’s extraordinary 10 million-plus reach of the Fashion Festival’s hashtag is anything to go by, VAMFF is an enormous boon for the Victorian capital and the greater state.

The prizes and competitions run by VAMFF also have a Victorian flavour, with this year welcoming the first Future Runway prize, a “competition-like” experience for Victorian high-school students. For budding designers with a little more experience, the Graduate Showcase offers exposure, and is open to graduates from tertiary institutions all around Australia. Finally, the Tiffany & Co. National Designer Award – “the country’s most pre-eminent award for our designers” – can have a dramatic impact on a young creative’s career. “Last year,” Lewsey says, “there was an article published featuring Australia’s most successful international designers, and I think every single one of those designers has actually won our award.” With five of this year’s six finalists hailing from Melbourne, the Festival is happy to acknowledge how designers benefit from having VAMFF in their own back yard. VAMFF, with Lewsey at the helm, has become more than a consumer ride of glitz and glam – integrity of the art is still their guiding principle, but ethics, sustainability, diversity, inclusivity and nurturing local designers play equally vital roles in the Festival’s program.

“When we travel I can spend a whole day rummaging through a bead market in Old Delhi. Within it is a small strip of stores with beads stacked up behind cows, people, motorbikes. I spend hours there in the market sourcing all sorts of beads, textures, colours – grabbing anything that looks inspiring really.” She was offered a uniquely handson position after just three months of work experience with Melbourne-based international fashion house Megan Park. Rumbold has since risen in the ranks to become Designer, working side-by-side with her mentor and design team to create timeless silhouettes out of hand dyed, printed and embroidered textiles. Piles of hand-worked textiles brought over from trips to Asia and vintage fabrics from when brand founder Megan lived in the UK fill their open office with communal work spaces and a flow of creative communication. While travel of course serves the purpose of inspiration, the international market also needs to be at the forefront of the brand’s collective mind. With stockists across Europe, the Middle East, Japan and the United States, nearly every season is at play at once and a huge range of needs are tailored to. Many Australian labels have lost the luxury of wholesaling overseas. “We have kept the international market due to the fact that our product is timeless,” reflects Rumbold.

The Melbourne Review February 2014 19

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FEATURE visible thread matching the tone of a bead. The team regularly sit down together, playing with how Rumbold’s intense patterns of large graphic flowers and twisting kaleidoscopes will sit with the fabric’s natural textures and fall on one of their Shape Designer’s loose, flowing fits. Kurigers, the Indian artisan embroiderers who the Megan Park brand work with on their visits, train for years to hone their skills and continue an age-old tradition. Now going into her ninth season with the brand, Rumbold continues to develop her own expertise with the support of a motivating and generous superior. The fashion industry is now just one of many in which students struggle to find a start and it is both encouraging and inspiring to hear Rumbold’s story of post-graduate years filled with screen-printing, researching and nurturing her craft abroad.

The brand also balances satisfying longstanding customers – those who love their approach of crafting ‘modern antiques’ – with meeting the needs of their broadening demographic. On top of the home, girl and accessories collections which have become a huge part of the label, Megan Park has recently launched a holiday line of soft, cotton beachwear.

Rumbold sometimes stops to think about how much their design process has changed since she first took pencil to paper four years ago. The past four years have seen the exciting introduction of more digital prints. These new developments in how the team work and construct still keep with Megan Park’s tradition of celebrating the artisan’s touch. The technical

work Rumbold does using new technology always begins with hand painting – the mixing of ink, gouache, watercolour and lead. “What makes a real difference is Megan’s ethos about craftsmanship. She pays incredible attention to detail,” says the textile designer. That detail may be as minute a

»»The Megan Park Flagship store is at 1039 High St, Armadale. »»The Megan Park collection will be showcased on RUNWAY 2 at the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival on March 18. meganpark.com.au

Dulux Baby Tone

Dulux Witches Cauldron

Dulux Creed

Dulux Whitsunday Island

To celebrate the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival, our leading interior design team have partnered with the iconic and influential Lisa Gorman as part of the United by Style project. Inspired by her latest collection, Winter Harvest, the Dulux team have created rooms that translate fashion, colour and texture straight from the runway into the home.

Transform your home with colour that inspires at dulux.com.au

20 The Melbourne Review February 2014

FEATURE

United by Style Romance Was Born and Lisa Gorman join forces with Dulux interior designers ahead of VAMFF.

by Daniella Casamento

olour choice and fashion are very much part of our day-to-day living. Whether it’s as simple as choosing which pair of shoes to wear with your outfit or what tie to wear with your shirt, we make daily decisions on colour, pattern and texture. The days of monochromatic living and white on white are behind us too. Bold colour is making a big comeback in the home.

This year, Dulux has once again partnered with two of Australia’s leading fashion designers for the United by Style project to be showcased at the 2014 Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival (VAMFF) this March. Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales from Romance Was Born, and Lisa Gorman of Gorman have spent the last five months collaborating with Dulux Stylist Bree Leech to present the latest in fashion and interior trends. This follows Dulux’s successful partnership with Camilla Franks and Kirrily Johnston in 2013. “The idea of the United by Style project and our collaboration with fashion designers is that people are confident about personal style but not as confident about interiors,” Leech explains. Her advice for people looking to update their home interiors is firstly to look in the cupboard to see the colours they are drawn to. “Use that as your inspiration,” she says. Lisa Gorman and the team at Romance Was Born developed a close working relationship with Leech in the months leading up to VAMFF. Early on they provided Leech with lookbooks for their 2014 Autumn Winter collections. From here, she prepared mood boards with images as a starting point for interior concepts and key looks which represent the essence of each designer’s collection. The look was constantly updated following feedback from the designers.

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FEATURE

Your home, like the clothes you wear, is very much an expression of your individual style.”

This has culminated in rooms, designed by the interior design team at Dulux, that demonstrate inspiring and trend-setting techniques to take fashion colours straight from the runway into the home. “Your home, like the clothes you wear, is very much an expression of your individual style,” says Leech. “It’s great to be able to show through these partnerships how inspiration can be taken from the newest fashion colours and translated into the home with paint and decorative accessories.” With a great interest in the inspiration and opportunities that come from collaboration, Gorman says that Dulux are very forward in their thinking. The United by Style rooms have a sensibility that embodies the symbolic references, prints, colours and patterns of her Autumn Winter collection. “We have combined gold and mustard colours with icy silver, pink and dark navy.”

National Designer in 2008, has taken the design world by storm. A fun and hopeful collection, Dream On sees silhouettes reminiscent of a marching girl’s uniform, logos and motifs that hark back to the ﬂower power movement and a ﬂuidity that evokes a street wear vibe. With such vibrant and inspired fashion designers at play, the United by Style project by Dulux is set to be a highlight of the 2014 Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival.

» The 2014 Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival will be held at Central Pier Docklands from March 17 – 23. vamff.com.au

Photos: Mike Baker (mikebaker.com.au)

Gorman’s Harvest pattern was inspired by artwork including hand blown glass vegetables and hand crafted macramé and ceramic homewares. Bright colours contrast with dark navy which is reﬂected in her new clothing collection and the Dulux room interiors. “The rooms have a Scandinavian feel with a mix of timber and vintage Danish furniture and product sourced from Angelucci 20th Century furniture,” explains Gorman. They also include accessories from her homewares collection to which she plans to add new product in the coming months. Leech describes Romance Was Born’s Autumn 2014 collection Dream On as “psychedelic, more 1960s than 1970s.” She says it delivers the sense of whimsy and theatre we expect from the dynamic duo that, since winning the title of Melbourne Fashion Festival

Fixation

Town Hall Gallery Hawthorn Arts Centre 360 Burwood Road, Hawthorn VIC 3122 P: 03 9278 4626 E: townhallgallery@boroondara.vic.gov.au

Our Obsession with the Fashion Culture

www.townhallgallery.com.au

Fixation seeks to create a dialogue around ideas of our obsession with fashion. Artists: Alexander Batsis, Janice Gobey, Leo Greenfield, Inge Jacobsen (UK), Ariana Page Russell (USA), Kitty N. Wong (HK). Curated by Mardi Nowak.

4 March – 13 April 2014

RUSSELL, Ariana Page, detail from After Party (2009), archival inkjet print, 45 x 66cm, © Courtesy of the artist and Magnan Metz Gallery

22 The Melbourne Review February 2014

PERFORMING ARTS

ANAM Opens its 2014 Season by Noè Harsel

As an educational institution and arts organisation dedicated to the artistic and professional development of young musicians, ANAM has developed its 2014 program to showcase innovation and energy. Over its 19 years, ANAM has invited some of the best Australian and international artists to our shores. This year is no different, with ANAM welcoming24HRExperience_PressAd_158x123_PROD.pdf a diverse and exceptional collection

Photo: Pawel Kopczynski

he Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) is opening its 2014 season on Friday 7 March with a concert that showcases the exciting and diverse year ahead for these young and talented musicians.

Brett Dean 1

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of artists including world-renowned conductor Simone Young, Israeli improvisational pianist David Dolan and young Venezuelan conductor Ilyich Rivas. It also sees the welcome return of former artistic director Brett Dean as Composer in Residence. Composer, conductor and musician, Brett Dean was born and educated in Brisbane, studying at the Queensland Conservatorium and winning the 1982 Conservatorium Medal for Student of the Year. At 20 years of age, he was a prize-winner in the ABC Symphony Australia Young Performers Awards.

CMY

Noon 29 March to Noon 30 March

The 24 Hour Experience | A living documentary of the city. 24 live works take place on the hour every hour from noon 29th March to noon 30th March 2014. From Federation Square to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. The 24 Hour Experience is a fully catered adventure through hidden perspectives of Melbourne.

www.24hourexperience.com.au

He moved to Germany in 1984 where he was a violist with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for 14 years. He began composing in 1988, with experimental film and radio projects and as an improvising performer. His reputation as a composer developed, and through awardwinning works such as the clarinet concerto Ariel’s Music (1995) and his works for strings, sampler and tape, Carlo (1997), he gained a strong international reputation. Winning the 2013 Melbourne Prize for Music, the judges’ comments acknowledged his international standing: “Brett Dean, classical composer and conductor, has made an outstanding contribution to Australian music both locally and on the international stage and in doing so has enriched our cultural life.” Dean’s conducting has been described as “crafted evocative soundscapes with refreshingly clear musical ideas in the underlying

accompaniment” (The Age, January 2013). He is one of the most internationally performed composers of his generation. Dean has cited his musical inspiration comes from many sources including literature, politics and visual arts. Works by Dean have been commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Proms, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Melbourne Symphony and Sydney Symphony to name a few. ANAM’s opening night will feature Dean as conductor and showcase one of his own compositions, Pastoral Symphony (2000). This emotional introduction to his ANAM residency is a reference to the loss of the natural environment to creeping urbanism in the Australian landscape. As Dean describes, “what at the beginning was birdsong becomes by the end, traffic noise within an aggressive industrial landscape.”

»»The first performance of 2014 featuring Brett Dean with musicians from ANAM is on Friday, March 7 at 7:00pm. Tickets: full $55, seniors $40 and concession $30. »»Australian National Academy of Music, South Melbourne Town Hall, 210 Bank Street, South Melbourne anam.com.au

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PERFORMING ARTS

Bragging Rights UK singer, songwriter and activist Billy Bragg was last in Australia late in 2013 to take part in Brisbane’s Big Sound music conference as a speaker and prior to that for a solo tour in 2012. Bragg is now returning with his full band and new album, Tooth and Nail, for

a national tour that will include appearances at WOMADelaide on March 10 and at St Kilda’s Palais Theatre on March 13.

BY ROBERT DUNSTAN

Woody Guthrie songs to music with the song Way Down Yonder in the Minor Key receiving much airplay on triple j. The musician is no stranger to WOMAD festivals as he has performed at many around the world and is greatly anticipating taking part in his ﬁrst WOMADelaide. “WOMAD festivals are always such a lot of fun,” Bragg says. “They are such a great event to be involved in because it’s like a little multicultural village and you also get to see some great music. “I’ve always had a good time in Adelaide, anyway,” he adds. “Adelaide is a place where you can really chill-out anyway and I’ve heard that Botanic Park, especially when WOMADelaide is on, is a great place to do that. And the other great thing about the WOMAD organisation is that they choose some great locations. They always give a lot of attention to that so a WOMAD festival is never just held in a big empty ﬁeld somewhere.” The musician uses Facebook to post videos of soundchecks with a recent guilty pleasure, as they have become known, being of Bragg and Australia’s Kim Churchill covering Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way.

ragg fronted UK punk band Riff Raff in the late 70s before embarking on a successful solo career with such albums as Life’s a Riot With Spy vs Spy, Talking to the Taxman About Poetry and Back to Basics. He has also been involved with grassroots, leftist political movements such as Red Wedge.

“They are a lot of fun because at soundchecks you can get into a situation where you are playing the same bloody song every day,” he laughs. “But doing a few covers, mucking around and jamming on some intros to songs can be much more fun. And for the Fleetwood Mac song, we got Kim up because he was touring with us at the time and we knew he’d make a good Stevie Nicks. He’s got the right haircut for a start.”

Bragg collaborated with Wilco on Mermaid Avenue on which they put the unused lyrics of

Bragg recently posted another ‘guilty pleasure’ on Facebook of the band covering

The Byrds’ I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better and dedicated the rendition to Sid Griffin, formerly of US band The Long Ryders but now leader of UK-based country rockers The Coal Porters. “Sid had been very helpful in introducing me to some musicians for my new band,” Bragg says of his latest backing players, which include drummer Luke Bullen, pedal steel player and guitarist CJ Hillman, bass player Matt Rounds and keyboardist Owen Parker. “Sid’s very active in the London bluegrass and country scene so when I was trying to put a band together I went to him for help as I was desperate to find a young pedal steel player. There are a lot of pedal steel players in the UK but most of them are older than me and I wanted someone who might know how to play pedal steel but Johnny Marr as well. “Sid told me there was a guy up in Manchester, CJ Hillman, who would fit the bill. So that’s how I hooked up with CJ who has brought something really special to the band with his pedal steel, the Dobro and his jangly Rickenbacker guitar. “I don’t know if you’ve ever heard The Flamin’ Groovies version of I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better but CJ, who is only 26 but into jangly guitar bands, had never even heard of The Flamin’ Groovies,” Bragg adds with a laugh. “So I had to sit him down and have a bit of a chat. Everyone should hear some of The Flamin’ Groovies even if it’s only Shake Some Action.”

Billy Bragg

Bragg was preparing for an encore when told that Nelson Mandela had passed away. “So I went back on and did Tank Park Salute,” he reveals. “It’s a song about the death of my father so I dedicated it to Nelson Mandela as the father of his nation. While his death wasn’t unexpected, there was an audible gasp from the audience when I told them.”

» Billy Bragg performs at WOMADelaide, Botanic Park, Adelaide, on Monday, March 10 and at the Palais Theatre, St. Kilda on Thursday, March 13. womadelaide.com.au palaistheatre.net.au

24 The Melbourne Review February 2014

PERFORMING ARTS

The Government Inspector The prolific Simon Stone celebrates the art of theatre in his new play to open Malthouse Theatre’s 2014 season.

by Anna Snoekstra

Photo: Gina Milicia

Cock by Katherine Smyrk

ohn is at the breaking point of his sevenyear relationship with M, a man. That’s when he falls for W, a woman.

MTC’s new play Cock is about one man just trying to find a place within the rigid lines of society. John ends up with a lot on his hands as the two competitors for his love whirl around each other in a brightly coloured, ferocious flurry. This is more than your average love triangle; this is a brutal cock-fight.

“Most of the audience at the MTC is from a generation where the labels of gay and straight were very liberating, were about positive identity,” she says.

score is centred on one song she wrote, which was then cut up into snippets, phrases and chord structures that are used in different ways throughout the play.

“For our generation, labelling is another form of repression. Where does that need come from in humans? Why do we feel the need to categorise?”

“It makes it feel incredibly contemporary, because everyone knows her voice and she’s so Australian,” says Ross. “It’s really interesting because that places the drama in the here and now, hopefully people will feel absolutely in it and not so voyeuristic.”

The struggle that John has with these questions shapes the play, fuelling the tug of war between M and W, and creating something audiences haven’t experienced on stage before. “Most love triangles we’ve seen in main stream drama have been heterosexual or homosexual, not the mix of the two,” says Ross. “It’s not just about his heart being attached to two people, it’s about identity. It’s a much bigger question. We’ve been grappling with this question for ten years, but not on stage.”

After highly acclaimed performances in London and New York, Mike Bartlett’s play Cock is set to explode onto Melbourne’s theatre scene this week.

The audience is thrown between high surges of comedy and deep troughs of drama throughout the play. Confronted with the ache of three peoples’ heavily invested hearts, the play is bound to be moving. But ultimately, Cock will make you laugh.

The production is only made up of four cast members. Tom Conroy plays the protagonist, John. Angus Grant plays M, the discarded lover. Tony Rickards is F, the father. And Sophie Ross is W, the womanly spanner thrown in the works of John’s life.

“Mike Bartlett is very witty. It’s absurd, it’s kooky,” says Ross. “The intimacy and the sex is so honest, it’s funny. It’s awkward in the way that life is awkward.”

While the play is definitely cheeky, it is more challenging than shocking, according to Sophie Ross.

To accompany this complex movement between hilarity and heartbreak is original music by Australian artist, Missy Higgins. This is Higgins’ first time writing for theatre. The

To complement the music, director Leticia Cáceres has been working closely with set designer Marg Horwell to create a captivating set for the play. The production in London was done on a completely bare set, but for the Melbourne show Cáceres has added a playful design element. But Ross refuses to divulge more, saying “it’s too beautiful, I want people to see it for themselves”. Settling somewhere in the middle of a furious animal fight to the death and a light-hearted romp between the sheets, Cock is bound to blow you away.

»»Cock shows at the Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio, until March 22. mtc.com.au

wenty-nine year old Simon Stone has been hailed as the ‘boy genius’ of the theatre world. Over the last four years, he has been incredibly prolific and this week is no different. “I just had a premiere on Saturday night in Germany for Oresteia,” he tells me. “I left the morning after the premiere and then started rehearsals in Australia the day after I got off the plane.” He has ducked out from those rehearsals to talk to me. However, the clatter and chatter continues behind him in preparation for the opening of The Government Inspector, an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 satirical play of the same name. Stone has made a career out of re-working classic plays. “It really comes down to how distant the thing is,” he tells me. “When it comes to the point when something really is quite distant, there’s a need to make it connect to the audience in a contemporary way. It’s the burning need to tell a story that I recognise in a classic play, as a reflection of the world that’s going on around me. The choice of material really just comes down to what mythology I want to explore. “Often the way I rewrite these stories is I restructure them or I find a new form for them first. More often than not, I am trying to find a language that is recognisable in the everyday. So the audience sees themselves on stage.” Gogol’s version of The Government Inspector is about a corrupt town that mistakes a visiting civil servant for a government inspector coming to check up on them. Knowing the history, the choice of play is quite inspired. Stone had originally begun work on The Philadelphia Story until the rights fell through at the last minute. “I decided actually that the best show to make was one that was inspired by circumstances and could be a celebration of the theatre’s ability to endure anything and the concept of the show going on,” he tells me. “We are basically creating a show about a group of actors who are suddenly

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW FEBRUARY 2014 25

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PERFORMING ARTS

Stories from the front line

THE LONG WAY HOME

Photo: Brett Boardman

SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY AND THE AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE FORCE PRESENT

left in a situation where they have no show to put on and they need to invent a piece of theatre in a very short period of time. “They come upon this very brilliant idea of doing a version of The Government Inspector but unbeknownst to them the famous European director that they’ve hired is actually an unemployed actor who was turning up hoping for an audition. So the plot ends up mirroring the plot of The Government Inspector and also echoing the genre and the notions of The Philadelphia Story, which is the show they wanted to do in the ﬁrst place. “I have one of the best acting ensembles that I could possibly have for this show, so that’s a great security blanket,” Stone tells me breezily, as I ask him about his confidence under such tight time pressure. “It’s completely silly and one of the silliest things I’ve ever done. It’s just there for the delight of the audience and as an opportunity to reflect on what it is that we do when we come to the theatre and what it is that we do when we make theatre. It’s a celebration of

the joy of entertainment.” The hectic nature of the creation of this piece seems apt, as it will mark the end of Stone’s last few years of constant work. He will be taking six months off and then will be taking his talents abroad. “Over the next two years I’m working a lot in Europe and my schedule is pretty full of shows in Europe. I grew up there as well, so having a chance to work where I grew up has a sense of homecoming to me, which is wonderful. Of course, it’s just a phase of my life. I hope to God I can be here on a regular basis again because Australia is one of the most extraordinary places to live and work in the world.”

BY DANIEL KEENE

27 – 29 MAR 2014 THE COOPERS MALTHOUSE SYDNEYTHEATRE.COM.AU/LONGWAYHOMETOUR 03 9685 5111

AN HISTORIC COLLABORATION BETWEEN SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY AND THE AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE FORCE WITH

WILL BAILEY, DAVID CANTLEY, JAMES DUNCAN, WAYNE GOODMAN, CRAIG HANCOCK, MARTIN HARPER, KYLE HARRIS, PATRICK HAYES, EMMA JACKSON, ODILE LE CLEZIO, TIM LOCH, EMMA PALMER, TAHKI SAUL, SARAH WEBSTER, JAMES WHITNEY, GARY WILSON, WARWICK YOUNG DIRECTOR

STEPHEN RAYNE

» The Government Inspector will open Malthouse Theatre’s 2014 season with performances from February 28 to March 23.

DESIGNER

RENÉE MULDER

LIGHTING DESIGNER

DAMIEN COOPER

SOUND DESIGNER

STEVE FRANCIS

Photo by Australian Defence Force

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26 The Melbourne Review February 2014

WORDS & MUSIC

GOD My Pal by Phil Kakulas

y Pal by GOD is an underground classic you may never have heard of – a blistering ode to alienation by a group of teenage malcontents that led the way for a new generation of Australian bands. The Melbourne group broke up before its members hit their twenties, but the song has lived on, championed by successive waves of alternative rockers like Magic Dirt, The Drones and Violent Soho. Released in 1987, My Pal was written by then sixteen-year-old singer and guitarist Joel Silbersher. The song opens with the simple, descending guitar riff that serves as the musical centrepiece of the song. Repeated alongside the opening salvos of a cyclical, three-chord progression, the riff stands resolute against the shifting forces of the music. The group plays it hard and fast, the song teetering on the edge of collapse as they careen through the intro and on to the first verse.

Silbersher’s voice belies his age in power and raw emotion. His shredded vocal chords caused, perhaps in part, by the group rehearsing without a vocal P.A. “We’d been playing the music for months,” he says,s “but we didn’t practice with a vocal P.A. so I didn’t know how the tune went until our first official gig as GOD… Those guys had played and sung in front of people before, which I had not.”

Go-Go Records, where label manager and proprietor Bruce Milne was already familiar with Silbersher and bassist Tim Hemensley. “I had known Joel and Tim for a few years already,” says Milne. “They were a pair of opinionated twelve-year-olds who would come into the shop and proceed to tell us what music was good and what was not… but the song was amazing. I had to release it.”

The words slur past in a wounded wail. A lyrical phrase emerging here and there from the musical stew: ‘I don’t like no-one except for you.’ The verses may be obscured but the chorus is unmistakable.

Out back of the shop was one David Laing, a music fan with a small indie record label of his own. “I remember Joel playing it to Bruce and thinking damn, I wish he’d played it to me first,” he laughs. “I would have loved to put it out.” Laing’s wish was eventually fulfilled with the 2014 release of Dirty Jeans – a retrospective collection documenting this important phase in Australian alternative music. As the curator of the release Laing had no doubt that My Pal should be the opening track.

You’re my only friend, you don’t even like me It’s a king hit. For critics, a pure expression of teen angst, yet the author’s not so sure. “I don’t know about the ‘urban teenage despair’,” Silbersher says, “(it was) more observing picked-on teens who still, unbelievably, wanted to be friends with their tormentors. I hate bullies and the desperateto-fit-in-whateverthefuckencost folk almost as much as each other… bullying bullies is good.” Having recorded the song in the weirdly wonderful home studio of Shower Scene From Psycho’s Simon Grounds, the band set about getting it released. First stop was Au-

“For me it represents a changing of the guard,” he explains. “Before GOD the scene was dominated by an almost reverential approach to the Detroit sound of The Stooges and Nuggets-era garage rock. Along with The Hard-Ons, GOD signalled a shift in influences to American hardcore and AC/DC, as well as a refreshing ‘piss-take’ type attitude. That shift was reflected in the bands that followed through the 90s.”

GOD split in 1989 on the eve of their debut album’s release. Silbersher and Hemensley, (along with guitarist Sean Greenway and drummer Matthew Whittle) would go on to further musical projects: Silbersher with Hoss and then Tendrils, Hemensley fronting The Powder Monkeys. Both regularly played the Tote Hotel, where My Pal was adopted in the 2000s as the legendary venue’s unofficial anthem. Twenty-seven years on, Joel Silbersher has mixed feelings about the ongoing attention given to the ‘brave little feller’ he calls My Pal. “I’m sick of hearing about it,” he says. “It’s nice that people love that song… (but) I’ve been making records ever since. That was 1987, yeah? I hope I didn’t shoot my musical wad when I was sixteen. I coulda been a neurologist or a high priced male companion.”

»»A reissue of the original 7” single of My Pal and Dirty Jeans: The Rise of Australian Alternative Rock are both out now. »»Phil Kakulas is a songwriter and teacher who plays double bass in The Blackeyed Susans.

THE melbourne review BRINGS IN 2014 IN STYLE The Melbourne Review welcomed a group of friends, clients and contributors to Kumo Izakaya in Brunswick East late last month. Host Andre Bishop provided outstanding and plentiful food and drinks as the TMR family mingled, catching up with old faces and meeting new friends.

Photos Matthew Wren

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

The Melbourne Review February 2014 27

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CINEMA Glorious Gloria

But I was very glad to have done it.” It’s impossible not to mention the love scenes in the film, particularly as they take place (gasp!) between ‘older people’, and García explains that it “was all about honesty, yes, but it was always difficult too. Intimacy between actors is always difficult… You know, Sergio is not my husband or my lover: he was my work partner. And sometimes they said, ‘Now!’, and we two were supposed to have this great intimacy! We did spend a lot of time with Sebastián to work out what was wanted and what we could show… And no, they’re not young people with well-shaped bodies – but they are feeling real emotions.”

by D.M. Bradley

“Everyone has been so kind and enthusiastic about the film everywhere”, begins Paulína Garcia as she discusses her titular role in cowriter/director Sebastián Lelio’s Gloria, “and they’ve been laughing too.” Laughing? But surely this isn’t really a comedy – or even a ‘tragicomedy’? “Maybe, but it does seem to be funny for some people.” García is very proud of her work in Lelio’s intimate drama, and speaks glowingly of how she became involved: “They [Lelio and co-writer Gonzalo Maza] called me at the very beginning and they wanted to write it for me. I was really very honoured, and at first it was really just an idea… It took three years before they started to shoot it as there were other commitments, as well as disasters here in Chile, and a tsunami [in 2010]. They started to properly write it at the end of 2012, and yes, I was involved from the very beginning, which was wonderful.” Gloria, an ‘older woman’ in contemporary, chaotic Santiago facing failing health, workplace issues and demanding grown-up kids, starts a passionate relationship with a former naval

Finally, García mentions that the Chilean film industry is currently thriving (see last year’s internationally renowned No, for example), and that she’s very happy with how Gloria turned out and the positive reaction to it around the world. officer (Sergio Hernández as Rodolfo). This role would be a demanding and difficult one for any actress, but García wasn’t intimidated: “It was both exhausting and rewarding to do… I actually, while we were making it, found it hard, as I was alone on the screen so often. I had to [map out] the character so that I could do it, as shooting a film like this is an unusual experience for an actress, any actress, and I consider myself mainly a stage actress.”

García’s in every scene, the camera is always on her and she often doesn’t have much to say: “It was very quiet. Even though we did rehearse a lot, those scenes where it’s just me and I say nothing, you know, there was no rehearsal of those. We just did them… I actually never had an official script – just a storyboard, and ideas, and no dialogue. I was trying to find the key to Gloria and, even at the end, I still wasn’t sure if I had found it…

“I think that now I might do more movies… But I’m not likely to find another character like Gloria for a while!”

»»Rated MA. Opens February 27.

THE WORLD’S FESTIVAL LINE UP INCLUDES

Billy Bragg

Arrested Development Muro

Femi Kuti Ngaiire

Washington

Mikhael Paskalev

SEE WEB SITE FOR FULL L I N E -U P

28 The Melbourne Review February 2014

PERFORMING ARTS / CINEMA The Great Beauty by Christopher Sanders

An Audience With Steve McQueen by D.M. Bradley

ou might have thought that Londonborn director Steve McQueen would be in high spirits mere hours after it was announced that he’d been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for 12 Years A Slave, but he isn’t, possibly as he’s still getting over a recent illness or, as he suggests towards the end of the interview, that he’s simply exhausted. “Yes, I have just heard about the nomination this morning. It’s good, yes. I suppose that it’s a surprise, as you never really know if these things are going to happen, you know?”

Slave is McQueen’s third feature after the confronting Hunger (2008) and the ‘controversial’ Shame (2011), and it’s quite unlike either of those. Was it something that he wanted to do simply as it was so different? “No, that wasn’t it, really. I just wanted to make a movie about slavery. That was all, really. I was fascinated by the story of Solomon Northup [1808 -1863], and I just wanted to make it into a movie… It was my wife who first read the book, so she was the one who found it. It was this story about a former slave, who was made a free man, who’s then kidnapped

7.5pt Univers 57 Condensed

and forced back into slavery. And my wife just said to me, ‘Why don’t you make this story?’… So that was it: I just wanted to make a movie about slavery.” Is Slave, which is mostly set in the mid-19th Century, also intended to be a movie about right now? “Yes, I think so. It is meant to reflect upon what’s happening now… It is meant to comment upon what is happening now in terms of exploitation.” This is a much bigger and more elaborate production than the more intimate Hunger and Shame, and it’s also McQueen’s first in America, so how did it all happen, and was Brad Pitt, who worked as a co-producer and has a fine small role, a key player? “Brad was a key element in it. It wouldn’t have been made, I think, without him... So yes, he’s the one, and he helped get it all off the ground.” Slave star Chiwetel Ejiofor was also born in London, so was he maybe a friend of McQueen’s? “I did know him beforehand, and he’s a very good actor and he really wanted to do it… I was very grateful that he had no misgivings about taking the role on, and he just did it so well. He did a very fine job… Especially considering the demands of doing the film: we did it all in only 35 days with one camera.”

»»Rated MA. Now showing.

Quentin Tarantino infamously slammed modern Italian cinema in 2007, calling it depressing and to add insult to injury added that while he loved 60s and 70s Italian cinema (and who doesn’t?) modern films from the land of his idol Sergio Leone “all seem the same”. And he had a point. What happened to the great cinematic country responsible for neo-realism and the director giants Fellini, Rossellini, De Sica and Leone? Italian siren Sophia Loren hit back at QT’s criticism with the lame rebuttal, “How dare he talk about Italian cinema when he doesn’t know anything about American cinema?” Whether you like Tarantino’s films or not, the Pulp Fiction director is a fanatical film nerd who knows his stuff. With Tarantino’s seven-year-old criticism in mind, it is hard to remember the last time an Italian film, aside from the gangster film Gomorrah, knocked you out of your cinema seat. Until now. Enter Paolo Sorrentino’s (This Must be the Place, The Consequences of Love) delicious love letter to Rome, The Great Beauty, which will not only knock you out of your seat but through the cinema door and into the foyer’s popcorn maker. As the name suggests, The Great Beauty is a decadent feast for the senses, which lives up to the ‘21st Century’s La Dolce Vita’ hype that surrounds it. Beginning with an elaborate party scene to celebrate writer Jep Gambardella’s (a wonderful cheeky Toni Servillo) 65 th birthday, The Great Beauty is over the top and in your face from beginning to end. The opening scene is one of the most bizarre and debauched parties you will ever see that features a conga line. Club music blares, as the ever-grinning and superbly dressed Jep and his A-list artistic friends dance the night away. After the party, the comedown hits. Jep is a writer who hasn’t followed his acclaimed debut novel from

40 years earlier with new work. Sure, he writes the occasional magazine feature to sustain his hedonistic lifestyle but he becomes bored of his A-list friends and random sex with beauties who are, of course, much younger than he. Jep and his crew are like the vapid characters from an early Bret Easton Ellis novel but who live in Rome instead of LA and are almost five decades older than Less than Zero’s vacuous mob of jaded rich kids. Jep, of course (despite his uber-cool and calm demeanor) goes on a journey of selfdiscovery to ponder the meaning of life and lost loves, something we’ve witnessed on screen, stage and the page too many times to mention, but somehow Sorrentino makes it work with the over-the-top set pieces, beautiful cinematography and a brilliant performance from Servillo, which is only matched by the film’s other star – Rome. Never has the city looked this wondrous. A remarkable cinema experience. Is QT down with Sorrentino’s latest? Who knows? But here’s hoping The Great Beauty sparks an Italian cinema revival that every film lover has been waiting for.

»»Rated M. Now showing.

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VISUAL ARTS

Project 14 Free Range at Anna Pappas Gallery by Suzanne Fraser

he title of the latest project show to open at Anna Pappas Gallery in Prahran is sure to conjure images of artists flocking and gambolling in open fields: painting, sculpting, filming, arranging bricks, musing with their muses and being generally creative. As stipulated by the gallery’s director Anna Pappas, this display is Free Range.

Yet it would be churlish to approach the exhibition expecting nothing more than a mischievous correlation between artists and chickens. The primary objective of Project 14 is to explore the seemingly immeasurable range of existence in our universe using the creative yield of a select band of contemporary artists. The line-up includes Melbourne residents Emma Langridge, Troy Innocent and Brad Haylock and out-of-towners Rebecca Baumann and Michaela Gleave. In designing this exhibition, Pappas was inspired by the way in which individual imaginations are driven to visualise the outermost regions of the universe. As she notes, “The universe is mostly unknown, so we can make it up ourselves, in our own minds… It is our space, our experience.” Attempting to condense the immensity of infinite space into the confines of a boutique metropolitan art gallery might initially seem a little hubristic, yet it is here that the artist, with their creative dexterity, plays their part. Having offered participating artists free reign to address the curatorial theme, Pappas drafted them in the role of philosopherartists. Their brief, to present a snapshot of the universe, chaos and all, in whatever form or method they saw fit.

That is not to say that the gallery’s curatorial team has remained idle in this pursuit. After defining the exhibition’s seemingly infinite parameters (although who knows what would have happened if a four-tonne elephant had entered discussions) and inviting select artists to participate, Pappas – along with her curatorial assistant Tahlia Jolly – determined on a ‘free range’ exhibition environment. While staged in the gallery’s regular premises in Prahran, Project 14 reinvents this orderly art space as a hectic and miscellaneous location. The placement of Michaela Gleave’s moving projection Eclipse Machine (Blue, Red) (2013) is such that the piece immodestly encroaches on the visual territory of the works displayed around it. The elegant stationary mechanism of Gleave’s work is contrasted with the cyclical, disorienting light that emits from the podium; this illumination falls variously on the surrounding installations, in turn affecting the viewers’ experience of each piece. For Anna Pappas, this is an important aspect of Project 14: “it is breaking bounds”. On the ground floor of the gallery, Brendan Murphy contributes more disorder in the form of a large concrete wad, entitled Predetermined (2013), which the viewer interacts with by driving it forward with their feet. A light push sends the curvilinear mass on a little circuit of the floor space, although the dimensions of this circuit are dependent on the pusher not the pushee. In this case, the surrounding viewers are more at risk of being encroached upon than the surrounding art – toes, in particular, should beware. Rebecca Baumann, Reflected Glory #2, 2014, ETC Source Four, mirror, orgigami paper,

CONTINUES ON PAGE 30

mirrored acrylic and wrapping paper.

Greg Hyde

Pete Groves

Pete Groves & Greg Hyde 2-16 March

Opens Sunday 2 March 2 – 4pm

320 Bay Rd Cheltenham t: 9583 7577 Mon to Sat 10am-5pm Sun 12-5pm

e n q u i r i e s @ w i t h o u t p i e r. c o m . a u w w w. w i t h o u t p i e r. c o m . a u

30 The Melbourne Review February 2014

VISUAL ARTS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 29

Free Range portrays the universe as characterised by diversity, sporadic disorder and metaphysical reflection, the latter of which is nicely parodied in Will French’s mirrored work Enquire Within (2014). The exhibition also reveals one of the primary tensions in our contemporary awareness of ‘universe’, that being the interaction between organic existence and synthetic existence. The 1960s fervour for all things space and alien – and the pop culture artefacts that it spawned – has irrevocably shaped popular understandings of the universe, what it is and what it means. In Rebecca Baumann’s corner work Reflected Glory #2 (2014), we find a gleaming and colourful disco cosmos, comprising various types of vivid surface arranged on the floor and in turn reflected on the walls. One might imagine this as an archaeological dig at The Jetsons’ place. Additionally, in a suspended tunnel work by Henriette Kassay Schuster and Hermione Merry, entitled Sternengucker (2014), the artists include a projected image of a hooded figure seen within the pupil of an eye, evocative of footage from Neil Armstrong’s first lunar promenade. The viewer is able look towards the figure from either end of a horizontal fabric shaft, although from both

sides the viewpoint remains from the rear. Thus the figure is always seen to move away from the viewer. As a visual exploration the concept of the ‘event horizon’ – that being the line between the ‘known’ and the ‘unknown’ – this work encapsulates the curatorial motivation of Project 14, namely that the universe is subjective and ambiguous. The seventh in a series of annual project shows to be staged at Anna Pappas Gallery, this exhibition – described by Pappas as “the gallery’s signature for the beginning of the year” – is less about sales and more about facilitating artistic expression. Comprising largely of artists not represented by the gallery, Project 14 announces the zeal of Pappas and curatorial assistant Jolly for championing the cause of contemporary art. Much as Stephen Hawking champions the cause of the universe, incomprehensibilities and all.

Angelica Mesiti, The Calling (production still), 2013 - 2014. Courtesy of Anna Schwartz Gallery. Produced by Felix Media.

»»Project 14 shows at Anna Pappas Gallery, 2-4 Carlton St, Prahran, until March 12. annapappasgallery.com

Nonverbal Angelica Mesiti’s The Calling at ACMI by Suzanne Fraser

anguage plays a crucial role in defining our personal identities – as citizens of a nation, representatives of an ethic group, or even members of a clique. In Angelica Mesiti’s recent video work entitled The Calling, currently on display at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), the diversity of historic communication methods is highlighted through a study of ancient whistling languages.

2 March – 9 June 2014 www.royalacademybendigo.com

Tickets: 03 5434 6100 Packages: 1800 813 153

In Mesiti’s video, we are shown that language is not merely an arbitrary and standardised device through which humans transfer messages. Rather, it is a bespoke resource, born out of precise environmental context and vital to projecting a sense of self.

Exhibition organised by Bendigo Art Gallery and the Royal Academy of Arts, London

Higher education partner

Frank Cadogan Cowper, Vanity (detail), 1907, oil on panel. © Royal Academy of Arts, London. Photographer John Hammond.

Filmed across three locations – in Northern Turkey, the Canary Islands and the Greek island of Evia, respectively – Mesiti’s work documents and creatively interprets instances of non-verbal whistling language used by locals in these locations. Accompanied by immersive sound and shown across three screens in the gallery, The Calling offers an engaging

viewer experience exclusive of any deeper consideration of the subject matter. Yet the combination of subject and medium in this work compels the viewer to reflect on, for instance, how and why whistling languages first emerged and, moreover, how they might be preserved in an increasingly text-driven global communications market. The former question would seem to find an answer in the source landscape of the whistlers. These are mountainous terrains in which residents were historically dispersed, largely through farming practices, so the high-pitched notes could carry further and clearer than words. Not that these non-verbal methods existed in lieu of verbal language – they served, rather, as supplementary communication. This work by Mesiti, who is based in Sydney and Paris, came about after she won the inaugural Ian Potter Moving Image Commission in 2013, which is a joint initiative by the Ian Potter Cultural Trust and ACMI. While the video takes its theme from locations distant to Australia, the links from, firstly, European immigration to Melbourne and, secondly, the universality of language preservation concerns, make this very much a local work of art. It also serves as a celebration of both non-dominant cultures and the beauty of language more generally.

»»Angelica Mesiti’s The Calling shows at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Federation Square, until July 13. acmi.net.au

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A-Z CONTEMPORARY ART

ARTSPEAK EMO Emo has been morphing from 90s rock music into art with the inevitability of cane toads bearing down on Kakadu. Tortured otherness takes many forms so think beyond wide-eyed, downcast waifs. A few Bill Viola videos will give you an idea of how grownups can play the game. Oh what a feeling. EMERGENT / EMERGING There is some agreement that an emerging artist has been practising professionally for five years. After that? ‘Emerged artist’ has no currency. Many artists remain submerged across a lifetime of work. That’s a long time to hold one’s breath in the hope of being discovered.

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

THE EVERYDAY Like Buddy Holly said in 1957, ‘ Everyday, it’s a getting closer’. The Everyday is one of the biggest ideas in contemporary art. Its beauty is that, like the Twist, anyone can do it. Start up suggestion Go LOMO. The LOMO camera emerged as a spy craft tool during the Cold War. Not much larger than a cigarette packet, this camera could capture all manner of subjects in varied conditions. As you sashay across the city you’ll feel like an MI5 operative on the prowl. A lazy day of LOMO shooting from the hip could give a few hundred images, enough for several shows. Remember the rule: Don’t Think. Consider: Some clever souls have suggested that LOMO is an acronym for Lots Of Meaningless Objects. Why the Everyday? If asked why you have ﬁlled a gallery with odd socks just say that you are closing the gap between art and life. If pressed try to get the word ‘quotidian’ into the next sentence. After that you’re on your own.

Photo: John Neylon

BY JOHN NEYLON

Homeless plinth, Melbourne, 2013

Plinth power Putting any old everyday object in an art setting is risky business. Some viewers may not get the ‘artlife’ nexus or appreciate the nuances of ‘implied narrative conveyed through palimpsests of usage’. Minimise the risk by visually privileging the object. Put it in a frame or on a plinth. Don’t worry that generations of artists from Duchamp have been onto this ruse. Warning: Beware of being seen as cynically exploiting viewer desires. Solution: Add a dash of irony by subverting the plinth. Hack into it with a chain saw or use unconventional materials like crushed hoon car hubcaps.

of a pianist sitting at a piano, and not hitting any keys for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. It was all very Zen. The audience was meant to vibe with ambient sounds (audience snoring, car horns and so on). Take this idea for a walk: Make a sound recording of a walk in which at every 10th step you hit something with a stick (use discretion) or see how much pavement rubbish you can cram into your pockets on a 30-minute walk. Go to a pre-selected gallery and walk on your hands for ﬁve minutes. Exhibit whatever falls out of your pockets. Easy as.

Junk If your everyday art consists of collecting and Here’s an idea manipulating junk, for heaven’s sake do not refer ‘Step in all the puddles in the city’ to yourself as a junk artist. You’ll immediately be Yoko Ono, City Piece, 1963 lumped in with people who make junk critters Your turn and sell them on eBay or Etsy. Suggestion: use 70 Welsford St, Shepparton VIC 3630 p +61 (03) 5832 9861 a scatter aesthetic, strewing objects across the Get with the program e art.museum@shepparton.vic.gov.au Everyone knows about John (‘I have nothing gallery ﬂoor and up the walls, to create things like w sheppartonartmuseum.com.au to say’) Cage’s 4’ 33” performance work. A metaphoric gaps, interstices, zones of uncertainty reminder: it’s a musical composition consisting and slippages much favoured by curators.

nick selenitsch. Play

EDGE (AS IN CUTTING) A desirable state for artwork aspiring to be effulgent. EMPOWERMENT Being channelled by an artwork for the greater public good. A sweeping claim. Difficult to prove but empowered artists are a force of nature.

Giving notice Make a determination to notice things such in sitting on a train and record everything about the third person to enter a carriage. Caution: Do not stalk. Playing museums Why should (non art) museums have all the fun in giving everyday things signiﬁcance? Beat them at their own game by using similar taxonomic tricks of display. Think left ﬁeld. Suggestions: pre-loved chewing gum, coffee stains, broken toys. Things to avoid: soup cans, doorways, thongs, bottles, barbed wire, Ukrainian Easter eggs. Yarn bombing rules You may laugh but trust me; this art genre is in its infancy. Just think beyond power poles and bike racks. Sulo bins anyone?

NOW SHOWING 70 Welsford Street, Shepparton w sheppartonartmuseum.com.au p (03) 5832 9861

FREE ENTRY Open 7 days 10am to 4pm Public holidays 1pm to 4pm Nick Selenitsch Headless Chooks (detail) 2008 collage and pigment pen on paper © the artist

SAM is proudly provided by Greater Shepparton City Council

32 The Melbourne Review February 2014

GALLERY LISTINGS 1

CAMBRIDGE STUDIO GALLERY

Sally Garrett: Exotic March 5 - 22 52 Cambridge Street , Collingwood cambridgestudiogallery.com.au

EDMUND PEARCE GALLERY

Rebecca Dagnall: In Tenebris Daniel Sponiar: Yes Chef! (pictured) Eva Collins: On a Lazy Summer Afternoon March 5 - 29 Level 2/37 Swanston St (cnr Flinders Lane) edmundpearce.com.au

FLINDERS LANE GALLERY

Jo Davenport: Time Recalled February 18 – March 8 137 Flinders Lane, Melbourne 9654 3332 flg.com.au

GEELONG GALLERY

Ex libris - the book in contemporary art February 22 – May 25 Little Malop Street, Geelong geelonggallery.org.au

HAWTHORN STUDIO GALLERY

Ryan Foote: Inspirations Until Feb 26 635 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn East 9882 5553 hawthornstudiogallery.com.au

IAN POTTER MUSEUM OF ART

The Piranesi Effect February 20 – May 25 The University of Melbourne, Swanston Street, Parkville art-museum@unimelb.edu.au

MCCLELLAND SCULPTURE PARK + GALLERY Juan Ford: Lord of the Canopy Sensory Overload: Karen Casey, George Khut, Ross Manning and Kit Webster Martin Hill: Watershed February 16 – April 27 360 - 390 McClelland Drive, Langwarrin 9789 1671 mcclellandgallery.com

MONASH GALLERY OF ART

RMIT GALLERY Music, Melbourne + Me 40 years of Mushroom and Melbourne’s popular music culture Until February 22 Storey Hall, Swanston St, Melbourne rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery

Solitaire and Michelle Ussher: Yellow Eyes Burn and Return February 22 – April 27 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road, Healesville www.twma.com.au

WILDCARDS: Australian photographs from the MGA Collection curated by Bill Henson March 1 - 30 860 Ferntree Gully Rd, Wheelers Hill 8544 0500 mga.org.au

TARRAWARRA MUSEUM OF ART

WITHOUT PIER GALLERY

Pete Groves & Greg Hyde March 2 - 16 Stewart Westle March 23 – April 6 320 Bay Rd, Cheltenham 9583 7577 withoutpier.com.au

TOWN HALL GALLERY

New Ground: Contemporary Printmaking Featuring works by Elizabeth Banfield, Tiziano Bellomi (IT), Anita Iacovella, Jenny Peterson, Bronwyn Rees and Andrew Totman. Until February 23 360 Burwood Road, Hawthorn townhallgallery.com.au

Heide Museum of Modern Art Future Primitive Until March 2 Albert Tucker: Explorers and Intruders Until March 10 Poetry, Dream & the Cosmos: The Heide Collection Until May 4 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen heide.com.au

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FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

B’STILLA

A year on and B’Stilla has found its groove. BY MARIANNE DULUK

irthday celebrations are in order for B’stilla. And whilst their first year hasn’t been without challenges, owner Jason Jones (Mamasita’s guru) comments that it’s been an “exciting and rewarding first year for B’Stilla. However witnessing the number of restaurants who shut shop in 2013 was daunting and we had to quickly adapt due to the changing dining climate.” That meant a simplified menu with a more relaxed approach to any stiff dining airs; all things we salute. Set behind Chapel Street, the bistro is fresh with Moroccan splashes. Think tessellated tiles and terracotta tones; with a large outdoor terrace particularly special on warm Melbourne nights. Propped at the bar seat a diverse bunch: locals, professionals sipping after work lagers and hipsters alike. It’s also the best place to get chatty with the staff who are sociable and all over the food. Jones’s menu pulsates with authenticity and dynamic flavours, in tune with a modern crowd. Minimising their carbon footprint is priority as is supporting local producers. Hard to find ingredients such as rose petals are sourced from the nearby Prahran market, gamekeepers for their Aylesbury duck and Gippsland lamb. Foodwise, start with a number of the ‘small plates’ – they’re fantastic value and whilst the dishes may be tongue-twisters the flavours are palate pleasers. For example the popular street snack, ‘Rghaif’ ($14), similar to a calzone is excellent. Toasty pastry is packed with spinach, peas, and artichoke, lifted by refreshing mint. Equally onsong is the Duck Merguez ($5) a spiced sausage of Tunisian origin – and yes it packs some fiery heat. The signature B’stilla ($14) is a non-negotiable order. Soft brik pastry comes filled with chicken,

tender duck, cinnamon and saffron. It’s made even richer with eggs and almonds, and finished with a good dusting of icing sugar. What a sensory interplay of savoury-salty-cum-sweet and a complete thrill to eat. You’ll have a tagine, presented in traditional clay pots; there’s vegetable with figs and goats curd for the vego folk, lamb with apricots or seafood ($34). Fresh mussels, fleshy blue cod and octopus swim in a wonderfully fragrant chermoula and saffron broth. It’s a dish you want to keep diving into, even with the tough octopus, and best mopped up with a side of fluffy cous cous ($6). Even better are the heirloom carrots, ($8) tarted up with pumpkin and sesame seeds and a seriously good green chilli labne. Finger lickin’ brilliance. Bold flavours call for thirst-quenching sips. Disappointingly the wine list is short and steep, so your best value is one of the house-crafted cocktails – West Wind Gin with cucumber sorbet, fresh mint and tonic anyone? Desserts are equally on theme with a creamy rosewater flan ($10) and rockin’ walnut nougatine a standout. B’Stilla is a modern Moroccan recipe for success. With whispers of a new tuckshop/ street food venue in the pipeline, here’s to a swinging first year and beyond.

» B’Stilla 30b Bray Street, South Yarra Ph: (03) 9826 2370 Tues-Thurs 5.30pm til late Fri & Sat 12.00pm til late bstilla.com

34 The Melbourne Review February 2014

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

Hawthorn Common A wholefood philosophy put into action is working wonders at Hawthorn Common.

by Marianne Duluk

t’s a recipe for the common good. Danny Colls (ex-Café Racer and Silo) and George Sykiotis (Press Club, Hellenic Republic, Gazi) have recently overhauled the former Orto café along Burwood Road, into a slick, sustainable and community minded joint.

Livingroom by Lou Pardi

t’s not entirely unusual for Malvern locals to have the odd facelift, and when it comes to well-loved local the Livingroom, a few adjustments bring out its best.

In a corner shop on Claremont Avenue, Livingroom’s (relatively) new Chef Michael Harrison is creating the kind of food you’d expect at a city fine dining establishment. It’s not surprising given his pedigree – he worked with Ray Capaldi, Gary Mehigan, Jeremy Strode, Leigh Dundas (as Chef de Partie at Attica) and Patrick Craig (at Restaurant Maris) before a stint as Head Chef at Syracuse. The tone at Livingroom lies somewhere between a dinner at a friend’s house (the kind of friend who has a butler perhaps) and a classic fine dining experience. The antique-style mismatched dining settings lend character to the otherwise reserved, but not stuffy, dining room. The menu paces through classic European fare, with a touch of Mediterranean for good measure. Produce is sourced locally where possible, and straight from the farmer is the preference. Rutherglen lamb, Milawa free range poultry and plenty of other locals have a direct relationship with Livingroom, and their produce is showcased very well.

It’s worth mentioning the front of house team, led by manager Jason De Stefano, a faultless crew lifting and replacing implements and foodstuffs (together with a well-advised glass of wine) with the grace and seamlessness of a silver-service-trained ghost. The six-course tasting menu ($90) kicks off with beef tartare, a pleasing mound of grass-fed beef with egg yolk, coriander and

raspberry chips; it’s a refined take on a classic – and a delight. The theatre arrives with the soup course – a garden of chicken, crab, sorrel, shitake mushroom and pork crackling, doused at the table in a coconut broth. The smoked beetroot salad with blackberries and goats cheese is good, but dense in flavour and perhaps a more reserved salad would pave the way better for the next course. The highlight of the night is the ocean trout with miso leeks, cuttlefish, cucumber and corned beef – a perfectly balanced stack delivering comfort and a medley of gorgeous textures in each mouthful. Somewhat of an East Mediterranean curveball in this line-up, the lamb shoulder with cracked wheat tabouleh, shanklish (cheese), smoked almonds and lamb jus is excellent. At course five, you may be wondering when this generous serve lands how you’ll get through it, yet the next moment your dish is clean. Dessert is a duo of milk chocolate mousse and sweet potato custard on hazelnut crumble topped with curls of Gianduia (Italian hazelnut chocolate). If you’re not after a marathon eating session, skip the tasting menu and opt for the one course ($35), two course ($50) or three course ($65) options, or mix and match of your own accord from entrees (all $19), mains (all $35), sides (all $9) and desserts (all $17). Also open for breakfast and lunch. Whether you’re lucky to call the Livingroom your local, or it’s a destination to dine, it’s certainly worth a visit.

»»Livingroom Restaurant and Café 12-18 Claremont Avenue, Malvern Ph: (03) 9576 0356 Breakfast: Saturday - Sunday. Lunch: Wednesday Sunday. Dinner: Tuesday - Saturday lroom.com.au

“Environmental sustainability and a complete wholefood lifestyle is our philosophy,” says Danny, and it’s seriously impressive to see the chefs milling their own flour into wholesome breads and pastries, hand rolling oats, culturing yoghurt for power-boosting green smoothies and composting waste wherever possible. It’s a huge open space, so there’s plenty of room for your whole crew to enjoy the dark timber furnishings or leafy outdoor terrace. Decked out with recycled wine crates, here you can have a potter amongst the kitchen’s

herb garden or join in a spot of yoga on Saturday mornings. Locals love the Common Eggs ($18), a hearty mix of earthy mushrooms, wilted silverbeet and bacon ‘crumble’ that pack a serious crunch. It’s virtuous, as is local trout draped over a savoury ricotta flan ($18) with house pickled beetroots. Lunch-wise, ensure you stick your fork into the hearty Ox pie ($18) or a vibrant dish of Carrots ($14) presented five ways. From pureed, shaved, pickled and fried, it will have you re-think the humble veg. Brilliant Genovese coffee pumps daily with pour over, drip, syphon and aero press blends all up for grabs. These guys care an awful lot about supporting local producers and setting an example for the wholefood lifestyle. So support the common good and go. It’s anything but common.

»»Hawthorn Common 302 Burwood Road, Hawthorn, 3122 Mon-Thu 7am-4.30pm; Fri 7am-late; Sat, Sun 6.30am-6pm Ph: (03) 9819 2200 hawthorncommon.com

The Melbourne Review February 2014 35

melbournereview.com.au

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

Everything’s coming up Rosés by Andrea Frost

t might well be nearing the end of summer but there’s still plenty of heat to come. Rosé, that pink wine made from red grapes, is one of the vinous world’s most

De Bortoli La Boheme Act Two Pinot Noir Rosé 2013

Port Phillip Estate Salasso Rosé Pinot Noir

RRP: $20 Yarra Valley debortoli.com.au

RRP: $22 Mornington Peninsula portphillipestate.com.au

Leanne and Steve Webber of De Bortoli Wines in the Yarra Valley are champions of rosé. So much so, they started a revolution – the Rosé Revolution – to encourage the relishing, making and consumption of pale, dry and textural rosé. This all started, as it often does, with the inspiration derived from a bottle of French rosé while holidaying in Provence. This wine, the De Bortoli La Bohème Act Two, keeps their dream alive. Made from 90% Pinot Noir with a splash of a few other varieties, it offers a gentle puff of strawberry, rosehip and a red summer berry aromas. True to their maxim the palate is savoury, dry and lovely and well worth starting a revolution for.

I remember, some time ago, hearing a rock star accept a Hall of Fame music award by saying, “It takes a lot of effort to look this casual”. This wine is a bit like that; lots of care and attention backstage to make a perfectly effortless wine on stage. Behind the scenes are super vineyards, careful varietal selection and meticulous winemaking. In the glass, the wine offers depth and complexity all wrapped up in a lovely salmon hue. The nose offers a hint of spice and strawberry aromas, reminding me of the lovely pink fuzz off newly made jam. The palate is dry, savoury, textural and delicious. Which makes it sound a lot simpler than it actually is, but this of course, is what makes rosé special.

thirst slaking and refreshing wines. See the last weeks of summer off with a few of Australia’s most adorable pink wines. Serve ice cold with a good view and even better company.

Bird in Hand Pinot Noir Rosé

La Linea Tempranillo Rosé 2013

RRP: $20 Adelaide Hills birdinhand.com.au

RRP: $21 Adelaide Hills lalinea.com.au

For reasons known to viticulturalists, winemakers and Mother Nature only, the Adelaide Hills and Pinot Noir go particularly well together. The higher altitude and cooler climate help to keep the famously wily variety happy so it can produce all of the things that Pinot Noir produces well; pretty and beguiling aromas with great complexity and spice… when it’s in the mood, of course. So it’s no surprise that when Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir is made into rosé it is equally enticing, if only in a less complex way. This wine has a particularly pretty nose of strawberries, watermelon, and bright red fruits while the palate is crisp, lively, dry and very moreish.

Since its first release in 2007, this wine has steadily built a reputation as one of Australia’s best rosés. Not surprising when you have the cleverness and credentials of the team made up of Peter Leske and David LeMire MW, wine industry professionals with a swagger of vintages, qualifications and experience with esteemed producers behind them. Every decision here has been scrupulous but I’ll not complicate such a beautiful thing with technical details. This wine is delightful. Lovely pale pink, it is dry, savoury, crisp and delicious. Brimming with dreamy wafts of red fruit, rosehip a little spice the wine finishes bone dry with lovely refreshing acidity. A perfect wine for pretty much any moment.

36 The Melbourne Review February 2014

The Kitchen

Weylandts will be hosting a sumptuous summer harvest event in-store in March. Keep an eye on The Melbourne Review and the Weylandts Australia Facebook pages for your chance to win tickets to this exclusive event.

After launching its first Australian store in Melbourne, South Africa’s leading furniture retailer, Weylandts, is set to turn the local industry on its head. by Marianne Duluk

ith stores across South Africa, Namibia and now Abbotsford, Edgear Weylandts’ furniture is designed to inspire with its signature modern designs and sustainable techniques. Conveying the store’s ethos is their inhouse bistro, The Kitchen. Under the guidance of dynamic South African chef, Charlene Pretorius, The Kitchen fuses South African flavours for a contemporary Melbourne crowd. It’s a beautiful environment with natural light streaming onto the sleek, raw furnishings and textured ceramics. Food wise; dishes are honest and effortless, with ingredients such as cape spices and rooibos sprinkled across the menu. The Kitchen features Maison Estate wines including their prized Chenin Blanc and

superb olive oils and lemon juice produced from the Weylandts Franschhoek family farm, Maison. The Melbourne Review speaks with Pretorius about her new project and how she has transported a little slice of South Africa to Melbourne. South African food is often referred to as ‘rainbow cuisine’, given its variety of multicultural sources and stages. How would you best describe the cuisine? South African cuisine is like a liquorice all-sort... Absolute dynamite! Each South African cooking influence is so unique yet the influences have rubbed off on one another throughout the years – both locally and on

an international level. We know much more of our own cuisine – the different cultures, where it originated and its influences – to form what it is today. Our influences have come from as far as Malaysia including Dutch, British, Indian, French and a dash of Portuguese. However our main ingredient that has made us unique has come from our African roots. M elbourne diners are known for their discerning palates; how has the reaction been? The reviews have been well-received and extremely positive. Our style is very much contemporary, with a dash of fusion, making

Photos: Sharyn Cairns

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW FEBRUARY 2014 37

MELBOURNEREVIEW.COM.AU

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE it appealing for the diner to experience new ingredients balanced with the familiar.

that is on ﬁre. Like the Aussies, we live to eat! What advice would you give home chefs who are inspired by your style of cooking? Keep it simple, use a recipe as a guideline but break the rules! Cooking is about playing around and creating your own palate in your food.

We don’t see a great deal of South African establishments around town; what is your secret to promoting a somewhat ‘exotic’ cuisine? As we are very much competing with some of Melbourne’s ﬁnest, we don’t distinctively promote it as a South African café. We have kept a sound balance when it comes to ﬂavours and people’s palates. Our secret: keeping it honest with a zing of South Africa on the plate.

How would you describe the food and overall philosophy at The Kitchen? Well let’s try this... fresh, honest, simple and unique with a dash of ﬂair.

Can you talk us through any speciﬁc cooking techniques and interesting ingredients you have incorporated into the menu? The whole trend for 2014 is focusing on preserving and curing, which has been a technique that has been quite lost and underrated for the past few years. We have been pickling daikon and a few other ingredients, which is really exciting. Do you source much local produce and does this have an impact on the menu? We incorporate local produce, as it’s a huge part of our philosophy and how we accentuate our food beliefs. We source free-range and organic wherever possible to encourage environmental sustainability and a wholefood lifestyle approach. Talk us through the ‘Madiba homebrew burger’, currently on the menu and its connection with Nelson Mandela. I was at Federation Square in Melbourne, watching his memorial and I decided there and then to dedicate something to this legendary man! And so the Madiba burger was born. Essentially boerewors meets chakalaka in a burger. We use freshly crushed coriander seeds and a mixture of other spices (which I can’t speak of as it is part of my great grandma’s

secret recipe). Chakalaka is an African-spiced bean sauce that the Zulus eat on their bread and ‘pap’ – a traditional porridge/polenta made from ground maize.

African chef, however, a chef who was well travelled, with a diverse palate; someone who could translate our vision on a plate, which Caleb does tremendously well.

Who is the Head Chef at The Kitchen and was it difficult to find a chef who shared your vision and enthusiasm for the project? Caleb Laws, from New Zealand, is leading the team. We didn’t specifically look for a South

Do you see a difference in Australia’s relationship to food compared with South Africa’s? South Africans have become more passionate about their food over the past decade and we have really kick-started with a food culture

» The Kitchen 200 Gipps Street, Abbotsford, 3067 Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday: 9am-5pm Tuesday and Saturday: 10am-5pm Sunday: 10am-4pm Ph: 9445 5900 weylandts.com.au

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38 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW FEBRUARY 2014

FEATURE

NEW SCHOOL Bottle shop racks are no longer stacked solely by the old-school Aussie ales of yore like VB, Fosters or Cascade. Now we see fridges full of cheeky experiments, and styles taken from foreign lands. BY JOHN DEXTER

ozens of craft brewing companies have sprung up in the past decade to colonise the bottle shop and your tastebuds. Spanning the breadth of the country from Perth to Hobart, Australian beer has a new style: variety. Your choice is hardly even limited by the adjectives used to describe them. Golden, dark, pale, summer, winter, Indian, ginger, white, unďŹ ltered â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the list goes on. The big boys have noticed, too, and are jumping on board. Coopers has always

had a niche in brewing beers slightly off the beaten track, but with Celebration Ale and the new Artisan Reserve they are well and truly establishing themselves as craft masters. Melbourne locals, Hawthorn Brewing Co also make a strong showing this issue with their newly released Golden Ale. We spoke to them about tackling a saturated yet thirsty market as independent brewers. So, hop to it and take a peek inside the new world of Australian brewing, with technique, style and ingredients sourced from far away.

BORN, GROWN & RAISED IN THE ADELAIDE HILLS

NEW Honey

For all enquiries please call 1300 HBC BEER (433 233) or email ContaCt@HawtHoRnBREwing.Com.au

Cyser

Artisan by nature, unique in character. Our range of cloudy ciders are made in the Adelaide Hills from hand picked fruit from our family and local orchards. Individually crafted to create an authentic cider: cloudy, unfiltered, untamed & full flavoured. For stockists visit loboapple.com

Cider with Style

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW FEBRUARY 2014 39

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BEER & CIDER

Crafty Coopers Artisan Reserve is the newest addition to the growing Thomas Cooper’s Selection line of craft beers for Coopers.

BY JOHN DEXTER

oopers managing director, Dr Tim Cooper, notes that this is “an allmalt Pilsner crafted with Hallertau Tradition and Hallertau Hersbrucker hop varieties, both sourced from Bavaria”. Indeed, two other hops are used in the beer’s making, but their identities are under wraps to prevent imitations of this distinctive release. “The result is a bright, clear beer that is golden yellow in colour with an appetising soft and creamy head. First impressions are citrusy with a balanced malt character.” Artisan Reserve sits apart from other pilsners

on the market for a few reasons. Thanks to Coopers’ tradition and expertise in creating bottle-conditioned beer, Artisan Reserve is unpasteurised, unlike most lagers. This leaves the beer tasting fresher out of the bottle. The beer also sports a higher alcohol content than the majority of lagers on the market, which, aside from adding a touch more kick to your drink, strongly supports its ﬂavour and aroma. Flavours of citrus, ester and fruit are bolstered by the use of a specially selected Tuborg strain of lager yeast in fermentation as well, reducing the presence of any sulphury notes. An extended brewing process in maturation tanks helps to develop this rich ﬂavour, and removes the need for pasteurisation. Tasting notes for Artisan Reserve suggest seafood, tempura, or bacon and pork sausages best accompany it. After the success of Celebration Ale, which shifted 100,000 cases last year establishing itself far beyond being a simple seasonal release, this beer is a welcome addition to an expanding line of craft beers from the South Australian brewery.

coopers.com.au

17th - 25th May 2014 GALA LAUNCH TIX ON SALE NOW

For program launch details head to

GOOD GOO D BEE BEER R WEEK.COM.AU

40 The Melbourne Review February 2014

FEATURE / BEER & CIDER McLaren Vale Beer Company - Vale Ale IPA

Mountain Goat - Summer Ale

A trend you’re seeing in Australia is the IPA [India Pale Ale – heavy on the hops]. I can easily have a session on this IPA from McLaren Vale in South Australia, and recommend it to anyone.

This is a great beer and it’s the first craft beer available in cans - fantastic for when you’re going camping or to music festivals. Mountain Goat first did a limited run of the cans and it’s just gone epic, everyone wants them.

Hargreaves Hill ESB

Boatrocker - Alpha Queen

The Hargreaves Hill ESB [Extra Special Bitter] is great on a bit of a cooler night, for something a bit more full-flavoured, a bit heavier. The Hargreaves Hill brewery is in the Yarra Valley and they’ve got a restaurant in Yarra Glen where you can go and have a beer – worth seeing if you’re in the area.

Alpha Queen has been around for a while and is one of my old favourite go-to beers. It’s heavy, but still easy to drink on a cool night. Start off with Alpha Queen and your palette will walk up the mountain of hops!

Murray’s Craft Brewing Co. - Whale Ale Melbourne Bitter This is the beer I drank when I was younger. It’s an old favourite of mine. (I’m showing my age – all the young kids drink VB now.)

Matilda Bay Brewing Company - Alpha Pale Ale The Alpha Pale Ale won a lot of awards years ago. It’s still a great beer and you can find it on tap.

Brew Cult - Hop Zone Session IPA Some young guys just coming into the mix are the guys behind Brew Cult. This beer has a great hops flavour and good balance.

Gabriel Presutto Is General Manager Of The Boatbuilders Yard At South Wharf Promenade.

Top 16

Australians have always been known for their love of beer, but it’s only been in recent times that Aussies have become a force on the craft beer scene.

South East Brewing Company Monster Mash Double IPA This is a phenomenal beer if you can find it. It’s stronger in alcohol and hard to find, but so worth it to chase it down. It was the first beer launched by this brewer and everyone in the industry took notice.

Aussie Summer Beers

Gabriel Presutto

America leads the way in craft brewing, but Australian brewers are catching up. Two years ago I would go to a craft beer show and you might get a couple of good ones. Now each stall has a beer that’s fantastic. My favourite beer changes dayto-day, season-to-season, here’s my current top 16 Aussie Summer beers.

Holgate Brewhouse Road Trip American IPA

Bridge Road Brewers Beechworth Pale Ale *

Holgate’s brewhouse is in Woodend. It’s at the end of the train line, so you can get the train, have a couple of beers and come back into town. Worth a visit.

This is a simple, easy-drinking Pale Ale with enough flavour to satisfy a craft beer drinker, but good for sessions too.

Moo Brew - Pilsner Mornington Peninsula Brewery - Pale Ale This American-style pale ale is a really good-drinking sessional pale ale, especially in the afternoon.

The Moo Brew Pilsner, from Tasmania, is slightly more expensive than other pilsners, but well worth it. It’s got a great, light flavour and makes a great sessional beer.

This beer from Port Stephens in NSW has a fantastic name. It’s a really easy-drinking beer that you can easily share with friends. It’s not too heavy and not too light; simple and easy to drink but still offers enough flavour to satisfy.

Feral Brewing - Feral White The Feral White is one of the most awarded white beers in Australia. It’s from WA and not always easy to find but worth getting your hands on. It’s great example of a white beer and good if you feel like a refreshing, fruity, unfiltered beer something different.

Beard and Brau Bon Chiens Saison This is a French farmhouse ale with a high alcohol percentage. It’s got that lovely sweet and malt flavour to it with a little bit of hops.

Matso’s Broome Brewery Ginger Beer Although this is not technically a beer, Matso’s Ginger Beer is simple great, easy-drinking ginger beer. If you’re feeling parched, it’s stinking hot and you don’t feel like a cider, this is great. The ginger isn’t too heavy or hot on the tongue, it’s just refreshing.

theboatbuildersyard.com.au

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THE MELBOURNE REVIEW FEBRUARY 2014 41

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42 The Melbourne Review February 2014

FEATURE / BEER & CIDER

Golden Ale

home brewing front [they have run an invite only beer festival for more than ten years] but to transition to a commercial brewing company was a big step... but very rewarding,” Willis says.

Hawthorn Brewing Co is proud to announce the release of its sixth beer, the Golden Ale.

While the lads don’t currently have their own fully operational brewery, they do have the ‘Hawthorn brew shed’ where Chief Brewing Officer Hamish Reed tinkers away developing, tasting and tweaking their many recipes in small batches. These are then upscaled at commercial breweries where Reed works with the in-house brewers to ensure the taste, style and specs achieved in the brew shed are replicated.

“

We are always looking for gaps in the market and for new brews to complement our existing beer styles,” Managing Director Peter Willis explains. “Golden Ale is a popular style and, with its lower hop profile, is very easy drinking. It adds another dimension to our range and complements our other lighter style beer [a Czech pilsner] well.” With German malts, the full-flavoured, yet easy-to-drink, ale has a sparkling golden appearance with use of hops from the USA, the UK and Australia with characters of passionfruit and tropical fruit. Available from February 2014, Hawthorn’s sixth beer joins its flagship Pale Ale, UK-style Amber Ale, Czechstyle Pilsner, Belgian-style Witbier and the Australian IPA. The Golden Ale continues the Hawthorn Brewing Co’s motto of utilising the world’s best brewing styles and techniques. “It is important to offer a wide taste profile to give our customers options,” Willis continues.

“The Golden Ale is a step up from our craft beer entry-level Pilsner. This is important, as we look to increase the range of styles that our customers have been exposed to, without it proving too big a step. It’s all about having a diversity of products to suit the consumer.” The Hawthorn lads have taken a different approach to this release. Traditionally they brew a small limited release keg run to test the market. If the market says ‘yes’ then that beer becomes their seasonal keg/packaged beer for the following year. However, with the Golden Ale, they jumped straight into a larger batch of packaged-only beer. Willis explains: “The keg market is extremely competitive and we did not want to detract from our existing four keg products. In addition the feedback

we received from our customers to a packaged Golden Ale was very positive. Our customers are very loyal and have been with us for a long time, so they have confidence in the brews we produce. This reassurance is very humbling and allows us to move forward with brews confident there is a market for them”. Hawthorn Brewing Co. started in 2008 as a backyard idea of three mates with a history of home brewing. After living abroad for many years, the boys experienced first hand the variety of styles and flavours in the international beer scene. It was here that the idea started to take hold. “We’d had some pretty good results on the

Since its inception, the company has gone from strength-to-strength gathering a loyal following of dedicated craft beer fans winning many awards along the way. “The support for our beer has been wonderful,” Willis says. “Consumers, retailers and venue operators alike have all embraced our products”. Hawthorn Brewing Company products are available nationally at all good independent retailers, Dan Murphy’s, BWS, First Choice Liquor and Vintage Cellars, as well as your favourite pubs, restaurants, cafes and bars.

hawthornbrewing.com.au

DOMAINE CHANDON SECRET GARDEN PARTY All was revealed at Domaine Chandon’s recent Secret Garden Party. Set on the picturesque property, over 300 guests enjoyed a beautiful summer afternoon at the Yarra Valley’s favourite winery. With lush lawns underfoot and a balmy summer breeze in the air, guests sampled wine tastings direct from the Chandon cellar paired with a selection of epicurean canapés created by Domaine Chandon’s Greenpoint Brasserie. Guests included Lisa Gorman, Emma Notarfrancesco, Clare Bowditch, Yeojin Bae, Emma Clapham and Dani Venn.

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THE MELB OUR NE R EVIEW F EBRUARY 2014

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

WOMEN IN DESIGN A new group exhibition at fortyfivedownstairs unveils the creative practices of 14 of Melbourne’s leading female designers.

44 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW FEBRUARY 2014

FORM 1.

1. Simone LeAmon, Ricotta 2. Leah Heiss, Drift; 3. Debbie Ryan, Dome House 4. Celina Clarke, Yo 5. Sue Carr, Westin Hotel Melbourne 6. Susan Hewitt and Penelope Lee, Great Petition 7. Kerstin Thompson, Marysville Police Station.

WOMEN IN DESIGN

A new group exhibition at fortyfivedownstairs unveils the creative practices of 14 of Melbourne’s leading female designers. BY DANIELLA CASAMENTO

elbourne has a rich design culture which is fostered by numerous degree courses offered by our tertiary institutions. While the number of professional female designers who practice architecture, interior design, industrial design, landscape architecture, graphic design and visual art continues to grow, their contributions to shaping our built environment is less recognised than that of their male counterparts. Women In Design is a group exhibition which unveils the creative practices of 14 of Melbourne’s leading female designers. Showing at fortyﬁvedownstairs, this two-week exhibition is presented by the Design Institute of Australia Victoria Tasmania Branch and is a satellite event of Melbourne Now. Debbie Ryan and Sue Carr (interior design), Helen Watts and Michaela Webb (graphic

design), Kerstin Thompson and Leanne Zilka (architecture), Penelope Lee and Susan Hewitt (visual art), Celina Clarke (lighting), Helen Kontouris (furniture), Jenny Underwood (textile design), Leah Heiss (interdisciplinary design), Simone LeAmon (artist and designer) and Kirsten Bauer (landscape architecture) have produced designs that are embedded in the physical and cultural environment of our city and beyond. The exhibition features a mix of scale models, plans and photography of completed work, audio video installations and samples of furniture, textiles and light ﬁttings. Each piece tells a story about the designers’ careers. Highly visible projects include the Westin Hotel Melbourne, QV2 apartment building and the Great Petition sculpture which rests in Burston Reserve behind Parliament House. Other projects are recognised by their relationship to cultural institutions such as the National

Trust’s Polly Woodside Gallery. Clarke’s light fittings are found in many public and private buildings locally and interstate. “Since establishing ISM Objects in 1990, I have seen many women work in this field very successfully,” she says. “I would like to see more women move into the local manufacturing field with their design work. With so much manufacturing moving off-shore, it is important to make sure that we retain skills in our local manufacturing industry.” Bauer’s work with Aspect Studios spans commercial, infrastructure and public realm projects. Her installation offers an insight into the design process with images of sites alongside designs in development and images of completed projects. Zilka and Underwood’s video projection details Fibre-architecture, their highly collaborative practice which investigates the cross-pollination of textiles with architecture through new technologies. Heiss collaborates with experts from a range of disciplines including nanotechnology, medicine, manufacturing and computer science. Her audio visual presentation demystifies her work at the cutting edge of hearing technologies, biosignal sensing jewellery and more. Founder of multidisciplinary firm Carr Design Group, Sue Carr says Australian design culture has leapt forward since she began her career in the early 1970s. She says there is now a greater awareness that architecture and interior design are “infallibly linked” which has in turn “increased expectation on our level of expertise and the quality of our delivered outcomes. This

has created a greater sense of responsibility among interior designers and contributed to building the reputation of interior design as a worthwhile and recognised profession.” Kerstin Thompson is one of Melbourne’s most prominent architects and says the practice of women in architecture will have evolved when women are respected as architects, “not ‘women architects’”. “While there are many women practicing there is still an inadequate number that are highly visible as leaders and authorities in the industry, leaders of practices explicitly responsible for establishing the agenda and direction of projects and more broadly the culture of practice,” she says. “This visibility is important because it communicates their role to more people and in turn transforms expectations around our rightful place in construction and design.” The exhibition features biographies of early Melbourne architects Eileen Good (1893-1986), Ellison Harvie (1902-1984), Mary Turner Shaw (1906-1990), Cynthea Teague (1907-2007), and landscape designer Edna Walling (1895-1973), courtesy of the Australian Women’s History Forum.

» Women In Design shows at fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne until February 22. design.org.au/victas fortyfivedownstairs.com

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW FEBRUARY 2014 45

MELBOURNEREVIEW.COM.AU

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Somebody Drew That Marketing, branding and true innovation BY BYRON GEORGE

arketing and branding. Arguably the two most important words in today’s design paradigm. Like babies on long haul flights or emails with the word “urgent” in the subject title, mention of them usually ﬁlls me with a fair dose of dread. It’s like somehow, good design is not enough anymore.

At its worst, branding is the appliqué of proven ideologues applied to something based on some perceived notions of what is the right thing to do. A collection of ticks on a checklist, responses from marketing team focus groups. At its most sinister it’s like putting sulphur dioxide on old meat to make it appear fresh. It’s gym trained tanned young models in swim suits selling sugary drinks to obese people. It’s oil companies with green logos and ads featuring small children. At the other end of the scale are companies Print_Ad_Melbourne Review_FA.pdf 1

Image: Courtesy of www.mac-history.net

My problem is not with the words or what they mean. They have long been an important part of our commercial cultural milieu. If you want to sell something in an increasingly crowded marketplace, you had better have a strong brand position or you’re not likely to make much of an impact or be noticed. It’s just that branding and marketing have now been given a value in themselves independent of what they are attached to. People talk about brand as if it’s a thing, rather than a perception of something. In the past, people would create a great product and develop a brand around it. Today the reverse can be true. Branding is often used as a replacement for innovation. Frankenstein’s Monster has given birth to a Kardashian.

Original 1984 Macintosh.

who use it to great effect to communicate their company ethos and get people excited about what they are doing. It offers a window into a realm of possibility and something that speaks about who we are. We don’t think of spending money when we buy products from great brands. The important thing is how they make us feel. People queuing all night at an Apple store for the latest iPhone, which is almost identical to the previous one. Spending more than $30 for a bottle of Aesop hand soap when a $3 bottle from the supermarket does the same thing. These are two strong brands that have transformed the retail landscape and developed a cult following, not just because they have great product, because they have managed to cultivate brand advocates. In the architectural world, branding is a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it shows that developers are ﬁnally realising that employing good architects and designers on a job will increase theamperceived market value of a 12/02/2014 11:45

FORTYFIVEDOWNSTAIRS 45 FLINDERS LN, MELBOURNE TUESDAY, 11 FEBRUARY - SATURDAY, 22 FEBRUARY 2014 TUESDAY TO FRIDAY 11AM - 5PM & SATURDAY 12 - 4PM ARTIST FLOOR TALKS SATURDAY, 15 & 22 FEBRUARY 1 - 2 PM WWW.DESIGN.ORG.AU/WOMENINDESIGN WOMEN IN DESIGN IS A MELBOURNE NOW SATELLITE EVENT

project. This leads to more of our built fabric being designed by people who are actually trained to do so (Australia has one of the lowest percentages of buildings actually designed by architects in the western world – less than 10 percent). The problem occurs when this is the only reason they are employed. The type of scenario where architects and designers are employed to put their names on the marketing campaign is a little too common in this country. Some carefully placed furniture items and ﬁnishes from an experienced hand do not automatically make great places to live. Ultimately, many of these apartments are actually designed by real estate copywriters. There is one company who seems to have mastered the balance between a commercial reality and making desirable spaces that are actually great to live in. Neometro have been creating apartments of varying scales across inner Melbourne for more than 20 years. The design is always fresh, the spaces are

interesting and thoughtful, and even when they are compact, they are designed in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you’re living in a shoe box. As far as a brand proposition goes, their product is consistent in its standard. Importantly, design has always been at the core of what they’re about – it’s not an add-on. This really goes to the heart of it. Design is not something that adds value to great brands, it’s an intrinsic part of them. Brand advocates demand it.

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

Women in design

46 The Melbourne Review February 2014

FORM

No Fixed Address by Jennifer Cunich

f the 21st century is the knowledge age, then it will also be the century in which our working habits change and adapt to reflect the way we see and use knowledge. Adopting flexible spaces and practices is part of the rise of knowledge-intensive industries, a global movement revolutionising the workplace. Many of these challenge the traditional notion of the office, by making work process-driven, rather than a concept determined by place. One concept which has become increasingly popular is activity-based work. Activity-based work (ABW) refers to a workplace environment where there are no fixed seats, and employees choose where they will work from a diverse mix of work spaces. Macquarie Bank was one of the first companies to adopt the practice only four years ago. It was quickly followed by several other notable institutions, such as the National Australia Bank, GPT, Jones Lang LaSalle and Arup. The benefits of ABW are many and varied. ABW workplaces recognise that everyone has their own working behaviours and offers employees the choice of various settings for different types of work. For instance, certain areas would allow task-focused work in a quiet environment free of distractions, while others would allow for collaboration. Moreover, most ABW sites drive staff engagement by offering a greater number of collaborative spaces than a typical office layout. Offering a variety of

Magic Millions by Enzo Raimundo

hile it’s no great surprise that median house prices in many of Melbourne’s leafy eastern suburbs top the $1 million mark, the increase in median house prices across the city in the final quarter of 2013 added some surprises to the milliondollar list. The city’s median house price rose by more than seven percent for the December quarter, to $643,000, with the big increase in top end sales helping to push that price up. In fact,

work spaces increases productivity and ultimately translates to better project delivery. Companies can also fit 10 to 20 percent more people in the same building, thereby increasing the value of their premises.

been the potential to connect and communicate with those from other disciplines. It comes as little surprise that this movement has been quickly adopted by entrepreneurs and start-up communities around the world.

Another concept that has challenged traditional notions of the office is the practice of co-working. The co-working movement, a style of work that involves individuals from different organisations sharing one office space, has so far seen success in parts of the world from San Francisco to Berlin. Fully equipped with the infrastructure of a modern office, one of the most highly valued aspects of co-working has

Of course, the adoption of new working practices is not without complications. Some challenges which have emerged include finding places to store personal effects as well as implementing ways to find people in an unassigned environment. On the other hand, these trends offer a promising vision for the future of workspaces, namely by offering a more creative, engaged and sustainable way to work.

more than 20 percent of all city sales in the quarter were million-dollar sales, compared with 16 percent in the September quarter.

one – Williamstown – reach the magic median figure ($1 million) for the first time ever.

Prahran topped the December quarter price growth list, its median price up 25.7 percent on the September quarter price to $1,155,000. But it was Toorak, with a December quarter median of $2,875,000 – the city’s second highest after East Melbourne which recorded $3,200,000 – which was the city’s top growth suburb for the year. Its December 2013 quarter median was up 55.4 percent on the previous year. However this was inflated by the number of sales above $3 million in the final quarter of 2013. The closing months of 2013, with interest rates at record low, a record number of auctions and a healthy clearance rate average of around 70 percent, saw some suburbs rise above a median of $1 million for the first time in several years and

Even Northcote, once the poor relation to nearby Fitzroy North and Carlton North but now in the top 10 suburbs for house price growth, is nudging the million dollar mark with a median price of $971,500. Bentleigh, Donvale, Moonee Ponds, and Richmond also came close. Having said this, heading into 2014 there are still a range of areas of Melbourne that are much more affordable, with these generally further out from the Melbourne CBD. For those in the market for an owner-occupier or investment home at present, the top most affordable suburbs – based on their median house prices – include Cranbourne, Wyndham Vale and Carrum Downs. The most affordable suburbs for units include Seaford, Frankston, Sunshine and Noble Park.

The growth of Australia’s service economy will be one of the major forces that drive innovation in the 21st century. As ever, human capital will remain at the centre of this revolution. It’s little wonder that companies are finding new ways for enhancing the potential of their most valuable assets – people.

»»Jennifer Cunich is Executive Director, Property Council of Australia (Victoria) propertyoz.com.au

If you are house-hunting in the coming months, remember to do your research with much of this data (including suburb-by-suburb information) provided online at reiv.com. au. And if you find a location you like, it’s worth broadening your search to surrounding suburbs, which are often more reasonable and provide a viable alternative. Armed with the right information, you can more easily find the property to best meet your needs – and one that may well provide a strong return in years to come.

»»Enzo Raimondo is CEO, Real Estate Institute of Victoria. reiv.com.au

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