The Melbourne Review June 2013

THE MELBOURNE

REVIEW ISSUE 20 JUNE 2013

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SPEAKING IN COLOUR

Shepparton Art Museum hosts highlights from the collection of Carrillo and Ziyin Gantner

34 DEBORAH CHEETHAM

BIG DATA ON THE RISE

EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH

Tali Lavi meets a master weaver of words and song

Peter Singline and David Ansett on how we feed Big Data’s voracious appetite

Robert Wilson and Phillip Glass’s minimalist masterpiece returns to the Melbourne stage

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J.M.W. Turner, Peace – Burial at Sea (detail), exhibited 1842. Photo: © Tate, 2013

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Art Gallery.

The Gallery @ Bayside Arts & Cultural Centre proudly presents (What’s so funny ‘bout) peace, love & understanding…? the third in its annual Midwinter Masters series.

Featuring works by Russell DRYSDALE, Sidney NOLAN,

Clifton PUGH, Noel COUNIHAN, Gordon BENNETT, Penny BYRNE, Judy WATSON and Jon CATTAPAN, the exhibition showcases the work of a diverse group of significant 20th

century and contemporary artists, whose practices engage with the theme of social commentary.

Whether openly critical of the status quo, or silently bearing witness, this exhibition seeks to highlight the artist’s role in analysing and reporting upon the political, social and environmental concerns of the times.

(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding...? will run from 22 June to 18 August 2013 at The Gallery @ Bayside Arts & Cultural Centre, Brighton Town Hall.

Jon CATTAPAN, Atonal group (Icy) 2013. Alkyd-modified oil paint, acrylic and coloured pencil on Arches paper, 140 x 140 cm. ©Jon Cattapan, courtesy KalimanRawlins.

The Gallery @ Bayside Arts & Cultural Centre cnr Carpenter & Wilson Streets, Brighton, VIC 3186 03 9592 0291

Bayside Film Festival With its dynamic, life-affirming selection of short films and documentaries from Australia and abroad, the 10th annual Bayside Film Festival is guaranteed to banish those winter blues!

Renowned for showcasing the talent of young and emerging filmmakers, and helmed by Richard Moore in his first year as Artistic Director, the 2013 Festival runs from 28 to 31 August at Palace Brighton Bay Cinemas. Screening alongside the curated section of Australian premieres and new releases will be a selection of short films from around the world created by film makers aged between 10 and 26 years of age.

For further details please contact Mark Potter on 9599 4720 or 0439 141 722 mpotter@bayside.vic.gov.au

baysidefilmfestival.com.au

Contact: Caitlin Telford 9599 4444 and artevents@bayside.vic.gov.au

bayside.vic.gov.au/artsandculture

6 The Melbourne Review June 2013

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BLOODY GOOD EATING

A major new survey of Indigenous art opens at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane

Rebecca Sullivan argues for more extensive consumption of kangaroo and wallaby meat

review

Fashion 22 Performing Arts 23 Visual Arts 32 Food.Wine.Coffee 39 FORM 49

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Patrick Allington

Harriet Edquist

John Neylon

David Ansett

Arabella Forge

Lou Pardi

Claude Baxter

Suzanne Fraser

Christopher Sanders

Daniella Casamento

Andrea Frost

Margaret Simons

Wendy Cavenett

Byron George

Peter Singline

William Charles

Dave Graney

David Sornig

Jennifer Cunich

Noé Harsel

Shirley Stott Despoja

FIONA HALL: BIG GAME HUNTING

Greg Denham

Michael Hince

Rebecca Sullivan

Heide Museum of Modern Art. Until Sunday July 21

Paul Dietze

Phil Kakulas

Peter Tregear

EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH

Alexander Downer

Stephen Koukoulas

Arts Centre Melbourne.

Friday August 2, 6.30pm

Robin Dwyer

Tali Lavi

WINTER SOLSTICE AT LYGON COURT

STORY OF O: MELBOURNE THEATRE COMPANY Southbank Theatre.

Friday 28 June 2013, 7.30pm

SUNDOWNER Whitehorse Centre. Saturday June 29, 8pm

OUR COVER Irene Mbitjana Entata Loading Camels 2006 (detail) acrylic on linen 90 x 120 cm Courtesy the Carrillo and Ziyin Gantner Collection © Irene Mbitjana Entata and Hermannsburg Potters.

Photograph: Andrew Curtis See page 34.

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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8 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013

PROFILE

DEBORAH CHEETHAM Master weaver of words and song

BY TALI LAVI

T

o talk with Deborah Cheetham is to experience a private audience with a master storyteller; the integration of dramatic cadences and musical intonation, her articulate delivery and a trove of stories both personal and ancestral. She is as adept at this form of wordweaving as the Tjanpi Desert Weavers of Central Australia are at weaving materials into the creations she extols.

We meet in a glass surfaced meeting room of a curvaceous St Kilda Road apartment building.

Cheetham is of theatrical bearing, elegant in a cream and black ensemble. Whilst her necklace speaks of fine European provenance, it is her draped scarf which quietly resonates. For Betty Mbitjana’s effulgent artwork depicting Awelye (`Women’s Ceremony’) epitomises the message Cheetham is intent on delivering, that Australian Indigenous culture is vibrant, rich with hidden systems of knowledge and deserving of pride, respect and learning.

To be in her presence is to risk becoming supremely enthralled; Phillip Adams recently interviewed her and sounded not unlike a besotted man, referring to her being `a wholly remarkable human being’ and claiming that she was not merely able to `sing like an angel’ but that she had one of the most beautiful speaking voices he thought he had ever heard.

Listening to Cheetham is akin to listening to an admired teacher introducing you to the wonder of the world, only to find the serious tone being derailed by her subversive humour. Her dark eyes radiate an impish spirit and an earthiness sits alongside a continual engagement with ideas. She lives life passionately, arduously, mindfully.

Soprano, composer, mentor, Head of the Wilin Centre at the Faculty of the VCA and the MCM (Melbourne Conservatorium of Music), University of Melbourne and Associate Dean of Indigenous Development, much more besides.

Cheetham’s ambitious vision encompasses a meeting point of “fair exchange” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia, a “reciprocal model” in which “the performing and visual arts as a way of knowing” is valued.

She is strikingly suited to the role of ambassador for this “quiet revolution” as that very meeting point is to be found within her experience. As her solo show of the late

nineties attested, she grew up perceiving of herself as a White Baptist Abba Fan. A member of the Stolen Generations she was taken away from her mother Monica Little as a baby of three weeks, through an act of deception, and given to a family who adopted her under the misconception that she was abandoned. After coming out at the age of 21, and the subsequent exclusion by her Baptist church community, she turned to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian community. It was there, in the eighties, that her Aboriginality was originally championed.

Cheetham’s ambitious vision encompasses a meeting point of “fair exchange” between Indigenous and nonIndigenous Australia, a “reciprocal model” in which “the performing and visual arts as a way of knowing” is valued.”

But it wasn’t until a decade later, whilst researching Australia’s first Indigenous opera, Pecan Summer, that Cheetham learnt of the power of cultural destiny. Its subject, the Cummeragunja Mission Walk-off in 1939, was an audacious act of Yorta Yorta people which precipitated legal reform. What she didn’t know was that her own maternal grandparents, James and Frances Little, had been part of this extraordinary event, a mass strike against exploitation. The story, one so integral to her own obscured personal history, had been calling to her.

To hear this told is to feel the presence of unexplained happenings and hauntings. I have heard Cheetham tell it over the radio and watched her emotional narration on YouTube. It acknowledges the power of a long-hidden identity laying claim; nothing short of a kind of religious calling. Here, instead of God’s voice descending from the heavens was elderly Aunty Frances Matheson sitting at a kitchen table in Shepparton. “It was the simplicity of those surroundings »a and nd the seemingly incidental nature of that

conversation which made it all the more powerful. It’s like here is your belonging.

Here is your knowing of who you are. Here is your opportunity to know. And see, I think if you broaden that and apply that to Australia more generally . . . without being able to own our histories confidently we can’t actually know who we are, we can’t deeply know. We can have a caricature, which is why there are so many caricatures of the Australian nature or it’s sometimes overly simplified.”

value everything that’s Western and modern about Australia, then you’ll need to value Aboriginal culture as well.”

Reappearing throughout her conversation, one that incorporates somersaults of terminology and thinking liberated from old tropes and `issue’ laden speech, is this hope for a national understanding. As Cheetham explains, “If you’d like Aboriginal people to

Her newest project is in its infancy, a requiem titled Eumerella that will bring to attention the Eumerella Wars of the nineteenth century and the over 6,500 year-old stone dwellings of the Gunditjmara people at Budj Bim, a sacred site otherwise known as Mount Eccles. She attributes

She is a gifted spokesperson for an ancient, breathing culture, “I would argue if there is one culture in the world that can lay claim to being the longest continuing culture, and that the way that they continue that culture is through the visual and performing arts, that’s a fairly proven model, then wouldn’t you say?”

The Melbourne Review June 2013 9

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PROFILE the idea of the form of the requiem to a colleague at Wilin, Tiriki Onus. This is another one of those strange instances of confluence, for Onus, the son of acclaimed visual artist Lin Onus, is also the grandson of Bill Onus, one of the architects of the Cummeragunja Walk-off. A visual artist who always dreamed of becoming an opera singer, he is now pursuing it as a career. To hear Cheetham speak of Budj Bim is to feel that we are living in a country with so much to be illuminated, not mapped out and renamed as past European explorers, but listened to and recognised. Thus the weight of responsibility is transformed into the buoyancy of stories “that can elevate the spirit, that can help us understand and know our country and its history”.

Where does opera fit in? “I just loved opera from the moment I went, because it does what Aboriginal people have been doing for a thousand generations. This is why I know that I’m hardwired for this, we tell our stories through song, dance, costume, makeup, ceremony . . . I was just tapping into something that my ancestors had done forever.” Her epiphany of opera’s magic was experienced at the age of fourteen, where as a student she witnessed Dame Joan Sutherland performing in The Merry Widow at the Sydney Opera House. The love affair with both opera as an art form and Sutherland began at that point.

She credits Jennifer King, her music teacher at the time, with instilling a sense of belief in herself.

King paved the path for excellence by repudiating

other people’s low expectations, which “a lot of Aboriginal people have to suffer in this country even today”. There is the sense of a relay race being played out, one that King began and that Cheetham is continuing through her quest to open this artform up to other Indigenous people through Wilin.

Cheetham began writing songs from a very young age. Her first significant commission was for the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games, the Welcome to Country, Dali Mana Gamarada. Pecan Summer, which she composed, wrote the libretto to, appeared in and directed, was a career turning point.

It was also punctuated by loss that is still keenly felt; Monica, her Aboriginal mother, died two weeks before the premiere and her role model, Dame Joan died the day after.

The premiere, which played on country in Mooroopna, was thick with feeling; it was only a kilometre away from where many of the participants of the Walk-off had ended up.

Her uncle Jimmy Little, esteemed country and western musician, who at eighteen months was carried off Cummeragunja by his parents, was in the audience. Two grandnieces of William Cooper, another architect of the Walk-off and revered social rights campaigner, were in the children’s choir. Pecan Summer will be touring to Adelaide next year and Cheetham hopes to bring it back to Melbourne in 2015 for its fifth year anniversary.

At least the journey is not always lonely.

Cheetham sees herself continuing a long held family tradition of music; her mother had “the finest voice” of the family, her grandparents were musicians. She derives strength from her culture and others who have gone before her, the Yorta Yorta men and women who walked off Cummeragunja thus taking “hold of their own destiny”, and contemporary Indigenous arts practitioners like Stephen and David Page of Bangarra Dance Theatre, Wesley Enoch, Leah Purcell, Gurrumul Yunupingu, “too many to mention”. She draws on “Dame Joan’s work ethic”. She collaborates artistically with her partner, pianist Toni Lalich, head Repetiteur and Company Manager of Short Black Opera, Cheetham’s opera company. They met in 2006 and Cheetham acknowledges “for me it was love at first sight. We have been together ever since.”

At one point, I refer to the dismay felt at her being sidelined during a recent appearance on Q & A. She responds with an irreverent, “I need my own show.” Yes, I assure her, she does.

“That would be fun,” she laughs, “Australia’s Oprah. I’d have my own book club and gratitude journal. Ingratitude journal.” Of course it’s said in jest, but it would be brilliant. One imagines she would amass hordes of adoring fans, Phillip Adams and myself included.

vca-mcm.unimelb.edu.au/wilin

LD OU ALLOCATION SO

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10 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013

FEATURE

Nicholas Chevalier, The Public Library, 1860, watercolour, gift of Mr McEwan, 1965, State Library of Victoria.

FREE, SECULAR AND DEMOCRATIC Building the Public Library 1853-1913

BY HARRIET EDQUIST

I

t is generally supposed that Sydney provided the touchstone for the development of Melbourne’s cultural identity and that in the rivalry between the two cities Melbourne first crafted its view of itself.

onto its shore from the nineteenth-century global diaspora an early experiment in liberal democracy. The invention of a football game with no offside rule and the foundation of one of the earliest Public Libraries in the world were no accidents.

But Sydney was only a part of the story. For Melbourne the main game was elsewhere; it was always Melbourne v The World. The city’s ambition was breathtaking and inspiring.

The exhibition Free, Secular and Democratic: Building the Public Library 1853-1913 at the State Library of Victoria tells the story of the birth and early development of the Public Library. From the laying of its foundation stone in 1854 to the completion of the Domed Reading Room in 1913 it was the quintessential cultural achievement of early Melbourne.

Born competitive, Port Phillip’s first fortune was founded on wool which was sold in tough, competitive overseas markets. Its second fortune came from gold the extraction and processing of which required innovation and advanced technological infrastructure. So the settlement always looked outwards, its squatters and wealthy post-gold entrepreneurs shuttling back and forth between the colony and Europe keeping an eye on the latest idea, product, or invention. The colony liked to communicate and innovate, establishing the first telegraph line (1853) and train service (1853) in the country. And certain of its hard thinkers had the ambition to create from the assemblage of diverse people that crowded

While Charles La Trobe’s government set aside the funding for the building and its books in 1853, the Library’s early fortunes were closely bound up with Redmond Barry, chair of the first trustees. Barry was a quixotic figure and his history is well known; indeed he enjoys something of an iconic status at the Library, his bronze statue still guarding the entrance. Born in Ireland, he studied law and was admitted to the Irish Bar in 1838. Arriving in Melbourne in 1839, he

practised as a lawyer and was elevated to the new bench of the Supreme Court of Victoria in January 1852.

However Barry is best known (apart from sentencing Ned Kelly to the gallows) for his indefatigable enthusiasm for every social, cultural and philanthropic activity he could possibly be involved in – the Mechanics Institute, Melbourne Club, Melbourne Hospital, Philharmonic Society, Philosophical Institute, Royal Society of Victoria. He was first Chancellor of the University of Melbourne as well as chair of the Library’s trustees. He made things happen. He organised the first purchases of books for the Library, oversaw the architectural competition that produced Joseph Reed’s winning design and generally masterminded the development of the Library site for almost three decades.

Joseph Reed, the architect of the library’s first buildings and close colleague of Barry, is far less well known to Melburnians, although his legacy in the city is there for all of us to see. It includes not only the Library but also the Town Hall, three churches, Trades Hall, the Royal Exhibition Building and various buildings at the University of Melbourne, all still used for their original purposes. Reed’s office exists today as Bates Smart, one of the oldest continuous architectural practices in the world.

Free, Secular and Democratic tells two interwoven stories. One focuses on the Queens Reading Room, the Intercolonial Exhibitions buildings of 1866 demolished in the early twentieth century and the Domed Reading Room which took their place. This story is about architectural and design innovation and

the gradual occupation of the whole site from Swanston Street to Russell Street.

The second story concerns the cultural institutions which were gathered together on the site over the course of four decades – the Library, National Gallery of Victoria, Industrial and Technological Museum, Natural History Museum, Schools of Painting and Design, and the Intercolonial Exhibitions which were held in the 1860s and 1870s. With its roots in the liberal political philosophy of the nineteenth century the ‘Institution’ as it was known, followed closely on the heels of the newly established South Kensington (now the Victoria and Albert) Museum in London, both inspired by the educational objective of engaging with the public in a practical and accessible way.

If Melbourne’s identity is characterised, as some believe it is, by a belief in enlightenment and happiness for all, in the importance of social and political engagement and in the capacity of ideas to galvanise action, then we might say that the Public Library is its foundational site.

» Harriet Edquist is Professor of Architectural History at RMIT and Director of RMIT Design Archives. » Free, Secular and Democratic: Building the Public Library 1853-1913 is one of many events celebrating the centenary of the Dome.

This free exhibition shows in the Keith Murdoch Gallery until February 2014. slv.vic.gov.au/free-secular-democratic

The Melbourne Review June 2013 11

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POLITICS American gas

BY ALEXANDER DOWNER

F

racking has become something of a bogeyman. Australia has made a sizeable share of its national income from energy and it is fracking which is going to cost us and dearly.

The problem isn’t solely that we are doubtful about fracking, with many believing it could damage the water table and destroy agriculture.

The real issue is across the Pacific in America and Canada. Fracking has led to a remarkable increase in gas production in the US. In 2008 alone there was a 71 percent increase in gas production in the US and the following year an increase of over 50 percent.

This enormous increase in domestic gas production in the US will have several long term consequences, not just for the Americans but for all of us. Let’s look at it from a selfish Australian point of view. The supply of energy globally is increasing substantially and that is going to have a negative impact on energy prices. For most people that’s good news. But for our coal producers as well as natural gas industry it could very well mean lower prices and lower returns. Already coal prices have

dropped by about one third over the last five years.

Secondly, the Obama administration has begun to approve the export of LNG from the US. They say exports will favour allies and countries with which America has trade agreements. One country in particular is a target for American gas exports: Japan. And Japan is one of our most treasured gas markets so expect some new and tough competition from Uncle Sam in that market. No doubt the Americans will favour markets like Taiwan as well, another of our important markets.

So for the Australian government and our energy exporters, the next few years promise to be challenging. At the moment we are the world’s largest coal exporter and the fourth largest exporter of LNG. We’ve been doing great business in energy markets but that boom looks as though it’s over.

For the Americans, the domestic gas boom is already having a positive impact on the local economy. Manufacturers, particularly of chemicals, have suddenly discovered a source

of cheap energy. Profits are up, investment in some manufacturing sectors is starting to grow again and jobs are being created. Needless to say, American industry is arguing that US sourced gas should be priced at below world parity prices to give home grown industries a competitive edge. Whether that is good economics is highly debatable but it does stand in stark contrast to our domestic energy policies.

In Australia, we are loading up our energy costs through the carbon tax, the 20 percent renewable energy target and by limiting fracking – Victoria has a moratorium on fracking. We’re doing this, as you know, as a contribution to combatting global warming and preserving the environment.

There’s an issue here. For a start, we produce less than 1.5 percent of global man made CO 2 emissions. America produces 18 percent, so what it does really matters; what we do doesn’t matter much at all. And what America has done as a result of fracking and replacing coal with cheap domestic gas is to reduce its CO 2 emissions to below the levels they were in 1994. That’s an incredible statistic. US CO 2 emissions reached their record high in 2005 and have fallen by 12 percent since then.

The gas revolution in the US also has important strategic implications for the world. The Americans are becoming less

dependent on imported energy, in particular hydrocarbons from the Middle East. Some analysts have argued this will lead to greater US disengagement from the Middle East and a deeper engagement with Asia – where the markets are. This is simplistic but it may have an element of truth.

For a start, America is not going to turn its back on Israel. That locks it into the difficult architecture of the Middle East. And secondly, the Americans won’t abandon their other key ally in the region – Saudi Arabia. Although the Americans may have less need for Saudi oil, that isn’t true of America’s European allies – or Japan. And to abandon Saudi Arabia would risk allowing deeply hostile Iran to dominate the politics of the Middle East. And it isn’t just hostile to the West; Iran is also inherently sectarian promoting tensions between Shia and Sunni Muslims.

But having said that, the Obama administration is loathe to get too heavily engaged with Syria’s civil war and nor did it play a leading role in oil rich Libya.

So there it is; the world is changing perhaps to our disadvantage because of fracking in America. It will be an education to see whether the Australian government after the general election in September has some answer to this challenge.

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12 The Melbourne Review June 2013

BUSINESS / PROFILE

Martin Cooperwaite

by Nina Bertok

T

oday, Kiandra IT is a globallyawarded software development company, considered veteran in its field and ranking as the premier choice for IT infrastructure, managed services and digital solutions. But back in 1995 it was merely an extension of a high school friendship group consisting of a handful of ‘buddies’ who had no business sense but just wanted to work in a place they loved.

By sheer coincidence, according to cofounder and Director of Software Development, Martin Cooperwaite, Kiandra IT became a place that others loved too which still remains the essence of what the company is all about.

“When Cam [Cameron Brookes, Managing Director] and I started the business, everything was about care,” Cooperwaite says. “It was central to everything. We worked overnight

and we’d sleep under our desks just to be there when the first person arrived and the last person left. Our message was that we had exceptional experience and that we applied the same level of care to our clients as we did to our staff and each other as friends. So we were absolutely, fundamentally focused on caring and it had to be genuine and real.”

This not only remains the heart and soul of Kiandra IT 18 years on, but ought to be the core of every business model, according to Cooperwaite. If that’s not the case, he advises companies to rethink what their business does.

“Reputation is everything, too. You want every experience related to your company to be as positive as possible and that starts with how your people relate to you as an owner and a leader. Again, it goes back to the essence and dynamic of the company. Always ask

Martin Cooperwaite.

yourself if all your staff, clients and entire network consider you to be relevant, humble and loved. It’s a hard place to reach, but I think if you can set that as your goal, if you can achieve to be loved by everyone, then you’ve nailed it. Relationships are so important. Business has become very whatcan-you-do-for-me-versus-what-I-can-dofor-you but our focus is assisting our clients without asking for a return.”

Kiandra IT is proof that this philosophy works. As testament to Cooperwaite’s leadership and the innovative solutions Kiandra delivers, the company has been awarded countless accolades, including Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year for Software Development in 2009, Software Application Partner of the Year finalist in 2010, and Software Development Partner of the Year in 2011. Additionally, last year Kiandra IT was named the 2012 Microsoft Australia Partner of the Year under the Windows Azure Platform SI category and also won Medium-Sized Business of the Year at the Telstra Business Awards, Best SMB Reseller at the ARN Awards, and Best Overall Business at the Asia Pacific Business Excellence Awards. However, it is one accolade in particular that is more special than any other to Cooperwaite personally.

“The one I am most proud of by far is the BRW Best Place to Work for four years running, because as I said, that’s the essence of what we stand for. Happy, passionate people produce the best results. If you don’t have passion for what you do, you won’t get very far. For me,

that started at about age six when I started writing adventure computer games for my primary school friends. I also really loved problem-solving in general. I learned very simple programming as I was also learning to read and write so Dad would give me source code, which is a list of instructions that you type into your computer to make it do something. So Dad would get me a ‘new game’ but I couldn’t get the game straight away – he gave me the source code which would take me a couple of weeks to type in, but I would have a game at the end of it! I did it all myself since I was six, so Dad pretty much secured my nerd status! I was never going to be a jock.”

Co-founder and high school friend Cameron Brookes filled that role, Cooperwaite jokes.

“Friends’ parents would ask me to fix their computer problems and would tell me, ‘This is fantastic, we’ve had an IBM consultant working on it for three weeks and he couldn’t get it sorted’. I’m also working at McDonald’s for $6 an hour at this time so when they started paying me $60 I realised I could make something out of it. My current business partner Cam was doing the same sort of thing back then except he played sports, unlike me. He came to me one day and said, ‘Marty, you’re the nerdiest person I know at school, let’s work on this together!’ The partnership started from there. Word got out and has continued as word-of-mouth since 1995.”

kiandra.com.au

The Melbourne Review June 2013 13

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BUSINESS / FINANCE

Economists are worriers… and warriors

by Stephen Koukoulas

On the policy front, economists are warriors for reform, for change, for progress. They have views and ideas about the appropriate economic policy that they judge will benefit the economy on either efficiency or equity grounds and they are often quite vocal in expressing their views about the prescriptions that need to be followed to make things better.

Add to all of that the quite substantial cut in interest rates and the business sector – outside mining – and consumers are set to maintain solid growth in spending.

These worries are all just part of the swings that inevitably arise over every business cycle.

Some economists are starting to worry about higher inflation as the Australian dollar falls.

Or that the very low level of interest rates will fuel a house price bubble.

These worrying and warrior themes from economists are showing up in the current economic and political dynamics.

There is always something to worry about While much of the election discussion is currently focused on a range of ephemeral matters, there is an undertone of economic policy issues that highlight the divergence between the two main political parties. The economic policy warriors are looking to a likely change in government and the election of the Coalition.

From an economic perspective, there is currently a wall of worry that the end of the mining investment boom will risk Australia rushing headfirst into a recession. Until recently, the mining investment boom was the catalyst for the economy’s resilience.

Industrial relations is something of a policy sleeper at the moment in terms of a public issue, but underneath the surface, the policy warriors at either end of the political spectrum have strong views about how best the regulation should work in the labour market.

One critical effect of the mining boom was its role in driving the Australian dollar to a record high above US$1.10. This elevated level for the dollar was in turn a worry because it was inflicting pain on the non-mining parts of the economy. There have been a swarm of stories about the dollar forcing manufacturers to close, tourism operators to change their marketing strategy and retailers to adopt new methods of selling if they were to compete with the overseas on-line sellers who were seeing a boom in business as the Australian dollar rose.

On the right, there is an ongoing fight for greater labour market flexibility. They argue continually for lower wages, smaller and fewer penalty rates, greater ease in hiring and firing staff as the business cycle moves higher and lower. These warriors are unlikely to ever win, because on the left, the hard facts of more than a decade of low unemployment, moderate rises in real wages and low levels of industrial disputation are clear evidence that the current balance of work place practices is about right.

Now, as mining investment inevitably weakens, there is nothing much else in the economy that can stop the slide to recession, or so say the economic worriers.

Policy warriors usually have a lot to say about tax. And wherever the tax system is at any point, policy warriors will always argue that it needs to be reformed. There is an unending discussion on the scope and level imposed on the goods and services tax. At the same time, the tax system needs to reform company taxes, the mining tax, negative gearing and income taxes, to name a few.

But these worries seem overblown. The Australian dollar has fallen quite a lot in the past month or so, more or less matching the news that mining investment is turning lower.

For the tourism operators, retailers and anyone else who has been squeezed when the currency was trading above parity with the US dollar, it’s a significant turn that will likely see them grow.

It is apparent that exporters will be getting a significant boost from the weaker dollar. It will also help those local businesses that were competing with importers whose import bill will start to rise as the dollar falls.

Image courtesy: gaianeconomics.blogspot.com.au

E

conomists worry about the next problem for the economy be it inflation, deflation, a recession or a boom. That worry extends to whether the central bank and government have the right policies in place to tackle these risks and challenges, which of course, according to the economists, they never do.

Like industrial relations, political bias will determine the stance of the policy warriors. It would not be possible, it seems, for the right to argue for higher income taxes or for the left to embrace a flat income tax.

And so the story goes.

There will always be something to worry about with the economy – it is never perfect.

There will always be a business cycle and the economy is never in so-called equilibrium. For the warriors, there will always be a policy that needs to be tilted, changed or reformed.

This is probably why economists have and always will have a high profile in the political debate.

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

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14 The Melbourne Review June 2013

BUSINESS

Our appetite for feeding Big Data It is game on and most of us want to play

by David Ansett and Peter Singline

L

ast month we wrote about Amazon’s recently launched online store which is solely dedicated to the Over 50 market.

Amazon offers us a glimpse into the future, where online retailers truly have an intimate understanding of a market – how they like to shop, what they like to buy, and what complementary product purchases positively add to their lives. We recently observed that the ultimate endgame is for online retailers to leverage their ‘Big Data’ to create a ‘segment of one’. That is, totally personalised marketing.

However, let’s pause for a moment and reflect on the data inputs that make a ‘segment of one’ a possibility. The digital world has for a while been beating its chest over what it sees as the power of Big Data. It has been suggested that 90 percent of the data ever created has been generated in the past two years. Our digital interconnectedness and ever increasing propensity to declare to the world our every move, thought and purchase decision has produced an avalanche of data ripe for analysis.

The digital trail we all leave behind is the by-product of our time exploring life on Google, connecting with friends on Facebook, gifting Likes to brands, checking into bars and restaurants, credit card transactions, smart phone use, and much more, including devices with sensors that capture everything

from our energy use to the roads on which we drive.

While the person sitting next to you in the café as you read this article may not be taking much notice of you, rest assured the aggregators of your digital life are taking plenty of notice. Big Data means big power and, for many companies, big dollars. What we all put into that mysterious Cloud is owned and leveraged by a small number of significant corporations, including Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple. Their shared focus is on monetising the insights about us that their data provides.

What excites them most is the predictive potency of their sophisticated algorithms. With the right analysis it is suggested that our Big Data world can assign a 95% likelihood as to whether a certain person is likely to default on a loan or even survive a surgical operation.

Microsoft’s research lab showed that they could predict a person’s approximate location up to 80 weeks into the future, at an accuracy of above 80 percent.

Big Data is powerful and can be helpful and timely. Andreas Weigend, the former chief scientist of amazon.com, now directing Stanford University’s Social Data Lab, tells a story about awakening at dawn to catch a flight from Shanghai, when an app he’d begun using, Google Now, told him his flight was delayed. The software scours a person’s Gmail

and calendar, as well as databases like maps and flight schedules. It had spotted the glitch in his travel plans and sent the message that he needn’t rush.

Osito, a small company in Palo Alto, offers similar advice with its smartphone predictive

intelligence app. It offers you the information you need, right when you need it. This means calling up your boarding pass as you approach the airport, or alerting you to bad traffic on your normal commute 10 minutes before you leave your house. Location is the key to their approach, as it provides the necessary context

The Melbourne Review June 2013 15

melbournereview.com.au

BUSINESS

We can feasibly draw some comfort from the fact that if data is shared from one company to another it will be encrypted in a way that the data remains anonymous. Data exchange will be occurring as we witness the creation of data markets where companies will buy, sell and trade data for mutual benefit. However with the right smarts our privacy may not always be assured. A recent study of 1.5 million anonymous cell phone users in Europe showed that just four points of additional reference were enough to individually identify 95 percent of the people. The concept of six degrees of separation takes on a whole new meaning.

While Big Data provides the opportunity for companies to profile each of us to the ‘nth’ degree, and tailor their offers with far more relevance, there is one profile we all should be interested in, and it reads like this:

to understand what information is relevant. If location is important then tracking your every move is critical.

You can see what is playing out here.

Every smart app we use has the propensity to declare even more about us to the world.

We simply add to the pool of data that is being captured about ourselves. The question is, do we care? Are we concerned about our privacy, or is a lack of it simply the price we have to pay for a seemingly more convenient and connected life?

‘Young (a remarkable proportion of the successful ones are in their late teens) ... male (as few as 5% female) blessed with a phenomenal capacity for mental concentration, often over greatly protracted stretches of time. Many could be diagnosed, in social communication terms, as occupying a place somewhere on the autism spectrum.’

We are assuming you do not match the above profile, unless of course you are a ‘cyber thief’.

The profile is the work of investigative journalist

and historian Misha Glenny who wrote the book Dark Market: CyberThieves, CyberCops and You (Vintage). His book seeks to examine who the human geeks are behind the dubious online personas, with usernames such as Lord Cyric, Dron or Matrix001. What emerges is a seedy picture of internet cafés, drug addiction and obsessive young geeks who are often seeking a world in which they get the respect that they find is lacking in the real world.

It is hard to knock any one striving for a little self-respect, except of course when it is gained by exploiting other people. It is estimated that around the globe there are over 1.5 million victims of cyber crime a day. In February 2013 Australia ranked 10th in the world in terms of number of cyber attacks that occurred.

There is no doubt that our brave new digital world has some real advantages, but what we do not fully understand yet is what the trade-off is likely to be over time. It is simply game-on, and interestingly most of us want to play.

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

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16 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013

MEDICAL RESEARCH in North Richmond. Data collected included structured observations of public injecting sites, secondary indicators (needle syringe disposal and retrieval data, and Ambulance Victoria data on attendance at heroin overdose) and interviews with local traders, health and community workers, police, people who inject drugs and residents.

Dave Schmidt

The research found that public injecting is widespread, frequent and highly visible in North Richmond and there is significant community concern over discarded injecting equipment. For people who inject drugs, a lack of access to sterile injecting equipment after hours and on weekends led some people to inject with other people’s used needle syringes, placing them at medium to high risk of BBV infection. Additionally, ambulance service data indicate that City of Yarra has the highest number of ambulance attendance at heroin-related overdoses of any local government area in Melbourne.

INJECTING BEHAVIOURS The Burnet Institute generates evidence through research to inform public health policy and practice

BY PAUL DIETZE & ROBIN DWYER

T

he health and social costs of injecting drug use represent most of the public health burden attributed to illicit drugs in Australia, conservatively estimated at over eight billion dollars in 2004/05. Injecting drug use causes harms to individuals and communities, but these often arise from failures of policies and strategies as much as from the drug use itself. People who inject drugs experience health-related harms such as infection with blood borne viruses (BBVs – hepatitis C, hepatitis B and HIV), injectionrelated injuries (e.g. skin and soft tissue infections and endocarditis) and overdose.

The wider community experience harms such as drug related property crime and the loss of amenity that goes with street-based drug markets and drug use.

The sale of illicit drugs such as heroin in locality-based outdoor public settings has been a feature of the Australian illicit drug scene since the early 1990s. Similar ‘street-

based heroin marketplaces’ have also been characteristic of illicit drug scenes in cities internationally. In Melbourne, street-based heroin marketplaces emerged during the early 1990s in five suburbs – Melbourne, Fitzroy/Collingwood, Springvale, Footscray and Frankston – while in the suburb of St Kilda, a pre-existing heroin scene became more publicly visible. These areas were fed by a ready supply of cheap and comparatively pure heroin, often referred to as a heroin ‘glut’. By 1999, a report by the state government-appointed Drug Policy Expert Committee also noted the emergence of a seventh marketplace in the inner-city suburb of North Richmond.

In the early 2000s Melbourne’s illicit drug marketplaces underwent fundamental change.

In part a result of a dramatic shift in heroin supply, commonly termed the heroin ‘drought’, but also as a result of shifts in technologies (e.g. mobile phones), and the displacing effects of saturation policing, the illicit drug markets in

many parts of Melbourne virtually disappeared.

Nevertheless, persistent drug markets have survived through to the present day, focused largely around Footscray, North Richmond, Frankston and St Kilda.

A variety of interventions aimed at ameliorating the burden associated with injecting drug use have been undertaken in Melbourne, but with only mixed success. In terms of law enforcement, saturation streetlevel policing of drug use continues in spite of limited evidence of success, but this has been coupled with referral programs aimed at diverting drug offenders away from the criminal justice system. Health interventions aimed at health promotion, harm reduction and drug treatment have also only had mixed success.

Notable successes with initiatives such as needle and syringe programs, and opioid substitution treatment with methadone and buprenorphine, are limited by incomplete coverage which means that the prevalence of blood borne viruses among people who inject drugs remains high, drug overdose and related problems such as hypoxic brain injury continue, and overdose deaths due to pharmaceutical opioid use are rising.

Furthermore, interventions of demonstrated success such as supervised injecting facilities and syringe vending machines, available in other parts of the country, have not been implemented in Melbourne.

In 2012, the Burnet Institute conducted research to collect evidence on the existing situation regarding injecting drug use behaviours and impacts on public amenity

New public health responses are required to address the significant burden imposed on individuals and the community by the public injecting and amenity problem in North Richmond. Installation of syringe vending machines and peer-to-peer distribution of needle syringes are costeffective interventions to extend needle syringe provision hours and coverage, and reduce BBV transmission risks. Provision of peer-based training in overdose response and expired air resuscitation (EAR), and provision of naloxone (the ‘heroin antidote’) to heroin users and to their peers and family would be of significant benefit in reducing overdose.

Consideration should also be given to the introduction of a supervised injecting facility as a viable component of a comprehensive harm reduction response to illicit drug use.

Conditions of high rates of public injecting, discarded injecting equipment and reduced amenity have led to the establishment of supervised injecting facilities in other cities and the evidence clearly demonstrates they are effective in improving amenity and health. For these public health responses to be effective, greater cooperation is also required at both policy and practice levels between police and local services to encourage and support service use.

» The Burnet Institute report: North Richmond Public Injecting Impact Study (2013) is available at burnet.edu.au/news/249_ » Professor Paul Dietze is Head of the Alcohol and other Drug Research Group, Burnet Institute and co-author, North Richmond Public Injecting Impact Study. » Robyn Dwyer is Research Officer, Centre for Cultural Diversity and Wellbeing, Victoria University and co-author of the North Richmond Public Injecting Impact Study. burnet.edu.au

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013 17

MELBOURNEREVIEW.COM.AU

PUBLIC HEALTH

Beyond Direct Policing Addressing the problem with community engagement in North Richmond and Abbotsford

BY GREG DENHAM

While these factors clearly indicate that the drug market is a complex issue, made more so by the fact that many people travel from all over Victoria to purchase and use illicit drugs in Yarra, the response to this issue has been almost solely dominated by an increased police presence. Additionally, closed circuit cameras have been used extensively on the North Richmond public housing estate. Both of these strategies have led to significant displacement of the drug market to suburbs and other places adjacent to North Richmond.

So despite an ever-increasing police presence, the people of North Richmond and Abbotsford still experience the negative health and social impacts of the illicit drug market; thousands of discarded needles and syringes are left lying around; drug affected people on the streets; frequent sounds of ambulance and police sirens; public toilets used as de-facto injecting facilities; visible drug trafficking and their suburb labelled as Melbourne’s ‘drugzone’.

The YDHF has therefore in recent years taken up the challenge of advocating for more considered and evidence-informed practices to address the social and health harms associated with injecting drugs in the area. The Forum has sought the views and concerns of a broad range of agencies,

The community launch of the North Richmond Public Injecting Impact Study in May.

residents, business groups, non-government organisations and various other interested parties, and the overwhelming view is that the issue of public injecting requires a fresh and innovative approach.

Unfortunately, whilst there is overwhelming local evidence for the introduction of a SIF, now added to the supportive national and international evidence, there have been no policy initiatives in Victoria on this issue in recent years.

In order to gain an evidence base and collective input for the purpose of developing a more considered response to the social and health risks associated with public injecting, YDHF has worked closely with the Burnet Institute on the development of two important research papers: the first being ‘The potential and viability of establishing a Supervised Injecting Facility (SIF) in Melbourne’ (2008) and the ‘North Richmond Public Injecting Impact Study’ (2013).

The YDHF intends to conduct an ongoing advocacy campaign in support of the establishment of a SIF to address the social and health harms impacting on the community in the City of Yarra. This advocacy strategy will involve strengthening the groundswell of support as well as seeking endorsement from highly regarded groups and individuals residing outside the local area.

Both papers provide an excellent evidence base to facilitate a change of policy that will allow for the introduction of strategies that reduce the impact of public injecting and address many of the social and health impacts of illicit drug use. Both papers, for example, provide substantial support for the introduction of a Supervised Injecting Facility (SIF) and outline the existing social, environmental, and public health conditions in Yarra that would precede its introduction.

Both papers clearly outline the benefits of SIFs in terms of disease prevention, particularly blood borne viruses, overdose death prevention and improvement in public amenity, all of which are relevant to those people who live in, work in or are connected to the City of Yarra.

There is also strong evidence that SIFs provide an important bridge to drug treatment and other health and welfare services for disadvantaged and marginalised groups, as well as having no negative impacts on crime and drug rates of use.

Photo: Robyn Dwyer

North Richmond and Abbotsford are currently a perfect mix for a drug market with networks of existing drug traffickers, high density living for many disadvantaged people, ready access by road, rail and tram, and numerous obscured laneways and other places where injecting can be done ‘out of view’.

Photo: Stephanie Luketic

T

he Yarra Drug and Health Forum (YDHF) was formed 17 years ago as a means to engage the community of the City of Yarra in action around illicit drug issues.

At that time the City of Yarra, along with several other local government areas, was known as a ‘hot spot’ with the public injecting of heroin commonplace. The impact of heroin injecting and overdose was so significant in many parts of Melbourne that a daily ‘heroin toll’ was listed alongside the road toll in one of the state’s most prominent newspapers.

» Greg Denham is Executive Officer, Yarra Drug and Health Forum.

Needle and syringe disposal unit helps clean up the

ydhf.org.au

streets in North Richmond.

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18 The Melbourne Review June 2013

COLUMNISTS Irregular Writings Port/South

BY Dave Graney

I

spent most of the 90s living in the Port/ South Melbourne area, in a manager’s flat above City Ford right next to the light rail overpass. The one where a truck gets its top knocked off every other week. Well it was actually next to a dim sim factory to tell the truth. Twenty-four hour security, though. It was a strictly light industrial area that was a ghost town on the weekends. The only people about were locals.

Albert Park and Middle Park had been getting poshed up for a couple of decades but this end was cool. Neighbourhood ladies chatted by the stone fence and their cats came out to say hello too.

Our windows looked out onto the tall buildings of the city and a couple of gum trees hung over our rooftop garden, which our bedroom opened on to. Hey it was a lovely joint!

Like St Kilda when I first saw it, the streets were terrifically wide. Tanks could roll down them. South Melbourne was a funny mix of advertising people and auto repairers. There was an electrical and white goods store where I went to buy smokes. It was delightfully dodgy.

Once they knew you, you asked for a brand and they went out the back and came back with the gear. At a price that was very competitive, as they would say on the business report.

Times change, of course, and the gentrification happened. Swallows and Ariel biscuit factory and the fire station were sold off for apartments along with many other quaint and cute operations that had hung on for longer than they should have. Mr Tippings variety store was in a block along Clarendon Street that had public housing at the back, next to the Town Hall. The tower blocks have been talked about for years by developers as being ugly and out of date. What they mean is that poor people shouldn’t have views of the sea like that.

The advertising business was there, in part, because of the many recording studios and film processing firms in the area. It’s still present there.

So it was that we found our way back to our old manor to play on a session. We took a

break and wandered down Bay Street. We got lost on our way and drove aimlessly through the area known as ‘Beacon Cove’. It is a low level residential district, quite pretty and very successful. After finding an exit from the murmur of cul de sacs we came out at Port Melbourne pier. We had thought we were driving through the remnant nub of ‘Garden City’ but realised we were in the area that had previously been termed a ‘toxic waste dump’ unfit for habitation. Times had changed and those pesky red tape rules were relaxed in the 90s. Thus, Beacon Cove. I remember the advance settlement in that frontier area being a fish and chip emporium built by Rex Hunt.

It was symbolic of the changes in the area. It went from poor and light-fingered to superrich with no intervening bohemian time zone.

So we walked down old Bay Street. It used to have such a spectacularly sad and bereft annual street festival. It was funny. Now it has all been retooled and chromed to hell. I still read of the occasional murder and beating around here but it’s decidedly snooty. Fish and Chipperys and boutiquetries abound.

My comrade was wanting a few drinks after a hard session behind the kit. We found a shop that sold liquor. Too much choice! Whither the poor drunk nowadays? We stared at the rows of wine and whiskey and gin, bourbon, vodka, brandy and then headed to the beer at the back. There were a lot of staff. I didn’t make eye contact with the hipster-glassed Ned Kelly bearded fellow. What could he possibly know? We saw a thin gent who had lank hair and looked like a desperate alcoholic. A human being! So we thought. He proceeded to educate us about lagers and stouts and ales and interesting little breweries and cute modern ciders. I had to turn away as I was laughing too much. My partner asked for a famous Sydney brand of stout and got a lecture about genetically modified hops and the colouring that is used in such corporate fare. I wondered, as we walked out, what would be the fate of some poor desperate who just wanted to get pissed – as did my pard – just a little bit?

I went to the supermarket and filled a bag with stuff and then left it in the aisle, as there was not a single checkout person to bag it and pay. All the shoppers seemed to prefer it that way. Mean, these new people! I would still love to live in this Bayside area though. Part of me is still there, wandering about those lovely, wide streets, lost in contemplation, wondering how to get out.

Six Square Metres The life and death of coriander

BY Margaret Simons

C

all it a cliché, or call it an archetype.

The rounds of the seasons give us one of the reliable metaphors of human storytelling. We know the deal: hope comes in spring, ripeness in summer, sadness in autumn and stoicism or death in winter.

Yet these days only gardeners and farmers are in touch with this pattern. The supermarket robs us of the rhythm of story.

In any case, modern life is not as neat as a seasonal metaphor. This week I finished a book. It is rather like recovering from a long illness. Suddenly there is time and energy once again. I can garden without feeling that I should be at my desk. I can stare out of the window without each breath being tinged with guilt.

Longneck Miles, Stella, Franklin, White

BY Patrick Allington

F

or a small country, albeit one squeezed into the crevices of a wide brown land, Australia is blessed with – and burdened by – a proliferation of writing prizes. The newest is the Stella Prize, which celebrates fine women writers while aiming a jab or two at the male-centric Miles Franklin Literary Award.

But wait: in 2013 the Miles Franklin Award has an all-female shortlist – including Carrie Tiffany’s Mateship With Birds, winner of the Stella Prize. And wait: a woman, Anna Funder, won in 2012. And wait: J.K. Rowling is a woman. And wait:

To celebrate, I decided to plant daffodil bulbs. It is late to be doing this, I know.

Planting bulbs – garlic or spring flowers – is something one normally does in the last bit of autumn.

I went to Bunnings wielding my $50 gift token, a remnant of summer and Christmas.

I bought a big shiny red outdoor pot and a little net bag of bulbs. Outside on the verandah, my fingers red from cold, I poured the mix and watered it, then ripped open the bag to find that the bulbs already had spears of green emerging from their brown papery skins.

They were ahead of time. They were in tune with my mood. There will be flowers in a few weeks, rather than months.

My writing life will lie fallow. What a sense

Miles Franklin herself – Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin – was a feminist. And wait: Julia Gillard is the Prime Minister. And wait: Beyoncé is famous. And wait: just the other day, I saw a woman wearing pants and drinking beer. STRAIGHT FROM THE BOTTLE! There’s nothing like a woman excelling to provoke mutterings about imagined discrimination (usually accompanied by claims that middle-class men are the new wretched of the earth). But history is not a single handclap, and the Miles Franklin Award boasts a proud legacy of cheering for the fellas. I don’t know whether a women-only prize is the ideal riposte, but it beats saying ‘she’ll be right’, which, when translated, really means ‘he’ll be right’. And it beats claiming that art is pure: creating it might be – maybe, sometimes – but judging it sure isn’t.

Still, there’s one bloke who I wish had made this year’s Miles Franklin shortlist: the late Patrick White, winner of the 1973

The Melbourne Review June 2013 19

melbournereview.com.au

COLUMNISTS of possibility there in the lack of a Big Project.

At this distance, if feels as though I could write anything, precisely because I know I will write nothing.

Meanwhile I am struggling with the coriander. What is it with this herb? It has to be the most difficult of plants. Sow it in summer and it gives you a few leaves then goes spindly and to seed. Plant it in winter and it grows so slowly you hardly dare snip it.

So I am planting lots, because coriander is one of the miracle herbs, capable of rendering any meal fragrant and exotic. I have planted it in the back lane next to the miracle Happy Wanderer. I have planted it in a polystyrene box on my neighbour’s roof, and I have planted it between the sulky broccoli in the strip of earth between the front of my house and the street.

Of these three sites, only one is working.

The coriander is doing well with the broccoli, growing low and lush. Meanwhile it is sulking in the lane and dying on the roof. Light, water and liquid fertiliser make no difference.

Even the plants in the front yard have their limits. Coriander is not, like parsley and thyme and every other respectable herb, a cut and come again plant. Cut it and it is gone forever, never to regrow.

“Buy some,” said my daughter. “It comes in a tube these days.” I told her that wasn’t the same.

Meanwhile my friend, cutting sandwiches on my kitchen bench the other day, asked if I had bought tomatoes.

I realised how far I had drifted from the normal concerns of the non-gardening world when I replied that I had not, because they were not in season. Who would buy the artificially ripened, flavourless mini cannonballs that pass for tomatoes mid-winter?

This is winter, the time for chutney and things pickled, dried, salted and put aside, I said. He stared at me, and left for the supermarket.

@margaretsimons

Nobel Prize for Literature (thanks, Sweden, for giving Australia permission to venerate ‘our Paddy’). In 1957, White won the very first Miles Franklin Literary Award, for Voss.

‘Personally I felt as though a slow tin of treacle was being poured over me,’ he wrote.

‘But on the whole, it was all very pleasant, and gratifying, and strange, and tiring’. He got the treacle treatment again for Riders in the Chariot. But when he heard that he’d won for The Solid Mandala, he declined – forcefully – and, from then on, barred his novels from the Miles Franklin Award.

Last year, more than twenty years after his death, new fiction appeared. The publication of The Hanging Garden, one third of an unfinished novel, was marked with reverence, with nostalgia and with regret (at least from the tiny percentage of people who care about such things) that more people don’t read White’s novels. Unedited fragment or not, hard work or not, it’s amongst the best

Third Age We are old, and we are many

BY Shirley Stott Despoja

H

ow do old people vote?

I know the easy answer is “how they’ve voted all their lives”. But that is tommyrot. Old people are well aware that they have choices their parents did not have and which they did not have in their earlier lives, and can swing with the best.

Perhaps they are even secretive voters.

My mother (born 1900) and father voted differently. Dad was a red ragger who had no respect for the upper class after his experiences at Gallipoli, and Mum, from a cosier family background, was a feminist with a small penchant for educated voices.

I can remember rows when Dad said, “We cancel out each other’s vote! It’s a waste,” but my mother was smart enough and feminist enough to know that she was entitled to place her democratic vote where she wished, and that was her triumph. Dad was not entitled to her vote as well as his own, no matter how tight the marital knot.

Who knows for sure how anyone votes?

We are not talking about the Facebook generations here, as likely to photograph their ballot papers as their latest meal, if they had a chance. Alone in our voting booth we can say what we choose. I am sure there are couples deluded about how each votes.

And long live that freedom. It was hard won.

I sometimes wonder if the old express their wishes for themselves or for the future they will not perhaps share. There are so many precedents of older generations making sacrifices for their young, which is one of the reasons I am wary of legalised euthanasia. Does it extend to voting against their own needs? Convinced that they faced

Australian fiction of 2012: deep, unforced, aching and – best of all, since White started it in 1981 – fresh.

I’m no expert at guessing the wishes of absent heroes, but White would surely have disapproved of The Hanging Garden’s publication. After all, he wanted the manuscript destroyed (with fire his favoured method). He would have applauded his publisher for not entering The Hanging Garden in the Miles Franklin Award – and the judges for not calling it in. But what a missed opportunity. I would have loved to see him rubbing shoulders with twenty-first century peers like Carrie Tiffany, whose Mateship With Birds scratches out an odd, luminous world on the fringes of a town, or Romy Ash, whose Floundering follows two boys and their wayward mother to the continent’s edge.

In 2013, White stands as a sort of monument to Australian creative achievement. But there’s limited value in luxuriating in his genius, as if

a choice between a rise in their pension and jobs for their kids and grandkids, I have a feeling many old people would forgo the pension increase and embrace bread and cheese three nights a week rather than feel they were prejudicing their kids’ chances.

But here’s a warning to politicians: don’t take advantage of this. It may not be the way of the future. The breath of the Me generation is on our receding backs.

How are older voters wooed or lost then? I cannot see concerted attempts to enchant the third agers of our present day by personalities and presentation. I do not think old people are delighted by Tony Abbott’s winsome ways, suspiciously hearty laugh and much less by his sportswear. Some of them are turned off by his swaggering walk (“as though he has the crown jewels between his legs,” one old soul confided to me) and they do not find it impossible that a loving father of daughters might make policies that did not suit all women. On the other hand, I can tell you for certain from discussion among my peer group that many old people detest the way Julia Gillard dealt with the ALP Senator for the NT, Trish Crossin. Even those with a

he’s a hot shower for tired limbs. While White was busy creating his imaginary Australia, he roared abuse at the real place: ‘How sick I am of the bloody word AUSTRALIA. What a pity, I am part of it; if I were not, I would get out to-morrow. As it is, they will have me with them till my bitter end, and there are about six more of my un-Australian Australian novels to fling in their faces’. Late in life White turned political activist, showing what a magnificent servant to the nation a serial whinger can be.

People – including judges – should read whatever the hell they want. But I’m all for flinging Patrick White’s stories into unsuspecting faces. And his life too. Because it takes the combo – a shelf of great novels and a portrait of a dedicated grump – to glimpse his full achievement in all its wide-brown-land glory.

@PatrAllington

huge investment in a female prime minister – Emily’s List, for example – became tonguetied after that particular dismissal was known.

The behaviour of our local government officials, to whose election we often pay too little attention until our neighbourhood suddenly changes for the worse because of them, will likely affect our response to the referendum too, short-sighted as it might seem to political sophisticates. Policies will be in our minds too; but we are emotional beings and, so far as I know, people do not shed their feelings of fairness, decency and appropriateness when they go into the voting booth.

Old-fashioned values still count with third age voters, so watch what you are at, politicians.

It is not backward thinking to long for and respect, decency, decorum, due process, and even proper speech (as my mother did). Quaint, you think? Well, we are old and we are many.

Get used to it.

Don’t forget that if you think ahead that you might not feel up to it on the day, you can apply for a postal vote. We are past the age of queuing, some of us, but not past the age of having our say. Not by a long way.

20 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013

BOOKS

NIGHT GAMES Anna Krien / Black Inc.

BY DAVID SORNIG

The morning after Collingwood’s 2010 AFL Grand Final win, Sarah Wesley contacted police to make a complaint of sexual assault against a number of the team’s players following events at the South Melbourne home of team member, the late John McCarthy. Collingwood’s legal machine was swiftly engaged, the players were interviewed and investigated, and a familiar scandalhungry media storm ensued. Footballers involved in pack rape was on the agenda again. Months later, the only person charged over the complaint – with rape – was a young amateur footballer, renamed here as Justin Dyer, who was not associated with the club.

It’s inside a Melbourne courtroom at the end of Dyer’s 2012 trial that Anna Krien begins Night Games, her second fulllength work of journalistic non-fiction. As the jury returns its not guilty verdict, Dyer breaks down in tears and Krien, who has been following the trial day by day, trying not only to build a picture of Dyer, but also

of Wesley, who only ever appears through testimony and by video link in a closed court, emerges from the court ‘inside out’, uncertain whether the verdict was the right one but nonetheless falling into the embrace of Dyer’s grandmother. ‘Well,’ she writes with typical wryness about her own feelings, ‘there goes my objectivity’.

The truth is that Krien is all about objectivity.

While there’s little doubt that her sympathies lie far from the male-dominated cultures of Australian football, she goes out of her way, as she gives a gripping account of the trial, to make balanced sense of those cultures, and the difficulties they face in coming to terms with attitudes and practices that have either condoned or remained silent on the sex ‘games’ that players play, that reduce women to being sexualised ‘team-bonding’ objects, the centre of the ‘gangbang’ where consent sometimes seems to matter for very little.

Effectively Krien positions herself – and the reader – as a privileged extension of the jury; her feelings on whether or not Dyer is guilty sway and swing as witnesses appear, and as arguments are made by both prosecution and defence about the reliability of witnesses, about how far the complainant might have invented details, about the ‘grey zone’ that makes it legally unclear when it is that a rape has occurred. Krien also gets to tell what she hears when the jury is sent for out recess as legal arguments are made about the admissibility of evidence that might breach a very narrow set of legally defined events that restrict all argument to the South Melbourne laneway where the alleged rape occurred, rather than the house in which Sarah Wesley initially claimed she had been assaulted.

Krien’s style, a recognisable signature now, following her first book Into the Woods, and her Monthly Essay Us & Them: On the Importance of Animals, is one of intelligent listening. Once again she has managed to present a riveting and disturbing set of stories, voices and arguments that are not structured into a polemic, but that nevertheless draw a clear case for cultural change. They operate as a welcome opening, sometimes a provocative one, into discussion, debate and reform.

LEVELS OF LIFE

MAFIA REPUBLIC

Julian Barnes / Jonathan Cape

John Dickie / Sceptre

BY TALI LAVI

BY WILLIAM CHARLES

Because this is Julian Barnes, Levels of Life begins as an essay on `balloonatics’, focusing on a few early eccentrics only to enter them into the territory of fiction. But even as we read about Sarah Bernhardt, Félix Tournachon and Colonel Fred Burnaby, it is also about something else entirely. Barnes begins as a flâneur and then somewhere along the way we fall down the rabbit hole to find ourselves deep in the guts of life. When he writes, `You put together two people who have not been put together before; and sometimes the world is changed... Together in that first exaltation, that first roaring sense of uplift, they are greater than their two separate selves’, we know that arrival at a grief-soaked reality must come. Essentially an elegiac ode to his wife Pat Kavanagh who died of a brain tumour in 2008, Barnes’s account of his subsequent untethering from life in the book’s third movement might fill us with despair, but the absence would never be as keen without the incandescent presence of love.

Following on his hugely successful Mafia Brotherhoods, which explored the rise of organised crime in Italy from the formation of the nation in 1861 through to the end of the monarchy and World War Two, British academic John Dickie now looks at the next chapter in this turgid drama of state decline and criminal ascension, in Mafia Republic. A narrative of depressing inevitability drives this superbly researched book onwards, as Dickie describes the rise and rise of the Cosa Nostra, Camorra and ’Ndrangheta from their southern Italian heartlands, spreading out into the industrialised north and on into criminal networks across Europe, the USA and Australia. An entire alternative economy and social organisation based on a mix of omertà and narrowminded familial greed/revenge, this fundamentally primitive phenomenon is largely responsible for so much of the backwardness that has helped to create mayhem at the heart of the dysfunctional Italian state. What Dickie’s book shows most clearly is the way the development of the Italian Republic post1946 and that of the various mafia groups constitute two sides of the same coin, interlinked in a kind of ever-circling hopelessness.

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THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013 21

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BOOKS

VIENNESE ROMANCE David Vogel / Scribe

BY TALI LAVI

THE CHINA FACTORY

WE ARE NOT THE SAME ANYMORE

Mary Costello / Text Publishing

Chris Somerville / UQP

BY DAVID SORNIG

BY HELEN DINMORE

These stories of lives lived in Ireland balance in the place between the romantic vision of the self and the deep unease of the mismatched inner life. They have the ring, in some of their more drifting, elegiac passages, of Joyce in ‘The Dead’; there’s the epiphanic yearning there too, for other places, to and from the west. In ‘Sleeping with a Stranger’ a man in a troubled marriage seems to drift away from his mother’s deathbed: ‘He was still for a long time. He did not know if this moment counted for anything. He drove west into the night. On the radio a piano was playing single high notes, marvellous and pure, like the ringing of delicate bells. Their tinkle, their ambulation, tapped on his soul and made it soar.’ While there might be some conscious emulation here, there’s also a lot of originality whose mark is in its unflinching examination of open existential wounds that are animated by sometimes deeply uncomfortable realities.

Mary Costello is a careful and direct writer, whose future work, if The China Factory is anything to go by, will be worth reading.

The stories in Somerville’s debut collection are the sort of contemporary short fictions – familiar now – that deal, superficially and deceptively, with the ordinary, but that seek, by increments, to work up to moments of unexpected, obscure or absurd profundity. These are narratives without clear signposts, in which characters often lose their way, both figuratively and literally; in some cases the way has already been lost. Most of the protagonists suffer from a prosaic kind of joylessness, passing over opportunity and glimmers of their own and others’ interiority in order to drift instead into the swamp of their own passivity or indifference. The best stories come late in the book: ‘Hinterland’, with its nuanced portrayal of a difficult father; the riskier ‘Room’ and intriguing ‘Sleeping With the Light On’. And there are times, such as in ‘The Chinese Student’ when Somerville’s sudden, unresolved endings create artful impact. Where the stories are less successful, it’s because the prose style itself errs too much towards the ordinary, offering less than this kind of fiction needs to make it sing.

MELBreview1/4page

23/1/13

6:02 PM

The world in which the Holocaust is still an impossible event is that contained within the precious but flawed pages of Viennese Romance, an unfinished manuscript discovered more than sixty years after it was penned. Its own history is as fascinating as that which it evokes.

Written over several decades between Vienna and Paris, it swings between cosmopolitanism and philosophical enquiry.

There is a dichotomy that lies at the heart of this novel. David Vogel was forever the outsider; born in the Russian Pale of Settlement, he emigrated to Austria where he was arrested as an enemy alien at the outbreak of World War I. In Vienna and later Paris, he lived as an impoverished writer; bohemian, haunted and always visibly Jewish. Even in language he stood apart, writing in a blended high and modern Hebrew. The anti-hero of Viennese Romance, Michael Rost, is a kind of fantasised alter ego, an eighteen-year-old womaniser who has his world at his feet after a Magwitch-like figure becomes his patron. Rost’s remembering of his hometown in interludes tinged with poeticism are some of the most affecting sections in this sometimes ruptured novel.

This is the Vienna of Freud, Arthur Schnitzler and Otto Weininger; its fin de siècle sexual consciousness more risqué than other Western cities. Sexual acts are often accompanied by the threat or semblance of violence. Eroticism and taboos are explicitly encountered and the subject of Rost’s affections, virginal Erna, whose mother is already his lover, is in the dramatic throes of adolescent sexual awakening.

Admittedly, there are scenes that are highly chauvinistic. As one Hebrew scholar has noted, Vogel is an early Woody Allen and some of the success of his comedy relies on the use of the absurd statement. But what endures, alongside the images of a bourgeois society consumed by

decadence, is a portrait of an émigré Jewish community which congregates at Stock’s Kosher Eatery, made flesh with anarchists, effete intellectuals, lecherous Rabbis and heroic tenors. Whilst the surrounding culture of hedonism is stultified with various states of ennui, enervation, boredom and inertia, Stock’s is awash with liveliness, camaraderie and an earthy Yiddish humour. Memorable ripostes abound, “A person might as well talk to a herring as waste words on you. You should be hung up to dry.”

Emotional states and physical depictions of dark and light are continually in interplay.

Rost is not entirely an unlovable cad; besides being witty, he is solicitous about Misha the anarchist and depressive aristocrat Fritz Anker, outsiders haunted by what they perceive of as the void of life.

By the time the manuscript was rewritten

by Vogel at the height of Hitler’s rule – although there is a difference of opinion as to the timeframe – Rost embodies everything the Jew should not: virile, anti-intellectual, of carefree sensibility and blonde. There is a pleasure to be derived in imagining Rost living forever, amoral but vigorous. Then reality interjects: his intellectual, dark-haired Jewish creator was killed in Auschwitz as he too, in all likelihood, would have been if he was not buried underground for the duration of the war.

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22 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013

FASHION

Photos: Matthew Wren

Those rising stars will have the opportunity to showcase and sell their collections on the day. The event will be held in the historic barn on the grounds of the property, which is already home to the popular Yarra Valley Farmers’ Market. The afternoon will also feature live music and red wine for its winter edition of the project, creating a unique retail experience.

Styled by: Cecylia.com. Hair and Make up: Bernice, bernicemakeupartist.com. Model 1: Bree Laughlin, Stride Management. Model 2: Kaye Waterhouse, Scene.

Karen Webster was one who attended the first event late last year and can’t speak highly enough of the day out: “I was privileged to enjoy a day that pays tribute to the unique and significant qualities of our fashion industry,” she commented. “Fusing fashion, fine food and delicious wines in the magical environment of Yering Station, the independent designers were showcased with integrity and style. Thankfully there were no sale signs, no cheap copies but by contrast there was incredible mix of well designed, locally produced fashion and great service.

“I can’t wait for the Australian Edit team to do it again so I can bring all my girlfriends for a great day out,” she said. So come and experience an unforgettable afternoon with a glass of wine in beautiful surroundings where you have the chance to support and talk with the new generation of talented Australian designers, who this year will include: Cylk, Divya Rao, Silvari Jewellery, May Muck, Mardi McQueen, Tanja Kozub, MIMI Leather Goods, Kim Victoria, Constance Roe, Aaizel, Pilkington Jewellers and Luna Gallery.

» The Australian Edit – A Fashion Space is at Yering Station, 30 Melba Highway, Yarra Glen, on Sunday June 23 from 1pm to 5pm.

A $10 entry fee includes complimentary Yering Station wine and warm winter sweets.

For more information contact: jane@janehayesconsulting.com.au

THE AUSTRALIAN EDIT – A FASHION SPACE Fashion goes to the Yarra Valley

BY THE MELBOURNE REVIEW

T

hings aren’t easy right now for local retailers. The climate is tough, and no-one knows this as first hand as the fashion industry.

Melbourne fashion consultant, Jane Hayes, has now created Australia’s first farmers’ market for fashionistas. The new event – held for the first time late last year – aims to

assist some of Australia’s most talented up and coming designers.

The Australian Fashion Edit – A Fashion Space is held in collaboration with one of the Yarra Valley’s historic wineries, Yering Station, and will be celebrated on Sunday June 23.

“The farmers’ market for fashion has been

created to support and nurture Australian fashion and accessory designers and local manufacturing in what is an incredibly tough time for the local industry,” says Hayes. “We know that more and more Australians are spending their weekends visiting markets in their local communities and this is a great way of taking fashion to those living out of the city,” she added.

The Melbourne Review June 2013 23

melbournereview.com.au

PERFORMING ARTS

Orava Quartet Australia

ARC Trio, Japan.

Room Music with Regional Resonance

by Peter Tregear

F

or a city that prides itself as the national cultural capital, Melbourne hosts surprisingly few headquarters of the nation’s leading music organisations.

Chamber Music Australia however is one of the most conspicuous and important of our local residents. Its work in promoting this most cultured of classical music genres reaches a zenith every four years with the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition. It also runs an Asia-Pacific Chamber Music Competition that occurs in the middle of this cycle. Next month, the 2013 Asia-Pacific Competition will take place from July 8 – 14 at the Melbourne Recital Centre and the Iwaki Auditorium.

Originally entitled the Australian Chamber Music Competition, this second event was founded in 1997 with the aim to provide musicians from the region both the opportunity and encouragement to prepare for the global competition two years later. In this respect it proved successful from the very outset. One of the three entries in that inaugural year was a trio led by Melbourne cellist Josephine Vains that successfully made the grade in 1999. The

same pathway was taken a few years later by the Tin Alley Quartet, which famously went on to win the 9th Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2007.

The broadening of its focus to the Asia-Pacific region came about as a result of successful lobbying of Chamber Music Australia by educational institutions and teachers in New Zealand. It also reflected the organisation’s recognition, several years in advance of the current Federal Government’s ‘Asian Century’ White Paper, that Australia’s cultural (as well as political and economic) interests were increasingly moving away from an historic European and American focus towards our near neighbours. The competition has thus grown to become a kind of Commonwealth Games to Chamber Music Australia’s musical Olympiad.

This expansion into Asia could seem ironic given that, of all musical genres, chamber music is particularly associated with ‘old Europe’.

In fact, the last thirty years have witnessed massive institutional investment in cities such as Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, and Seoul to

enable them to produce local musicians capable of performing chamber music at the highest level. It is ironic indeed, then, that this same period in Australia has seen a disinvestment in our own tertiary-level music institutions.

In this sphere of cultural diplomacy at least Australia will soon be massively outgunned by its regional competitors.

While governments may consider that there is very little political capital to be had in the funding of high-quality classical music education in Australia, there is, however, considerable ‘grass roots’ support for chamber music in the wider community. One particularly positive initiative from this year’s competition is the introduction of a People’s Chamber Music event that draws attention to the fact that for many people chamber music is a participatory, as well as spectator, sport.

The idea arose out of a comment the ABC Classic FM presenter Emma Ayres made in 2011 during the lead-up to that year’s International Chamber Music Comp lamenting the fact that amateur quartets like her own lacked an opportunity to perform in the Melbourne Recital Centre, this city’s purpose-built chamber music venue. Now they do, and the result is a free concert on Saturday July 13 at 2.30.

»»The 2013 Asia-Pacific Chamber Music Competition will take place from July 8 – 14 in Melbourne. chambermusicaustralia.com.au melbournerecital.com.au

24 The Melbourne Review June 2013

PERFORMING ARTS

Photo: Lesley Leslie-Spinks

on a black background slowly ascends into the air, received a standing ovation at the first performance at the Metropolitan Opera in November 1976.

Einstein on the Beach

Towns which lie at the end of train lines tend to get a bad rap – indeed the very phrase ‘end of the line’ has become a common euphemism for decline or death.

by Peter Tregear

F

or a brief moment in the late 1950s, however, just such a town became the toast of Australia when Frankston was chosen for a day’s filming of Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach. The then sleepy seaside suburb could boast the presence of Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Gregory Peck, among other Hollywood luminaries.

Ironically, the film they were shooting was in fact about the end of the world, even if Ava Gardner appears never to have exclaimed (as a persistent urban myth would have it), that the city of Melbourne and its outskirts were the ideal setting for such a subject. The film was based on a 1957 novel of the same name

by British author Nevil Shute and deals with the after-effects of a catastrophic nuclear war, the omnipresent apocalyptic fear that gripped the world in the Cold War years (and before the rise of popular consciousness about global warming).

Almost fifty-five years later, Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s opera Einstein on the Beach (1976) is returning to Melbourne for a season of five performances between July 31 and August 4 (the work received its Australian premiere in Melbourne in 1992). The allusion to the film in its title is deliberate as the opera is inspired in part by the same historical and cultural context, recast to focus upon one of its most iconic

figures. ‘As a child, Einstein had been one of my heroes,’ the composer reflected in his book Music By Philip Glass (Harper and Row, 1987).

‘Growing up just after World War II, as I had, it was impossible not to know who he was; at the same time, the ‘emphatic, if catastrophic, beginnings of the nuclear age’ which his ideas heralded ‘had made atomic energy the most widely discussed issue of the day.’

Unlike On the Beach, however, the opera is conceived in a radically new way. Simply put, it is essentially without plot as we might commonly understand it and, performed without interval, audiences are welcome to leave their seats for a break at any time during its roughly four-and-a-half hour running time. Indeed Wilson has argued that its character amounted to a complete break with how traditional theatre is usually conceived, declaring that ‘we put together the opera the way an architect would build a building.

The structure of the music was completely interwoven with the stage action and with the lighting. Everything was all of a piece.’

This was in part the outcome of a creative process that from the very outset intensely collaborative, not just between Wilson and Glass but also involving some of the original performers, such as choreographer and dancer

Lucinda Childs (who also provided some of the script). One result is that, unlike traditional opera, Wilson’s staging, and Childs’ dance movement have become nigh inseparable from the work itself. Indeed, Einstein on the Beach is a piece for which Richard Wagner’s term Gesamtkunstwerk (‘total work of art’) seems particularly apt.

Glass, Wilson and Childs are all returning to Melbourne for these new performances, although Childs has now retired from stage work to concentrate entirely on the choreography.

In conversation her speech reflects elements of her choreographic style – ideas are expressed in short staccato phrases that yet invite deep reflection. While she has no problem with the term ‘minimalist’ to describe her work, she rejects the idea that the effect should be the induction of a trance-like effect in the audience.

Instead, her concise physical forms ask us to recalibrate our normal ways of understanding movement and time. The minimalist frame simply provides the temporal context that makes this possible.

“When push comes to shove,” she says, “the whole choreography is inspired by the music, the systemic additions and subtractions of the score are perfectly matched by the addition and subtraction of dancers.” By the same token once seen in the theatre, the music of Einstein on the Beach seems equally to be inexorably tied to the sequences of images and movements that accompany it.

The sung and spoken texts typically take the tiniest of units – a sequence of numbers, or solfege syllables, and seek to draw our attention to their abstract ‘thing in themselves’ quality – something we might imagine could be mirrored in the way a mathematician/musician like Einstein might have actually thought.

Numbers and patterns are, after all, the basic working material of theoretical physics. In any event, the theatre that results is surprisingly powerful. The sequence in Act IV, Scene 2, for instance, where a large bar of white light

Ultimately, abstract intellectual endeavours cannot avoid engaging with the everyday world we inhabit and the same is true for Einstein on the Beach which, in this respect, is not just ‘minimalist’ but also ‘post-modern’. The style of music itself can’t but allude to the repetitive forms common to some popular music. Spoken texts draw on material from the trial of Patty Hearst (underway during the period of the work’s genesis) as well as works of the savant poet Christopher Knowles, and the song Mr. Bojangles. And then there is the figure of Einstein himself, represented on stage as a violinist (which indeed he was), who may well have been the founder of a new branch of theoretical physics, but he was also a pop cultural icon. Ultimately Einstein’s ideas opened up not just new fields of scientific endeavour, but also new ways in which we could annihilate each other.

Whatever we might think of the ‘great man’ thesis of history, it continues to inspire great art.

For Glass himself, the opera signalled the start of a trilogy of works that celebrated world-historical figures: Satyagraha (1980) which explored the writings of Mahatma Gandhi and Akhnaten (1983) which charted the rise and fall of the Pharaoh who first tried to introduce monotheism to the world. The composer has since declared that ‘should the three operas be performed within a fairly narrow time span (within the same week, for example) I believe their internal connection will become increasingly obvious and provide the audience with a coherent musical and theatrical experience.’

That, however, would be a truly mammoth undertaking, one that would dwarf the challenges confronting Melbourne in mounting Wagner’s Ring. We can though, consider ourselves still fortunate that we’re getting to see a production of Einstein on the Beach only a few weeks after Victorian Opera’s new production of Nixon in China. These are certainly no ‘end of line’ works; both are ultimately, indeed, about journeys to new places. For the former, this was the epochal visit of President Richard Nixon to communist China in 1972. For the latter it was about a journey of the scientific imagination, but no less influential for that.

The Melbourne season of Nixon in China was a justly deserved critical and popular success.

If the return of Einstein on the Beach to the Arts Centre in July/August gets close to the power of the performances that occurred there twenty-one years earlier, I’d confidently predict it will be too.

»»Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach is performed at Arts Centre, Melbourne, from July 31 to August 4. artscentremelbourne.com.au

26 The Melbourne Review June 2013

PERFORMING ARTS

“So little is known of the artist’s life that the details would scarcely provide fodder for a full length musical, but is an examination of what makes artists ‘tick’, how and why they must create.”

Photo: © The Art Institute of Chicago

York, Alexander Lewis leads the cast as George, playing opposite Christina O’Neill as his lover Dot. Other musical theatre personalities on the stage include Nancye Hayes and David RogersSmith, and opera regulars such as Antoinette Halloran and Dimity Shepherd.

Georges Seurat, French, 1859-1891, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte -- 1884, 1884–86. Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago.

Sunday Afternoon: Seurat and Sondheim

by The Melbourne Review

A

lthough dying at the very young age of 31, post-Impressionist French artist Georges Seurat left behind a body of work that includes one of the standout pieces of late nineteenth century European art, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

At the heart of this work, with its apparent depiction of the idle pleasures of a calm bourgeois existence, lie tensions: the majority of the characters are cast in shadow, alliances amongst them are uncertain; there is a foregrounded monkey, a strangely collared dog; mute children and, as legend has it, Seurat’s lover and muse.

New life is to be injected into the imaginary landscape with its brilliant cast of fin de siècle characters, its grand painterly technique, its vibrant creativity and its intimation, amid such tranquil beauty, of an end to the order of things. Over one week in late July (July 20 – 27) Victorian Opera is bringing American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s

musical theatre piece Sunday in the Park with George to the Arts Centre, Melbourne.

Winner of a Pulitzer Prize, Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George explores the imagined stories of the characters depicted in Seurat’s painting, including of course the love affair between the artist and his muse – albeit with a large dose of artistic licence.

“The piece is not a biography of Georges Seurat. So little is known of the artist’s life that the details would scarcely provide fodder for a full length musical, but is an examination of what makes artists ‘tick’, how and why they must create,” said Stuart Maunder, director of Sunday in the Park with George.

“Although the relationship of George and his muse is at the heart of the piece, it’s not a conventional love story. Rather what we have is a love affair with art; with the act of creating art. We experience the bliss of the creator, the intense concentration, the

Briggs is excited by the opportunity for Victorian Opera to perform a piece of musical theatre, combining voices and experience from both genres. “Musicals have long been performed by opera companies internationally,” she commented. “They provide a great way to engage with new audiences, and also give us the chance to explore a wider range of repertoire.”

The large canvas of A Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte is now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Many of the characters in the painting are still unidentified, as are their stories.

»»Sunday in the Park with George shows at the Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse, from July 20 – 27. victorianopera.com.au/sunday

sheer hard work, the craft, the passion, the desire to make things that count, things that will be new.”

There is an attempt to reflect the very physicality of Seurat’s pioneering use of pointillism. “Sondheim has gone to great lengths to encapsulate the essence of Seurat’s paintings,” said Phoebe Briggs, conductor for Sunday in the Park with George and Head of Music at Victorian Opera. “In a number of passages during scenes that George is painting, the music is fast and busy, likely intended to reflect the process of rapidly painting in dots. This attention to detail is an example of how Sondheim writes – there is no padding in the music; every note and word is carefully chosen for maximum effect,” Briggs added.

Victorian Opera’s production of Sunday in the Park with George will feature some of the finest performers in Australian musical theatre and opera. Returning to Australia following tenure with the Metropolitan Opera in New

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013 27

MELBOURNEREVIEW.COM.AU

PERFORMING ARTS

The Crucible

BY NINA BERTOK

A

“Well, I suppose when Arthur Miller wrote the play, he was really writing about what was happening in America at the time,” she offers.

“But there are so many themes within the story that still play out today in our lives. Suspicion, accusation, affairs – these are pretty timeless things, they don’t belong to just one era. The whole story is based on real life events, it was just too hot a topic to be able to write about at the time in America, so I think it was a great way to draw that parallel with the Salem witch trials because when you look at it, the two were really so similar in the way that people got treated.”

Add to a classic story a brilliant cast and the ultimate role that every actress strives to play at some point in her career, and you get a straight-out career highlight for Hegh, being involved in the Sam Strong-directed take on The Crucible. While Hegh claims the story stays mostly true to the Miller original, Strong, MTC’s Associate Artistic Director, adds one or two minor twists to it.

“The great thing is that Sam really respects that this is a really well-written play already, so there’s really no need to alter it in any way or to make changes. He has adhered to what Miller has asked for and the way that the story has normally been approached. Sam tries to make the story as clear as possible because it works and it’s a very moving tale. The only difference, I guess, is that we are going to be sticking to the accents that we naturally have.

We’ve got actors with various backgrounds so you’ll hear an American, English and Australian accent here and there. We’ve decided to use our own voices because it’s the most authentic approach. Everyone has given their all to their characters and everyone inspires each other.”

With just two weeks to go before The Crucible officially opens for Melbourne audiences, Hegh claims no one could be more excited than her about stepping into the shoes of one of the great female leads – as Elizabeth Proctor.

“She is one of the great female roles. She’s such a beautiful character because she is this woman who is trying to be good and trying

Photo: Gina Milicia

rthur Miller’s classic play returns to the stage this month as the Melbourne Theatre Company presents The Crucible, starring Australia’s top theatre and television actors David Wenham and Anita Hegh. Written at the height of the McCarthy trials during the 1950s, decades on the play still remains a true classic and relevant as ever, according to Hegh who portrays Elizabeth, the brave and loyal wife of John Proctor.

The Crucible cast during rehearsal.

Elizabeth is from a time when the benchmark was high in terms of behaviour and how much good you do in the world.”

NIDA SHORT COURSES

her best to do things right. Elizabeth is from a time when the benchmark was high in terms of behaviour and how much good you do in the world. People’s idea of faith and relationship with God and how they treated others was very highly valued. And it was a hard life, as well.

“What’s really interesting about her is that she goes from being a person who thinks she is very good and doing everything right, yet by the end of it she realises there were things that she could have done within her marriage to prevent John Proctor from having an affair with Abigail. She’s an amazing character but quite a humbling person to portray. It’s not often that you get to do these really well-written plays that are so classic but so contemporary at the same time.”

» The Crucible shows at Southbank Theatre from June 22 until August 3. mtc.com.au

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28 The Melbourne Review June 2013

PERFORMING ARTS

While most of the characters seem to be happy-go-lucky, McInnes’ Matt and Karvan’s Caroline aren’t. From the first few episodes they actually appear to be cold and unlikeable, which is a revelation for a local drama to contain unfriendly characters that aren’t merely caricatures.

William McInnes in The Time of Our Lives.

Times They Are A Changing William McInnes the interviewee is a million miles removed from his seemingly cold and distant character on new Australian drama The Time of our Lives.

by Christopher Sanders

M

cInnes plays Matt on the excellent new ABC drama, a serious and unhappy man who on the surface is living the dream with a highpaying job, a beautiful wife (played by Claudia Karvan) and a young child. McInnes, however, is a hilarious interview subject who breaks off into impersonations of Australian politicians, especially Christopher Pyne, during the interview. The actor and author, best known for his roles as Constable Schultz on Blue Heelers, Max Connors on SeaChange and Nick in his late wife Sarah Watt’s film Look Both Ways, describes the show created by Judi McCrossin and Amanda Higgs (The Secret

Life of Us) as “entertainment with a brain”.

“I know there’s lots of stuff on television at the moment, Australian stuff, and that’s great but this is a contemporary drama that’s trying to elaborate on the theme of real life,” McInnes explains. “Accepting that Australia’s a multi-dimensional, layered society and it’s still entertainment. Hopefully it will get a few people watching.”

And it should. Even though it could merely be seen as The Secret Life of Us characters hitting their 30s and middle age, it has more depth than the aforementioned show,

“On the surface he’s got everything he wants,” McInnes explains about his character Matt. “He’s got a successful career, he’s got a beautiful wife but he’s still not happy. He’s got a charming little boy, he’s got all the bits and pieces anyone would want but he’s not happy. The attraction of this show was the idea that people even within a tight-knit family... it’s quite disparate in its make-up in many ways and they continually look to each other’s lives and are either bewildered by what the other people in the family are up to but also envious that they’ve got everything they haven’t got.

“He looks at his brother and the relationship he has with his wife, his partner, and I don’t think Matt has any idea how his brother can function. How can he be so happy with so little? That’s interesting, I think. There’s a reference there to the wider idea of Australia. Anyone else in the world would look to Australia and think how can people that are blessed with a terrific society, a relatively strong economy and lots of opportunity, how can they be so almost unimaginably worried about the future and scared of themselves?

With Matt and Caroline, Claudia [Karvan] said they were a first world problem, and I think that’s exactly right. They’ve got everything they need but they’re still not happy. The secret is, I think, they’ve got that awful malaise that lots of people have and that’s this feeling of entitlement – that they’re owed something in life. That what they’ve got isn’t enough. It’s just a crazy thing. I guess the other crazy thing about the show is that Christopher Pyne makes an appearance,” he jokes.

Photo: Jeff Busby

which was also written and produced by the Higgs and McCrossin partnership.

Focusing on an extended Melbourne family, the Tivolis, the ensemble cast (which includes Justine Clarke, Stephen Curry, Shane Jacobson, Tony Barry and Michelle Vergara Moore) explores everyday Australian life with wit and wisdom not seen on local screens for some time. With The Time of Our Lives, it’s fascinating to invest in local characters that are a reflection of your own peer group, so you don’t have to escape to the castles of Westeros or the Mobowned strip clubs of New Jersey to find interesting characters.

When the sun goes down

T

he critically acclaimed Sundowner combines theatre and dance for a story that celebrates love and family after onset dementia affects a family member.

Directed by Kate Denborough and starring Helen Morse (Picnic at Hanging Rock, A Town Called Alice), Sundowner was created

by KAGE in collaboration with Alzheimer’s Australia to shine a light on sundowner, a form of dementia where Alzheimer’s sufferers become disorientated when the sun goes down.

Helen Morse plays Peggy, the late-50s writer with younger onset dementia. Seen through the eyes of three generations, Sundowner is the result of two years’ worth of research, community engagement and development.

KAGE were involved with focus groups and held discussions with carers and people with younger onset dementia so they could explore the issue minus sentiment and triviality.

Praised as “physical theatre at its best” by the Sydney Morning Herald, Sundowner continues KAGE’s mantra of crossing the theatre and dance boundaries and features the original Tivoli Theatre dancers, the Tivoli Lovelies.

Sundowner is part of Whitehorse Centre’s 2013 season.

»»Sundowner performances are on June 28 (8pm) and June 29 (2pm and 8pm) at Whitehorse Centre, Nunawading. »»The Time of our Lives premieres on ABC 1 on June 16 at 8pm.

whitehorsecentre.com.au

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013 29

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PERFORMING ARTS

An Intimate Knowledge The Brodsky Quartet and the Shostakovich Cycle

BY NOÉ HARSEL

I

Having played over 2000 concerts across the world’s best stages and released more than 50 recordings, it is still the Shostakovich Cycle, from Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, that they are best known for.

The 15 string quartets that make up this cycle are collectively thought of as one of the great works of the 20th century.

“Shostakovich has been part of our lives since the very beginning,” explains Paul Cassidy of the Brodsky Quartet. “It always amazes me that he was still completing his epic journey of 15 quartets when we started playing them back in 1972. Excitedly we scribbled onto manuscript in a quest to learn

David Wenham

Experiencing the complete string quartet cycle gives the listener an insight into the expression of Shostakovich’s innermost thoughts and feelings: the wit, the irony and the passion – a compelling life and death battle of ideas, truth, ideology and existence.

ST FA

The Brodsky Quartet, consisting of Ian Belton (violin), Paul Cassidy (viola), Daniel Rowland (violin) and Jacqueline Thomas (cello), are a virtuoso ensemble famous for their dynamic and engaging performance.

his music in the early days, when parts were still hard to come by.”

T U O

Their exploration has seen the Quartet embrace a wide range of musical eras and genres, having worked and recorded with pop musicians such as Björk, Sting, Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello, gathering a huge and diverse fan base for themselves along the way. Such energy has seen them tour extensively, doing ongoing educational work to pass the wealth of their knowledge on to the next generation of performers.

Brodsky Quartet

G IN LL SE

Maintaining “freshness” in the repertoire and evident chemistry on stage, the quartet always sought to invest time and imagination in the exploration of their repertoire and to break with the accepted norms in concert presentation, including the audience in the intimacy of performance, and ‘breaking away from the illusion that chamber music is an elitist artform’.

Photo: Benjamin Ealovega

n 1972 a group of talented youngsters aged between 11-13 years old gathered together after Friday night Youth Orchestra practice to play football, table tennis and string quartets. Very early on, they distinguished themselves as innovative and courageous musicians, winning numerous awards both in their native England, and across the world.

Forty years later, the Brodsky Quartet is still going strong.

The Quartet will bring this intimate knowledge to Melbourne where they will perform the entire Shostakovich String Quartet Cycle with musicians from the Australian National Academy of Music, along with a series of pre-concert talks by members of the Brodsky Quartet.

MTC THe CRUCIBLE » Performances on July 5 at 7pm; July 6 at 5pm and 8pm; July 7 at 2pm and 5pm.

Package tickets for all five performances: $220 (full); $160 (senior); $120 (concession) Individual tickets: $55 (full); $40 (senior); $30 (concession). To book call 9645 7911 or online at tickets.anam.com.au Australian National Academy of Music, South Melbourne Town Hall, 210 Bank Street, South Melbourne. anam.com.au

by Arthur Miller

‘The theatrical equivalent of a gripping page turner.’

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22 June — 3 August Southbank Theatre, The Sumner

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30 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013

PERFORMING ARTS / CINEMA STILL MINE

BY CHRISTOPHER SANDERS

Veteran character actor James Cromwell finally gets to be a leading man at 73 in the beautiful Still Mine, a Canadian film about an elderly man who fights the bureaucrats to build a dream house for his wife.

OPERATION E

BY CHRISTOPHER SANDERS

Photo: Michael Amendolia

Based on the true story of Operation Emmanuel, Miguel Courtois’ Operation E is a heartbreaking realist thriller/drama that focuses on a family in flight from the Colombian jungle to save a child despite the risks. The family’s naive but good-hearted patriarch Jose Crisanto (a brilliant Luis Tosar) grows coca for the militant rebels FARC, but his large family grows when the militants deliver a sickly baby to his jungle farm to look after. With the baby’s health failing, Crisanto seeks medical assistance but the local rebel leader won’t give him medicine.

That’s reserved for his soldiers. Crisanto and his

family flee the FARC controlled jungle, despite being told to stay put by the rebels, to get the medical attention required. What Cristano doesn’t know is that the baby, Emmanuel, is the son of a political prisoner, Clara Jonas.

Later, when Emmanuel is needed as part of hostage negotiations and the baby is in the care of social services, things get prickly for Cristano and his family. A documentary-style look at how family is affected by The Colombian guerilla war, Operation E is a moving account of how doing the right thing is not always the smart thing, especially in Colombia.

Based on a true story, Still Mine (written and directed by Michael McGowan) is the latest in a wave of films starring older people about older people, such as Amour, The Exotic Marigold Hotel and Dustin Hoffman’s Quartet. Still Mine has more in common with Amour than the others. Like Michael Haneke’s Cannes-winning film, Still Mine is about an elderly couple – Craig and Irene Morrison (played by James Cromwell and Genevieve Bujold) – that explores what happens when the wife’s health deteriorates.

Still Mine isn’t as dark as Amour, but it’s no less powerful. While Cromwell thinks

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“You will notice these films are not made in America and it takes a certain amount of courage to [make] and these are independent films but they are made by people, artists, that are looking at the world and saying what we are seeing coming out of Hollywood is a very jaundiced and limited view about life,” Cromwell explains. “You’ve got all of these people going through all of these extraordinary things and they are not 14 years old. So, I’m very heartened because there always were great stories and there are still great stories to be told but the fact is there is now an older audience that wants to see their lives mirrored back to them, which is why we do the work in the first place. So, I am very hopeful.”

» Still Mine is now showing on General Release.

» Operation E is showing as part of the Spanish Film Festival.

CARMINA O REVIENTA (CARMINA OR BLOW UP)

4 O UT O F

there will be more independent and foreign films featuring and starring older people, he doesn’t think this wave of elderly cinema will catch on in Hollywood.

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BY WILLIAM CHARLES

The Spanish continue to make some of the most uninhibited, humane and darkly humorous films in the world – for the simple reason that that is how they live. This is no confected outrageousness, but a reflection of a country whose people remain, despite all their tribulations – or indeed perhaps because of them – larger than life.

A real highlight of the current Spanish Film Festival is the directorial debut for Spanish actor and TV star Paco León. Carmina or Blow Up (as often happens, the title is a clumsy translation) is a treat for the hardcore Spanish film fan, with its deep southern Andalusian accents, its profanity-

riddled language, its beleaguered working class characters and its grim comedy in the face of endless setbacks. Filmed documentary-style, the film recounts the attempt of Carmina Barrios, bar owner, to overcome a series of financial setbacks in the running of her humble establishment on the outskirts of Seville. Previous robberies had taken cash and the slot machines, but this time the legs of jamón have gone – and things are serious.

Told principally by Carmina, her daughter and her husband, this short (only 70 minutes) film is a vulgar and deeply true masterpiece about dignity and love of life. For a glimpse into how less well-off Spaniards (and there are many of them nowadays) live, Carmina or Blow Up will tell you a lot of what you need to know.

» Carmina or Blow Up is showing as part of the Spanish Film Festival. spanishfilmfestival.com

The Melbourne Review June 2013 31

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WORDS & MUSIC

Three Blind And Bleeding Mice

Here the references to sneezing and falling down may be taken as evidence of the song’s origins during the Great Plague. The ‘ring o’ roses’, it is argued, was a rosy rash symptomatic of the disease, while posies were used to mask its smell.

The idea of linking children’s rhymes to historical people and events has been traced back to one highly influential book called The Real Personages of Mother Goose by Katherine Elwes. Published in 1930, it asserted that nursery rhymes were in fact ‘codified historical narratives’ written at a time when to speak plainly would have been to risk one’s life.

Unfortunately, it appears that in the cases of ‘Mice’, ‘Sheep’ and ‘Rosie’ neither the historical facts nor medical symptoms tally well with the theories put forward.

Inside the strange world of nursery rhymes

by Phil Kakulas

T

For generations, nursery rhymes have delighted young imaginations with strange tales of fantastic happenings. Their simple melodies and repetitive lyrics are thought to aid early language and musical development, but their often surreal and sometimes violent subject matter has stirred controversy and debate about their appropriateness and meaning: Why are the three mice blind? What kind of a sadist would sever their tails with a kitchen knife? Who thought this would be suitable for kids?

The oldest historical records of children’s songs date back to Ancient Rome, but evidence of rhymes and lullabies have been found across all cultures and times. The earliest known English language rhymes were found scribbled into the margins of books from the Middle Ages, but it was not until 1744 that the first collection of nursery rhymes was published in

Image: Paula Rego

hree blind mice, three blind mice.

See how they run, see how they run.

They all ran after the farmer’s wife, Who cut off their tails with a carving knife, Did you ever see such a sight in your life, As three blind mice?

England as Tommy Thumb’s Song Book. This popular tome contained many of the songs and rhymes we still sing today, such as Baby In The Treetop and London Bridge, both of which demonstrate an early preoccupation with danger and destruction.

Protestant bishops executed by Queen Mary I of England in the 16th Century. Likewise, Baa, Baa, Black Sheep is at once a song about a sheep and also a veiled protest against medieval taxes on wool or even possibly an allusion to the slave trade.

Contemporary opinion about the significance of these lyrics varies greatly.

For some theorists they are simply fantastical verse written to amuse new minds, while others hold that they are of far greater historical import than that. Three Blind Mice, they argue, is not just a song about a trio of rodents unlucky enough to lose their tails to a carving knife, but also a reference to three

By this reckoning, an apparently innocuous song like Ring Around The Rosie can take on a great historical significance. From 1883 comes this version: A ring, a ring o’ roses A pocket full o’ posies A-tishoo, a-tishoo We all fall down.

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By the 19th Century, the popularity of nursery rhymes had spread from England to the New World, inspiring a host of original children’s songs such as Mary Had a Little Lamb. Sung to the simplest of melodies, the song’s prosaic subject matter signalled a shift away from the morbid scenarios of traditional rhymes like Humpty Dumpty and Jack and Jill. This trend toward sanitisation continued well into the modern era, by when public concern about the unsavoury and anachronistic nature of the old rhymes gave rise to the British ‘Society for Nursery Rhyme Reform’, who campaigned for a complete rewriting of the works.

Today, children sing the old rhymes with as much pleasure as their forebears did over 250 years ago. Psychologists attribute this enduring popularity, in part, to the gory subject matter and dreamlike logic of the rhymes. Like fairy tales, nursery rhymes are thought to provide a bridge between innocence and experience; a portal into a world populated by archetypes where children can imaginatively explore adult concepts and themes – a chance for kids to get their feet dirty and their hands a little bloody.

»»Phil Kakulas is a songwriter and teacher who plays double bass in The Blackeyed Susans.

32 The Melbourne Review June 2013

VISUAL ARTS

Bigger Pond

Monet may have remained true to nature as it floated onto the surface of his canvases but in the more ‘abstract’ of his works a distinction between literary and retinal ways of realising experience takes on the finest shade of grey, if not blue, violet or green

by John Neylon

M

onet’s Garden is a memorable exhibition devoted to Claude Monet’s iconic garden at Giverny in northern France.

Monet worked for decades on his project of capturing the changing moods of nature within his walled garden. These landscapes of water and reflections became for Monet an obsession tempered by the artist’s extraordinary capacity to realise visual impressions as floating worlds of the imagination.

Alain de Botton in the closeout to his book How Proust Can Change Your Life asks the big questions about how to deal with great art.

He cites the example of Virginia Woolf who for a long time held out on reading anything by Marcel Proust for fear it would strike her dumb.

Being stopped in your tracks by extraordinary art, be it music, literature or an artwork needs to be thought through. De Botton suggests that this condition derives from what Proust called ‘artistic idolatry’.

Claude Monet Vétheuil (1879). Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Felton Bequest, 1937.

It happens easily enough. As a tourist you visit the artist’s studio which looks as if he or she has just stepped out to buy a bag of buns. Later you listen to a compilation of music (the artist’s favourites) while cooking a meal from a book of regional recipes bought from the museum shop. All this, Proust contends, privileges the context but distracts from the main game, as De Botton interprets it, of looking at our world through the artist’s eyes, not looking at his/her world through ours.

Herman Pekel with Claude Ciccone & Lisa Wang 23 June – 7 July 320 Bay Rd Cheltenham

T: 9583 7577 Mon to Sat 10am-5pm Sun 12-5pm enquiries@withoutpier.com.au www.withoutpier.com.au

The exhibition Monet’s Garden ticks all the artistic idolatry boxes. Who could resist the exhibition exit wrap-around cinematic experience of a day at Giverny from dawn to dusk? The problem or challenge with ‘Giverny Monet’ is that we expect to find familiar things – and we do. Walls of water lilies floating on water easily satisfy expectations. It’s all about beauty tinged with the X factor of semiabstraction that lends many paintings the kind of qualities associated with 20th century abstract expressionism of the numinous kind.

These are landscapes of pleasure.

No, make that desire. Monet’s pleasure and our desire for something along the lines of beauty, a piece of Monet, a taste of France or simply reflecting pools for meditation. Hang onto that idea of desire. I’m saying this because I came into the exhibition resistant to the whole

Giverny Dreaming caper. And remain so. But I was confident that something in this exhibition would give me what the artist Frank Auerbach described as artwork escaping from a thicket of prepared possibilities. And so it proved.

The first gallery tracks Monet’s creative journey out of Paris, along the Seine, from 1871 to the mid 1880s, in search of a place where nature wasn’t buried by suburbs and industry.

Some beautifully crafted images of Seine Valley villages, Argenteuil and Vétheuil, should predispose all viewers to Monet’s remarkable eye for light. Cezanne once remarked that Monet was ‘only an eye – but what an eye.’

Time spent looking at the nuances of colour, texture and tonal exchanges within these works sets up an appreciation of how Monet cultivated this eye for light and landscape subjects as he explored the Norman coast, tracked the passage of light across the face of Rouen Cathedral, peered through the murk of a Thames side fog and adapted his palette to accommodate the snow-clad landscapes of Norway. This ‘warm up’ section of the exhibition has key, quality works which deliver a real sense of how well equipped Monet, in his mature years, was to deal with the challenge of creating an entire world out of an equivalent to grains of sand – a few water plants, some willow tendrils, occasionally the green bridge and of course, reflections.

The Melbourne Review June 2013 33

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VISUAL ARTS

Claude Monet French 1840–1926. Waterlilies and agapanthus (Nymphéas et agapanthes) (1914–17). © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, © Bridgeman-Giraudon / Presse

Of particular interest is the importance of gesture, something not easily discerned in reproductions. The artist always had this certain flourish in his brushwork. A late (1917 – 19) water lilies subject panel has the sprung energy of a mid 1950s de Kooning Full Arm series painting or any number of Cy Twombly drawings. The capacity of gesture to draw the viewer into the image is particularly evident in late (early 1920s) works at a time when Monet was afflicted with an eye condition which played hell with his capacity to see colours other than reds and yellows. This explains the extraordinary, quite expressionistic colour palettes of this group of works. In such images the brush works in a convulsive but disciplined manner as if the cane of a partially sighted person searching the way forward.

The big surprises in the exhibition are large panels featuring willow trees which are invested with Monet’s compassion for the soldiers who had suffered and died during the war of 1914 – 18. The nervous energy these images communicate dispels any notion of Monet as

Henri Manuel. French 1874–1947. Claude Monet (1840-1926) in front of his paintings ‘The Waterlilies’ in his studio at Giverny 1920. © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, © Bridgeman-Giraudon / Presse.

Suddenly the exhibition becomes Giverny. From here on it’s reflections all the way down. Many perhaps have a fixed idea of Monet’s water lilies as being that extraordinary 360° installation in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. The reality, as evidenced by this large assembly of Giverny-based studies, is that Monet worked for a quarter of a century on his project of

capturing the constantly changing aspects of his walled garden. The diversity of his interpretations goes far beyond that of the play of natural light across the day. It is an extraordinary journey, to see such a finely tuned eye become fixated on water and reflections to the extent that nothing else mattered.

the grand seigneur cloistered from the world and adrift in a floating world. A different kind of frisson is lurking in some earlier pond paintings such as a 1907 water lilies in which the reflected sky looks to be running with blood. Virginia Spate’s catalogue essay nudges this work into the orbit of Symbolism and its fixation on death, the afterlife, dreams and emotions.

Monet may have remained true to nature as it floated onto the surface of his canvases but in the more ‘abstract’ of his floating worlds a distinction between literary and retinal ways of realising experience takes on the finest shade of grey, if not blue, violet or green. De Botton’s final advice on how to treat great art is that sometimes it needs to be thrown aside. Try it – but see this very seductive show first.

»»Monet’s Garden, The Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris shows at the National Gallery of Victoria until September 8.

34 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013

VISUAL ARTS

Speaking in Colour

P

lanning for the upcoming exhibition at Shepparton Art Museum began with around 200 sheets of purchase records; a sea of black and white text from which the museum’s director Kirsten Paisley would subsequently tease out a unique and vivid account of Aboriginal art, its creation and its collection. The records in question were first handed to Paisley by Victorian philanthropist and chairman of the Sidney Myer Fund, Carrillo Gantner AO, along with an offer to loan his collection of modern and contemporary Aboriginal art to the regional museum. This collection, which was gradually built up by Gantner and his wife Ziyin over the past 40 years, will be shown at Shepparton Art Museum until late August under the title Speaking in Colour.

Introducing a visitor-friendly orderliness

to the wide selection of paintings included in this exhibition was undoubtedly a demanding task for Kirsten Paisley, partly owing to the fact that the works on display were never intended to form a ‘collection’. In contrast to the largely regulated process of acquiring works for a public art museum, private art collections more often than not emerge from a chance spark of interest and develop from opportunities that arise thereafter. In Carrillo Gantner’s own words: “You don’t start with any idea of ‘collecting’. You simply buy a work of art because you love it and it speaks to you.”

In more than one respect, the works displayed in the new exhibition speak in a range of voices. First and foremost, the pieces serve as visual representations of a variety of language groups around Australia, now brought together in Yorta Yorta country in which the Shepparton

22 JUNE - 18 AUGUST 2013 Featuring works by Russell DRYSDALE, Sidney NOLAN, Clifton PUGH, Noel COUNIHAN, Gordon BENNETT, Penny BYRNE, Jon CATTAPAN and Judy WATSON this exhibition seeks to highlight the artist’s role in analysing and reporting upon the political, social and environmental concerns of the times.

Jon CATTAPAN, Atonal group (Icy) 2013 (detail), alyd-modified oil paint, acrylic & coloured pencil on Arches paper, 140 x 140 cm, © Jon Cattapan, courtesy KalimanRawlins

Harry J. Wedge. The Coming of the Serpent 2000. Courtesy the Carrillo and Ziyin Gantner Collection. © Estate of the artist.

Art Museum stands. Gantner’s first acquisition of Indigenous art was a work by the western Arnhem Land bark painter Yirawala (1901-76), who, in 1971, was the first Aboriginal artist to have a touring solo exhibition around Australia.

Gantner was directed to this exhibition by Jennifer Isaacs, with whom he then worked at the Australia Council. A prominent arts writer and curator, Isaacs assisted Gantner and his uncle Baillieu Myer to assemble a collection of contemporary Aboriginal art to tour America in the 1990s (the works from which, reproduced in the book Spirit Country, have since been donated to Museum Victoria); she is also the author of the excellent catalogue accompanying the current exhibition.

From this first purchase of a bark painting

by Yirawala has developed a disparate and engaging assembly of art, organised for display at the Shepparton museum partly by region (Arnhem Land, Kimberley, Western Desert, Balgo Hills) and partly by artist and practice (including Albert Namatjira and Julie Dowling, as well as a room dedicated to outsider and contemporary urban art). Local Yorta Yorta artist Lin Onus (1948-96) is included in the exhibition with the large-scale landscape Floodwater ‘Woorong Nucko’ (1995), which includes the traditional Arnhem Land design known as rarrk (crosshatching), for which Onus was instructed and given permission by Murrungun/Djinang artist Jack Wunuwun.

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It was on account of the landscape by Lin Onus that the present collection was initially lent to Shepparton Art Museum. In order to provide an Indigenous perspective in amongst the largely colonial-filled landscape hang at the museum – and not holding a work by Onus in the permanent collection – Kirsten Paisley approached the Gantner family to, well, have a loaner of theirs. In the current exhibition, this work stands as a paradigm of accomplishment for artists in the Shepparton region, for whom the great success of Lin Onus is clearly a source of encouragement and instruction. Indeed, for Paisley and the team at Shepparton, a key objective of this exhibition is to “bring

in local audiences and provide education for local Aboriginal artists” – alongside attracting visitors from Melbourne and further afield.

It is here that we might locate the reasoning behind Carrillo Gantner’s decision to loan – and gradually donate – his family’s very personal collection to the regional museum. Shepparton has the second largest Aboriginal population in Victoria (behind Melbourne) and the addition of this collection to the local art museum will have a big impact on its standing in the community.

When I questioned the museum’s director on the role of such deeds of philanthropy in a time of widespread cuts to arts funding, her response was understandably enthusiastic: “It is absolutely crucial”. She was also keen to qualify this tribute with an acknowledgement of the “strong support of local council”, without which a public art museum, such as that in Shepparton, could not achieve its proposed outcomes. “It is a delicate relationship between local councils and philanthropists, particularly in a regional context,” says Paisley.

A thematic thread running across the exhibition at Shepparton Art Museum is that of Aboriginal dispossession, from country and from family. According to Kirsten Paisley, “a lot of artists included in the exhibition were not on their own country when the works were created,” so they were painting “to keep alive stories and their connection to country”. In collecting this range of works together – barks, dot paintings, watercolours, contemporary figural works – and in turn providing them for exhibition, Carrillo Gantner has also brought together these stories to create, with help from Kirsten Paisley and Jennifer Isaacs, one immense narrative of Aboriginal art practice from the early twentieth century to the present.

» Speaking in Colour shows at the Shepparton Art Museum from June 21 to August 25. sheppartonartmuseum.com.au

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013 35

MELBOURNEREVIEW.COM.AU

VISUAL ARTS

My Country

spent at the Queensland Aboriginal Creations store (the government outlet for works produced in local and northern Queensland Aboriginal communities) while studying at university. In 2002, he joined the QAGOMA as a trainee, working on the landmark exhibition, Story Place: Contemporary Art of Cape York and the Rainforest (2003).

My Country: I Still Call Australia Home, Contemporary Art from Black Australia

BY WENDY CAVENETT

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Stand in the foyer of Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), and witness the vast sitespecific work, Trust the 2%ers by contemporary Victorian artist, Reko Rennie. Covering a wall 15 metres high, the brightly-coloured, diamondpattern mural references the Indigenous population – approximately two per cent of Australians – and aptly announces the landmark exhibition, My Country: I Still Call Australia Home, Contemporary Art from Black Australia.

As its title suggests, this is an exhibition embedded with many layers of meaning, its three curatorial themes of My Country, My History and My Life offering a powerful construct for more than 300 works by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists from all states and territories.

“Every work in this exhibition relates in some way to the idea of country,” says curator Bruce McLean. “In fact, the title My Country has many meanings – the way Indigenous people relate to place… the Dorothea Mackellar [1904-penned] poem about country, and the Peter Allen song, of course, I Still Call Australia Home. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are claiming their space within that national construct, because we still call Australia home. This is still our country.”

McLean continues: “The show is also about contributing Indigenous versions of history to the national dialogue, so these stories are not just Indigenous stories, they’re Australian stories, and they appeal to people to look at them as such – to see our shared history through a different pair of eyes.”

Displayed in a series of linking spaces, My Country is a big exhibition made intimate thanks to the conversations between more than 100 Indigenous artists (including Vernon Ah Kee, Doreen Reid Nakamarra, Judy Watson, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarrnda, and Sally Gabor) using a variety of mediums such as photography, sculpture, video art, painting and instillation.

Move through the gallery and there is Warwick Thorton’s lone figure hanging from

Photo by: Natasha Harth

Now two rivers run their course, separated for so long. I’m dreaming of a brighter day when the waters will be one.” – Treaty, Yothu Yindi (in collaboration with Paul Kelly and Midnight Oil)

Thaiday Sr, Ken. Torres Strait Islander, Meriam Mir people. Australia b.1950.

a neon-lit cross in his 3D film projection, Stranded (2011). The Long Gallery features a selection of desert paintings that offer a unique representation of Australia’s interior, and the second site-specific work by Megan Cope – a descendant from the Quandamooka region (North Stradbroke Island) in SE Queensland – is a large-scale map located in the River Room, which explores ideas of time, environment and toponymy.

There are many synergies and conversations that I hope our audience will engage with.”

McLean, a Wirri/Birri-Gubba man with heritage from the central coast of Queensland, says Indigenous art has always been part of his life – from his mother’s work as an arts facilitator to his time

“The works in this exhibition speak to each other,” says McLean, and these conversations present challenging narratives for the viewer to consider – reconciliation, the response to the national apology, the responsibility to country, and the critical engagement with contemporary politics and race relations amongst them.

Strong also is the pride in which these artists tell their stories, and their willingness to engage others – to invite all people to consider that “brighter day” when two rivers will be one.

» My Country: I Still Call Australia Home, Contemporary Art from Black Australia shows at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane until October 7.

Gosia Wlodarczak

Back in the gallery, it is Archie Moore’s intricate Sacred rights (The first intervention) from 2008 – a folded book page in the shape of a church sitting atop an open book – that catches one’s attention, and then it’s Ruby Tjangawa Williamson’s collaborative painting, Ngayuku ngura (My country) Puli murpu (Mountain range) 2012, depicting, says the artist, desert country “alive and full of colour”.

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A Room Without A View OPENING 6–8 pm Thursday 27 June

Keep moving and you hear the soft voices of Indigenous people, the sounds of their whispers, their incantations mixing with the written words, I forgive you, each letter formed by emu feathers and attached to MDF board – a statement, writes Victorian artist, Bindi Cole, “open to everyone” – while Michael Cook’s series of Civilised inkjet prints play with our history’s contradictions and complex narratives.

“I am amazed at the strength of the work in this exhibition,” McLean says, “and by the courage of the artists who tell their stories.

“The experience of art is just remarkable,” McLean says. “When it comes to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, there are many very important stories embedded within the art, and what’s just as important is the way that those stories are told. I believe art gives people a way to really engage with those stories.

A lot of people wouldn’t want to read about them in a book – it’s like a history lesson, but when they’re looking at Indigenous art, which is really visually engaging – it’s a beautiful painting, it’s also sculpture and really potent instillations – people are drawn in by the art itself, and for me, My Country is about that power and passion and history through art that really gives people a sense of pride and a deeper understanding of our shared history.”

da s 28 June–17 august 2013 daTE

RMIT Gallery 344 Swanston Street Melbourne 3000 / Tel 03 9925 1717 Mon – Fri 11– – 5 / Thurs 11– 7 / Sat 12 – 5 / Closed Sundays / Free entry www.rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery / Like RMIT Gallery on Facebook / Follow RMIT Gallery on Twitter @RMITGallery

36 The Melbourne Review June 2013

VISUAL ARTS 1

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RMIT Gallery 4

Gosia Wlodarczak A Room Without A View A Head in a Hive of Bees: Selected Drawings by Peter Ellis June 28 – August 17 Storey Hall, Swanston St, Melbourne rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery

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Various Artists Tooth & Nail: Cross Cultural Influences in Contemporary Ceramics Until July 14 7-27 Snake Gully Drive, Bundoora bundoorahomestead.com

Cambridge Studio Gallery

Susan Gibson 27 Pieces June 19 – July 13 52 Cambridge Street, Collingwood cambridgestudiogallery.com.au

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Geelong Gallery

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

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Hawthorn Studio & Gallery

Kim Kennedy Collective Mix Until July 28 635 Burwood Road, Hawthorn East hawthornstudiogallery.com.au

Monash Gallery of Art

Carol Jerrems: photographic artist July 6 – September 28 860 Ferntree Gully Rd, Wheelers Hill mga.org.au

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Eleven40 Gallery

International Loupe Awards: Medium Format Fine Art Prize 2013 June 20 – July 8 The BIFB Collection 2013 Gala Event July 14 1140 Malvern Road Malvern eleven40.com.au

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre

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Flinders Lane Gallery

EXPLORATION 13 Annual emerging artist exhibition June 18 – July 13 137 Flinders Lane, Melbourne flg.com.au

James Makin Gallery

EXHIBITION: Troy Ruffels Cinder Until July 6 PROJECT SPACE: Jeff Makin Still life: Towards a florilegium Until June 22 67 Cambridge St, Collingwood jamesmakingallery.com

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Bayside Arts & Cultural Centre

Kamesburgh: From home to hostel June 15 – August 4 cnr Carpenter & Wilson Sts, Brighton bayside.vic.gov.au

Melbourne Art Rooms McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park McClelland Sculpture Survey & Award 2012 Until July 14 360 - 390 McClelland Drive, Langwarrin mcclellandgallery.com

David Burrows I To Eye Julie Collins & Derek John Rescue Until June 30 418 Bay St, Port Melbourne marsgallery.com.au

3/06/13 3:14 PM

The Melbourne Review June 2013 37

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GALLERY LISTINGS 7

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The Dax Centre Reverie Selected Works from The Cunningham Dax Collection Until September 21 Kenneth Myer Building, The University of Melbourne, Genetics Lane off Royal Parade, Melbourne daxcentre.org

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Heide Museum of Modern Art

Fiona Hall Big Game Hunting Until July 21 Siri Hayes Back to Nature Scene Until July 28 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen heide.com.au

Bendigo Art Gallery Shadowlife Until July 28 42 View St, Bendigo bendigoartgallery.com.au

Catherine Asquith Gallery Jarek Wojcik Museum Series June 24 – July 6 48 Oxford St, Collingwood catherineasquithgallery.com

Grant Nimmo World Headquarters 2103 Michaela Gleave Universal Truths July 2 – August 3 2-4 Carlton Street, Prahran annapappasgallery.com

Direct Democracy Until July 6 Building F, Monash University, Caulfield monash.edu.au/muma

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TarraWarra International 2013 Animate / Inanimate From June 29 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road Healesville twma.com.au

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Without Pier Gallery

Conchita Carambano, Donal Molloy-Drum & Trevor McNamarra June 5 – 19 Herman Pekel with Claude Ciccone & Lisa Wang June 23 – July 7 320 Bay Road, Cheltenham withoutpier.com.au

Exhibition, Print Sale & Gala Event 125 Prints 125 Photographers No Names

Sunday 14th July 1pm - 4pm Pick up a print from an Australian or International master for only $100

MUMA

TarraWarra Museum of Art

BIFB Collection 2013

Tickets www.eleven40.com.au

Anna Pappas Gallery

Whitehorse Art Space

Essentials for the Domestic Goddess Revisited Contemporary domestic ceramics featuring ceramicists represented by Skepsi Gallery together with works from Ceramics Victoria and the Whitehorse Art Collection.

Ceramics Decal Award Ceramics Victoria Inc A $2,000 acquisitive ceramics award and joint project between Ceramics Victoria Inc and Decal Specialists.

Until August 3 Box Hill Town Hall, 1022 Whitehorse Road, Box Hill boxhilltownhall.com.au

Shepparton Art Museum Speaking in Colour: The Collection of Carrillo and Ziyin Gantner June 21 – August 25 70 Welsford Street, Shepparton sheppartonartmuseum.com.au

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Edmund Pearce Gallery

Paul Snell Decoding New York Pam Davison To Whom It May Concern Danica Chappell/Kate Robertson White Balance June 26 – July 20 Level 2 Nicholas Building 37 Swanston St, Melbourne edmundpearce.com.au

38 The Melbourne Review June 2013

VISUAL ARTS

Ellen Page Wilson

Throughout this exhibition there is a tussle between festivity and threat.

The artist harnesses her multipoint cultural perspective to disorient the viewer, inundating their senses with an array of colours, shapes, subjects, and sounds”.

Wangechi Mutu. Moth Collection 2010. Porcelain, chalk, leather, feathers, paint, paper. Courtesy and © the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

Cabinet of curiosities Wangechi Mutu at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

by Suzanne Fraser

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verything about Wangechi Mutu, the artist, is a revelation of contrasts. Her education, her career, her methods, her subjects – all stand as tribute to the value of multiplicity and synthesis. Showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney from May until August, Mutu’s latest exhibition represents a 10-year survey of her career so far, laying bare a carnivalesque artistic practice in which the black female body takes centre stage.

Using a combination of collage, drawing, installation, and video, the artist offers a series of visual musings on the functioning of race, gender and consumerism in contemporary western society. This disparate subject matter is tied together – and lent serious heft – through the artist’s ongoing references to the history and legacy of colonialism, a topic in which the artist has a vested, ancestral interest.

The embrace of variety in Wangechi Mutu’s body of art might at first seem a little bewildering. Yet her use of what might best be described as a “hybrid” aesthetic is not superficial or arbitrary, but the informed product of a sweeping set of life experiences.

Born in Kenya and educated in Nairobi, Mutu relocated to study in a twelfth-century castle in Wales at the age 17, before taking degrees at Cooper Union in New York and finally Yale University, where she earned her MFA under the tutelage of William Kentridge and Jeff Wall. Each of these chapters has in turn been folded into her art, making the current survey exhibition a veritable labyrinth of identity prompts and cultural insignia.

Included in the exhibition are two installations featuring banqueting tables, a motif that might initially prompt the viewer to consider either the biblical iconography of Leonardo’s fifteenth-century masterwork The Last Supper or the early feminist imagery

of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. Both of these spheres of reference, religion and feminism, have pertinence in Mutu’s practice.

But these table-based installations are, in the first instance, fantastical explorations of excess; three-dimensional, multisensory reinterpretations of the seventeenth-century vanitas painting. In Exhuming Gluttony: Another Requiem (2006), Mutu presents the setting of a ruinous feast, in which wine bottles drip their contents from the ceiling, rotting and staining the solid wooden table below. In her 2010 work entitled My Dirty Little Heaven, the central structure is instead comprised of a series of slatted tables onto which a combination of wine and milk trickle; in the mixture of these liquids we witness a contrast between vice and innocence. The use of slatted tables in this work makes references to the benches on which bodies were stacked during the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Throughout this exhibition there is a tussle between festivity and threat.The artist harnesses her multipoint cultural perspective to disorient the viewer, inundating their senses with an array of colours, shapes, subjects, and sounds. Mutu draws upon the legacy of Italian modernist Lucio Fontana in her creation of spatial environments, in which the viewer must, however momentarily, exist and reflect.

In reference to Mutu’s employment of eroticism in the work The Ark Collection (2006), senior curator at the MCA Rachel Kent makes an observation that extends across the exhibition: the artist “suggests all, but reveals nothing”.

These are sensory works, tactile and evocative, yet never explicit.

Mutu’s body of work is partly driven by a challenge to western historical discourse, as is evident in the aforementioned collage series The Ark Collection, which features assorted images of women arranged in neat display cabinets. Here the artist reimagines existing quasi anthropological texts of the twentieth century as ridiculous fantasies of exoticism. In the mixed-media sculptural work Moth Collection (2010), the artist mimics the western tradition of taxonomic display – often associated with nineteenthcentury imperial expansion – by exhibiting a collection of 52 ceramic “moth girls” split across two gallery walls. Mutu situates the female figures around four large gouges in the gallery walls, representative of four east African lakes that were also the sites of massacres. The moth figures are presented as interesting hybrid specimens that, nevertheless, deny scientific classification and display.

For the MCA’s Rachel Kent, who has been “a great admirer of Wangechi Mutu’s work for many years”, the current exhibition is clearly a labour of great interest. Amongst Kent’s other curatorial badges is the massively successful 2008 survey exhibition of British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, the catalogue for which is shortly to be reissued with a new essay written by Kent. It is interesting to contrast the current exhibition with that of Shonibare, who also explores issues of colonial legacy and hybridity in his practice. Yet whereas Shonibare alludes to West African history in his work, Mutu positions her art through her East African heritage. The curious forms and creatures imagined by Mutu are expressions of her starkly contrasting life experiences to date – from Kenya, to Wales, to Brooklyn, and several places in-between. As the current exhibition in Sydney shows, it is all across these locations and cultures that Wangechi Mutu has located her oeuvre.

»»Wangechi Mutu shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, until August 14. mca.com.au

THE MELB OUR NE R EVIEW JUNE 2013

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

TONKA

The former Honky Tonks has been revamped into a spanking new restaurant and bar.

REVIEW BY ARABELLA FORGE / PHOTOS BY MATTHEW WREN

WASTE FOOD AS SOCIAL CAPITAL

NATIONAL TREASURES

BLOODY GOOD EATING

Claude Baxter on community efforts to make the most of our food surplus

Andrea Frost finds Australia’s oldest wine families showcasing some of the best

Rebecca Sullivan argues for more extensive consumption of kangaroo and wallaby meat

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40 The Melbourne Review June 2013

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE The Woods of Windsor A good feed and a great drink all under the watchful eye of the resident stag. When south of the river, Woods of Windsor beckons

by Lou Pardi

M

ention Chapel Street and it will bring up images of many things: shopping, cars with large exhausts that just can’t seem to find a carpark; but amongst them probably isn’t a homely bar and restaurant with game heads hanging on the walls and an impressive range of whiskey.

Swing open the door to Woods of Windsor and step into this 1920s - 1930s inspired establishment and you’ll forget you’re on Chapel Street at all. There’s a sense of theatre and restrained elegance in the décor, the service, the drinks, and much of the menu.

Take a stool by the window for a drink before dinner – the specialties of the house are classic cocktails and Woods of Windsor excel at anything involving a Titanic-threatening chunk of ice and some quality booze. Take a sip and let it work through those knots in the back of your shoulders.

Mosey on over to the dining table, a sexy dark wood number (just slightly too wide for you to hear your dining companions over the din) and let the knowledgeable staff tell you ‘how the menu works’. (I’m not sure at what point we fell into this habit of almost every menu needing explanation Melbourne, but I’m wondering if we need to simplify things?) The menu is made up of entrees, mains and desserts, unless you go for the chef’s set menu – so not so complicated after all.

It’s a beautiful collection of classic dishes, so good in fact that making your choice may be difficult. Zucchini flowers are always a good idea and this duo of blossoms with goats cheese, beetroot and pine nuts are tasty ($16). The

strumpet of this entrée selection is the duck liver pate. A pot of rich, smooth pate with a layer of Madeira jelly sits on a board alongside some devious potato crisps (like kettle chips if they were made by an angel). You don’t need to finish the whole thing – but you will, even if you have to smear the last bits on your bread...

“Don’t fill up on bread,” advises my companion, before tucking into a couple of pieces. It’s good advice (when you heed it) as the mains offer up some hearty, rich and filling dishes. The pert and juicy Gippsland duck breast is perfectly prepared and served alongside curried cauliflower, baby beetroots, sweet potato, parsnips and witlof ($39). A small jug of sauce is poured over the meat at the table.

For classic comfort food, it’s the Yarra Valley lamb shoulder, falling apart and almost melting into the plate with its companions: heirloom carrots, beer braised shallots and pumpkin jam ($39). Provenance takes centre stage on this menu with New Zealand Hapuka (with Jerusalem artichokes, pickled fennel, broccoli and quinoa - $35), Cape Grim hanger steak (with onions, smoked marrow and celeriac - $39) and Otway Pork Neck (with quince, cabbage, turnips and crackle - $35) showing off their roots. Sides aren’t strictly necessary if you’re not ravenous, but they are good fun and who can resist broccoli gratin with cheese sauce ($11) on a cold autumn night?

The dessert menu is tempting. A sophisticated take on the popular peanut butter bar is accompanied by an excellent raspberry sorbet, and if you’re after a rich indulgence, the triple chocolate slice ($15) is for you.

It’s cold outside, and that’s the perfect weather to take in this dark and handsome number. There are a range of events on the website including a five course Whiskey Degustation Dinner on July 1 ($105) and the genius daily ‘Cheese Happy Hour’ (three cheeses for $15).

»»The Woods of Windsor 108 Chapel Street, Windsor 9521 1900 Lunch: Friday - Sunday Dinner: Monday - Thursday thewoodsofwindsor.com

Tonka

by Arabella Forge

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eet me at Honky Tonks or Tonka was what we used to say when planning a long night out in the City. Now, the former has become the latter, as one of Melbourne’s most familiar and well-loved bars – Honky Tonks – has been revamped into a spanking new restaurant and bar space, known as Tonka. .

Set in a dimly lit Melbourne laneway, with a flashing neon sign signalling the direction to the obscure doorway, the path to Tonka is a contrast to the swank new space that awaits inside.

Space is something of a commodity in any restaurant, and Tonka makes it all the more alluring with a spacious floor plan, minimalist design features and a large, open plan kitchen which dominates the central dining area.

Designed in a sleek, modern manner with a hint of Jaipur luxury, the major wow-factor is the swirly fabric clumps atop the ceiling, designed

by Melbourne installation artist Naomi Troski.

The food is Modern Indian inspired – it’s sleek and simple, with strong influences from Head Chef Michael Smith (Former Head Chef at Jacques Reymond) and Executive Chef Adam D’Silva (Coda Restaurant).

The menu moves well away from rustic Indian staples – lentils, naan bread

and strong spice combinations – and more toward modern refined flavours and toned down spice combinations. Take the trademark lamb curry: tender and unfussy, it’s a delicate reincarnation of an otherwise fullflavoured and hearty dish. Black cardamon, toasted sesame seeds and star anise are the dominating flavours, and it matches well with a reita of pomegranate and mint in a thick yoghurt base. Certainly the reita is a scale up from the unpasteurised, sour-tasting variety that you might have sampled on the streets of Jaipur.

A Hervey Bay scallop with tamarind and toast-flavoured roasted rice dressing is washed down in an instant. And the puffed rice, green papaya, peanuts and spanner crab team together well in a salad with sharp flavours of fresh coriander and chilli.

Plump Mooloolaba prawns are making a comeback. Grilled until crispy and still gloriously stout, they team well with kaffir lime dressing, mint and coriander.

Service is suave, bordering on pitch-perfect.

Think wait staff in crisp white shirts, large black aprons and a touch of red lippie. There’s also the luxury of simply asking the wait staff to order for you – an old-school tradition so often overlooked by other up-market dining spots.

The Melbourne Review June 2013 41

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RESTAURANT REVIEWS

Banh Na Thai What’s the sign of a good restaurant?

Surely it’s when you’ve saved their number in your phone, know your friends and families’ orders and recognise the delivery man?

by Lou Pardi

the postcode just so they can get home delivery (it has occurred to me).

t the top end of Sydney Road in Brunswick, which has recently had lots of attention for all the wrong reasons, you’ll find a luminous green sign between a couple of bay windows. It might not look like anything special but in fact it’s the favourite restaurant of many locals.

The major pull is the Green Curry. It’s a mild and creamy number, with plenty of vegetables and your choice of prawn, fish, chicken, calamari, beef, pork or tofu ($11 - $14.50). If you want something really special, ask if they can do it with duck. Seriously addictive and a wicked treat with a side of coconut rice.

Before the days of Yelp and Foursquare it wasn’t easy to find a great local. It was a process of elimination, ordering in or visiting restaurants in the area and seeing what you liked. Even now there are some hidden gems not captured in the myriad of apps and review sites (although of course even these will have a few entries on Urban Spoon).

The Matsaman Curry is another thick creamy indulgence with coconut milk, cashews, pumpkin, potatoes, capsicum and basil. Most commonly paired with beef, you can order this with any of the proteins and it’s surprisingly good with everything from chicken to prawns.

A The same goes for the wine. It’s warmly reassuring to be guided through an abundant list by a calm, steady hand.

Travis Howe (2013 Sommelier of the Year for The Age Good Food Guide) is attentive, with meticulous attention to detail. The list is a heavy manual of varieties spanning boutique regions of Italy, France and other nooks throughout Europe, plus a good selection of local drops as well. There’s also a perk of alternative format bottles in 375ml, and a good assortment of varieties sold by the glass.

Of course, if you feel like being a little more adventurous, try a Tonka Lassi with the warm flavours of rum, yoghurt, mango and pistachio nuts or a Darjeeling Fizz with a hearty kick of gin, peach, black tea and citrus.

Smith and D’Silva have worked hard to redefine and modernise the flavours of a well-known but regionally diverse cuisine.

Just like the premises, the food has had a luxurious makeover which renders it a modern, refined version of its original. But times change, and so do names. Here’s to another night at Tonka.

»»Tonka 20 Duckboard Place, Melbourne 9650 3155 Monday to Friday, Lunch: Midday to 3pm, Monday to Saturday, Dinner: 6pm to 10:30pm info@tonkarestaurant.com.au

Banh Na Thai do an excellent satay sauce – great with their chicken satay sticks or as a dip for roti. Banh Na Thai’s noodle dishes aren’t their strong point, but the stir frys are very good, particularly the Cashew Nut Stir Fry (Pad Med Mamuang).

If you enjoy mild curries and delicious satay, Banh Nah Thai is certainly worth a visit.

»»Banh Na Thai 598 Sydney Road, Brunswick 9388 2133 Dinner: Tuesday - Sunday

It was through this process of elimination that I came across Banh Na Thai, many years ago.

Before long our household had the restaurant’s number programmed into our phones and had chosen favourite dishes (before having tested them all – but 67 is a lot to get through).

Deliveries were a highlight with an alwaysjolly gent proclaiming “Easy cook tonight!” when we answered the door. A year or so in, he changed his signature greeting to a significantly less jolly, albeit still friendly, “Tonight, it will be easy to cook.” I don’t know who corrected him but for all my love of the English language I sincerely wish they hadn’t.

middle brighton

The order-in edition of Banh Na Thai is excellent, but not known for its speed. On that note, if you order take-away for pick up you’ll be waiting too. But that is the nature of the beast.

Having moved out of the area, I haven’t found a Thai restaurant, or any home delivery at all, to compare. Eating in is an option of course. Not an option for dates perhaps, but for catch ups with friends or a family dinner – perfect. The dining area consists of a carpeted rectangular room, some on-theme knickknacks and serviettes folded into lotus flowers (the lotus flowers are actually quite impressive). The loos are out the back door in another building. It’s not fancy, but it has made an effort to dress up.

Banh Na Thai tends to divide people – there are those who say it’s not traditional, not cheap and takes too long – and those who’d move into

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

The Restaurant offers a $49pp 2 course and $55pp 3 course winter dinner special from any dishes on the a la carte menu.

Available Monday – Friday throughout June, July and August.

251 Esplanade, Brighton T: 03 9539 7007 F: 03 9539 7017 www.middlebrightonbaths.com.au

42 The Melbourne Review June 2013

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

Photo by: Brett Goldsmith

mastering exam technique and getting through the exam was a case of timing and technique. It took her a long time to work out and involved much arguing with other MWs!

Swirl, sniff, sip, savour & enjoy!

Mastering the thirst for wine knowledge

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Palates primed and with oversized Riedel or Plumm wine glasses in hand we are busy sniffing, sipping and savouring wines that, a decade or so ago, we had never heard of, with a new found élan and enthusiasm.

Now, with the help of social media, enjoying fine wine has become less intimidating, more

Australia boasts nineteen MWs. Michael Hill Smith was the first in 1988 and Meg Brodtmann was our first female MW in 2002, whilst Kate McIntyre is one of our newer ones, admitted in 2010. There are only 304 MW worldwide.

The MW is regarded as the pinnacle in the world of wine and is seen as devilishly difficult to achieve. The MW examination includes theoretical and practical components plus a 10,000 word written dissertation.

by Michael Hince

s the book Wine Grapes attests there are 1,368 vine grape varieties currently making wine in commercial circulation and of late many Melbournians are exercising their olfactory nerve and tantalising their tastebuds like never before.

While wine education is not the sole preserve of Masters of Wine (MW) – there are many who offer a wide range of wine appreciation classes – few can claim the level of expertise, professionalism and depth of vinous knowledge that the MW accolade brings.

accessible and much more relaxed. No longer are we limited to drinking Shiraz, Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc – new, exotic and intriguing grape varieties are emerging as is a sense of adventure and curiosity about all things wine.

Put simply when it comes to vino less is more in that we drinking better quality wine more often and are more particular about what foods we pair with our favourite drop and vice versa.

Enter Masters of Wine Meg Brodtmann and Kate McIntyre, who are both an integral part of the Wine & Spirit Educational Trust’s (WSET) contemporary wine education courses at the Prince Wine Store in South Melbourne.

“It took me 10 years to get my MW and I sat the exam five times and submitted my dissertation twice. And yes, I got close to chucking it a number of times,” says Kate McIntyre.

“It required a breadth and depth of knowledge – in the theory of viticulture, vinification, wine marketing and general wine issues; and in the discipline of tasting – knowing enough about all the wines in the world to be able to identify them randomly by what is in the glass at a rate of 2.5 minutes per wine – or you don’t get the exam finished,” McIntyre went on.

Meg Brodtmann says the key to her MW was

As for the WSET courses which originated in the UK, according to Meg the Level 1 Foundation is a basic, one day introduction course which is based on how a wine should be served. At Level 2, Intermediate Certificate, the focus is on the important grape varieties and discuss the relevant global winegrowing regions in relation to each variety.

The Advanced Certificate, Level 3, is based on the reasons why a wine tastes the way it does. The focus is more on the regional and winemaking influences on particular wine styles, and covers most important classic winegrowing regions in the world, including looking at sparkling and fortified wines, as well as spirits.

Finally Level 4 is the Diploma, another step up, where the aim is to educate well-rounded trade professionals over a two year period.

This Level 4 WSET course is fast becoming a pre-requisite to doing a MW. “It is a very intense course and requires candidates to have a range of skills, not just wine product knowledge. We are trying to teach them how to apply their knowledge in commercial and hospitality situations,” says Brodtmann.

“The most important factor in all of the WSET courses is the Systematic Approach to Tasting. Candidates are required to systematically assess wine without allowing personal preferences to come into play. Anyone who has completed one or all of the WSET courses will be able to communicate globally about wine,” she concludes.

»»For information about the WSET Courses contact: Prince Wine Store, 177 Bank Street, South Melbourne.

Ph: 9686 3033 princewinestore.com.au

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44 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

Waste food as social capital

BY CLAUDE BAXTER

I

t is a normal overcast weekday morning in Abbotsford. In one room of the food processing plant you have a dozen volunteers and two paid staff preparing thousands of nutritious meals and in the other, a group of high school kids getting an inside view on social inequality while helping prepare baked meals under the supervision of a former school teacher. By afternoon, one room will be occupied by a corporate group intent on team building and expressing social responsibility.

The plant is magnificent, well laid out and equipped. But it wasn’t always so. FareShare started in a smaller and more provisional setup one small block west. It has been the canny philanthropic husbandry of Marcus Godinho that has built the enterprise to current levels.

Marcus has the passion of a man who loves his work and knows he is doing something that is good for society. He sees happy people all around. Most people love giving.

Marcus invented and made FareShare to provide nutritious meals to Victoria’s less advantaged. The former oil and bank industry executive suffered through an MBA before he decided to do ‘something more’.

With no government funding, the ‘business’ only works if businesses pitch in and supply funds, food or material contributions or other in-kind support. Marcus has cobbled together a collection of philanthropists who do everything from supply Cryovac bags, to signwriting, equipment repair, legal work and whatever any other normal business needs. He has engaged large organisations and small.

Some, like Goodman Fielder (think Meadow Lea or Pampas), Boscastle (surplus pastry) and Linfox (who maintain FareShare’s small fleet of delivery vans) are indispensible on a daily basis. Others contribute when required or as they can.

FareShare engages over 900 volunteers through three rolling shifts. These people cut and dice, mix and stir, cook and package.

Kellie, the Lake Bolac farmer’s daughter turned geologist turned caterer designs the meals and supervises the cooking, cooling, packaging and storing, pending delivery.

Morning shift volunteers at FareShare.

Donated food is not ‘bad’. Some is incorrectly labelled, some has been prepared out of sync with end-user demand but can be used in the 4,000 meals they prepare every day. FairShare commonly uses Foodbank’s established processes to get their meals to the people who need them.”

Donated food is not ‘bad’. Some is incorrectly labelled, some has been prepared out of sync with end-user demand but can be used in the 4,000 meals they prepare every day. FairShare commonly uses Foodbank’s established processes to get their meals to the people who need them. But it also works with service organisations and women’s refuges to strengthen community networks and link to groups who are not well-enmeshed in established welfare networks. It all sounds very philanthropic but this side of the food industry is also about the environment.

Elaine Montegriffo, the CEO of SecondBite, talks of her organisation being active both environmentally and socially. At the local level, SecondBite helps more than 1.2m Australians who have no food security and over 2.2m who live in poverty. They go without sufficient food on a daily basis. This is not about the third

Kellie with Marcus Godinho.

world. This is about Australia’s inability to achieve social equity for its population. If it wasn’t for organisations like SecondBite, one in ten of us would have slipped from view. To understand the need, and despite the extraordinary achievement of these organisations, Foodbank’s 32 million meals was enough for just 1.5% of the need, while SecondBite’s 8 million does not bring the supply up to 2% of the need.

Even though SecondBite engages the support of large organisations (Coles, Woolworths, Aldi etc) and hundreds of volunteers to rescue and supply nutritious food for the food insecure, Elaine is also passionate about the environment.

As she puts it, Australia’s 4 million tonnes of food waste – at a value of $5.2 billion – contributes to carbon emissions and global warming. Currently, most of it ends up in landfill. This not only results directly in carbon emissions but represents further carbon emissions in the farming of the food, its processing and transport, all of which has been in vain.

At the volunteer level, people are involved in this extraordinary new industry for a range of reasons. Some work through Rotary and food security is just one contribution of many. Others get their workplace to provide regular volunteer staff to organisations such as FareShare. Others, like Clemence the Pilates teacher, help out at local churches like Saint Silas in Middle Park. Many enjoy the social contact and the sense of contribution that comes from volunteering, but are also working on ways to help the environment, achieve social justice and find a little more meaning in their lives. Theirs is the face of a world gone a little crazy, a face that weeps for the absence of some sort of rationality or sanity in the food industry – let alone the wider society.

fareshare.net.au secondbite.org

The Melbourne Review June 2013 45

melbournereview.com.au

CAFéS

Mina no ie

Pope Joan O

ne of the early outposts of hipsterdom in Brunswick East, Pope Joan has only improved with age.

Not to mention grown. The beautiful main café doors open out onto a deck with tables and chairs, which leads to a courtyard and kitchen garden. There’s also a produce store and in the later hours, a bar.

by Lou Pardi

R

idiculously good looking. That’s Mina no ie. From the soaring bare-boned interior, designed by architect and co-owner Zenta Tanaka, to the divine light that illuminates the warehouse windows and the innovative paper wall divider of rolls of brown paper hanging from the roof, each with small squares cut at intervals, providing peek holes into the empty half of the warehouse.

The menu by Megumi Tanaka (Cibi) is a small but well-formed collection of local, organic and free range (where possible) produce fashioned into Japanese-style breakfasts (think baked eggs with sweet miso roasted eggplant, butternut and provolone cheese - $16.50) and lunches (meat, fish or vegetables with two salads from a selection available - $15). There’s a short list of tea served in gorgeous teapots. In fact everything’s gorgeous – including the cutlery, the furniture – and the leaves floating from the tree just outside the window. Ridiculously good looking.

Pope Joan is now open for dinner Monday – Friday nights, but to date has perhaps been best known for her breakfasts.

»»Mina no ie 33 Peel Street, Collingwood 9417 7749 Breakfast and lunch: Tuesday - Saturday minanoie.com

The fun boiled eggs with soldiers ($9) threaten a regression to high chair behaviour, but are served with grown up bacon bits and herb salt for a touch of sophistication. The Thai red curry and snake bean omelette with green papaya salad ($19) is a gorgeous start to the day, with the red curry sauce gently seasoning the perfect plump omelette. For the health-conscious there’s also berry granola with yoghurt ($11) or porridge with apple, almond and smoked maple ($11).

»»Pope Joan 77 – 79 Nicholson Street, East Brunswick 9388 8858 Breakfast and lunch: Monday – Sunday Dinner: Monday – Friday Functions: Saturday – Sunday and on request popejoan.com.au

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46 The Melbourne Review June 2013

WINE

National Treasures n 2009, the Australian wine industry was suffering. A perfect storm of influences including a record high Australian dollar, an oversupply of wine, an influx of newer and cheaper

I

competitors, a reputation for making cheap and cheerful wine and the GFC, combined to leave members of the Australian wine industry kicking their RM Williams’ into the dirt and wondering where it all went wrong.

Meanwhile, in cellars around Australia, historic wine gems – bottles of wine with history, pedigree and provenance – lay slumbering in the cellars of some of Australia’s oldest wineries.

In response to the industry situation, twelve winegrowing families banded together to form a group called Australia’s First Families of Wine with the aim of joining forces to showcase the very best of Australian wine, both here and abroad. The families represent some of the oldest Australian wine companies including Yalumba, DeBortoli, Henschkes, Brown Brothers, McWilliams, Campbells and Tyrrells.

Between them the families cover 17 wine regions, have 1,200 years of experience and span 48 generations of winemakers. Recently, the group unlocked the cellars to show off some of their wares, both old and new. Here are a few.

Tyrrells Vat 1 Semillon 2007

2009 Tahbilk ‘1927 Vines’ Marsanne

2010 Henschke Stone Jar Tempranillo Graciano

Campbells Isabella Rare Rutherglen Topaque

Hunter Valley RRP $68 tyrrells.com.au

Nagambie RRP $38 tahbilk.com.au

Eden Valley RRP $46 henschke.com.au

Rutherglen RRP $120 campbellswines.com.au

Bruce Tyrell, fourth generation winemaker, describes a Hunter Valley Semillon has having three lives. The first, when it is very young, fresh and brimming with citrus and enlivening acid. The second life, around five years, when the wine, thought still fresh, starts to show its first signs of development and complexity – a honey note here, a toasty note there. The final life, which can go for decades, starts at about 10 years when the wine has softened, become very complex with even more developed notes.

This knowledge wasn’t always common. Some decades ago, in defiance of a board decision Bruce, with the help of a friend and a forklift, hid 1000 dozen Tyrell’s Vat 1 to test his theory that aged Hunter Semillon was something to behold. Fortunately his hunch paid off, and the Tyrell’s Vat 1, a wine always released with some bottle age, has become a Hunter Valley icon.

Tahbilk in Victoria’s Nagambie region was founded in 1860 and has been owned by the Purbrick family since 1925. Today, the property is like a living museum. Old buildings, underground cellars and old vineyards, including the infamous 1927 Marsanne vineyard, highlight the business’ heritage. Marsanne is a variety a lot like a well-run family business, showing vibrancy, freshness and pace in its youth, but with the right care, developing complexity, new flavours and richness with age. The Tahbilk Marsanne remains one of Australia’s best value wines (around $13); while the Tahbilk Marsanne 1927 Vines is a wine that flourishes with age.

The Purbricks hold one of the largest, single and oldest Marsanne plantings in the world. Tahbilk is so named as the local Aboriginals, Australia’s first families, knew the site as tabilk-tabilk, meaning land of many water holes.

Stephen Henschke, fifth generation winemaker and wife Prue, are the current custodians of the Henschke winemaking stable; a stable that includes some of the country’s oldest vineyards, Australia’s most lauded wines including the profound Hill of Grace, and an organic and biodynamic farming legacy spearheaded by Prue. This wine, the Stone Jar Tempranillo Graciano, is a bit like a holiday crush that lasted. On a visit to Spain the flavoursome, savoury and earthy wines of La Rioja impressed the pair who planted the component varieties, Tempranillo and Graciano, in a selected site in the Eden Valley upon their return. The resultant wine is an elegant, bright and savoury wine with lifted red fruits, herbal notes, spice and grippy tannins. The name pays homage to the original Henschkes who sold wine in stone jars.

When John Campbell left St Andrews Scotland in 1857 and boarded a ship for Australia, he dreamt of striking it rich in the gold rush thriving across North East Victoria. When the mines had all but dried up, Campbell struck it rich by planting vines on his Rutherglen property he named Bobbie Burns, after the eighteenth century Scottish poet Robert Burns. That homestead still stands on the Campbell’s property that is now run by brothers Colin and Malcolm Campbell and their families. This wine represents the pinnacle of Australian fortified wines. Like a glass of dark, wet toffee it has a heady and complex nose while the palate is intense and opulent – rich, sweet and viscous, yet remarkably, it finishes dry. A wonderful, intoxicating wine to be devoured at the end of the night.

by Andrea Frost

The Melbourne Review June 2013 47

melbournereview.com.au

FOOD.WINE.COFFEE

DIRTY GIRL KITCHEN DIARIES ‘National emblem’ or bloody sensible eating?

by Rebecca Sullivan

C

Kangaroos and wallabies evolved millions of years ago and make up part of the traditional diet of Aboriginal people. It is estimated that the Macropodoidea (superfamily) first evolved 16 million years ago. Now, the red kangaroo and the wallaby form the basis for a commercial harvest and export industry. Australian governments are seeking to promote the kangaroo industry as a form of ecologically sustainable development.

Kangaroos and wallabies have an enzyme in their gut which means they produce practically no methane. They also consume a great deal less water than sheep and beef per edible kilo of meat.

Kangaroos and wallabies are cute, but so is a lamb, so is a baby calf and so is a pig (to some), but we have no problem eating them. Vegetarians are obviously excluded from this assumption, but are welcome to converse on the matter.

I am not a vegetarian, but am a sustainable eater. By that I mean I choose ethically, try ever so hard not to buy food from strangers and believe in living in a food system that works for everyone in the present and the future. My work largely revolves around the notion of a sustainable food system for the next generation.

For this very reason, I ask the question: if these animals are over populated, often dying of starvation, destroying the livelihoods of some farmers all around the country, yet are more hygienic for us than eating chicken, are healthy as one of the highest sources of protein at 84%,

Photo: Macro Meats Gourmet Game

ute, cuddly and indigenous? Yes to all three. A pest to our farmers, suffering often from drought and lack of food, over-populated? Yes to all three.

Kangaroo Meatballs.

with a lean red meat and pretty darn tasty, why all the backlash?

kangaroos. After all if they kill them with no regard, what business do they have in the future?

I know that there has been an awful lot of uproar around the so called ‘inhumane’ nature of the way these ‘roos and wallabies are being killed. The uproar being that if a female is killed, then the National Code of Practice requires: ‘If a shooter kills a female with pouch young, then they must kill the joey. Depending on the size of the joey this is usually done by decapitation or a blow to the head.’ In fact all kangaroo shooters are required to abide by the National Codes of Practice. The key differences between commercial and non-commercial kangaroo shooters are the level of training and testing required and the monitoring of compliance with this code of practice.

Richard Gunner of Feast Fine Foods and the newly opened ‘Something Wild’ in the Adelaide Central Markets recently made the decision to sell not just kangaroo but wallaby too, from the Flinders Island Meat Company. “The Flinders Island Wallaby is a unique Australian game product as it grazes on coastal green grass year round, giving it not only consistent tenderness but a more subtle flavour than any other wild shot game. It is more akin to veal or lamb in comparison to the more robust flavour you get with kangaroo,” says Gunner.

Those associated with kangaroo management believe there is a higher degree of inhumane killing of kangaroos in non-commercial killing than with commercial killing. So like all choices, when buying your food, just ask or seek out ethical choices. There are companies (just as in the entire meat and farming industry) who are doing the right thing, and are now hiring and training their shooters to only kill male

The wallabies are harvested in the wild by a professional shooter, so they are in their natural environment and there is absolutely no stress ante-mortem. Great care is taken to select only the best wallabies for use.

While Bennetts Wallaby and Pademelon Wallaby are found in large numbers on Flinders Island, the population is managed in a wholly sustainable way. Wallabies are gathered on a quota basis that is reviewed annually and is independent of market demand.

Editor of The Age Good Food Guide, Janne Apelgren, has described a steady rise in chefs serving wallaby meat as one of the trends to emerge in food dining this year. Flinders Island Wallaby is served at three out of the four Victorian restaurants that received prestigious 3 Chef Hat ratings in the Guide this year – Attica, Vue de Monde and Jacques Reymond.

For those of you that perhaps put off ‘roo in the past, wallaby may be your thing given its more delicate flavour. With the health benefits that come with eating ‘roo and wallaby, we also contribute to a more sustainable food future by eating what is natural to our environment.

»»In Melbourne, wallaby is available for purchase at: Nifra at Queen Vic Market and Gary’s Meats at Prahran Market. Restaurants serving wallaby include: Attica, Vue de Monde, Pure South, Syracuse, Grossi Florentino, Circa the Prince, Bluestone, Ten Minutes by Tractor and others. @grannyskills dirtygirlkitchen.com

Making History Almost at the 5,000,000 mark.

Will you be the 5 millionth guest to stay at The Windsor in its 130 year history?

Reserve your room at www.thehotelwindsor.com.au and stay from now until 31st August 2013 for your chance to be rewarded with 5 nights in the Royal Suite, butler service and a private dinner party for six.

The 5 millionth guest must directly book and stay between 1st of April and 31st of August 2013 via The Hotel Windsor website only, third party website bookings are not applicable.

The winner will be decided by The Hotel Windsor Management and will be notified on 1st September 2013. Competition prize is valid up until 31st August 2014.

MakingHistoryad_MR.indd 1

09/04/2013 07:36

48 The Melbourne Review June 2013

DECONSTRUCTION

D.O.C Delicatessen

by Daniella Casamento

D

.O.C Delicatessen in Carlton is the first stand-alone deli for business partners Tony Nicolini, Robert De Santis and Michael Costanzo.

During a 10-day research and buying trip to Italy last year, the D.O.C team visited fresh food producers, factories, traditional delicatessens and little eateries to bring an authentic experience to their own deli. This retail concept shares a consistent theme with their restaurant and produce store in Mornington and D.O.C Espresso next door.

Tasked with the role of designing D.O.C Delicatessen in collaboration with the business owners, architect Domenic Ridolfi has created a retail experience that is part theatre and part visual feast in response to the brief. If the primary role of retail design is to create a space that effectively promotes and sells product and is targeted to re-enforce a brand, then this is it. Ridolfi has designed an authentic modern

Italian deli experience that is enhanced by the flavours and aromas of fresh produce.

One side of the entry is dedicated to a black steel framed structure that displays large cheese wheels and a variety of hanging cured meats. Packaged pasta and bottles displayed on the opposite side allow a view into the store and the theatre of customer service at the display counter beyond. Inside the long, narrow shop Ridolfi has employed a combination of efficient planning, a refined industrial aesthetic and a neutral palette of materials and track lighting to draw the eye into the store. Custom designed and made stained plywood display modules at the front of the shop and along one wall give order to an array of authentic Italian produce.

Bright white rectangular wall tiles contrast with the polished concrete floor and the warm Porter’s Paints stained timber lined ceiling.

These neutral tones accentuate the colourful

produce and packaging while the aroma of a variety of cheeses and Italian cured meats keeps customers lingering inside. A retro-look SMEG fridge finished in green, white and red stripes adds a humorous touch and an authentic vintage Berkel scale is a merchandising highlight.

Nicolini explains that their aim was to provide an environment which could double as a retail store with a limited dining menu and an event space where customers feel comfortable to ask for information about products they wish to buy. Round timber display tables made by local artisans Arteveneta, are made to support the weight of a 30kg wheel of cheese used for tasting while small dining tables and stools allow customers to sit and savour the atmosphere of the preparation area.

More than 60 imported and locally made prosciutti hang like an art installation on sturdy

butchers’ rails at the preparation area. Light streaming from a skylight above accentuates this as the heart of the business. “Pasta made on site here is supplied to D.O.C Espresso next door on a daily basis,” Nicolini says. “Our customers love the theatre of the preparation area and have a hunger for information about our products.” An event space on the second level is used to educate customers about cheeses, cured meats, pasta varieties and wines.

A custom made black steel stair and balustrade leads customers upstairs to the event space where two original fireplaces hint at the previous life of the building. In this large and light-filled room, a bespoke antique look dining table crafted by Arteveneta seats 20 people and is complemented

by No.18 Thonet chairs. Both walls are lined with stained timber storage units and at the end of the room a window provides a view to Lygon Street and a void in the floor provides a view to the activity of the store below.

»»D.O.C. Delicatessen 330 Lygon Street, Carlton docgroup.net

THE MELB OUR NE R EVIEW JUNE 2013

FORM

APARTMENT LIVING Ideas for better furnishing, design, lighting and storage for small spaces.

He with Glands of Wasp by New Zealand artist Rohan Wealleans.

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

50 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013

FORM CONGESTION PUTS LIVEABILITY AT RISK

BY JENNIFER CUNICH

A

s anyone who has been stuck in peakhour traffic knows, congestion is a very serious problem and one which contradicts our reputation of being the most liveable city in the world.

resources available from any single funding source and we must recognise that both the government and the private sector have an important role to play in devising innovative, alternate solutions.

The cost of congestion to Victoria’s economy, according to estimates by the Bureau of Infrastructure Transport and Regional Economics, is currently around $4.6 billion per annum. Congestion costs include loss of time, schedule disruptions, fuel use and high levels of vehicle emissions. In short, traffic congestion has become a very real threat to our way of life and economic competitiveness.

Governments are increasingly recognising the potential that private investment can bring to major projects, but so far we have not fully explored how this potential can be leveraged. A key part of the solution to Victoria’s infrastructure challenges will be incentivising the private sector and it’s time we figured out how.

An Access Economics research report commissioned by the Property Council found that parking levies do not reduce congestion, as evidenced by examples from both Perth and Sydney.

Rather than mitigate the cost of congestion by targeting its outcomes, we must tackle its causes at the source. Levies do not address congestion caused by commercial vehicles and peak travel. Nor do they address congestion caused by ’through traffic’.

One option the Property Council has recently explored in its latest report Supercharging the Victorian Economy, Ideas for Reform is congestion charging on Melbourne’s roads.

Packaged with a new structure for public transport fares, congestion charges on our busiest roads could shift car users onto public transport in a way that allows the public transport system to cope. One approach could be to vary the charges by time of day and across the network, so that they directly target peak periods and locations. This would trigger changes in the behaviour of drivers, easing peak period congestion but also the pressure on our already straining public transport system.

Congestion levies also do little to encourage sustainable public transport patronage. Shifting the pressure from one mode of transportation to another without any mechanisms to offset demand will only result in additional stress on our already overwhelmed public transport system.

Revenue from congestion charges and a revised fare structure for public transport would have the potential to support transport initiatives and increase our public transport capacity in the areas it is most needed.

As most experts will agree, our infrastructure needs far outstrip the

The Property Council believes there is real potential for the private sector to work

in partnership with government to boost the State’s economy and productivity. It’s time we became more imaginative in the way we tackle problems. With the right incentives, the private sector could just be the solution we have been looking for.

» Jennifer Cunich is Victorian Executive Director, Property Council of Australia. propertyoz.com.au

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013 51

MELBOURNEREVIEW.COM.AU

FORM and international designers, introducing clients to products that are very fresh and in some cases have not even seen the showroom floor.

Varied lighting solutions is also crucial to any space. Right now, New York based design studio Rich, Brilliant Willing lighting collection is garnering a lot of attention, including the quirky table lamp called Quart.

Paul Grummisch from please, please, please has designed a 60s inspired floor lamp called Leila.

Amongst architects and designers, there is a trend in mobile kitchen island benches that serves the dual purpose of storage and dining.

Comfortable seating for your kitchen island is Daniel Barbera’s Uccio stools. They are elegant with their light framework not crowding out your apartment space.

Another item that has a flexible approach to apartment living is the Lift Table by Team Seven. It converts from coffee table to dining table to seat four and comes in three sizes – 70cm, 80cm and 90cm.

Jill Malek wallpaper

APARTMENT LIVING Ideas for better furnishing, design, lighting and storage for small spaces

W

hen furnishing your apartment, most would agree there are four key areas to consider: lighting, storage, multi-functional elements and art to create an individual habitat.

It is common knowledge that most newly developed apartments are like a woolen jumper in a hot wash – that is, shrinking. With this knowledge, architects, interior designers and even product designers are challenged to incorporate and develop better space-saving ideas that allow

a multi-functional living space which is not static.

For designers, it is very important to keep on top of what is new in regards to product offering and design directions that professionals share and apply. They engage constantly with local

Clever storage solutions that can work in any room are the Kairos shelving and drawer compositions by Arlex. The versatility and finishing options are excellent.

Wallpapers from NewYork-based Jill Malek and Eskayel create the perfect artistic element for any space large or small. For a more neutral and softer look, a textured wallpaper is very effective such as the new Elitis range.

With the global growing demand and trend of economical spaces and apartment living, there is a plethora of choice to create individuality and address the functional efficiency with style.

eadesandbergman.com

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52 THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013

FORM

Zuster

April dining bench

et, an Stre 370 Sw 3121 nd VIC Richmo 27 7188 (03) 94 u .com.a zuster

Raw bed

Jade Storage Unit

Tori Settee

Dai Dining Table and Bench

Colin Swivel Chair

ing Apt Liv

Taro Sideboard

St, 5 Union 5 IC 320 ourne V lb e M South 43 7190 (03) 90 .au ng.com aptlivi

Weave Modular Sofa

Bea Workstation

THE MELBOURNE REVIEW JUNE 2013 53

MELBOURNEREVIEW.COM.AU

APARTMENT LIVING

Jordan Sofa

Boss Sofa

Benson Wing Back Chair

G Arthur

reet, urch St 618 Ch 3121 nd VIC Richmo 6 29 669 (03) 94 u .a g.com arthur Belair Sofa

3000 n o i t a n i Dest treet, nders S 525 Fli 3000 rne VIC Melbou 14 7167 (03) 96 00.com dest30

The Lobster Chair

Eight Bar Stool

Date Dining Chairs

54 The Melbourne Review June 2013

FORMCOMMERCIAL considered and in the long run, cohesive.

Don’t be scared of big wall hangings or paintings – especially in a receding colour (like blue). These can make the space look bigger and keep the space looking interesting.

Embrace reflective surfaces. A large hanging mirror is great for throwing natural light around the space.

Add more lighting than you think is needed.

Lighting expands horizons, adds depth, and creates atmosphere so standing, table and wall lamps are your new best friends.

To further enhance your living space, whether large or small, ensure you choose furniture that complements the style of your apartment. PDG have furnished the spacious and contemporary display suite for Ryan and Leveson with a selection of sleek and inspired pieces from Jardan.

No matter what the style or size of your apartment make the most of every inch…

ryanandleveson.com.au jardan.com.au

Using the Space F

urnishing an apartment can be likened to a game of Tetris. It’s all about playing with the space you have, be it large or small, to get the right mix of comfort and practicality.

Unlike traditional houses, apartments rarely incorporate large laundries, long hallways, garages or backyards with sheds. Their central living spaces are usually open plan to take advantage of views of provide a greater feeling of spaciousness. This means that opportunities to personalise your space through furnishing may feel compromised.

Get that furniture up off the floor! Furniture with legs, such as Jardan’s Nook sofa and bed, feels lighter in a space than items that sit directly on the floor. The slim profile and floating aesthetic of the Nook sofa and bed, which PDG have utilized in the Ryan and Leveson display suite, is perfect for apartment living and creates the feeling of space.

Get rid of clutter. Everything should have a place and you should try to store items after you’ve finished using them.

Space and storage for clothes, books, DVDs, CDs (does anyone actually use these anymore?) can be tricky, so consider built-in cabinetry and modular furniture systems that can be configured specifically for your space. To help maximise space in the Ryan & Leveson apartments, PDG offer customers optional joinery packages which are custom designed to fit each of the apartments. They include a desk with an open shelving unit above and a three-drawer roller unit below as well as a television unit with fixing and conduit for a wall-mounted television.

Dual purpose is your new best friend. Look for multiple ways to use everything you buy. While under the bed and above the wardrobe make excellent dens for monsters and drop bears, those spaces can be better used as storage.

Don’t try to furnish your space all in one go. Start with the essentials – a place to sleep (couch, bed, hammock – we don’t care). Live with that for a while before you start adding other items. Your choices will be more

But fear not, we’ve put our thinking caps on and have come up with some tips on how you can make the most of your apartment space…