Trouble September 2013

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contents

trouble sept 2013

FEATURES (09) COMICS FACE Ive Sorocuk (10) MURMURS OF MR. JOHNSTON

Inga Walton

(20) A STERN WARNING Bryce Stevens (30) LET’S TALK ABOUT

OUR FEELINGS Anney Bounpraseuth (32) SEPTEMBER SALON Super (46) ACTEASE Courtney Symes (50) ADELOUD Cassandra Scalzi (52) MELBURNIN’ Inga Walton (57) SOUND BITES CITY Evelyn Tsitas (60) 55TH VENICE BIENNALE

PART ONE Tiziana Borghese (64) DEAR DREAMBOAT Dmetri Kakmi (66) STRALIAN STORIES:

FOOTY’S GLORY DAYS Neil Boyack (70) GREETINGS FROM HIROSHIMA

Ben Laycock

(72) SKULL MOVIES: SCENE VI

Robin Pen

Issue 105: SEPTEMBER 2013 trouble is an independent monthly mag for promotion of arts and culture Published by Trouble magazine Pty Ltd ISSN 14493926 STAFF Vanessa Boyack, administration admin@troublemag.com Steve Proposch, editorial art@troublemag.com Listings listings@troublemag.com CONTRIBUTORS Mandy Ord, Ive Sorocuk, Inga Walton, Dmetri Kakmi, Courtney Symes, Cassandra Scalzi, Evelyn Tsitas, Tiziana Borghese, Robin Pen, Neil Boyack, Ben Laycock.

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Murmurs of Mr Johnst on

by Inga Walton

WILLIAM ROBERT JOHNSTON (1911-86) was an antique dealer, art collector and aesthete who ran his principal business, Kent Antiques, in High Street, Armadale from 1971 until his death. He acquired the East Melbourne property Cadzow (1860) in 1952, remodelling it to create the appearance of a late eighteenth century Georgian-style townhouse, and renamed it Fairhall. Johnston left the property and its contents to the people of Victoria as a small housemuseum, “a place of historical and educational interest”, as he put it. An independent charitable Trust was established in 1986 to preserve and develop this unique collection, expressive of one man’s personal taste and love of fine objects. The Johnston Collection formally opened to the public on November 19th, 1990. 4

The Bedroom, arranged as ‘Ahmed’s Bedroom’. Installation image: John Brash.

Murmurs of Mr Johnston / Inga Walton

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Murmurs of Mr Johnston / Inga Walton

The Green Drawing Room, arranged as ‘William Johnston’s Workshop’. Installation image: John Brash.

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Born in Lilydale, the only child of Robert Alexander Johnston, a boot-maker, Johnston’s young life was transformed when he was around eight years-old. His maternal grandmother, Mary Theresa Friedrichs, presented him with a Minton teacup (c.1812-15), but without the saucer. That London shape cup, with its delicate ‘chicken bone’ handle, remains in the Collection today and is regarded as one of its most treasured pieces.

This gift could be said to have inspired the course of Johnston’s life; collecting would become both his passion and his business. Or, to put it more romantically, perhaps Johnston embarked on a life-long quest to reunite his little cup with the elusive missing saucer?

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At fourteen, Johnston left school and secured work as a window dresser at the fashionable Melbourne department store Buckley & Nunn (acquired by its rival David Jones in 1982). In March, 1947, Johnston departed for England intending to establish a career in antiques dealing there. He soon discovered the extent to which the privations of World War II had diminished the country and rent a hole in the existing social fabric. After speculatively knocking on the doors of several country houses, Johnston found that the landed gentry, faced with new post-war taxes and maintenance costs, were disposed to discreetly sell their antiques to a willing buyer. Johnston initially established himself in a three-storey shop in Greenwich and began to ship the goods back to Australia in container loads, later moving his operations to a larger warehouse.

In 1972, Johnston suffered a heart attack, an event that gave him pause to consider the future of his already sprawling and beloved collection.

It was at this time he spoke to a solicitor friend, John Rogan, about bequeathing it to the State, which raised the issue of finding a permanent home in which to display it. This was undoubtedly the motivation for Johnston’s decision to return to Melbourne permanently, and gradually transfer his Greenwich collection to Fairhall. A gardening enthusiast, Johnston also acquired the country property Chandpara (an Urdu word meaning ‘Silver Home’), an 800 acre property and stud at Tylden near Woodend, in 1977. Formerly the residence of Dr. Arnold Caddy (1866-1948),

the property in many ways fulfilled Johnston’s aspirations towards the English country-house ideal, and the bucolic lifestyle he wished to emulate as the gentleman-in-residence.

Johnston greatly enjoyed the process of decorating and re-dressing within his properties over the years, arranging little feature corners and vignettes, as he did at Kent Antiques. He reputedly sold many items from Fairhall informally, as the genteel domestic setting helped clients imagine the objects in their own home. Ever the savvy businessman, if Johnston had something he thought would suit a particular collector, that person might well be invited to dinner, and a sale negotiated. This spirit of interpretation and change Johnston enjoyed about his collection remains a central tenet of how it is administered today; not as a static or moribund group of objects, but as a dynamic assemblage. Over the years a number of individuals with similar professions and interests to Johnston and his circle have been invited to bring their own responses to Fairhall and the Collection.

Of those, Laurie Carew OAM, the former visual merchandising manager at the original ‘Georges’ store (which closed in 1995), and fellow antiques dealer Francis Dunn were Johnston’s friends.

These days, The Johnston Collection program divides the year into three distinct periods and themes. ‘Mr. Johnston and his Collection’ (MarchJune) invites a guest arranger who works only with the permanent collection, these have included Primrose, Lady Potter, AC, Lynne Landy (wife of the former Governor of Victoria John Landy), interior designer Caroline Touzeau, and theatre designer Shaun Gurton. ‘The House of Ideas’ (July-October) asks a guest curator to work within Fairhall who may bring in other items, or introduce new ways of working with or seeing the Collection, and ‘to make old new again’. The series aims to attract new audiences to the venue, and recent participants such as fashion designers Akira Isogawa (2010), Luke Sales and Anna Plunkett (of Romance Was Born), and architect Pascale Gomes-McNabb (both 2012) have certainly raised its profile. The annual ‘Christmas at The Johnston Collection’ (NovemberFebruary) engages creatives from around Victoria who work to produce pieces based on Johnston’s life and collection.

Murmurs of Mr Johnston / Inga Walton

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Murmurs of Mr Johnston / Inga Walton Rosslynd PIGGOTT, Splinter-Garden (2012-13), DVD loop (30 mins), projected through an English glass chandelier (c.1820) in situ in ‘William Johnston’s Dining Room’. Installation image: Inga Walton.

“The premise of ‘Mr. Johnston and his Collection’ is evocative, and the ‘House of Ideas’ can be assumed to be a bit more provocative in its response to the Collection. We perceive that our role as a museum is to encourage audiences to think about and see objects in new ways”, agrees Louis Le Vaillant, Director of the Collection since late 2008. “To continually think about the Collection and collecting, to think about versions of the past, versions of the present and of the future, to honour the practices, techniques and styles of the past while also anticipating and embracing progress and development”. The latest installment of the ‘House of Ideas’ sees Melbourne artist Rosslynd Piggott curate the Collection, which she has titled Murmur (until 23 October, 2013). “Rosslynd has a well-established and well-developed history of working collaboratively with numerous artists and galleries and responding to site-specific locations.

She brought that carefully honed approach to The Johnston Collection”, says Le Vaillant.

Piggott first visited the Collection to see Akira Isogawa’s installation, “The rooms and the house were absolutely beautiful and the visit rather transforming. l felt l had been transported to a kind of other space and time. This feeling stayed with me for days. l am very interested in this kind of immersive space, whether it be a house, a room, an object, a film, a flower display, a painting or an experience”, she remarks. Piggott’s process of familiarising herself with the Collection and its history has been in-depth over the past two years, “l was able to drop in quite regularly to view rooms, objects, walk through the spaces and talk with both Louis and [assistant curator] Angela Hesson ... l made one visit to the off-site storage facility [in the grounds of Government House]. First, l had to have a conceptual framework in place and then much of the selection of key objects was done with Angela and Louis’ help. Lots of going from room to room, looking in cupboards – all that fascinating hunting – l was able to choose every object in this installation and in most cases able to handle and place [them] in a very exact way”.

Although The Johnston Collection was not devised to offer a biographical testament to its owner, Piggott’s approach differs from past curators in that she has been less preoccupied

with the ‘objects’ per se, and more concerned with how various pieces might express aspects of the personalities who lived with and enjoyed them over the years within a domestic setting.

“As l was reading [writer] Sylvia Black’s [asyet-unpublished] history William Johnston: A Decorative Life, l became more interested in the lives of the men who had lived at Fairhall”, Piggott explains. “When you work with the physical and emotional resonance of objects that have been a part of lives, placement and associations are a very important part of bringing a new energy and new insights into a collection. This is a very subtle, complex and engaging process ...”

Piggott has dedicated a number of the rooms to their principal former occupants, using archive photos and other visual aids to convey what the experience of life at Fairhall might have been like.

“One of the biggest challenges was attempting to deal with the delicacy of the emotional layers of the history ... each room is very dense in such association”, she admits. “The next was visualising the spaces. l did not start with empty spaces.

Every time l visited there was another tour [of the residence]. So l needed to look at the spaces and objects, somehow obliterating them and beginning with my own possible versions. This really messed with my head ... l mean lots of sleepless nights. l often worked at 4am ... The thinking about this is constant, and yet some of the most important moves happened during the install week”.

Johnston had a substantial property portfolio and owned as many as thirty-six rental properties in the East Melbourne area. Following his acquisition of Fairhall, Johnston had the interior converted into three rental flats, and one of the first tenants was set and costume designer Angus Winneke (191182). Winneke worked for the Tivoli Theatre, and his archive is preserved as part of the Performing Arts Collection at the Arts Centre, Melbourne. He would also work part-time at Kent Antiques when Johnston was overseas, bringing his visual flair to the displays. Winneke moved from Fairhall in 1966 to another Johnston property around the corner in Gipps Street, where he lived until his death. The Yellow Drawing Room upstairs has been arranged as Winneke’s domain with facsimiles of his costume sketches and stage designs on the walls Murmurs of Mr Johnston / Inga Walton

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“Johnston’s nineteenth century piece is made out of cut crystal, so it became an excellent device for shattering light ...” and tables, along with photos of the productions, and a black and white head-shot of the man himself displayed on a coffee table.

Former Director of the Collection (2000-08), the late Nina Stanton, undertook substantial research into Johnston’s life and movements. According to her chronology, in 1963 Johnston went on a buying trip to Egypt where he met his future colleague and companion Ahmed Moussa Abo el Maaty. In 1965, Moussa spent his school holidays working in the Greenwich warehouse, and later visited Melbourne with Johnston for three months in 1968. In 1976, three years after Johnston had returned to Melbourne to live, Moussa relocated to Australia permanently to become his assistant, and Fairhall became their main abode until Johnston’s death. “The connections between the three men have indeed been very close, tender and helpful in each others lives...

It seemed they made their own ‘family’, loved, protected and cared for each other, in a way that was productive for all of them”, Piggott relates. “l wanted to honour these emotional connections, the role of devotion, perhaps more than the objects, as these had not been spoken about so much, and were such a vivid and important part of Johnston’s history and success. At the same time, l did not want to spell this out. Gentle, respectful and even subliminal communication through the images was very important”.

Piggott produced a number of new works in response to the Collection, including SplinterGarden (2012-13) a loop of filmed footage of flowers in the garden at Fairhall. This is projected onto the ceiling of the Green Drawing Room through an English glass chandelier (c.1820), Murmurs of Mr Johnston / Inga Walton

reputedly acquired by Johnston from the Maharajah of Tagore during a buying trip to India. “l have worked with a projected image of a chandelier in a past installation, Palace (1990). It belonged to antiques dealer Graham Geddes who allowed me to photograph an extraordinary chandelier made from uncut crystal; such a mysterious and beautiful object. l projected it (larger than life) onto suspended gauze, so it appeared to hover and sway in the darkened gallery space”, Piggott recalls. “Johnston’s nineteenth century piece is made of cut crystal, so it became an excellent device for shattering light, being projected images of his magnolia and ice camellias”.

A series of nine digital prints, also titled Murmur (2013), range throughout the property, providing an almost ghostly counterpoint to the physical objects they represent. “[These] were made as a result of looking through the Collection archives. l came across rather beautiful large-scale negatives of the interiors of Fairhall under the first directorship [of Judith Thompson, 1989-91]. These interiors were very ordered and classical. Louis gave me permission to use these negatives to produce new work. The layering of these images produced surprising new spaces that are akin to layers of memory, floating time and space”, Piggott comments. She also found points of common ground with Johnston’s love of mirrors and reflective surfaces, and has hung some of her earlier works in the White Room, and upstairs in the Study, and Sitting Room. “l have long enjoyed glass and mirrors, particularly those that do not reflect perfectly. l have included some of my own double mirrors in the house made by slumping glass, they appear molten and fluid, as a way of emphasising connections between seeing and sensing, presence and absence”.

Johnston’s collection of paintings includes two important works he acquired from the Kimbolton Castle sale in 1949, the family seat of the Earls and later Dukes of Manchester from 1615. One work,

by Mary Beale (1632-99), a former student of the court painter Sir Peter Lely (1618-80) depicts a lady of the Montagu family (1683). This is possibly Lady Anne Montagu (c.1667-1720), eldest daughter of Robert Montagu, 3rd Earl of Manchester (1634-83), who became the third wife of James Howard, 44

3rd Earl of Suffolk (1606/7-88) in early 1682. The other painting, attributed to Robert Peake, the Elder (c.1551-1619), depicts Edward Montagu, 1st Baron Montagu of Boughton (1563-1644), an English politician whose career spanned three monarchs from Elizabeth I to Charles I, whose cause he supported in the Civil War, and which led to Montagu dying a prisoner at the Savoy Hospital.

Piggott has hung this 1601 work in the Blue Room, along with a view of Alva House, Sterlingshire, The Seat of J. R. Johnstone Esq (c.1800), attributed to either Patrick (1787-1831) or Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840). The work was part of what might be called Johnston’s personal myth-making; he apparently used to stand in front of the painting, allowing people to assume that the property had family associations. A portable oval-framed oil portrait of Johnston’s mother, Mary Louise Freidrichs, with a bronze surround featuring an oak leaf and acorn wreath design sits nearby.

Other paintings, Piggott was less enamoured of, “Since l am a painter, l found it difficult to retain any paintings that l didn’t like! Johnston had many portraits of noblemen, landowners etc, that l had to turn to the wall”, she quips. A charming work

by Joseph Highmore (1692-1780) of a lady of the Beaumont family, Untitled (Portrait of a Young Lady with Roses) (c.1740) was probably also acquired by Johnston in 1949. Piggott has draped gauze over the sitter’s face, “In shrouding the ... painting l had simply wanted to emphasise the beautiful gesture of the hands and the rose. It may have been a symbolic gesture to indicate the pregnancy of the woman. Since this painting hangs in Ahmed’s sitting room, l had wanted to emphasize the image, as a gift to Ahmed”, she confides. “It also makes some nice connections in this room to the Bohemian glass light stand that is decorated with roses and a beautiful photograph of a young Ahmed carrying a bunch of gorgeous garden roses”.

This desire to articulate the unspoken through objects and images permeates Murmur, speaking to us softly of a man who strived for graciousness and beauty in his life, and of his friends who shared it. “Rosslynd’s response, while of course loaded with her strong visual sense of place and object, was more extraordinary for her sensibility of person and recalling of the past of the people

Rosslynd PIGGOT, Murmur - Vacance en Paris (2013), digital print on Hahnemulle paper (ed. 5 + 2AP), 104.5 x 82.5 cm.

who had, through our museum practice been written out. So, the opportunity to curate that narrative through archives, items and her interventions was exceptional for us and indeed our audiences”, Le Vaillant believes. For the artist who has been immersed within Johnston’s world so intensely, there is a sense that the experience will continue to linger, “The possibility to work with an entire house and its collection was totally beguiling. To have the opportunity to work with a collection in a very close and intimate way is a special and rare privilege ... working with The Johnston Collection to make Murmur has been an extraordinary experience ...”, Piggott reflects.

“Strange and challenging, as the task has hovered in an unfixed zone, somewhere between historical interpretation and installation. l do enjoy such unfixed zones; fragile and risky”.

The Johnston Collection, can be visited by booking at - johnstoncollection.org Rosslynd Piggott is represented in Victoria by Sutton Gallery, Fitzroy - suttongallery.com.au • Artist site - rosslyndpiggott.com Murmurs of Mr Johnston / Inga Walton

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The White Room, arranged as ‘William Johnston’s Sitting Room’, featuring: Rosslynd PIGGOTT, Murmur-Vapour (2013), digital print on Hahnemulle paper (ed. 5 + 2AP), paper size: 104.5 x 82.5 cm, print size: 100 x 78.5 cm. French Empire-style, 20th century gilt metal crystal basket Chandelier. (English) mirror (c.1755), pine and gesso, glass, 200 x 100 cm. (Contemporary furniture supplied by Space Furniture, Richmond). Installation image: John Brash.

Murmurs of Mr Johnston / Inga Walton

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by Bryce Stevens

Stern Warning a chat with novelist and screenwriter Aaron

Sterns

AARON GREW UP AND WENT TO SCHOOL in the state of Victoria in Australia. After studying Shakespeare, the Romantic Poets and Greek tragedies at university, Aaron convinced his graduate school to let him study contemporary horror; his PhD work examines the impact of late capitalism on the works of Bret Easton Ellis, David Cronenberg, Clive Barker and other exponents of postmodern horror. As well, Aaron has presented academic papers on American Psycho and Crash at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts.

Aaron’s first published story, The Third Rail, appeared in 1998 in the very successful Jack Dann/Janeen Webb mass-market anthology Dreaming Down-Under; published in hardcover and paperback with a subsequent reprint. A number of stories followed, including his take on werewolves, Watchmen, which was quickly optioned for film after appearing in 2003’s tri-country Gathering the Bones, edited by Jack Dann, Ramsey Campbell and Dennis Etchison.

Aaron has for many years now been a major player in the development of the Australian horror scene, having edited The Journal of the Australian Horror Writers and worked with Bloodsongs magazine, and also serving as the regular Australian correspondent for Hellnotes: The Insider’s Guide to the Horror Field. Since the late 1990s, however, Aaron has been actively involved with screenwriting. It is his contribution to this latter field of horror and speculative fiction that we will concentrate on in this article.

Currently, Aaron is busy filming the Australian horror/thriller Wolf Creek 2 — of which he is co-writer — in the heat and dust of the South Australian Outback. I was not able to have a face-to-face with him so this is an email interview, with Aaron probably shaking his fist at the cruel sun, while I sit comfortably here, near Sydney, with a cold beer.

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A Stern Warning / Bryce Stevens

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4 Bryce Stevens: Let’s begin with your story Watchmen. Can you tell us how that tale was offered for option to film?

Aaron Sterns: I showed that story around to friends before submitting it, as I usually do, and it fell into the hands of Adam Simon (who wrote and directed the trippy Bill Pullman/Bill Paxton Roger Corman-horror Brain Dead, amongst others). It was a pretty raw story for me, being based on a number of progressively Taxi Driver-like years bouncing in nightclubs to pay the bills while studying, and Adam saw some potential in the idea.

He commissioned me to adapt it into a screenplay, but it was clear it needed more world-building. The editor of most of my short stories, Jack Dann, encouraged me to expand it into a novel as well, which until that time I’d never been game enough to attempt, and I’ve spent the last few years (when I’ve had time) developing the storyline and mythology. It’s in pretty good shape now, I think, so I’ll see how I go. Hopefully all the work’s been worth it.

BS: I have found that it is not always necessary to meet publishers faceto-face to make a story sale. Often word of mouth or previous published stories will garner a writer attention for potential future sales. Do you think it’s different for screenwriters, whereby it’s better to personally meet and greet potential backers or directors/producers?

AS: It’s all about the meetings. A good spec script or a produced credit should at least suggest you can complete a coherent screenplay, but there’s still an element of auditioning. It might be pitching your take, listening to their angle, developing an idea together. You can do a lot more remotely in the Internet age, but you still need face-to-face contact. To be a serious screenwriter you probably really need to live in the epicentre of it all: Hollywood, but I’m not quite there yet. Maybe a few films from now.

BS: You were credited as Script Editor on the Australian gruesome creature-feature Rogue (about a monster crocodile stalking a group of tourists in tropical Australia). Can you tell us how you came to be involved with that project?

AS: I’ve had a bit of a weird initiation to film, having come from academia and horror fiction and theory, and would never have contemplated screenwriting if I hadn’t met Simon or Greg McLean (director of Wolf Creek and Rogue).

John Jarratt in Wolf Creek A Stern Warning / Bryce Stevens

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4 I was lucky enough to meet Greg before either of us were published/ produced, and I shared an office with him and another friend, Dan Austin, here in Fitzroy. We’d trade scripts and stories back and forth and talk film (him) and horror theory (me) for far too much of the day. We then wrote a few spec scripts together, and once he made Wolf Creek things opened up a bit. He moved on to a script he’d written some years previously that I’d given various notes on — Rogue — while I wrote the sequel to Creek. I was then brought in during the editing of Rogue to give my two cents about the structure and shaping. I like to argue so quite enjoyed that actually.

BS: Was your successful involvement with that production a catalyst for you to seek more professional work of this kind, or were you approached by other Australian production companies?

AS: I did script-edit a number of other screenplays after this, helping out a producer I knew with some scripts at the funding application stage.

While breaking down others’ stories helped my own craft, I’ve since tried to minimize how much of that work I take on. There’s only so much time in the day (particularly with a beautiful little daughter-who-must-crawleverywhere taking up so much of it!) and I’d prefer to be spending it on my own work.

BS: You mentioned to me in an email a while back that you had a cameo in Rogue. It must have been fleeting, because I didn’t see you. What character did you play? Oh, and did you get chomped?

AS: I didn’t make the final cut, alas. After the nightclubs I spent a number of years doing bit parts and extras work (mainly just to get a look at film sets like Ghost Rider and The Pacific) and have cameoed in each of Greg’s works, appearing in his short film ICQ as a sadomasochist wearing a leather mask and not much else who cuts his hand off, the Nazi General in the trailer for his WW2 zombie graphic novel Dark Axis, one of the evil truckies in the roadhouse in Creek, and recently as … someone, towards the end of Creek 2 (which I can’t disclose until it’s released). There was supposed to be a final shot in Rogue where the croc’s been captured and is strung up by grinning hunters. Greg enlisted a bunch of friends and then had to cut us from the film (as it was better to finish with a shot of Michael Vartan’s Pete). Ah well, at least I got to hold a shotgun for a whole day.

“I like to argue so quite enjoyed that actually.”

A Stern Warning / Bryce Stevens

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4 BS: One of the Monty Python team once commented on their final movie as a group: “The Meaning of Life was a good movie, but it was one script rewrite away from a great movie.” In regards to your own work, how do you know when enough is enough?

AS: Screenplays are rewritten incessantly in the lead-up to financing, during pre-production, and often even during shooting. There’s always some tweaking that can be done, or someone has an opinion that must be incorporated. Film is collaborative, as they say, and you can’t afford to be precious about your words, as annoying as that can be. In fiction you can argue for your prose with an editor and sometimes win. In film you’re often arguing against twenty others, and sometimes they’re even right. Your job is to know which battles are important, and when some suggestion’s going to destroy your idea, and when one will improve it. I’m always focused on the end product, so I don’t care if I have to swallow my pride if it’s for the good of the movie. The flip side of this is that it’s very hard to know when a script’s ready to show, let alone ready for shooting. Everything’s so permeable that it can sometimes be hard to know if enough is ever enough.

You can rewrite forever. The most important thing is to nail the central idea and solidify the structure. Sequencing of scenes and dialogue changes and cutesie flourishes are minor compared to securing those massive things.

BS: Let’s talk a little about your latest project, Wolf Creek 2. The first movie was an international success, even gaining the attention of Quentin Tarantino, who praised John Jarratt’s role as the sadistic murderer Mick Taylor [Jarrat subsequently appeared in Tarrantino’s film Django – ed]. Can you tell us how you came to be recommended for this gig?

AS: Greg and I had already written spec scripts together (including a fastzombie movie before the Dawn of the Dead remake stole our thunder). I’d talked a lot with him about Douglas E. Winter’s theories of anti-horror and the tendency in modern horror to undermine generic conventions, and a little of this may have found its way into Wolf Creek, as it arose from a more conventional script of his about a serial killer who hijacks a tour bus in the Outback. We started casually spitballing ideas for a while until we happened upon one that seemed big enough for a film. Great, Greg said.

Now go write it.

Aaron with shotgun on the set of Rogue. No - I’m not about to shoot the director.

A Stern Warning / Bryce Stevens

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4 BS: Can you tell us the process of collaboration on a film script, as you did with Wolf Creek 2?

AS: We spent a lot of time on the treatment — I think it was over thirty pages long in the end — and once we were happy I secluded myself for a few weeks to write the first draft. I’m happy to say that’s still the spine of the story. Greg did his own pass and we’ve basically been passing it back and forth since. There were little changes still being made during rehearsals, and even in the editing room there were things to nip and tuck. Thankfully I’ve been involved during the whole process, which can be a rare thing for screenwriters, who are often discarded once they’ve written the script, like a prom date who’s put out too soon. It’s crazy, because probably no one knows the structure and intention of the film better than the writer/s.

BS: When one or the other of the collaborators has what they believe is a great scene and their writing partner is against it, how is a compromise met?

AS: It depends who can argue loudest. You have to be open to criticism and weigh up whether the suggestion’s valid. There’s an adage that you must ‘kill your darlings’ during rewriting. A great scene or image or line that doesn’t fit with the whole of the movie has to be cut. It doesn’t matter how good it is. That’s part of the benefit of having another writer on board: that second critical opinion. Later on the producers have their notes, even the investors sometimes have their notes. By this stage the script’s starting to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the writer’s hands, but we can still have some influence here, fighting changes we don’t agree with, or working out how to incorporate good suggestions. It’s tough, but once everyone’s on the same page hopefully the budget’s still in place and everyone else can do some work.

BS: Has there been any rewrites during production of Wolf Creek 2?

AS: Many. But that first draft has surprisingly stayed very much intact.

There’s a new prologue scene at the start, and we now have a different ending, but the core storyline is all there. It’s quite amazing really.

“Everything’s so permeable that it can sometimes be hard to know if enough is ever enough.”

A Stern Warning / Bryce Stevens

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4 BS: Earlier this year you informed me you were on location for the film in the dry summertime outback of South Australia. Can you tell us what it was like being on set, watching the shoot, in such trying weather conditions? And how did you feel when you heard the actors reciting the dialogue you wrote?

AS: It was hot, damn hot. But I did spend some of my early years living in Adelaide, so I’m used to the dry heat there. I was only on set a small percentage of the overall shoot, so I got off lightly compared to everyone else. And I was too happy to be there to complain. The first day I was on set was quite surreal, as I turned up mid-morning to the sight of two characters from my dreams hitchhiking nonchalantly down a closed-off highway. I couldn’t stop grinning at how well these two actors (I won’t say who they are yet) fitted my imagination, but then I remembered what I put them through later and felt instant guilt. Glee mixed with guilt, that’s the emotions I remember. I felt the same thing when I saw the first cut.

BS: Is the sequel as confronting as Wolf Creek?

AS: ‘As confronting’? I hope it’s a whole lot more. We’ve ramped up everything in the sequel. And John’s pulled no punches in his portrayal of Mick. There’s a couple of scenes in particular that I was worried we could have pushed too far, but in the context of the film I think are justified and work brilliantly. The audience will make up their minds, of course, but we’ve put a lot of work into pushing this to the limits.

BS: You mentioned you have a cameo in WC2. Can you tell us what to look for, or when to expect you?

AS: I’m right at the end. Look for the big angry guy (I could say that about all my roles, really).

BS: Do you have any humorous anecdotes about your time on the Rogue or Wolf Creek shoots that you might like to share with us?

AS: I did get to play with the actual R2D2 used in the Star Wars films (the ones shot in Sydney) that maker Justin Dix brought to the set of Rogue one day.

The only shot I was allowed to use from my visits to Wolf Creek 2 (because they thought it was funny that I was in a dressing gown).

A Stern Warning / Bryce Stevens

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4 And I got to have a lightsaber fight with Nash Edgerton, who was Ewan McGregor’s double for Obi Wan Kenobi’s fight scenes. As a former Kendo exponent, it doesn’t get much better than that. Also amusingly with Rogue, someone leaked a story that a crocodile had been let loose from the set in Warburton, and before we knew it a Channel 7 chopper was buzzing the lake we were filming on. It took a while to convince them the only crocs in the film were animatronic.

BS: You’re also writing the first in a series of Wolf Creek novels, is that right? Can you tell us a bit more about the intended series?

AS: The films are sequels, extending out from the first movie. But the novels are prequels set in Mick’s early years. I’ve written the first in an intended series of six, Origins, which follows Mick’s fairly horrible childhood and his first job as a seventeen/eighteen-year old on a cattle station where he’s trying to fit into society and failing. These novels will flesh out the Creek universe in a unique way I’m not sure any other Australian horror film has done, or could do.

BS: Can you tell us how you approached writing the novel? Did you just go scene by scene, or because it is a novel and not a 90-minute screenplay, did you delve deep into event and characterization?

AS: It’s not based on a screenplay, but is a completely new story so it’s not written as a simple expansion or adaptation of a film.

I approached it as if it was an Australian Gothic novel, unmindful about criticisms of Creek being a simple slasher film (which it isn’t) or a onedimensional horror. I felt I could say something about the darkness in the Australian psyche in this novel, capture some of the desolation and harshness of the landscape, and explore the unwinding of Mick’s mind.

My intention was that it could stand alone without the film, rather than just being a knock-off attempt to exploit the franchise.

Penguin commissioned the series last year, and Greg managed to convince me to write the first (and juiciest, as it’s the origin story) despite a deadline of just four months. I had two weeks to flesh out the two-line idea into an actual story and then conduct a lightning research trip.

Aaron, on the right, as an evil truckie on the set of Wolf Creek 2 A Stern Warning / Bryce Stevens

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4 Firstly I interviewed John Jarratt about his ideas on Mick’s character (as I would have to delve deep into the serial killer’s psyche), then I picked up on some of John’s stories about his own childhood. He mentioned he’d grown up in Aramac, a tiny town in the middle of Queensland, so I booked a flight and visited it, then arranged to stay at a cattle station nearby for the second half of the book. I developed the story as I drove the vast Queensland highways, then jumped straight into the writing upon returning to Melbourne. And somehow I made the deadline. It was such an intense and harrowing experience I’ll have to see if I’m involved with any of the other novels, but if not, there’s a wealth of local horror writers we’re hoping to tap to continue the series.

BS: You mentioned to me that prior to writing the novel you were told to ‘go for it’, so you did just that; and then when you handed in the manuscript they asked you to tone down a few places. A. What happened there? And B. You won’t be letting the unused prose go to waste, will you?

AS: It’s a common theme with my work. I’m always having to cut out the good stuff. There were a few scenes that were a bit too graphic for Penguin, but the screenwriting experience has prepared me well for knowing when it’s necessary to rewrite for market, so I fought for what I thought should stay, and changed what I thought was indeed gratuitous.

I hope we’ve got a happy compromise. People expect Creek to be horrific, but in retrospect there are probably a few things I surprised even myself with.

BS: Many writers have their personal favourites. Some like the highly disciplined short form, or verse; some enjoy the leisurely pace of the novel, whilst others may prefer the strict guidelines of a screenplay. I know you like all forms. Do you now have a preference? Also, because they are such differing disciplines, how do you manage to juggle your hats?

AS: It’s not easy. My short story writing has fallen by the wayside, because each story requires so much effort for relatively little gain.

Scary laughing with John Jarratt and ‘scream queens’ Robyn and Maree.

A Stern Warning / Bryce Stevens

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4 The more years I’ve worked as a writer the bigger my ideas are getting too, so I’m leaning more towards longer works now. But the way I see it is, you do short stories for the art, novels for depth and to have some control, and screenplays to make an impact. The writing techniques required for each are almost at opposite ends of the spectrum (film is all external description and short clipped sentences; whereas prose allows internal reflection and metaphor, so it can be very hard to switch back and forth between the two). But there are not many horror writers that get to write both fiction and film, and even less in this country, so I’m going to do my damnedest to continue writing in all mediums.

BS: Do you have any plans to deliver any more of your punchy short stories any time soon? Would you consider publishing a collection at some stage?

AS: I’ve always intended to get enough stories together for a collection, but it’s been hard to put aside the time to do so. I have a couple ready to go out, but also another twelve or fifteen sitting in the wings awaiting writing. I think maybe I need to give up sleeping so I can get everything done in my life. That being said, I am being forced to write a short story by the end of the year—for your Cthulhu: Deep Down-Under collection—so I guess that’s the best way of getting these stories done: have someone make me do them.

BS: So, what is next, film-wise and fiction-wise, for you Aaron? AS: I’m hopeful that by the time this interview’s published I’ll have another (very dark) film into production. That will make it quite an extraordinary year. I’m partway through a new novel that was pushed aside for the Creek one, so I’m looking forward to getting back to that. And I have a number of other screenplays I’m working on that I’ll start going out with next year once Creek’s released. On top of that I’d like to write two more books in the Blood series, and there’s another two or three novel ideas I have swirling.

That should keep me going for the next ten or so years.

Wolf Creek 2 will premiere at the 70th Venice International Film Festival 28 August – 7 September 2013, and will be released in Australia on 20 February 2014. The first in Penguin’s Wolf Creek novel series will be published in the lead-up to the film’s release.

This interview took place in June 2013 and appeared in Choking Dog Gazette issue 11 Vol, 4 # 3

Aaron, left, with Wolf Creek and Rogue director, Greg McLean.

A Stern Warning / Bryce Stevens

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Let’s Talk About ur Feelings

by Anney Bounpraseuth

I REMEMBER IN THE EARLY 90S MY SISTER AND I would spend our post-school afternoons with the babysitter while my self-sacrificing mother was sewing away in her makeshift clothing factory-cumgarden shed for a measly five cents a garment. Amongst other things I won’t elaborate on, we were raised in a fundamentalist religion, so our childhood was far from ideal. In fact, it was incredibly sheltered and characterised by extreme loneliness and sometimes physical and emotional abuse. Our babysitter was none other than Oprah Winfrey. 4 4

4 Oprah became ike a second mother to me, teaching me things like

the transformative power of the makeover, home decor on a budget, low-fat eating and the therapeutic release of a good old sook. When the general consensus was to “Get over it” or “Suck it up”, Oprah gave people permission to talk about their feelings and “Let it all out”, turning it into a lucrative business empire in the process.

The perception of public confession and outward displays of grief (also known as ‘Oprahfication’), can incite empathy, discomfort or disdain on the richter scale of human emotional responses. Oprah’s minions revere her as someone who has successfully transcended personal hardships such as poverty, discrimination, abandonment and sexual abuse, while empowering others to follow suit. She’s an almost Christ-like figure who genuinely cares, having been there and done that herself, you could say. Others however, see her as this overemotional egomaniac – “I’m a bleeding heart and it’s all about me and my feelings!”.

I wanted to explore this polarising Oprah dichotomy in a watercolour series depicting her in various states of emotional meltdown. Watercolour obviously has this beautiful emotional quality to it, reminiscent of painting with coloured tears... from a unicorn... frolicking in a meadow... of carnations... to Celine Dion.

I borrowed the title of this series from The Western or Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, where predominantly male Jews gather to publicly vent their grief and pray for divine intervention. There’s something very awkward and humiliating yet vulnerable and touching about open displays of grief. 6 By portraying Oprah – who is regarded as a highly influential spiritual leader and cult figure of self-help and self-improvement – at her “hot mess” worst, my intention was simply to humanize her.

The reality is, we’re all just as messed up as each other and trying to do the best we can to make sense of it all and keep it together. Scratch the surface of any of our heroes and you’ll find some emotional baggage. Admit it, there’s a bit of Oprah in all of us. Oh the humanity of it all! Someone give a girl a hug and some tissues, please.

TALK SHOW (to be continued), MOP Projects, 2/39 Abercrombie St, Chippendale (NSW), until 8 September - mop.org.au

Anney BOUNPRASEUTH, Wailing Wall (series of 7), 2013, watercolour on paper, 14 cm x 21 cm each.

Let’s Talk About Our Feelings / Anney Bounpraseuth

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september salon

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: Bindi COLE, Want longer lasting love? 2013, billboard for Arts Mildura’s Palimpsest #9, in Mildura (VIC) 4 – 7 October - artsmildura.com.au/palimpsest 1. Linda JOY, Water for Object (triptych detail) 2013, pen and ink on canvas. Water for Object, NCCA (Northern Centre for Contemporary Art), Vimy Lane, Parap (NT), 13 September – 12 October - nccart.com.au 2.

Todd WILLIAMS, Beer can Regretter 2013, vinyl mounted on aluminium, 80cm x 80cm. Groggy, NCCA (Northern Centre for Contemporary Art), Vimy Lane, Parap (NT), 13 September – 12 October - nccart.com.au

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3. JANE THEAU, The Cortege (detail) 2012. HIDDEN – A Rookwood Sculpture Walk, Rookwood Cemetery, Hawthorne Avenue, Rookwood (NSW), 21 September – 31 October 2013 - hidden.rookwoodcemetery.com.au 4. Maria Fernanda CARDOSO, Emu Flag + Coat (Fluro Orange) 2006-2008, lambda print on photographic paper, 185.0 x 125.0 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne. Air Born, McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park, 390 McClelland Drive, Langwarrin (VIC), 23 June to 6 October - mcclellandgallery.com

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Josh MUIR. Liberate 2012, acrylic on canvas. The Ballarat Four, Koorie Heritage Trust, 295 King Street, Melbourne (VIC), 16 September – 22 November - Koorieheritagetrust.com

september salon 5. Robert HAGUE Trojan hammer (Urn) 2013, lithograph; artist’s proof. Reproduced courtesy of the artist. 2013 Geelong acquisitive print awards, Geelong Art Gallery, Little Malop Street, Geelong (VIC), until 24 November - geelonggallery.org.au 6. From: War or Peace: Twelve linocuts, Noel COUNIHAN, Jack LINDSAY, (Gryphon Books 1979). Courtesy of The Baillieu Library and (c) the Estate. In the Public Interest, Counihan Gallery in Brunswick, 233 Sydney Road, Brunswick (VIC), 6 September – 6 October moreland.vic.gov.au/gallery

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: David WADELTON Position position! (detail) 2013, archival inkjet; edition 1/5.

Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne. Geelong acquisitive print awards, Geelong Art Gallery, Little Malop Street, Geelong (VIC), until 24 November - geelonggallery.org.au

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7. Tarli BIRD, Finishing Banner (detail) 2012, latex and safety pins, 6200 x 300cm. Personal Best, BLINDSIDE, Nicholas Building, Level 7, Room 14, 37 Swanston St (enter via lifts in Cathedral Arcade, corner of Flinders Lane), Melbourne (VIC), 4 – 21 September - blindside.org.au 8. Ponch HAWKES, Untitled 1982, from the series These women have just run twenty six miles, gelatin silver print, printed 2013, 18.8 x 12.6 cm, intended acquisition. Ponch Hawkes: works from the MGA Collection, Monash Gallery of Art (MGA), 860 Ferntree Gully Road, Wheelers Hill (VIC), until 29 September - mga.org.au

ACTease DATELINE: SEPTEMBER 2013 Courtney Symes

September is one of my favourite months in Canberra. The showstopper event of the month is Floriade (think one million flowers in Canberra’s Commonwealth Park attracting more than 400,000 visitors), which starts on 14 September, then there’s the Canberra Times Fun Run on 8 September, and need I even mention the fact that by September, Canberra’s inclement winter days are numbered.

Plus there’s a stack of awesome exhibitions, but hey, nothing new here, just a taste of what’s in store …

There’s only three days left to catch two sensational exhibitions at Beaver Galleries. Jamie Boyd’s Brief Encounters consists of a varied selection of works on paper. An established painter and printmaker (Jamie is the son of Arthur Boyd, so there’s no shortage of talent and good genetics here!), Boyd’s latest body of work uses “both vibrant and subdued colours and expressive gestural lines, the works reflect a strong European tradition”. Boyd “is highly regarded as a painter of the landscape and the figure, constantly challenging and redefining his knowledge of art through experimentation and play”. Splitting his time between his homes in London and the Shoalhaven area, Boyd’s work is the richer for his frequent travel.

Collections such as the National Gallery of Victoria, Artbank, the University of South Australia, University of Western Australia, Parliament House Art Collection and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery currently represent Boyd’s work.

He has also exhibited regularly in Australia and extensively in Europe.

Yogis and Yoginis is Clara Hali’s latest sculpture exhibition, a tribute to her mother who sadly passed away last year, as well as a reflection on “our deep desire to find balance and spirituality within our busy lives”. Hali has drawn inspiration from images in her mother’s favourite book, Light on Yoga by B.K.S Iyengar. Hali’s mother was a yoga teacher for many years, so this is familiar (and perhaps comforting) territory for Hali. The bronze works featured have an elegant simplicity to them as they celebrate the beauty of the human form. Hali is an established artist who has lectured at the National Art School since 1988 and exhibited extensively. She is represented in collections such as Macquarie University, University of Sydney and Cottesloe City Council. Both exhibitions run until 3 September - beavergalleries.com.au ACTease / Courtney Symes

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ACTease / Courtney Symes

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4 It was the name of Juliette Dudley’s latest exhibition, Pastel Galaxy Dream that caught my attention, and after spying a sample of Juliette’s gorgeous illustrations I was completely hooked. Dudley has a background in graphic design and illustration (after completing an Advanced Diploma of Graphic Design in 2008 at Canberra Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Graphic Design in 2012 at the University of Canberra) and currently works as both an in-house and freelance professional (Dudley’s work has been featured in local Canberra publications such as Wobble magazine, The Canberra Times’ Relax magazine, and Us Folk magazine). I love the spirited, dreamlike quality of Dudley’s work – it’s the visual equivalent of reading Alice in Wonderland or another favourite fairytale. Pastel Galaxy Dream consists of drawings and paintings on paper, which are complemented by ceramic, hand-decorated plates. Inspiration for this exhibition has been drawn from Japanese pop culture, especially fashion styles such as fairy kei and decora. Elements of Dudley’s work have also been influenced by “Australian flora and fauna, urban culture, street fashion, vintage style, food, advertising, history and film”. Pastel Galaxy Dream gives your imagination permission to ‘checkout’ from reality and your mind freedom to wander, whilst absorbing the colours and the delights Dudley presents in each of her works. Pastel Galaxy Dream is on at This Studio until 5 September. A visit to This Studio in Gungahlin is also highly recommended. This Studio was founded by creative duo Rob and Tasia, who both love photography and the arts and is available for hire for shoots and exhibitions. - juliettedudley.com thisstudiocanberra.com It’s not uncommon for artists to be influenced by past experiences in their lives.

In Marisa Martin’s case, it was the experience of growing up as a vegetarian that inspired her short animated film, Tegan the Vegan. Martin is a local artist who hails from Queanbeyan, and was excited by the recognition Tegan the Vegan received when it was selected to screen at Flickerfest 2011; won the Best Australian Animation Award at the WOW (World through the Eyes of Women) Film Festival; and was screened at the New York City International Film Festival. Now the National Film and Sound Archive has two new showcases that present some of Martin’s most interesting hand-made items from the film, including miniature sets, polymer clay puppets, hand-drawn shot lists, as well as film extracts. “I love building the sets.

It’s like creating the world from scratch, in miniature. I am truly stoked to have the exhibition on display at the NFSA,” says Martin. Runs until June 2014.

Also at NFSA in the Liversidge Street Foyer, exhibition On Location presents a collection of coloured photographs and posters of stills and production shots made in Canberra, including Finding Eric (2011), Resistance (2008) and Theatre of the Dead (2013). Runs until 15 September. Both of these exhibitions demonstrate that Canberra is an exciting hub for filmmaking. - nfsa.gov.au Speaking of films, the Canberra Short Film Festival is on from 13-15 September at Dendy Cinemas in Canberra City. Film categories include: International, National, Local, Documentary, and Schools. Each film is no more than 20 minutes long. The first Canberra Short Film Festival was in 1996 and the Festival

ACTease / Courtney Symes

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4 has grown exponentially since then. The Festival has seen several changes in Directorship over the years, and this year the event will be directed by 2012 Festival winner, Simon Weaving (creator of winning film Waiting for Robbo).

Don’t miss some great screenings throughout the Festival - csff.com.au

Present history: a selection of photographs of New Zealand 1960s to the present at the National Gallery of Australia is a striking photographic exhibition exploring New Zealand’s fascinating history, which has been formed through layers of culture, tradition and conflict. Each of the photographers featured in this exhibition bring their own perspective to these layers. “Noble and Peryer look back to earlier artists for inspiration. Semu, Barrar and Adams re-stage or re-interpret this earlier imagery in exciting and unexpected ways. The world that Reihana looks back to is a mythical one, but one she seeks to make real in the here and now. Through a meticulous documentation of their own times, Aberhart and Westra have made work that we now see as valuable witnesses to peoples changed or places long gone.” The end result is a body of work that not only documents, but also celebrates the ‘coming of age’ of a unique nation and culture. Runs until 4 November.

A combination of “remixes of romance and war comics, brushstrokes and nude girls” best summaries Lichtenstein’s most popular Pop prints featured in NGA exhibition, Roy Lichtenstein: Pop remix. “Lichtenstein developed a central creative principle that became a potent formula: an ability to identify over-used cultural clichés and to repackage them as monumental remixes.” Featuring work from Lichtenstein’s print projects from the 1950s to the 1990s, Roy Lichtenstein: Pop remix examines the way he reinterpreted work from renowned masters such as Claude Monet, Max Ernst, and Willem de Kooning. Ironically, Lichtenstein’s work became as identifiable in its own right as the work of the masters he was inspired by.

Runs until 27 January 2014. nga.gov.au ABOVE: Mia (2010) Courtesy Dallas Bland. From NFSA exhibition On Location ACTease / Courtney Symes

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DATELINE: SEPTEMBER 2013 Cassandra Scalzi

This month we go directly to Port Adelaide.

No, not our often, famous losing football team, whose fans seem to get a bad rap for some reason. Team sport is one thing in this state; art is quite another. As is Illuminart. 4

Helen KELLY & Jim COAD, Light Paintings, a collaboration, performed for the opening of Streets Alive at Junction Arts Festival in Launceston (TAS).

4 Illuminart is an innovative SA Arts company founded in 2007,

which specializes in ‘’architectural storytelling’’, that is, large scale animated narratives of lasting significance to communities and unique collaborative hybrid media projects that creatively manifest into various, spectacular forms of luminous artistry. This includes interactive projection sculptures that generate music from movement and much more. Illuminart’s major accomplishments include, the Lipson Street projection show, Port Inhabited in 2011, Fractured Heart Interactive at VIVID 2012, No Boundaries projection onto Dame Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre in 2012, and Luminous Hall for the University of WA Centenary in 2013. The core members of this team of Australian artists, creating cutting edge media art, are, Cindi Drennan (Producer/ Director), Luke Kukuku (Animator/Programmer), Craig Laurendet (installation design/Sculptor) and other interstate core collaborators.

Illuminart works with leading theatre makers, AV companies, Councils and Precincts, Directors, Production companies and festivals.

The Lipson Street Projection Show, next month (18-20th) part of the Port Adelaide Festival, is definitely worth a look. Old, charming Lipson street will be transformed with projection and light. The dark streets and old buildings of Port Adelaide are just perfect for these illumination projects, moving image and projection art. This historic part of Adelaide is visibly on the move in the art scene and forms the basis of a big vision for the area, known as ‘New Light Industrial’, which will showcase these new types of illuminations and moving art in events for photographers, designers, architects, families and anyone looking for a new after dark experience! I must say, I enjoyed the guided night walk and talk (a SALA event, part of the Luminous Art Trail) much more than the last graveyard tour I went to. Perhaps it was the way it culminated with a hot chocolate, a nice touch on a cold winter’s night. What’s also nice is the way this talented bunch of creatives involve local South Australian artists in their projects and events, training them to use light and projection as an innovation within their own work.

This is a true community with an artistic vision for their surrounds. I take my hat off to them! Actually, I wouldn’t mind wearing one of their interactive textile hats that change colour with one’s mood to my next party! Quilts that respond to touch were also on display during SALA, which featured an Interactive Textiles Workshop, combining traditional and old school textile techniques with leading edge lighting and electronics for South Australia’s textile artists Illuminart.com.au NEXT MONTH: A frenzy of festivals and feasting, with CheeseFest, The Kangaroo Island Art Feast, A Brush with Art in the Flinders Rangers, some fashion and film; the Fleurieu Art Prize and the Adelaide Zombie Walk.

Adeloud / Cassandra Scalzi

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DATELINE: SEPTEMBER 2013 Inga Walton

IN 1998 GEOFF TODD WAS INVITED to exhibit at the Museo dei Bozzetti in Pietrasanta, by its then director Giuseppe Cordoni. Pietrasanta is on the coast of northern Tuscany, a town where the marble is worked rather than quarried, though it is situated close to Carrara. “The Professor of sculpture explained to me that, as the ‘rules’ of art had changed to such an extent, his students could graduate with successful works that merely expressed the qualities of the marble, and revealed its wonderful form.

However, he felt the accepted ‘modern’ sculpture techniques encouraged uniformity and were ‘using’ the students, rather than the students controlling the techniques”, Todd recalls. “It was then I realised why my work was of interest to the Città di Pietrasanta and its Centro Culturale; my drawing from the figure brought it back into the realm of art rather than mere rendering. It was hoped my works would inspire the students to take up the challenge to work closely with the figure, to wrestle with marble carving in contemporary practice, and show they were indeed in control of the medium”.

In his catalogue essay Cordoni observed, “...the first and most apparent reason for Geoff Todd’s style can be attributed to his acute perception, his readiness of mind. Only a few incisive outlines achieve the desired effect; spare fields of colour create a visual mood. It is a quality of painting which is masterful because it is minimal and intense...One could say that he is present in his work; he is poised, ever-ready to secure for us, in the course of his encounters with all that is living and unique, one of the rare secrets of humanity”.

Todd returns to some of the themes that informed the first exhibition with twenty new works in L’amore della figura, II at Salt Contemporary Art (13 September-6 October, 2013). These rather Melburnin / Inga Walton

Geoff TODD, Yellow Cushion, I (2013), acrylic & charcoal on canvas, 138 x 85 cm.

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stark nude studies, enlivened with minimal colour, express Todd’s preference for concerted studio work with a model. In doing so, he reasserts the practice of drawing from life, a key discipline which has fallen out of favour in Australian art schools. It is also expressive of a skill-set which used to denote the realm of the artist, something Todd feels is being eroded.

“I have been reflecting of late on the tendency, particularly in the popular media, to label everything and anything as ‘art’. This creates a situation where increasingly the term has little currency, applied as it is to objects and activities that bear little relation to the areas of practice that ‘art’ traditionally encompasses. This does a great disservice to those of us within the field, and it would also seem to generate a lot of confusion for the viewer”, he believes. “Some random comments on various television shows have irked me recently. An architecture segment where the reporter rhapsodised, ‘This house is an artwork, it’s like living inside an artwork!’. I say it was a wonderfully designed house, conceived by a master architect, not an artist”, Todd asserts.

“A shopping channel segment where the host was presenting a diamond-encrusted bangle and called it a ‘sculpture’. Really? To me it looked like a beautiful piece of jewellery made by an accomplished metalsmith. Comments on MasterChef that so-and-so is ‘a true artist’, that’s interesting because I thought it was about cooking; a billboard exhorting us to ‘Learn the art of coffee making’, seriously?”.

Geoff TODD, Blue Lining (2013), acrylic & charcoal on canvas laid on canvas, 122x122cm.

Todd’s frustration at the casual misapplication of the term stems not from a quibble about semantics, but from his feeling that this habit detracts from the legitimate dialogue about the evolution and appreciation of art, and its place in contemporary culture. “Art is humanity’s response to itself, and I believe humanity ‘owns’ art. We have always needed to preserve qualities of life and states of mind, many of which art is capable of exposing, illuminating and documenting in profound ways. In today’s world because anyone can call anything ‘art’, the reputation of legitimate art has been sadly diluted, and more difficult to identify. Certainly, let an excellent example of something within its own field be respected and acknowledged, but that doesn’t mean it qualifies as ‘art’. I think that the eroding of this distinction does no one any credit”.

• Salt Contemporary Art, 33-35 Hesse Street, Queenscliff, Victoria, 3225 - salt-art.com.au

Terence S. BOGUE, Enigma #1 (2013), archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper (ed. 5).

23.5 x 23.5 cm, frame: 53 x 43 cm.

• Artist site - geofftodd.com Melburnin / Inga Walton

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As part of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Terence Stewart Bogue’s exhibition Enigma (until 15 September, 2013) brings together nearly thirty works in this continuing series of monochrome figurative studies. Born in Brazil, Bogue was greatly influenced by his countryman, pioneering fashion photographer Otto Stupakoff (1935-2009), whom he met when he was sixteen. Stupakoff recommended Bogue attend the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, where he stayed for two and a half years, before moving to London. There he worked for Adrian Flowers, a well known figure in advertising and editorial photography during the 1960s and 1970s whom Bogue remembers as, “an eccentric genius who resembled Rasputin and held a contagious fascination for light. He taught me to question”.

Bogue emigrated to Australia in 1974 and established his South Melbourne studio in 1979.

He quickly became one of the leading commercial photographers in the state, a position he maintained for some three decades. In recent years, Bogue has chosen to focus almost exclusively on his own artistic output, “I photographed work by some of the best artists in Victoria: potters, weavers, glass blowers, painters, silversmiths and woodworkers. All these photographs were of things”, he remarks. “What really intrigued me though were the people who made them. Extraordinary individuals who evolve and create extraordinary work in a society that can leave us painfully undernourished, creatively. So I started to photograph some of them. That led me to try and distill the beauty within us all, this intangible enigma that we are”.

After so many years spent documenting forms and figures, Bogue’s compulsion towards the medium remains as strong as ever, “Part of the fascination of photography is that it is such an unpredictable, fabulous two-dimensional lie. We can only interpret based on personal experience, and that experience is so subjective, so momentary, that a strong photograph will produce strong emotions that transcend the mere document. As such it will always be the better for what is left out. This is why I see a photograph as merely a trigger to our memory of substitution, where we perceive far more than we see”.

• B1 Art Space, 14 Camp Street, Ballarat, Victoria, 3350 - ballaratart.com & ballaratfoto.org • Artist site - tbogue.com TarraWarra Museum of Art marks its tenth anniversary this year with the addition of a new initiative, TarraWarra International. Curated by Victoria Lynn, the inaugural exhibition, Animate/Inanimate, presents works that consider the profound interconnections between diverse life forms and the environment in a time of rapid, and at times pitiless, global change. Louise Weaver’s five-piece sculptural installation is accompanied by the sounds of birds that the artist recorded around Victoria. These large-scale but airy works are predominantly made of natural fibres, and have a variety of textures, which frame and gently demarcate the space, casting shadows on the floor and walls.

A new installation by Janet Laurence, Fugitive (2013), draws on the specimen collection of the Melbourne Museum, and incorporates film footage of animals from the nearby Healesville Sanctuary, the first time the venues have collaborated. New media work from Indian artist Amar Kanwar, The Scene of Crime (2011) examines the industrial encroachment on local farming in Orissa (Odisha), a state on the subcontinent’s east coast by the Bay of Bengal, and the devastating results of environmental degradation. American Jennifer Allora and her Cuban collaborator Guillermo Calzadilla are based in Puerto Rico.

Their new media work, Raptor’s Rapture (2012), concerns the oldest musical instrument located to date, an ancient flute made from the wing bone of a griffon vulture, found at the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany in 2009. Bernadette Käfer, a flautist specialising in prehistoric instruments, attempts to play this 35,000 year-old relic of human culture in the presence of one of the bird’s living descendents, now threatened with extinction.

Melburnin / Inga Walton

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Louise WEAVER, (l-r) Time to Time (2013) (detail), Lighthouse in high sea (2013), Bird Hide (2011), Hiding in plain sight (Witch grass nest) (2011-12) Installation Photo: Mark Ashkanasy.

Chinese artist Lin Tianmiao’s glossy 180-piece sculptural installation All the Same (2011) consists of artificial versions of every bone in the human body categorized from largest to smallest, and arranged in a line along the walls. Lin employs a technique she calls ‘thread winding’, where silk or cotton thread is wound around an object until it is completely covered, and ultimately transformed; here the silk threads also pool on the floor, creating a rainbow-hued tangle. “I am very careful in employing colour because it is an element that you cannot use without careful consideration, otherwise it will interrupt the purity and order of the artwork. In many of my recent works I have used colour purposely, which I also think is necessary”, Lin says. “I have the choice to go in the direction of the stereotypical understanding of one colour, or not. For instance the use of the colour pink produces different psychological reactions from different gender groups and the exclusivity associated with the colour gold has a similar effect on different social classes. I find this very interesting”.

Melburnin / Inga Walton

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Reaction (2013), created especially for this exhibition, has twelve skulls wound in two shades of pink suspended from the ceiling. Each has been variously altered to incorporate an item used in day-to-day work (tubing, a shovel, a trumpet, an iron, kitchen utensils) to reflect the impact of politics and progress on the lives of the everyday person in China.

Lin’s means of wrapping, shrouding, or ‘embalming’ these bodily parts so delicately and carefully demonstrates an almost obsessive labour within her work, or perhaps a consciousness of the fragility and disposability of life in her country. “To change, re-create or destroy their original functions and meanings … is to transplant new functions, life and possibilities within the objects, which makes ‘being useful’ into ‘being useless’, and ‘being useless’ into ‘being useful’. I am living in an environment in which violence is seen everywhere in China and the element ‘violence’ exists naturally in my works”.

• TarraWarra Museum of Art, 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road, Healesville, Victoria, 3777 twma.com.au New Zealander Reuben Paterson also employs a naturalistic theme in his capsule collection of four sculptures and corresponding works on canvas, Earth, Wind & Fire (until 21 September, 2013), at Nellie Castan Gallery. Paterson is an artist unafraid to get his glitter on, sparkling materials which he puts to evocative use in order to engage with what is known in Māori culture as whakapapa, the layers of genealogy, myth and knowledge that are central to consciousness. The handmade sculptural works, a (brown) rearing bear, a (green) snake, a (black) reclining panther and a (gold) potted tree reflect the subdued tones of the earth and its environs, but are named after famous works of art.

With the exhibition title, Paterson gives a knowing wink to the enduring popularity of one of the few black ‘supergroups’, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2000) and still performing after forty-four years. He further references several of their singles for the monochrome painted works. Paterson’s practice deftly navigates the often fractious gulf between the depth of cultural memory and tradition that characterises his Māori ancestry, and the impact of received and contemporary ‘western’ influences. He does this with sparkle in tact and with his groove definitely on!

• Nellie Castan Gallery, Level 1, 12 River Street, South Yarra, Victoria, 3141 nelliecastangallery.com • Artist site - reubenpaterson.com

Reuben PATERSON, Mona Lisa (2012), glitter , polystyrene, scrim and hardened plaster, fibreglass, glass eyes. Photography: Bridget Webber, 31 x 200 x 110 cm.

Melburnin / Inga Walton

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sound bites city the fine art of listening

A NEW EXHIBITION AT RMIT GALLERY Sound Bites City will showcase the RMIT University Sound Art Collection – the first of its kind in Australia – and offer audiences the chance to experience 19 new and significant works by leading Australian and international sound artists.

Lawrence Harvey is an Associate Professor and director of the SIAL Sound Studios. His recent projects include artistic direction and sound diffusion for five concerts at the Melbourne Recital Centre, a report on Melbourne’s five Urban Soundscape Systems, spatial performance research with Elision Ensemble at the 2011 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and performances at the Institute of Sonology, The Hague, 2013.

Evelyn Tsitas from RMIT Gallery caught up with him during the installation for Sound Bites City to discuss the auditory self, and how a curator helps an audience to ‘see sound’.

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Evelyn Tsitas: How can Sound Art expand our concept of both music and art, as well as the vocabulary of song writing?

Lawrence Harvey: A lot of the artists in the exhibition and the collection have practises in both classical music and Sound Art; some come out of fine art, media art, theatre studies, experimental music, and composition; anywhere people have been working with expanded notions of sound and how it can be used artistically. These artists create works that you can just come upon, listen to for some unspecified time and then move away again; although most of the works in this collection have a finite duration.

ET: How can Sound Art extend the very act of listening?

LH: It’s always an interesting question that one, because when you’re putting together an exhibition or event you do put yourself in the shoes of an audience, wondering “If I came into this room, what do I leave with?” or “Do I leave with a big frown?” or a big “well what was that?” Or does something change in the way that I go out and listen to the world and I think that’s really what I would be interested in?

What happens as a result of someone walking off Swanston Street into RMIT Gallery, up the stairs to into the 16 channel sound system and suddenly being presented with a transformed sonic environment? The audience is moved 15/20 metres away from a dense urban environment into something quite different, and then back out again.

It’s what happens in that transformation that is fascinating. There’s always that aspect at one level when we talk about artistic experience. The art object or sound doesn’t necessarily do anything. It’s always about the relationship we form with sound as the viewer or listener.

Sound Bites City / Evelyn Tsitas

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So what we bring to the work is important, and that relationship that you build up through your own sonic imagination. And we all have a sonic imagination. When I’m teaching students one of the first things I do is to get them to understand that they have sonic ideas, they have sonic memories, and they probably have sonic dreams as well.

ET: That’s a fascinating idea. To dream in sound, to remember in sound.

LH: Hopefully the exhibition provides a place to come and play with all of those aspects of our imaginations. When you have an opportunity to work with sounds recorded in the environment you experience just how dynamic the world is. When you really listen, it’s not all noise. When you listen to the world in a particular way it is a cornucopia of sound. The idea that sound is critical to our being in the world cuts right across many cultures. Sound is different depending on your environment, be it natural or urban. For instance, we experience reverberation in an interior going to a cathedral or concert hall. There is that beautiful decay in the sound, but when you’re in the forest you can also get that sense of enclosure as well, your voice comes back to you in that way. The aim of Sound Bites City is to provide an opportunity for the audience to really hear the world in a different way.

Sound Bites City: The inaugural exhibition of RMIT University’s new Sound Art Collection. Exhibition dates: 4 September – 19 October 2013 - rmit.edu.au/browse;ID=hvwhknvs6tyt

Sound Bites City / Evelyn Tsitas

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Prato, Italy, about 25 minutes by car from Florence is a hidden treasure. It has all the quiet tranquility of a small regional town with the option of being a train ride away from the high fashion, culture and art of one of Italy’s largest cities, Florence. Surrounded by green luscious mountains, it is a medieval town with high stone protective walls, a castle which belonged to an Emperor and a Cathedral and churches which attracted such esteemed artists of the Renaissance as Pisani, Lippi, Donatello and Della Robbia.

From Melbourne to Prato and onwards to the Mecca of the art world : the Venice Biennale Tiziana Borghese

E-ticket in hand I make one final check to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything.

Passport-check, accommodation vouchers-check, Euros-check, hand-luggage and suitcase with distinctive rainbow ribbons-check.

I have been looking forward to this day for an eternity. I am flying to Italy for a three month gorging on art, architecture, history and Italian food and culture.

My first stop is Prato, via Singapore and Rome. I intend to spend 5 weeks researching food, culture and the Italian way. Being so close to where it all began… where Dante wrote his Divine Comedy, where Machiavelli wrote The Prince and where some of my favorite Renaissance artists worked, walked and loved is like being projected into a parallel universe of visual splendor connected by a synchronicity of images in time. Prato is so close to Florence and Florence is magnificent. Walking on the same cobbled stones as the Medici’s might have done and where Michelangelo and Leonardo might have had their famous artistic banters, where Lippi and Lucrezia had their clandestine assignations and where ordinary medieval people went about their daily lives caring for families, buying food and clothes and travelling on horseback, brings the past into the present and connects who I am now with my origins.

The Venice Biennale / Tiziana Borghese

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Although my family migrated from Italy when I was six years of age, Italian literature, culture and art is as much part of me as my Australian upbringing.

Migrants who are not lucky enough to become totally assimilated find that their identity is split between their sense of where they come from and their adopted way of life. When I come to Italy and I hear Italian spoken around me my heart races as if meeting a lover for the first time. But the same happens when I hear that familiar Australian accent overseas. There is an instant connection and affection toward cultures that are the basis of one’s identity. The first time I heard the Venician dialect on my return I felt an instant kinship with total strangers .I felt at home. A chance encounter with an Australian family in Florence had a similar result…instant bonding. Italy is in my blood and Australia where I belong.

Trouble magazine have commissioned me to do a series of articles on my research in Italy, especially the Venice Biennale, this is the first article, focusing on the journey and first impressions. In the following articles I will report in more detail on the Biennale, but also on art in Italy In general. I will be conducting interviews with artists in and outside the Biennale.

My two main destinations are Prato, near Florence, and Venice. Prato has a vibrant artistic community and in the summer months there is a smorgasbord of cultural events, most for free, on every street corner and venue of the old city.

There are musical events from jazz and rock to opera and rap, there are wine tastings, artist’s talks on graphic novels and photography and interviews with leading literary and cultural figures. Two years ago Simple Minds gave a free concert in the Piazza della Republica in Florence and Patti Smith is scheduled to give a concert this year.

Monash University has a campus in Prato and attracts students all year round, but in summer students of Fine Art and Design converge on Prato to study Renaissance art and its contribution to modernism and contemporary art, and the Venice Biennale, a mecca for art and artists from all over the world. Pilgrimages to these iconic art events, galleries and museums are always more fun when they are shared with others who have the same passion. And nothing can replace the sheer joy of talking about discoveries of the day over a few glasses of wine or beer, or a Spritz (a popular cocktail of Prosseco, soda and Aparol) in the evening.

Residencies are all the best part of shared housing with art thrown in. The camaraderie, the sharing of ideas and experiences, the company and support, and the warm feeling of having shared a journey not only of place but also of mind, is part of the residencies’ experience; memories, which stay with us forever.

With anticipation and a bit of trepidation I board the train to the city and take the Sky bus from Southern Cross station to Tullamarine airport, terminal 2. My flight on Singapore airlines leaves at 3.45pm but international flights require you to be at the airport at least three hours before that …. an inconvenience but you don’t want to miss that flight!

The flight is an endurance test. I can never sleep and for virtually twenty four hours (approx. 8 to Changi, then a long wait that is in the middle of our night, The Venice Biennale / Tiziana Borghese 4 and then 12 hours to Rome) I watch every new release video I can access; Cloud Atlas, Stoker, The Story of Pi and a number of others. Due to the late

The flight is an endurance test. I can never sleep and for virtually twenty four hours (approx. 8 to Changi, then a long wait that is in the middle of our night, and then 12 hours to Rome) I watch every new release video I can access; Cloud Atlas, Stoker, The Story of Pi and a number of others. Due to the late night and jet lag their plots become intertwined and characters jump randomly from one scenario to another. With the lights on a constant dim time is irrelevant, compressed, expanded and elastic. Space is constricted.

At Changi airport trying to remember the time difference (back two hours?) in a state of apprehension that I might miss that connecting flight, I buy a few trinkets for family and friends. Trying to do mental arithmetic with conversion rates after an eight hour flight and watching mind-numbing screens for hours proves impossible. The basics of economic rationalism and the dictates of demand and supply mean that I am willing to pay anything to a guy behind the counter with an ever expanding smile. The Singapore government has given all travelers 40SGD (Singapore Dollars) as an added incentive to buy from traders, but the catch is that you have to line up for a voucher. There are only three people behind the counter and a multitude of travelers from flights from all over the world rushing to get their voucher and spend it before their connecting flights. The result is an ever-increasing tension as time seems to slow down and blood pressure rises as the line crawls along. A type of Monty Pythonesque surrealism.

My connecting flight leaves from terminal three at 1.05am local time, which is 3.05am in Australia. My brain has shut down; my body is on automatic pilot. I think of Dawn of the Dead and feel like one of Snyder’s minions. I shuffle from shop to shop, one eye on the clock, the other on the departure board. I find some way of spending my voucher and miraculously I make it to the right gate and board. Back on the plane I take a deep breath and settle into my seat knowing that the next leg of the flight is going to be even longer than the last. More movies ... here we go.

We touch down in Rome at 7.45am local time. Who knows what time it is in Australia and who cares? I am now well and truly beyond that. My biological clock has been flipped upside down. I have lost eleven hours, have witnessed sunsets and sunrises every few hours and have lost count of the number of lunches, dinners, breakfasts and snacks served during the flight.

Sleep deprived and sense deprived I find my luggage and proceed through Italian customs. The customs officer doesn’t even look at me, stamps my passport and tells me to move on. No baggage check … and I’m in Rome. Italy has a different light, a different feel, a different smell. I am arriving at a time when the whole world of art is descending on Venice for the 55th Venice Biennale. For now I sit back and enjoy the 4 hour bus ride to Prato.

A PREVIEW OF THE NEXT ARTICLE FROM The 55th La Biennale di Venezia Photos from the Arsenale, The Giardini and some of the Collaterals, Spotlight on Marc Quinn, Bart Dorsa, Australia’s representative Simryn Gill, and four Australians at the Palazzo Bembo, plus an interview with new rising star sculptor Peter Simon Muhlhauber.

The Venice Biennale / Tiziana Borghese

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National Participations at the 55th International Art Exhibition.

The Venice Biennale / Tiziana Borghese

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with Dmetri Kakmi

Dear Dreamboat

Dear Dreamboat

I am standing in the grounds of a university. A young woman tells me she needs my help to kill a vampire. She has a gun. I agree to help. We enter a shipping container. Inside is a dark, tall, coldfaced vampire. He is ugly, sallow and heartless. The young woman aims her gun. In a split second, the vampire tears her apart. I run! As I round a corner, the vampire is already there waiting for me. Looking me in the eye he rips apart a nearby male student.

The vampire rewinds time and does it over and over again. Each time the agony of the student is played out just for me – I feel culpable in his suffering.

This is a recurrent dream. I’m on a cruising ship, like the Titanic, on the open sea. Sometimes I’m outside watching and sometimes I’m inside the ship, part of what’s happening. Sometimes I am trying to escape, sometimes I am watching the havoc as the sea closes in. This week I was inside, watching helplessly as the ship was engulfed and sank. The feeling of dread is prevalent. Knowing that I am trapped, knowing that it is going down and there’s nothing I can do. I love the sea, but in the dreams it is a dreadful, menacing place.

Bliss

Maria Dear Maria

Dear Bliss The vampire and dismemberment. Two archetypal images that continue to speak to the modern mind.

The dream may portend an ambivalent relationship with death.

You are traversing psychic depths in a vessel that is The vampire is a liminal being. Neither alive nor dead, not up to the task. The ocean is primordial mother. he is seductive and predatory, beautiful and ugly. He She is the depth and range of human psychology. represents human desire, torn between polarities, yet Inside us we carry oceanic memories of creation united in one body. The fact that he attracts and repels and destruction that are eternal. We are droplets in means that we fight ongoing battles with our own the vast swirling liquidity of the sea and the cosmos. natures. I see this dream in relation to your previous The rational mind evolved from the same restless dream. With that in mind, I add that for some the liquidity; however, in its Apollonian outreach vampire is a revenant of unprocessed or unassimilated it has unmoored itself from the knowledge that trauma and deprivation, which can obsess and keep it is finite, infinitesimal. That is why the sea can us from fully living. be simultaneously calming and disquieting. It is unstable matter on which we have uncertain footing.

In this instance, however, the vampire is working for you. Note the educational setting? Despite your The boat, the ship, is a creation of the rational hesitation, he is doing you a favour by guiding mind. It is the body that allows us, against the you toward greater good. Dismemberment from odds, to navigate oceanic depths. It holds us secure the ancient cult religions is a blessing of fertility above the chaos that lurks below. The shipwreck, and resurrection. Being torn apart breaks down the terrifying descent into the abyss, is death itself. defensive structures until only the bone of The vast cruising ship of your dreams, is human personality remains, upon which a new body can hubris and vanity, tossed on the back of a wave be built. Your psyche is forcing you to trust in and crushed to matchsticks. As it sinks, the ocean dissolution. It’s only when you’ve torn down your becomes a womb tomb and the boat a coffin that defenses that you can rebuild or transform yourself carries us to the final destination. ¢ through suffering.

Dmetri Kakmi learned to tell fortunes and interpret dreams by observing his grandmother when he was growing up in Turkey.

Nowadays he combines that fledgling knowledge with Jungian, ancient and traditional symbolism.

If you have a dream you would like interpreted email dreamboat@troublemag.com

Deanne Gilson Marlene Gilson Deanne Gilson Marlene Gilson Josh Muir Josh Muir Bronwyn razeM

Bronwyn razeM

295 King Street, Melbourne 3000 t: 03 8622 260 www.koorieheritag

295 King Street, Melbourne 3000 t: 03 8622 260 www.koorieheritagetrust.com

stralian stories with Neil Boyack

Footy’s Glory Days

by Elliot Cartledge Hardie Grant rrp $29.95

[ Trouble is giving away five copies of Footy’s Glory Days to the first five readers who email art@troublemag.com and tell me who they barrack for - ed ]

T

hose days still have an effect on me. I look back at them thanking various life forces, including my dad, for facilitating experiences connected to this era of football. It was tough, full of flare, aluminium beer cans, burnt onions, old fashioned public transport, and standing room only much of the time. Players weren’t afraid to have a smoke before the game, or multiple pies and beers afterwards. It was a time when you could run onto the ground after the final siren and kick your footy. Ahhh…I remember that sound, one hundred footballs being kicked with varying abilities amidst the cold of Saturday evening descending. If you couldn’t get to the football, you’d hear Harry Bietzel, Lou Richards, or Jack Dyer commentating on the radio (…3KZ is Football!). You’d get a super-footy-day all in one Saturday over six venues through Melbourne and Geelong and after the footy you’d strive to get home in time for the replay on Channel 7.

Footy’s Glory Days by Elliot Cartledge is an insightful book that captures the significant shifts and changes going on in the VFL from the late sixties to early eighties. It is more than a book however. It is a well-crafted remembrance of those heady days when football was moving from non-professional, to semi-professional, to a professional sport, from black and white to colour on TV, from drop-kick to handball on field, and from suburban grounds to main super-venues. A time when the game had outgrown itself as a pastime. Cartledge describes how clubs and the governing body created the scope for this growth, how their vision for an expanded competition morphed into a business structure demanding clubs themselves be accountable for the future security of football.

VFL Umpire Glenn James

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Robbie McGhie Stralian Stories / Neil Boyack

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This commercialisation of football was symbolised by sponsors making their way onto jumpers (Yakka, CUB, Courage Draught). Naming rights for certain elements were also up for grabs (Commodore Cup, Escort Cigarettes night series). This new mainstream interest in football as a commercial vehicle created a stream of income that fed the imaginations and appetites of players. Many weren’t awake to it immediately, especially those who were modest of skill and just happy to get a game. They found safety in the old ways of loyalty and low match payments, yet some were seeing themselves fairly and squarely in the plan that was unfolding in front of them. Loyalty was the first casualty of these new opportunities (so wonderfully captured at times in David Williamson’s The Club). Whilst loyalty to club still counted for something, those who felt they could make a living from football saw their ability as “the business” and were happy to be part of a market place.

There was many a dud trade however, and some more exciting ones.

Peter Moore went to Melbourne and won a Brownlow Medal, Graham Teasdale went to Collingwood (for big money) and didn’t do much, other champions like Robbie Flower (Melbourne) chose to stay with their original clubs, the thought of leaving unbearable. A host of interstate imports also coloured the competition.

Allen Aylett, President of the VFL from 1977 to 1984, brought much to the table in terms of business acumen. Former player and North Melbourne man through and through he contributed much to the transition of the VFL with his own skills, and his network of business minded colleagues who saw the Trade Practices Act as a catalyst for protecting and encouraging capitalism of the highest order within football. “The VFL’s central administration income went from $6.5 million in 1976 to $23.9 Million just eight years later” (Cartledge, P20, 2013). The expansion of the competition was inevitable and this would test the passion of the thousands and thousands of supporters whose patronage and loyalty formed the very foundations of the huge business opportunities that were appearing. In a wake of financial loss South Melbourne moved to Sydney in 1982 and “significantly altered the game’s landscape” (Carteledge, 2013, p27). Still, the “Keep South at South” group formed in response, showing that the hard-core suburban football narrative was still breathing.

Nationally, the VFL had experimented with games for premiership points throughout Australia since 1952. The first game in Sydney was played in 1968 between Carlton and St Kilda, with a crowd of 22,000 people turning out to witness the Saints prevail by 58 points.

Major centres such as Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, and Launceston were Australian Rules strongholds, feeding the competition proper with players and support. A national fervour for the game was evidenced by the hugely popular and parochial State of Origin clashes.

This combination would surely demand a national competition at some point.

Armed with a detailed business plan, and encouraging forecasts of growth, West Australian club East Perth applied to join the VFL in 1980. The VFL’s leadership however, through Jack Hamilton, did not take this seriously. Studies at this time showed that half of the clubs in the competition were” technically bankrupt” (Cartlegdge, p 28, 2013) demonstrating damaging holes in club management modality. Gone were the days of simply selling booze and hamburgers to pay players who worked as plumbers and gasfitters during the week. Also disappearing was the “suburban warfare” which had so successfully underpinned the rabid parochial support the early years of Australian Rules football had been mythologised upon.

Those old crows who couldn’t accept the change tore their membership tickets up and waited for cricket season. Fortunately, most came along for the ride.

Stralian Stories / Neil Boyack

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Collingwood Cheer squad 1981 All of the original VFL clubs have survived the journey, bar Fitzroy (who merged with Brisbane Bears, yet the colours still live on). This is more than an impressive feat in business and economic terms, and a credit to the loyalty of VFL and club administrators, committees, supporters and their abilities to adapt. It is more amazing in a context of the unfair and crippling traditional method of recruitment, which no doubt affected the financial and on-field wellbeing of clubs in many ways. Established in 1967, a geographical zoning system that connected areas of Victoria with VFL clubs predicted that “five clubs would win flags over the next 23 years” whereas in the previous 23 years (pre-1967), nine clubs had shared the honours (Cartledge, P21, 2013). Zoning was a dud and the VFL would have been anchored to the spot if a draft system had not been introduced.

Sitting in a near-empty outer-grandstand at Victoria Park, with dad quietly marking the footy record in a shaft of winter sunlight; the Pies taking on the Bulldogs in front of him, we never talked much, but I could tell he was proud to be showing me the greatest game there is. He wasn’t a “touchy feely” man, but dad was a VFL umpire for 10 years and he loved footy. Taking me to the footy was his way of telling me he loved me, and his way of passing something onto his son. I love football because it connects directly to powerful life forces: family, community, tribe. Elliot Cartledge’s book is a wonderful package, filled with descriptions of an important time for Australian Rules football. It is also an invaluable time capsule for me, and anyone who grew up watching footy in this era will return to this text again and again for reminders of this footy magic.

Trouble is giving away five copies of Footy’s Glory Days to the first five readers who email art@troublemag.com and tell me who they barrack for - ed

Neil Boyack is a poet, writer, welfare professional and commentator. He is also the founder and director of the Newstead Short Story Tattoo www.newsteadtattoo.org .

Check www.neilboyack.com for more.

Refs: Car tledge, E, Footys Greatest Era, Hardy-Grant, 2013. You Tube references Manassa’s run down the wing against Nor th - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4lCYDQg3SY ; Phil Carmen highlights package http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=sjb9lTAM4QE ; Jesalinko…you beauty - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBeHVLs3kdU ; Peter Daicos highlights http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUwKKL51bEc

Stralian Stories / Neil Boyack

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GREETINGS FROM ...

Hiroshima PART TWO: Country Bumpkin Hits Tokyo City

words & pics by Ben Laycock

Greetings From Hiroshima / Ben Laycock

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The plane lands safely (thank you Jehovah) I catch the Shinkansen to Shinjuku. After alighting from the bullet train I am a little disoriented ...

Tokyo Central Station has no less than 5 levels. Three subway levels, ground level and the Shinkansen that travels in air. I descend into the nether world of the subway. There are entire shopping complexes down here, run by Vampires that rarely see the light of day. Within minutes I have no idea if the earth’s crust is up or down. When I finally escape and fill my lungs with ‘fresh air’ (I use the term loosely) there is not an inch of space amongst this seething mass of humanity, rushing madly hither and thither like ants on crack. I am instantly overwhelmed with feelings of claustrophobia. I am a country lad, remember, never having never found myself amongst such a throng outside the house of the Lord.

Luckily I spy, out of the corner of my eye, a little patch of green, an oasis in this concrete desert.

But lo and behold, an officious looking sentry bars the gate, demanding payment. Breathing space obviously commands a premium in this country and I willingly hand over the ransom.

To my immense relief I find myself almost alone in the most picturesque of gardens, a babbling brook here, a cherry tree there, balanced by a nice rock, every twig and blade manicured to perfection, which of course is the Japanese way when confronted with unruly nature. The environment is seen as mere Play Doh for the ikebana artist to mold and shape to her will. I soon spy an empty bench on which to lay my weary head. My eyelids fall. I drift into the sweet unconscious. ... I am rudely awoken by a prod from our officious little friend: “No Sleep in Park. Read sign” Am I trapped in a Luenig cartoon?

My friend Mikio is not yet twenty-six years of age yet he has already achieved the lofty heights of success, being the editor of The National Ikebana Magazine, no less. Mikio lives at home with his mother. He has a car, but not a girlfriend. His room is the same size as his car, I kid you not. The Japanese, not unlike our good selves, love drinking. Every evening after knocking off work around 6 or 7pm Mikio is obliged spend a couple of hours with his workmates in the company’s rooftop bar getting absolutely blotto.

My friend is keen to show me the depth and richness of his ancient culture, and this is an area where our two nations are polls apart. The Japanese are quite taken with the odd ways of western culture, they are in fact great fans of the essence of our way of life: Hollywood, Disneyland, McDonalds, but it is for them mere light entertainment. Sure they love Maccas and all that crap, but for something really special one must of course, go Japanese. We, on the other hand, are happy to eat meat pies and fish and chips till we drop dead, but for something really special we must also go Japanese … or French or Eritrean or anything but plain old Ozzie.

Sad but true.

In the next chapter our intrepid cultural explorer discovers Karaoke, gets the gong from a real, live, Zen Buddhist, stumbles across a Shinto shrine and hopefully gets to Hiroshima by August the sixth, in time for The Big Demo. www.benlaycock.com.au Greetings From Hiroshima / Ben Laycock

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SKULL MOVIES

by Robin Pen

Scene VI : Waiting for Godzilla ...

A Play in One Act Wherin the Audience are Asked to Explore Their Own Opinions While the Author Keeps His Comfortably Nebulous Lights go up on a wood-panelled room where a bare light-globe hangs above a small, melamine table. Two men sit, one at either end of the table. Behind them, a window looks out over the ruins of a large city. Occasionally, in the distance, a pair of enormous reptilian legs stomps past, setting the light-globe jiggling and specks of plaster falling from the ceiling.

The man on the left is FANCHER, his companion HAMPTON. Both are young film critics, and as such each wears an aloof, disdainful sneer. After two minutes of contemplative silence, one speaks. ...

HAMPTON I simply cannot agree that the reinsertion of the unicorn scene confirms Deckard to be an android.

FANCHER Replicant please; android is the book.

The book’s better.

HAMPTON

FANCHER Unarguable, but replicant is the correct title in this instance.

HAMPTON Okay Mister Pedant; replicant it is then.

Thank you, and you’re an idiot.

Skull Movies: Scene VI / Robin Pen

FANCHER

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Blade Runner Dir. Ridley Scott Skull Movies: Scene VI / Robin Pen

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HAMPTON Well you’re a bigger fool, because your position is tenuous, to say the least, when you claim confirmation that Deckard is a replicant just because he dreams – Waking dreams.

FANCHER

HAMPTON – waking dreams a full-blown unicorn, which you think we’re supposed to associate with the discovery of the origami sculpture, presumably left by Gaff, outside his apartment.

Then what’s the point if it isn’t that?

FANCHER

HAMPTON Art! Ever heard of art, symbolism, aesthetics of the craft?

FANCHER Art? Come on; it’s a science fiction movie.

HAMPTON Yes, yes I know, but Ridley decided that in this particular SF movie he would employ certain ambiguous arty elements, and I believe they should not necessarily be interpreted so ambitiously. He may have been intending little more than subtlety and an ambience of esotericity.

FANCHER Oh crap! Those sort of things don’t work in sci-fi shows.

Well then, maybe Blade Runner ...

Yes? Blade Runner may, just may ...

Spit it out! What are you intimating?

HAMPTON FANCHER HAMPTON FANCHER

HAMPTON I am raising for serious consideration, my good man, that just perhaps ...

Perhaps what?

Perhaps it doesn’t work.

FANCHER HAMPTON

FANCHER What? No! Don’t say that, especially out loud. Don’t even think it!

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4

HAMPTON And why not? Maybe it should be addressed. Ridley Scott should have done more than merely infer that Deckard is a replicant, not that he does so very successfully anyway.

FANCHER It’s an SF movie for god’s sake. What makes you think that esoterica has to mean something esoteric, even if you recognise it as such?

You’re being bloody cynical.

Aren’t you?

HAMPTON FANCHER

HAMPTON I’m not being cynical. I’m being realistic. There’s nothing there, just random esoterica.

The way you – and you’re not alone in this by any means – wish to interpret this stuff is simply wish fulfilment; looking for the flicker of humanity in Nexus-6 and ignoring the blatant inhumanity illustrated by the replicant’s lack of respect for human life.

FANCHER Now hold on! What about the lack of respect humans have for the replicants? Even Batty defends himself against JF Sebastian in that regard: “We’re not computers, Sebastian.”

At least get the accent right.

HAMPTON

FANCHER Shut up. And Pris adds to it, quoting ... um Descartes.

Was it Descartes?

Spinoza?

No, I’m sure it was Descartes.

HAMPTON FANCHER HAMPTON FANCHER

HAMPTON Anyway, you and Ridley have really lost it. I refuse to accept that Ridley ever actually sets out to state that Deckard is a replicant.

(Shouting) He doesn’t have to!

FANCHER

HAMPTON Of course he does. Subtlety just doesn’t work in SF movies!

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FANCHER No no, subtlety is never expected in sci-fi movies, so it’s never noticed when it is there!

HAMPTON Well actually, subtlety isn’t noticed because cinematic science fiction is largely about spectacle. The idea of overwhelming sound, image and activity has always been the driving force behind the inspiration, concept, production, promotion and viewing of the super-slick SF flick.

FANCHER Rather a sweeping generalisation; isn’t it simply the case that the sci-fi that has attained classic status has largely been extravaganza of one type or another.

HAMPTON No, no, no. Those films have defined the genre; big movies out to impress the audience with wilder graphics, better effects that previously screened: spectacle.

FANCHER An attempt to expand our idea of reality by exploring the fanciful?

HAMPTON Indeed. They’ve amounted to SFX Maestros’ attempts to impress upon the poor naive audience that the Universe, in All God’s Glory, is Larger, Wider and More Colourful than You Could Ever Have Imagined.

FANCHER But it’s an illusion of course, given that what’s presented as “beyond the comprehension of mere mortals” must be conceived, created and filmed by mere mortals in the first place.

HAMPTON Yep, somewhat of an act of pompous arrogance, if it wasn’t simply out to entertain.

FANCHER I guess all bigger-than-big movies can come across as self-righteous shit.

HAMPTON Well yes, unless they manage to acquire that vital semblance of humility from the low bows and modest words of the gracious director as he accepts the accolades of the delighted and very moved sharers in his dream.

Oh very eloquent.

Thank you; and fuck off.

FANCHER HAMPTON

FANCHER So, sci-fi film is the cinema of the spectacle.

HAMPTON SF is the cinema of the fantastique and the spectacle; and it has always been so, right back to Georges Melies’ fin de siècle space-tripping adventure flicks.

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FANCHER But that stuff was rather naive and silly; fanciful nonsense.

HAMPTON Precisely. Certainly, by today’s standards, they were far more fantasy than science fiction, but still ground-breaking nevertheless. And they were the beginning.

FANCHER I really think the trend towards spectacle would have properly begun in 1922, with Fritz Lang’s Dr Mabuse.

HAMPTON Possibly, but no one remembers it. I mean, who’s seen it? But everyone’s seen the flawed masterpiece of Lang’s 1926 Metropolis (albeit with disco music and pastel tinting), and because of it’s popularity, or rather availability, that very cinematic, icon-laden opus made spectacle the trademark of the SF blockbuster. And films since then have built on the iconography by which we identify popular SF and made spectacle the raison d’être for this kind of movie. I mean, just look at the German film The Tunnel, followed soon after by Frankenstein.

FANCHER The latter is really more a horror spectacular.

HAMPTON OK, true; but my thesis is supported by Things to Come, the space opera serials, Rocketship X-M, This Island Earth, When Worlds Collide, Forbidden Planet and War of the Worlds in relatively quick succession. And though movies tried variation on the theme, they still maintained the central premise that science fiction is meant to excite the audio-visual senses with its stunning depiction of Things Beyond the Ken of Mortal Man. Even The Incredible Shrinking Man is about spectacle, although of inverse proportions.

FANCHER Hmm. That’s certainly true of most of the Alien Invasion movies; but that was a very ‘50s thing, to get all excited about big metal things that would send man into an unknown future full of great hopes and terrible fears.

HAMPTON Ah, but the ‘60s and ‘70s kept it alive with the introduction of deservedly LSDassociated sci-fi epics like Barbarella, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Thunderbirds Are Go, Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run and Fantastic Voyage, which involves essentially the same kind of spectacle as ‘Shrinking Man’.

Hmm, possibly.

FANCHER

HAMPTON And of course Star Wars made it virtually mandatory for the burgeoning sea of SF cinema to be primarily fanciful spectacle.

FANCHER With the added element of myth-pretension.That’ll teach Joseph Campbell to become trendy.

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HAMPTON I’m not saying these films are nothing but audio-visual trips; some have very good concepts behind them and some excellent story-telling qualities, but even the most cerebral of them can’t escape the fact that their main strength lies in a series of dominant images of power in different manifestations. They still have the express purpose of placing the viewer – not even the characters, necessarily – in a situation where it is all too clear that they are insignificant and unable to control much of even the immediate environment.

FANCHER But this attitude within a movie is not exclusive to the field of SF. HAMPTON Ah, but the employment of spectacular visuals is now almost mandatory for an acceptable sci-fi entertainment piece.

FANCHER What about all the exceptions? What about films like The Invisible Man, It Came From Outer Space, I Married A Monster From Outer Space, Village of the Damned, Charly, Colossus – The Forbin Project, The Stepford Wives, ET and The Quiet Earth; films that don’t use big pictures to define them but rely instead on characterisation, subtle filmic technique, appropriate premise and the power of emotional manipulation to create an effective SF story?

HAMPTON You do have a point, but even so, many of those films still resort to spectacle for climax or highlighting, no matter how brief.

FANCHER Still, your generalisations are staring to irritate me.

HAMPTON And so they should. Though I stand by my central premise, individual examples are easily argued in and out of the different lists. Indeed, many a good SF film employs both techniques.

FANCHER So, do you feel that should be considered characteristic of the truly deserving, the classic?

HAMPTON Indubitably. The Invisible Man, for example, employs the invisibility as a spectacle inseparable from its characterisation, and the spectacle of the machine that is the body of Colossus is inseparable from the power of the dialogue between organic human and AI. Thus, many SF movies shift between intelligent concepts and startling imagery. And some sit right in the middle, like The Day The Earth Stood Still and Blade Runner.

FANCHER And possibly even The Abyss and Alien3.

If you insist.

Skull Movies: Scene VI / Robin Pen

HAMPTON

4

FANCHER And nearly all those films I mentioned a minute ago.

HAMPTON: OK, OK, but while there are plenty of examples of intimate SF storylines, there is still a driving force in SF film which relies heavily on being spectacular to achieve its purpose.

FANCHER Alright; let’s say that I accept the argument that science fiction movies quite happily and deliberately use really neat pictures so that their audiences can feel really neat too. I still don’t agree that this defines the genre. As I think I said, many non-genre films use the device to equal effect.

HAMPTON Surely, but it’s the fanciful nature of SF which provides the excuse to go way over the top, and to get away with it.

FANCHER Yet it’s still a case of “Beyond the mind of man”, as conceived by the mind of man.

Exactly. Now you’re getting it.

I’m getting –

HAMPTON FANCHER

HAMPTON But more than that, not just conceived but made by man: the things which are the spectacle are fabricated purely to further the suspension-of-disbelief, to amplify the illusion.

Sure, but –

FANCHER

HAMPTON: And obviously, because these objects simply don’t exist other than as models, matte paintings and scale replicas in plaster and plywood, they must derive from the human brain reflecting on nature and mechanism.

Absolutely. Now if –

FANCHER

HAMPTON In other words, this stuff has to be designed. And so, to re-iterate, SF film is almost always the work of narrative and design; of action within an environment designed to excite the senses. You might almost say that the underlying consideration in most SF film is the confrontation of architecture. This is certainly true of movies set on futuristic worlds and in alien places (in the full sense of the word). I don’t think it can be seriously argued that, in films like Metropolis, Forbidden Planet, THX1138, Logan’s Run, Tron, Brazil, Blade Runner, Batman and Total Recall, architecture – in the sense of constructed landscape – is stylistically separable from action. Certainly the emotional and intuitive reactions of the audience would be different if these movies used different designs for their filmic environs.

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That’s obvious, but – Not as obvious as you might think.

FANCHER HAMPTON

FANCHER – But I wish you’d shut your fucking mouth a minute.

HAMPTON And because predictive design will always tend to reflect current fashion, regardless of what time it’s supposed to depict, just as “Cars of the Future” colour supplements in magazines on the ‘50s and ‘60s reflected the dream-futures of the contemporary middle class, so we have marvellous SF movie futures full of giant buildings and wonderful machines, from Robby to HAL to C3PO, Rocketship X-M to the Enterprise to a Corillian Cruiser, from the Krell Civilization to Venusville.

FANCHER There’s no need to lecture me about the “future is now” principle; it’s all part of that post-modern thing.

HAMPTON Yes indeed, the post-modern thing. Interesting how an old architectural term can get so out of hand.

FANCHER Only with puerile science fiction critics and popular culturists. Hey, did you know there’s an avant-garde German Industrial band called Einsturzende Neubauten whose technique consists mainly of banging bits of metal together and who’ve gone as far as having Kabuki dancers in their act? All very po-mo stuff, and their name actually means something like “Confrontations with Architecture”. Do you reckon a Jim Cameron clip could make them a hit with an SF movie audience?

Don’t be a prat.

Fair enough.

Now, where was I? Crumbling façades.

HAMPTON FANCHER HAMPTON FANCHER

HAMPTON Oh yes; post-modernism in SF is all the rage at the moment. And in the movie industry doubly so. I must admit though that it’s a lot like when the new generation of critics in the seventies decided to apply Freudian psychology to horror movies, and suddenly it was all towering penis-monsters doing unspeakable to things to hordes of maternally-endowed females.

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A common phallusy.

FANCHER

HAMPTON Anyway, now everyone’s going all post-modern over SF films, claiming them as metaphors exploring humanity’s inherent technophobia.

FANCHER Big deal. It all sounds just like the Red Terror movies of the fifties.

HAMPTON Well, Hollywood got wind of this new trend and saw the Big Buck signs. They found that as long as they were consciously pandering to post-modern sensibilities, they could get away with parading ridiculously violent action as ironic reflection of social mores.

Like Total Recall and Darkman.

FANCHER

HAMPTON And now some of them have come to realize that this kind of post-modern selfawareness in film does indeed allow a lot of scope for in-joking about politics, fast food, Hollywood and popular culture. Although they’re not really in-jokes of course, as the audience are force-fed the correct responses.

FANCHER You’re talking about inherent self-parody. You’re talking about RoboCop and Batman. ...

HAMPTON Yes, but it’s gone further than that. Just look at The Last Action Hero and Demolition Man. And here’s the ironic bit; this development comes out of Hollywood’s deep desire to seem all grown up. Suddenly they want to be seen as having put away their childish games, so they’ve created a new breed of action fantasy; movies supposedly aware of their own silly natures, so instead of being embarrassed about what they are, they play it for all it’s worth. And they play largely on violence and injokes. You see, science fiction is considered a stupid genre fit only for stupid films.

Thus these new SF movies are happily – proudly, even – both violent and stupid.

This is the new sci-fi?

FANCHER

HAMPTON Yes; a crass, low-brow genre habitually sniggering at its own bad humour and poking fun at itself.

Like a Hope and Cosby Road movie.

FANCHER

HAMPTON Yes, but without the wit to justify it. With the new SF movie, Hollywood is having its cake and eating it too.

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FANCHER That’s a very disturbing image when you phrase it that way. But what about Jurassic Park?

HAMPTON Just a monster movie. Don’t think about it.

FANCHER But violence, sick humour and self-parody don’t necessarily lead to bad movies.

HAMPTON True, and some of these films can actually be quite fun in themselves. But this violent self-parody is establishing itself as the standard sci-fi. This stuff is redefining the cinematic genre of science fiction. And because of this, it will probably die: stone dead before it’s got much farther than Melies’ A Trip to the Moon. Fanciful spectacle, violence and self parody, like a drunken man who thinks everyone’s laughing with him.

FANCHER Hey - now you’re depressing me. I mean, if science fiction has nowhere to go, what is there left to talk about?

HAMPTON Plenty. For instance, I really feel that the director’s cut of Blade Runner in fact does little more than create an ambiguous atmosphere with regard to Deckard’s biological background.

FANCHER Sometimes, Hampton, I just know you’re full of it.

While HAMPTON sits in injured silence, FANCHER turns his head to look out of the window.

FANCHER I still don’t think he’s coming, you know.

HAMPTON turns to look, and then seems to ponder something before he speaks.

HAMPTON Have you considered that maybe he’s been here all along?

The two men stare at each other in silence for several minutes before the globe is extinguished and the stage lights fade to black. However, the spectacle outside the window shows no real signs of abating, and eventually the audience realise they should probably leave. ¢

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Robin Pen is a lapsed blogger. See The View From Mt Pootmootoo - http://members.iinet. net.au/~robinpen/blogger.html and Planet Blog -www.planetvideo.com.au/blog. This series originally appeared as The Secret Life of Rubber-Suit Monsters, in Eidolon: The Journal of Australian Science Fiction & Fantasy Issue 14, April 1994 Š 1994 Robin Pen.