Art Smitten

London Comedy Duo Roulston and Young come straight from the Adelaide Cabaret Festival to Melbourne’s Butterfly Club, to deliver an hour of upbeat laughs and jabs at relationships on a frosty Melbourne night.

The first song lets you know what you’re in for, an upbeat formula with plenty of witty banter between hosts and invitations to the audience to join in the wink-winking and nudge-nudging. The audience that this reviewer was a part of were only too happy to oblige, a lively oneindeed.

From there, Roulston and Young travel through lovers past and present, dancing between awkwardness and laughter, stopping for breath only to invite the audience to chat and join in on the stories. While interactive is probably the wrong word to exercise here, it certainly felt involved and it ushers everything in with a warm solidarity.

Songs explored everything from one-night stands with people half their age, vegging out in front of Deal or No Deal re-runs with a box of tim-tams, and crowd favourite ‘Please don’t hand me your Baby’, which brought on plenty of hearty laughter from the audience. The group was also adept at throwing in plenty of Australian references, something I thought was quite self-aware and clever.

And while it is a mixture of upbeat tempo and sultry comedy, there’s a certain tenderness that underlies it all. Particularly relevant in the song ‘The Letter’, where Young explores the crucible of adultery and divorce.

Of course, the core of it is a collection of songs on love, and the absurdity of all: the silly things it makes us do, the things it makes us put up with, and the infinite happiness and regrets it’s capable of inducing in us.

In this strange way it feels rather intimate, and human. The way the Butterfly club is set up only enhances this quality, giving the sensation that the show was written with the venue in mind, which is down a laneway off Little Collins Street and winds up staircases through to a bar, a back room littered with what seems like 50’s memorabilia, and then to a stage in the attic.

Seats are up front and centre the walls not wide apart. The only focus is on stage. People in the front row are almost at arm’s lengths from the stage. The nakedness of it gave it the sensation of being at a dinner party, face-to-face with friends.

Written by Matthew Toohey

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Christian chats to musical theatre performer Nelson Gardner about playing the part of Charley in Watch This’ production of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, running from June 29 – July 15 at Southbank Theatre, 140 Southbank Boulevard.

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Jack and Christian chat to Circus Oz veteran performer Matt Wilson about their new show, Model Citizens, running until July 16 at the Big Top in Birrarung Marr (between Federation Square and Batman Avenue).

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This documentary wasn’t just your normal superstar backstory, this was a story about a woman's journey through self-doubt, a controlling family, addiction and racism.

Nick Broomfield’s documentary of Whitney Houston is truly riveting and captivating, unlike any documentary I’ve ever seen. There were a number of never before seen home videos of Whitney starting out singing with her mum, Cissy Houston, in church, Whitney’s early interviews and of her backstage. There were also a number of interviews from people close to her where it was really interesting to hear what they saw and how she spiralled out of control.

She paved the way for African Americans. We wouldn’t have people like Beyonce if it wasn’t for Whitney, but back when she was starting out she was hated by her African American community because they thought white Amercia had basically taken her away and moulded her into a white American popstar singing pop as opposed to what African Americans wanted to hear: RNB. She was even booed on stage at Soul Train which really affected her and was something she would never get over.

The documentary really portrayed all the things that happened to her and what evidently killed her. The booing; the moulding; her now trying to find herself and her not being herself, the controlling mother who wanted Whitney's career and credited her daughter's success to herself; the father who loved her dearly but in the end wanted Whitney to pay him over 100 million dollars while he was lying on his death bad; the marriage breakdown of two addicts; Bobbi Brown and Whitney; his cheating; her not wanting to disappoint god or anyone around her: all these things are attributed to her addiction which lead to her death. So many of the interviews said she died from a broken heart. She wasn't being herself. Everyone had moulded her into this money making machine, depending on her to pay their bills. She had so much self doubt and wanted so much for people to like her that she never truly believed she deserved this success.

I always thought the addiction started with Bobbi Brown, but it didn’t, it started when she was in her teens. Her brothers gave her the illegal substances the family was ridden with drugs and no one focused on that from the beginning so addictions formed. She no longer used for fun: it was to survive.

There is a one scene near the end showing Whitney walking off stage before an encore, bawling her eyes out, the crowd screaming her name, but she didn’t care. She was lonely and heartbroken - she had no close friends, except for a woman named Robyn that everyone thought she was in lesbian relationship with, and then Bobbi Brown pushed Robyn away. No one knows if Whitney was a lesbian, but if she was, she was she wasn’t allowed to be.

It was a truly remarkable documentary, delivering intimate insights into why Whitney always asked ‘Can I Be Me’ hence the title, I really want people to watch this. It shows the truth behind fame and fortune that a lot people don’t see. 

Written by Christina Cavaleri

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Maria and Ben chat with Piri Goodman and Maya Tregonning, students at the National Institute of Circus, about their June showcase performance at the National Circus Centre, Circosis: Left Brain, Right Brain.

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Jack and Christian are joined by artist and producer Tina Dixson, human rights advocate Renee Dixson and Thomas Feng, from Road to Refuge, to discuss Stories About Hope, an exhibiton celebrating the strength, identity and human dignity of people from refugee backgrounds, on at the No Vacancy Project Space in Federation Square until Sunday June 25.

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Jack and Christian are joined by artist and producer Tina Dixson, human rights advocate Renee Dixson and Thomas Feng, from Road to Refuge, to discuss Stories About Hope, an exhibiton celebrating the strength, identity and human dignity of people from refugee backgrounds, on at the No Vacancy Project Space in Federation Square until Sunday June 25.

Click here for part 2

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Maria and Ben chat to Jodi Newcombe, ​​​Creative Producer​ of ​Empire of Dirt, an environmental work by James Geurts up on Rodda Lane off La Trobe St at RMIT.

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Caroline's interview with Sam Yong, Apparition Media 30-year-old artist and designer of the Spider-Man: Homecoming mural at Melbourne Central.

CAROLINE: Congratulations on your big commission!

SAM: Thank you.

CAROLINE: Can you tell us how you got the gig?

SAM: I work part time at Apparition Media, and I’m an artist and a designer there as well. Tyson (Hunter), one of the founders, he pitched me as an artist to do a custom design for the Spider-Man mural. Sony likes my work so they said “we’ll have you do the artwork for us”.

CAROLINE: Spider-Man is such an iconic Marvel character. Were you briefed to stay true to the original, or were you allowed to have creative freedom in the design?

SAM: They were pretty strict on keeping it to the new Marvel cinematic universe design because they wanted it to be set apart from the classic comic book costumes and also to keep it apart from the past Spider-Man franchises that have been done before.

CAROLINE: And how is this reflected in the art, in the mural itself?

SAM: I kept the design from the new Marvel cinematic universe, the costumes and stuff, I kept it all the same as they were going to be in the movie. So it didn’t change too much. I didn’t change too much of the design, I just did my own layout.

CAROLINE: And Knox Lane is such an iconic laneway in Melbourne. Can you tell us how you made use of the space available to reflect this?

SAM: It’s quite a long and narrow wall, I think it’s about 28 metres long in total. So instead of just one big image, I broke it down and I treated it more like a storyboard, or a comic book strip.  So I can have multiple scenes in the same artwork. So I kind of treated it like an action set piece, fight scene rather than just one piece of art.

CAROLINE: I noticed when I walked past it you had Spider-Man in different positions.

SAM: It’s meant to play out like one little scene.

CAROLINE: Many thousands of people would’ve walked past your mural this week and it looks amazing. What is it that you want to draw their attention to? Is it the story you’re trying to create from the mural?

SAM: I didn’t really want to just slap movie artwork onto the wall. So I wanted to make a little cohesive comic book, something that would hold interest as you walked past it, so tell a little story about it as well as inform people about the new movie coming up.

CAROLINE: And are you a Marvel fan?

SAM: Yeah, actually comic books kind of got me into drawing as a kid, so it’s nice to have gone full circle again to go from copying comic books when I was about 11 or 12 I guess. That’s how I got into drawing, and then now that I’m a painter, as a career, and now I’ve gone back to painting for some of the stuff that got me into art, so that’s pretty cool.

CAROLINE: Can you tell us a little bit about your own art and style and how you combined it with what Sony Pictures wanted you to create?

SAM: I started as a commercial illustrator and graphic designer when I first got out of uni and then I slowly moved away from commercial stuff and then moved into painting and art. And I’ve been oil painter for the last coupe of years, and then working at Apparition doing the murals part-time and learning how to paint a bit more. And that’s gotten me into the commercial side of things again. And then so that’s informed how I’ve painted this a little bit, like, I bought an Ipad and I did all the paining digitally.

CAROLINE: How does that work?

SAM: There’s an app called Procreate and it works with an Ipad and the Apple Stylist Pin.  So it’s pretty much like painting. It does feel quite like traditional painting except everything is done digitally, which is pretty cool.

CAROLINE: So it’s very much a New Age way of doing art isn’t it?

SAM: Yeah, it’s the easiest for the commercial kind of stuff. If there’s changes by the client, it’s easier to go back. So, really hard to make changes to a physical painting once it’s, like, once you've kinda painted it. It’s just a faster work flow.

CAROLINE: And I’d like to go back to the film. The Australian premiere is very highly anticipated. Was there any pressure for you?

SAM: This is probably one of the biggest commercial jobs that I’ve had before. And I felt a lot of pressure to make it good, especially because I really wanted to do the character justice because I like Spider-Man so much and been a big fan of the comic books for a very long time. I wanted to do a really good job, do the movie justice and everyone involved justice for giving me the job.

Image from Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc

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