Sunday Arts Magazine

Melbourne’s Arts Industry once again converges at the iconic Comedy Theatre to celebrate and applaud the accomplishments of its talented community at The37th Annual Green Room Awards. Hosted by the Green Room Awards Association (GRAA), Victoria’s peak body for honouring excellence and innovation across our dynamic performing arts sector, this vibrant evening is always a highlight on the Melbourne Arts Calendar.

Danny talks to the Sunday Arts magazine team about the upcoming exhibition – Collection of Strange Things

Roslyn is an artist and organiser driven by the belief that broad participation in arts and culture is key to a healthy, harmonious and rich civic society.With a background in journalism and political science, and equipped with a Masters in Arts Politics from Tisch School of the Arts (New York University), Roslyn has ten years’ experience organising, producing and delivering major artistic projects with a focus on social change, public participation and artistic excellence – from independent festivals and events right through to major commissions for Sydney Festival, Kaldor Public Art Projects, VIVID Sydney and Underbelly Arts Festival.  In 2018 Roslyn was the recipient of an Australia Council Career Development grant that afforded her the opportunity to travel abroad and forge connections with artists and festival directors across Europe, and to promote Australian contemporary artists and practices to international peers.

Six  talented and vibrant young musicians chat to the Sunday Magazine Arts team about their current classical recital programmes.

Collide has curated a programme of French mid 19th century music to honour the beginnings of the saxophone, and to share the delights of the French style. These three award-winning artists, who are also close friends, want to share the colour and beauty of sound with people everywhere.

From the beginning, Collide (Yelian He, cello; Joseph Lallo, saxohpone; Yasmin Rowe, piano) has been about shattering imaginations on what was traditionally thought possible.  Arranging well-loved works for other instruments,  showcasing the distance classical saxophone has come since the 1800s, encouraging living composers to write for ensembles outside of the norm. Their recital program begins 27 March at Forty Five Downstairs, 45 Flinders Lane in downtown Melbourne.

Duo Eclettico Saxophonist Justin Kenealy and pianist Coady Green saxophonist also reveal details of their upcoming performance in May at the Melbourne Recital Centre.

 

 

 

Sue Foley artistic director of the Melbourne Celtic Festival extends an invitation to the Sunday Arts Magazine team to a traditional Celtic Brunch and high spirited festivities on St Patrick’s Day hosted at the Mission to Seafarers complex on Flinders street at the Docklands, set to launch the inaugural Melbourne Celtic Festival celebrating Celtic Arts and Culture.

Unique Spaces and a few secret nooks in the historic Mission to Seafarers complex will burst to life with a Celtic Brunch, Celtic rock and traditional music, Irish dancing, musical drama, children’s activities, writing workshops, traditional Irish singing workshop, Scottish smallpipes and bodhran demonstrations, food, licensed bar and more – a comprehensive program from noon until dusk.

This is a family friendly event with all ticket proceeds directed to Community Mental Health programs through Rotary Health focusing on the bushfire affected areas as well as supporting the important welfare work of the Seafarer’s Mission.

David Menzies, NGV curator of the VCE Top Arts exhibition  introduces the Sunday Arts team to the works and two finalist artists showcasing their work in the annual favourite on the NGV calendar Top Arts 2020 – this exhibition located in the Ian Potter Centre at Federation Square   (Free Entry) showcases the exceptional, arresting and thought-provoking work of VCE Art and VCE Studio Arts students.

Celebrating its twenty-sixth year at the NGV, Top Arts continues to feature diverse works, styles and mediums. During the curatorial process, three major themes – ‘perception’, ‘identity’ and ‘simpatico’ were explored, interrogated and expressed. This year’s exhibitors were chosen from more than 1700 submissions and from these emerged the final forty-six works of art.

Actor Jem Lai featuring in the dark comedy ‘Single Ladies’ presented by  Red Stitch Theatre in Windsor  Melbourne chats with the Sunday Arts Magazine team.

Set in the sanitised grunge of Smith Street Collingwood, Single Ladies is a buddy story of lone women in the city told over the course of a day, from the award-winning writer Michele Lee of Going Down and Rice.

Anne, Lilike and Rachel are from different generations and backgrounds and hold different allegiances to their neighbourhood, but a chance happening outside Coles sets them on the path to an improbable friendship.

Single Ladies was developed through Red Stitch’s INK program.

Jason Moad  a realist painter based in Melbourne chats to the Sunday Arts team on his philosophy and the realisation of a series of ‘tangibly extravagant’ works featured at Fox Galleries in Langridge street Collingwood.

His current focus is a series of paintings that amount to a love letter to residual media – the kind you can’t download.

His subjects under exquisitely detailed scrutiny are succulents – these reflect both a change of focus and also personal philosophy. Although his initial interest in these plants was aesthetic, he was impressed by the aura of presence and personality they project – that of personhood.

Most of his subjects are drawn from The Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne and, so isolating them against plain backgrounds also hints at the way they have been dislocated from their native environments and transplanted halfway around the world; in effect treating them as Object, rather than Subject.

Regardless, they loom like Triffids; self-possessed and with their own agency.

 

Iconic shoe designer John Fluevog explains the philosophy behind his trademark brand as he chats with the Sunday Arts Magazine team. He literally fell into shoes with his first customers being pimps and hookers.

The Canadian designer has been creating shoes since the 1970s, their Art Deco styling and chunky heels are their trademark, recognisable on the feet of celebrities like Lady Gaga, Whoopi Goldberg, Beyoncé and Madonna.

The recent launch of his Book ‘ Unique Soles for Unique Souls’ is a dazzling and comprehensive window into John’s rollercoaster journey in fashion and in life telling the story of his design process including messages on the soles often whimsical with sayings inscribed like, “Resists alkali, water, acid, fatigue and Satan”.

The Melbourne Fluevog flagship store is located at 1 Degraves Street, Melbourne and advocates the opposite of fast fashion, “we ….practice SLOW FASHION.”

 

 

 

 

Over the past four years the former Collingwood Technical College has been undergoing a dramatic transformation into a permanent, affordable and dynamic home for artists and the creative community in Melbourne’s inner north. With the site already welcoming the first influx of tenants and set to open to the public in stages throughout 2020, we are excited to reveal its new identity as Collingwood Yards.

“The ‘Collingwood Arts Precinct’ is a literal description that has been applied not only to Collingwood Yards, but to the adjoining Circus Oz site and, at times, some of the creative community around it,” says Marcus Westbury, CEO of Contemporary Arts Precincts Ltd, the organisation that has managed and developed the Collingwood Yards site since the Victorian Government, through Creative Victoria, designated the site as a creative hub and community asset, transferring ownership to Contemporary Arts Precincts in March 2018.