Sunday Arts Magazine

Queer-ways Project Retraces Yarra’s Queer Footprints with Pride

Luciano and Georgia Keats are launching a new iteration of their Queer-ways project, Retracing Queer Footprints, as part of Melbourne Pride on 13 February 2022.

Retracing Queer Footprints raises awareness of the contributions queer people have made to the City of Yarra. The project aims to build a greater understanding of the past bringing together all generations, sexualities and gender identities as we all move into the future with pride.

This project will be permanently maintained by Yarra City Council so it remains accessible into the future through the Queer-ways website and the Yarra City Council website.

Retracing Queer Footprints consists of a multi-modal public artwork as well as a series of self-led walking tours, which will introduce listeners to the queer history and rainbow communities of the City of Yarra.

During this educational journey through Yarra listeners with be joined by local community members including:

Angela Bailey from the Australian Queer Archives

Bryan Andy from OutBlack

John Hall from Thorne Harbour Health

Richard Watts from Q&A

Sally Goldner AM and;

James McKenzie from 3CR.

Listeners will also experience music created for the project by local queer musicians Jennifer Loveless and Maize Wallin.

Retracing Queer Footprints has been made possible through the support of Yarra City Council through Yarra City Arts, City Heritage, Community Partnerships and Yarra Libraries, Midsumma for Melbourne Pride – A Road to Pride and the State Government of Victoria.

Meet Chase. She’s living her best life.

Hailing from the streets of Frankston, Chase is

the itch you can’t scratch.

Compelling, repelling, and disarmingly funny,

join her as she sifts through the weeds of

modern culture with a handy cam and her

33 YouTube subscribers for company. If only

Chase understood half of what she helps

others discover.

Carly Sheppard has been developing and

performing the character of Chase for nearly

a decade and has continued to develop

its persona through different independent

performances over the years. In 2019, she

was the recipient of a Green Room Award for

Best Production In Experimental Theatre for

Crackers N Dip With Chase N Toey.

Though the character has evolved from a

skit to a one- woman show, Chase’s role as a

mirror back to Australia remains appropriate—

due in large part to Chase’s constant

inappropriateness. But therein lies her power

to spark conversations about race and class.

Combining Carly’s unique comedic skill and

political awareness—and with the assistance

of projected visuals,

she invites her audience into the juxtaposed

digital and physical world as she confronts us

to consider how we continue to benefit from

colonialism.

Malthouse Theatre’s Artist in Residence

Kamarra Bell- Wykes (Chopped Liver, North

West of Nowhere, Body Armour, Viral and Scar

Trees) directs this confronting and sometimes

shocking exploration of race, class and gender

in a semi-fictional apocalyptic world.

‘Chase is the interruption to the loop, the

things you can’t say, the reflection you can

never unsee and the tragedy you can’t look

away from’ said Kamarra Bell- Wykes.

Meet Chase. And you just might see yourself.

What happens when young people are given the chance to produce site-specific and participatory arts works at Northcote Town Hall? It’s a take over! Darebin Arts Speakeasy’s sensationally successful program LET’S TAKE OVER returns for its fourth year showcasing the creativity by 11 talented young people aged 15 – 25 for a one-day arts festival on Saturday 5 March.

“Let’s Take Over represents everything that’s unique about our arts community in Darebin. It’s an inclusive, diverse program lead by community that not only showcases the work of our young artists and performers but supports them with the tools to succeed as local creatives,” said Darebin Council Mayor Cr. Lina Messina.

Across 16 weeks, Let’s Take Over participants completed a professional development program facilitated by Sarah Austin, Cassandra Fumi and Stella Charls, with mentoring support from Guy Ritani and Edwina Green, covering programming and curation, budgeting, marketing, production logistics and networking. Workshops were led by guest industry professionals, including Uncle Bill Nicholson Jnr., Wesley Enoch, Caroline Bowditch, Kate Davis, Selene Bateman and Declan Furber Gillick.

Inspired by the Young Producers program at Battersea Arts Centre in the UK, participants come from different worlds with their own unique skill sets, art forms and life experiences.

2022 projects include works by Tash Atkins, a Melbourne based mezzo-soprano, composer sound artist and creative, who has combined an interest in opera, installation and sound art to create experimental compositions using technology and code; performance by An Dang,  an actor, dancer and singer with a background in circus where she trained with the National Circus of Vietnam as a contortionist; works by Akwal Magek, an arts facilitator from Melbourne’s west, whose art practice utilises poetry and spoken word to focus on the issues of identity and self-love and Fathiah Raihan, a henna and jagua artist with an interest in facilitating community healing through the arts.

LET’S TAKE OVER is the first event for the 2022 Darebin Arts Speakeasy season and is expected to be immensely popular with the 2021 iteration selling out within 24 hours of release.

Solo exhibition by sculptor BRAD GUNN

Where:

Red Gallery

157 St Georges Rd, Fitzroy North VIC 3068, Australia

Dates: 9th – 27th March

Official opening night : Friday 11th March 6-9pm

Soft opening night: Friday 9th March 6-8pm

Synopsis

“Shameless explores the culture surrounding our innate response to shame and how it directly

affects our choices. The theme depicts characters in various contexts depicting our most

questionable thoughts and behaviours. ”

A series of scale figurative statues and wall sculptures

Each piece has been sculpted in oil-based clay, moulded in silicone and fibreglass, cast in

gypsum/resin and covered in a synthetic flock. Each piece can take up to a month to complete.

Brad Gunn is a Melbourne sculptor working in a range of contemporary materials and techniques.

His works are often figurative and explore the psychology of interactions and identity through

surreal characters and imagery. The work is very process driven involving sculpting, moulding and

casting and the pieces are hand painted or finished in a velvet flock. His 5th solo show

‘Shameless’ will be at Red Gallery in September 2022. He has exhibited most recently ‘Small

Works’ and ‘Lucid’ at Beinart Gallery. His work ‘Flopsy’ was selected for both the 2021 Gippsland

Sculpture Award and the 2021 Wyndham Art Prize.

Written by Aran Thangaratnam

Directed by Bridget Balodis

A new play about two brothers, Niv and

Sai, heading to the mountains for a party

weekend to bury the hatchet on a lifelong

rivalry.

Big brother Niv has gone vegan. He’s madly

in love, he’s starting his own business, and

seems to have finally found himself after years

as the black sheep of the family. In an attempt

to reconcile their differences, Niv invites

golden child Sai and his new girlfriend Kate on

a ski trip where they can put the past aside for

the sake of family.

But when party banter turns political, Kate

stumbles into a minefield, and finds herself the

focal point of an all-out war.

Stay Woke will be the first play performed in

The Malthouse’s Beckett Theatre in over two

years, following the cancellations of Season

2020 and the hugely successful season of

Because The Night (2021) that took over the

entirety of The Malthouse building.

Said Malthouse Theatre Artist in Residence

and Stay Woke Director Bridget Balodis:

‘Stay Woke is such an exciting play to return

to the Beckett with; it’s so contemporary in

its references and so fearless in its desire to

tackle issues like white fragility, weaponised

wokeness, and cultural appropriation.

In rehearsals I keep thinking about comedians

like Alok Vaid-Menon and Hannah Gadsby—

it’s a knife’s edge comedy, and even though

the play has a big heart, no one is safe from

scrutiny.’

Writer Aran Thangaratnam was a participant

of Malthouse Theatre’s Malcolm Robertson

Writers Program in 2020, which commissions

two early career playwrights each year to

write a full-length play, and enabled him to

develop Stay Woke.

Yep he is back again talking about films, films and even more films………

Putting a spotlight on disabled artists in cabaret!

Showcasing a full cast of disabled and chronically ill performers all telling their stories through burlesque, circus, drag, song and more. From diagnosis to accepting help from mobility aids to navigating a world that wasn’t built for us, each one of these artists has a unique story to tell.

Featuring local disabli-babes (TBA) and hosted by local iconic chronic, Phsychobilly Queen, Rosie Roulette!

Lucy Guerin Inc

 

Established in Melbourne in 2002 by Artistic Director Lucy Guerin, Lucy Guerin Inc (LGI) is an Australian dance company dedicated to challenging and extending the art of contemporary dance.

The company’s work explores human complexity through movement invention and the integration of voice, projection, sound, text, and design. LGI has contributed to the growing identity of Australian dance nationally and internationally through the presentation of challenging productions that examine movement conceptually and physically. The company also supports the development of independent dance artists in Melbourne through a program of residencies, classes, workshops, presentations, and mentoring opportunities.

You believe in a fair go for all… until your ex shows up on your doorstep.

Yellingbo is an ingenious, darkly witty 3-hander from award-winning Tee O’Neill (Best Possible World, Barassi) about the vulnerability of asylum seekers, set in an ordinary Australian living room where all appears ordinary…until it isn’t.

In a series of startling revelations, Yellingbo poses burning questions about love and responsibility. When it’s time to put our values into action, who do we save? Ourselves? Family? A stranger? What if family turns out not to be family…? Yellingbo is inspired by the playwright’s experience working and living with Eastern European asylum seekers.

Shakespeare to Winehouse is a major international exhibition featuring iconic works from the world’s first and foremost portrait gallery, and includes portraits of people who have shaped British history, identity and culture over the past 500 years. The faces of some of the best-known and most-loved Britons – Queen Elizabeth II, the Beatles, David Bowie, Kate Moss, Mick Jagger and Princess Diana, to name a few – are situated alongside historical luminaries including the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, Queen Elizabeth I, Lord Nelson and Sir Isaac Newton. Modern-day icons like Ed Sheeran, Darcey Bussell, Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai feature too.

Rather than a chronological display, the exhibition is focused on six interrelated themes of Fame, Power, Love and Loss, Identity, Innovation, and Self, demonstrating how defining characteristics of portraiture have been reinterpreted and reimagined by artists across time, and showing how portraits can share the same language despite being created centuries apart.

Karen Quinlan AM, Director of the National Portrait Gallery said many of the works in the exhibition are rarely off the walls of our sister gallery in London. “We are thrilled to have this rare opportunity to show them here in Australia while NPG London is closed for refurbishment,” Ms Quinlan said.

“The exhibition includes portraits of many well known and loved British faces, as well as works of immense historic and artistic importance.  The hero portrait of William Shakespeare was the first to enter NPG London’s collection on its founding in 1856 is thought to be the only one to capture the playwright during his lifetime, and the self-portrait by Anthony van Dyck is also widely considered to be one of his finest.

“There is a broad and diverse range of artistic styles and genres from an important list of artists, each in their own way capturing the icons of their time – from royals, rockstars, fashion models, leaders and literary giants.  This is a big picture exhibition of British art, culture and history,” Ms Quinlan said.

NPG Curator Joanna Gilmour says that “one of the many strengths of Shakespeare to Winehouse is the way that it demonstrates the inventiveness and complexity of a genre that is often typecast as staid and conservative. The rich storytelling tradition that is intrinsic to portraiture will be abundantly evident in the exhibition as well.

“There are many quirky, tragic and fascinating stories behind the works in this exhibition – such as the painting of the Brontë sisters, which was long thought lost before being found folded up on top of a cupboard in 1914; Charles Buchel’s arresting portrait of writer Radclyffe Hall, best known for her seminal, semi-autobiographical novel The Well of Loneliness, which was banned from publication in Britain for over twenty years for its depiction of a lesbian relationship; and an uber-stylish self-portrait by artist and designer Doris Zinkeisen, which she painted in a hotel room in Sydney in 1929.”

The National Portrait Gallery, London was founded in 1856 to encourage through portraiture the appreciation and understanding of the people who have made and are making British history and culture.  Today it promotes engagement with portraiture in all media to a wide-ranging public by conserving, growing and sharing the world’s largest collection of portraits. The Gallery in St Martin’s Place, London is currently closed until 2023, while essential building works take place on the Inspiring People redevelopment project, which will transform the Gallery, including a complete refurbishment of the building and a new learning centre. During the closure period, the Gallery will continue to share its Collection through its digital channels and a series of partnerships and collaborations.

The National Portrait Gallery Australia is one of the youngest of Australia’s national cultural institutions.