Another quiet week for me but with moments of the sublime, courtesy of an unusually strong geomagnetic storm. I have always dreamed of seeing the Northern Lights but never, in a million years, suspected that the most spectacular display of the Aurora Australis in 20 years would take place at the end of my street!
I was just getting into bed on Saturday night when local friends started sending photos of the green and pink night skies. The kids were out with Neil watching rugby. I put my coat on over my pyjamas and headed out into the darkness. The skies appeared black but there was a long strip of misty haze just above the sea horizon, with a slightly greenish tinge. The bayside pathways were busy with clusters of young people and families holding their phones up to the skies – their screens showing vivid greens and a hint of purple.
I had to fiddle with my camera, which is generally terrible for night shots, until suddenly the colours popped – the horizon an eerie lime-yellow, with vertical spears of purply-red shooting straight up into the sky (the photos are blurry but the colours are true!). For ten minutes or so the red flared brighter and brighter, the fiery lines even visible to the naked eye, until they gradually subsided to a fainter purple glow. There was a crowd of 30 people or so on the little raise of Ormond Point, everyone oooing and aahing and spellbound by the spectacle! It was absolutely magical.
The following night the space forecasters reckoned we might be treated to another lightshow. Maisie was keen to see it, so once again we headed out into the darkness, joining, this time, a crowd of hundreds. But sadly she, and all the others, were to be disappointed. The skies remained an inky black, everyone’s phones trained on the shimmering city horizon instead.
It was Neil’s birthday on Friday. He and I managed to slot in a ‘birthday hour’, travelling up to Caulfield together on the tram, sitting down for a coffee in the campus’s lovely modern library and visiting the university art gallery, before Neil headed off to his office. The exhibition was a survey of the work of Visnja Brdar, one of Australia’s most internationally successful graphic designers. She has worked with a number of huge global fashion/make-up brands, designers and architects (including Michael Kors, NARS, Marc and Norman Foster) so many of the images were familiar. Brdar’s aesthetic is pretty severe and modernist – large, sharp-edged letters combined with stark monochrome photography. I liked her student drawings best – her intricate black ink drawings of early C20th terraced houses, constructivist posters and pastiche art deco designs.
It was Mothers’ Day on Sunday. The kids gave me lots of chocolates, drew lovely cards, and made me breakfast in bed (with rather bad grace!). It was a dazzling, mild, blue day and I managed to persuade Maisie to join me on an afternoon stroll along the sea-front (while Tommy and Neil were at the footy).
I had to dial things back a bit this week as I was a little unwell. But I did play my second gig with AB/CD and catch a couple of new movies. Our performance was at the school market (May 4th – the Star Wars edition!). We had to set everything up (including the PA system) ourselves, outdoors, in the bitter morning fog, so the sound wasn’t the best, but lots of people sat down on the astroturf to listen to our half hour set, and we distributed plenty of flyers for the Battle of the Bands gig (which hopefully will convert into ticket sales – our main aim!). Thank you to Jayne’s friend Holly for the photo.
On Mubi, I watched British director Kevin Macdonald’s new documentary ‘High and Low: John Galliano’. Centred round a candid interview with the disgraced (but apparently rehabilitated) fashion designer, it raised many questions and provided few answers. The man’s creative genius was apparent, as was the hideous coercive circus of high fashion, and the destructive depths of addiction. But no-one seemed to care or be ready to take responsibility for any damage caused – from the fashion money men who pushed the designer into creating 32 different clothing/product lines a year, to Galliano himself, who sought an ‘education’ from rabbis following his anti-semitic outbursts, but never apologised to the individuals he insulted.
The German movie ‘The Teachers Lounge’, directed by Îlker Çatak, was a tense watch. It was set in a large city school where there has been a spate of thefts – in classrooms and the staff room. Everyone’s on edge – immigrant kids are being pointed at, staff suspicious of each other. On a whim, an idealistic young teacher sets up a sting (a laptop camera casually left on, a wallet full of cash planted in a jacket pocket). It’s a disastrous move for her – the identified culprit is popular and will admit nothing (knowing the covert footage is inadmissable evidence), instead utilising the already febrile atmosphere to destroy the young teacher’s reputation with staff and students. How fragile the trust in schools can be – it was all worryingly believable.
When the sun emerged from the chilly mist, it was beautiful and mild. Here’s an autumnal park rainbow.
Early in the week I made it to a few more exhibitions that were about to end (a couple of them also part of the ‘Photo 24’ festival). Two exhibitions – ‘Odalala’ and ‘nireekshane’ – at North Melbourne’s Arts House brought together works by artists from India and Sri Lanka interrogating class and caste, migration and displacement, indentureship and the ‘Plantationocene’. Pictured are Sajan Mani’s ‘Stretched light and muted howls’ – the faces of enslaved C19th Dalit and indigenous Keralans printed on natural rubber sheets, and part of Elyas Alavi’s mixed-media installation ‘Alam’ – a portable metal tree/ statue used in Shia Muslim ceremonies, which he has decorated with forbidden queer poetry.
Dalit (‘untouchable’) artists captured their lives in photographs. In ‘Home, The Ongoing’, inspired by the writings of Dalit feminist and author Bama Faustina Soosairaj, Krithika Sriram pictured herself and her mother. In ‘Millenia of Oppression’ Arun Vijai Mathavan documented the Dalits still compelled to handle the dead (now in the mortuaries of hospitals), and moodily captured the ‘Urban mountains’ of Chennai’s rubbish dumps.
Documentary photographer and activist M Palani Kumar records the lives of marginalised communities in India, in particular those who survive by scavenging (an act now banned by law, but continued in practice as a caste-based occupation), highlighting the wide range of environmental and social issues they face. Priya Suresh Kambli altered and embellished images from her family archive to explore her identity as an Indian migrant in the US.
‘To See is to Change’, at the RMIT Design Hub, brought together two large installations by Mumbai-based artist group CAMP. ‘A Photogenic Line’ cherry-picked a selection of striking images from the 140-year-old archive of Indian newspaper ‘The Hindu’, arranging them according to themes and visual echoes (while retaining the labels for context). It was an intriguing presentation – a lively mix of politics and sport and social history. The multi-screen video piece ‘Bombay Tilts Down’ was also fascinating. Filmed by CCTV camera from a single point location on a 36-floor building in central Mumbai, it captured stormy seas and skies and vast city panoramas. As it ’tilted down’ it closed in on small details – hard-hatted builders clinging to half-built concrete towers, people hanging washing out on rooftops, men sweeping tropical gardens, people buying fruit and veg from hole-in-the-wall stalls, workmen re-roofing a temple, people going about their daily lives in blue-tarpaulin-roofed slums.
The galleries at ACCA were showcasing a selection of works by French conceptual artist Laure Prouvost. She won the Turner Prize in 2013 with her work ‘Wantee’, a crudely-filmed Dada-ist inspired video diary about the legacy of her fictional grandparents – her grandfather who ‘disappeared while digging a tunnel from the Lake District to Africa’ and her grandmother who made lumpish ceramics (and lots of cups of tea). It was odd and fun and engaging.
Prouvost’s later works ditched the humour, and felt the poorer for it. The shadow of Louise Bourgeois loomed large over ‘Gathering Ho Ma, The glaneuse’, a collection of glass and ceramic shapes (referencing female artists and activists who had inspired Prouvost) arranged round a campfire. Prouvost’s video works featured lots of naked women in nature – celebrations of sensuality and female mythology and power, one conveyed the glorious sea of the womb. There was a puppet child telling their grandma about all the differences between their worlds (that was pretty scary!). There were also some weird glass birds that I quite liked.
It was a three-day school week (not fair so soon after the holidays!). Thursday was ANZAC Day. Neil had scored tickets for the popular annual ANZAC Day footy match at the MCG, which always features the Collingwood (Tommy’s team) and Essendon AFL teams. Tommy, me, Danielle and Ella joined a crowd of 97,000 people who had gathered to remember military heroes (the event started with a parade of veterans in vehicles driving slowly round the perimeter of the pitch, followed by some ceremonial marching and singing and the playing of the Last Post, and a flypast by the Air Force stunt team). The minute’s silence – in such a vast crowd – was affecting.
The match was exciting too – the two teams barely a goal apart all the way through, you couldn’t have called it at any stage. And it ended, appropriately (and unusually) in a draw! At one point a player leaped onto the shoulders of another (opposition) player in order to catch (‘mark’) a ball. He then went on to successfully kick it into the goal. Even I could tell that it was an impressive stunt – a week later the commentators were still referring to it as the ‘possible mark of the season’!
On Friday I took the kids to see the ‘BBC Earth Experience’, a David-Attenborough-narrated nature documentary projected onto multiple, large jagged-angled screens in a barn-like space in Geoff’s Shed (the Melbourne Convention Centre). A repeating cycle of seven ten-minute films introduced selected natural wonders from the seven continents of the world. There was some fabulous footage (the mating dance of the manakin bird, fighting muskox, great clouds of damsel flies and fireflies, strange cave-dwelling lizards, the poison dart frog piggybacking his tadpole to safety – to name but a few!).
The immersive nature of the space worked best for the underwater scenes – of manatees, whale sharks, leopard seals hunting penguins, the writhing sea-bed of the Antarctic. It was very pleasant lounging on beanbags enjoying all these amazing sights with David Attenborough’s warm, ever enthusiastic voice washing over you. Even Maisie, who had come along reluctantly, seemed happy enough.
On Saturday I played my first gig with AB/CD! We had been invited to perform as support for excellent Melbourne-based punk-ska band The Resignators. Lead singer (and band founder) Francis has been running a pub/music venue in the small hamlet of Warrion for the last couple of years – but, although (amazingly – as it’s really in the middle of nowhere – 3 hours drive from the city!), it’s well-frequented, it has not turned a profit. So this gig was his last hurrah.
The six of us and our instruments crammed into one car, heading out west on a pale, bright wintery afternoon. There was an excitable, road trip vibe, lots of snacks and loud rock singalongs. We stopped in the country town of Colac for tea, and enjoyed some delicious Lebanese pastries in a super friendly café. There was one of those shops that sells everything – from suitcases to lava lamps – Mandy went wild, buying ‘holiday presents’ for everyone in her family (including the dog)!
We arrived in the flatlands of Warrion (just a single strip of buildings, the pub on the end, the straight, empty road continuing on through rock-strewn dairy pastures), an hour before sunset. The low golden light was just magical. I went for a stroll along a dirt side-street which soon opened out into fields, lined with silvery poplars and dry winter grasses. It was silent, just the chirps and wingbeats of flurries of tiny brown birds (red-browed finch I think) with Vs of larger birds – various ibis – flying high overhead to their roosting spots.
Back in the pub, things were pretty loose. We managed to squish our equipment on to the tiny stage and make sure that it was all plugged in and working, but there was no soundcheck (which was rather nerve-wracking as we had no idea how we’d sound when we started to perform!). We met the Resignator’s Melbourne crowd (some great punk looks and top hats!) and sat in our booth and ate more delicious food (huge platefuls of steak/fish/parmas and chips). At other tables (and in the public, standing bar) were the Saturday evening locals out for a family meal (they left before the music started) and a large group of competition dog owners, staying over for a nearby event (a few of them stayed on).
The time ticked by till it was 8.30pm and time to go on! We opened with AC/DC’s ‘Shook me all night long’ which went down well. We raced through the rest of the set – taking almost everything at breakneck speed which caused more than a few wrong turns, and some spectacular impromptu re-arrangements, which we somehow found our way out of without breaking down entirely. My keyboards were loud (putting the lead guitarist off – I’m not sure he’s ever been aware of what I’ve been playing before!). But I was reassured later that the balance was fine out the front. Our finale ‘Killing in the name of’, was the most popular song by far – even the drunk young guys from the public bar came in to join in with the bawling of the song’s many f*** bombs.
The Resignators were on another level entirely! They were fantastic – great musicians, the band so tight. Their original set of fast, loud, ska songs were catchy and clever. I particularly loved the brass section – trumpet and trombone. I was only disappointed there weren’t more solo slots for them (a trumpet improvisation over a stretched, woozy reggae groove was a highlight for me).
At 11pm we all squashed back into Dan’s car and set off home. The country roads were dark and empty, the skies cloudy, a murky moon occasionally emerging through the haze. Pez DJed – a random playlist of rock and indie, even some dance classics (and an AI-composed Motown shocker!). We talked of favourite gigs and venues and lobbied for various new songs to be added to the set-list (getting a full-group agreement on any is hard!). Amazing Dan (who did all the driving) got us all home safely at 2am. I sleep-walked through a sunny Sunday. Maisie roller-skated down the beach promenade with Neil and me, while Tommy huddled in bed listening to footy on the radio (he is obsessed!).
The kids returned to school and I started getting back into the normal routines. Following all the recent rain (see my Wednesday office view), our local park was particularly verdant (see later)! Over post drop-off coffees, afternoon cups of tea and evening shots of artisan vodka, I caught up with local friends who I hadn’t seen in quite some time – including Belinda and Warren, Stephanie, Myomi and Jenni. I rehearsed twice with AB/CD, in preparation for my first gig with them (next week!) in Warrion (rural Victoria!), as the support act for popular Melbourne ska band, The Resignators.
I had missed most of the events in ‘Photo 24’ – a sizeable festival of international contemporary photography which took place, mainly in March, in locations across Melbourne and regional Victoria. But on Friday I made it to (the last day of) two shows at RMIT. ‘execute_photography’ brought together some interesting, if not always visually arresting, pieces exploring ‘how new technologies are shaping photography’s future’.
I enjoyed playing Sebastian Schmieg’s arcade game ‘Prompt Battle Training Station’ where the challenge was to come up with (in 30 seconds) succinct, text-based instructions to generate an AI image matching the one presented on screen. It was curious which words the computer latched on to, and which ones it missed entirely (it didn’t know who Andy Warhol was!). Pictured is one of Sara Oscar’s AI-generated images depicting real (unphotographed) images in her family’s history – this series was telling the story of her pregnant mother arriving at a Thai airport in the 1970s.
I wish I’d had more time to spend watching visual effects expert Alan Warburton’s fascinating (and cleverly digitally animated) lecture ‘RGBFAQ’ explaining how images are ‘creatively manufactured in digital culture’. Also interesting and scary was Dries Depoorter and Max Pincker’s ‘Trophy Camera’, which utilized machine learning to analyse all the photographs that had won the World Press Photo Competition since 1955. The camera was programmed only to ‘recognise, make and save photos that show a positive correlation with the [winning] characteristics’. You could try it out (but within the darkened room of the exhibition I’m not sure how successful it would have been!).
The second exhibition at RMIT had transferred from a gallery in Stuttgart (super exciting – and unusual – to get a European show over here!). German photographer Ulrich Wüst took crisp black-and-white photos of buildings and life in the former East Germany. He was fascinated by the juxtaposition of old and new architecture, of Soviet sculptures and Western adverts, by people in public spaces in moments of repose. His streets were eerily empty of activity, his people immersed in their own lives. They were striking and deeply evocative images – I loved them.
Later that morning I made it to the new show at the University of Melbourne’s Science Gallery. ‘Not Natural’ explored the ‘growing friction between natural and artificial systems’, asking questions such as ‘Are we redesigning evolution or is evolution redesigning us? And just because we can, should we?’. It was one of the gallery’s more approachable and visually lively exhibitions. And it was full of enthusiastic young science students keen to talk about what it made you think and how it made you feel! I steered the conversations towards their interests, and learned how they were navigating PhDs, science nerds and art practice, and their sci-fi passions and dreams.
I liked Thomas Marcusson’s ‘Aguaviva’ which utilized the movements of an ancient life form (a jellyfish) to generate truly random numbers, and David Bowen’s ‘Plant Machete’ – a plant curled round a robot arm wielding a machete. When the plant sensed movement nearby it triggered the arm, whirling the machete at potential destroyers!
There was a piece about the scientists working on de-extincting the Tasmanian Tiger (some big ethical questions there) and another that posited the idea that human evolution might involve adaptations such as a ‘lung to reduce the toxicity of inhaled chemicals or a liver able to filter and store microplastics’. Most appealing were Neil Mendoza’s ‘Spambots’, a band of cans of spam typing out Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ (but with added piggy references!).
Neil kept up the relentless sport schedule with a Thursday evening AFL match (both kids), a Saturday afternoon AFL match (Tommy) and a Saturday evening Netball game (Maisie and two of her netball-playing friends). I managed to slightly redress the culture-sport balance, taking Tommy to a Sunday morning showing of ‘Robot Dreams’, Spanish director Pablo Berger’s bittersweet animated tale of a lonely New York dog and his new best friend – a mail order robot. Based on a graphic novel by Sara Varon, with touches of ‘The Iron Man’ and the dream sequences of Studio Ghibli, it wordlessly explored the nuances of friendship and loneliness, and lovingly depicted the rough, dilapidated, vibrant streets of ‘80s Manhattan and Coney Island. Tommy and I both really enjoyed it, but were disappointed that there were no other children there (they were all in another screening room watching ‘Kung Fu Panda 4’!).
Mum and Lizzie came over from the UK to help out during my convalescence. They stayed in a beautiful airy upper floor apartment in a 1930s mansion block nearby. They were here for the Easter holiday period – it was a luxury having a ‘holiday house’ (two houses to spread out in!). One morning, after 12 solid hours of rain, we had to wade there (the building was encircled by a large, deepish puddle – which happily drained away fairly quickly). Mum and Lizzie kindly prepared dinner for us almost every day, which we ate together in their stained-glass windowed dining room seated round a large blonde wood table.
Lizzie took the kids on some solo outings. She and Maisie went to a bouldering wall in Port Melbourne, where Maisie impressed with her natural ability and ‘dynamic’ climbing moves! Lizzie and Tommy travelled up to Darebin to hear the Listies ‘Make some noise’ (and so she learned that most of Tommy’s comedy repertoire is copied verbatim from the comic duo’s books and shows!). Tommy took Lizzie out for one of his meticulously-scheduled ‘train days’, and got to sit in the train driver’s cab! When he got home he built a pretty accurate Lego model of one of the new raised train stations (Hawkestowe).
Mum and I went to see a couple of films at the Elsternwick Classic. Wim Wenders’ latest, Tokyo-set movie ‘Perfect Days’ was a quiet celebration of routine and moments of everyday beauty. A solitary older man takes pride in his work as a toilet cleaner (according to the film Japanese public toilets are immaculately designed and never get dirty!). Happy enough making fleeting connections with passersby, photographing the light through trees, and driving through the city listening to old cassette tapes, his life starts to get more complicated when his teenage niece suddenly appears on his doorstep.
‘Goodbye Julia’ was an emotionally complex, beautifully acted Sudanese drama directed by Mohamed Kordofani. It premiered at Cannes film festival last year, the first Sudanese movie to do so. Set in the years before the secession of South Sudan (in 2011) it was about a connection forged between two very different women in the darkest of circumstances. When the controlling husband of well-off northerner Mona shoots a southern man dead in the street, the murder is hushed up, the police paid off. Guilt-wracked Mona covertly seeks out the dead man’s widow (and small son), and employs her as a live-in maid, supporting her and her son’s education, without explaining why. Over the years, while the friendship blossoms, the household’s secrets and lies simmer, only to suddenly explode in the aftermath of the secession vote.
The weather turned wintery quite soon after mum and Lizzie arrived – it was often chilly and rainy. But on the few dazzling sunny days we enjoyed trips to the Royal Botanical Gardens and walks along the beach front. The St Kilda pier is currently being dismantled (and the replacement pier still under construction) so we couldn’t get anywhere near the penguin colony, but we were incredibly lucky to spot a little blue penguin zooming through the shallows in pursuit of tiny fish. We went for a ride in the almost empty big wheel, nearing the end of its summer season in Catani Gardens.
Lizzie, Tommy and me went for a walk amongst the ancient river gums in the Plenty Gorge. The leaf litter was alive with tiny darting skinks and aggressively inquisitive bull ants. We spotted kangaroos grazing in the waterside foliage, a spoonbill sieving through the silt and a wedge-tailed eagle circling in the thermals.
We visited the NGV and spent lots of money at markets – buying fish, apples and chard, dahlias, pickles and cherry pie at the Veg Out monthly farmer’s market, and handmade clothes, jewellery and bags at the popular Makers and Shakers craft show in the lofty Royal Exhibition Halls. One day mum, Lizzie and the kids came to visit me at my office (the video art is in the tower’s grand foyer) and went to a matinée of Circus Oz’s new show ‘Smash it’ at the Arts Centre.
Lizzie and me caught a couple of comedy shows (and snuck in a couple of cocktails!). We were in the front row for Rose Matafeo’s ‘On and on and on’. Luckily she didn’t pick on anyone in the audience, instead riffing on her anxieties, going down online counselling rabbit-holes and the differences between dating in your thirties (knowing who you are and not compromising) and your twenties (accepting anyone, trying to be what they want you to be). I enjoyed her observations of London life – about riding on the 73 bus and her experiences of class (I wish she could have delved deeper into that stuff).
Hannah Gadsby was on good form in their latest show ‘Woof’. Happy with their identity but tired of all the pronouns (‘non binary – why be defined by what you’re not?’), they free-wheeled through many topics – from the fake feminism of the Barbie movie (‘but what about all that plastic’) and Taylor Swift, via the wonders of haemorrhoids and a life-changing sleep apnoea treatment to grief. Particularly sharp were their observations about learning how to operate in a middle-class world, and their description of an anxiety attack-inducing ‘dream trip’ swimming with whales.
One evening mum, Lizzie and me went to an hour-long MSO open rehearsal in the Hamer Hall (mum and Lizzie were suitably impressed by the glitz of the building!). Conductor Benjamin Northey was running the orchestra through Gershwin’s glorious symphonic poem ‘An American in Paris’ in preparation for a concert the following evening. The personable Northey combined his roles of educator and conductor well – guiding the audience through the main themes, providing choice bits of historical context, and even playing us (through his phone!) the original 1929 recording (with Gershwin on celeste) which he was aiming to emulate. He had individual instrumentalists rehearsing small details and the whole orchestra working on section changes, and finished with a full performance of the piece – in which the subtle changes he had directed were, in the most part, effected! It’s such a fantastic piece – we all agreed that it was a great treat to hear it played live.
Mum and Lizzie’s visit came to an end all too soon – it was so wonderful to have them here. On Sunday morning we waved goodbye as they departed by taxi to the airport, and then had to adjust back into school mode, with an 11-week term due to start the following day…
A strange couple of months existing in a state of limbo, dealing with medical uncertainty and periods of pretty intense pain. The wonderful and constant support of friends and family (plus some strong medication!) got me through it all. A few fun things happened along the way. I managed to rehearse sporadically with AB/CD, getting my ‘80s synth keyboard vamping up to scratch. We had to pick a set for the ‘Parents Battle of the Bands’ in May – my choice was Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’!
Rowena and I caught one film in the French Film Festival. ‘The Taste of Things’ (dir Tranh Anh Hung) was a refreshingly feminist foodie period drama about the loving and respectful partnership between a C19th aristocrat and his cook (Juliette Binoche) who, in their kitchen, create intricate yet homely food that subverts contemporary pretensions. Other new releases I saw included Jonathan Glazer’s brilliantly chilling ‘The Zone of Interest’ – focussing on the commandant of Auschwitz and his family, apparently living the bucolic Arian dream while thousands are methodically being murdered behind their garden wall. ‘Fallen Leaves’ was Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s latest Edward-Hopper-esque cinematic poem about two lonely souls – an alcoholic welder and a factory worker – whose path to romance is beset by a series of obstacles (from lost phone numbers to an almost fatal accident). British director Molly Manning Walker’s debut movie ‘How to have sex’ vividly depicted the Costa Del Sol party scene – where three naive sixteen-year-old girls experience the hideous coercion, misogyny and rape promoted and tolerated as drunken ‘fun’.
Maisie and me spent four days in Adelaide at the Womadelaide Festival. It was crazily hot – the temperature gauge hitting 39 degrees centigrade by 9am every day. We didn’t attempt to do anything fast – we moved our picnic blanket from shady spot to shady spot (according to our well planned schedule) and didn’t attempt any dancing till way after sunset when it was just a little cooler! There were plenty of aerial mist sprays rigged up for people, and for the site’s bat colonies too (one of the stages was closed during daylight hours as they were worried bats might drop dead from the trees – but fortunately the creatures proved hardier than expected).
The music was fantastic. So many incredible musicians from all over the world! Senegalese superstar Baaba Maal rocked the main stage in the evening darkness with his joyful words and grooves, underpinned by an intricate web of beats (played on sabar and talking drums). One of Maisie and my’s favourite half hours of the weekend was spent at one of the smaller stages, listening to Maal’s rhythm section as they demonstrated and explained a few of the traditional patterns. Another arresting evening performance was by Tunisian singer Emel Mathlouthi who declaimed her sinuously phrased torch songs accompanied by big electronic beats and live string quartet. Middle Eastern collective Al Qasar woke up a sleepy afternoon crowd with their combination of North African trance beats, limpid Turkish flute, psychedelic guitars and electric oud. Ibibio Sound Machine (from Nigeria and the UK) leaned more into an Afro-funk groove – giving late entry star Angelique Kidjo and her band (who stepped in when Nitin Sawnhey sadly had to pull out due to ill health) a run for their money!
Eastern Europe were represented by the astringent vocal harmonies and pounding drums of Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha, and (Maisie’s favourite), Bosnian ska-punk outfit Dubioza Kolectiv. No one can beat Balkan musicians for their fizzing, fierce, anarchic musical energy. Even in the stifling heat of the late afternoon, Dubioza had the whole audience on their feet jumping up and down. They were great communicators – their (mainly English) lyrics well-observed and wry, their between-song banter hilarious. We chose to hear the band perform twice – their main stage set was pumped full of techno drums and electronics, their (almost) acoustic set less bombastic but just as spirited. Another rousing set was provided by veteran Chilean rockers Illapu who opened one of blazing afternoons with their distinctively Andean sound – their powerful protest and folk songs combining bamboo flutes and panpipes, wooden and seedpod-based percussion with electric guitars and drums. I just love a panpipe – I braved the full sun in front of the stage, while Maisie lounged on the edge of a busy pool of shade!
The largest festival crowd gathered at dusk on Saturday night to hear legendary Brazilian singer-songwriter (and former politician) Gilberto Gil – on his farewell tour (he’s 81 years old!). His liltingly rhythmic samba melodies, which he sung (and strummed) in his quiet, still tuneful voice, at the heart of his family band (made up of his children, nephews, neices and grand-children), were just gorgeous. Other lovely sunny vibes were provided by young British reggae singer Hollie Cook, Australian First Nations soul singer Dean Brady, Tanzanian rapper Katanga Junior (with his Aussie band) and Irish accordionist Sharon Shannon.
There were four stand-out musical performances for me. By Portuguese Fado guitar virtuoso Marta Pereira da Costa and her trio – whose intimate, unshowily dazzling fingerwork transported me straight to a tiny dark backstreet bar in Lisbon. By British drummer Yusef Dayes and his quartet – who took me back to my London heydays with their complex, clever contemporary jazz played with the lightest of touches. And by two electronic duos – fiercely rhythmic Kenyan/Ugandan rapper MC Yallah and DJ Debmaster (master of the dirtiest bass grooves – although it was late and I was exhausted, I couldn’t not get up and dance!), and the brilliantly inventive Belgian pop electronica duo Charlotte Adigéry (singer) and Bolis Pupul (multi-instrumentalist). They commanded the stage – Adigéry totally inhabiting the duo’s perceptive songs of misogyny and contemporary challenges.
There wasn’t much art around the site this year (Maisie and I made up for this with a quick whizz round the Adelaide art gallery). The Womadelaide organisers had ‘rationalised’ the layout, separating the craft stalls (banished to a strip on a concrete road, just like any average weekend craft market) and food stalls (in two separate clumps), limiting the access routes (which meant the two halves of the site were virtually cut off from each other – and that you had to walk past twelve stinky toilet blocks to get to the far side of the site). All this did spoil the ambience considerably – there was no wandering round, serendipitously discovering an interesting, quiet, corner of the site. The stall-holders were sad too as they were so far from the music, they didn’t really feel part of the festival any more.
Although the art was lacking, there were some wonderful, and varied, theatrical performances. South Korean group ‘Elephants Laugh’ had actors immersed in glowing night-lit free-standing water tanks in a piece inspired by free-diving pearl fishers. French musical theatre group Compagnie On Off’’s delightful ‘Le chant de l’eau’ took place in an air-conditioned hall (the dark, cool, space provided a welcome respite from the exterior glare!). Four identically-clad actor/singers called ‘Lucy’ performed a comedic new-age therapy session all about making the water in our bodies vibrate. Circulating a group of blind-folded volunteers in deckchairs, they sang, in perfect four-part harmony, witty arrangements of popular songs about water and vibrations (‘Good vibrations’, ‘Sitting on the dock of the bay’).
New York group ‘Streb Extreme Action’ did shouty, showy, heavy-hiphop-soundtracked acrobatic stunts on big, industrial-looking metal rigs. Three female acrobats had shoes clipped in to a high revolving bar that allowed them to spin, handsfree (and standing) 360 degrees like the hands of a clock. A massive spinning hamster wheel had the whole team running and clinging on inside and out. A revolving metal ladder provided the most hair-raising moments as the acrobats leaped on and off it narrowly avoiding decapitation.
I had to be careful about what I ate during the weekend so I wasn’t too adventurous with my food choices, but I did enjoy a generously spiced veg-packed paella (twice!) and an incredible vegan ice cream – sage and pomegranate flavour (from a local Middle Eastern ice-creamery). We spent most of our money on cold drinks. The fresh sugar-cane juices were the best – my favourite was blended with fresh ginger, while Maisie preferred the lychee/coconut combinations.
The best performance of the festival combined music, dance and food. The hour-long show, entitled ‘Beytna’, had been devised by Lebanese choreographer Omar Rajeh. It was inspired by Sunday meals at his grandfather’s house, where ‘the whole family would gather to have lunch, drink and dance’.
A huge table, piled high with salad vegetables and bunches of herbs was at the centre of the stage. The choreographer’s elderly mother was the first to appear, making a start on cutting and mixing a salad, and gradually the other performers started pitching in – the air filled with the aroma of parsley, coriander, onion and lemon. The three oud players and drummer peeled off and started playing and the four dancers (from Togo, Japan, Lebanon and Belgium) took turns on the stage, expressing their own very individual movements (the African dancer all core strength, the Japanese guy almost floating, the Belgian like a clown etc.) sometimes alone, sometimes in dialogue. Sometimes there was actual conversation too, and more food preparation – culminating with the mother mixing and dressing the whole huge salad by hand.
Everyone in the audience was invited up to take part in the feast – as well as the fatoush (salad) they had prepared spicy stewed beans and flatbreads and a jug of arak. Once we all had plates laden with food there was more music and dancing. And when the performance ended we were entreated to stay on and chat and eat up the leftovers. It was such a welcoming show and so full of love it almost made me cry!
The long school holidays finally ended this week! Maisie started at her new secondary school on Tuesday – what with the strict uniform (blazer and tough black leather lace-up shoes to wear in), avalanche of tech (all communication/teaching/studying via app and email), the complex timetable (no school bells, so students need to manage their own schedules), the navigation of a new campus, the early starts and the challenge of travelling to school unchaperoned on various forms of public transport – there was a lot to take in, but Maisie took it all in her stride. She was tired at the end of the week though, and spent most of the weekend in bed!
Tommy’s term didn’t start till Wednesday. On Tuesday we went on a little outing into town to get a coffee/hot chocolate at a new tram café based at a CBD catering college. It was a pleasant, airy, space with plenty of character, as they had kept the original fit out (as far as possible). Tommy was also pleased that it was sited on a tram route, so he could watch trams from a tram!
Tommy went back to school (reluctantly – ‘it’s so boring!’) on Wednesday and then we were back into the routines (if slightly different ones now). I had rehearsals with both of my new bands. My first session on Monday night with family punk band ‘Riot Baby’ was in a dingy private rehearsal studio in Northcote (it took me back to Sax Pack rehearsals at Rich Bitch studios in Selly Oak in the early 1990s!). I was one of three new members of the band, and we were all involved in working out new arrangements of Riot Baby’s original songs, so it wasn’t too intimidating (although my improvisation skills are very rusty and I have to get more comfortable with a more raucous, noise-based sax style!).
On Friday I watched two long films at the Classic. The first was US director Alexander Payne’s ‘The Holdovers’. Set at an exclusive boys boarding school in rural Massachusetts, it was about three people stuck, on the deserted, unheated snowy campus, during the Christmas break – a bolshy senior student (his parents refused to take him with them on their Florida vacation), a grieving cook (her son a gifted student at the school, killed in his first year in the military in Vietnam) and an embittered teacher (hated by the school principal as he would not automatically award the ultra-elite dunderheads top grades). The way the three interacted, the gradual unpacking of their grief, loneliness and disappointment, and the interrogation of American society, was all done so gracefully and sensitively and without sentimentality. I thought it was fantastic!
French director Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winning movie ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ kept you on edge for it’s entirety! It starts with a man’s body in the snow, below the open third floor window of a remote chalet home. The body is discovered by the man’s visually impaired son, returning from a walk with his dog. The son calls for the mother, who emerges from the chalet, having apparently been asleep all afternoon. It isn’t long before the mother, a successful writer, is charged with murder. In the court the couple’s marriage is dissected and interrogated to a savage degree – she is vilified for her professional success and lack of maternal instincts, her novels picked to bits to find indications that she is murderous. And all the way through the trial, the lonely son sits and listens and has to make his own sense of his parents troubled marriage. It was a sad, brilliant, unsettling film.
At the weekend I wasn’t feeling too well so missed out on some social gatherings that I had been looking forward to for a long time. Maisie put in an appearance at one of them on my behalf (her friends were there too). Tommy and Neil spent many hours watching cricket. First was an (after-school!) Friday day-night clash at the MCG between Australia and the West Indies (Tommy reported that the crowd was very drunk, and the West Indian players very laid-back), second (on a 34 degree day) was 8 hours of the Sheffield Shield test cricket at the Junction Oval- Victoria vs South Australia (free to watch, Tommy counted no more than 50 people in the crowd, and only 1 or 2 others stayed for the whole day!).
A quiet week as half our household came down with COVID. Before it set in Tommy and Neil spent another day at the Australian Open – Tommy was buzzing with tennis names and stats on his return, and remained obsessed with the championships over the final few days, his radio constantly tuned to the match commentaries (alternating with the Test Cricket coverage), providing us with up-to-the-minute info about who was in and out!
I forgot, last week, to review a lovely film that I took Maisie and Tommy to see. ‘The Boy and the Heron’ directed by Hayao Miyazaki (and made at the famous Studio Ghibli animation studios), was a dark and fantastical story about a young boy who flees to the countryside with his father when his mother is killed during the WW2 fire-bombing of Tokyo. Befriended by a fierce heron/goblin spirit, he enters a magical tower where his quest takes him through a number of surreal parallel universes, peopled by warped animal versions of his friends and enemies, as he tries, once again, to save his mother from her fiery death. The Japanese sensibilities – weird, unexpected, sometimes dazzling beautiful – were very refreshing!
Tommy and I were able to escape on Saturday and went on a little cultural trip to the NGV and the MPavilion. The robot dogs (part of the trienniale) were Tommy’s favourite exhibit. He also liked Sheila Hicks’ tower of vibrant cotton bales, and David Shrigley’s Australian Open-themed ‘Melbourne Tennis Ball exchange’, where visitors could bring in a worn-out old ball and swap it for a brand new one (sadly we didn’t know about it in advance – we possess countless bounce-free old tennis balls!). We also enjoyed the solar-powered benches in the gallery courtyard, which revolve extremely slowly, giving you an effortless panorama of the shady gardens. They had replaced the murky green water in the MPavilion’s pool – the clear waters made it a much more sleek, urban space.
We were all quarantining on Friday’s Australia Day holiday. We learned that before dawn that day activists had taken an angle-grinder to a local Captain Cook statue and removed everything above the feet – good for them! I haven’t had a chance to take a photo of the feet, but will add it in if I get the chance.
On Sunday afternoon I joined my first rehearsal with AB/CD (get it?!), the school parents band that I have recently joined, playing keyboards (and a bit of sax). Our repertoire of covers comprises AC/DC classics (unsurprisingly) and a random selection of cheesy/emo/indie ‘80s and ‘90s rock covers (Voyager! Evanescence! Killers!). I had great fun blasting out all the synth power chords!
Monday was the last day of the cousin’s trip to Melbourne. Becky took John and Tommy to watch tennis at the Australian Open. I looked after the girls. Sarah wanted to climb our favourite trees in the park. She and Maisie scaled the Moreton Bay fig (harder now as the main climbing branch has been chopped down), the little palm tree and, most impressively, the cork oak – they made it right up into the canopy!
On Thursday we caught an early morning flight to Sydney – a trip to celebrate Tommy’s birthday weekend. There were also several art exhibitions that Neil wanted to catch. We decided to get a couple of them in straight away before the kids started complaining too much! Two of them were at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. There was a retrospective of the work of Louise Bourgeois, which was on show in the new extension (above ground an airy maze of glass-walled levels connected by escalators and spiral staircases – and below ground, a huge dingy former emergency fuel-tank which still stank, rather headache-inducingly, of oil).
One of Bourgeois’ great spiders welcomed us in the gallery courtyard (Neil and I were trying to work out how many different countries we’ve seen these spiders in!). Inside was a good selection of the artists’s tiny and monumental, but always visceral sculptures, installations, sewing pieces and drawings exploring love and pain and rage, motherhood and fatherhood, the conscious and unconscious.
The exhibition was split into two sections – ‘Day’ and ‘Night’ (‘Day’ was peppered with a few less bleak pieces, ‘Night’ was all grim!). The day pieces were presented in the traditional white box galleries (pictured are a few of my favourites), the night pieces in spotlit pools in and amongst the supporting pillars of the vast tank. They were a little lost in the busy space, but a few of the larger sculptures stood out – Tommy was very taken with ‘Twosome’, a hefty pair of internally lit, cylindrical metal fuel tanks which trundled in and out of each other on rail tracks.
Also in the new galleries, we enjoyed Kimsooja’s ‘Archive of mind’, an interactive piece in which visitors were invited to craft a perfect sphere out of clay and add it to a pile on a huge oval table. Tommy and Maisie spent a happy ten minutes doing this.
I liked Kathleen Ryan’s ‘Bad lemon’. Made of glass beads, bone and semi-precious gems, it was an impressively realistic sculpture of a mouldy lemon! Sancintya Mohini Simpson’s series of watercolours depicting indentured, casteless Indian women working on a sugar plantation was also striking.
The second major exhibition was a well curated (if brief), survey of the career of Vasily Kandinsky, the paintings drawn from the New York Guggenheim Museum’s extensive collection of the artist’s works. Early C20th politics and wars shaped Kandinsky’s life – whenever he settled somewhere he had to move (from Germany, to Russia, to France).
It was interesting to see how Kandinsky’s early fauvist colours and Russian folk art motifs transmogrified into his later abstract dancing shapes, to recognise his flirtation with surrealism and ongoing interest in ancient, shamanic forms, and to track how the intersecting triangles, rectangles, arcs and spheres gradually became more amorphous and biological over time (he was fascinated by cellular structures viewed through the microscope).
Overall, it was just amazing how bright and celebratory the paintings were, given the times Kandinsky was living through. I loved pretty much every one – shared are just a very few of my favourites!
We checked into our apartment in the late afternoon – and it was huge and carpeted (carpets make everything so much quieter – I do miss them – weird rules specify that our apartment cannot be carpeted!). There were three giant televisions. The kids would have been happy not have gone anywhere and just spent the weekend watching sport (tennis and cricket) on the big screen!
In the evening Tommy and me caught the tram down to Circular Quay for a performance aboard an old sailing ship, mounted as part of the Sydney (Arts) Festival. The Arka Kinari is travelling around the world as an ambassador for sustainability, hosting environmental talks, connecting with local communities, and presenting night-time concerts. A Spanish/Indonesian duo combined ambient, glitchy electro beats and traditional percussion with silky Javanese vocals, while images of global destruction were projected on small sail-sheets behind them. It was atmospheric, but too small-scale to compete with the general Circular Quay chaos of bars and crowds, bridge traffic and harbour ferries.
On Friday we all went on a long bus ride north to Palm Beach – a beautiful peninsular at the very farthest reaches of the Sydney suburban sprawl. We picnicked on the calm natural-harbour-facing beach, the sands shaded by fig trees, translucent warm waters revealing flashes of narrow silvery fish. A pelican sailed serenely by, and a white/grey sea eagle hovered overhead. It was a beautiful spot, it almost felt like we were in the Whitsundays.
We walked up the rocky headland to the lighthouse, immaculately restored since I was here last (although still closed to visitors) and enjoyed the stunning isthmus views. We descended to the Ocean Beach where the kids ran into the foaming cold waves, body surfing and rolling in the sand – by the time they left their bodies and hair were caked in it (and it was very hard to get off!).
Later I caught another Sydney Festival show at a pleasant modern theatre in the Rocks. The performers were Belgian experimental theatre company Ontroerend Goed, the show entitled ‘Are we not drawn onward to a new erA’ (note the palindrome in the title!). The curtain opened on a blank, black stage, with only a small, live, tree planted in a pile of earth in one corner. Six casual characters gradually emerged, moving in a slightly stilted way, conversing in a strange language with only the odd identifiable word of English. One plucked an apple from the tree and started to eat it, another then viciously destroyed the tree, ripping it branch from branch (it was horrible to watch), and then hundreds of plastic bags descended from the heavens. A great golden statue of a man was raised and the stage flooded with dry ice until everything was obscured. There was no mistaking the messaging, despite the odd delivery. The curtain dropped and one character came out to deliver a monologue which suddenly switched into English – ‘this is where we are now, what can we do to change this going forward?’. And then the second half of the play completely made sense of all that had gone before and showed how clever and brilliant the acting had been (and why it had been so odd). It was an amazing piece of theatre!
On Saturday it was Tommy’s 10th birthday. He wasn’t too thrilled to be reaching double figures! We breakfasted on eggs at an unpretentious pavement café and popped into a fantastic board-game/model car/railway shop, a Japanese bookstore (with plenty of great kitsch offerings) and the world’s largest Lego shop (the range nothing special, but featuring some impressive large creative builds).
We visited the Australian National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour. Moored up alongside the main hangar-like museum space are a number of large ships that you can go inside. We started by clambering down into the HMAS Onslow, a 1960s Oberon Class submarine. It was decommissioned in 1999, and has been left pretty much as it was at that point. The interior was claustrophobic and chaotic, bristling with pipes, buttons, dials, switches, gauges and valve wheels (these last all coded by shape – different ones for water, engine, air systems etc.).
Poky cells housed control rooms, bunks were crammed everywhere. The largest spaces were devoted to torpedos and the vast multi-cylinder engine. The sub was divided into five watertight compartments – we had to squeeze through a small circular bulkhead door to access each. It was amazing to be in a submarine – I’ve always been intrigued by them. The kids were familiar with subs from all the James Bond movies they’ve watched!
Moored next to the sub was the huge HMAS Vampire, a Destroyer, built in the 1950s and used by the Australian navy till the mid 1980s. It was the last of Australia’s big gun ships (later ships were equipped with missile weaponry). It felt very spacious after the submarine, and very hierarchical – the top officers floor had carpet and panelling and cabins, while the main crew below had to make do with plastic and vinyl and dormitories around the gun turrets.
There was a tuck shop (best sellers – cigarettes and chocolate) and kitchens still displaying the weekly menus (lots of meat, some Asian choices!). The switch and signal equipment was manufactured in St Albans (as in my hometown!).
Also in dock is a replica of the James Cook’s’ HMB Endeavour – a functioning ship which still goes out to sea once a year. The decks were a writhing mess of coiling rope (how you could identify which rope attached to which mast/sail is beyond me, they weren’t colour coded or even braided in different ways!). Below decks it was pleasantly woody and cool (a relief after the stuffy, dank diesel-wreaking interiors of the Destroyer) but many of the spaces had ridiculously low ceilings – some sleeping spaces you had to crawl through on hands and knees (Tommy could just about stand up!).
In the museum itself we enjoyed a small exhibition featuring artefacts belonging to, and photos taken by, legendary underwater photographer/documentary-maker and shark conservationist Valerie Taylor. She and her husband Ron were pioneers in all these areas, and it was fascinating to see, in real life, their home-made camera casings and the chain-mail suit that Valerie wore to prove that certain sharks, considered dangerous, were not actually able to bite with force at all.
An exhibition of award-winning underwater photography featured many stunning images, including a ‘heavenly’ dugong (Sylvie Ayer), a rush-hour crowd of rays (Nicholas Hahn), and a devilish gannet (Henley Spiers).
We hopped on a ferry from Pyrmont Bay to Circular Quay which took in all the sights – the glittering towers of Barangaroo, the garish facades of Luna Park, the looming bridge and pearly opera house, and that day’s monstrous cruise ship (the new Virgin ship!). We ate Tommy’s birthday tea at a first floor Grill’d burger bar which afforded a commanding view of Sydney’s Town Hall tram stop.
Sunday was our last day in Sydney. Despite the kids grumbling we managed to get another art exhibition in – a survey of the career of British artist Tacita Dean at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Dean’s practice spans video, photography, drawing and printmaking and explores time and process and patterns of light. I think I mainly know her for her video piece ‘Disappearance at sea’, an evocative close-up of the flashing lens of a lighthouse at dusk. Video pieces in this show included a fascinating dissection of the actor’s craft, performed by Stephen Dillane, a mesmerizing flickering rainbow lightshow set to a score by Thomas Ades (which formed part of a Wayne McGregor dance piece) and an observational piece following a very elderly Claes Oldenburg sketching new works. All the video works were made on film, and sometimes the projector and film reels were part of the art, whirring away in the background.
There were also photographs and paintings of clouds and trees and great chalk drawings of melting ice-bergs. The kids were very bored – and spent most of their time looking out of the gallery windows at the activities in the harbour!
We raced over to the pretty inner suburb of Chippendale (all two-storey terraced houses with wrought iron balconies and frangipani and banana trees in the front yards) to see another Sydney Festival show. ‘White Gold’, performed by Cambodian circus group Phare, was a celebration of rice and acrobatics. It opened with an artist deftly creating a rice mandala on stage, which tumblers then leaped and backflipped across without disturbing a grain. Later rice fell like a waterfall from above while around it men (and one woman) somersaulted in the air, performed rolla bolla, seesaw, juggling, diablo and traditional dance. And all was accompanied by lovely traditional music – in turns plangent and twinkly, plucked and struck, and woodily rhythmic. It was a lively, entertaining, warm and fun show.
sophieinmelbourne 