tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49482248906831535882024-03-18T21:46:04.191-07:00sweetpolkaUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger213125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-15076432738260764342016-05-08T22:06:00.001-07:002016-05-08T22:06:06.492-07:00Blog moves to new homeIf you'd like to read more blog posts, click <a href="http://www.sweetpolka.com/blog/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
I've moved to my website (www.sweetpolka.com) to keep things neat.<br />
Thanks for reading.<br />
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xAnna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-60517788552726824202016-04-14T17:13:00.000-07:002016-04-15T20:22:14.314-07:00creativity, play, friends<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As part of a visual self portrait at school Hazel listed "partying" as something she was 'good at'. So you can imagine with her sixth birthday was a big event. In the lead up she wrote list after list covering categories such as guests, food, games, music and themes. A little closer to the date she collated these into a book, the party book. The themes were elaborate, ambitious and resource-wise, demanding. In total seriousness she requested Taylor Swift. This was when the Gym bus party was sitting at top of the list. As in, Could Tay Tay sing on top of the Gym bus? I'm sure Tay Tay could pull it off but as I explained, she had tour commitments. Closer to the date I became more nervous. Any attempt to firm up plans was met with tears. So we put the lists, the book and the talk to one side. And while all the party planning was on hold I got to thinking about parties and how the art of throwing a party was being lost in a culture of outsourcing. Goddammit, I thought, we are going old school. Breaking the news was tough. Hazel cried and cried and cried. Holding her wrapped in a blanket after her epic sob session we gazed at the empty yard and hills hoist against a grey sky. That hills hoist would make a great frame for some streamers, I ventured. Eventually, my little party animal looked up and agreed. Her spirits lifted. She loved the days of preparation, all of us working together on baking, games and decorations (including a purpose-built "Welcome" booth for Otto in the front yard). Sure, I had a crisis on the morning. I was literally puffed from tidying the house at double speed. If I was throwing a pool party I wouldn't be puffed, I'd be holding a latte. </div>
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But Hazel welcomed her friends with pride. They had a great time. My favourite thing? Watching the kids tear around in an hour-long game of hide and seek. They didn't need anything other than each other and a glass of water. Parched hunters and nervous, excited prey. It was a Happy Birthday.</div>
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-27522805588299184762016-03-20T22:21:00.003-07:002016-03-20T22:53:34.883-07:00ACMI: Future Manifestos<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My decade at university pursuing an arts education grounded me in the significance of manifestos. But I haven't really thought too much about them since the early noughties. You know, too busy earning a crust and keeping myself and my brood clean and fed to be pouring over declarative sentences with a call to action (though domestic routine does take me to a rage-full place and in alignment with a midlife crisis a couple of years back things got pretty close to revolutionary). But I got invited to the ACMI /RN talks Sunday 13 March on the topic and I thought 'What the heck!' There must still be room for Ideas in life, right?<br />
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Outside ACMI it was one great thrill ride. Moomba, people throwing themselves off bridges, ferris wheels, overstuffed soft toys and jam donuts. Inside studio 1 it was a more serious affair. I enjoyed the intro into manifestos by a proper academic - it was scholarly, engaging, detailed - before Paul Barclay (Big Ideas, RN) took to the stage with broadcaster and author Jeff Sparrow and early career researcher Max Halupka talking <b>Political Activism</b>. How much do we hear and how much do we see? I saw a very warm, smart and competent compere. Jeff Sparrow looked hungover, a tiny bit hostile and not impressed with his sparring parter: Max Halupka. It was like watching a wolf and a peacock. Sparrow was taking things back to the Enlightenment. Halupka was excited by politics in the age of Twitter.<br />
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Next up was Professor Anne Marsh and Clementine Ford for a 30 minute bout on <b>Feminism</b>. This session was tricky for Barclay: the ghost of himself as a young man navigating second wave feminism, at a guess. Marsh was very sure of herself and clearly persuaded by the importance of universities in being the epicentre of good ideas (apparently gender politics is really influenced by Deluze's ideas on sexuality <i>right now</i> - though pretty sure he wrote about them forty years ago). I'll probably read about it in a watered down first person confessional story that is so popular in <i>The Age </i>sometime next year. Ford was less certain of herself. She may have been intimidated by the context and who can blame her. I read her writing regularly and I got a better sense of her project and method: call it like it is and then throw a spotlight on the misogynistic men that troll her.<br />
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Last up Amanda McKenzie (Climate Council, CEO) and Guy Abrahams (CLIMEART) took to the stage to discuss <b>Environment and Sustainability</b>. Away from the mucky bizness of men versus women, I felt like the room brighten. Sure, the planet and it's demise was at stake but Abrahams brought a very expressive pair of hands to explain how art could make a difference. McKenzie brought a sense of purpose. They steered the conversation to Paris and the Climate Talks. Both had been present for them. It was in their session and this moment that the Future Manifesto's event found momentum. Trading anecdotes of the Paris Metro, billboards and delegates from far-flung places sitting down to discuss the future of carbon emissions and targets they built something - a story that held hope for the future - together.<br />
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-32711484068778035372016-02-22T18:55:00.000-08:002016-02-22T19:03:33.339-08:00Double Blind<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3t5Z8RKHmKnaF3LYsbHMFPbzPO_GaW-1dwPZLmjierOiX9ZY4-9mBMbNJZs96A4xiSZKON3T5Dp-l-Bf8c8aT-PRBvU5l7kwqqcTDypAD6g3zyltEsrnaThjHLIo0figwIqgaaKJjO_T6/s1600/timthumb.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="416" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3t5Z8RKHmKnaF3LYsbHMFPbzPO_GaW-1dwPZLmjierOiX9ZY4-9mBMbNJZs96A4xiSZKON3T5Dp-l-Bf8c8aT-PRBvU5l7kwqqcTDypAD6g3zyltEsrnaThjHLIo0figwIqgaaKJjO_T6/s640/timthumb.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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<i>Double Blind</i>, dancer and choreographer Stephanie Lake's inaugural piece for <a href="http://stephanielake.com.au/" target="_blank">Stephanie Lake Company</a> had its Melbourne season last week on the back of a stupendous Sydney run as part of the Sydney Festival. I'd been following crowd funding efforts and rehearsal updates across Facebook and clicked through to some pretty excited reviews.<br />
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The title<i> Double Blind</i> alludes to the now infamous social psychology experiments conducted in the USA in the 1960s that explored obedience in test subjects. Knowing this ahead of the show made me a little apprehensive, anticipating as I was some formal investigation into pain, terror and possibly science lab sadism. It is only heightened by the sight of composer Robin Fox – himself a formidable presence – guru-like at the side of the stage at the ready at the deck. <br />
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Apparently stress levels are higher waiting to get on a roller coaster than when you are actually hurtling through the air. Waiting for <i>Double Blind </i>to start I could relate to that piece of research. It opens with Fox's digital sound manipulations – a series of rhythmically varied and unpredictable pulsating bleeps – that animate the still dancers who move, investigate and respond to the space and one another. The sonic intensity is electric.<br />
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I was totally absorbed by the dynamics between the four on stage: Alana Everett, Alisdair Macindoe, Amber Haines and Kyle Page following their every movement in sequences that were richly varied.<br />
The phrases and gestures oscillated between human and machinic registers, shifts that complicated agency in curious ways. I wondered more than once, who or what is in control? Harriet Oxley's costumes reiterate the institutional flavour: uniform in colour, gendered, with an open slit at the back much like a very refined hospital gown.<br />
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If it sounds a bit menacing it's not. Lake, a keen observer of people, has a wry sense of humour. It is a work that is well modulated, drawing on a range of techniques: calling on the audience to participate at times, deploying props to great effect and, in one hilarious moment, dialogue.<br />
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<i>Double Blind's</i> investigation into manipulation and experimentation circles around trust, disclosure, pleasure, curiosity and limits. As the performance progressed I became increasingly aware of the physical demands of the piece, the dancers total exhaustion, plain for all to see. I was most moved by this, on reflection. Lake seems to have something to say about limits, of what happens to us when we are taken there: vulnerability, defencelessness, surrender. I received it as a disturbing gift.<br />
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-74831018425866168742016-02-15T19:43:00.001-08:002016-02-16T19:31:35.092-08:00Carol/The Revenant/Spotlight<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge4gWU4j_h4dj-xgZEmL9kTKIn1qVgLfnKz2Wfpt-bgqfVznEOhx57qCcLJCfxHiKVibGHt_4-Zl-UTf8meZpZF0e-ZF0X0N19DYBDxIAcCj0Xf7krEtmQQ5q4Ztu20huL6wXFlwb5cOhY/s1600/spotlight-movie_Fotor.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge4gWU4j_h4dj-xgZEmL9kTKIn1qVgLfnKz2Wfpt-bgqfVznEOhx57qCcLJCfxHiKVibGHt_4-Zl-UTf8meZpZF0e-ZF0X0N19DYBDxIAcCj0Xf7krEtmQQ5q4Ztu20huL6wXFlwb5cOhY/s640/spotlight-movie_Fotor.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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I've been listening to the BBC's Kermode & Mayo's Film Reviews on podcast for sometime now and it's got me thinking how much I enjoy listening to conversations about films. I think I like listening to them even more than having actual conversations myself.<br />
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It was on Kermode & May's program that I heard Cate Blanchett describing working with Todd Haynes on <i>Carol</i>, Leonardo DiCaprio disclosing the 'transforming' experience of working with an 'artist' shooting a 100 minute film with dialogue that covered half an A4 sheet of paper for<i> The Revenant</i> and my new Hollywood Husband Mark Ruffalo - sorry Edward Norton, you've been displaced - on ensemble acting in <i>Spotlight. </i>They were all wonderful subjects: serious, engaging, generous, totally committed to their craft and getting their films seen. I can report in the world of professional film people at the top of their game seem to try hard and give it their best.<br />
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I know that probably sounds cynical, it's not intended that way. Some days I just feel like the distance between our private and public selves is a gap so wide it pulls apart logic and sense. I got to thinking about this recently reflecting on my feature film rewrite which was a <b><i>herculean </i></b>effort. Writing every day for a month was gruelling. Doing it with two monkeys on school holidays with Christmas in the middle felt like a folly of the highest order. Moving between work and home was something akin to daily time travel, right down to edgy camera shakes to signify the awkward transition. It was discombobulating in every way and felt harder with each passing day. The needs of small children – their moods and variable temperaments – and the exhausting detail of domestic life, as well as the demands of a complex and large creative project almost broke me, except it didn't. Even virtual strangers stopped me to tell me "Looking gggreeeaat". Go figure.<br />
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It's even stranger to consider that writing is an imaginative interpretation of the space between those different spheres - our public and private selves - and how we feel and behave as we inhabit them. Off air at BBC headquarters maybe Mark Ruffalo kicked himself for describing himself as an 'activist' - and not just a wealthy movie star. Cate Blanchett could have disconnected and thought "Banging on about the theatre, AGAIN". Leo? I couldn't even speculate. What I'm imagining is not really for sharing publicly. It's staying private.<br />
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By the way they were all fine films. All three of them.<br />
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-1532427183284216902016-01-21T21:21:00.000-08:002016-01-21T21:21:23.437-08:00(Re)writing Three Point Turn<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRL3WQLrjIBM-K0iSHMKycVuu33FGb-gRCdDliEpNa22K6rmGss5gYHmM6-0sB9yJ3hRi2o0uurVDS3Xi-s71_eb_w6C7LqrcezbeosUkjTn5rcHMrp115N0Hdxp5pYxLlc-ZMPcwIOh19/s1600/%25C2%25A9%252BLee_Grant_10.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRL3WQLrjIBM-K0iSHMKycVuu33FGb-gRCdDliEpNa22K6rmGss5gYHmM6-0sB9yJ3hRi2o0uurVDS3Xi-s71_eb_w6C7LqrcezbeosUkjTn5rcHMrp115N0Hdxp5pYxLlc-ZMPcwIOh19/s400/%25C2%25A9%252BLee_Grant_10.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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You might have noticed that I post usually every three weeks. That's generally the length of time between posts when I feel the itch to write or compose a few words. Not this month.<br />
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Redrafting my feature film<i> Three Point Turn</i> to a deadline, I've had to roll my sleeves up and got to work like a farmer at harvest time.<br />
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Writing every day is so different to life as I usually live it and so completely different from any other January I've had that it almost feel like I tripped and slipped into a parallel universe.<br />
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My other work, all of my other work, has been put on hold. I have children but they have a nanny, aka Stevie, on duty all summer. My only obligation is to write five pages a day.<br />
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Sounds so easy! It's. So. Hard. For starters I'm an extrovert. What am I doing sitting in a room alone all day, even half a day? I have come to think of my office – an eco oasis nestled looking out over Merri Creek – as a (very productive) prison. I've started to wonder if I am a genuine masochist.<br />
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And I am not writing in total isolation. I have a team, a crack team (executive producer Tony Ayres, producers Tania Chambers and Verity Fitzgerald, director Maziar Lahooti and script editor Matthew Dabner - they are an excellent, smart and kind hearted bunch). I have a lot of good fortune to have them on my side.<br />
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Of all the genres of writing I do – blogging, art writing, reviewing – screenwriting is the most mysterious. <br />
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Even on days that it has me completely beat, days when I crawl home, lie prostate on the couch, pinch the area between my eyes and make small moaning sounds, moments I am a suffering animal, it has my attention.<br />
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Breakthroughs – writing a good scene, rewriting a scene so it reads better, rearranging scenes so that the plotting is tighter – are rarer. Those hard-won moments bring me a terrific sense of satisfaction. They are not, however, what keep me rooted to the keyboard.<br />
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Curiosity with its little friend Tenacity keeps me writing even when I am beset by doubts and fears. I have an ambition to write a truthful, moving, and elegant story. I just keep at it: trying and failing, trying and failing, trying and failing until, hopefully, one day, I succeed.<br />
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Image: <a href="http://www.leegrant.net/sudanese-portraits/" target="_blank">Lee Grant</a>, part of the Sudanese Portraits series.<br />
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-12970505048905797202015-12-14T20:06:00.000-08:002015-12-14T20:06:17.941-08:00Festivities/War<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqC2KEWspylBusk9jqaBhzR-dCprMN_hXCza7A0NBIJviqd1DnWWOxyE5MCHjsfMEHZTrpP_hO_SqkYY1S0p9N5XkZkh-z1mdVHUP1hCcEHEjUdRzqwcmc8Z_YLEz1ehII0jkBRzbePQ_W/s1600/IMG_6250.jpeg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="451" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqC2KEWspylBusk9jqaBhzR-dCprMN_hXCza7A0NBIJviqd1DnWWOxyE5MCHjsfMEHZTrpP_hO_SqkYY1S0p9N5XkZkh-z1mdVHUP1hCcEHEjUdRzqwcmc8Z_YLEz1ehII0jkBRzbePQ_W/s640/IMG_6250.jpeg" width="640" /></a><br />
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I'm tapping this out at my dining table surrounded by the detritus of Christmas a little overloaded, over excited and more than a bit over it. I am staggered by the amount of social obligation sandwiched between work responsibilities not to mention a host of free floating ideas from early 2015 that want to assert themselves <i>right now,</i> propelled by a motor that seems entirely independent of my conscious will.<br />
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Even as things get hectic both internally and externally I am finding myself undertaking a process of reflection of the year just past (hard-as). Rather than filling me with any particular sorrow, I am mostly overwhelmed by my sense of gratitude for good friends and the enormous care and love that has been shown to me and my peeps (hospital visitors, you especially). Amazingly, there's still been time and inclination for celebration. The very best moment has been hosting a bbq for family and close friends this past week in the dustbowl of our backyard (water colour scene above captured by guest and artist Piers Lumley).<br />
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The kids were the best. Fresh memories of children snaking out the kitchen patiently waiting for a scoop of ice cream in a cone have been keeping me strong through Christmas elf duties that involve malls and the CBD and the mail which includes the Medican Sans Frontiers magazine <i>Pulse. </i>This issue opens with an editorial about the Coalition forces bombing of the hospital in Kunduz, Afghanastan. Honestly, fuck those cunts and the havoc they wreck.Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-2233925889953112002015-11-14T17:25:00.000-08:002015-11-14T17:25:03.058-08:00Depreston<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On Friday I heard Courtney Barnett's single 'Depreston' <i>for the first time.</i> I know what you're thinking. Am I living under some kind of rock? I'm last to hear anything and everything, my music know-how so low, since my car radio is tuned to Fox, PBS and Radio National depending on my companions and my own state of mind.<br />
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I'd been hearing good things about Barnett's album and its barnstorming ways up charts here and in the States so my response to hearing her now award-winning song surprised me. I liked it but I think I expected a bigger song, instrumentally and its canvas, though press articles about the "telling detail" in her writing should have alerted me to the fact that specificity – being attuned to the spaces, places and emotional texture of life at this point in time as a 30something north sider – is her thing. She sings about going to an open for inspection in the now gentrified former working class suburb of Preston with a light, comic touch, though the subtext of the song is economics. I wondered whether 'Depreston' has struck a chord with people because of its truthfulness: on the subject of Preston we are in total agreement.<br />
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In life we are rarely given the opportunity to feel into another person's inner world, even our family and friends remain essentially mysterious. That inner world is the place where working life intersects with intimacy and love, the place where our bank balance and our aspirations face one another. This is the the land of self-talk, a patter that veers between hopefulness and resignation that circles around questions of self-worth and the material. Some days it veers off towards questions of security and safety, other days it strays towards worries over power and influence but it always begins and ends with the question: how much is enough?<br />
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-69981867828174198222015-10-20T20:17:00.002-07:002015-10-20T20:17:25.509-07:00Louisa Bufardeci: The Sea Between A and I<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF42XeXYq1tR740AV7IA8YlArkiXrAiYQUHFTx1R0aA3PbKgcxQhpJ4Cij3NCaJoQS4JyrTvYDDxJuiy-YsBpwAddDgxnoI0DlCVDKZKyNU6XJcr1MgIXY5GseiSINXePnS_8dggthGblX/s1600/bufardeci_image_1_web-m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF42XeXYq1tR740AV7IA8YlArkiXrAiYQUHFTx1R0aA3PbKgcxQhpJ4Cij3NCaJoQS4JyrTvYDDxJuiy-YsBpwAddDgxnoI0DlCVDKZKyNU6XJcr1MgIXY5GseiSINXePnS_8dggthGblX/s640/bufardeci_image_1_web-m.jpg" width="592" /></a><br />
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Louisa Bufardeci's exhibition <i>The Sea Between A and I </i>(as in <i>Australia</i> and <i>Indonesia</i>) opened on Saturday at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne. The artworks – all needlepoint on a fibreglass screen – make reference to maritime disasters, sunken boats and the plight of desperate people risking their lives to make the perilous journey across the seas. Bufardeci has used Google Earth to pinpoint the precise coordinates of eight of these tragedies and crafted intense and abstract forms in gradations of blue. They invoke the swirl of meteorological matter, weather charts and thermal imaging, though in this instance in place of heat associated with living, breathing organisms these works speak of the opposite – death itself.<br />
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The real events described in Bufardeci's artworks felt very far away on that sunny Saturday afternoon. I felt very graciously welcomed into the gallery where I was not only offered a Campari after climbing the stairs but the monkeys even had a room set aside for art making. I was surrounded by some pretty lovely people, some of whom I knew. The opening speaker, human rights lawyer David Manne gave a considered, moving address. It was long sure, though not overly, and given the subject matter it felt appropriate: my legs were bearing less stress than the asylum seekers. Manne drew on statistics on the number of displaced persons around the world, recounted the lack of detail in reporting of asylum seeker journeys and drew a line between that and the abstracted language of Bufardeci's needlepoints. For someone who admitted he hadn't written about art since year 11, to my eye some twenty five years earlier, it was a perceptive observation.<br />
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If you are wondering whether there is a market for these kind of works, the entire show sold to the NGV before the exhibition opened. Not only was the work well crafted, but topical. I felt very pleased for the artist with whom I share a personal connection (we both have girls in the same class at school). It was only afterwards, on the journey home that I felt growing ambivalence. The work and its backstory forces us to consider uncomfortable truths about the country we live in and the world at large. But in the space that opens up afterwards, what resides there other than Guilt and Shame, and possibly Anger. Is there anything wrong with turning tragedy into art and those art objects into dollars? Is it worse to <i>not</i> make that art? Does not making the art only mirror the silence that characterises the government and media on this 'issue'. I just don't know.<br />
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Louisa Bufardeci<br />
The Sea Between A and I<br />
17 October - 11 November 2015<br />
Anna Schwartz Gallery<br />
185 Flinders Lane, Melbourne<br />
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-52821519494691201552015-09-26T21:14:00.001-07:002015-09-26T22:07:42.748-07:00Gayby Baby<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We always get to a film during school holidays. The obvious choice would have been <i>Oddball</i>, the new Australian film about the unlikely friendship between a penguin and a labrador, but Otto – already ten years of age – remembered the trailer for <i>Gayby Baby </i>(Maya Newell, 2015) from our Jim Henson fest at the Nova some time back, and had it in his sights. I could see its appeal. The documentary features four kids aged between 9 and eleven as they navigate life – school work, sibling relationships and passions – in family's with same sex parents. It tells the story of Gus, Ebony, Graham and Matt, and their relationship with themselves, their parents and the world outside their font door as they negotiate acceptance and their own sense of belonging.<br />
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In each of the stories Newell has found a satisfying narrative: Gus' campaign to persuade his mums to accept his passion for crazy-ass WWF wrestling; Ebony's audition and hopes to be accepted into a socially progressive performing arts high school; Graham's struggles with literacy, the legacy of a heartbreaking early childhood; and Matt's unenviable situation – working out whether he believes in Jesus when his church considers his mother, a lesbian and full-on Christian, a sin against God.<br />
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I was expecting an interesting film but I was surprised by its beauty. Newell's sure sense of craft is evident at every level, from casting to cinematography, editing and sound. <i>Gayby Baby</i> also uses setting to create contrast: messy bedrooms, rain soaked sports ovals, the fecund tropical gardens of Fiji. Newell's approach to narrative – focusing on change and moving between the individual and collective, the private to public – borrows from fiction films to superb effect.<br />
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The drama is not in the same-sex relationships: the relationships represented, what we see of them, are all loving and functional. It's in the struggles all parents of children face: negotiating difference, relegating resources, providing support and boundary setting. What stays with me – other than the kids irrepressible sense of fun – is the ordinary and yet moving portraits of family life, the love and hopes that parents have for their children and what effort familial love inspires. <i>Gayby Baby</i> finishes on an uplifting note and the joyful celebration of Madi Gras. No shame. The shame is mine, for this country and its cruel, outdated laws. <br />
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-22974785334850763192015-09-03T19:07:00.003-07:002015-09-03T19:07:55.740-07:00Reader lunch: sharing is living<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I was reminded of the value of celebration this week. Bringing friends together in the name of an occasion – five years blogging – at the outstanding <a href="http://distasio.com.au/" target="_blank">Cafe di Stasio </a>was memorable fun. I'm pretty certain that a long lunch is the definition of civility. Really. Great company, delicious food, good wine and sparkling conversation is simple confirmation that sharing is living.</div>
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Thanks to <a href="http://obus.com.au/" target="_blank">Obus</a>, <a href="http://www.marmosetfound.com.au/" target="_blank">Marmoset Found</a> and <a href="http://www.rubypilven.com/" target="_blank">Ruby Pilven</a> for their role in making the day extra special. I felt like Santa handing out gift bags with these awesome goodies. If you missed out this time, I'm planning the ten year event already. Be at the ready. If you would like a copy of the limited edition sweetpolka publication (a 24 page trip down memory lane) it can be yours for $10 + postage. Email anna@sweetpolka.com</div>
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-64858638066522466012015-08-21T19:43:00.000-07:002015-08-30T18:19:29.788-07:00The Right To Know<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This week I sat in front of 20 Preps studying Journeys and told them the story of our family's migration to Australia from Poland when I was precisely their age. I had their rapt attention. It's that kind of story, which includes our family separated across continents, my father's trip by boat to Africa, my mother's escape from Poland with four small children over the mountains in an unreliable car and our eventual reunion in Vienna before the long journey by plane to Australia. </div>
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My own background as a refugee was one of the reasons I was so glad to participate in Red Cross' exhibition, <i>The Right To Know</i>, which tells eight stories of family separation and reunion thanks to the efforts of the Red Cross Tracing Service. It's difficult not to be moved by the stories of sadness, longing and loss told so achingly concisely. </div>
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Designer Cate Hall and I worked on the project out of her backyard studio calling out measurements to each other against a background of children's voices, and Cate's large, doleful black rabbit hopping silently around the yard.</div>
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It was the beginning of winter. There was a birth – beautiful Nina in Adelaide – and the shock of Otto's diagnosis of diabetes to contend with the week the artwork was due at the printers. To be honest I was grateful for the chance to lose myself in meaningful work. I laid out photographs of Emmanuel – his warm, positive and dignified face – alongside quotes that were horrifying in their meaning. His story begins: "I was only 14 years old when my family members were killed, when I witnessed that mass killing." </div>
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Moving graphic elements around millimetre by millimetre in Illustrator and changing pixels sizes in Photoshop, I felt fate's cruel hand: good and bad fortune, historical and geographical forces. What choice do we have but to keep moving forward one foot in front of the other? </div>
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<a href="http://museumvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/whatson/the-right-to-know/" target="_blank">The Right To Know</a></div>
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Immigration Museum</div>
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400 Flinders Street, Melbourne</div>
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Until 25 October 2015</div>
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<a href="http://www.sweetpolka.com/">www.sweetpolka.com</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.catehall.com.au/">www.catehall.com.au</a></div>
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Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-91436196212414661772015-07-26T20:03:00.002-07:002015-07-26T20:03:47.643-07:00Milestones<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Can you believe it? Five years of posts. That's a milestone to celebrate and an opportunity to give thanks, dear readers, to you for checking back here for the next instalment. Come along.</div>
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-61118987391217301012015-07-10T23:25:00.001-07:002015-07-10T23:25:32.927-07:00Outline by Rachel Cusk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When people ask me how the school holidays are going I usually say, great. It's restful not doing the school run. The kids have a chance to unwind. We stay in our pyjamas until we feel like going somewhere, build lolly dispenser machines using cardboard boxes, kick the soccer ball around the backyard, head out for spring rolls on Victoria street, you know, knit together as a family. </div>
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But that's only part of the story. At this point of the holidays I am also a shadow of my former self. By former self, I mean me, two weeks ago. It's as though through the process of tending to my offspring my contours have become blurred. I exist in the service of others. The monkeys have no interest in my inner life, other than to check in with me when they become concerned or suspicious that I am "phoning it in." It's true, every now and again a powerful sense of hostility and aggression erupts inside of me about the demands of motherhood and the difficulty of securing one fricken' hour to myself during the daytime (after a solo trip to the milk bar for a can of beans I am unrecognisable like I've just returned from a month long Vipasnia retreat. Present. Radiant. Energetic. Calm). On weekends Stevie's loving gaze carries a heartbreaking amount of sympathy. But to his offers of hugs, I can only yell: Don't come near me, I'm hungry.</div>
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I think professionals call it "self-managing".</div>
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Because I need to be here, I fantasise about being there. There, being anywhere. Only a few things keep me sane on this tour of duty: a night out on the turps with friends, brisk walks in parkland's and reading fiction. I am ridiculously grateful for authors, especially good ones. (Not you Kirsty Clements of Vogue editorship fame, your novel was so lame, so tedious I read it only with the thought it might be useful one day if I write anything that requires a working knowledge of magazines and/or eating disorders). Good novels, on the other hand, are my salvation. <i>Outline</i> by Rachel Cusk was superb. Formally inventive – a series of recounted conversations – it is so insightful, elegant and provocative, that I felt genuine wonder for how it achieves both a sense of melancholy and gentle satire. The story is simple. It follows its middle aged protagonist, a recently separated professional writer as she travels to Athens to run writing workshops. The book is a moving meditation on the value and role of relationships in culture and the catastrophe of divorce, while revealing almost nothing about its narrator. It's as though she simply exists. This week, that struck a real chord. </div>
Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-17077256803603010282015-06-24T18:18:00.000-07:002015-06-25T18:08:00.677-07:00Winter Solstice<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It must be the steely grey mornings that have me longing for colour. I know Melbourne is not Siberia but I am a complete winter sook. I want to be warm, snug and within an arms reach of hot chocolate <i>at all times</i>. But I try and remind myself that winter has an upside which is an effortless introspectiveness that at other times of year, as an excitable Gemini, I have to really strive to connect with. That introspectiveness slows my thinking to just a pip above hibernation speed. I feel able to undertake slower projects, projects like weaving that demand patience and stamina. </div>
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The last time I tried my hand at weaving was 1993 in the Silesia region of Poland. Outside the manor in which I was staying smoke stacks dirtied the air (remember acid rain?). Inside its four walls I was trying to evoke a cheerier landscape. It wasn't a success. But I'm willing to have another crack at the art and craft of weaving next month and put my inexperienced hands in the hands of Victorian Tapestry Workshop founder Sara Lindsay. She'll be running a two day workshop, over consecutive Saturdays in July at <a href="http://popcraft.com.au/sara-lindsay-shaping" target="_blank">Pop craft</a>. </div>
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-4716107079307347842015-06-06T00:08:00.000-07:002015-07-15T16:56:09.105-07:00Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the early 1990s I was in my most magazine reading intensive period. This was before the internet when monthly titles actually brought news. Poorer than a church mouse I still forked out a whack of coin for my favourite, the US Harpers Bazaar. Under the editorship of the British Liz Tilberis it was truly something special. It occupied a special space in my still largely un-lived and undefined life, one that did not yet include children or a husband. I was transfixed by its imaginative fashion spreads photographed by largely up and coming photographers like Mario Sorrenti and Craig Dean featuring super (and less well known models) Naomi Campbell, Helena Christiansen, Linda Evangalista, Karmen Kass, Nadia Auermann, Claudia Schiffer, Amber Valletta, Shalom Harlow, Kate Moss and Stella Tennant. As a cultural moment I remember that five year period as being both highly romantic and grunge. The designers and fashion houses represented between its pages - editorial and advertising - were largely European: John Galliano for Givenchy and Dior, Alexander McQueen for Givenchy, Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel. In addition to them Tom Ford at Gucci and Gianni Versace were pushing a sleazy disco glamour.<br />
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Coming of age during that period, it's been interesting reading Dana Thomas' <i>Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano</i>, a book that documents the nineties and noughties in global fashion through the prism of two of its uber designers and their rise and subsequent fall (McQueen by suicide, Galliano through disgrace). Not familiar with Thomas' previous work I was persuaded by the fact that she'd written for the <i>New Yorker</i>, the benchmark for quality journalism these days (though truth be told it's closer to <i>Who Weekly</i> than that venerable magazine). Thomas details Galliano and McQueen's working class upbringings and then settles in for a detailed description of their careers, show by show. She contextualises their ascendancy alongside the growth of the luxury market. I'm guessing that was the subject of her previous book, Deluxe. I enjoyed the behind the scenes machinations of major fashion houses and developed a good appreciation of what made McQueen such as remarkable designer: precise tailoring, a sense of the macabre and an interest in working closely with collaborators – jewellers, milliners – on unique, strange accessories. Her heart belongs to him.<br />
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Of all weeks I was glad to have it beside me this week, one in which I spent three nights on a fold out armchair at the hospital beside my beautiful boy. When we were sad and overwhelmed by his diagnosis of chronic illness, or trying to stave off frightening thoughts of the future and what it would require of us – thoughts that would rouse us in the dead of night – we'd turn on the night lights and read together until the dread passed.<br />
<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-8095985780108427832015-05-14T20:34:00.000-07:002015-05-14T20:36:05.102-07:00The Story of Us<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Five years ago I was holding an infant Hazel and had a whirling dervish of a son who was crazy about Lego. I think it was Stevie who came home one day with something to show us – a blog titled <a href="http://leoslegolab.blogspot.com.au/" target="_blank">Leo’s Lego Lab</a>. It was a delightful document of creativity; Leo, aged five at the time, posted various Lego creations with the help of his mum. I remember liking this little kid, and the world captured in his blog. I felt an immediate sense of kinship with his mum. When I read that Leo had taken a break from blogging with the arrival of his little sister Hazel – who not only shared the same name but was the same age as mine – I just knew we were fated for friendship. Other than a vague sense that this crew were Melbourne based I really had nothing to go on. We continued to read Leo’s blog. Hazel learned to crawl.<br />
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At the tail end of summer we celebrated a friend’s sixth birthday in the Edinburgh Gardens. The playground was a mangle of kids when Otto found himself in a confusing disagreement with a mum about Hazel. I've got a Hazel, he said. I've got a Hazel, she replied. There were two Hazels. That mum turned out to be the tough, smart, creative and highly original <a href="http://www.craft.org.au/news/emma-greenwood-2/" target="_blank">Emma G</a>.<br />
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In the years since Otto and Leo have developed a strong friendship. The Hazel's, not so much. Emma and I have drunk our fair share of tea mostly over her kitchen table. Of all of his friends Leo's home is the one in which Otto feels most comfortable. I sometimes wonder whether Otto senses the common thread between us; a life that revolves around art, music, books and family.<br />
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Driving down Sydney Road after a play at Leo's last weekend Otto and Hazel asked me to tell them once again the story of how we came to meet Leo and his family, the one recounted here. We started at the beginning. They love to tell it, hear it and add to it. We think of it as the story of us.<br />
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Photo of my feet and Emma's shoes by Emma Byrnes. She belongs in this story too. It was her daughter's birthday that we were attending that fateful day in the Ed Gardens. <br />
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Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-47730078010051479572015-04-22T20:55:00.003-07:002015-04-22T20:55:50.612-07:00Open the door: Noah Baumbach's When We're Young<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Noah Baumbach's new feature, <i>When We're Young,</i> opens with a quote from one of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's plays from turn of the century – that would be the 20th century. It carries the age-old sentiment of a middle aged generation not understanding the one that follows it. In it the sceptic is urged to "Open the door" on the young. I was left wondering about this piece of advice after leaving the cinema. Was it a really such a good idea? Judging by the film – a wry intergenerational satire – I wasn't so sure. It starts out promisingly. Josh, a documentary filmmaker is approached by the twenty-something Jamie (<i>Girls</i>' Adam Driver) after delivering a lecture on documentary film and quickly initiates a friendship based on his admiration for Josh's rarely screened documentary. Jamie introduces Josh to his wife, the ravishing Amanda Seyfried, and along with Josh's wife, Cornelia (Naomi Watts) they become inseparable. Baumbach captures the romance of new friendships as the pairs borrow mannerisms, style tips and ideas from one another. There's no doubt Josh and Cornelia are enlivened by the relationship. It comes at a critical juncture; Cornelia is making peace with being childless as their best friend's adjust to life with a newborn. Josh is at a creative impasse after a decade working on his documentary about war and the American "system". His rough cut sits at six hours. He's not sure he can cut anything out. But what do newlyweds Jamie and Darcy get from the arrangement? While the older couple envy the young pairs energy and openness, Jamie most certainly covets Josh's ready-made life that includes a well connected film producer wife. I don't think its any kind of spoiler to say it ends in tears. Adam Driver is a terrific foil for Ben Stiller, the difference in height, already comedic. Driver brings a physical expansiveness to the role that sits well beside Stiller's contained presence. The film belongs to them. It's not simply a matter of performance. Baumbach fleshes these characters out. The climax – played out at a swanky award ceremony overlooking Manhattan – is between these two and about the nature of documentary. When it comes down to it Josh and Jamie are fundamentally different. Baumbach you feel sides with the principled Josh while making it clear that success comes to the Jamie's of this world. <i>When We're Youn</i>g finishes on a cute upbeat note. I was thankful for it but it was not enough to offset the swirl of conflicted emotions inside of me or the sense that middle age is a shit sandwich and, all things considered, I would still prefer to be young and feckless than old and weary. </div>
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-75773701701253830732015-04-06T16:31:00.000-07:002015-04-06T16:31:01.266-07:00Brent Harris: Dreamer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There's no contemporary Australian artist I admire more than Brent Harris. Is there another artist as inventive, courageous, surprising and plain well skilled? Can't think of one. Sometimes when someone has had such a consistent, prolific practice – and Harris has exhibited prodigiously for 30 years – it's difficult to know where to begin? As an artist who has worked across printmaking and painting there's a lot to account for. I'm not going to attempt it here (though keep an eye out for a forthcoming article by M Zagala – she's putting some ideas together on Harris' printmaking in long form). If Harris' current exhibition is anything to go by he is in the rare situation of being both a critical and commercial success. <br />
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<i>Dreamer</i> is a beautiful exhibition. I liked the hang that positioned Harris' small canvases close to Tolarno's gallery entry. They have a vignette-like quality, a shifting plane of figurative and abstract elements that recall the figure groupings of religious Italian Renaissance paintings by way of Turner. Harris' brush work is a riveting combination of flat scrubbed back surfaces overlaid with buttery paint strokes. But Harris' real gift to the viewer is the way in which he brings the process to the fore. There is a sense of chance, discovery and serendipity articulated in the compositions that might appear tentative but actually reflect Harris' enormous experience.<br />
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In the larger canvases whimsical faces emerge, some tiny little proto-beings, not more than graphic linear gestures animated by cartoon-like eyes. I was intrigued by the different propositions contained in single works – late 19th century landscape traditions, psychedelic colours, and the human form. In all the paintings it's the human figure – searching, fugitive – that lend these abstracted landscapes a slightly unsettling quality. In them the spectre of the unconscious hovers like an inky presence drawing together the complex spheres of the social, sexual and religious.<br />
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Brent Harris<br />
<i>Dreamer</i><br />
12 February - 4 April 2015<br />
<a href="http://www.tolarnogalleries.com/">www.tolarnogalleries.com</a><br />
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Images courtesy of Tolarno Galleries<br />
<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-79515051226227224392015-03-26T17:58:00.000-07:002015-03-26T17:58:25.488-07:00Polka dot: Habbot's Bell grey loafer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What is it about closing a definitive chapter in your work-life that sends you shoe shopping? It's got me wondering whether there is a uniquely symbolic dimension to shoes that I haven't considered until now. I cyber stalked these <a href="http://www.habbotstudios.com/all/flats/Bell_grey_loafer" target="_blank">Habbot </a>flats last week and followed it up with an in-store visit just the other day. This is the shoe crafted by an Italian artisan for an eastern suburbs housewife. The leather! Hand-hole punched detailing! The tassle! I love them.<br />
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At $390 they are way more than I like to pay for a pair of shoes. On the other hand I am in a vulnerable – or is that open – state of mind?<br />
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-79451962055105061562015-03-19T16:06:00.000-07:002015-03-19T16:06:03.727-07:00Trente Parke - The Black Rose<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last week I flew to Adelaide for the opening of the Trent Parke exhibition<i>, The Black Rose</i>, at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The exhibition, co-curated by Maria Zagala and Julie Robinson had been a topic of daily conversation between my twin and I for months, if not years. There was no way I was going to miss it. Sharing my life with two curators I’ve come to understand that every now and again – and it’s really not that often – curator and exhibition subject connect in a powerful way. I had a feeling that this was that kind of show.</div>
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A few things pointed in this direction: Trent Parke’s remarkable personal story, the project’s ambition (only seven years in the making) and the scale of the exhibition (carte blanche to the entire temporary exhibition space). In his early thirties, and newly a father, Parke’s thoughts turned to the traumatic memory of his mother’s sudden and unexpected death from an asthma attack when he was 13 years old. The exhibition charts Parke’s odyssey – an epic emotional, cosmic and vast geographical journey – undertaken with his own young family across the country and ending at his childhood home in Newcastle, NSW. Documenting birth, death, and the everyday banalities of suburban life, Parke and the exhibition curators have collated a selection of the thousands of mostly black and white photographs, in addition to multimedia and installation works, into a series of self-contained rooms that articulated the exhibitions themes.</div>
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Apart from the visual material, Parke wrote some 15,000 words to accompany the project: a diaristic collection of notes, recollections, dreams and observation, some of which appear on the walls and as part of the exhibition catalogue. These form an interesting adjunct to the visual works. The photographs, all formally exquisite and technically precise recall the documentary style of iconic mid 20<span class="s1"><sup>th</sup></span> century magazines like <i>Life</i>. (Parke is Australia’s only Magnum photographer – a difficult feat and rare honour). Parke acknowledges that he is not a writer in the short film that introduces the exhibition, and reiterates the statement in the catalogue despite identifying as a storyteller. His prose – unabashedly pulpy and overwrought – is everywhere. Parke’s widely divergent skills as a artist and writer had an interesting effect. I literally flipped between Amazing! and Terrible! every second step. The juxtaposition of very different modes – professional and amateur – added a compelling dimension to the exhibition. For Parke, this project was a total excavation. </div>
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Parke’s exhausting and exhaustive search for meaning by way of documentary, vernacular and theatrical form powerfully conveys the messy, dislocating experience of trauma. At the exhibitions end I was in awe of Parke’s capacity for risk – emotional, professional and financial. It seemed to me the definition of courage.</div>
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Trent Parke, <i>Black Butterfly</i> from The Black Rose, 2014 gelatin silver hand print 120 x 152cm</div>
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The Black Rose</div>
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Art Gallery of South Australia</div>
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14 March – 10 May 2015</div>
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-67459158016032516502015-03-05T18:29:00.000-08:002015-03-05T18:29:02.783-08:00sweetpolka website is live<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We are live! Big thanks to <a href="http://www.michelledicinoski.squarespace.com/" target="_blank">Michelle Diconoski</a> for help with words,<a href="http://www.heartlandprojects.com/" target="_blank"> Heartland Projects</a> for photography and web support and you friends for your kind encouragement in getting this off the ground.</div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-67788605155939212002015-02-22T19:26:00.000-08:002015-02-22T19:26:06.543-08:00Sketch pad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.heartlandprojects.com/homes/fdjeleo02xl98gkdqt53x1tllpzw69" target="_blank">Heartland Projects</a> whizz Emma (see my Heartland Projects love-in <a href="http://www.sweetpolka.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/i-heartland-projects.html" target="_blank">post</a>, then read <a href="http://www.heartlandprojects.com/heartlandblog/2015/2/20/sweet-polka-folio" target="_blank">Emma's</a>) is sending through shots from my folio shoot. Here's a sneak peak – a page from my sketchpad– that will make its way to my new website. That's right, mercury is no longer retrograde. Get set for some action.Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-2608760962428169152015-02-19T15:56:00.000-08:002015-02-19T15:56:08.153-08:00I ❤ heartland projects<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLclCZEKR7k6xt24UW7MRkL6AzACvS6hhPePBlRYtJFr0tTRf7ZdUn03kpCfXDeoVnMidmFHYvOghTjSN_fsK8ZCaHA44Z3WZu2Fhrl17XpRE8Gu1WYh0jXrMpPjQ3Mb5cIf1xWXwY0kl-/s1600/anna_wide01_reduced.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLclCZEKR7k6xt24UW7MRkL6AzACvS6hhPePBlRYtJFr0tTRf7ZdUn03kpCfXDeoVnMidmFHYvOghTjSN_fsK8ZCaHA44Z3WZu2Fhrl17XpRE8Gu1WYh0jXrMpPjQ3Mb5cIf1xWXwY0kl-/s1600/anna_wide01_reduced.jpeg" height="425" width="640" /></a></div>
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This week I've been going through the process of having my folio documented by <a href="http://www.heartlandprojects.com/" target="_blank">Heartland Projects </a>lead creative Emma Byrnes. This lady is amazing. I have always loved working on projects in collaboration – that's essentially why I am a designer – but once the project is at its completion, even if I am very happy with the outcome I'm usually left experiencing a little mort. Some light switches off inside of me. Good night. Documenting my folio has been on the top of my to-do list for a thousand years. I watch it get booted to the bottom of my list every other week. I blame it on a lack of time but really the thought of getting my work out for a camera lens has filled me with a weird, pathetic dread. On the other side, I'm here to report it wasn't that terrible. In fact, I was able to enter into that exciting, productive zone where creativity finds expression. Emma did more than document the work. She interpreted the genre with a sense of fun. For that and for Emma I am super grateful. </div>
<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948224890683153588.post-53491688950387442202015-02-02T01:01:00.000-08:002015-02-02T01:01:08.981-08:00sweetpolka - doodlings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Anna Zagalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17987103450890125917noreply@blogger.com0