Vale Harry Wedge

Harold James (HJ) Wedge
Artist
1957-2012

Photograph © Greg Weight, 1993
Courtesy the artist and National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

Vale Ruby

Ruby Langford Ginibi 
Writer and academic
(26 January 1934 – 1 October 2011

Vale, Ian Abdulla

Ian Abdulla
Painter
1947-2011

Vale Makinti Napanangka

Makinti Napanangka
Painter
c1925 - 2011

AUS/NETHERLANDS: The Namatjira Project - 2011

The Namatjira Project has announced preliminary dates and venues for its 2011 tour - see below.
If you didn't catch this during its all too brief Belvoir St (Sydney) season, book now!
International Community Arts Fesitval, Rotterdam, Holland.
30th March - 4th April
Creative development and showing in the Pilbara, WA.
18th July - 30th July

Melbourne season (announcing soon!)
10th August - 28th August

Drum Theatre at Dandenong Town Hall, Dandenong, VIC.
1 September - 4th September

Geelong Performing Arts Centre, Geelong, Victoria.
8th September - 10 September

Canberra Theatre Centre, Canberra, ACT.
14 September - 17th September

Illawarra Performing Arts Centre, Wollongong, NSW.
21 September - 24th September

Big hART and the Namatjira Project continues to nuture a close relationship with the Namatjira family, and will continue to work with them both in Alice Springs and on tour. For more info: hhttp://www.namatjira.bighart.org/

See our blog item from earlier this year: http://leflaneurblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/sydney-big-harts-namatjira.html

Vale Roberta

Roberta 'Bobbi' Sykes 
Writer and activist
1943 – 2010

Sydney: Big hART’s 'Namatjira'

Namatjira 

Upstairs Theatre at Belvoir Street 

until November 7

www.belvoir.com.au


This piece of 'community theatre', about the early 20th century Aboriginal painter Albert Namatjira, transcends the genre, delivering an intimate spectacle with heart, soul, humour and profundity in equal measure. It's effectively a 2-hander and Trevor Jamieson and Derek Wyatt are both compelling in their multiple roles. See it if you can. The Sydney season is nearly sold out but an extension and wider tour is likely.


More about the project:
http://www.namatjira.bighart.org


Flickr photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/namatjiraproject/5092303482/


Pictured: Trevor Jamieson
Courtesy Belvoir St Theatre

Vale, Ruby

     Ruby Hunter 1955 – 2010

Sydney: Clinton Nain

Clinton Nain
re-dress
GRANTPIRRIE GALLERY, Redfern
until 19 September 2009

Left: © Clinton Nain Pay 5, 2009, Acrylic and bitumen on canvas

This exhibition closes on Saturday, Nain's first Sydney show for 2 years. It has slipped under Sydney's art radar somewhat, possibly because it doesn't feature his better known motifs of weeping hearts, mission dresses and potholed roads. One of Nain's great strengths as a painter is that he is constantly exploring new expressions of his familiar themes, and refuses to just keep doing what has sold well in the past, which must be tempting, especially with his work of the last decade doing well in the secondary market.

To those that are familar with the artist's many themes, this exhibition is an exciting progression from his explorations of written language seen in his shows AEIOU (2006), and Resistance to Resilience (2008) at Nellie Castan Gallery in Melbourne. Bitumen and white acrylic on canvas are the media, and here scrawled and iterated words have decayed and merged to the point abstraction. The impact of the whole room hung with these works is quite extraordinary - go see.

Samson and Delilah

Samson and Delilah
Australia, 2009
101 minutes
Director, Screenplay, Cinematography: Warwick Thornton

Winner, Caméra d'or 2009
Festival de Cannes 2009, Un Certain Regard

There are some films where it’s no consolation telling yourself “It’s just a movie”, because you know that they reveal an appalling truth, irrespective of the fact that these are actors playing parts. The Australian film Samson and Delilah, whose director Warwick Thornton took out the Camera D’Or for best first feature, is one such film.

From the first frames we seem to inhabit the skin of these Indigenous teenagers, and Thornton’s unflinching depiction of their physical and emotional world is all the more powerful for the almost total lack of dialogue between them – early on we surmise that Samson (Rowan McNamara) has speech problems and may be partially deaf – it is never spelled out, but would explain certain incidents. He only utters one word in the entire film (his name), and Delilah (Marissa Gibson) only really speaks to her aged grandmother, charismatically played by Mitjili Gibson.

I found the film quite harrowing, which is no doubt the desired effect, but I didn’t expect to be so completely absorbed into the world of these youngsters. The moment when Samson, having ‘lost’ Delilah for the second time, covers his head in a blanket and begins to quietly keen with grief, is a moment of utter human despair, and we feel ourselves there with him, in his haze of petrol fumes and hopelessness and loss. Thornton’s close-up photography and extraordinarily subtle direction of his two young principals, whose faces express what no dialogue could, conveys an almost unbearable tenderness, even as we recoil in horror at their plight.

Yet when the protagonists are in the ‘big town’ trying to get food and money to survive, Thornton skillfully distances his audience, turning us into uncaring supermarket workers, indifferent café dwellers, an arrogant gallerist, a suspicious priest (in a church with a black Madonna and Christ-child, a nice touch). Suddenly we see the characters we have been empathising with, through other eyes - as dangerous-looking Aboriginal kids, trouble best avoided. Thornton makes us ask the questions: Are we these cold-hearted people? The next time we see a brutalised Aboriginal youngster will we try to imagine how it came about? Or try to help?

This is skilful and potent film-making, and a towering achievement for a first-time director, but especially for one dealing with a subject many Australians would prefer not to think about. And there is truthfulness too in an, if not happy, then at least hopeful ending. It is not about being saved, but saving yourself, and love is probably all we’ve got.

Go see if you haven't already.

Half Light at AGNSW

Half Light
Portraits from Black Australia
until 22 February 2009
Rudy Komon gallery, Upper Level



Above: Destiny Deacon Where's Mickey? 2003 light jet print from Polaroid. Private collection, Sydney © Destiny Deacon. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney.

LF joined the benefactors, pre-Xmas bash, for a viewing and talk by curator Hettie Perkins. Many of the artists were there, and La Perkins let them do the talking, which worked well for the most part. Richard Bell gave a fine harangue, to broad Aboriginal grins and a few rather fixed smiles from the white folks present, but it was all good clean fun – very much a family affair.

This all-photography show is solid, if unsurprising – much of it is well-known and has been exhibited many times before. LF's standout was Tony Albert's 'Polaroid' series (actually hi-res digital we think), and of course the late Michael Riley's studio portraits, seen not long ago in the 'Sights Unseen' retrospective. Tracey Moffatt is notably absent as an artist, which is a pity, but everyone else is there, so it's a useful catch-up survey all told.