2017

2017

community

31 December

Parramatta Park New Year’s Eve Fireworks

19 December

An afternoon around Sutherland

CAPTAIN COOKS LANDING PLACE  Kurnell area in Kamay Botany Bay National Park

In 1769, King George III commissioned the Endeavour to sail from Portsmouth to the Southern Hemisphere to observe the spectacular sight of Venus passing between the earth and the sun and did a large land mass exist in the southern seas.  On April 29, 1770, after a failed attempt at landing the previous day they found a sheltered bay, Botany Bay. Two boatloads of about 30 men, including Cook, Bans and Tupia whet ashore.  The aborigines of Botany Bay are know as Dharawal people.

There are two headlands which make up Botany Bay National Park, the northern side, La Perouse and the southern side, Kurnell.  Captain Cook’s landing place was set aside as an area of public recreation in 1899.  The park was proclaimed an historic site in 1967 and with Bare Island and La Perouse was included as part of Botany Bay Nation Park in 1988.  Today, the park consists of 436 hectares of coastal cliffs, woodland, beaches and picnic areas.

Kurnell area is at the southern headland ofKamay Botany Bay National Park,near Cronulla. Go whale watching or explore some of NSW’s most significant heritage sites — and see why Kurnell Peninsula headland was included in the National Heritage List in 2004.

Aboriginal sites in the park include rock engravings, burial sites and areas that show evidence of occupational activity, such as axe-grinding grooves on rocks.

• Discovery Visitors’ Centre and Museum
• Two km return  Commemorative track alone the foreshore running past the obelisk making the landing spot
• Burrawang Walk
• Banks-Solander Track through stunning bushland
• Cape Solander cliff line, wide variety of plant species that Banks and Solander documented
• Captain Cook’s Landing Place
• Guru and Yena Tracks

HAZELHURST GALLERY

Art Rules.  My picks were Anthony Pham’s lino prints and Benjamin Clay’s photo media

This year’s Art Rules exhibition presents the talents of 21 young local artists who will showcase their work in this annual exhibition of HSC art, using their work to tackle the contemporary social and political issues of refugees, gender inequality, environmental destruction, religion, extinction, cultural determinism and dyslexia.  Art Rules features works from schools in the Sutherland Shire and St George areas.

Claire Schanzer, from St George Christian School, in her drawing What She Could Be2017 explores the tension between an imagined and realistic life for Mona, a 5 year old Syrian refugee. With the current political climate, wars continue to leave families homeless and searching for a safe and secure place for refuge. All potential for a hopeful and joyful life is torn down, when their cries for help are ignored by individuals and governments together. The dichotomy between the limitless potential of an Australian born child’s life and the darker reality for a child refugee is symbolised through the contrastingly coloured and monochrome palettes. This work brings to light the largely overlooked and forgotten impact asylum rejection has upon individuals, the refugee’s childhoods and futures of refugee generations to come.

Anthony Pham from Sydney Technical High School also tackles issues of refugees in his work The Journey2017, which conveys the long, tiring journey of his father from Vietnam to Australia by boat. His personal experiences and emotions are packed into a set of lino prints, each depicting one of many significant events that defined his journey. Anthony had no idea of what his father went through until he simply just asked. Then and there his father recounted everything, from leaving the docks of his hometown Long Xuyên to being rejected by the government from going to France. Anthony has written a sentence on each print briefly describing the event based on his father’s journey. Any refugee or any hard-working person who works tirelessly for a new and better life can relate to these experiences and hardships.

Claudia Taylor from St Patrick’s College Sutherland confronts gender inequality in her workA bit awkward – a glass ceiling2017. Claudia explores the “glass ceiling effect” that exists within modern society, by drawing various figures who are significant to her, and have been subject to inequality due to gender imbalance. The pressing nature of glass has been used to symbolise a ‘physical barrier’ which restricts women from excelling within the workplace. “A girl’s confidence plummets during puberty”. By drawing the youngest character free from physical restriction, she endeavours to emphasise the power of innocence, removing a sense of insecurity that is present for mature women.

Benjamin Clay fro Kirrawee High School ‘The Decisive Moment’ photo media stood out for me.

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organisation of forms, which give that event its proper expression.” Henri Cartier-Bresson (Author of ‘The Decisive Moment’)

My practice acts to explore the facets of transitory forms within physical and fractured, occupied and unoccupied space.  Through photography, I am to arrest this ephemerality and present it in my work.  By contrasting the architectural permanence of space with the fleeting femininity exuded in the figure’s expressive potential, both continuity and tension are created within the picture.

PLAY ON:  The Art of Sport.

One of Australia’s richest and most prestigious art awards, the Basil Sellers Art Prize has inspired innovative and complex explorations of sport from a rollcall of Australia’s most accomplished artists.  The exhibition includes painting, sculpture, video, drawing and mixed-media installation by prominent Australia artists from diverse cultural backgrounds. Individual works in the exhibition engage with gymnastics, running, community sport, ground-keeping, AFL, race relations and the representation of women in sport.
Play On offers a unique opportunity to bring art and sport lovers together, engage with new audiences and present additional public programs with local sports clubs, personalities, athletes and fans.Includes work by Tony Albert, Richard Bell, Lauren Brincat, Jon Campbell, Daniel Crooks, Tarryn Gill & Pilar Mata Dupont, Shaun Gladwell, Josie Kunoth Petyarre and Dinni Kunoth Kemarre, Richard Lewer, Fiona McMonagle, Kerrie Poliness, Khaled Sabsabi, Gabrielle de Vietri, Gerry Wedd.A NETS Victoria and Ian Potter Museum of Art touring exhibition.

Peace Park and Chuo City Garden – Sutherland

Chuo City Garden was established in 1993 to commemorate the Sister City relationship between Chuo City, Tokyo, Japan and the Shire of Sutherland. Plaques were unveiled in the garden in 2002 and 2006 to commemorate the 10th and 15th anniversaries of the Sister City relationship.

10 December

Save Sydney Park camp tree planting and bar-b-que celebration.

9 December

A beautiful summer evening at Strathfield park for Strathfield Christmas Carols including Strathfield Symphony Orchestra and St Martha’s Primary School String Ensemble and Choir, the snow making machines and balloons creating lots of fun and laughter followed by the screening of How the Grinch Stole Christmas and fireworks to finish the evening.

3 December

City of Sydney, The Lord Mayor’s Christmas Reception

30 November

Industry Night DCE

16 November

Lantern making at Save Sydney Park Camp.

1 November

SYDNEY ACM SIGGRAPH

A Creative Flight plan……and how 99% of the time we’re off course

Speaker: Paul Butterworth, VFx Supervisor – Director

Paul is going to finish up the Sydney ACM SIGGRAPH events for 2017 with a talk about projects, research, and planning. You’re probably very familiar with his work on Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Allegiant, Insurgent, Iron Man Three, Prometheus, and so many others. He’s an engaging and entertaining speaker, you should come listen to him talk and look at his pictures.

Start VR had the 360º and VR display.

Float above the exhibition or view the sculptures from the perspective of a little cat or a massive giant.  Sculpture by the Sea and Start VR have collaborated to create an interactive VR experience that offers Users an entirely new way of seeing the exhibition.  Using 360° videos & photogrammetry this on-site VR experience highlights Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2017

“We are a full service studio who craft stunningly immersive VR content. Our specialised 360º storytellers, technologists, artists and film-makers are at the frontier of user experience.”

28 October

The Strathfield Food and Jazz Festival is on this Saturday! Get your tastebuds at the ready for an overload of delicious food from cultures across the world including Malaysian, Korean, Turkish and more!

–    Live cooking demos by MasterChefs Julie Goodwin and Diana Chan!
–    Kids entertainer Gaston Soufflé
–    Vibrant jazz with Gang of Brothers and Sydney Jazz Collective
–    Kids cooking classes with the Colourful Chef from Foost
–    International food stalls

27 October

BUSHWHACKERS  –  Big Family Bushdance at Addison Road Centre Marrickville.

17 October

OPERATION ART  Newington Armory Wharf and Gallery

Operation Art is the premier state-wide visual arts exhibition for school students from Kindergarten to Year 10.  With almost 800 artworks by students from throughout NSW, this year’s exhibition offers Armory Gallery visitors a great opportunity to celebrate the creative talents of our young people at our unique riverside setting.

16 October

AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM:  Nature Photographer of the Year

Witness Australasian nature at its most dramatic, graceful and unexpected with this stunning collection of breathtaking photographs that showcase the exceptional talent of our region.  See over 100 images presented in large format, accompanied by information in English and Chinese that unveil spectacular moments in nature.

All the photography was amazing, some photographers that I particularly enjoyed were Stuart Blackwell, Andrew Peacock, Chris Firth, Georgina Settler, Charles Davis, Julie Fletcher, Karen Willshaw, Justin Gilligan and Robert Irwin.

12 Stunning 2017 Nature Photographer of the Year Finalist Photos.  Every year the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year competition presents incredible perspectives on natural landscapes, animals and our effect upon them. 2017 is no different, with a huge range of fascinating nature photography to take in. Enjoy this selection of 12 finalist photos from the competition, courtesy of the South Australian Museum.

KOREAN CULTURAL CENTRE:  ‘Dissolve, Inspiration by Korea’

Past Exhibitions

The Korean Cultural Centre Australia (KCC) presents a specially-curated exhibition ‘Dissolve, Inspiration by Korea’ featuring five Australian artists who have been inspired by Korean art and culture. This exhibition aims to provide an opportunity to introduce the artists’ artworks which were inspired from their own personal experiences of Korea. It also investigates the multifaceted nature if cultural exchange to reveal the meaning of being Korean through the perspectives of non-Koreans. Hence, through the exhibition, the specific intimate connection that exists between interpretations and crossovers of culture is exposed. Developed by the KCC, ‘Dissolve, Inspiration by Korea’ comprises of about 30 works including painting, fibre, textile and Hanji (Traditional Korean paper) crafts by Yvonne Boag, Jan Coveney, Catherine O’Leary, Marianne Penberthy and Maryanne Wick.

It is impossible to define the culture of a nation into a single word. Particularly, objectively looking into one’s culture to accentuate its appeal is undoubtedly a strenuous task. In a sense, these new form of artworks created by an artist from another culture enables you to understand Korea and Korean culture. Furthermore, it is a rare opportunity to deepen the understanding of another culture.

Yvonne BoagScottish-born printmaker, painter and sculptor. In 1977 she graduated from the South Australian School of Art with a Diploma of Fine Art (Printmaking). She has been a resident in print workshops in Scotland and France as well as being Australia’s first artist-in-residence in Korea.

Korean painting freed me from the constraints of my education in the western tradition of Art.  I had lived in Framce for a few years before I first visited South Korea.   My impression of Korea when I arrived from Paris was of colour and energy and a freedom from the awareness of the heavy tradition or weight I carried from my western roots.   I could see an learn with new eyes.

Colour was celebration of beauty, colour had meaning and direction.   Colour was not used just as a way of depicting a real scene, it was an expression of time, place or direction, symbolic in it’s use in Shamanist traditions and in the traditional clothing worn by the people.

Korea also related me from the overwhelming predominance of thick oil paint used by most artists in Australia, a feeling that any painting of value must be thick and expressionistic.  The use of Korean water paint and ink proved to me the power of simplicity and less.

Jan Coveney She lives in Adelaide, South Australia and has studied the crat under several different Hanji artists in Korea and she has taught Hanji for the last 10 years. As very little is known about this craft outside of Korea, she’s currently writing a book on it in English.

Everyone in life needs a passion and my passion is Hanji.  There’s something about the paper being so tactile and foldable that is alluring and being able to make beautifully practical, everyday objects is extremely satisfying in this, everything looks the same, throwaway world.

Hang is the Korean word for paper and is also the word used to describe the craft of making objects out of cardboard and covering them with the paper.   There are two and three-dimensional forms of Hanji but I work mainly in the three dimensional field.  ‘Han’ refers to the Korean people and ‘ji’ means paper.  It’s a paper made from the bark of the mulberry trees ‘dar’ and has been made as far back as the Three Kingdoms period around 130AD.

My inspirations come from various forms of Korean history, from my time spent in Korea an the sights and experiences I had there as well as symbolisms so close to the Korean culture.  In the last few years I’ve been branching out and incorporating some of my photography into my pieces as well as using Hanji techniques to create more modern designs that appeal to the western world.

Each piece I make is very time consuming but it represents a part of my Hanji journey.  My extensive travelling over the last 15 years has influenced that journey and I’m learning something new everyday, the more I do the more I get out of it.

Because little is known about this craft outside of Korea and even less is written about it in English, I’ve had to make many adjustments to allow me to continue doing Hanji.  Not everything I’ve needed has been available in the countries I’ve called home but with a lot of determination I’ve been able to source most of the products either locally or online which has allowed me to continue my craft.

Creating a teaching Hanji means everything to me.  I’ve had a longtime passion and determination to do what I love best, no matter what the obstacles that have arisen, and there have been many.   My ongoing goals are firstly, to support other English speakers who have learnt this craft and who would like to continue doing it outside of Korea an secondly to spread the word about the beauty of Hanji in the English speaking world.

Catherine O’Leary  She lives in Melbourne who works primarily in the Textile Arts. With a formal training in Fine Arts, her portfolio spans thirty years. She is inspired by the simple, clean lines of the Korean aesthetic.

My first contact with Korea came when I was invited to have an exhibition of her felt artwork in 2008.  I returned the next year with a follow up exhibition at Gana Gallery and also held a workshop in Seoul.  Other exhibitions in South Korea included; 5 Australian Artists exhibition in Heyri Artists Village and being included in two Bojagi Biennale touring exhibitions

I was introduced to the tradition of Bojagi by the artist and curator Chunghie Lee.  Bojagi is a traditional folk art which originated from the need for fabric to store or to wrap things.  It embodies craftsmanship with historic traditions.  There is a potential for Bojagi to be developed into a fine art form.

The techniques of piecing fabric together and making a feature of the exposed seams identifies the unique structure of Bojagi. In my work, this structure allows light to filter through and the functions between the seams create their own patterns.  I am inspired by the simple, clean lines of the Korean aesthetic.

Art is a powerful way to connect people regardless of age or nationality.  We are coming together as a unique community showcasing the ties between our countries.

Marianne Penberthy  Sheis an established West Australian fibre and textile artist based in Geraldton, Western Australia. She studied Art and Design at Durack College Geraldton and Edith Cowan University in Perth where she obtained a BA (Visual Arts) in 1995. In 2014, at the invitation of the Korean Bojagi Forum, she showed new works in a solo exhibition on Jeju Island South Korea, a project funded by the WA Department of Culture & Arts and the City of Greater Geraldton.

My introduction to Korean Bojagi came in 2002 when I visited a travelling Bojagi and Beyond exhibition at the Geraldton regional Art Gallery in Western Australia.   This exhibition was the result of one of the first workshops in Australia about Korean Bojagi conducted by textile artist and educator Professor Chunghie Lee.  These textiles works in this exhibition had a lasting and haunting influence on my art practice.

What inspires me about Bojagi is the transforming use of the remnant and the value placed on scraps of cloth by the Korean makers of Bojagi.  The strength of the joint seams grids, the abstract quality of the patchwork cloth and the concept of wrapping something precious in a carefully constructed cloth all resonated with me.   Thoughts about wrapping a memory, a place of something precious in cloth or paper filtered down into my work.

The referencing of women’s work through textile construction carried this inspiration.  In 2013 I received a grant from the Western Australian Department of Culture & Arts.   This grant application was directed towards the development of new work influenced by Asian textile traditions including Korean Bojagi and shibori.  With the assistance of this grant I was able to change the traditional approach that had been driving my work with cloth.  I chose to create new works outside these traditions and more in alignment with my West Australian art practice.   I chose to do this in isolated bushy locations where I spend long periods of time in winter.   The work evolved as an implied memory of cloth, rather than actual cloth.  I sifted baking flour directly over lace remnants onto the red dirt, removing the cloth to reveal the cloths’s mark or memory.  The act of sifting flour over lace onto the ground surface referenced wormed’w work.   Historically wheat and flour is associated with the colonisation and early development of Australia.  This is important to me.  Working in isolated bush locations helps me to connect with place, history and the land on which I work.

In 2014 and 2016 Professor Chunghie Lee invited me to present my work at The Korean Bojagi Forums in Jeju Island and Seoul respectively.  These Forums supported contemporary interpretations of Korean Bojagi.  It is apparent that inspiration has been drawn from Korean Bojagi traditions by textile artists from around the world.

The cultural exchange through textiles and the Korean Bojagi Forums offered me an opportunity to experience the diversity of another country its culture and to develop new friendships.  The Forums gave voice to new ideas, concepts, skills, and approaches to art making and importantly the opportunity to be part of an ever expanding international contemporary fibre arts ………………Australia and beyond.

Maryanne Wick  She is a lecturer in painting and drawing at the National Art School in Sydney, from where she graduated in 2001 with a BFA (in Painting). The five years spent living and working in North Asia, primarily in South Korea and China, was invaluable to her development as an artist.

‘My still life paintings about Korea are conceptual.  They depict hand-made ceramic pottery and local objects in a fragile estate of being.  Rather than focus entirely on the composition and the objects themselves, I look toward the environment, my surrounds and the society in which I live to create my paintings’. (Maryanne Wick, Seoul, 2003).

I started travelling to Korea in 1999.  At that time, a friend and colleague invited me to the home of Korean ceramicist and potter Jong-neung Lee, known by this artist name Jisan.  Jason collected pure water from the stream next to his house and made us lunch from his garden.  We ate and drank from his exquisite hand-made bowls and talked about Korea, its art and tradition.  This meeting was significant to my painting still life compositions about Korea.

After graduating from the National Art School in 2001, I went back to Korea to begin my practice as a full-time artist.   The tree small paintings ‘Tilt (Soju Cups)’ (2002) ‘Equilibrium’ (220) and ‘Kumgangsan’ (2203) were painted in Seoul.  They formed part of a large series of still life works exhibited in Seoul and Sydney.

Returning to Australia in 2006, I continued painting still life composition based on a ‘sense of place’.  The three compositions ‘Still Life in Celadon I’ (2010), ‘Still Life in Celadon II’ (2010) and ‘Still Life in Celadon (Memories of Invading)’ (2010) again depict hand-made ceramics from Korea.  Focusing on the environment, local colour and light (which is quite different to the northern hemisphere) each painting aims to reflect my natural surroundings an memories of Korea.

‘Still Life Undisturbed’ (2015) and ‘Still Life After “The Owl and the Pussycat”‘ (2016) depict my collection of Korean and Australian ceramics, various objects and ‘gifts’ from nature.  In more recent years, lizards and birds have found their way into my paintings.   Nature is a strong influence on my still life painting, together with the use of symbolism, shadow-play and narrative derived from traditional Asian art and, specifically, traditional Korean art.

On reflection, the title of this exhibition ‘Dissolve, Inspiration by Korea’ accurately reflects my Australian heritage and acquired Korean sensibilities.  It captures the merging of two unique countries, cultures and art that have impacted, quite significantly, my life and art.

11 October 

In The Works is a new film screening event at Event Cinemas George Street where WIFT members can preview their work-in-progress films on a cinema screen and in front of a live audience.

The aim of the night is for the filmmaker/member to gain insightful audience feedback to assist in the project’s next edit.

Our debut feature preview is The 33rd Wedding directed by Jed Malone.

8 October

WHITE RABBIT GALLERY Ritual Spirit

http://theupsider.com.au/first-look-ritual-spirit-opens-white-rabbit-gallery/2396

Chinese art was once regarded as a gift from the gods. Artists were conduits between earth and heaven; their aim was not just to capture the beauty of nature but to convey its vital “breath”. Many were recluses or monks, for whom painting and calligraphy were spiritual exercises. But that was long ago, in a China where the “three teachings” of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism suffused every aspect of life.

China today is a different country, where the official “religion” is atheism and most people are too busy making a living to spare much thought for their soul. But interest in spirituality is growing, as is the freedom to pursue it. For some contemporary artists, faith fills a personal need. “I grew up without religion,” says Tianzhuo Chen, a Buddhist. “I think that is one of the reasons I have this longing to believe.” Even for atheists or sceptics, the symbols of religion tap into deep wells of cultural memory and human meaning.

“Art is not like science,” says Gade. “It is concerned with the soul, the spiritual world.” Ni Youyu is not religious, but he thinks “a good artwork should have a sense of the divine”; otherwise, “it is just a pile of paint”. Zheng Guogu believes ideas and imagery from Tibetan Buddhism give “a new dimension” to his work. Other artists put religious symbols in outrageously secular contexts to mock the modern gods of money, power and pleasure.

The artists in Ritual Spirit do not seek to raise man into heaven. But all are trying, in one sense or another, to bring the gods down to earth.

Among the highlights:

• Ishvara, Tianzhuo Chen’s over-the-top operatic rave inspired by the Bhagavad Gita
• Mr Sea, by Geng Xue (pictured), in which exquisite porcelain figures act out a classic tale of the supernatural
• God Comes Down to Earth, Chen Yu-Lin’s dramatic images of religious festivals in Taiwan
• Scripting, a high-tech ode to hidden harmonies by Luxury Logico
• Joss, a firecracker of a video on material and spiritual values in the consumer age by Cheng Ran and Item Idem
• Ni Youyu’s Dust(Thomas Ruff: 16h 30m/ -50°), a “photograph” of interstellar space made with chalk on a blackboard.

4 October

SYDNEY ACM SIGGRAPH  #MEETMIKE

 Speaker: Mike Seymour, fxGuide.  Come and see Mike Seymour talk about the presentation he gave @ SIGGRAPH 2017 in Los Angeles earlier this year.

Producing a digital human in CG has been the ‘Manhattan’ project of computer graphics, it is both extremely difficult and has wide ranging implications both commercially and ethically. Digital Actors, Agents and Avatars are all very hot topics, but what few in the industry anticipated is how rapidly this would move from the issue of rendering a high quality human, to being able to do so in real time. Come and see MEETMIKE at ACM Siggraph ANZgraph were Mike Seymour will explain the project first shown that SIGGRAPH 2017 in LA that aimed to not only produce a realistic human but to do so at 90 frames a second in stereo in VR. Beyond realtime at even 30 fps (30 milliseconds), this International team has to render each frame in just 9 Miliseconds. To produce such fast results, the team deployed Deep Learning AI for a markerless facial tracker and solver, and used a custom build of Epic Games UE4. 

In this worldwide first, each day of the SIGGRAPH show digital Mike met digital versions of industry legends and leading researchers from around the world. People such as Dr Paul Debevec, Tim Sweeney, Oscar Winners Ben Grossman (Magnopus) and Wayne Stables (Weta) and leading researchers from places such as PIXAR’s Christophe Hery, Glenn Derry (Fox).
Together they met and conducted interviews in “Sydney” via virtual reality which was watched either in VR or on a giant screen. 

This project is a key part of a new research project into virtual humans as Actors, Agents and Avatars. The ANZGraph session will provide valuable data and insights for taking digital humans research to the next level, and share lessons learnt from the collaboration of R&D teams from around the world. MEET MIKE researchers span four continents, three universities and six companies including Epic Games, 3Lateral, Cubic Motion, Loom.ai and the Wikihuman global research project. The project aimed to explore best of class scanning, rigging and real-time rendering. Please note that this project aims to give away nearly all the data for non-commercial use and is a non-profit research effort.
(As featured on ABC TV’s Catalyst program).

Behind the scenes of #MeetMike  fxphd

25 September

ACMI

Code Breakers:  WOMEN in GAMES Did you know that almost 50% of gamers are women? Maybe, but how much do you know about the integral role that women have played shaping gaming? Though they still comprise less than 10% of the industry, the contribution of women is enormous.

Screen Worlds:  Bringing together rare footage, fascinating objects and interactive displays, Screen Worldstakes you through a journey that examines the past, present and future of screen mediums and digital culture.

NATIONAL GALLERY VICTORIA  HOKUSAI Exhibition

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/JP1847/

Katsushika Hokusai is regarded as one of the most influential and creative minds in the history of Japanese art. His unique social observations, innovative approach to design and mastery of the brush made him famous in Edo-period Japan and globally recognised within a decade of his death.

The self-described ‘Old man mad about drawing’ was known by at least thirty names during his lifetime and was renowned for his unconventional behaviour. Despite his fame, Hokusai never attained financial success and his years of greatest artistic production were spent in poverty. He travelled and moved his resting place and studio regularly, finding inspiration for his unique style through close observations of nature and interactions with ordinary people.

In 1909 the NGV purchased five works from Hokusai’s iconic Thirty-six Views of Mt Fujiseries, including his most celebrated image The great wave off Kanagawa (The great wave), 1830–34; two works from his A Tour to the Waterfalls in Various Provincesseries; and four other major works. These astute acquisitions established a legacy of Japanese art in Australia that has now extended for more than one hundred years.

http://www.japaneseprints-london.com/7441/katsushika-hokusai-1760-1849-landscapes-313/

Hokusai features 176 works from the Japan Ukiyo-e Museum, Matsumoto, and the NGV Collection that encompass the artist’s remarkable seventy-year career. For the first time in Australia, seven of Hokusai’s major series, including Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji, 1830–34; A Tour to the Waterfalls in Various Provinces, c. 1832; Remarkable Views of Bridges in Various Provinces, c. 1834; Eight Views of the Ryūkyū Islands; and One Hundred Ghost Stories, c. 1831, are on display, as well as selected works representing his great passion for the classical subjects of birds and flowers and historical poetry. A selection of rare prints and paintings that show the stylistic and thematic changes of Hokusai’s formative years, as well as three sets of illustrated books that highlight the artist’s masterful and compositionally innovative book illustrations, including the complete set of fifteen volumes of Hokusai Manga, complete this comprehensive insight into the life and times of this major figure.

EARLY to  MATURE 1782-1831

HOKUSAI MANGA 1814-78

THIRTY-SIX VIEWS of MT FUJI 1830-34

ONE HUNDRED GHOST STORIES 1831

A TOUR TO THE WATERFALLS in VARIOUS PROVINCES 1832

EIGHT VIEWS of the RYŪKYŪ ISLANDS 1832

SNOW, MOON and FLOWERS 1833

A TRUE MIRROR of CHINESE and JAPANESE POETRY 1833-34

BIRDS and FLOWERS 1833-34

REMARKABLE VIEWS of BRIDGES 1834

ONE HUNDRED POEMS EXPLAINED by the NURSE 1835-36

ONE HUNDRED VIEWS of MT FUJI 1834, 1835, 1839

The LIFE of SHAKYAMUNI 1845

21 September

MCCLELLAND SCULPTURE PARK & GALLERY McClelland has a long tradition of innovation and success. Its entrepreneurial spirit in the last decade has doubled the size of the Sculpture Park to 16 hectares, more than trebled the attendance to over 130,000 visitors annually, acquired significant works and forged public/private partnerships to consolidate its role as an artistic hub and the focus for cultural tourism in the Frankston & Mornington Peninsula regions.

STEPHEN HALEY:  Out of Place

Working in painting and digital media, Stephen Haley uses 3D modelling software to explore the virtual and actual environments of contemporary experience. Where once we inhabited particular and unique places, these are increasingly replaced by generic constructed space. Haley transforms seemingly unremarkable urban surroundings into complex spatial and visual phenomena, to highlight the current conditions of rapid urbanisation, digital evolution and environmental degradation. This exhibition features a selection of Haley’s recent constructed photographs and video work, including vast aerial vistas of metropolitan spaces and driving simulations.

https://www.visitfrankston.com/whats-on/event/745663-tina-wentcher-sculptor-mcclelland-gallery

TINA HAIM- WENTSCHER Sculptor 1887-1974

This exhibition celebrates the life and art of Tina Wentcher, a somewhat overlooked figure in Australian sculpture whose works elegantly unite Eastern and Western aesthetic influences. The artist was born in 1887 in Constantinople and established herself as a significant sculptor in Berlin, before travelling extensively with her husband Julius throughout South East Asia. Here they produced numerous sculptures and paintings, including portraits of the local people and landscapes. After fleeing conflicts in Europe and Asia, the Wentchers arrived in Australia in 1940 and continued to produce work that brought together varied cultural and aesthetic influences. After several years of research, renowned curator Ken Scarlett OAM has traced Wentcher’s sculptures in Germany, Greece, China, Singapore, North America and Australia, with this reseacrh and key loans to be presented with McClelland’s representative collection of works by the artist.

19 September 

Arthurs Seat Mornington Peninsula, Gondolaand lunch atArthurs Hotel 

17 September

Port Phillip Estate Winery and Accommodation, Mornington Peninsula with a carpark full of McLaren cars.

5 September

DAVID JONES SPRING FLOWER SHOW

The annual David Jones Flower Show at the Elizabeth Street Store in Sydney is in its 32nd year. 30 specialist florists have spent over 10,000 hours and used 150,000 fresh flowers to design this year’s show. It is the largest public event for David Jones and runs daily from 31^stAugust 2017 to 10^thSeptember 2017.

ART GALLERY of NEW SOUTH WALES

ARCHIBALD, WYNNE and SULMAN PRIZES 2017

The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes is an annual exhibition eagerly anticipated by artists and audiences alike, first awarded in 1921, is Australia’s favourite art award, and one of its most prestigious. Awarded to the best portrait painting, it’s a who’s who of Australian culture – from politicians to celebrities, sporting heroes to artists.  The Wynne Prize is awarded to the best landscape painting of Australian scenery, or figure sculpture, while the Sulman Prize is given to the best subject painting, genre painting or mural project in oil, acrylic, watercolour or mixed media.  Each year, the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSWjudge the Archibald and Wynne, and invite an artist to judge the Sulman. The 2017 judge is Tony Albert. Visit the exhibition to vote for your favourite portrait in the ANZPeople’s Choice award before voting closes (2 October) and see the work of budding artists aged 5-18 on display in the Young Archies.

Congratulations to painter, comedian and author Anh Do who has won the 2017 ANZ People’s Choice award with his portrait of Indigenous actor Jack Charles.

‘Jack’s face is full of character,’ says Do. ‘I wanted the painting to capture his gravitas but also the loneliness that has been his constant companion. I mixed wet and semi-dried paint to create a texture that would evoke mountains and waterfalls, tree bark, fallen leaves, clouds and rain to encapsulate the beauty of the Australian landscape inside this beautiful man’s face.

VICTORIAN WATERCOLOURS

Over 80 magnificent but seldom-seen watercolours made between the 1830s and 1900 from the gallery’s collection are presented in a Victorian-style displayed in the Grand Courts.

Victorian watercolours were among the very first works of art acquired by the Art Gallery of NSW. Painted in an elaborate, highly finished style that claimed consideration on equal terms with oil painting, they were highly prized in the 19th century. Watercolour painters embraced new and ambitious subjects and usually displayed their pictures in ornate gold frames to set off their jewel-like colours.

OUT OF THE ORDINARY

Works by Australian and New Zealand contemporary artists who engage with everyday materials and imagery in surprising and transformative ways. In Out of the ordinary, paper price tags burst into a radiant mandala, a printer performs a colourful abstraction, a huge tarpaulin becomes an unexpected canvas and everyday fluorescent lights convert into brilliant ‘blue poles’.

The artists include Rebecca Baumann, Kushana Bush, Sara Hughes, Helen Johnson, Jonathan Jones, Nicholas Mangan, Laith McGregor, Grant Stevens and Michelle Ussher.

MIKALA DWYER

Mikala Dwyer creates objects and installations that are both playful and provocative, re-imagining familiar materials and what they say to us about the world in which we live.  Her highly engaging sculptures explore ideas about shelter, childhood play, modernist design and the relationship between people and objects.  Often beguiling in their colour and profusion, her works incorporate raw materials and found objects in inventive and unexpected ways that transform their architectural settings.

For A shape of thoughtDwyer co-opts both the everyday and the fabulous to transform four of our contemporary galleries – floating 150 silver balloons high above the gallery floor, installing an elaborate suspension of fabric shapes held aloft by stockings, and building a large circular sculptural gathering that includes crystal-like Perspex structures.

PASSION and PROCESSION art of the Philippines

Passion and processionbrings together painting, sculpture, video and installation works from ten contemporary Filipino artists, revealing their very personal responses to faith, history, politics and life in the Philippines.

The works draw on folk mythology, family archives, nature and religious ceremony to reconsider established narratives of history and nation. The artists have used found as well as ritual objects, plant specimens and symbols of precolonial histories to address the ambiguities of faith and science, social inequality and relationship to place. In doing so, they demonstrate a belief in the potential of art to inspire, heal and effect social change.

The artists include Santiago Bose, Marina Cruz, Alfredo Esquillo Jr, Nona Garcia, Renato Habulan, Geraldine Javier, Mark Justiniani, Alwin Reamillo, Norberto Roldan and Rodel Tapaya.

30 August

DESIGN VISUALISATION FOR EVENTS AND LIVE ENTERTAINMENT  An exploration of Autodesk’s 3ds Max in design visualisation

Will provides a unique opportunity for you to get a hands-on look at how 3ds Max sits comfortably within the traditional design process to provide for the reduced time frames and the geographically dispersed teams which typify today’s live entertainment industry.

We will take you on a high-speed walk through the building and rendering of a 3D model of a live event in 3ds Max, adding realistic lighting and atmosphere whilst ensuring that everything is modelled to a real world scale ensuring the same models can be used by the workshops to produce the real thing.

Get valuable insights and plus live demonstrations including:

• an understanding the role that models have always played in the design process
• an appreciation how the technology must be an enabler and not a barrier
• experiencing how 3ds Max can be used as a rapid visualisation tool including VR
• an understanding of how real-time rendering assists rapid development
• an understanding of how Yeo Creative Solutions use 3ds Max as the backbone of their design and visualisation service
• see how Chaos Group V-Rayprovides fast, flexible and realistic rendering

Jonathan Yeoman   Managing Director,  Yeo Creative Solutions

Jonathan Yeoman is an experienced 3D visualiser and live entertainment production manager. Jonathan runs Yeo Creative Solutions who support all stages of the creative process including high-quality 3D visualisations, fly throughs, interactive 360-degree panoramas, set designs, construction drawings and the supply of specialist scenic flooring, fabrics and scenic products. He has a background in theatre production and applies the knowledge of construction and lighting techniques that he gained through this experience to add detail and realism to the models his company produces.

Yeo Creative Solutions combines new technology and experience to create better results for event planners and designers with 3D visualisation, drafting and set design that gets everything right before the event takes place.

David Zwierzchaczewski   Animation Specialist, Autodesk

David Zwierzchaczewski is the animation specialist for media and entertainment at Autodesk. He has spent the past 20 years working in the Film, TV, and Games industries and the last 5 years at Autodesk where he has been at the forefront of software development and implementation in the industry.

23 August

Jaunt One Demo Sydney by Staples VR

LINK to more information under Business post

16 August

EPIC Lecture: Live-drawing with Code. Immersive Virtual Measurement & Analytics

Featuring creative live-drawing using coding (presented by Tomasz Bednarz of Data61 and UNSW Art & Design) and invited lecture by Wes Griffin from NIST, USA 🙂 After talks, we all will move to Expended Perception and Interaction Centre (EPICentre), for small nibbles and one or two HPC Visualisation demos.

Abstract: Everything starts with a pixel. Once you know how to display a dot, you can draw almost everything without any limitations. Things became simpler – you don’t need to know operation on bits to draw a ghost or a flower, or remember hexadecimal numbers to animate shapes. However, you still need to know a bit about hardware, its limitations to produce efficient code and creative real-time visuals. Ninjas can achieve almost impossible, even control Big Data of 64kb. Ninja Hack Art is alive in connecting dots of art and science, making new engineering designs. This talk will focus on live-drawing with code.

Bio:  Tomasz Bednarz

Title: Application Creation for an Immersive Virtual Measurement and Analysis Laboratory

Abstract: Content creation for realtime interactive systems is a difficult problem. In game development, content creation pipelines are a major portion of the code base and content creation is a major portion of the budget. In research environments, the choice of rendering and simulation systems is frequently driven by the need for easy to use content authoring tools. In visualization, this problem is compounded by the widely varying types of data that users desire to visualize. We present a content creation framework incorporated into our visualization system that enables measurement and quantitative analysis tasks in both desktop and immersive environments on diverse input data sets.

Bio: Wesley Griffinis a Computer Scientist in the High Performance Computing and Visualization Group of the Applied and Computational Mathematics Division of the Information Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He currently works on realtime interactive systems both at the infrastructure level and at visualization creation of scientific data produced at NIST. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2016.

KHRONOS is royalty-free, open standards for 3D graphics, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Parallel Computing, Neural Networks, and Vision Processing.

Walter Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

Link to more information as part of my Programming Post.

14 August

Kokoda Track Memorial Walkway

29 July

Sydney Olympic Park Armory Gallery – Mining Pyrite

Mining Pyrite offers a comparison between the failure and success of Olympic Park through the work of artists for whom work and experimentation are synonymous. The constant testing and exploration of the boundaries of what does and doesn’t work is the stock and trade of creativity. Over the past 12 years Sydney Olympic Park Authority has acknowledged and supported this endeavour through its Artists at the Armory program. Mining Pyrite is an exhibition that sheds light on the activities of the studios, as well as celebrating a history of the success of the residency and proving the point that if a studio exists for emerging artists, success may prevail over failure.

Curators Cassandra Hard-Lawrie and Nick Vickershave selected 20 artists who have occupied the studios and whose works exemplify a journey of exploration, a journey that demonstrates that creativity is not easy, a journey that traces the journey within the journey from failure to success.

Mining Pyrite features the artworks of: Wade Marynowsky, Mark Booth, Chris Bowman, Mark Brown, Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Louisa Dawson, Gary Deirmendjian, Judith Duquemin, Allan Giddy, John Gillies, Locust Jones, Akira Kamada, Michael Keighery, Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Meredith Peach, Jane Theau, Rachel Walls, Ken and Julia Yonetani.

21 July 

SMPTE17 Conference– Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers   ‘Embracing Connective Media’

The region’s premier forum for the exploration of Broadcast, Media and Entertainment technology, SMPTE17 includes three days of compelling technical conference sessions, offering attendees unparalleled opportunities for professional development, relationship building, and “mind sharing.” Presenters and panelists will include a wide range of international and local technology thought-leaders.

The Australia Section of the SMPTE was founded in 1971. Today, it is part of the SMPTE Asia Pacific Region that includes more than 750 members. SMPTE in Australia has been a leader in building ties between like-minded and guild organisations serving the media and content industry. Further information about SMPTE Australia is available at smpte.org.au.

The Oscar® and Emmy® Award-winning Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers® (SMPTE®), a professional membership association, is one of the leaders in the advancement of the art, science, and craft of the image, sound, and metadata ecosystem, worldwide. An internationally recognized and accredited organization, SMPTE advances moving-imagery education and engineering across the communications, technology, media, and entertainment industries. Since its founding in 1916, SMPTE has published the SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal and developed more than 800 standards, recommended practices, and engineering guidelines.

More than 6,000 members — motion-imaging executives, engineers, creative and technology professionals, researchers, scientists, educators, and students — who meet in Sections throughout the world sustain the Society. Through the Society’s partnership with the Hollywood Professional Alliance® (HPA®), this membership is complemented by the professional community of businesses and individuals who provide the expertise, support, tools, and infrastructure for the creation and finishing of motion pictures, television programs, commercials, digital media, and other dynamic media content.

20 July

WALKLEY  MEDIA  TALKS in association with the State Library of NSW:  Interactive Storytelling:  New Ways of Engaging Audiences.

In the digital age newsrooms are experimenting to capture readers’ attention. Some approach the challenge in a tech-driven way, with chatbots, interactive games, quizzes and complex multimedia stories that let readers choose their own adventure. For others it’s about involving the audience from the earliest stages of story selection through to crowdsourced content. The rise of news bots and Snapchat glasses raise questions about user experiences and concerns about information curation. So what’s next in storytelling, and how are different organisations faring with the growth of interactive content?

KOREAN CULTURAL OFFICE  Passage to Pusan: The Journey Bridging the Friendship between Two Families

To commemorate the anniversary of the Korean War, representing the book of the same name by Australian journalist Louise Evans.  The exhibition details the 15,000km journey of Australian Mother, Thelma Healy to spiritually reunite with her son Vincent after his death during the Korean War.  The journey bridging the friendship between two families, transferring Thelma’s travel diary, family photographs and intimate letters onto six installations, revealing Thelma’s pilgrimage and an enduring friendship forged by mutual loss, grief and gratitude with Korean war widow Kim Chang Keun and her family.  340 Australian soldiers died fighting for the democracy in Korean during the Korean War.

White Rabbit Gallery:  The lights go out on THE DARK MATTERS

The ancient Chinese got their ink from smoky oil lamps, brushing away deposited soot and missing it into a paste that hardened into “stones”.

7 & 8 July

Lantern Making Workshops

28 June

DisConnex:  Reframing Resistance.  Chrissie Cotter Gallery, Camperdown NSW, Australia

A group exhibition showcasing re-used salvaged heritage items from homes destroyed by WestCONnex; in tandem with films, photographs, placards, works of art, protest actions and costumes that creatively challenge the displacement caused to communities across Sydney by the spreading network of tollways.

Paintings for sale via silent auction at the opening on June 28 by Janet Kossy

“Women Against Westconnex” acrylic and collage on canvas 41x 51cm 2016 All proceeds of the sale of this painting will be donated to Save Ashfield Park. Reserve price: 400.00

“Transported” acrylic and paperbark collage on canvas 61 x 76cm 2017 All proceeds of the sale of this painting will be divided between Save Newtown, Save Sydney Park and No WestConnex – Public Transport. Reserve price: 600.00

“Our Home” acrylic and collage on canvas 46 x 61cm 2016 All proceeds of the sale of this painting will be donated to the WestCONnex Action Group. Reserve price: 350.00

1, 9, 12, 14 June

VIVID

The idea is to turn the Opera House into a sculpture of creatures.

14 June

STATE  LIBRARY of  NSW

BEAUTY in DIFFERENCE:  The STREET PHOTOGRAPHY of JON LEWIS

‘I work to find the beauty in difference, and when placed together, show a new beauty in togetherness.’

2 June

POWER HOUSE MUSEUM  Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences

LOVE IS…..AUSTRALIAN WEDDING FASHION

From the simple to the stunning, Love is: Australian Wedding Fashion features more than 50 wedding outfits plus accessories covering nearly 200 years of Australian weddings. The exhibition includes Australia’s first surviving wedding dress from 1822, gold rush fashions, elegant 1920s gowns, unconventional sixties styles and spectacular contemporary designer fashion, as well as garments reflecting Australia’s culturally diverse communities. Memorabilia, photographs and letters reveal the stories and traditions behind the outfits within the context of the social, economic and political changes in Australian society. The exhibition will showcase examples of exquisite contemporary gowns from well-known Australians at the vanguard of international wedding fashion.

THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION of SHERLOCK HOLMES

Elementary? Maybe for Sherlock Holmes, but how will you fare when you try to solve a captivating, original mystery in the tradition of the master detective? Find out for yourself in The International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes at the Powerhouse Museum.

For the first time in Australia, be transported back to Sherlock Holmes’ Victorian London and crack the case by conducting your own experiments in this interactive exhibition that is perfect for the whole family.

Before taking on the challenge, enter Sherlock’s world and explore the study of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, doctor-turned-author and the man behind the legend. See original manuscripts and first editions, visit one of the world’s most accurate recreations of 221B Baker Street, the home of Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick Watson.

Plus immerse yourself in the most comprehensive display of Sherlock pop culture items since his creation 127 years ago, including costumes, props and behind the scenes equipment from the hit CBS television show Elementary and the BBC’s Sherlock, as well as Warner Bros.’ recent Sherlock Holmes movies.

So whether you’re a Sherlockian fanatic, a mini sleuth, have a keen interest in science and history or just a fan of pop culture, an ear to the ground and an eye for observation are elementary in The International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes.

OUT of HAND:  MATERIALISING the DIGITAL

Out of Hand: Materialising the Digital explores the increasingly important role of digital manufacture in contemporary art, science, fashion, design and architecture.

Recognising that many techniques have emerged from past ideas and are now defining new possibilities, understandings and expectations.  3D printing in its various forms, CNC machining, laser cutting and digital knitting and weaving.

These technologies suggest a new future that promises innovation in design, new industries and business models and a renewed local manufacturing base.  They also indicate a breakdown of the way we understand the boundary between the digital and material worlds, marking a significant cultural shift.

The exhibition features works by more than 60 artists, designers and architects from around the world including Barry X Ball, Zaha Hadid, Iris van Herpen and Ron Arad, as well as works from Australia and the Asia-Pacific, and objects from the MAAS collection.

ICONS:  from the MASS COLLECTION

This exhibition, featuring a selection of over 70 celebrated and rarely-displayed objects from the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences’ vast and diverse collection, explores what makes a museum object an icon in the 21st century.

From a grand concert piano to a humble elephant statue that survived the great Garden Palace fire of 1882; from Sir Howard Florey’s penicillin samples to a cochlear implant; from an ancient Greek drinking cup to the Apple 1 computer; many of the objects are leading examples of human creativity and ingenuity, and have played a significant role in shaping society and creating a better world.

This diverse array of objects are explored through themes including luxury, celebrity, status, spirituality, value and genius. You are invited to consider and question what makes something iconic.

STUDENT  FASHION  2017

Student Fashion is an annual display that provides a glimpse of the exciting potential of the next generation of Australian fashion designers. The exhibition showcases outfits from the final-year ranges of top students from four Sydney-based fashion design schools. With inspiration as varied as the rural landscape around Orange and Chinese calligraphy, and fabrications ranging from hand-woven to 3D printed garments, each student presents two signature garments alongside fascinating documentation of their creative process.

1 June

SYDNEY  FISH  MARKETS

22 May

NIMBIN,  New South Wales.  My first visit to the village of Nimbin, is notable for the prominence of its environmental initiatives such as permaculture, sustainability and self-sufficiency as well as the cannabiscounterculture. Writer Austin Pick described his initial impressions of the village this way: “It is as if a smoky avenue of Amsterdam has been placed in the middle of the mountains behind frontier-style building facades. … Nimbin is a strange place indeed.”

Nimbin has been described in literature and mainstream media as ‘the drug capital of Australia’, ‘a social experiment’ and ‘an escapist sub-culture’. Nimbin has become an icon in Australian cultural history with many of the values first introduced there by the counterculture becoming part of modern Australian culture.

NIMBIN  ARTISTS  GALLERY 

Nimbin is a vibrant and unique community nestled in scenic north east New South Wales.
Nimbin Artists Gallery was established on the 7th of November 1997 to showcase the creative and innovative styles of the regions artists.  The gallery exhibits a huge range of works from over 100 artists living in and around Nimbin.

On display is a large variety of art including sculpture, glass, jewelry, ceramics, clothing, baskets – too much to mention. The gallery is open daily (7 days) 10am – 5pm and is run by a small team of dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers.

The gallery hosts the annual Nimbin Autumn Arts Extravaganza. This major exhibition joins the gallery to the adjacent hall, stage and back stage areas. It includes daily recitals and performance art.It occurs around Easter for three and a half weeks.

21 May

TWEED  REGIONAL  GALLERYis surrounded by beautiful gardens and lawns and offering panoramic views of the Tweed River, the Tweed Regional Gallery is the perfect place to visit to view first-rate exhibitions.  Past Exhibitions.

Margaret Olley Art Centre  

MOAC combines exhibitions of paintings and objects, an interactive multi-media drawing activity, research library and education workshop, and is complemented by the Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio. Central to the MOAC is the recreation of areas of Olley’s famous home studio, principally the Hat Factory and the Yellow Room.  The recreation features original architectural elements such as windows and doors, relocated from Olley’s home studio at 48 Duxford Street, Paddington, Sydney. The interiors are filled with over 20,000 items Olley collected over many years as subject matter for her paintings.  These combined elements offer a rich and dynamic context for Olley’s extensive artistic career.

Portraits: Margaret Olley, The Margaret Olley Art Centre

“Because I have a face like a pudding and it’s easy to draw.”

This was Margaret Olley’s humorous response, when asked by friend and biographer Christine France, why, in her opinion, she was such a popular portrait subject for fellow artists.

Margaret Olley remains the most painted face in Australian art history. As a fledgling artist at the age of 25, Olley sat for friend and fellow artist William Dobell. His portrait Margaret Olley 1948 won the Archibald Prize, hurtling a shy Olley into a media frenzy. More than six decades later, Olley was again the subject of an Archibald Prize winning portrait by Ben Quilty, Margaret Olley 2011.

This outstanding exhibition of portraits of Olley by her artist friends, and self-portraits, is an exploration of Olley’s extraordinary life, spirited character and her enduring friendships with some of the most significant figures in Australian art. Portraits: Margaret Olley includes work by Margaret Olley, William Dobell, Russell Drysdale, Ian Fairweather, Judy Cassab, Jeffrey Smart, Ben Quilty, Nicholas Harding and more.

A – Z: the alphabet in art – Works from the collection,  The Withey Family Gallery

Drawn from our collection, this playful exhibition brings together a curious combination of works inspired by the alphabet.  Selecting pieces for this exhibition presented me with the opportunity to create fun and unusual combinations of artworks from the collection for our visitors.  Play a classic game of ‘I Spy’, or create your own game using the artworks as a visual language. I invite you to interact with some wonderful pieces in what I hope is an engaging, family-orientated and entertaining exhibition.  After viewing this playful glimpse into the Gallery’s collection, you’ll really know your ABCs!

Slipstitch, The Boyd Gallery

An Ararat Regional Art Gallery and NETS Victoriatouring exhibition, curated by Dr Belinda von Mergensen  Slipstitch presents an Australian perspective on the contemporary uptake of embroidery by a new generation of artists.

In recent years contemporary artists in Australia have embraced embroidery for its capacity for poignant and reflective narrative. The re-emergence of embroidery is part of a broader questioning of the hierarchy of materials that has gained momentum since the 1990s. Embroidered objects have often been read literally and relegated within a domestic framework. These new contemporary works break down preconceptions by exploring what embroidery can become once it transcends the regularity of pattern and decoration. Historically, embroidery like the Bayeux Tapestry, was used as a tool for personal or political narratives. Slipstitch aims to introduce a contemporary audience to the capacity of embroidery for drawing and communication in this mode.

The exhibition features recent work from Mae Finlayson, David Green, Lucas Grogan, Alice Kettle, Tim Moore, Silke Raetze, Demelza Sherwood, Matt Siwerski, Jane Theau, Sera Waters, Elyse Watkins and Ilka White.

Concrete 2, The Peter and Judy Budd Foyer

Throughout the history of art photography, the concrete form has been used to symbolise pervasive and dominant social forces. Concrete through photography has become a symbol of Modernist design, the metropolis, urban growth, industrialisation and of the designed utopia.

Damien O’Maraseeks to re-present the concrete form in a way that challenges the established symbolism. Rather than a clean and inert concrete structure, Concrete 2 depicts a concrete bridge that is marked and stained by time and place. The beam structure is overcome by marine growth and algae. The circular pillar reflects the greens and purples of the surrounding vegetation. The concrete form is depicted as immersed in and effected by its environment. While the clean concrete form suggests the dominance of the designed over the natural, the stained and marked concrete form suggests an inevitable intertwining of the intended and the experienced. The works reflect a gradual shift away from the regimentation of Modern societies and towards a less homogenised and more interactive contemporary awareness.

Guy Maestri, The Friends Gallery

During 2016 Sydney-based artist Guy Maestri spent time in the Gallery’s Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residency Studio. The aim of the residency was to commence the development of a body of work for a solo exhibition in the Friends Gallery in March 2017.

The artist said, “I originally intended to observe and respond to the local landscape and fauna as the focus of my residency at the Gallery. However, as I settled into the studio and absorbed myself into the residency, I realised what a privilege it was to have such intimate access to Margaret Olley’s world via the exhibition of Olley’s work and the re-creation of her Duxford Street home studio.  Studying Margaret’s paintings, reading her thoughts about art and life and having access to the actual objects that she painted from (her own things) made me realise what a masterful painter she was. It made me fall in love with painting again, for the pure joy of it. To spend time looking at, and painting from life, the objects I know so well from Margaret’s paintings, and to know that Margaret herself had spent time quietly rendering those same objects was again, a privilege. It unexpectedly redirected my focus for my residency, to something more intimate and more about personal objects, and of course, about the love of painting.”

Drawn to Print: David Fairborn, The Temporary Exhibitions Gallery

Renowned portraitist David Fairbairnis well known for his large mixed media drawings. Although this aspect of his practice continues, in recent years he has worked almost exclusively on large scale etchings.  

David Fairbairn said, “It is important to me that my etchings compliment and extend my previous explorations in drawing. With these new prints, drawing directly from the sitter onto the copper etching plate is an important aspect of my process. The length of time spent with a person and the stopping and starting of a work as a series develops, are factors that contribute to the final outcome. I am interested in the unexpected transformative qualities of the line that is etched by immersion in ferric chloride. The quality of the corrosive line is different to a drawn line on paper using charcoal or pastel. Now working predominantly in black and white, I am able to reinforce the underlying formal and abstract structures in the depiction of the sitter, whilst still emphasising the emotional and psychological content of the work.”  

Drawn to Print: David Fairbairn showcases drawings produced from 2010–2016, and etchings of the same sitters created during the period 2015–2017.  David Fairbairn is represented by Stella Downer Fine Art, Sydney and Port Jackson Press Print Gallery, Melbourne.

Slow light… Celestial, The Macnaughton Focus Gallery

The Slow Light… Celestial series was inspired by Colleen DaRosa’sroad trip in April this year starting in the Red Centre, Uluru on 2 April 2016. The previous day, artist Bruce Munro had finalised the installation of his epic work Field of Light (2016) using 50,000 solar-powered LED lights. He had been enchanted a decade ago by the fields of wild flowers he’d seen at Uluru and was motivated to recreate a vision in light. Under the night sky, one experienced the glowing majesty of a celestial floral tribute to the Milky Way, mirrored in a colourful cosmos. The enormity of the work and the power of light as a poetic device was compelling.  The motifs for the Slow Light… Celestial series are traces from that experience and my own imaginings of celestial light and cosmic forms. I employ techniques in which reflection and refraction of light create a glow of colour. As one’s view point changes, light becomes a more palpable force.

Tumbulgum and the Countdown to Midnight at the First Supper Between Now and Forever, The Anthony Gallery

MURWILLUMBAH  “place of many possums”

Surrounded, as it is, by the rim of the world’s largest extinct shield volcano and bordering the Tweed River, almost every street has magnificent mountain, river and valley views.  As well as being the gateway to five of Australia’s World Heritage listed National Parks, Murwillumbah is home to the World Heritage Rainforest Centre – a visitor information centre which also houses a National Parks and Wildlife Service office. The magnificent Mt Warning is the core of the ancient Caldera and it towers over the township of Murwillumbah like a prehistoric guardian.

Head On Photo Awards 2017 – Landscape Prize – George Byrne: Mount Warning is depicted in a local mural near Murwillumbah.

The Treasures of the Tweed mural is a beautiful show of the creativity in Murwillumbah.  The mural is located along the concrete flood mitigation wall on the western side of the Tweed River bank on Commercial Road, Murwillumbah.

20 May 

MURWILLUMBAH – The Blue Frog Patisserie and Café,La Grenouille Bleu.  The french owner, Andre’s goodies include authentic french pastries, quiches and baguettes made at the cafe not to mention the great coffee. 4 Wharf St, Murwillumbah, New South Wales. +61 2 6672 7474

Concrete flood protection wall mural

18 May

SEA WORLD

Polar Bear Shores where you can observe the bear’s graceful underwater swimming and playful behaviours through large underwater viewing windows and learn about these massive marine mammals through detailed information boards and fascinating interpretive information.

Creatures of the Deep, shows a journey to the depths of the ocean and discover a world of mysterious creatures in Sea World’s.  This brand new world-first attraction showcases an array of marine life, from the legendary Kraken to the giant Blue Whale, the fierce Megladon and the luminous creatures from the deepest & darkest parts of the ocean. You will be able to go on an educational, interactive and exciting expedition through the prehistoric, present and mythical worlds, discovering the shadowy realms of the deep sea below.

Penguin Feeding is home to the smallest penguins in the world, this specially designed exhibit offers our cute little Fairy Penguins their very own slice of paradise. You can observe them diving, swimming and burrowing as they playfully interact with each other while getting a rare and educational insight into the nature of these amazing flightless birds.

Penguin Encounter where you get lost in your very own slice of Antarctica in this beautiful frozen exhibit, home to the second largest species of Penguin in the world, the King Penguin as well as the lively Gentoo penguins. Encounter these incredible birds up close in their icy wonderland as they dive in and out of the crystal clear water. You’ll see their playful nature on the snow through the topside viewing area, and their elegant underwater flight through the stunning underwater viewing window.

Shark Bay, explore life beneath the ocean’s surface in the world’s largest man-made lagoon system for sharks. You’ll be amazed by the magical display of tropical fish, sting rays and other bottom-dwellers in the stunning Tropical reef Lagoon – it’s like a piece of the Great Barrier reef on the Gold Coast.

Ray Reef Feeding where you can get up close and personal in this interactive exhibit with one of the ocean’s most misunderstood inhabitants, the majestic Stingray. Discover the true nature of these beautiful creatures in their colourful Sea World home as they fly and glide under the water, coming close enough to let you touch, feed and observe them. You’ll even learn all about the Ray’s place in the ocean’s eco system during one of the many live educational presentations.

Affinity Dolphin Presentation at Dolphin Beach is a large natural sandy bottom lagoon system for dolphins and features the stunning show pool, as well as two other large lagoons. This wonderful area is home to our delightful Offshore Bottlenose Dolphins, and often houses baby dolphins in the nursery area. The 8m deep presentation pool is where the amazing ‘Affinity’ dolphin presentation takes place daily.

Jet Stunt Extreme takes your next visit to Sea World to the extreme as you watch some of the world’s best freestyle Jet Skiers bring the Sea World lake to life twice daily.  Group precision rides sequences and head to head competition are just part of the fun. Don’t miss the thrilling ariel stunts and fast action on purpose designed Jet Skis made for speed.  You’ll be on the edge of your seat the entire time as you watch the team perform amazing aerial flips and gravity defying stunts.

Seal Harbour where you can get up close and personal to Sea World’s playful seals in the Seal Harbour exhibit.  Stroll along the specially designed boardwalks and watch the seals splash, play and sun themselves in their home. Featuring glass partitions and boardwalks just above the water’s surface, it’s the perfect place to unwind and see the seals at play. Learn about the Long Nosed Fur Seals, Sub Antarctic Fur Seals and Californian Sea Lions.  With expansive sandy bottomed lagoons, naturalistic play areas and crystal clear waters, you will delight at this amazing paradise for seals.

Seabird Rehab were you can come and meet our very own resident Pelicans in the Seabird Rehabilitation Aviary. This amazing area is designed to house sea birds under care and rehabilitation. The birds in this area have been nursed back to health by our experienced staff, and many will never return to the wild due to disabilities caused mainly by carelessness with fishing hooks and lines. This area is also famous for its very successful breeding program, which is made all the more special by the fact that it is very unusual to see Pelicans breed on the eastern coastline of Australia!

13 May

MUSEUM  OF  SYDNEY  on this site, in 1988 on the ancient land of the Gadigal people, Governor Arthur Phillip built Australia’s first Government House.  The house was the home, office and seat of authority for the first nine governors of New South Wales and the centre of the social and political life of the colony.

Cesar Dezfuli’s image of 16-year-old Amadou Sumaila, who was on board a crowded rubber boat drifting off the coast of Libya, was one of 118 refugees he photographed within minutes of their rescue.

“Their faces, their looks, the marks on their body, their clothes or the absence of it … reflects the mood and physical state … in a moment that has already marked their lives forever,” Dezfuli wrote on his website.

“Documenting it can serve to bring this migration reality closer to those who only observe it from a distance.”

The winner in the festival’s mobile division also had a refugee theme, with Demetris Koilalous’ The Tempest capturing the sea passage between Greece and Turkey which is often referred to by migrants as the “death passage”.

Also SAND IN THE CITY, CALLING ALL BEACHCOMBERS …

Celebrating Sydney’s beautiful beaches, this fully interactive exhibition features dazzling models of our northern and southern seashores along with a pair of giant digital sandboxes with ‘projected’ scenery changing as your busy hands shift and sculpt a playful sandy landscape.

When you’ve had your fill of shaping sandcastles, mermaids and sea monsters, try building a LEGO beach shack or any other funky creature that springs to mind, with moats overflowing with loose bricks and minifigs surrounding a giant LEGO coastline crafted by the ‘Brickman’ himself, Ryan McNaught.

As you work, watch our special documentary film featuring a sandy line-up of salty-haired Sydneysiders, reflecting on beach life and the many ways we enjoy and experience our city’s watery edge.

Living with an ocean at our doorstep, we use the beach in many different ways. From playing, strolling and jogging along it, to tanning, cuddling or snoozing on it. From drawing, dreaming and writing about it, to revegetating and removing plastic from it. We surf, swim, sail and snorkel alongside it, and sometimes we’re simply moved by the mystery and magic of it.

Inspired by the popularity of our recent interactive LEGO exhibitions, Sand in the City combines all the fun and possibilities of scooping, sculpting and shaping sand with Sydney’s insatiable love of the seaside.

10 May

NSW Award George Byrne Murwillumbah. Mount Warning is depicted in a local mural near Murwillumbah.

HEAD ON LANDSCAPE/TRAVEL prize and NSW Parliament Landscape Photography Prize to encourage a new perspective of an old genre to push creative boundaries and promote work that is informed, but not limited, by traditional practices.  Head On has a broad approach to ‘Landscape’ which encompasses ‘large vista’ images of the natural environment (land or sea), urban or industrial settings.  It may include people but are ‘incidental’ rather than the main subject matter.

Head On Photo Festival  Full festival program at: https://www.headon.com.au/

Launch and Announcement of Winners 2017

Exhibitions by Maggie Steber, US artist and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow Maggie Steber’s new exhibition titled Secret Garden of Lily LaPalma will be presented in UNSW Art & Design’s ADspace.

Maggie Steber is a photographer who has worked in more than 60 nations champions humanistic values and ideas. She received numerous grants and awards in support of her practice over 30 years including work covering disasters in Haiti. Aperture published a monograph on her work Dancing on Fire in 1991. She has been a photo editor, director of photography, curator and photographer. She teaches workshops around the world including Master Classes for World Press Photo. Steber has served as judge for many grants and photographic competitions. Her work has been exhibited extensively in the US and around the world and is included in the US Library of Congress and the Richter Library at University of Miami.  Her honors include Leica Medal of Excellence, World Press and Pictures of the Year first prizes, Overseas Press Club awards and Medal for Distinguished Service to Journalism.

TWO FOLLOWING EXHIBITIONS on at  ACTORS  CENTRE  AUSTRALIA

THE ONE PROJECT Group of exhibiting photographers

The One Project curated by portrait photographer Hilary Wardhaugh, showcasing 29 works by 28 photographers.

NOWESTCONNEX PROJECT   Luca Altamore 

Major pubic discontent has resulted, with major demonstrations and protests across Sydney showing the out-pour of anger, sadness and grief that has come as a cost of the project.  Luca followed this demonstration to capture the raw emotion and swell of people that were against the WestConnex project and families and communities being disrupted.

WestConnex is the largest transport project in Australia, linking Sydney’s west and south-west with the CBD, Sydney Airport and Port Botany.   The construction of major roads is gutting neighbourhoods and parks, and decimating communities the have been established over time.  These photos are a part of my photojournalism project at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney.

LEICHHARDT  LIBRARY  Exhibition SHARK BAY by Remy Gerega

“Shark Bay”, Remy’s latest series showcases the stunningly beautiful kaleidoscope of colour and diversity of the Western Australian coastline.  The aerial perspective of UNESCO World Heritage listed Shark Bay is captured from a Cessna 182 with the doors taken off allowing Remy to lean out of the plane and photograph a true birds eye view of Australia’s most western point spanning over 5.4 million acres.   The landscape of Shark Bay is all the more striking when seen from the air, especially when flying at 5000 feet.   From the pristine expanses of coastline, to the groups of tranquil turquoise lagoons contrasted with the deep red sands we are reminded of how breathtaking the landscape of Western Australia really is.

2 May 

Hans ZimmerREVEALED and his band, Sydney Concert. The concert will be in two parts: the first being some of Zimmer’s classic movie scores including GLADIATOR, THE LION KING and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, and the second featuring re-imagined versions of some classic scores such as THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY and INCEPTION with special guests from the rock and pop world.

“Performing a concert series like this is something that I have always wanted to do, and I am thrilled to visit Australia and New Zealand and return to Europe where we had so much fun playing in the summer.” said Zimmer. “I am very excited to get some of my very talented friends together and give our audiences an experience unlike any concert they have ever been to before.”

Hans Zimmer Setlistat Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney, Australia

Setlist

1. Driving Miss Daisy / Sherlock Holmes / Madagascar
2. Crimson Tide
   (with speech about Tony Scott and the film)
3. Gladiator
4. The Lion King
5. The Da Vinci Code
6. Pirates of the Caribbean Theme
   (Klaus Badelt cover) (with “Drink Up Me Hearties Yo… more )
7. Intermission
8. True Romance
9. Man of Steel
10. Is She with You?
    (Wonder Woman Theme)
11. The Thin Red Line
12. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
13. The Dark Knight
14. Aurora
    (with speech about Heath… more )
15. Interstellar
16. Encore:
17. Inception

ABOUT HANS ZIMMER

Hans Zimmer has scored more than 120 films, which have, combined, grossed over 24 billion dollars at the worldwide box office. His upcoming film projects include Sean Penn’s The Last Face and 20^th Century Fox’s Hidden Figures, with Pharrell Williams and Ben Wallfisch out January 2017. Zimmer has been honored with an Academy Award®, two Golden Globes®, three Grammys®, an American Music Award, and a Tony® Award. His most recent Academy Award-nomination for Interstellar marks his 10th career Oscar nomination with the Academy. In 2003, ASCAP presented him with the prestigious Henry Mancini award for Lifetime Achievement for his impressive and influential body of work. He also received his Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010, and in 2014 was honored with the Zurich Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award. Zimmer recently completed his first concerts in the UK, “Hans Zimmer Revealed,” at the Eventim Hammersmith Apollo, and concluded his first ever European tour, “Hans Zimmer Live,” on June 5, 2016.

Other recent releases include: Zack Snyder’s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Mark Osborne’s The Little Prince, Peter Sollet’s Freeheld, Simon Curtis’ Women in Gold, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Ron Howard’s Rush, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, History Channel’s miniseries The Bible, the Christopher Nolan-directed films Inception, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises; and Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Some of Zimmer’s most notable works include his scores for Rain Main, Driving Miss Daisy, Thelma & Louise, Crimson Tide, The Thin Red Line, Gladiator, Mission: Impossible II, Hannibal, Pearl Harbor, Tears of the Sun, Spanglish, The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, the Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar films, The Da Vinci Code, Frost/Nixon, and The Lion King, for which he won the Academy Award.

A taste of some of his compositions.

29 April

Annandale Heritage Festival

A Short Virtual Walk  –  In the footsteps of WS Jevons

In the 1850s, a new Train line passed through the Annandale Estate and William Stanley Jevons came to live at Annangrove Cottage on the Parramatta Road. Jevons left us descriptions of Annangrove Cottage and his journeys and rambles from here.

Marghanita da Cruz retraced Jevons footsteps in a virtual tour of 1850s Annandale including the first subdivisions. The walk will then jump a 100 years to the 1950s when three tramlines passed through Annandale.

The talk will form the basis of Marghanita’s seventh book in a series which presents Annandale’s History as Short Walks.  The afternoon will include an opportunity to explore historic Annangrove cottage and nearby sites.

Annandale Gates

The gates originally stood just off Parramatta Road, on the crest of the hill, on the south side, where the Globe Cinema now stands. (Since publication, the cinema has been demolished and the Globe Apartment complex built.) At the centre of each gate hung a cast iron shield featuring the Johnston crest, the flying spur. From the gates an avenue of Norfolk Island pines led south to the house.

Dating the gates is not easy in the absence of documentary evidence, but the impression stylistically that they date from about 1875-1880 is consistent with the changing situation of the Johnston family at that time.

The gates had been removed and re-erected at Liverpool showground and subsequently dismantled again.
In 1972, they were located by the Annandale Association in storage at Liverpool Council’s depot. Liverpool Council presented the gates to Leichhardt Council
in 1972, to commemorate Leichhardt’s municipal centenary.

In 1976 it was agreed that they should be included in the landscaping by the Department of Education of the area, now part of the school grounds, where the house “Greyholme” had stood. The Education Department, the school’s headmaster Mr P. Bracks, Leichhardt Council and the Annandale Association agreed to this proposal.

(Taken from “Our History” Annandale Public School 1886-1986)

25 April

SPIRIT OF ANZAC  Centenary Experience

My Visit:  Tagged Exhibits

• Aboriginal service during the First World War  Aboriginal Australians had few rights in society. Most were ineligible to vote and none were counted in the census. When war broke out, some saw it as a chance to prove themselves the equal of Europeans and tried to enlist. For many, the motivation was no different from any other Australian: that the offer of six shillings a day for a trip overseas was simply too good to miss.
• Captain Albert Jacka  AIF’s First VC of the War, Lance Corporal Albert Jacka landed on Gallipoli on 26 April 1915. Just over three weeks later, the Turks launched large-scale assaults and captured a small section of trench at Courtney’s Post. Jacka, taking advantage of a diversion created by bomb-throwers, leapt in, killing most of the occupants. For this he was awarded Australia’s first Victoria Cross of the First World War.
• Graham Butler  Medical officer Captain Graham “Gertie” Butler landed on Gallipoli early on the first day. He quickly set up an aid post in the hills behind the front line and started treating casualties using the small number of instruments contained in this wallet.
• Kerosene Tin Grave Cross Private C G H Hampson, 23 Battalion AIF.  For three years, this fragile cross marked the gravesite of Victorian Private Charles Hampson, 23rd Battalion, who died at Lone Pine. It was replaced when Hampson’s body was re-interred at Lone Pine Cemetery.
• Landing Boats Lifeboats from the Devanha, which had been requisitioned from the P&O line as a troopship, transported men of the 12th Battalion, the 3rd Field Ambulance and the 3rd Infantry Brigade Headquarters ashore on the day of the Gallipoli landings.
• Major King’s Whistle This whistle was blown three times by Dennis King, brigade major of the 1st Brigade, to sound the start of the Australian attack on Turkish positions at Lone Pine.
• Private William Goudemey’s Distinguished Conduct Medal During a Turkish counter-attack on the Australian positions at Lone Pine, Goudemey was one of four men who climbed out of the trenches to bring a Vickers machine-gun into action. He was killed at Pozières a year later.
• Remains of Turkish Grenades  Known as “cricket ball” bombs, these weapons had a 10-second fuse; if thrown too early, they might be caught and thrown back.
• Sir William Birdwood When the First World War began, Britain’s Minister for War, Lord Kitchener, placed Birdwood in command of the Australian and New Zealand forces. Birdwood impressed the men by regularly visiting the front lines. His bravery earned him the enduring respect of the AIF, and he was appointed its commander, following the death of Major General William Bridges.
• Admiral Sir George Patey Patey was appointed the first commander of newly formed Australian Fleet in 1913. He led Australian operations against German Samoa and German New Guinea in 1914.
• HMAS Melbourne  Melbourne kept guard at the rear of the convoy carrying the first contingent of Australian and New Zealand troops. There were three other escort ships, including the other Australian warship, HMAS Sydney.
• HMAS  Sydney 1:175 scale model of HMAS Sydney.
• HMAS Sydney Destroys SMS Emden On 9 November 1914, while escorting the first Australian and New Zealand troop convoy, the light cruiser HMAS Sydney received an SOS from a communications station in the Cocos Islands. The ship leading the convoy, HMAS Melbourne, ordered Sydney to investigate. At first, Sydney was hit by 15 shells fired by the Emden (although 10 failed to explode). Four sailors were killed. The faster, more powerful Sydney returned fire, causing so much damage that Emden’s captain ran his ship aground on North Keeling Island. In all, 134 of Emden’s officers and men were killed, and the rest of the crew were captured, ¬except for a small landing party that eventually made its way to Constantinople after an epic journey.
• The AE1 Submarine The AE1 was one of two similar British-built submarines operated by the Royal Australian Navy in the first two years of the war. It apparently sank off German New Britain on 14 September 1914; no trace of it or the crew has ever been found.
• The AE2 Submarine The RAN’s second submarine earned brief celebrity in April 1915 when it penetrated the elaborate defences of the Dardanelles, eluding Turkish searches and attacking a number of ships. It still lies at the bottom of the Sea of Marmara.
• The ANZACS Make Their Final Push After months of fighting, death and disease, there seemed no end to the stalemate. A fresh offensive was launched in August to break the deadlock, but despite determined fighting few gains were made. During the August offensive, battles noted for sacrifice and bravery were fought – Lone Pine, The Nek, Chunuk Bair – but soon the fight slipped back to a stalemate.
• 170 – Millimetre Minenwerfer The German version of a trench mortar, the Minenwerfer was able to lob large shells almost vertically onto enemy trenches. Men were likely to be killed by the shock wave alone.

• Gas-Proof Pigeon Carrier Box Pigeons proved unusually reliable in delivering messages at the front, and much effort was expended in training and protecting them. A whiff of gas would kill a pigeon, hence the effort made to produce gas-proof boxes for them.
• Otto Dix, Sturmtruppe Geht Unter Gas Vor (Storm Troopers Advancing Undehttps://www.awm.gov.au/images/collection/items/ACCNUM_SCREEN/RELAWM04399.001.JPGr a Gas Attack) Dix wrote: “The war was a horrible thing, but there was something tremendous about it, too. I didn’t want to miss it at any price. You have to see human beings in this unleashed state to know what human nature is.”
• Sergeant David Emmett Coyne  While testing some grenades on the night of 15 May 1918, Coyne mis-threw one which rolled back into the trench. Shouting a warning to his mates, he threw himself on it. “I thought you didn’t have time to get out,” he explained as he lay dying.
• Trip-Wire Gun Originally designed in the 1880s as an anti-poaching device and activated by a length of trip wire, these simple guns usually fired a 12-gauge pin-fire shotgun cartridge to alert defenders to an impending intrusion.
• Cheops Photo InteractiveExperience  Disclaimer: The Australian War Memorial is not responsible for the information contained on these screens. All information has been compiled by the WAGS 11Bn Project. To visit their website after the experience, please tap your audio device here.
• Recording History – Charles Bean Charles Bean was the AIF’s official war correspondent. Later in the war he established the Australian War Records Section, responsible for the assembly of records, the administration of war photographers and artists, and the collection of artefacts. Bean eventually published a 12-volume history of the Australians’ efforts in the war and became founder of the Australian War Memorial, which opened in Canberra in 1941.
• Bullecourt The 4th Australian Division was ordered to attack the Hindenburg Line alongside Bullecourt in 1917 despite a shortage of artillery support. Advancing across snow-dusted fields, the Australians met a hail of fire that tore through them. The 4th Brigade lost 2,339 men out of 3,000. The 12th lost 950 from less than 2,000. On May 3, they tried again and, after two weeks of fighting and a further 7,000 casualties, this portion of the Hindenburg Line was held, but for little real gain.
• Pozieres – Australian Significant Losses and Casualties Within five days of the 1st Division going into the battle on 23 July 1916, the division lost 5,000 men. It was replaced by the 2nd Division, which had an even worse time of it – almost 7,000 casualties in 12 days. The 4th Division then went in, pressing its attacks towards the adjoining Mouquet Farm. Over 42 days, the Australians made 19 attacks: the final casualties came to the appalling total of 23,000 men.
• Spanner from an Enormous War Trophy A huge German 28-centimetre calibre railway gun captured at Harbonnières on 8 August 1918 was eventually shipped back to Australia, where it was placed on display at Sydney’s Central Railway Station, and later at Canberra Railway Station.
• Glass Beadwork Snake Craft work, such as this snake and purse fashioned by Turkish soldiers in a British prisoner-of-war camp in 1917–18, was a time-honoured means of occupying one’s time that also allowed prisoners to earn some money.

• Australian Nurses at the Front Australian nurses played a vital role in handling the war’s innumerable casualties. About 500 nurses were regularly employed on the Western Front at any time, and those in casualty clearing stations were sometimes exposed to enemy bombing. Many were decorated, with eight nurses receiving the Military Medal for bravhttps://www.awm.gov.au/images/collection/items/ACCNUM_SCREEN/C02305.JPGery during the First World War.
• Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres)  On 12 October 1917 Australian, New Zealand and British troops made an unsuccessful attempt to capture the Passchendaele Ridge from the Germans. The allies struggled through thick mud and shelling, and faced vicious fighting and slaughter on a large scale. Ground was taken but could not be held. In wretched conditions, with casualties mounting at an appalling rate, the Australians fell back, exhausted.
• Canon De 75 MM, MOdele 1897 The French “75” light field gun was the first mass-produced weapon to combine an effective axial recoil, a quick-acting breech and a splinter-proof shield, and to use fixed ammunition.
• Nurse’s Medals Sister Nellie Leake served with the Australian Army Nursing Service from April 1915 until the end of the war. She was awarded the Royal Red Cross (Second Class) for her “valuable services in the field” in Egypt; she also served in France.
• The Tragedy at Fromelles  Just after arriving in France from Egypt, the newest and least prepared Australian division, the 5th, became the first to go into a major battle at Fromelles, commencing on 19 July. It was meant to be a diversion to draw enemy attention away from the allies’ Somme offensive, but over little more than 24 hours the Australians suffered 5,500 casualties. One German soldier who survived Fromelles, and who was later awarded the Iron Cross for bravery, was the young Adolf Hitler.
• American Water Bottle Carrier  This water bottle carrier was worn by one of men of the US 132nd Regiment attached to the 13th Battalion during the battle of Hamel on 4 July 1918. It was noted that the Americans “fought well, but with a dash that needs to be tempered by experience”.
• Cigarette Case During the assault on the Hindenburg Line on 29 September 1918, Lieutenant Marcus Griffin, 30th Battalion, was wounded by a piece of shrapnel. His cigarette case deflected the fragment away from his lungs, but it cut through three of his ribs.
• German’s Red Baron Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, aka the Red Baron, was a highly skilled German fighter pilot. When the war began, he was a cavalry reconnaissance officer, but soon transferred to the Imperial German Army Air Service and took command of fighter squadron Jasta II. By the time he was shot down in April 1918, the Red Baron had 80 confirmed victories.
• The Charge at Beersheba The charge at Beersheba, near the vital strongpoint of Gaza, on 31 October 1917, is the most famous of all Australian light horse actions. Beersheba was the key to Gaza and was captured in an audacious old-style cavalry charge. About 500 Australian light horsemen in three lines broke into a gallop and became an unstoppable force that smashed the Turkish defences. It was all over in an hour.
• Mont St Quentin and Peronne  On 31 August 1918, two undermanned Australian battalions charged up Mont St Quentin, ordered by Monash to “scream like bushrangers”. The Germans quickly surrendered. The Australians were unable to hold their ground, and German reserves regained the crest. But the Australians regrouped just below the summit and the next day recaptured it. A German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line ensued.
• Sir John Monash and His Victories In 1916, Monash and his command were transferred to the Western Front. He was promoted to major general and placed in command of the Australian 3rd Division, fighting in actions such as Messines, Broodseinde, and the first battle of Passchendaele. Impressed by his abilities and enthusiasm, the British High Command promoted Monash to lieutenant general in 1918 and made him commander of the Australian Corps – at the time the largest individual corps on the Western Front. A brilliant tactician and a meticulous planner, Monash led many victorious attacks during the final stages of the war. Considered one of the war’s outstanding commanders, Monash was knighted for his services in 1918 and received numerous foreign honours.
• Tanks Come of Age  After the tanks’ poor performance at Bullecourt in 1917, the Australians had little affection for them. This changed in 1918 with the introduction of the 27-tonne British Mark V tank. Technically superior to earlier models, the Mark V was more reliable and manoeuvrable. The Germans, slow to adopt the idea, made only 20 of the A7V, a poor design.
• Living Conditions in the Middle East There was water in the desert, often obtained from bores, but it was mostly poor in quality. Turkish troops adapted to the conditions but the British relied on water pumped through pipes newly laid from the Nile. The Australians introduced the “spearpoint” pump – a tube driven through old well floors – as an effective way to provide water for horses.
• Richthofen’s only Australian Victim Second Lieutenant Jack Hay was flying an outdated FE8 pusher biplane when he encountered Richthofen’s squadron on 23 January 1917. In an unequal fight, Hay’s plane burst into flames; rather than burn, Hay jumped to his death.

• Slouch Hat These standard-issue items were worn by South Australian Private George Kenihan, who served with the 4th Light Horse Field Ambulance. He helped treat the wounded after the famous charge at Beersheba on 31 October 1917.
• The Australian Flying Corps The first roles assigned to No. 1 Squadron, AFC, were reconnaissance, photography and bombing operations against the enemy in the Sinai. The first of its 29 confirmed aerial victories occurred on 3 January 1918 against an Albatross D.III scout. By the end of the war, five of the squadron’s personnel had been knighted and 15 of its pilots had become aces.
• The Camel Corps The Imperial Camel Corps (ICC) was formed in January 1916 in order to deal with the revolt of pro-Turkish Senussi tribesmen in Egypt’s Western Desert. The 1st and 3rd Battalions were entirely Australian, the 2nd was British, and the 4th was a mix of Australians and New Zealanders. In late 1916 the ICC was transferred to the Sinai desert to take part in operations against the Turkish army, fighting alongside Australian Light Horse units at Romani, Magdhaba and Rafa. They remained an integral part of the British and dominion force that advanced north through Palestine.
• Turkish Officer’s Binoculars At Ziza on 29 September 1918 Colonel Ali Bey Wahaby of the 11th Turkish Corps handed over these binoculars when he surrendered to Major General Sir Edward Chaytor, Commander, Anzac Mounted Division.
• An Enduring Memory Fifteen-year-old Nellie Blain was knitting socks for her 23-year-old brother, Trooper Arthur Blain, when she received news of his death from head wounds on Gallipoli. She kept the unfinished sock in memory of him until her own death at the age of 98.
• Private C H Stevens’ Wheelchair In June 1918 four German “daisy-cutter” shells had landed near ambulance driver and stretcher-bearer Charlie Stevens, shattering his legs, both of which had to be amputated above the knee. After the war, he used this crutch every day of his life.
• Ray Pflaum’s British War Medal British War Medal 1914-20 issued to the family of 161 Private Raymond ‘Ray’ Holstein Pflaum. The son of Theodore and Mary Pflaum, he was working as a shop assistant in his home town of Blumberg, South Australia when he enlisted in the AIF on 21 July 1915 at the age of 18.
• Sounding the End of the War In November 1918 Darwin postal worker Joseph Johnson received a telegram in code from the Navy Office Melbourne stating, “Armistice signed. Please advise Darwin populace.” He and his wife spent the night around the town spreading the news and ringing the buffalo bell.

• The Treaty of Versailles The victors showed little mercy towards Germany in 1919 and left a legacy of hatred in their wake. Germany was forced to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, and pay reparations of 132 billion German marks (roughly equivalent to US $442 billion in 2015). But the victors had competing goals, and ultimately the treaty left none of them completely satisfied. Worse still, Germany was neither pacified nor permanently weakened.

The exhibition starts with a brief journey back in time to what life was like in Australia before the outbreak of the First World War. In 1904 a telephone link was established between Sydney and Melbourne.  The world’s first full-length feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang,was made in Australia in 1906.

The outbreak of war in Europe leads enthusiastic Australians into the unknown – a war many thought would be over swiftly. The Royal Australian Navy’s initial involvement, the sinking of Emden and the loss of HMAS AE1. Troops training in the desert of Egypt as the Australian.

Around 4am on 25 April 1915 the Anzacs rowed from ships towards shore under the cover of darkness. Step onto the shores of Gallipoli with the Anzacs.  Soldiers lived and died in the fields of Belgium and France: the constant shelling caused some to suffer ‘shell-shock’, the destruction, gas attacks, night raids and the weather to name but a few.

The key battles that Australian troops were involved in, along with the variety of weapons that were being used. The brave nurses who put their own lives on the line to treat the wounded coming from the frontline and a glimpse at Australia’s home front addresses the national conscription debate.

General Sir John Monash takes command of the Australian men, the first tank versus tank battle outside Veillers-Bretonneux and the story of the Australian Flying Corps on the frontline.  Often-overlooked Australian battles of Sinai and Palestine in 1916, 1917 and 1918. The important role the Australian Flying Corps, the Camel Corps and The Light Horse played on this very different battleground.

The end of the war was sudden and with it came a sense of shock and disbelief for troops at the frontline and people back home in Australia. Aftermath touches on the huge task of an orderly repatriation of Australian forces along with the challenges faced by returning soldiers. The massive contributions of organisations such as Legacy, the RSL and Red Cross along with the work of Charles Bean and his personal legacy to the nation.

For more than 100 years, Australia’s armed forces have been involved in conflict, peacekeeping, peacemaking, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief around the world. The bravery, commitment and sacrifice of ordinary Australian men and women placed in extraordinary circumstances around the globe.

Brass 18 pounder field gun shell case, hand inscribed as follows: ‘THE LAST SHOT FIRED FROM ANZAC AT 5.5 P.M. ON THE 19/12/15 AT THE OLIVE GROVE FROM NO. 4 GUN 8TH BATTERY A.F.A. DETACHMENT NO:1778 SGT. S.G. BREARLEY NO:2097 CORPL J.E.H BUTLER. NO:4291 GNR R.F. CUNNINGHAM. BATTERY COMMANDER CAPT. W.C.N. WAITE’. The base of the shell has had two brass screws inserted, with holes drilled in them. A bent ring remains in one hole. The screws were added to enable the shell case to be suspended from a stand for use as a gong.

This 18-pounder field gun shell case fired the last shot towards the Olive Grove, on Gallipoli, before the final evacuation of Australian troops in December 1915. It was later inscribed with the details of the gun and battery from which it was fired, together with the names of the men in the detachment who had fired the shell and the name of their battery commander, Captain William Waite.

“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … 

You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours. 

You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears. 

Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 1934 moving tribute to the Anzacs killed at Gallipoli

Kemal Atatürk Memorial, Anzac Parade, Canberra.

God of our fathers, known of old,

   Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

   Dominion over palm and pine—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;

   The Captains and the Kings depart:

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

   An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;

   On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

   Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

   Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,

Such boastings as the Gentiles use,

   Or lesser breeds without the Law—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust

   In reeking tube and iron shard,

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

   And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

For frantic boast and foolish word—

Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

REGARDING SYDNE PARK New Paintings by Janet Kossy  The Corner Gallery, Stanmore 

The Gallery does not charge a commission basis for works sold and instead operates on a fixed rental basis.

Expressive works using mixed media and collage to evoke layers of change.  In creating them over the past few months I have chosen the freedom of an abstract and expressive approach, while observing, enjoying and learning about Sydney Park.

Over the last few years especially, Sydney Park has been richly developed with a sustainable wetland environment and increasing amenities, art works and plantings. Although it is immensely popular with locals, many outside the area have never looked beyond the iconic chimneys.

Janet Kossy has history and diversity in mind as she walks through the park or does a shift at the protest camp. Her paintings attempt to connect intuitively with the varied, edgy and mostly unknown stories of Sydney Park.

Artist’s Statement:

Sydney Park is now beautifully landscaped and much-loved by locals.  It is known for its dog walkers and bird-filled wetlands, dance parties and children’s playgrounds, sporting teams and rough sleepers.   But of course there is history here. The park sits on top of millennia of changing conditions as a hunting and fishing ground.  In early colonial days it was granted by the government to a convict business woman.  The lans provided fertile ground for gardens and orchards and then for decades was deeply excavated, with queries, brickworks, factories and a municipal tip.

Currently the State Government is shaving off edges and corners of Sydney Park for the WestConnex motorway.   But passionate defenders of the park have occupied a protest camp since September 2016, fighting against the toll road and its destruction of trees habitat and community.

My Sydney Park paintings attempt to connect intuitively with the varied, edgy and mostly unknown stories of this place.

Printmaking, drawing and collage techniques in conjunction with painting have helped me to play with pattern, colour, texture and layering to deepen the elements of narrative suggestions in the images without forgoing the pleasures of accident and experimentation.

24 April

USAtong Atem

As a place for gathering and exchange, Customs House provides the perfect home for US.  Juxtaposing historical and contemporary cultures, Atem creates compelling photography by drawing on her South Sudanese heritage.  Critical sentimental and visually striking her works pay homage to West African studio photography in the 1960s.  Popularised by those such as Mallik Sidibé and Seydou Keïta, whose works subverted the ethnographic gaze traditionally seen in colonial Africa. Following this tradition, Atong Atem turns the lens back on herself and her community, reclaiming the very tool that was used to deny black identity.

Critical, sentimental, and visually striking, Atem’s studio series use an array of cultural iconographies, black visual languages and diasporic traditions to return the camera to the colonised subject, and in turn, celebrates the personal and cultural identities of first and second generation Africans living in Australia.

Her self-portraits are equally as bold and just as declarative. As a young black woman, Atem uses both photography and social media as a powerful tool to analyse the world she lives in, her own experience and place in the world. Whether as a Martian, a marble statue, or decadently dressed with plastic flowers, Atem’s self-portraits perform and construct a sense of self and identity.

Strongly focused on people USprovokes discussion about the role of photographic image in connecting us and engaging us in conversations about our diverse histories and imagined futures.

19 April

Royal Easter Show Sydney

Braved the last day, coming home on dusk, totally exhausted and like always impossible to see it all, let alone in one day.

A new exhibition transformed the Daily Telegraph Paddock into the Little Hands on the Land paddock, it was set up into a kid-size working farm with free activities. Out in the open, with lots of space, it took me through nine stations, including a cook shed, vegetable patch, fruit orchard and outback tractor pull with the last stop, the Woolworths supermarket. A fantastic addition to the show.

As it happens every year, the farmers come from far and wide with their treasured live stock and produce to show case for all who wish to see and this year did not disappoint. Children of all ages were lining up to see chickens hatching, view the cattle, horses and dogs and to see the little faces patting sheep and goats in the farm yard nursery.  The horse arena was busy with proud riders warming up and competing in there chosen events.

Again the Flower & Garden, Arts & Craft and Fashion & Style pavilions had a wonderful display that was lovingly put together, showing people’s skills and passions that had been submitted for competition.

The district exhibits, which I never miss, where five districts create massive sculptures made from their product, did not disappoint.  More than 50,000 pieces of fresh fruits, vegetables, grain, wool and other produce was being taken down with nothing going to waste.  Leftover produce is collected by Oz Harvestand distributed to the community.  People coming to view the displays were purchasing the produce for very reasonable prices from the farmers with their big, warm, country smiles.

One of my favourite desert bars, KOI, had delicious deserts all beautifully lined up ready for making the impossible choice.  The Country Women’s Association tearoom cannot be missed.  Volunteers selling over 40,000 scones in ten days as well as a sandwiches, salads, tea, coffee, cakes and cold drinks. Don’t miss the home made jams, fruit cake and cook books for sale on their promotions table.

Loved the Australian Knitting Mills, Serenade bags, The Heraldie Shoppe and much more, could not carry another thing, arriving home happy and totally exhausted.

18 April

• Gain expert knowledge about knowing who your users/audience are, where they are, what they are viewing, and how they are interacting long before you start development or production.
• Find out about the importance of Design Thinking and Human Centered Design (HCD) principles within any digital project, as well as Ideation and Design Strategy tips and tricks.
• Hear from an experienced filmmaker how to take an idea from script to screen, to create a powerful story that connects with your audience.

Write up of my notes can be found via this link, go down the page and you will find the heading.

31 March

INFRASTRUCTURE and the CITY – Sydney | Berlin | New York.

The Civilising WestConnex exhibition at UNSW is on Mon-Fri 10-5pm until April 5th. Its not open weekends. Its in the Red Centre, west wing, ground floor gallery. 

In association with the Reid Lecture, the UNSW Master of Urban Development & Design Program presents the Studio work of 2016-2017, its 22nd year.

1. Sydney – Civilising WestConnex
2. Berlin – River as Urban Resource  (hosted by Technical University, Berlin)
3. New York – Hudson Yards & Midtown West, Manhattan  (hosted by Kohn Pedersen Fox)
4. Studies in Urban Form – Nine Water Cities.

We are honoured to announce the 10th Annual Paul Reid Lecture in Urban Design and first Utzon lecture for 2017. Presented by Reiner Nagel, Director of the German Federal Foundation of Building Culture on the theme: Culture, Ideas, Strategies in the Making of the City – Baukultur and the German Federal Cities Program.

We are honoured to announce the 10th Annual Paul Reid Lecture in Urban Designand first Utzon lecture for 2017.  Presented by Reiner Nagel, Director of the German Federal Foundation of Building Culture on the theme: Culture, Ideas, Strategies in the Making of the City – Baukultur and the German Federal Cities Program.

I live in the Burwood Council area and found the following information interesting:

Three main issues identified for the subject site are:

• the unbalanced development of Burwood suburb
• traffic congestion along Parramatta Road, which is heavily used by trucks, buses, private cars and lead to frequent traffic jams and air pollution
• the lack of diverse land use, mainly residential uses near the subject site, it lacks cultural uses, good quality retail uses and any sense of the area being a destination precinct

VISION  STATEMENT

To proved a mixed-use and new environment counter to the harsh interface of Parramatta Road, that encourages a new culture precinct for this part of the city.  The vision of the project is to enhance pedestrian street connectivity and optimise the social, cultural, environmental and economic benefits of the neighbourhood.  The basic principle is to rebuild a liveable environment for local residents,

STRATEGIES

• to create a mixed used and commercial area to existing replace the fragmented retail uses along Parramatta Road, that would be supported by a new Metro Station
• to create a podium buildings mainly on the corner of Parramatta Road and Burwood Road of mixed uses.  The proposed smaller tower form would mainly provide office uses.  The lower floors would provide commercial uses.  The roof level would be designed as a landscape common open space area.   The landscaped space would be accessible for all users in the buildings below
• to create a commercial corridor along Parramatta road, which enhanced street activation and provides a significant economic boost to the neighbourhood
• to create a real tree lined boulevard style road to Parramatta Road, as well as provide a separate bicycle lane
• to create a central open space providing opportunities for social activities, enhancing the relationship between the neighbours, while providing access to the Metro station

27 March

HARBOUR  SCULPTURE Clarkes Point Reserve, Woolwich

An exhibition of contemporary Australian sculpture held along the foreshore of Sydney and inside Hunters Hill Sailing Club function space.  With Sydney Harbour as a backdrop, the exhibition showcases works that reflect a sense of history and place in Australia.

INSIDE

John Rayson, Leanne Thompson, Margaret Olah, Sinan Revell, Mitsuo Shoji, Larissa Smagarinsky, Alma Studholme, Elisabeth Thilo, Peter Van Sommers, Feyona Van Stom, Jacek Wankowski, Margaret Westcott, Susan Dorothea White, Richard White, Louise Young, Ayako Saito, Wendy Black, Helen Amanatiadis, Nadya E Anderson, Michael Bennett-Williams, Penel Bigg, Kerry Boer, Mary Boland, Keith Chidzey, Carol Lehrer Crawford, Mark / Bernadette Elliot-Ranken/ Smith, Jenny Green, Gary Gregg, Amanda Harrison, Stephen Hilton, Selina Hitches, Jules Jones, Lea Kannar-Lichtenberger, Gudrun Klix, Daniel Kojta, Patricia Lawrence, Peter Lewis, Denise Lithgow, Beatrice Magalotti, RO / MANDY, Murray / Burgess, Ro Murray, Lesley Murray, Kay Norton-Knight, John Rayson, Leanne Thompson, Margaret Olah, Sinan Revell, Mitsuo Shoji, Larissa Smagarinsky, Alma Studholme, Elisabeth Thilo, Peter Van Sommers, Feyona Van Stom, Jacek Wankowski, Margaret Westcott, Susan Dorothea White, Richard White, Louise Young, Ayako Saito.

OUTSIDE

Gary Christian, Allyson Adeney, Robert Barnstone, Jane Burton Taylor, Rozanna / Elizabeth Cabon / Oomens, Rhonda Castle, Keith Chidzey, Carol Lehrer Crawford, Alethea Deane, Heather Shaw Designer, David Doyle, Karen Farrell, John Fitzmaurice, Adam Galea, Allison Garoza, Janny Grant, Jenny Green, Paul Harrington, Stephen Hilton, Akira Kamada, Nicole Larkin, Leon Lester, Peter Lewis, Dana Lundmark, Ro Murray, Karen Manning, James McCallum, Ludwig Mlcek, Victoria Monk, Ingrid Morley, Alison Mortiss, Robert Neeson, Graeme Pattison, Sandra Pitkin, Louis Pratt, Ashfield Public School, Kate Rae, Regan John, Raveane, John Rayson, Jan Shaw, Kayo Shoji, Larissa Smagarinsky, Paul Stacy, Ulric Steiner, Iona Steinle, Peter Stroud, Alma Studholme, Rick Tailby, Jayanto Damanik Tan, Bob Teasdale, Leanne Thompson, Willem van Stom, Jacek Wankowski, Alison Winchester.

24 March

HAZELHURST Regional Gallery & Arts Centre, Sutherland Shire

ARTEXPRESS exhibitionincludes themes of identity and our relationship to the environment. Artists experiment across a range of media, pushing aesthetic, thematic and formal boundaries. More information about the students’ work and the process behind their creation can be found on the ARTEXPRESS 2017 – Student Work page.

SMALL WORKS – BIG IMPACT

A group exhibition by artists of the Bundeena and Maianbar Artist Trail.

Lee Bethel, Doris Kaminsky, Sonja Karl, Peter Mulder, Marion Stehouwer, Oliver Mesrobian, Lan Wang, Tony Fragar, Regina Nazar, Corinne Ferris-Hemsle, Jiawei Shen, Caroline Corby, Yvette Linton-Smith, Margaret Heathwood, Liz Borghero.

Encausticis a new word and form of artwork for me today, also known as hot wax painting.  With the help of Goolge I have discovered what it is and information on Liz Borghero’swork that inspired me to find out what this is all about.

23 March

CUSTOMS HOUSE  

BE. LIVE THE CITY

THE CITY AS A FABRIC

How do we trace ourselves onto the city and allow the city to trace itself onto us? From how we move, think and see to how we play, discover and dream –…This exhibition is a love letter to our city and the people who live in it.  The city is a nexus of home, work, leisure, experience and celebration. It can be more? Can the places and non-places that make up a city be re-imagined to become something other – something transforming.

This exhibition brings to life the city’s rich past by re-imagining moments in time. Contrasting archival photographs and recorded stories with contemporary interpretations, the exhibition highlights how the past can inform the present and stir new ways of being. It shows that history is not only what’s documented and preserved, it is also what is lived by us each day.

We invite you to imagine all a city could be, and the city we want to live in, together.

Curator: Lekki Maze.    Photographer: Kathy Luu.

Contributing video artists:

Cordelia Beresford ‘This City as a Fabric’

Julia Davis ‘This City as a Creative Commons’

Shaun Gladwell  ‘This City as a Playground’

Sue Healey  ‘This City as a Portrait Gallery’

Jethro Lawrence ‘This City as Possibility’

A MILLION THINGS THAT MAKE YOUR HEAD SPIN

American artist Megan Geckler lets us feel what it might be like to step inside a dazzling rainbow at Customs House.  

Feel what it is like to step inside a dazzling rainbow.

American artist Megan Geckler is bringing her detailed, multi-coloured installations to Sydney, and this new work is delivering a ‘wow’ moment inside one of the city’s most historic buildings.

The atrium within Customs House will be home to A Million Things That Make Your Head Spin. The hovering, cloud-like form, which gets its name from a line in Australian band The Jungle Giants’ track Don’t Know What Else to Do, is part of Geckler’s hyper-colourful, mathematically-based practice using thousands of metres of tape, more commonly used on construction sites.

When diffused sunlight is streaming through the multiple stories of Customs House, intersecting the thousands of colourful ribbons in the giant installation, the result will be like stepping inside a rainbow. And while it is visually arresting from the ground floor, every level of the building will provide a unique view.

A Rainbow of Tape Cascades Through a Six-Story Atrium by Christopher Jobson 

21 March

Sydney Animation Production Group– The Dark Art of Pitching

Pitching Tips with Libbie from Children’s ABC TV

Libbie Doherty, Commissioning Editor at ABC Children’s discusses the dark art of pitching shows.

What do commissioning editors want to know, what do they say once you leave the room and how to leave an impression without wearing a character suit and making everyone feel awkward!  We’ll be taking a rare look behind the doors of Australia’s most prolific children’s TV commissioning team.

Libbie Doherty is a passionate advocate for Children’s content and brings a wealth of experience from the animation and live action worlds to the position of Commissioning Editor. Libbie is focused on nurturing new Australian talent, reflecting Australian kids’ lives and creating pathways for Australian kids’ content to cut through into the international market.

ABC Children’s Content

HEART  TO  HEART:  AUSTRALIAN-KOREA-CAMBODIA

15 March

The Lovewell Project Cafe  Mt Gravatt Lookout, Brisbane. Is a social enterprise, profit for purpose café partnered with the Hope Foundation (changing the world one woman at a time) in one of Brisbane’s best locations with stunning views over Brisbane. A charity for women wanting to quit drug addictions and/or leave the sex industry. The new cafe at the Mt Gravatt lookout not only raises funds, but also provides valuable work experience to those it seeks to help.

14 March

the impression of our arteries  Woolloongabba Art Gallery

Featuring:  Caitlin Franzmann, Sonya G. Peters, Robyn Daw, Ali Bezer, Jay Younger, Julie-Anne Milinski, Debra Porch, Mona Ryder, Sophie Bottomley, Elizabeth Shaw, Kat Sawyer, Chantal Fraser, Leena Riethmuller, Carol McGregor, Victoria (Tor) Maclean

The impression of our arteries is an exhibition that questions how the heart and the mind convey significant and revealing impressions and intentions through objects, images and the senses. It reflects the circulatory patterns between those one loves, and the feelings, senses, intuition, perception, influence and the impressions that are formed from these bonds. ~ Debra Porch

Queensland Art Gallery  Moving Pictures: Towards a Rehang of Australian Art

A concentrated presentation of Australian collection highlights is on display during QAG’s Collection Storage Upgrade. This stunning salon hang includes paintings by Rupert Bunny, Vida Lahey, R Godfrey Rivers, Russell Drysdale and Nora Heysen, and many others.  The art storage capacity at the Gallery is being increased by 30 per cent with the construction of a new mezzanine level and modernised storage systems in QAG’s collection store. As part of this upgrade, the Australian collection display is currently closed. This space will be used to accommodate the Collection for the duration of the project, and is scheduled to reopen in September 2017. In the meantime, enjoy Australian collection highlights in ‘Moving Pictures’.

GOMA Gallery of Modern Art

‘we miss you magic land!’ Pip & Pop

GOMA is turning 10 – how sweet! Headlining the celebrations is ‘Sugar Spin’, featuring over 250 contemporary artworks exploring light, space, architecture and the senses.

Nick Cave’s HEARD

Julian Opie‘People Waling Coloured’ 2008 andQAGOMA Learning

MUSEUM  of  BRISBANE

Robert Andrew: Our mutable histories.  History is a changeable force. It is recorded, erased, re-written and scraped back revealing rich cross-sections of layered lives and stories.

100% BRISBANE  Every one of us has a story. Together, they tell the story of Brisbane.

From the enduring culture of our Aboriginal community to the modern metropolis which continues to grow and change, 100% Brisbane puts our city under the microscope like never before. Take a journey from the past through to the present day in ‘A Brisbane Story’, a short film written and presented by acclaimed author and actor William McInnes. Throughout the exhibition you will discover first-hand accounts of people’s experiences of living in Brisbane, alongside some of our city’s most defining moments.

3 March

BtoBW – 5 Step Digital Marketing System  

• Google +, page
• Mobile, friendly Mobile-Friendly Test Link
• Content, publishers of content
• Visuals, think about how people search
• Social Media, ‘like’ builds natural back links

28 February

ART EXPRESS at the Armory at Sydney Olympic Park, is a series of exhibitions of exemplary bodies of work created by students for the 2016 New South Wales Higher School Certificate.  Featuring  a variety of expressive forms including painting, photomedia, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, graphic design, documented forms, textiles and fibre, ceramics, time-based forms and collections of works created by 60 talented students.  It is a joint venture of the NSW Department of Education and Communities and the NSW Education Standards Authority.  The bodies of work represent a broad range of subject matter, approaches, styles and media that reflect the high quality of Visual Arts education in New South Wales.

27 February

Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Tatsuo Miyajima:  Connect with Everything.  It encompasses his sculptural works, rooms and environments, and performance videos.

ART ALMANAC Tatsuo Miyajima: Connect with Everything  29 November 2016 | Melissa Pesa

Tatsuo Miyajima (born 1957, Ibaraki) is one of Japan’s most renowned contemporary artists, known for his sculptures and room-scale installations incorporating light and numbers.

Three guiding principles represent the foundation of Miyajima’s art, which he outlines as keep changing, connect with everything, and continue forever. ‘A constant is the fact that we are always changing’, he observes. ‘In Western thought, permanency refers to a sense of constancy, without change. In Eastern and Buddhist philosophy, change is natural and consistently happening’. Explaining the importance of connection, he expands: ‘As humans and living beings, we cannot and do not exist independently. We are only able to live within relationships in this world.’ The third principle – expressed through the perpetual cycle of birth, death and regeneration – refers back to the first two, for ‘that is the structure of life and of truth’.

Time and its passage are explored through the works and represented visually by multiple, small digital counting devices. Miyajima developed his first customised digital counters in the late 1980s, using light emitting diodes or LEDs. These ‘counter gadgets’ remain central to his art today, their red and green palette expanding in the mid-1990s to include blue, then white, as LEDtechnology developed in and beyond Japan.

Mega Death

The three-wall installation, which is reflected in the polished floors as well, is meant to speak to the abrupt deaths and mass murders of the 20th century.  The wall installation is comprised of LED counters cycling from 9-1 (representing the life of man), followed by a ‘black out’ moment that represents zero (death) – then back to 9, and so on. At certain impossible-to-predict moments the lights simultaneously black-out, representing the loss of innocent lives – before beginning their cycles again.

For Miyajima, blue is “a special colour. I see it very much as representing the ‘infinite’.”

100 Time Lotus (2008)

Like an indoor lap pool for goldfish, this 20-metre ‘pond’ contains 100 white diodes, ten goldfish (all different colours and shapes) and five lotus plants. When they flower, you’ll see these are white lotuses, a flower that represents a key point on the Buddhist’s pathway to enlightenment.

Arrow of Time (Unfinished Life) (2016)

The most recent work in the exhibition (direct from its premiere as part of the Met Breuer’s inaugural exhibition, in New York), this installation takes its title from the scientific concept of linear time. Audiences are encouraged to sit on the floor beneath the red-lit LED counters and experience “time coming at them.”

“It’s an attempt to get people to consider the passage of time in their own lives” says Miyajima.

Kent describes the experience as “like a beautiful cosmic meteor shower.”

REBECCA BAUMANN, MCS Sydney Automated Colour Fields 2011, 100 Flip-clocks, paper

A grid of 100 flip-clocks, the numbered cards have been replaced with sheets of brightly coloured paper set to a 24-hour cycle.  The cards gently click over on the minute or the hour.

Rebecca Baumann’s practice spans a range of media, including kinetic sculpture, photography, performance, digital animation and installation. She is fascinated by the complex workings of human emotion and our pursuit of happiness through celebration and ritual. She has extended this interest into the relation between colour and emotion, drawing on research in psychology, sociology, colour theory and art history. Her works affect the audience through their experiential, transient and emotive qualities. Methodically planned and executed, Baumann’s pieces often utilise festive materials such as confetti, tinsel, smoke, balloons and streamers, which are momentarily, and sometimes violently, brought to life by various mechanisms including fans, ball-throwers, clocks and detonators.

TIM SILVER, MCA Sydney

In a poetic interplay between painting, sculpture and photography Untitled (adrift)documents the demise of an object. A small rowboat, the subject of many a watercolour enthusiast, is moulded from solid watercolour pigment and displayed on a plinth. Although it appears stable, a similar boat is documented with photographs as it dissolves, rather than floating on water. The ten photographic prints on watercolour paper can be shown together as a series, although when first exhibited they were displayed sequentially, so that the process of disintegration corresponded to the exhibition period.

FORGOTTEN SONGS The Bird Cages of Angel Place

Forgotten Songs commemorates the songs of fifty birds once heard in central Sydney, before they were gradually forced out by European settlement.

21 February

From Exhausted to Energised by UTS Business School, Business Practice.

Ph: 02 9514 3504  Email: business.practice@uts.edu.au

In your office alone, one in four coworkers will have taken time off from work due to stress-related reasons. You may even have taken time off yourself.  Whilst this costs the Australian economy over $10 billion dollars in lost productivity, the expense it has on your health, well-being and overall happiness is not to be discounted. It’s time to slow down, find a balance within your career and work intentionally – concentrating on the most important tasks at hand and not being bogged down by an endless list of ad-hoc duties.  In 2017, re-balance your work life and discover the strategies that will enable you to work in an intentional and focused manner. With self-leadership, learn to lead from within and hear from our inspired panel of speakers on how they have managed to create a balanced work life.

SPEAKERS and panel discussion with:

Deanna Chesler, Director, PwC

I have been with PwC since 2000, with experience in Financial Services Assurance across the insurance, investment management as well as banking and capital markets sectors. I have an active role on the PwC gender diversity Committee and FS People Committee and am passionate about the development of people.

Brooke McAlary, Founder, Jackrabbit.FM & Slow Your Home

Brooke McAlary is the founder of Jackrabbit.FM, Australia’s largest independent podcast network, and the host of The Slow Home Podcast, an iTunes #1 Health program, where she discusses slow living, simplicity and mindfulness with guests from all over the world. She’s also a keen traveller, snowboarder, yoga amateur, parent and advocate for the finest things in life (naps, bush walks and a good book). You can learn more about Brooke and her simple living mission at slowyourhome.com.

Muneesh Wadhwa, Founder, Humanity in Business

Muneesh is the Founder of Humanity in Business and has been in events industry for over 15 years. He is passionate about people and making a difference to the business world. He loves to connect people to each other and support leaders to be the best they can be.

Anna Guz, Naturopath and Wellness Consultant

Anna Guz is a highly qualified and caring Naturopath and Wellness Consultant with more than 10 years of experience in running her own clinical practice. Her main interest lies in fertility, pregnancy, reproductive health for men and women as well as mental health.

Anna’s dedication to developing her clinical practice and constant hunger for further education in integrated medicine has led her to supporting many people during their healing journeys.  She loves to see people reach their individual health goals and support them to improve their quality of life.

Moderator: Suzanne Salter, Research Consultant, CMOS Centre for Management and Organisation Studies, UTS.

18 February

DARLING  HARBOUR– Australian National Maritime Museum:  LUSTRE Pearling & Australia

From a 2,000-year-old natural pearl found in a Kimberley rockshelter to modern lustrous pearl jewellery, Lustre: Pearling and Australiatraces the fascinating heritage of pearling across the north of Australia, from Shark Bay to the Torres Strait Islands.  Explore the gritty human story of pearling, weaving together intersecting strands of Aboriginal, Asian and European histories to reveal insights into one of Australia’s oldest industries.

BARANGAROO

Barangaroo Reserve is Sydney’s newest Harbour foreshore park – marking the transformation of one of the city’s oldest and ugliest industrial sites into a spectacular, six-hectare headland open space for Sydneysiders and visitors to embrace and enjoy.

17 February

VAUDEVILLIA by Mic Conway’s National Junk Band & Sue Broadway @ Camelot Lounge

Back by very popular demand, Mic Conway’s National Junk Band presents the first edition of new Vaudevillia for 2017.  Yet again “Everything new will be old again!” with NEW GUESTS, fresh tunes, and some very well-honed one liners and magical happenings.

Based on the old Vaudeville program intermingling segments of music, magic, dance, comedy, sight acts and more, the Junk Band have created a recipe for mirth, mayhem and madness, with SPECIAL GUESTS (including the inimitable SUE BROADWAY) as stunning and startling additions to the bizarre and prodigious talents exhibited by members of the Junk Band.

It’s a 21st Century recreation of Vaudeville atmosphere and charm, and what better venue than the fabulous Camelot. Roll up, Roll up, and discover entertainment as it should be : Vaudevillia.

15 February

The Sandpit – Sydney

You don’t need to play by yourself any more.  The Sandpit is a not-networking night, designed for people who hate to network.  Every other month, creative business people and freelances just like you meet for drinkies and chit chat in the safe and friendly environment of the pub.  It’s all the good bits of networking (meeting people, drinking, getting out of the house) without any of the bad parts (awkwardness, pressure to sell, feeling like a dill).  Best of all, this is a wanker-free environment and it is free.

Come along and have a chat about your goals and plans for the upcoming year (or just bitch about the last one) with some cool like-minded people.

Why is The Sandpit “non-networking”? Because we meet to make friends, have a few drinks and find like-minded creative people. Golden Sandpit Rules: We DO NOT meet to share elevator pitches, annoy each other or be wankers. Please DO bring your business cards though, just in case you connect with someone cool 🙂Host: Creative Plus Business, with your hosts Monica, Sarah, Wendi and SteveWhere: The Bank Hotel, 324 King Street Newtown

3 February

NUDE  art from the Tate collection

In a partnership between Tate, London and the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney, Nude: art from the Tate collection presents over 100 major representations of the nude, including paintings, sculptures, photographs and prints by renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso, Lucian Freud, Henri Matisse, Louise Bourgeois, Marlene Dumas and Sarah Lucas.

At the heart of the show lies the world’s most famous image of erotic love, Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The kiss 1901-04. Never before has this work from Tate’s collection left Europe. Other notable works include Pierre Bonnard’s The bath 1925, Picasso’s Nude woman in a red armchair 1932, Sylvia Sleigh’s Paul Rosano reclining 1974, Ron Mueck’s Wild man 2005 and Rineke Dijkstra’s Julie, Den Haag, Netherlands, February 29 1994.

Each artist in the exhibition offers a different way of looking at the naked human body. Some look tenderly; some idealise it; some look anxiously or politically. Together they show how the nude in art has persisted yet changed, shifting shape and acquiring new meanings in the hands of successive generations, from the idealising painters of the Victorian era to the artist-provocateurs of our time.

Nude: art from the Tate collection is a spectacular tour through many major art movements, including romanticism, cubism, expressionism, realism, surrealism and feminism. It is also a story of beauty, truth, desire, vulnerability and human drama.

The presentation of this exhibition is a collaboration between Tate and the Art Gallery of NSW, and part of the 2016-17 Sydney International Art Series.

NEW MATTER matter recent forms of photography

How do we look at photographs without relying on pictorial content alone?

Drawn from the Gallery’s collection, this exhibition features recent work by Australian and international photographers who expand the limits of photographic representation. These artists are preoccupied with the material properties of the photograph and challenge our tendency to treat a photographic object as a passive conduit that we look through, not at.

The selected works resist the category of the purely representational. They experiment with the abstraction of form and acknowledge illusion and artifice as inherent to the medium. Exposing fissures or gaps in the image that either camouflage the subject or render it illegible, they offer new ways of reading and interpreting photography itself.

The artists – most of whom are in the early stages of their careers – include Jacqueline Ball, Walead Beshty, Matthew Brandt, Danica Chappell, Zoë Croggon, Christopher Day, Charles Dennington, Cherine Fahd, Deb Mansfield, Todd McMillan, Luke Parker, Kate Robertson, James Tylor and Justine Varga

ARTEXPRESS 2017

Featuring a selection of outstanding student artworks developed for the artmaking component of the HSC examination in Visual Arts 2016, ARTEXPRESS 2017 provides insight into students’ creativity and the issues important to them.

The exhibition encompasses a broad range of approaches and expressive forms, including ceramics, collection of works, documented forms, drawing, graphic design, painting, photomedia, printmaking, sculpture, textiles and fibre, and time-based forms.

PRIMARY  STRUCTURES, SPECULATIVE FORMS

Sculpture lies at the heart of the John Kaldor Family Collection and is also a strength of the Gallery’s collection of contemporary international art.

In 1966, five years after he started his collection, John Kaldor viewed the now-legendary Primary structures: younger American and British sculptors exhibition, curated by Kynaston McShine for the Jewish Museum, New York. Widely credited for introducing minimalism to the United States, the exhibition featured an emerging group of artists whose works took abstract, geometric forms achieved via industrial fabrication techniques. By exhibiting as ‘art’ objects that they conceived and designed, but did not necessarily make themselves, the artists helped shift the aesthetic course of 20th-century sculpture.

Primary structures and speculative forms takes McShine’s exhibition as a point of departure and explores various strands of artmaking that connect it to the present. At the core of the exhibition are works by artists associated with 1960s minimalism. Spiralling out from them are the speculative forms of contemporary artists whose works question or expand upon the minimalist tradition, through the use of ready-made objects, the creation of objects that incorporate the body, and the application of sculptural principles to two-dimensional media.

Artists include Ai Weiwei, Carl Andre, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Larry Bell, Thomas Demand, Vincent Fecteau, Sol LeWitt, Anthony McCall, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Gabriel Orozco, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, Monika Sosnowska, Tatiana Trouvé, Franz West and Rachel Whiteread.

Note: works by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Vincent Fecteau, Mario Merz, Fred Sandback and Franz West will be removed temporarily from display in 2017 while ARTEXPRESSis on show in one of the galleries

Yes yes yes yes graphics from the 1960s and 1970s  

Left to right: Joe Tilson E – Erotic – Earth – Eyes 1969 from the portfolio A-Z Box… fragments of an oneiric alphabet © Joe Tilson, 1969-70, Art Gallery of New South Wales © Joe Tilson/DACS. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney; Eduardo Paolozzi Vogue gorilla with Miss Harper from the portfolio Bunk 1972, Art Gallery of New South Wales © Sir Eduardo Paolozzi/DACS. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney

These decades were an exciting period in art, when advances in printmaking techniques and the ever-increasing power of mass-media provided artists with diverse and innovative ways to communicate their art to a wider audience.

In this exhibition are works from the Gallery’s collection by renowned artists including Joe Tilson, Eduardo Paolozzi and John Cage among others, alongside works by Roy Lichtenstein on display for the first time and newly acquired works by Corita Kent.

Inspired by the title of a work by Joe Tilson in the exhibition, the phrase ‘yes yes yes yes’ evokes the democratic spirit and ethos of technical innovation shared by many of these artists and their printers, who sought to distribute ‘fine art’ imagery more broadly through methods of mechanical reproduction.

1 February

ACM SIGGRAPH:  Showreel Planning Workshop

Speaker: Dr Shilo T. McClean, is the Head of the UTS Animal Logic Academy and Chair of Sydney ACM Siggraph (Professional Chapter). She is the author of the books: Digital Storytelling – the narrative power of VFX in film and Digital Playing Fields – new rulz for film, art and performance.

http://sydney.siggraph.org.au/

Notes have been posted towards the bottom of my Show Reel Blog – link here

30 January

Max and Olive: The Photographic Life of Max Dupain and Olive Cotton

A National Gallery of Australia Exhibition. This is the first exhibition to look at the work of these two photographers as they shared their lives and studio.The exhibition showcases 70 works drawn from the photography collection of the National Gallery of Australia and will include some of the most memorable and iconic works of these two photographers from  the 1930s and 1940s.

Olive Cotton and Max Dupain are key figures in Australian visual culture. They shared a long and close personal and professional relationship. This exhibition looks at their work made between 1934 and 1945, the period of their professional association; this was an exciting period of experimentation and growth in Australian photography, and Cotton and Dupain were at the centre of these developments.

This is the first exhibition to look at the work of these two photographers as they shared their lives, studio and professional practice. Looking at their work together is instructive; they were often shooting the same subjects, or pursuing subjects and pictorial effects in similar ways. Comparisons articulate and make apparent Dupain’s more structured – even abstracted – approach to art and to the world; similarly, comparisons highlight Cotton’s more immersive relationship to place, with a particularly deep and instinctual love of light and its ephemeral effects.

This exhibition focuses on the key period in each of their careers, when they made many of their most memorable images. Keenly aware of international developments in photography, Cotton and Dupain experimented with the forms and strategies of modernist photography, especially Surrealism and the Bauhaus, and drew upon the sophisticated lighting and compositions of contemporary advertising and Hollywood glamour photography.

They brought to these influences their own, close association with the rich context of Australian life and culture during the 1930s and ’40s. Their achievement can be characterised, borrowing terms they used in discussions of their work, as the development of a ‘contemporary Australian photography’: a modern photographic practice that reflected their own, very particular relationships to the world and to each other.

Supported by the National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach Program, an Australian Government program aiming to improve access to the national collections for all Australians.

Silver & Salt: Experimental Photography

Works which embrace and exploit traditional photographic techniques and mediums to produce innovative and experimental work.

Includes work by:

Amanda Williams,I enjoyed the high contrast while maintaining details in the shadows and light areas and keeping the grain that is part of analogue film.  The photographic were treated differently with the use of light and tone.

Justine Varga, found interesting, no camera and the use of bodily actions on the film then processed.

Ashleigh Harwood with an interesting use of negative film, scanned then digitally manipulated and altered.  The places do not exist, time is neither transient nor external – see time.

Light and ephemeral effects.

“The Wings of Tomorrow” Clive Turnbull.

Palimpsest

New work from Belinda Allen, ‘Sacred/Profane’ and Christopher Laurie, ‘Come Fill The Cup’.  Both artists combine images, film, books, texts and soundscapes in an exploration of history and culture of place. The works utilise imagery from travels in Europe, Japan, India and Australia. The images are layered and juxtaposed to reveal synchronicities and contradictions that perplex the viewer’s perception of place.

Belinda Allen’s ‘sacred’ images of history, culture and landscape are layered with the quotidian and ‘profane’ – street scenes, newspaper clippings, found texts and accidental ‘art’ – to provoke our thinking about how each informs our experience of the ‘now’.  http://belindaallen.com.au/

https://vimeo.com/135642627

Christopher Lawrie explores the dichotomies and synergies between contemporary Islam and historical, non-secular Christianity. In a modern world that is struggling with the place of religion in social and political life, and most particularly with the perceived ‘threat’ to Christian and secular cultures of an imposed ‘Islamic State’, it is pertinent to reflect upon the origins of our own secular culture and the place of the spirit. https://vimeo.com/christopherlawrie

WABI SABI  Japan

29 January

Free Guided Walk at Long Reef Aquatic Reserve This program is proudly supported by the Recreational Fishing Trust

Phil Colman searching for marine treasure in a big kelp stranding on Collaroy Beach. Photo: Pittwater Online News Jan 8 – 14, 2012: Issue 40

October 21, 2018 | Categories: year | Tags: 2017 | Leave a comment

2016

2016 

community

23 December

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS

Christmas Lights:  Second Avenue, Ashbury

St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney city.

David Jone’s windows, Sydney; Pitt Street Mall, Sydney; Queen Victoria Building, Sydney; Martin Place, Sydney.

4 December

The Consulate-General of the Republic of Korea in Sydney hosts a North Korean Human Rights Film Screening and Reception of the North Korean human rights film “The Wall”

1 December 

Art Bank 2017 NSW Visual Artist Fellowship Exhibition

222 Young Street, Waterloo NSW 2011

The 2017 NSW Visual Artist Fellowship Exhibitionincludes a selection of recent works by Khadim Ali, Linda Dement, Karla Dickens, Bianca Hester, Hiromi Tango, and Salote Tawale, the six artists shortlisted for the award by an industry panel.   Salute Tamale was awarded the fellowship.

Our collection has been building for over 30 years and is one of the largest of Australian art in the world. Accordingly, we hold some of the greatest examples of Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous artwork produced during the past four decades.

26 November

White Rabbit Gallery exhibition Vile Bodies

Out in the wild lands beyond the Great Wall, there once roamed people with claws and blue skin, one-legged goblins, women with tigers’ teeth, and fish-men that walked on four fins. Such monsters and mutants posed a threat to the civilised order, so they had to be kept at a distance. Yet they were also enticing, alluring, impossible to ignore.
That is because they were us. Their freakish forms, bizarre behaviours, even their magic powers, were expressions of the lingering wildness in us all. They gave shape to our inner Swamp Creatures—the primal fears and imaginings, the lusts and eccentricities, the built-in bugs and defects beneath our standard-issue skins.
Monsters can be dangerous. To give them free rein is to invite calamity, as China’s history shows. But while the vile in us must be restrained, it cannot be suppressed. We may do away with blue-skinned tribes and fish-people, but evolutionary ape-men and cyborgs, cloned sheep and mutant viruses soon take their place. And the vile in us is not always evil. It can be beautiful, even glorious, as the artists in VILE BODIES show. In exploring the monsters we contain and the monsters we create, they enlarge our picture of the human animal.

• Chinese Offspring, Zhang Dali’s “mass hanging” of naked migrant workers

• Recombinant, 50 photographs of eerily plausible insects and amphibians re-engineered with human skin and hair by Li Shan

• Lu Yang’s electronic music video Krafttremor, in which the movements of men with Parkinson’s disease “control” the soundtrack

• A Wandering robotic avian centipede by Luxury Logico

• Qiu Anxiong’s New Book of Mountains and Seas Part 2, an ink-painting-based animation inspired by a mythological “geography” book.

• Zhou Changyong’s video–sculpture of his qi-shrouded avatar playing Jamie Foxx in an action sequence from Django Unchained.

Vile Bodies is open Wednesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It runs until February 5, 2017.

12 November

The Corner Gallery, Stanmore:  Adopt a Tree, Save Sydney Park

Featuring an exhibition of photography highlighting the beauty and importance of Sydney Park and its trees, with photography by acclaimed photo-journalist Lorrie Graham, sculpture by visual artist Gabrielle Bates and drawings by Maryanne Coutts, Head of Drawing at the National Art School.

28 October

Operation Art Armory Gallery 

Operation Art is the premier state-wide visual artsexhibition for school students from Kindergarten to Year 10. With over 800 artworks by students from throughout NSW, this year’s exhibition offers Armory Gallery visitors a great opportunity to celebrate the creative talents of our young people at our unique riverside setting.

8 September

Q&A session with S^3. S Cubed, the creative driving forces behind it are all very experienced artists in the world of animation, animation direction and production , concept art, storyboarding, character design etc.

CARRIAGEWORKS

Kathy Cavaliere Loved provides an insight into Cavaliere’s (1972-2012) practice, where objects acquire an aura of love and trauma and tell the story of a life. Curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham.

‘HER VISION WAS TO SCULPT WITH LIGHT IN ORDER TO ILLUMINATE LIFE’S SHADOWS’ SMH

Katthy Cavaliere: Loved – Artist’s spirit present in posthumous MONA exhibition.  An exhibition that traces the career of the late Sydney artist Katthy Cavaliere movingly evokes her spirit. 

Francesco Clemente Encampment  Every single moment of the unfolding experience of the work is just a pretext to move on, to move forward from that moment. It’s never supposed to be a beginning of an ending; it’s supposed to be a transition.”

The first major exhibition in Australia of work by acclaimed Italian contemporary artist Francesco Clemente, and second in the annual Schwartz Carriageworks series of major international visual arts projects, Encampment includes six of Clemente’s celebrated large-scale tents, transforming 30,000 square feet of the precinct into an opulent tented village.

Created in collaboration with a community of artists in Rajasthan, India, with exteriors that combine camouflaged fabric and golden embroidery, the tents in Encampment invite us into jewel-toned spaces populated by Byzantine angels.

3 August

Sydney ACM SIGGRAPH  Speaker: Jeremy Harkins

ineni Realtimeis at the leading edge of real-time virtual technologies including: 3D immersive environments, VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) for architecture, mining and smart cities. The company has partnered with world leaders in building automation, integrated systems and business process management and is providing cutting edge solutions for some of the largest and most complex developments in the world.

ineni Realtime is a market leader in the development of realtime rendering visualisations and virtual reality applications for the built environment and related industries.  Helping to simplify the communication of engineering or architectural complexities, the innovative 3D content engages stakeholders whilst drastically saving you time and money throughout the building lifecycle.

Jeremy Harkins is the Director and co-founder of ineni Realtime, an innovative technology company focused on the development of the Realtime Visualisation Industry. Jeremy has spoken internationally about the Studio’s work and has over a decade of experience in Architectural Technologies including professional work, consultancy and Full-Time Academia.

25 July

TRACEY  MOFFATT Art Gallery of NSW:  Laudanum and other works

Left to right: Tracey Moffatt Laudanum 13 and Laudanum 16 from the series Laudanum 1998, photogravures, 36.8 × 37.4 cm and 28.8 × 47.6 cm, purchased with funds provided by the Art Gallery Society of NSW 1999 © Tracey Moffatt

Tracey Moffatt is one of Australia’s most influential artists and the Art Gallery of NSWhas a substantial collection of her work. This exhibition enables study of key threads and her particular use of the still and moving image.

Moffatt’s photographic series Laudanum 1998 and Plantation 2009 are related through the use of old colonial homes as locations for the playing out of fears and desires. The artist’s love of cinema and melodrama is evident, particularly in Laudanum with its references to Murnau’s expressionist 1922 film Nosferatu. Her ongoing play with the photographic medium is beautifully presented through the toned photogravures of Laudanum and the printing and painting on handmade paper in Plantation. 

The montage videos (made with Gary Hillberg) Love 2003 and Other 2009 are two sides of the same coin. Love traces the evolution of romantic love to brutality in the name of love; Other narrates the explosive attraction between races, sexes and genders.

24 July

Archibald Prize 2016  Art Gallery of NSW

Archibald for Portrait Finalists

Lynne for Landscape or Figurative Sculpture Finalists

Sulman for Subject, Genre or Mural Painting 

Images from the NSW Art Gallery Web Page.

21 July

Eid Night Marketand discovering Booza Mastic Ice Cream

9 July

EXILED  TO  NOWHERE:  BURMA’S ROHINGYA

A photographic exhibition by Greg Constantine,  Produced by the City of Sydney

In Burma, the Rohingya have been abused, excluded and denied the most basic of human rights, including citizenship.  As refugees in Bangladesh and beyond, they have been neglected, exploited and forced to exist in the darkest margins of society.

Nowhere People: exposing a portrait of the world’s stateless | Greg Constantine | TEDxEastEnd

Parramatta WinterlightSkate and Slide

Parramatta Ferry

6 July

Sydney ACM SIGGRAPH   Speaker: Niki Bern,Compositing

29 May

VIVID SYDNEY  27th May – 18th Jun 2016  is a unique annual event of light, music and ideas, featuring an outdoor ‘gallery’ of extraordinary lighting sculptures, a cutting-edge contemporary music program, some of the world’s most important creative industry forums and, of course, the spectacular illumination of the Sydney Opera House sails.

14 May

WAR – A Playground Perspective – Armory Gallery

This exhibition will explore and interrogate our understanding of war and draw on the work of some of Australia’s leading.

28 April

GEORGY  GIRL  The Seekers Musical

Mike McLeish (Bruce Woodley), Phillip Lowe (Keith Potger), Pippa Grandison (Judith Durham) and Glaston Toft (Athol Guy) in Georgy Girl: The Seekers Musical. Photo: Jeff Busby

13 April

Turandot on Sydney Harbour

Opera Australia presents Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour presents Turandot,  a story of a death-marked love. It’s the best of Sydney in a single evening: singing, sunsets and sparkling wine, in perfect harmony. Join us at the water’s edge in a pop-up opera house with purpose-built bars, restaurants and a grandstand under the stars.

Chinese director Chen Shi-Zheng’s take on this Chinese fable will be one for the history books.

Synopsis

5 April

Experience Autodesk Flame “Unleashed” 3D visual effects and finishing tool for your post-production and visual effects pipelines.  These one-off sessions provide hands-on experience with Flame in a class led by renowned Visual Effects & Finishing Artist, David Wood.

8 March

International Women’s Day – Short Film Screening at Woollarha Municipal Council in partnership with WOW

STUFFED:  Taxidermist Peter Murphy loves his mother and when she dies he can’t bear to live without her, and does all that he can to keep her with him.

CLAN: James Saunders went to boarding school on a football scholarship but when he finished school his step father told him he had to survive on his own. James moved to be with his father on a mission in Victoria but his family turned on him and sent him on his way. James was suicidal but decided to come out. He found a new family with a gay rugby team, the Convicts, and with them went on to win two world cups.

FRONTIER: is a Western/ Thriller set in the 1800s, a time when the most bloody and deadly of massacres in Australian history took place.

LETTER  FOR  HOPE:  is the story of two strangers, a lonely old man and a devastated young woman, who enter each other’s worlds at the lowest point of their lives.  The pragmatic and awkward old man discovers wisdom and compassion he didn’t know he had and his extraordinary actions give peace and new purpose to them both.

18 February

Walkley Media Talk – Difficult Women by the Walkley Foundation 

Looking past online outrage to a constructive discussion about how our society, politicians and public figures treat women. What role and responsibility does the media have? Where’s the line between political correctness and dangerous attitudes? Who’s getting it right – and who’s stuffing up?

Monique Schafter: Monique is a Walkley Award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker who reports for the ABC’s nightly current affairs program, 7.30. Previously, she co-hosted the ABC’s ground-breaking current affairs/comedy program Hungry Beast, produced by Andrew Denton.

Jenny Noyes: Jenny Noyes is a writer and producer for Daily Life, Australia’s number-one website for women.

Moo Baulch: Moo Baulch is chief executive of Domestic Violence NSW, the state peak body for specialist domestic and family violence services. She is part of a small team that works to improve policy and practice responses to women, children and communities impacted by violence in NSW. Moo is excited about the positive connections being made between media and the non-government domestic and family violence sector. She’s seen significant shifts in the last couple of years and believes that ethical reporting of survivors’ stories has played a huge role in the development of community conversations about violence and sexual assault.

Moderator: Kate Matheson. Kate Matheson was diagnosed with Early Onset Parkinson’s at 29, carries the BRCA1 gene mutation, is a cancer survivor times lots, and pretty much shouldn’t be standing upright. At 44 she is the Editor of the PNG Industry News and the PNG Report for Aspermont Publishing UK and a frequent columnist for the Huffington Post Australia. Her work for news.com.au is syndicated across the NewsCorp network, with her articles on tackling violence against women, domestic violence, equity for women in sport, marriage equality, and the need to start walking rather than just talking about change attracting international attention. She is a National Ambassador for the partner of the Fox Foundation here in Australia, Shake It Up, a Lifeline counsellor, and a domestic violence and rape survivor. She is a non-practicing law graduate, ex-corporate warrior, is about to start her Master of Literature at the same time as writing a book because she is completely insane, and is a total geek girl who loves code and web development almost as much as she does the fight for women’s rights and social awareness. Her blog is called A Difficult Woman, which pretty much explains everything.

The discussion started out with reference to the way we talk about women, how people refer to women, how women are perceived and bringing about meaningful change.  Does a difficult woman question, argue, have a passion in beliefs, stand against the tide. The need for ethical reporting of people’s stories, exchanging knowledge, what is the difficulty, to be transparent and have social justice.  To be inclusive rather than decisive, embracing and being respectful of difference. No need for gender related tribalism, with the expectation we are all on the same team and criticise with respectful language.  We are all human with work and home life responsibilities. Is issue of difficult behaviour and its relationship to mental health issues, are women over reacting. the by stander stuff – is it respectful?

17 February

The Sandpit; Creative Plus Business

You don’t need to play by yourself any more! The Sandpit is a not-networking night, designed for people who hate to network. Every other month, creative business people and freelancers  just like you meet for drinkies and chit chat in the safe and friendly environment of the pub. It’s all the good bits of networking (meeting people, drinking, getting out of the house) without any of the bad parts (awkwardeness, pressure to sell, feeling like a dill). Best of all, this is a wanker-free environment, and it’s free!

10 February

Intraware & Foundry Nuke 10 Seminar

Nuke Studio:  finishing suite enhancements are plays up to 4K playback, chroma key, grade nodes, smart paint tools transferring file types such as EDL, EXR and Quicktime, improved realtime playback and see in-timeline soft effects including a real-time keyer, enhanced audio handling, and a performance boost.

Nuke 10: enhancements, refinements and performance

3D rayTrace renderer, ray render node and spoke about reflections, AO, motion blur, shadows, antialiasing

smart paint tool set, generates a vector, exr sequence and can deform this across the surface allowing you to add textures or paint to any image sequence that contains complex motion or subtle details.  Smart Vector, Smart Distort.

Nuke 10 Beta Smart Vector Tutorial

roto paint increased number of strokes, frame range, faster feedback, more interactive

The Foundry Shows Off Nuke 10 – Lesterbanks

3 February

PARLIAMENT of  AUSTRALIA

Parliament House is a symbol of Australian democracy. Home to the Parliament of Australia and meeting place of the nation, Parliament House is the focal point of Canberra, our capital city.

The House of Representatives , known as the people’s house, is where government is formed. It has 150 members, and the party or parties able to gain the support of the majority of the House form government. The House’s other roles are to debate proposed laws, watch over government expenditure, including through its committee system, and to provide a forum for public debate on issues of national importance.

The Senate is a partner with the House in the legislative process, but is also a check on the government of the day. It consists of 76 senators – 12 from each state and 2 from each territory. The Senate conducts much of its work through an established committee system, including the budget estimates accountability process.

See Parliament in Action

Visitors are welcome to view the proceedings of both the Senate and House of Representatives from the public galleries in the chambers on parliamentary sitting days. Question Time is held in both the Senate and the House of Representatives from 2.00pm. Tickets for Question Time in the House of Representatives can be booked by phoning the office of the Serjeant-at-Arms on (02) 6277 4889 up until 12.30pm on the day required. Bookings are not required for Question Time in the Senate.

A visit to the roof of Parliament House provides one of the best views of Canberra and the opportunity to get up close to the building’s iconic 81-metre high flag mast, one of the world’s largest stainless steel structures.

MUSEUM  of  AUSTRALIAN  DEMOCRACY:  Old Parliament House.   Open daily 9am–5pm

A national icon, a place of great beauty, magnificent design and historical significance.  Enjoy a range of innovative exhibitions, tours and public programs that challenge and inspire. There are also special activities and spaces for children to explore. Finish your visit in one of our two beautiful cafés. As one of Australia’s most cherished and important buildings. Celebrating the spirit of Australian democracy and the power of your voice within it!

Right Here Now: a powerful regional voice in our democracy

A unique selection of artwork from regional Australian artists is on display from 17 November, highlighting the prominence of rural voices in Australian democracy.

The exhibition Right Here Now showcases eighteen artists working outside the major city centres of Australia who have been paired in a creative mentorship project. The project develops talent through pairing blossoming artists with experienced mentors for nine-months; their creations show a divine mirror of influence and encouragement between the pairs. Artists include:

• Brian Robinson and Jimmy Thaiday from Queensland
• Chris De Rosa and Ebony Heidenreich from South Australia
• Linda Botham and Bonnie Weidenbach from Victoria
• Rick Ball and young Menindee artists collective from New South Wales
• Raymond Arnold and Jessie Pangas from Tasmania
• Chayni Henry and David Collins from the Northern Territory
• Sandra Hill and Donna Fortescue from Western Australia

View the catalogue to see the designs, meet the artists, and read more about their background and what inspired their artwork for the exhibition.

Crisis 1914! The Call to Arms

First convoy leaving Albany

The outbreak of the First World War was the first crisis for the new Australian nation. Australia was one of only two or three functioning democracies that went to war in August 1914; Australia was also the most recently created nation. The first few months of the First World War demonstrated Australia’s enthusiastic commitment to the war, not yet exposing the tensions that would later divide the nation. Australians willingly went to war as Britons, but were also determined that the war effort reflected our young nation’s democratic spirit.

The decisions made by the governments led firstly by Joseph Cook, and then Andrew Fisher, were crucial to how Australia would conduct its war effort. Cook’s Cabinet rushed to commit a 20,000 strong expeditionary force, a figure easily achieved and then surpassed by the end of the year. Following the federal election in early September the new prime minister, Andrew Fisher, passed the War Precautions Act, giving the government wide-ranging powers to help in the conduct of the war. Some were alarmed at the extent of these powers, but all agreed that extraordinary measures were needed to deal with the challenges that the war presented.

By the end of 1914 Australians were optimistic and enthusiastic. Opposition to the war, such as it was, paled in the face of crowds of men eager to sign up to the new Australian Imperial Force, and community organisations mobilising to raise funds for the war effort. The successes of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force in German New Guinea, and the sinking of the German cruiser SMS Emden by HMAS Sydney on 9 November, added to the optimism and pride felt by most Australians.

Happy and Glorious

Queen Elizabeth ascending the front steps

The Queen’s Visit in 1954. The phrase conjures up memories of a young Queen in summer dresses and ball gowns, crowds of Australians excitedly waving flags and charming tableaus spelling out heartfelt messages.

Old Parliament House was central to the royal tour while the Queen was in Canberra. The Queen alighted from the Daimler and walked up the front steps in her coronation gown to rousing cheers. She was escorted through King’s Hall by a very proud Prime Minister Menzies to attend the State Banquet. In her most formal duty, the Queen opened the 20th Parliament in the Senate Chamber. A room in the President of the Senate’s suite was redecorated and furnished for her private use while she was in the house.

We have a number of objects in our collection online relating to this royal visit.

2 February 

NATIONAL  PORTRAIT  GALLERY:  The purpose of the National Portrait Gallery is to increase the understanding and appreciation of the Australian people – their identity, history, culture, creativity and diversity – through portraiture.

Women in Focus:  presents a selection of these early acquisitions alongside a sample of the 2600 works in various media subsequently added to the collection through purchase, gift and commission. Underlining the National Portrait Gallery’s ongoing role in showcasing the varied and inventive approaches employed by portrait artists, the display also highlights the energy the Gallery has applied to the development of a collection documenting the strength and diversity of the achievements of contemporary Australian women.

Sideshow Alley:

Ned Kelly Death Mask, 1880 by Dr Maximilian L. Kreitmayer Ned Kelly Death Mask 1880 by unknown artist plaster Private Collection

Our Victorian forebears weren’t squeamish. And they weren’t all that prim, either. Sideshow Alley re-tells tales of criminal and institutional savagery in Australia’s colonial settlements and considers the tension between:

• the idea of portraiture as a means to edify, refine and elevate the sensibility of the populace, and
• the popular thirst for the lowbrow, the cheap, the tacky and the ghoulish in portraiture.

Sideshow Alley transports us to a time when crowds surged to see the laid-out bodies of outlaws, competing to tear out scraps of their hair and beards; and a photograph of a corseted matron, posed against a pillar no less rigid than she, might be stuck in the family album alongside a photograph of a defunct bushranger, propped up with gun in hand to menace the populace even in death. 

Sideshow Alley brings to life a time when lithographs, woodcuts and waxworks of men in their direst moments attracted just as much interest as the monumental representations of explorers and statesmen that set the official tone of the age.

NATIONAL  GALLERY  of   AUSTRALIA:  TOM ROBERTS (1856–1931) was a great Australian artist. He is arguably one of Australia’s best-known andmost loved artists, standing high amongst his talented associates at a vital moment in local painting. His output was broad-ranging, and includes landscapes, figures in the landscape, industrial landscapes and cityscapes. He was also Australia’s leading portrait painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition, he made a small number of etchings and sculptures and in his later years he painted a few nudes and still lifes.

Artist : Tom Roberts Title : Bailed up

30 January

Newington Armory, Armory Gallery Exhibition: Designing Your Future: is an educational design collaboration between Sydney Olympic Park and South Western Sydney Institute’s Lidcombe design students. It celebrates cutting edge design work across the creative disciplines of industrial design, interior design, interior decoration and design fundamentals.

The exhibition offers a unique glimpse of 80 talented TAFE design students and their designs into the future direction of design in Sydney.  It also gives a public platform for students to showcase their award winning designs and prototypes to industry and the community.

29 January

The 2016 UNSW’s Gandhi Oration will be delivered by Mr Peter Greste on “Journalism in the Age of Terror” The annual oration commemorates India’s Martyrs’ Day, the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination on 30 January 1948.

Peter is an acclaimed campaigner for freedom of the press and an award winning Australian journalist.  He has also been awarded the International Association of Press Clubs’ Freedom of Speech Award and the 2015 Human Rights Medal, awarded by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

An Australian-born foreign correspondent, jailed for 400 days in 2013 on confected terrorism charges along with two colleagues while working in Egypt for Al Jazeera English.

He was sentenced to seven years in prison after a trial that was widely dismissed as a sham, but in February 2015, after intense international pressure, he was deported to Australia under a presidential decree.

As a result of the letters he wrote from prison in the defense of freedom of the press, Greste won a Walkley Award for most outstanding contribution to journalism in 2014, and Royal Television Society and Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards in 2015.

Prior to his incarceration in Egypt, Greste covered the civil war in Yugoslavia and elections in South Africa as a freelance reporter. He joined the BBC as its Afghanistan correspondent in 1995 and went on to cover Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. In 2011, he won a Peabody Award for a BBC documentary on Somalia before joining Al Jazeera as its East Africa correspondent.

Some thoughts that have come away with me from this outstanding oration:

27 January

October 21, 2018 | Categories: year | Tags: 2016 | Leave a comment

2015

2015

community

December 2015

13 December

Burmese Food Fair, Yennora

9 December

Sandpit Christmas

25 November

7 November

Refugee group exhibition opening with Jenny Kee at Everglades House and Gardens Gallery, Leura.  Over 15 artists have donated their work to support the work of Blue Mountains Refugee Support Group.

Exhibition open: 11am – 3pm, Wednesday to Sunday 7 November to 29 November

30 September

Operation Art  Daily, 5 Sep – 25 Oct 2015 10am-4pm – Armory Gallery

Operation Art is the premier state-wide visual artsexhibition for school students from Kindergarten to Year 10. With over 800 artworks by students from throughout NSW, this year’s exhibition offers Armory Gallery visitors a great opportunity to celebrate the creative talents of our young people at our unique riverside setting.

Presented in partnership with NSW Department of Education & Communities and The Children’s Hospital at Westmead.

2 September

Sydney ACM SIGGRAPH – Lightwell – a Vivid Case Study

The Aperture Club – Art and Soul:  The Secrets of Great Portrait Photography with Shane Rozario.  What is a good portrait?

photograph from google images

Some ideas that gave me food for thought from Shane’s presentation.

Photographers follow something, are driven by an interest, they have a curiosity while growing to understand the differences in your likes and dislikes. The little wins all become part of the experience and building confidence.

Make friends with your subject, consider making stories, tune into observations, look for shots, think about the bigger vision, experiments lead to new experiences and new inspiration.

Look at your work and learn how to predict what is going to happen.  Pre visualise the result and shoot for this result as you might not always have control of the colour, background, tone and light. Sometimes there will be no control except for the timing.

Understand how to work with light, shoot with the light, lighting for a particular situation, backlighting for a mood and consider the shadows. There is also movement, flash and slow shutter speed, ISO can shoot in darker spaces, not always about thirds there are other thing such as triangles and in film you can underexpose the shot for multiple exposures.  The background is part of the photograph.  Reality v the artistic version of reality.

Consider things like setting up a studio on location, building a series, shooting for the series, navigating direction, express what you want to say in the photo with psd.

Have a fair and ethical exchange, everything you do makes you better and genuine people will let you achieve you goal and the joy of having a photo that is used.

For me – I like to capture a moment of time or is it ‘in’ time and see how the photograph changes over time. What is actually changing?  What do I like to see change?

7 August

Harbour Sculpture:  Clarkes Point Reserve, Woolwich, Sydney

Community Event of the Year: Our achievements were recognised with the awarding of an Australia Day Award for the Hunters Hill Community Event of the Year 2013.

HarbourSculpture is an opportunity to engage the community and artists in the visual experience of sculptural works and sculptural space against our Harbour location.  A unique exhibition of art, held annually on Sydney Harbour. Spread across Clarkes Point Reserve and through the Deckhouse function centre and surrounds.  HarbourSculpture attracts the best Australian sculptors to exhibit their work.

28 July

A few snap shots of my photography day with Eva at Hornsby Quarry.

27 July

The Aperture Club‘Street Photography’ Adventures on the Highways of Life

Daniel Kukec – After pulling the pin on corporate ladder and armed with camera, Daniel embarked on a life changing journey of discovery around South America. It was there, wandering the streets, where he became captivated with observing life and everyday moments. Little did he know that the energy on the streets – these highways of life – would ignite a search for not only purpose and meaning, but also a passion for capturing urban life and the human condition. Searching for these moments became a creative obsession.

When Daniel is not shooting ‘street’ for fun he is a professional wedding and events photography as well as an accomplished tutor with The Aperture Club, where he is often found teaching our street photography workshops, of course… Come on an adventure with Daniel and listen to the story behind some of his favourite images.

Daniel broke his shots and presentation into Landscapes, People , Street Art and spoke about Observation, Stories and Connections, Graffiti and Wall Art,  Light, Approaches, Composition, Humans being Human.

Searching for observation and when committed to something people offer something.

View Bug  The world’s best photo contests, 20 new contests every month; judged by world-renowned photographers, and sponsored by top brands. Share your best work. Inspire others and be inspired.

24 July

Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

ENERGIES: HAINES & HINTERDING to 6 September 2015

David Haines and Joyce Hinterding, Geology, 2015, installation view, Energies: Haines & Hinterding, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2015 real-time 3D environment, 2 x HD projections, game engine, motion sensor, spatial 3D audio, commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, supported by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhatu, Christchurch, New Zealand, image courtesy the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney © the artist, photograph: Christopher Snee

Australian artists David Haines and Joyce Hinterding live and work in the Blue Mountains, NSW. Their collaborative practice incorporates experimental and traditional media to investigate Hinterding’s fascination with energetic forces and Haines’ attraction to the intersection of hallucination and the environment. Both artists are captivated by the unseen energies that surround us and seek to reveal them to audiences through work that draws upon aspects of science, the occult and philosophy.

The artists work across a range of media and processes, including sound, installation, moving image, performance, sculpture, photography and drawing. This exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of their work and includes a number of key collaborative projects, solo works by both artists, and a new commission. 

Curated by MCA Curator, Anna Davis.

Notes from the MCA web site

22 July

16 July

SMPTE – autodesk: David Zwierzchaczewski, Animation Specialist.

The latest bells and whistles in Maya 2016.

youtube CGPunch 

15 July

FX CAMERA  to  SCREEN : Maximizing your DCP pipeline

fxguide and Adobe present in association with
Sydney ACM SIGGRAPH (Professional Chapter) and Australian Cinematographers Society

Lars Borg – Principal Scientist at Adobe, has over 20 years of experience in color management. Lars develops solutions, specifications and standards for digital imaging, image processing, digital cinema (ACES), color management, CinemaDNG, high dynamic range, wide color gamut, UHDTV, video compression, metadata, holds over 30 patents in these areas, and is active in SMPTE, ISO and ICC standards developments.

Bill Roberts – Senior Director of Professional Video Product Management at Adobe, has worked in professional video and audio for over 25 years, with the majority of his career focused on developing software tools for creative professionals. He is an expert on video, film and file based workflows and the impact that the Internet / Cloud Computing is having on both content creation and consumption.

Exploring many issues regarding DCP authoring and distribution, and discussing workflow solutions and mobile color science.

– What can you do to maximize a DCP pipeline, from shooting to post?
– Issues with SMPTE DCP – why has the transition been difficult? Why is the adoption rate not higher?
– 4K, 8K and beyond – what is Rec. 2020 and what do I need to know?
– Standards for the home TV – the Dolby approach
– Mobile color science – new tools for capturing and creating looks
– What is Dolby Vision? (as launched with Tomorrowland)

 Perceptual Signal Coding for More Efficient Usage of Bit Codes [pdf]

Scott Miller Mahdi Nezamabadi Scott Daly Dolby Laboratories, Inc.

Some terminology and concepts covered in this presentation: 4K, higher frame rates, GAMUT, HDR production, Colour Volume, Narrow or Wide Colour Gamut, Wide and Tall HDR, Wider Saturated Colours, Tall with headroom above 1– IRE, White, Below 0 IR, Colour Resolution, Rex 79 Curve, Display representation to preserve the greyscale, Rec BT 1886 display curve for HD/UHD, SMPTE ST2084 PQ Display curve, An exact match, Classic video grading technology not suited for HDR content, Black and White Anchor Points, 108 Diffuse White, ACES Academy Colour Encoding System, Colour Management, LUT, Colour Conversion, Colour Gamut Mapping, Tone Compression, Edit without losing colour with grading for different formats, Stored in metadata, NITS 48 nits for cinema, Brightness Levels, PQ Curve – gamma and LUT, Gamma Shift 2,6 least artefacts and 2.4 for CRT video, For the human eye, HDR and SDR display different systems with metadata, Tone Mapping Curve, Preserve the colour, Keep the shadow and do not want to lose the highlights, LOG, open EXR, Negative colour values of float, Absolute Black, HDR in/out.

 13 July

SCENIC  WORLD  BLUE  MOUNTAINS

COORAH  CONTEMPORARY  ART  GALLERY  Blue Mountains Grammar School, Matcham Avenue , Wentworth Falls

Reductive Response curated by Billy Gruner and Beata Geyer  to the 24 August

Brad Allen-Waters, Vicky Brown, Fional Davies, Jacqueline Drinkall, Roger Foley Fogg, Beata Geyer, Anne Graham, Billy Gruner, Oeter Holm, Locust Jones, Sarah Keighery, Danial Kojta, Fleur Macdonald, Georgina Pollard, Margaret Roberts, Abi Tariq, Miriam Williamson, Alex Wisser.

To host High Quality, contemporary artists at the Blue Mountains Grammar School gallery, as a service to the local area, the school’s parent body and particularly its art students. As such, the aim of the gallery is to aid the education of BMGS students and the public and to provide a top level venue for curators and contemporary artists to exhibit and sell their art.  Curated exhibitions exploring contemporary themes and practice, with an emphasis on (but not limited to) contributions from curators and quality contemporary artists living in the Blue Mountains. work includes Painting, Photography, hand painted digital prints, sculpture, glassware and works on paper.

9 July

WILDLIFE  PHOTOGRAPHER  of  the  YEAR – Exhibition at Australian Museum

Experience the power, mystique and beauty of nature through the wildlife photographer’s lens.  Be captivated by scorpions basking in the sun, snakes in search of food, and fireflies lighting up the night. See over 100 images selected from more than 40,000 entries worldwide and discover the amazing world we live in.

Natural History Museum

KOREAN  CULTURAL  CENTRE

Traditional Art Collection A wealth of over 50 traditional pieces features in this exhibition, which truly showcases the quality of design from ancient Korea.

The Bridge between Life & Death: Ornaments of the Korean Funeral Bier  It is widely believed that death is not the end of our being. Most of us believe in the existence of the afterlife and interestingly many cultures believe death is the beginning of our spiritual journey. The Ancient Egyptians believed that the departed made a journey through the underworld, contending with gods and strange creatures to reach the Hall of Final Judgement. In Greek mythology, the dead went to an underworld ruled by Hades through crossing rivers, such as Styx, which divided Earth and the underworld.

Our ancestors in the olden days of Korea also believed in afterlife. Following Confucianism principle, the funeral ceremony held by the descendants was the start of a journey into the afterlife for the departed. The descendants decorated Sang-yeo (Korean funeral bier), the carrying device to transport a dead body to the graveyard, with wooden ornaments of birds, flowers and animals that contains different symbols in wishing for a peaceful journey to the afterlife for the departed. The exhibition of the ornaments of Sang-yeo (Korean funeral bier) will introduce Sang-rye (the traditional Korean funeral rite) and our ancestor’s wisdom and beliefs about death.

3 July

The Army Museum of North Queensland

Jazzine Barracks has been home to Australian military units for over 120 years and has been redeveloped not a 15-hectare heritage precinct.  The Museum collects and exhibits artefacts and stories associated with the history of the Australian Army in North Queensland.

Pinnacles Gallery, Thuringowa Central, Townsville

A Permanent Mark: the impact of tattoo culture on contemporary art is a ground breaking exhibition that will explore and reconcile how two distinct industries – tattooing and contemporary art – are becoming increasingly interconnected. Tattoos and body art are central to many ancient cultures and civilisations, but it is the more recent popularisation and acceptance of tattoos in Western culture that has resulted in the artform permeating into the contemporary art sphere. A Permanent Mark: the impact of tattoo culture on contemporary art will display works by significant local, national and international tattoo and contemporary artists that evidence the crossover of styles, technology and techniques, themes and iconography.

26 June

Townsville Art Society

The Townsville Art Society (TAS) has had a number of ‘homes’ during its lifetime; more recent ones being in Northtown on the Mall, the Cat and FiddleArcade in the Townsville Mall, Kings Road Pimlico and now at Hut 25 – Gallery “Art at Jezzine” Jezzine Barracks, Mitchell Street North Ward. 

The Townsville Art Group was the genesis of the Townsville Art Society which came into being on 18 May 1962, although a group of artists had met earlier in May 1955 at Townsville High School to discuss the possibility of holding an art show. 

The exhibition, entitled ‘As We See It’ was opened at the Tree of Knowledge, Lower Denham Street on 28 July. There were 91 entries, and comments in a visitors’ book were enthusiastic.

Encouraged by the success, ‘Artists of Townsville’ presented a second ‘As We See It’ exhibition from 7 to 10 June, 1956 with 96 entries and received another enthusiastic response.

17 June

The Sandpit

You don’t need to play by yourself any more! The Sandpit is a not-networking night, designed for people who hate to network. Every other month, creative business people and freelancers  just like you meet for drinkies and chit chat in the safe and friendly environment of the pub. It’s all the good bits of networking (meeting people, drinking, getting out of the house) without any of the bad parts (awkwardeness, pressure to sell, feeling like a dill). Best of all, this is a wanker-free environment, and it’s free!

6 May

Sydney ACM SIGGRAPH

Chris Ebelingis a world-class animator and digital artist with credits on Hollywood blockbusters such as The Lego® Movie, The Great Gatsby and Happy Feet 2, Knowing and Legend of the Guardians. He will talk about the journey from student to professional and will speak about developing your own IP and his project, Sumoboy. Chris Ebeling Blog

As a Student

– enjoy your journey, everyone’s is different

– do not be afraid to have a go and do something different, you do not know what it will be or where it may lead, doors open in interesting way, do not say no until you have had a go it could be an opportunity

– will never know everything, always something to learn, stay humble

– we all want the same things, to be creative and entertain the world, we all have a story to tell

– be prepared to work hard, share and lean from the people around you, how much do you want it

– take home and keep learning, only so much can be achieved in the class room

– if you know what you want to be then focus on that it took 400 people to make lego, can be a generalists for smaller companies, do the subjects you need to pass, you want to pass and the degree counts

– feedback and criticism is part of the job, working for someone who has a vision, get people to look at your work and consider it, put yourself out there

– working with people, part of a team, helpful, mindful, listen, communicate, positive, respectful, attitude does matter, the goal is to get something made together, small industry, bite your tongue, have fun

– work on your reel and not your grades, pass the subjects, the reel will get you the job, your work, your portfolio is what they want, to see what you can do really well

– roll with the punches, make the most of any situation, make it count, be inspired

– only one stupid question, the one that was never asked

– internships, working for free depends on the situation thing about are others being paid, collaborating with mates and make a film and use your strengths

– festivals, competitions, exposure

– time = experience = knowledge

– see what people are doing, what did they have to get hire

– showreel, only your best work, max 2 min, bet work first, finish strong at end, name max 2 or 3 sec and keep simple, cater for the job being applied for, generic music

– international market for employment, life as a contractor, save your pennies, have a backup plan, nothing is guaranteed

– people burn out, have a break during the day and do something else, get away from the job, miss it

– reflect and remember why your doing it

– remember a pen and paper, what is the world of the character and it will guide you, write down and describe what the character is doing, this is the world I am in

– where are the easter eggs in the lego movie

SumoBoy the Game Kickstarter | Bad Lip Reading Redub

1 May

Head On Opening Night

For the first time, the heart of Head On Photo Festival is the ‘Festival Hub’ in Lower Town Hall. We will transform the space into a gallery, housing a selection of world class exhibitions and slideshows. The Head On opening night offers an exclusive preview of this stunning photography.

Photographers, collectors, gallerists and audiences alike are invited to celebrate the announcement of the Head On Awards winners for 2015, where over $50,000 in prizes will be awarded across 5 categories.

25 April

ANZAC  DAY – Sydney

I ended up staying up all night and really pleased I went. I arrived an hour early and Martin Place was already packed, like where are the people that arrive in the next hour going to go. Chatted with the guys going in on the train, we were lucky with that train. They had come from Mt Druitt and the scheduled train did not exist so they had driven to Strathfield. When we arrived at Wynyard Station there were a lot of people inside the gates offering tea, coffee and anzac biscuits.

There was a special feeling among the crowd.  A couple of moments that were special for me was when all the lights were turned off for the minutes silence, thousands of people there in the nights darkness and not a sound. The other moment I will treasure was after the service people with people all around being in the moment and slowly the dawn came over the buildings. The clouds in the sky were waking up, looking down and it felt like they were sending their blessings.

People gathered around the pipe band as they continued playing into the morning. I so wanted to stay for the parade, could not last the distance.

Catafalque Party:  2.17 Battalion, The Royal New South Wales Regiment and supported by members from Ne Zealand Defence Force.

Bands:  For the first year they combined the Australian Army Band Sydney and The Hills District Pipe Band

Singer:  Angie Currington

MC:  Lt Col John Moore OAM RFD ED, his last time as MC for the ANZAC DAY Dawn Service

Australian  War  Memorial 

Gallipoli.1981.360p (full film)

6 April

Sydney Royal Easter Show: Sydney Showground –  photographs by Margaret Dean.

1 Showground Road,  Sydney Olympic Park, NSW 2127

(02) 9704 1000

Youtube Link

An annual agricultural event held in Sydney to promote and display livestock, produce and rural merchandise. The show celebrates all things Australian from our bush heritage to our modern day lifestyle. It is home to the largest carnival in the Southern Hemisphere with over 100 rides and games on offer, there’s something for everyone, showbags, animals, competitions, demonstrations, random stuff to buy, crazy hats, concerts, bull riding, sideshows, food, horse jumping, merry-go-rounds, rides, fireworks, monster truck and bikes shows.

The Sydney Royal Easter Show Competitions are the events in which the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW measures and maintains excellence in agriculture. Held almost continuously since 1823, these competitions set the benchmark for a wide range of rural produce and skills, from alpacas to dogs, horses, rabbits, utes, flowers, arts, craft, district exhibitions, honey, baking, showgirls, woodchopping, whip cracking, street parades rodeo and the grand parade.

It’s the 728-kilogram record-breaker that so very nearly might not have been.  Australasia’s largest-ever pumpkin, an Atlantic Giant grown by Dale Oliver, slipped from a harness when it was being taken for a weigh-in back in January.

“We were just lifting it and something broke,” said the farmer from Knockrow, a village near Bangalow in northern NSW.”

The dominant pumpkin smashes the previous 618-kilogram record, also held by Mr Oliver and set in 2013.

Our day included enjoying the following:

The Animal Walk where we saw poultry, sheep, farm animals, cattle, horses, judging of the alpacs, pigs and the food farm, getting up close and personal with the friendly country folk and the farm animals.

Art and Craft:  has been a feature of the Sydney Royal Easter Show almost continuously since 1869. It is the biggest Arts & Crafts Competition in Australia, attracting over 4,500 entries, across almost 300 classes. Entries include portraits, rural landscapes, photographs, sculptures, pottery, cake decorating, silverwork, sugar art and more.  New classes this year include Digital Artwork, Woven Tapestry and Lace.

Simon Begg’s Wood Turning

Australian Alpaca Barn

Australian Corriedale Association: Wool and War

Australian Knitting Mills Pty Ltd

Australian Wool Innovation Company

Bill Webb: Individually Hand Plaited & Crafted Whips, Belts and Leather Goods

CWA Tea Room:  Nothing says Australian country hospitality like the Country Women’s Association Tearoom at the Sydney Royal Easter Show.  The CWA has been baking scones at the Royal Easter Show since 1947. They donate proceeds to organisations such as Medicins Sans Frontieres, people affected by natural disasters and to drought relief.  The selfless ladies­ who work the famous Homebush scone stall every year do not make these delicious­ baked goods from scratch. Instead, they just add water.  The scrumptious doughy goodies are whipped together from two tonnes of packet mix stored in large brown paper bags, with the batter supplied by Australian company The Manildra Group.  The CWA baked a record 46,900 scones last year, raising more than $100,000.

Damask Bedlinen Collection

District Exhibits:  This year, the District Exhibit displays will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the ANZAC Gallipoli landing by recognising ANZAC men and women in the artworks.  The district exhibits allow the different areas of New South Wales and south-east Queensland to display their produce and their creativity, crafting scenes from wheat, wool, fruit and vegetables. This year the Northern District has taken out the top prize, with Central District winning the perpetual trophy for its display and south-east Queensland winning people’s choice.

Equestrian vaulting:   gymnastics and dance on horseback

Farm House Direct:  White Cedars Goats Milk Soap

Merino Wool

Sam the Lamb:  Download the Story and Colouring Book

The Woolmark Company

and in the Spotless Stadium:

Police Musical Ride

Sydney Royal Rodeo Series – NSW vs QLD, State of Origin: Bull Riders, Steer Wrestlers, Bareback Riders and Barrel Racers

Woodchopping & Chainsaw Relay

Australian Wool Industry Showcase

Extreme Korruption:  Cannonball Lady, Mr Boom, Showtime FMX, Team DMAX, Precision Driving Team & Flair Riders

Fireworks Finale

and then a walk through Side Show Alley to see rides you would never dare to take.

28 March

MOST Marrickville Open Studio trail 

Newtown Art Seat

Juilee Pryor – Juilee is working on Meditation on theRedundancy of Childhood for Cementa15, Contemporary Arts Festival at Kandos NSW. One hundred ghostly white toys silently reminding of our own impending redundancy and the fickle nature of time and desire………..all these chimeras of innocence abandoned on the streets of the city have been swept up and refashioned into a meditation on th temporary nature of childhood and life itself……….. 

Air Space Projects – Sarah Eddowes, Nicole Ellis, Hayden Fowler, Shalini Jardin, Fleur MacDonald, Sarah Newall, Raquel Ormella, Lynne Roberts-Goodwin, Ajay Sharma, Vivian White.

Lynne Roberts-Goodwin. MORE THAN EVER a change of plan (burnout 1), 2014.

Extinct Extant explores humanity’s relationship with the animal and plant worlds. Artists reflect on the value of plants and animals both ecologically and culturally.

Square Peg Studios– A unique space for making and learning all things jewellery. male Beck, Linda Blair, Kim Elliott, Brenda Factor, Kate Hutchinson, Fiona Meller, Margie Sampson, Bronwyn Vivian.

Red Rattler Theatre Inc – Rosanna Eid, Berna Dettol, Robin Elhaj

Mess With It:  Project Room – A new artist studio space in the heart of Marrickville’s Industrial area, home to over 10 visual artists, designers and event managers working across a number of contemporary art disciplines including painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, costume design, fashion, prop-making and theming.

Cris Baldwin, Camilla Lawson, Ochre Lawson, Jacqueline Maybury, Fiona Roderick, Katherine Rooney, Maggie Stein, Mark Swartz.

Ochre Lawson – Works on Paper 2012, watercolour and gouache on paper and painted plein-air or directly from nature.

14 March

Sydney Symphony in Parramatta Park, presented by Parramatta Park Trust and the NSW Government.

RAVEL Noble and Sentimental Waltzes
FALLA orch. Berio Seven Popular Spanish Songs
Jos. STRAUSS Ohne Sorgen! Polka
J STRAUSS II Die Fledermaus: Overture
LEHÁR Giuditta: My lips they kiss so hot
R STRAUSS Der Rosenkavalier: Suite

Ward Stare, conductor

Daniela Mack, mezzo-soprano

7 March

Art in the Digital World at Australian Centre for Photography

As part of Creative Paddington this panel discussed the impact of digital technologies across film, photography and border artistic practice since its introduction and what the future may hold as our dependency creases alongside technological advancements.

Hosted by Kate Jinx and speakers including

Michael Fitzgerald – was arts editor for the South Pacific edition of Time magazine (1997–2007), managing editor of Art & Australia (2008–2012) and is currently Editor of Photofile magazine for the Australian Centre for Photography, and Art Monthly Australia, the country’s art magazine of record since 1987.

Chris Winter  –  has a long background in web and mobile projects, digital and interactive TV, technology marketing and radio. He managed the ABC’s initial digital-only TV channel ABC2 for its first two and a half years and sits on the board of Metro Screen. Recent work includes a study of the galleries, libraries, archives and museums sector in Australia, as well as pro bono for the Intelligent Community Forum in New York and its local counterpart, the Australian Smart Communities Association.

Izabela Pluta  – photomedia artist and UNSW A&D Alumna.  Izabela’s practice is rooted in photographic ideas central to the experience of place, the effects of time and the construction of reality. She has been awarded residencies, scholarships and grants that have seen her practice exhibit all over the world. In 2012 Izabela was commissioned to complete a major public art work for the City of Melbourne. The two-part billboard was installed on the CitiPower Station, Little Bourke Street in March 2013. In 2015 Izabela will complete a major site-specific work as part of the Mildura Palimpsest Biennale #10.

Here Comes Everyone – A revelatory examination of how the wildfirelike spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects-for good and for ill

What is the conceptualisation of content. Why are some people in photography returning to early processes, is it to create boundaries? The role of photography and technology in the marking of time, acknowledging history and our roots. People are returning to photo-books.

Has kodak stopped making film? Access to information and purchasing via technology is an    everyday way of life and it easier and easier with more focus on this accessibility.

Are art works forever?

Ideas of copyright and ownership – Australian Digital Alliance

Exhibitions:

3 March

ARTEXPRESS at the Armory

A series of exhibitions of exemplary bodies of work created by students from the 2014 New South Wales Higher School Certificate. The bodies of work represent a broad range of subject matter, approaches, styles and media that reflect the high quality of Visual Arts education in New South Wales. Expressive forms include painting, photo media, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, graphic design, documented forms, textiles and fibre, ceramics, time-based forms and collections of works.

The theme of this year’s exhibition is Focus. To focus is to give attention, close study or to even narrow your field of vision in order to gain an insight or better understanding of an issue. Focus is required by an artist to resolve a body of work and by audiences to make personal connections to an artwork.  Students have been inspired by the material, sensory and imagined world they experience. The bodies of work exhibited reveal how these creative individuals have responded to personal experiences, family histories, consumer culture and current affairs. Students also found inspiration in the study of contemporary art and art of the past.

The process of focusing on an idea and developing it into a body of work involves experimentation, an understanding of the materials being manipulated, the mastering of techniques and the developments of signs and symbols leading to the evolution of a concept into an artwork. The selected artists present an understanding of contemporary artistic practices and the changing role of art, technology and culture in the 21st century.

With works by more than 60 students, this year’s Armory Gallery presentation is again the largest of all the metropolitan exhibitions.

25 February

ART GALLERY OF NSW:  ART EXPRESS 2015

The annual ARTEXPRESS exhibition is one of the most dynamic and popular at the Gallery. Featuring a selection of outstanding student artworks developed for the artmaking component of the HSC examination in Visual Arts 2014.  Artexpress provides insight into students’ creativity and the issues important to them, including process diaries for some students

The exhibition encompasses a broad range of approaches and expressive forms, including ceramics, collection of works, documented forms, drawing, graphic design, painting, photomedia, printmaking, sculpture, textiles and fibre, and time-based forms.

ART GALLERY OF NSW:  POP  ART

Slide Show of selected works on Art Gallery web site. 

Pop art exploded onto the cultural scene in the early 1960s as a new generation of artists rebelled against ‘high art’ to embrace the world of advertising, film stars, pop music and consumerism.  More than 200 works including masterpieces such as Roy Lichtenstein’s first comic-style painting Look Mickey, Andy Warhol’s Triple Elvis and David Hockney’s Portrait of an artist.

An amazing collecting of works with one of my favourites,  White Numbers.

AGNSW’s Pop to Popism puts Australian artists next to Warhol and co

Along side iconic works from Warhol, Lichtenstein, Koons, Haring and Hockney there will feature Australian artists, including Martin Sharp, Howard Arkley, Brett Whiteley and Maria Kozic. Works from 45 lenders worldwide including the Andy Warhol Museum, Tate and Museum of Modern Art.

The Pop Cafe, offering special food and drinks was a different inclusion in the exhibition.  On the wall as you enter the Pop silver sign reflects on the silver spheres suspended from the ceiling.

ART GALLERY OF NSW:  ASIAN GALLERY

 Yang Yongliang (China 1980 -) Infinite Landscape 

20 February
“Side Effects Software’s Final Houdini 14 Presentation on the “Down Under Tour” with Jeff Wagner and Paul Fratesi.

Check out all the new features that makes Houdini…Pyro, Wet and Dry Sand, Water Sims, Crowds, Hair Grooming and many more.

Special Presentation by:Feature Presenter:  Miles Green, FX Supervisor at Animal Logic.  An overview of how Houdini was used by Animal Logic’ FX department to create a brick based pipeline for Destruction, Water, Pyrotechnics and Crowd effects for the award winning Lego Movie.

Houdini Apprentice version

19 February 

Lanterns of the Terracotta Warriors 

For almost 2000 years a hidden army of Chinese warriors, fired in clay, guarded the soul of China’s first emperor deep beneath the earth. Row upon row, they waited, ready for battle should the call ever come…

China’s terracotta warriors captured the imagination of the world when they were unearthed by a group of farmers in Shaanxi Province in 1974. The discovery of the 8,000 warriors and horses, most of which remains to be uncovered, was one of the most extraordinary archaeological finds of modern times.

Created by Chinese artist Xia Nan for the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, these larger than life lanterns also include women and children arranged in family groups. Fashioned out of fabric and wire, they have all the delicacy of a traditional Chinese lantern, on a scale that inspires awe. With 90 2.1 metre high warriors and two horses glowing in brilliant bursts of colour, this is a sight not to be missed.

The Lanterns of the Terracotta Warriors have previously only been shown in China and the United Kingdom, and are in Australia for the first time as part of the City of Sydney’s Chinese New Year Festival. Illuminated against the beauty of Sydney Harbour for ten days and nights only, this unique exhibition is an unforgettable experience.

19 February

Frolic Exhibition: Alpha House Gallery.

A group of fourteen artists from the Creative Arts Alliance Sydney: Lynore Avery, David McGuinness, Janet Selby, Jenny Cuthbert, Jing Xu, Karin Pultar, Oren Lavie, Peter Thompson, Philip Cleary, Raj Panda, Sally Hollis, Veronika Pincevic, Victor Kay, Zio Ledeux

15 – 19 February

Pacific Jewel – Sydney toMoreton Island 

Hand feeding wild dolphinsis a once in a lifetime opportunity and gives guests staying at Tangalooma Resort the opportunity to interact in their natural environment off the beach. Anyone can come watch the experience from the jetty, giving you a birds eye view of the dolphins entering the feeding area, swimming around and taking fish right out of the hand of the feeders.

4 February

Speaker: Dr Shilo McClean, author of Digital Storytelling: the narrative power of visual effects in film

‘The Art of Dramatic Writing’  Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives

Stories need drama – risk, conflict and obstacles which gives the story fear (fish and conflict), frustration (conflict and obstacles)  and thrill (risk and obsticals) to get an emotional response from he audience.  Something against the hero, obstacles, win or lose to see who gets to win. In films look for risk, conflict and obstacles and identify them.

Conflict:

– static, a levelness to the conflict, no engagement

– jumping, is a bit over the top, where did that come from.  In good conflict we can see both side, exposes something about the human situation

–  slowly rising, is the good stuff.  Build slowly and make it worse and worse

Internal conflict is difficult to turn into visual storytelling, needs to be visual conflict.

From the point of writing something they want something, then it is not what they want and then they feel distraut.

Need Obstacles, they need to be natural and to give the characters something to act on, some energy.

Worked up to it from all the events, emotional, intellectual and the steaks have to be hight or nobody cares. Choices when something is at risk.

Impact and consequences of choices, start with a little choice and they get bigger and bigger.  The audience has to know a risk is being taken or there is no story. Have to make the character want something and then take it away. Make people feel something, make memorable.

Use the things of everyday life and take people on a journey, make you choose, make you suffer with the need to be inspired to survive. Needs to be so compelling that people are drawn in emotionally. They will always remember how you made them feel. Defeat death and save lives.

10 January

Exhibition: designing your future – Armory Gallery

Join us at Newington Armory Gallery for designing your future. Now in its fourth year, designing your future is an educational design collaboration between Sydney Olympic Park and South Western Sydney Institute’s Lidcombe Design students. It celebrates cutting edge design work across the creative disciplines of furniture design, product design, interior design, interior decoration and design fundamentals.

The exhibition offers a unique glimpse into the future direction of design in Sydney and features works by more than 75 talented TAFE graduates. It also provides a public platform for students to showcase works that have been awarded prizes from companies such as IKEA, Intercad, Graphisoft and The Colour Society of Australia, among others.

October 21, 2018 | Categories: year | Tags: 2015 | Leave a comment

2014

2014

30 December

THE HOBBIT:  The Battle of the Five Armes

The Hobbit:  Production Diaries

Peter Jackson: Playlists

9 December

Industry talk on the concept art behind Wolverine and Maze Runner with Wayne Haag

Starting out using Lift film processes of black and clear for multiple exposures and before photoshop was used, when concept art was called production art.  At the beginning of photoshop there were no layers, only channels and built 3d models were incorporating them into the photoshop works while painting with a mouse.  The model would often need to be modified for the camera and the reality needed to be changed to fit into aspects of the picture such as scale.

used to paint the yukon airport in the wolverine

the bi-plane in the sky was used in the opening of raiders of the lost ark

kitbashed models

google sketch up 

Looking at the use of colour and light in compositions and moving into the digital domain.  The subtleties of light such as dropping of the light from a car’s headlights or how we see the snow at night.

THE WOLVERINE Concept Art Set Designs

capsule hotel japan

Photographing on an overcast day and using raw, no HDRI images. What is the photographic look, how does it photograph, what does it look like in photographic reality?

love hotel

yeshiva estate

MAZE RUNNER Concept Art

There are differences between concept art and matte painting.

The Fifth Element

Started out as 2d matte painting and is now part of the 3d department using software such as maya and

mud box.

Lord of the Rings – Two Towers

Northern Exposure

alien temple

Some other artists:

Jim Burns

Ralph McQuarrie,Star Wars

Noah Bradley

1 December

RED GIANT   delivers Production-proven special effects tools for digital video & film professionals. Plug-ins built for Adobe After Effects, Premiere, Avid, Final Cut …

Visual Storytelling Workshop with Simon Walkerwho explored how colour grading techniques are used in film and showed practical applications of how to create moods, suggest genres, and inform the audience of the motivations of on-screen protagonists – all utilising Red Giant’s Color Suite of plug-ins.

He included some practical ways to improve the look of digital video, polish and enhance motion graphics sequences, showcasing strategies for reducing pixelation and noise and production techniques for making your video look as good as possible, as well as how to apply fast After Effects style post-production effects from your editing timeline, using Red Giant’s Universe suite of Plug-ins.

• Explore how colour grading techniques are used in film
• Learn how to create moods, suggest genres, and inform the audience of the motivations of on-screen protagonists, using Red Giant’s Color Suite of plug-ins
• Get practical ways to improve the look of digital video, polish and enhance motion graphics sequences

Why do we tells stories with colour, colour correcting, how are colour grading techniques are used in films, do we need all that dialogue or do we save money shooting at a particular time of day. A shot may be 2 to 4 seconds and it can be shorter with colour telling the story. The audience anticipate what is going on in a particular shot and colour can communicate the story making the shot shorter.

Think about the colour wheel, rgb light and when replacing a colour you move the opposite or complementary colour.

We cannot trust our eyes as our brains reinterpret some of the colour. With complementary colours that work together our eyes are more attracted to the image, more pleasing for the audience.

Visually when we look at a blue dot on white paper for long enough then look at a blank white page we will see the complementary colour.

two circles the same size

surrounding colours change other colours

the brown dots shown are the same colour the shadow and neighbouring colours affects the colour

Colour changes throughout the day, during a story and how it is interpret.

How do our eyes see colour, in low light conditions our eyes see different colours. With the light becoming less and less saturated there is less movement and everything goes black and white. The brain is saying there is not enough light to interpret colour and puts the light into interpreting detail. We need to factor these things into grading to be convincing to the audience.

Colour has different physical wave lengths with blue being shorter than red and green.

Consider orange and teal in movies. In the Matrix where different locations or environments are associated with different colours and temperatures.  There is the real world and the computer world which is more stylised which we get used to over the duration of the film.

What do the colours mean, they are associated with different locations giving more meaning. We make the different colours and manipulate the colour to tell the story. How can it change the story, what are they thinking, communicating with colour. This can change, there are no rules, do you craft every pixel or use presets or somewhere in between.

The Cinematography of “The Matrix” part 3/3 – the colour palette

Magic Bullets Looks

Every frame being designed to have the audience look at a particular thing in the image. Consider increasing highlights and decreasing shadows.

When the contrast is increased the rgb colour space gets a perceived saturated change looking unnatural. Could put the shadows to blue, reduce saturation and use a vignette.

Vignette – cause the audience to look at a particular thing in every frame, attention getting device.

Why is the sky blue? Different wavelengths of light are scattered by the atmosphere and the blue wavelength is shorter than the others and scattered differently. This is the physics of the blue sky and when we look up there is more atmosphere at the horizon it is whiter or lighter.  The blue wavelength and it is scattered differently by the atmosphere, it becomes a gradient.

Images can be enhanced with grading and when it is the wrong colour the audience might not know what it is though they recognise something isn’t quite right.

Distance including city landscapes, the distant buildings have a more blue/purple colour which is an optical illusion. To enhance space or depth in the image, a non-stereosciopie  image, one way to put them in the distance is with more blue with objects in the foreground with less blue.  Warm colours project forward, cool colours recede, the colour of light depends on depth perception. For white balance outside light is slightly blue and inside light is slightly yellow. This also happens in nature.

The physics of the colour of light only changes int he highlights, brightest forms of light. Consider colour correcting or changing in the highlights and when the mid-tones start to change it begins to take on a more stylised mode.

Reduced mid-tones affects the ambient light, could become earlier morning or later in the day as there is less ambient light then.  The colours look saturated when working in rub colour space and maybe increase the contract to reduce the saturation and it becomes more realistic. We see blue more readily as it has a shorter wave length. For the later time of day we see more blue, maybe add some blue into the highlights and make the shadows darker, for it to look more like the evening. Sometimes is it cheaper to shoot during the day, there is more light and introduces less noise in the well lit footage. Then colour grade later for the change of time of day rather than low light conditions

There is the golden hour, in photography, or the magic hour, is a period shortly after sunrise or before sunset during which daylight is redder and softer compared to when the Sun is higher in the sky. The blue hour, or sweet light is the twilight each morning and evening when the sun is a significant distance below the horizon and the residual, indirect sunlight takes on a predominantly blue hue. This effect is caused by the relative diffusability of short blue wavelengths of light versus the longer red wavelengths. During the blue “hour” (typically the period is about 40 minutes in length), red light passes straight into space while blue light is scattered in the atmosphere and therefore reaches the earth’s surface.  When the sun is below the horizon there is less ambient light and changes how the wave lengths are being filtered through the atmosphere.

What colour is snow, how it is changed in the Game of Thrones? 

It is blue, higher contrast and the shadows are darker.

Colour is contextual, dependent on what is happening in a scene and movies use colour for different purposes such as yellow for danger in an environment and blue in the head quarters office which are safe. Different locations have different themes.

Red: attracting attention, strong, positive, drama

Yellow: happy, highly visible, possessive, good mixed with black such as wasp, call someone yellow

Orange: mix of read and yellow, more friendly, politics, conformist, happy

Blue: opposite to political, conservative, cold, open, emotionally detached, safe, not upset the client, optimistic

Green: nature, calm, relief, evil,nausea, because the wizard of oz was green now all witches are green, traffic light (isn’t red)

Purple: pompous, femininity, mixes with yellow, warmth, romance

Black and White: mixer colours, black neutral, mourning, depression, goes with red

White: sterile

Look at the colour of trailers and see if you can tell what kind of movies they are e.g. blue for sic-fi, green for horror, orange for comedy.

How do some movies use colour?

Skyfall uses warm colours in turkey, yellow in the dangerous environment, the hot location and cool in the head quarters. What is the colour of the coat in the cold location and then the colour of clothing in the head quarters is blue, they are emotional temperatures. They are telling an emotional story and we cannot always tell these are different locations so colours can be used to illustrate this in movies.

In the film ‘House of Cards’, the different locations, the White House is not overly lit, greyish, neutral and two characters have different relationships having general conversations.  In the restaurant the two characters are having another conversation, the background is warm, they have with shirts but is at odds with what they are talking about, they are not the best of friends.

Are the lamps white or yellow, are they best friends?  The set design sets this up, it could be a costume moment. For clinical thinking the lamps are white and the environment is sterile.  What is this information telling the audience?

Increasing contrast as well as saturation it makes it more dynamic, the image is more attractive to look at. If there is low contrast this changes the perception of what is happening.

The low contrast evokes a sense of intimacy, the telling of a specific story, a mystery.  The painter stick to bring our attention to small details will sometimes put small bits of colour flying through, almost irrelevant and attracting our eyes, complementary colour on different corners.

Low contrast and grain for mystery, high contrast is in action movies.

Red Giant Plot Device

Red Giant’s Mojo for colouring effect such as warming up actors skin tones, adding a cool blue to the backgrounds and shadows, adding drama, or smoothing contrast.

Particular films have their colours such as Sci-fi films, the shadows and midtowns are teal/blue. Skin colour or tones have some element of orange giving a contrast of skin to the bluish background. The buildings and gloves are coloured blue with the balancing colours and throw these colours into the shots at certain points

There are no rules, is his skin tone accurate?

Used comic book colours

Why is green bad? At what point in the movie do we know it is a horror film. ‘Drag Me To Hell’ goes from neutral to green in the car park. Do white lights project a green background and skin tones?

This is not only to do with movies, the great artists have done it, Rembrandt and Rubens. The used the strong contrasts of dark and light, chiaroscuro. The detail on the face and hands with the viewer being attracted to the areas they wanted them to look at. There is fine brush detail in these areas with the use of white and the eyes are in shadow. Rembrandt was a humanist and wanted to bring out their story, to make you consider what his is thinking or hiding, using a vignette.

rubens – samson and delilah

The soldiers are lit, there is the use of rich colours of purple and red and the eyes are drawn across the picture. The attention is focused onto different areas.

hopper – nighthawks

Hopper uses texture, a gritty feel and has oranges and greens.

These techniques are hundreds of years old

Red Giant Universe

Teal and Orange – Hollywood, Please Stop the Madness

26 November

Design Centre Enmore; student exhibition

From 6pm graduating students of the Concept Art and 3D Art and Animation courses at Design Centre Enmore, Sydney are showing their reels and portfolios to industry. This year marks 20 years that Design Centre Enmore has been training students to work as designers and commercial artists, not only in the world of 3D/VFX but in areas such as graphic design, interior design, industrial design, jewellery and object design, illustration and live production design. Students from each of those discipline areas are also exhibiting on the night, so please come along to see the reels, portfolios and all of the great stuff the students have been able to produce this year. Food, drinks, music and plenty of familiar and friendly faces await!

5 November

SIGGRAPH: BAFTA & VES nominated VFX Supervisor Paul Butterworth, whose recent credits include: Prometheus, Iron Man 3, Thor¸ X-Men Origins, The Painted Veil and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire spoke about  his work on The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Five months of his life in a minute 40.

The creation of a holographic target that has a humanoid form. References, references and references including drawings and sculptures from around the world.  Thinking about seeing the form in motion, could it be a stack of cards to make a form having some game play. Maybe it could be silks and cloths. How would it be made, with lazors. Needs a sense of volume with inertia and mass.  Shatter tests to see how will it break apart, clumping.  The final character is made up of projections that shatters and has internal light.

How would it be lit, internally giving a sense of volume and needing to apply motion capture data to it.  They look good in a dark room, not so good in front of windows.  The location based on a car park 100 years into the future again reference, reference and reference – information napalm.

The arrows and quiver were designed.

Actors are not good at green screen, they are better when there is something to look at, respond to and use their eyeliner. There needs to be a piece of the set.

Working as a group for problem solving, creative jamming,  collective intelligence and capturing accidental moments.

Playing With Fire – Digital Media World

2 November

Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a 2010 3D documentary, the result of Herzog’s exclusive access to the recently discovered Chauvet caves in the South of France, and their truly extraordinary cave paintings, dating back 32,000 years, containing the oldest human-painted images yet discovered.

1 November

SIGGRAPH  MASTER CLASS

As working in industry settles into a rhythm of contract and serial employment for a significant proportion of the workforce, this Masterclass has been designed to nurture the ‘working artist’ for a lifelong career. The sessions will address how to apply for job vacancies, how to represent yourself as an independent artist and how to secure work on an independent/contract basis.

Nick Hore on how to present your work, remember about first visual impressions:

CV – easy to read, no more than 2 pages and do not pad

– contact details: name (all pages), email, phone, skype, address, website (vimeo/web), nationality, objective (career, meaningful and realistic)

– experience: most recent first, role, work history, company name, location, dates, duties, responsibilities, software, project name

– software proficiency

Cover Letter – day date

– about the kind of person that I am, take over from the objective statement in CV.

– current availability

– other commitments

Demo Reel

– best work only, no padding

– no more than 2 – 3 min, 1 min can be enough

– credit others who contributed

– contact details

– plays on all browsers and formats

– avoid ‘drop box’ that require the receiver to download software

– password protect

– music is optional, that compliments and consider lip sync

Discipline Specific Demo Reel

– wireframes for modelling

– turnables for modelling and texturing/surfaces

– before and afters for compositing, root, tracking

– walk, run, fly cycles for animation

Added Extras for Demo Reel

– music

– editing

– wipes and effects

– the hook

Shot Breakdowns

– list your contributions and software used as a shot breakdown, can be a thumbnail of the shot with list and can be supplied as a pdf or on your web site

Shot 1 animation maya

Shot 2 lip sync maya

Shot 3 character fixes maya

Shot 4 facial animation

– number shots rather than timecode

– do not do this:  Shot 1, 4, 9, 23 lip sync

– titles directly on the reel that are subtle and clear

Portfolio and Other Material:  can be on-line e.g. tumbler

– variety of styles

– sketch book and thought processes

Examples

Vivienne

Crazybrush

The Art of Elsa Chang

James Woodwilson

Other Material – photographs for lighting, sculptures for modelling

Education: qualifications, where, years

Can include group project with what I did, what the experience was like.

Can be a generalist reel if not sure where my interests are, could be broken down.  Where are my priorities.  Generalists do have an understanding of other areas.

Leadership experience can show an understand of leaders requirements and respond well to a leaders requirements.

Other skills may be relevant e.g. other work history, interests, experience and skills

REMEMBER WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE

Patricia Kung on how to present yourself:

Application Process

– follow the instructions of the application process

– avoid sending to multiple people in the same company

– do not send mass e-mails with everyone’s email address

– use the right company’s name

– spell check

– keep professional, not too casual

– balance your ambition with getting your foot in the door

– enthusiasm v harassing

– voicemail and missed calls

How do I want to be represented on Social Media

Preparing

– who will be at the interview and research them

– bring a copy of CV, reel or portfolio

– be ontime, if late call and apologise

– look presentable

– good hand shake

– acknowledge everyone in the room when enter and leave

– turn off the phone, do not put on silence

– be prepared

– keep answers concise and try not to get sidetracked

– give good, relevant examples

– take your time, if you don’t understand the question ask the interviewer to repeat the question

– if you don’t know say you don’t know

– try not to be negative about people you have worked with

– don’t sware

– ask questions

Questions to ask:

– what do you think are the biggest challenges of the project

– what do you like about working here/on the project

– where do you think I can improve

– how did you get started in the industry

– what software is used

– department structure

– who is the client/studio

– start date/end date

Consider

– areas you would like to improve

– most challenging shot/brief

– how long did you spend on a particular shot/concept

– what was the largest team you have worked in

– are you more technical or creative

– long term goal

– talking about personal projects

It is important how this information is conveyed, can ask for feedback and keep in mind my response after the interview.

Murray Debus on freelance contracting and staying in work:

Peter Luschwitz

Annecy Film Festival

Something to stand out from the crowd and indicate that I take this very seriously and they need to too.

Run as a Business

– schedule your time

– learn how to estimate how long it will take you to deliver a particular kind of job

– set aside time each week to do your accounts or business affairs

– invoice correctly and promptly, especially if a new client and break it up into time periods

– keep records, expenses and invoicing, negotiate sign offs during the work

– cash flow and understand profit and loss

– keep money in the bank

– submit BAS and tax on time

– understand GST

– learn about running a small business (don to borrow more than 30% of your assets)

– be prepared to keep learning, professional development is one key to survival

– look after your clients, they are your bread and butter

– don’t burn bridges if at all possible

Legal Agreements and Intellectual Property

– it is important to know the deal you are committing to

– think of what intellectual property as any creative work, copyright has to have some form of expression that can be traded

– seek advice from a media and entertainment lawyer e.g. The Arts Law Centre, Michael Frankel Lawyers

– “work for hire” vs contract on a project

– avoiding the pitfalls e.g. return of material

Tracey Sernack-Chee Quee on how to calculate your charge-out rate and how to build your reputation:

Virtual Tracey SCQ welcomes you!!

– people not paying

– seek professional advice

– need to learn the ropes

– always looking for the next job

– down time will be holiday time

– how good are you, age, experience

– what is a contractor, paid for the results of work and can walk away, free to accept work from other people

– sole trader, abn, register business name and trade mark, technically set up and commercial software licences

How much do I need to earn:

– personal costs

– business costs: administration, soft/hardware, asset insurance, income insurance, communication, transport

– superannuation

– student loans

If earning $80000 will receive $60000 after tax and costs, suggested planning for employment for 10 months per year at 30 hours per week. For $80000, before tax = $70/hour.

Register for GST, 10% on invoices, not a cost for the business

Shilo McClean closing comments –  ‘digital’ doesn’t mean I can fix your computer:

– reliable

– honest

– efficient

– anticipates problems

– find solutions

– take ownership

– make it easy

– has your back

– always figuring things out

– shares knowledge

– pitch in to help

– know when to keep their mouth shut

– know when to say something

– leave ego at the door

– respects and acknowledges the genius in others

– respect and acknowledges others

– quick learner

– deep learner

– self-disciplined

Other things that came up:

iUniversity

DIA

Ghibli Studio

Hayao Miyazaki.

24 October

POTTED POTTERtakes on the ultimate challenge of condensing all seven Harry Potter books (and a real life game of Quidditch) into seventy hilarious minutes. This fantastically funny show features all your favourite characters, a special appearance from a fire-breathing dragon, endless costumes, brilliant songs, ridiculous props and a generous helping of Hogwarts magic!

Created by double Olivier Award Best Entertainment nominees Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner, the show is a must-see for Potter addicts and a great introduction to the series for anyone who’s ever wondered what all the fuss is about. Even if you don’t know the difference between a Horcrux and a Hufflepuff, POTTED POTTER will make you roar with laughter.

17 October and 19 October

Nikon-Walkley Awards for Excellence in Photojournalism: Opening Thursday Oct 16, 6 pm and exhibition open until December 14

Walkley Documentary Screenings:  2014 Walkley Documentary Award – Longlisted finalists announced

State Library of NSW Metcalfe Auditorium Macquarie St, Sydney

NIKON-WALKLEY PRESS PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR 2013 – KATE GERAGHTY

NIKON-WALKLEY PHOTO OF THE YEAR WINNER: Andrew Quilty, TIME LightBox, “Baby Burn Victim in Boost Hospital”

The overall winner will be announced at the 59th Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism in Sydney on December 4.

CRONULLA  RIOTS  Northern Pictures and SBS

On December 11, 2005 a riot occurred on Cronulla Beach in Sydney’s south targeting men of ‘Middle Eastern appearance’.  Phrases like “100% Aussie Pride” were scrawled in the sand while slogans such as “We grew here you flew here” became a new source of national shame. In the following days, Lebanese-Australian youth rose up, responding swiftly in a series of retaliations. Leading up to these events, 270,000 text messages were sent and received to mobilise the rioters and those who retaliated.

THE REDFERN STORY  Sue Milliken and Darlene Johnson, Samson Productions

The National Black Theatre movement in Redfern formed at a crucial time in Australian political history, culminating with the setting up of a number of significant Aboriginal organisations.The National Black Theatre has left a lasting legacy on national politics, social welfare and the Australian arts scene.The documentary contains archival footage and interviews with people who were there.

LOVE  MARRIAGE in KABUL   Pat Fiske and Amin Palangi,Bower Bird Films

‘Love Marriage in Kabul’ follows a passionate and determined Afghani-Australian woman Mahboba Rawi on a working trip to Kabul for her Mahboba’s Promise charity as she also challenges tradition to negotiate a love marriage for Abdul, a graduate of her central orphanage. The power of the film’s subtle observational technique offers a rare insight into an Afghanistan impoverished by decades of war and allowing an intimate experience of the machinations of a love relationship in a place where arranged marriage is the order of the day.

CODE of SILENCE   Dan GoldbergandDanny Ben-Moshe, Mint Pictures, Identity Films and ABC TV

Follow the parallel journeys of an Orthodox Jewish father and his son, after the son breaks the code of silence in Melbourne’s Orthodox community and goes public with his story of being sexually abused as a student.

SONS and MOTHERS  Christopher Houghton and Louise PascalePop Pictures

Sons and Mothers” uses creative techniques to focus on the abilities, rather than disabilities, of its subjects. The judges felt that by allowing those in the film to tell their own stories, the film makers take a difficult subject and turn it into a compelling documentary.

10 October

AUBURN  BOTANIC  GARDENS 

12 September

DIGITAL HUMANTIES: STATE OF THE ART/SHAPE OF THE FIELD

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

Room 101, Level 5, UTS Building 11, Jones Street, Ultimo

+61 2 9514 9074

Abstracts,  Biographies and my notes.

Eyes on the Street: Re-surfacing digital archives for contemporary urban interfaces

Dr. Sarah Barns is a creative producer, historian & researcher whose work with digital archives re-imagines historical recordings as the substrata of contemporary urban interfaces. This work re-interprets the highly mediated interfaces of urban environs today – whether urban screens, mobile interfaces or geo-location devices – as platforms from which to dig into media histories of place. Using film, television, sound and photographic recordings as trace elements of contemporary mediated spaces, through Esem Projects she works with teams of video makers, animators, sound artists and designers to construct new narratives for contemporary place-making, collaborating closely with communities, historians, local governments, collection managers and site-owners. In this presentation Sarah will present a selection of recent projects which evidence growing opportunities for site writing and historical interpretation using the digital interfaces of today’s urban spaces.

Dr. Sarah Barns is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture & Society at UWS and practices as an cross-platform artist and producer through Esem Projects. She has over ten years experience producing cross-platform digital media projects with a wide variety of organisations including the ABC, the City of Sydney, the National Film & Sound Archive, the Powerhouse Museum, and National ICT Australia. She maintains a blog at sitesandsounds.net.au and collaborates on creative projects through Esem Projects (esemprojects.com).

Sarah spoke about the ideas of digital, places, archives and public places and how the use of digital to tell stories of the street. Using oral history, original photos, movies, visual words, archival and architectural drawings to have a play of vision and experience.  Projections are a way to experience a place and the objective can be convincing and compelling to make a physical experience. Also the idea of digital history being available on a slider through sites like google maps.

historypin – A global community collaborating around history.

Digital Projects:

Sight and Sounds:

– last drinks

– unguarded moments

Esem Projects

Eyes on the Street:  City Evolutions Newcastle 2013

The Last Drinks Project:  2012 

City of Sydney, Statement of Environmental Effects for MLC Centre Activation Project: Castlereagh Street, King Street and Lees Court for Digital Projection and Temporary physical Art Works. 

The Virtual Sydney Rocks Project

The Virtual Sydney Rocks is enhanced time-based Virtual Heritage recreation of the historic Sydney Rocks district from 1788 to 2012. Users set the time and date and can then interactively explore the build environment. A second screen displays the web-based Virtual Sydney Rocks Guidebook which is dynamically linked to the VSR. Users can interact with the VSR via the three different modes of Tour, Game and Explore and they can also view a time-lapse animation by adjusting the speed of time. The VSR is being used to research user preference, engagement and learning in time-based Virtual Heritage.

Kit Devine has been involved in computer graphics since 1984 when she coded her first animation at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design. She then spent nearly 20 years working in Sydney, London and LA as an animator and effects artist for film and tv projects during which she won a number of Australian and international awards. She currently lectures in digital visual effects, digital video and video art at the Australian National University. Prior to joining the ANU she lectured in 3D Animation at the Australian Film, TV and Radio School. She is currently in the final year of a Phd investigating time-based virtual heritage. She is a founder member of the Digital Labourers Federation. (http://www.dlf.org.au).

VIRTUAL  HERITAGE

Time and Navigable Space, what is it all about? What cinema was to the twenty century it maybe for the twenty-first century.  The ability to make your own path, felling like your there, getting involved and the affected experience of being physically immersed with physical realism. It requires user engagement and points of interest by giving people activities.

GTA Virtual Reality had a budget o9f $M265. For Assassin’s Creed Franchise when there was a conflict with history, game play and technology the game play and technology won out.

Time is how we make sense of the world, our place in it and have mental time travel in our imagination, a time lapse view of the changing world. In the virtual world we may have control over how long it takes to get there, how we get there and the interaction of the journey and the destination. Archaeology use time based heritage of the world, a band of time or a particular time and place. The importance of lighting and can have time of day and time of year for the weather, not having a frozen moment. Creating an environment over a time period with time-lapse.

Creating a sense of what it was like, the environment and creating an experience which could be a tour/traditional, a game/behavioural, exploring/discovery or a choice.  Creating a game using the Butchers house, which is next door to Cribb’s house and using three objects including a boning knife found in blocked up well on the dig site.  The objects were  in the glass case giving people a direction connection between the physical object and the virtual world.

Virtual Sydney Rocks with a navigable time and space, 26 Jan 1788 – 2010 and concentrating on the built environment:

– site of fresh water

– could anchor boats

– no sign of current aboriginal occupation, families and structures  at this spot. The rest of the harbour had aboriginal populations, structures and they were fishing in the harbour.

– sex, class and race roles

– settlers, sailors, aboriginals and soldiers

The Rocks:

– George Cribb

– The Rum Rebellion

– Green Bans

– Rocks Plague

– Burning Down of Garden Palace

The Big Dig:

– 3/4 million artefact

– 42 individual dwelings

– archival research and link people with buildings and artifacts

– Whaler’s Arms hotel in Gloucester Street demolished in 1904

– George Cribb

Australian Dictionary of Biography

The Big Dig Archaeology Education Centre

Dictionary of Sydney, State Library of NSW 

Heritage and Conservation Register of NSW – Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority

Historical Atlas of Sydney

Millers Point and Walsh Bay Heritage Review:   Final Report, 2007

National Register of Historic Places

NSW Environment and Heritage

The Rocks Discovery Museum

Trove:  Digitised Newspapers and more

Virtual Sydney Rocks Guidebook

Jacqueline Lorber Kasunic is a design academic whose research explores the junction between design history and theory, material culture and visual knowledge production. She has a background in visual communication and ethnography, and her recent work is concerned with concepts of visual prose, which attend to the use of visualisation (visual thinking processes) to translate textual and qualitative data into knowledge. Jacqueline is Director of Interdisciplinary Design, in the School of Design at the University of Technology, Sydney

Kate Sweetapple is a design academic with an interest in the intersections between language, literature and design. Her focus is the use of practice-led research methods (thinking through making) to extract and visualise unlikely data sets from written texts. Her research is realised through a variety of practices: designing, curating, writing and teaching.

Visualizing Self and Subjectivity in Art, Health and Medicine

For the past 12 years, George Khut has been exploring methods for facilitating reflection on experiences of self and embodiment – using biosensing technologies and multimedia interactions that visualise interactions between breath, heart rate, emotions and states of attention. The documentation of audience experience has been an important part of this work – in this presentation George will discuss different strategies that he has experimented with –  for facilitating and recording aspects of participant experience, as well as recent research into clinical applications for this work – for managing pain, stress and anxiety.

Dr George Poonkhknin Khut is an artist, academic and interaction-designer at UNSW Art & Design (CoFA), working across the disciplines of fine art, design, health and medicine. His research focuses on ways in which interactive art and design can be used to facilitate reflection on experiences of self, embodiment and agency, and applications for this type of work in health care contexts.

Show Me the HuNI

This presentation will answer the questions: What is HuNI and why would I use it?

HuNI is a new research and discovery platform developed by and for humanities and creative arts scholars.

HuNI combines data from many Australian cultural websites into the biggest humanities and creative arts database ever assembled in Australia. For two years, Deakin University and 13 partner public institutions have been working to pol their resources in order to improve opportunities for Australian research. HuNI data covers all disciplines and brings together information about the people, works, events, organisations and places that make up the Australia’s rich cultural landscape. HuNI also enables researchers to work with and share this large-scale aggregation of cultural information.

Find out how you can use and contribute to HuNI. And don’t forget to bring your laptop or tablet to sweeten the experience.

Deb Verhoeven is Chair and Professor of Media and Communication at Deakin University, Deputy Director of the Centre for Memory, Imagination and Invention and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation.

She is the Project Director of Humanities Networked Infrastructure (HuNI), a two-year project funded by NeCTAR (National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources).

Writing Rights

Writing Rights visualises the evolution of ideas that inform the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It provides an opportunity for collaboration between humanities (Stanford University) and design (UTS) in order to better understand the role of visualisation in humanistic inquiry. Part of this collaboration involves developing a critical understanding of visual knowledge production and how digital technologies facilitate this.

Oral History in a Digital Age

In this presentation I will outline and demonstrate the advances we have made in creating the website historyofaboriginalsydney.edu.au.  What does one do with 2000 hours of videotaped interviews with over 300 people.  What is the best use to which  the material can be put?  How would we do it differently, seven years after starting the project?

Peter Read was the director of the ARC/University of Sydney project A History of Aboriginal Sydney.  The author of many books of oral history and Aboriginal History, he is currently Adjunct Professor in the  Australian Centre for Aboriginal History, ANU.

27 August

Australian Effects and Animation Festival  –  AEAF award screening of finalists and winners in each category.

Finalists – link to web site

Winners – link to web site

DCE graduates:

Student SILVER Passion Fashion Tim Strain

StudentSILVER Passion FashionTim Strain

Music Videos  BRONZE  Little Darling  Big Cookie Studios

6 August

The LEGO Movie is Animal Logic’s most successful Animated Feature to date. In this talk Miles discussed a wide range of topics giving insights into what went into producing the brick base film, illustrating much of it with previously unseen footage. An overview of how a unique LEGO Movie pipeline was developed for Animal Logics artists to use and how various departments built specific tools and technologies to meet the specific needs of the film

An automated system for the modelled bricks that could then be used to build sets. Shel Bakes removing the details that we do not see such as the studs joining the bricks. When the bricks were transparent the bake knew to leave the studs.

STRANGERLAND – feature drama featuring Nicole Kidman, Hugo Weaving and Joseph Flennes

It is and unnerving mystery drama about a couple whose lives unravel after their two teenagers go missing in the harsh Australian desert.

29 July

Nicole Mather – digital matte painter

Dylan Cole

29 July

Clovelly Beach Field Trip

2 July

ACM  SIGGRAPH:  Lewis Morley, a designer who creates models and props for film and TV. His credits include: Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones; Star 

Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith; Red Planet; Mission: Impossible II; Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds;The Time Guardian; Dark City.

Lewis spoke about his experience with optical effects, how the camera perspective works with miniature models and how they create reality with false perspective, parallax, how they would stop down the camera for depth of field and then needed to increasing the light, miniature ships in films, his love of 1970’s Japanese posters, Thunderbirds and Machine City.

7 June

The Adventures of Prince Achmed  by Lotte Reiniger, the earliest surviving animated feature film, featuring a silhouette animation technique. Reiniger worked alongside experimental German animators Walter Ruttman and Bertold Bartosch to complete her film. Recomposed on Vimeo.

Combining electronic and acoustic instruments, the score will be structured around a pre-recorded score of sampled percussion. Against this, a live band will play, consisting of two electric keyboards, soprano saxophone, & trombone. The music will be through-composed, seasoned with elements of improvisation, and invoke elements of jazz, minimalism and classical music.

Composer Phillip Johnston has been creating new scores for silent films for 25 years, and has performed his work in the United States, Europe and Australia, at venues that include the New York Film Festival, The Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, the Roma Jazz & Image Festival (ITALY), Rote Fabrik (Switzerland), as well as the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, the Sydney Film Festival, and the Sydney Opera House.

Musicians: Phillip Johnston, James Greening, Casey Golden, Gary Daly

4 June

Matt Dignam, Studio Manager at Plastic Wax.  

A seventeen year industry veteran spanning across CGI, Post Production, VFX and Directing, Matt has played a pivotal role in most cinematic trailers and CG productions since his return to Plastic Wax in 2010. With a focus on production technologies and innovation, Matt is a driving force behind the continual progress and development of the studio.

‘Deconstructing Cinematics’ takes a rare inside look at the production of trailers from concept, storyboards, asset creation and motion capture through to animation, VFX as well as lighting and compositing Matt focused on some of Plastic Wax’s latest cinematics as well as including a secret peek under the hood of some exciting real-time projects we’ve been working on.

Matt spoke about the process from the design to polymesh to UV textures for colour and surface properties for a fully shaded model.  They generally use textures size of 4096 x 4096 , 1920 x 1080 HD images which are 4K and sometimes to 8K for extreme close up shots making sure that when blown up the textures are not stretched.  They use texture maps of 4K resolution, occlusion maps for things like surface dust and normal maps that bend surface qualities in relation to light to create the shaders for the characters bone, skin, hair, leather and other surfaces with the intention to plan the use of shaders efficiently. Live action shots are included as part of the reference with images of characters, clothing, objects and environments.

The skin’s colour and qualities are dependent on the lighting, at first considering even lighting to see how it looks and what the model is going to look like when it is lit. Test are done for the reflectivity pass, displacement mapping again to see how they look.

When animating the characters actions, facial expressions and dialogue they use both key frame and motion capture of the action. The motion capture is applied to the rigs and it was amazing to see the facial expressions and dialogue on the model.

I enjoyed seeing how they used around 20 light passes to dial in the information in compositing to create different moods and effects. If that was not enough after being introduced to Nuke passes in today’s class there was a practical example of utility passes using a point position pass or simple point pass showing motion blur fast action of the character across the screen.

To round the evening off Matt showed a sequence where the character stomped on an object and it squashed. The action was taken from motion capture and stamping on the object was not working, it was really only squashing it and had no feeling of force. Then he showed how the object instead of squashing, shattered into peaces and reacted to the character’s action. Then I realised something important, it was not only about the character’s action it was also about how the object being stomped on reacted to the action. They belonged together to create the moment.

17 May 

SIGGRAPH– David Willimas, Animal Logic senior animator and award-winnering filmmaker spoke about how the animation style for The LEGO® Movie was developed and implemented, the concept and the creative process behind the unique animation style. 

It was interesting hearing about the popularity of block style animation, how this became a part of the research and style for the film and was integrating into how the film was made.  The use of easily available materials that are part of these black animations were included as part of the story telling.

There were challenges, like how would the hands function, how would the legs walk and the joints move.  I’d never seen the animation series ‘A Town Called Panic’, the characters and roughness of movement showed how important the research was to how the animation was approached and the final style of the film.  These limitations becoming the advantages of the film.

I remember noticing and looking for particular moves that were unique to the characters when I watched the film and found it interesting hearing about how unique and differentiating character’s moves were such a conscious decision.

I liked seeing how the rigs were broken over fast movements and fascinated to see how the brick shapes were used for continuos motion.

11 April

ARTEXPRESS at the Armory – exemplary bodies of work created by students from the 2013 New South Wales Higher School Certificate.

The theme of this year’s exhibition is Transition. This exhibition features students’ bodies of work that highlight the concept of a transformation, of passing from one state, place or subject matter to another. Some students reflected on an inner world where dreams and surreal ideas merge with reality. Other students questioned their place in a consumer society increasingly dominated by technology.

Around the exhibition the words Balance, Transition, Impact, Awareness, Influence, Process Metropolis and Traces were written boldly on the walls. The  works were striking, different and totally captivating. Here is a selection of some aspects I enjoyed.

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ARTEXPRESS Education Resource

26 March

Yellow Jeff exhibition opening at Alpha House

Yellowjeff,Taiwanese and Yellow is his Chinese family name. Yellowjeff’s foray  into art came to a dramatic halt when he was a child after his school teacher   found  a portrait he had drawn of him and slapped him hard across the face. It wasn’t until he attended university that he undertook life drawing lessons, as he studied communication design in Shih Chien University in Taiwan.

Yellowjeff’s work has been influenced by Ken Done, Egon Schiele, Andy Warhol  and Expressionism. He mixes traditional drawing materials that create a  symbiotic result in application. Oil paint mixed with crayon and watercolours are applied together through different techniques, that mesh and drip whilst taking on different aspects of his friends and celebrities personalities. He achieves vividness that is inspired by surroundings of his new city, Sydney.

22 March

Symphony in the Park, Sydney Symphony Orchestrain Parramatta Parkwith Pinchas Steinberg conductor and Karen Gomyo Violin.

Antonin Dvorak(1841-1880):  Carnival Overture

Henryk Wieniawski(1835-1880):  Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 22

Allegro moderato, Romance (Andante non troppo), (à la Zingara)

Ludwig van Beethoven(1770-1827): Symphony No.5 in C minor, Op.67

Allegro con brio, Andante con moto, Allegro

5 March

SIGGRAPH Andrew Silke

‘What’s it all about: Back by popular demand and with the support of Framestore, we have a fantastic opportunity to hear Andrew talk about the work he has done.  Andrew Silke is an award winning animator and 3d generalist whose credits include: Avatar, the Harry Potter films and theHappy Feet movies. An AFI nominee and the creator of the short films Cane-Toad and Samurice, both which featured in the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theatre, Andrew was the founder of the not-for-profit 3D training web videos, GuerrillaCG and is highly regarded for his work as an educator and mentor to fellow CG professionals, many of whom rely on his animation rigs and videos that are used by thousands of animators around the world.

www.create3dcharacters.com

1 March  

MOST

The Art Month guided bus tour of Marrickville’s thriving independent arts scene is the perfect opportunity to engage with local artists, view works in progress and purchase art at studio prices.  Presented in association with Marrickville Council as part of the Marrickville Open Studio Trail (MOST).

SNO Contemporary Art Projects:  Non Objective Art, contemporary investigation into non-objective, concrete and abstract art in general reflecting a wide variety of approaches to the plastic arts, new media or any abstract art in general. Usually the work is its colour, shapes, brushstrokes, size, scale and in some cases its process. 

Artists were there speaking about their work:

Suzie Idiens doing something completely different with her work Passage.

Kelley Stapleton with  Two Lines and a Jump Ropeand Oscillate

Sophia Egarchos piece Step Into You

 AirSpace Projects:  The Democracy of Drawing 1. Focusing in the work of a selection of over seventyvisual artists from Sydney, Interstate and overseas, both emerging and established. For some, drawing forms the focus of their artistic practice while for others, drawing sits on the periphery of their practice as an ever-present possibility.  The Democracy of Drawing 1 and The Democracy of Drawing 2 comes in a phenomenal range of forms from charcoal, thread, tape, icing sugar, found materials, sound, performance, digital imaging, text, holograms and the reliance on ants and bees, to communicate very human concerns around identity, formalism, culture, politics, gender, science, technologies and history.

SquarePeg Studios:  A contemporary jewellery workshop and the home of contemporary jewellers.

ESP Gallery: supporting independent art in Sydney.  Slightly biased to the Inner West, small art happenings, artist run initative and a not for profit run by artists for artists.

woodpapersilk:

Newsagency Gallery –  exhibition Art Prints Asia

Is an exhibition by 4 artist-run silk screen studios from Asia including; Sticky Fingers Art Print Cambodia, Idle Beats Shanghai, Survive Garage and Krack Studio from Indonesia. The silkscreen and graphic art studios are based in Shanghai, Phnom Penh and Yogyakarta. Artists include Bayu Widodo, Julien Poulson, Visal Heng, Nini Sum, Gregor Koerting. Malcolm Smith, Moki Prihatmoko and more. All well-known contemporary artists working and collaborating in the thriving art scenes of crowded Asian cities. They will show limited edition prints that are drawn, designed and hand printed on quality art paper by the artists. I found the 3D prints interesting with offset red and blue lines and when viewed through 3D glasses a black line is created.

Tortuga Studios: A collaborative artists warehouse space, gallery, shared resource and production environment.

Peter Strong-Vectorpunk

Chris Fox

GAYTM

Alpha Gallery: Flora Mavrommati, Alwy Fadhel, Gina Roberts, Paola Talbert, Meghan Rheynolds, James Stephenson, Chris Rochester, Caqtherine Hourihan, Jonathan McBrunie, Zoe Walford, Zio Ledeux and Ganbold Lundaa.

Photos of things that interested me along the way.

10 – 15 February

Tearing the Mask, NIDA – An exploration of Japanese Performance introduced by Richaqrd Emmert and Jeff Janisheski.

A unique beauty of the Japanese artforms Noh, Butoh and Kabuki with rarely seen films and documentaries.  Screened on a traditional Noh stage set in the Parade Atrium which is a covered outdoor amphitheatre. I was able to see some of these films.

‘Seami and the Noh  Theatre’  1991

‘Noh drama is one of the world’s great classical theatre genres. Although often compared to ancient Greek theatre for its use of masks, chorus and music, Noh theatre is unique.

Handed down over the centuries, it remains a vital performing art to this day. Its present form, which is a combination of two earlier types of performance known as ‘Sarugaku’ and ‘Dengaku’, was realised by Kannami in the 14th century. But it was his son, Zeami, who honed and perfected it into the highly refined structure it achieved and has retained up to the present.

Zeami’s life was a long and eventful one. It was a life that ranged from early, dazzling success at court to lonely exile in old age. Yet through it all he continued to write – not only plays that are popular and still performed, but essays and treatises on the art and concept of Noh drama itself.

Featured in this film are highlights from five representative Noh plays. Reflecting the very essence of Noh are the stately warrior play ‘Kiyotsune’ by Zeami; the moving ‘Jinen Koji’ by Kannami, his father; and the elegant ‘Izutsu’, the sad ‘Kinuta’ and the dynamic ‘Toru’, all also by Zeami.

Noh theatre reflects the pathos and depth of the human condition and mirrors the sorrows and aspirations of us all.’

‘The Noh Mask ‘ 1987

Outstanding Noh masks have played a major part in the perfection of Noh, a form of theatre that describes the world of the mind. This film shows the beauty of the masks and the role they play during performances, when the expressions they convey reflect delicate shades of emotion.

The Noh play ‘Aoi-no-Ue’ is introduced, which portrays the intense jealousy suffered by a woman. The deigan mask, used in the first half, depicts dignity struggling against anguish; the hannya (demon) mask, used in the second half, depicts anger and sadness.

The film shows different types of masks, and commentary is given on dramatic presentation and the choice of masks for specific roles.’

Noh Dōjōji [The Dōjōji Temple – A Noh Play]

‘This film shows the full performance of Dōjōji, one of the most dramatic plays in the classical Japanese Noh repertory, bookended by highlights from two other performances of the same piece.

A legend tells of a yamabushi mountain priest who, during his travels, often visited the home of a man who had a young daughter. The father once jokingly told his daughter that when she grew up she would marry a priest, and she innocently believed him. Time passed, and the priest visited several years later. The daughter, now being older, chided him for not claiming her as his wife. The priest rejected her, and when she became enraged, he ran away to Dōjōji Temple and asked to be hidden from her. The priests lowered a huge temple bell and hid him in it. The girl followed him, but was caught at the flooding Hidaka River without a boat to cross over. Jealous rage transformed her into a serpent. The serpent swam across the river, found the lowered bell at the temple and lashed itself around it. The bronze bell grew hot and the priest was roasted alive inside.

The Noh play begins many years later. The above incident has been almost forgotten and the temple is at last dedicating a new bell to replace the one destroyed many years before. Though ordered by the chief priest not to let any women into the temple for the ceremony, the temple servants allow a shirabyōshi dancer to enter since such performers typically perform dressed as men. The dancer promises to dedicate a dance for the new temple bell. The woman is in fact the jealous spirit of the serpent-woman. After her long dance, she leaps into the new bell, bringing it down. The chief priest is informed and he relates the old story of the serpent-woman demoness. As she appears from under the bell in her true form, the priests confront her with prayers by rubbing their rosaries until she is finally subdued.

This is a special play in the Noh repertory in that it is considered the ‘graduation ceremony’ of a professional Noh actor. Participation in this play generally leads to acceptance as a full member in the Noh-performing world.’

‘Traditional Japanese Culture: Kabuki’ 1997

‘The Edo Stage: Kabuki and Bunraku’ 1982

‘Like the theatre of other cultures, Kabuki and Bunraku reflect the society in which they were born – its morality, dreams and changes. In the case of Japan, the mid-to-late Edo period was a time of deep-seated dissatisfaction with feudal morality, and Kabuki and Bunraku plays echo the growing power and consciousness of the common people.

This film features extracts from two plays, ‘Sukeroku yukari no Edozakura’, a Kabuki comedy, and ‘Sonezaki shinju’, a tragedy written for Bunraku by the great playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon. These plays reflect both the laughter and tears of Edo-period Japan.’

The Lovers’ Exile: The Bunraku Puppet Theatre of Japan 1980

‘The Lovers’ Exile features the incomparable Bunraku Theatre of Japan: the world’s most sophisticated puppet theatre. For those unfamiliar with Bunraku, the spectacular staging and emotive power of the puppet handling, music and narrative will be a revelation.The Lovers’ Exile is an adaptation of ‘Meido no Hikyaku (The Courier for Hell)’ by Chikamatsu Monzaemon.

The Lovers’ Exile was filmed in 1979 at Daiei Uzumasa Studios, Kyoto, on a specially constructed Bunraku stage, and performed by all the major Bunraku masters of the day, many of whom were National Treasures, or who obtained such designation later. Appearing are Takemoto Koshijdayu, Takemoto Mojitayu (now Sumitayu), Takemoto Oritayu (now Tsunatayu), Tsuruzawa Enza (5th), Tsuruzawa Seiji, Nozawa Kinshi (4th), Yoshida Tamao, Yoshida Minosuke, Yoshida Bunjaku and Kiritake Kanjuro (2nd) – the greatest Bunraku stars of the Showa era.’

‘Butoh: Piercing the Mask’ 1991

‘In the early 1960s Butoh dance exploded onto the Japanese stage. The shockwaves ripped the Japanese dance community apart and shattered stereotypical images of the Japanese people. Sexy, violent, humorous and nihilistic, Butoh confronted Japanese society, ridiculing and mocking traditional conventions of beauty and behaviour. This documentary pierces the mystery and mystique of a dance movement adored by the West and largely ignored by the Japanese. It uses archival and modern footage of leading Butoh performers – Dairakudakan, Hakutobo, Kazuo Ono – and interviews with Butoh specialists to throw light on the essential Butoh themes of darkness, violence and eroticism to get to the core of the nature of Butoh.

Going beyond its examination of Butoh as dance, Butoh: Piercing the Mask, delves into the relationship between culture and society. It portrays Butoh as a primal scream, uttered at a time when the post-war invasion of Japan by Western cultural and social conventions forced artists to re-invent their own identity. It raises questions about the Japanese people by revealing connections between some of the darker aspects of Butoh and Japanese culture. It examines Butoh’s relationship to contemporary life against the backdrop of modern Tokyo.’

‘Butoh: body on the Edge of Crisis’ 1990

‘Although Butoh is often viewed as Japan’s equivalent of modern dance, in actuality it has little to do with the rational principles of modernism. Butoh is a theatre of improvisation which places the personal experiences of the dancer on center-stage. The dancer is used as a medium to his or her inner life, but not for the portrayal of day to day existence. A Dionysian dance of nudity, eroticism, and sexuality, Butoh’s scale of expression ranges from meditative tenderness to excessive grotesqueness. By re-establishing the ancient Japanese connection of dance, music, and masks, and by recalling the Buddhist death dances of rural Japan, Butoh incorporates much traditional theatre. At the same time, it is a movement of resistance against the abandonment of traditional culture to a highly organized consumer-oriented society. An alliance of tradition and rebellion, Butoh is one of the most fascinating underground dance movements. Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis is a visually striking film portrait shot on location in Japan with the participation of the major Butoh choreographers and their companies.’

Talks and Demonstrations

Lynne Williams, Director/CEO, NIDA
Jeff Janisheski, Head of Acting, NIDA
Richard Emmert, Professor of Asian Performing Arts, Musashino University, Japan
Yukio Waguri, Artistic Director, Kohzensha Butoh Company, Japan
Allan Marett, Emeritus Professor of Musicology, University of Sydney

above copy from NIDA web site

7 February

NATIONAL GALLERY of AUSTRALIA

Gold and the Incas.The Lost Worlds of Peru.  Exhibition until 21 April.

One of my favourite pieces, the Quipu.

from National Gallery of Australia website

5 February

Sydney ACM SIGGRAPH – VFX on set, 3D scanning and modelling, rendering and compositing. Lidar scanning, HDR colour space, spectral response of sensors and everything else you need to know to get it right.

Speaker: Mike Seymour, Director & VFx Supervisor, Co-founder fxphd

Mike was one of the first Red Camera experts and has been a key figure in documenting its production pathways and standards. He is a leading educator and writer on VFX and works internationally as a consultant to productions and as a VFX Supervisor. His credits include: The Captain, Bear, Red Dwarf, Miracle Fish, I love Sarah Jane, Spider, Hunt Angels, Lucky, Farscape — The Peacekeeper Wars.

VFX needs accurate geometry and lighting for reconstruction. Some of the ideas spoken about were lidar scans, point clouds, identifies for multiple scans, still shots of the scene on set to include camera and lighting details, extra footage after the take can be helpful for reference such as tilt up or extra pan or pulling out, draw stuff, is the camera’s pivot point its optical centre and where is it placed on the tripod, camera image sensor and colour separation, use exposure on time, need the image to be deep not necessarily high res, lots of bit depth and can be small dpi, raw as the gamma is not baked as it is in jpeg, what is white light, colour temperature, spectral response, accurate colour, take light out of HDR.

For vfx lighting sampling and reconstruction an established lighting references is that the Macbeth ColorChecker. These boards are not always accurate and seeing many examples of inaccurate colour samples it was up to the vfx 18% grey ball for the job. Why is it a ball, a sphere in face and it is good from any angle.

LED lights which are being used more and more have this big blue spike on the spectral response graph.

fxphd

fx guide

Tom Gleeson, ACS & fxPHD’s Mike Seymour on the microRemote: “An Amazing Value”

vfphd with Mike Seymore – free eBooks and tutorials

Mike Seymore on Vimeo

Scott Metzger – special build of The Foundry’s MARI tool to project HDR set-captured environment data onto geometry.

2 February

Oopsatoreum, Power House Museum

7 December 2013 – 6 October 2014
Free with museum entr

‘The Oopsatoreum: a fiction by Shaun Tan and friends is an unpredictable and charming exhibition for families where inventors arise from their inventions and creative makings abound.’

‘The ‘inventions’ you will see are from the Powerhouse Museum collection, but the stories that accompany them were made up by Shaun and some bright young minds from the Sydney Children’s Choir. The exhibition is a reminder that all inventions, no matter how successful, begin as a daring act of imagination.’

Images and text from the PHM web site.

There was a wonderful wall where people could put up the ideas of their inventions which Gerald and I enjoyed reading.

One of our favourites was:

‘An automatic door powered by frustrated stomping.’

We laughed and laughed then looking at the bottom of the drawing it was by Ruth, 27.

We were not sure what to make of the one that said:

‘A new wife’, the wife’s reply was ‘You get what you pay for.’

Photos : © Gerald Yi-Cherng Lee

Thanks Gerald, another of your wonderful ideas to go exploring for interesting things to enjoy. I found it a real inspiration for my imagination.

Afterwards we enjoyed the atmosphere with the preparations for the Chinese New Year parade in the city, the year of the horse.

12 January

The Sound of Mumbai

11 January

Charles and Ray Eames

October 21, 2018 | Categories: year | Tags: 2014 | Leave a comment

2013

2013

community

23 November

Corroboree Sydney,  Celebrating Culture and Connecting People

18 November 

The 2013 Foxtel Screenwriter’s Address by Leah Purcell

Presented by the Australian Writers’ Foundation

28 October

Sculptures by the Sea

26 October

SIGGRAPH digital storytelling – Shilo McClean

Story Sturctureand POV.

Syd Field’s Three Act Paradigm

Robert McKee’s Five Part Narrative

John Truby’s Seven Major Steps

Linda Seger’s Eight Sections with Three Acts

13 October

ACMI Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing: From book to film

Tuesday 16 July 2013 – Sunday 19 January 2014
Open daily 10am-5pm (Closed Christmas Day)
Free entry

“Set in a city overrun by bureaucracy, Shaun Tan’s picture book The Lost Thing tells the story of a boy who befriends a strange creature that doesn’t appear to fit in any of the available pigeon holes.

Melbourne-based production company Passion Pictures Australia invited Shaun to direct an animated version of The Lost Thing. Several years later, the Oscar®-winning short film emerged.

This exhibition features Shaun’s exquisite original drawings and working sketches alongside exclusive footage of the animators and sound artists, demonstrating how the drawings were brought to life on screen with movement, sound effects, music and narration.”

from ACMI web page

11 October  

International Day of the Girl Child

‘Girl Rising’

World Visionis proud to present a new feature film about the strength of the human spirit and the power of education to change the world.

This internationally acclaimed film tells the stories of nine extraordinary girls born into unforgiving circumstances, including World Vision sponsor children Azmera from Ethiopia and Ruksana from India.

End Child Marriage Petition

Screened by Wake Up Sydney

I though the graphics giving information, the animated sequences and illustrations with live action expanding the visual storytelling were fantastic. They worked through out the film, enhancing the storytelling while bringing the story visually alive.

2 October

Sydney ACM SIGGRAPH – Digital Storytelling : the narrative power of visual effects in film.  Shilo McClean

Some of the ways VFx work to enhance and build story craft, to creating the story world and sense of place is fundamental with its rules and logic, the big truth or is it what if………..? Considering how the character is part of the plot, setting things up, how the action unfolds, events occur and keeping you in the story.  Creating and  giving the audience and engaging experience with VFX  which can be invisible and often the  most powerful.  It can give the storyteller control of the locations and being true to the story.  The fantastical, imaginative and surreal can be outside reality while being set up in the story,  within the rules and integrity of the story.  Setting is real, the challenge is hugs, there are any number of outcomes, it extends what they know in life, questions what is going to happen and is it plausible fitting into the world they have been put in.  What do we feel?

25 September

Art After Hours, New South Wales Art Gallery – Celebrating 10 years.

Live Music and Swing Dancing and we missed Sarah Blasko.

Photo Booth – dressing up and smiling, now these photos of Gerald, Wendy and Therese live on the fridge.

Collage Workshop – we made a  modernist collage inspired by the harmonious colour of Roy de Maistre’s

1919  painting  Rhythmic Composition in Yellow Green Minorthat is part of the in the Sydney Moderns exhibition.

Our masterpieces on my fridge

Our masterpieces on my fridge

Arranging pre-cut paper shapes based on the painting’s soft yellows, greens, blues and violets – a result of de

Maistre’s theory that colour harmonies were akin to musical harmonies.  Real masterpieces were created.

Operation Art, Armory Gallery, Newington, Sydney Olympic Park, 7 September – 27 October

An initiative of the Children’s hospital at Westmead in association with the NSW Department of Education and Community in collaboration with Sydney Olympic Park Authority.  Operation Art is the premier state-wide visual arts exhibition for school students from Kindergarten toYear 10.

With a record 897 artworks paintings and drawings by students from throughout NSW, this year’s exhibition offers Armory Gallery visitors a great opportunity to celebrate the creative talents of our young people at our unique riverside setting.

Upon completion of the exhibition, 50 selected works will go to the permanent art collection of The Children’s Hospital, Westmead to help brighten up the lives of sick children.  A selection of 50 works will be shown at the Art Gallery of NSW and tour major regional galleries. Works are also selected each year to form Operation ArtBank. These works are shared with other children’s hospitals in NSW and overseas.

30 August

Opening of the exhibition ‘Serve the People’ at The White Rabbit Gallery.   “The White Rabbit Collection is one of the world’s largest and most significant collections of contemporary Chinese art. Founded by Kerr and Judith Neilson, it focuses on works produced after 2000.”

I enjoyed the film made up of black and white images about China’s history. They used bold strokes and silhouettes to make the shapes and edited the still drawings into an interesting film.

The exhibition is open until 2 February 2014.

9 July

Cultural Office – Frame by Frame: Korean cinema from script to screen

The exhibition has been organised to highlight the 100th screening of films at KCO and the up coming Korean Film Festival.

Australian story board artists were given a section of script from the box office hit “Masquerade” and have been exhibited alongside the original storyboards. I enjoyed seeing these different interpretations along with the sections of the film from these storyboards being screened. When I arrived for the free guided tour, there was me and I was joined by the exhibition curator and had a wonderful experience chatting about Korean films, culture, language and the exhibition. One of the Australian storyboard artists wanted to include words as part of the storyboard , using google translations the translantion has created some humour among the Korean community.

‘The Stoker” has been included to show the work of Korean director Chan-wook Park and Australian actor Nicole Kidman.

6 July

Shopping and F***ing at Parade Studio, NIDA

The plot follows a crowd of drifters and sex traders in a seedy area of London in the 1990s. Five main characters are linked loosely and intermittently and at the center of the play is an ever-changing love triangle of petty criminals. It is a gritty, grimy urban society, a depressing  microcosm of drugs, shoplifting, prostitution, and sexual adventure. The characters have shunned morality and conduct hedonistic and destructive lives in this shocking, humorous, nihilistic play that examines a completely corrupted society.”   by goodreads

The production and acting were excellent. The fallen characters, explicit homosexual sex scenes, heroin junkies, sexual violence, male masochistic hooker,  phone sex, oral sex, a 14 year old boy begging to be sodomised with a knife, a woman in love with her gay roommate and shoplifting being displayed on stage added nothing to my theatre experience. This shocking drama presented graphic gay sex scenes on stage leaves me wondering why it has been translated into ten foreign languages.

3 July

Sydney ACM SIGGRAPG – showreels & getting a job in VFX

Patricia and Nick from Animal logic have both been working in recruiting VFX artists for well over a decade and came with excellent and practical information about applying for jobs and attending interviews.  They explained many points and details about putting reels together , applying for work, answered questions and spoke about their perceptions of how they see working in the industry.

Introduced by Stig Gruman, Vice President of M & E working with customers in areas such as Film, Television, Games, Advertising, Publishing, Graphic Design.

Matt Estela from Animal Logic spoke about his experience on ‘The Great Gatsby’ as lighting lead.  It was interesting to see how they used the hologram shader and only two main lights with the environment light, which comes from all directions and an expensive light. Made reference to ambocc.

Two suggested web sites :

http://www.123dapp.com

http://www.autodesk.com/recap

David Zwiezchaczewski from autodesk who is a 3D specialists spoke about Maya, 3DSMax, MudBox and Motion Builder. He is starting up a youtube channel for tutorials and welcomes questions.

davidz@autodesk.com

0406 232 199

Justin Bromley and Tom Corbet from Fin Design spoke about his work as a compositor and vfx artist on the Holden Colorado commercial. How they outsourced the maya modeling of the stadium around the world and the rotoscoping to India, the use of scene linear, 16 bit workflow, dmm plug in and luster for grading. Mark Toiadid the amazing shoot.

Rob O’Neill spoke about autodesk’s Smoke for macs, 16 bit, connect effects node base system and using FBX files from Maya.

1 May

ACM SIGGRAPH – Meet the Artist : Charles Santos – concept artists and Illustrator.

“He loves drawing very little things in a very little journal and dreams about funny, wondrous stories. Charles gathers inspiration from the curiosities he happens upon every day while going about his travels and weaves them together to create his whimsical narrative dreamscapes. Charles Santoso’s work has been exhibited in Sydney and also internationally in North America and France.

During the day he works at Animal Logic as a concept artist/art director working on various animated feature film and television projects including: Legend of the Guardians, The Great Gatsby, Walking with The Dinosaurs, The Lego Movie, and the Peter Rabbit TV series. Charles has also worked on major TV commercial projects for Coca Cola, Nike, the Sydney Opera House, Honda, and Hyundai.”

He spoke about films which are always about story and need to be believable, commercials which are about selling products or a company, short films which are also about stories and his personal work. Sometimes it is necessary to start again and always do your research. Charles initiated  ‘daily random word doodles’.  People twitter a word, he picks the first word that pops up and spends around 30 min to 1.5 hours drawing his ideas.

Google SketchUp

23 April

People Building Better Cities – participation and inclusive urbanisation for sustainable urban development. The project is travelling to ten countries working on ways to make cities resilient, equitable, inclusive, smart and sustainable where people are part of the conversation. They are involved in the collaboration of ideas and the exchange knowledge for their future.  What is the right process to engage with for social issues, sustainability, entitlements, sanitation, buildings and other issues and what do people really care about?

Global Studio

Centre for Sustainable Urban Development

16 April

Story Telling in Video Games – NSW Writers Centre.  There was a lively discussion about some of the aspects and directions of games writing.

Writing books and movies are linear and at certain points things happen, the audience is more passive. Story telling in games includes aspects of story, narrative, plot and action that come together to create the experience for the player requiring them to do something.

Are games story driven?  Is there a need for structure?  How is the game and story telling coming together?  Is it the character or the game that gets the player there?  Are players being forced to watch long sections of story?  Does this make game stores broader and deeper?  Are the game play moments telling the story and becoming the reason to go from one event to another with the plot evolving with the story?

When asking the player to do something what is the motivation?  Is it beat the enemy, creating conflict, solving conflict, moral choices, winning, a journey, historical or is it something else entirely?  Does the player care ?  What is the influence of moral trends? What are games asking the player to do?

In games there can be branching narratives, it can be structurally dense and the player can be setting their own goals. The narrative links become part of the game, giving freedom to the player where it may be less likely everything will be found. The protagonist can be the player, an active participant working to find where they are going and what is happening with choices that influence the direction and the outcome. They are confronted with a range of choices that influences decisions and are asked for emotional responses that are compelling, engaging and contributing to experiences. The game play is feeding into a story, not only binary moral choices but grey choices to make it interesting. As the narrative and the depth of the world develops the player makes decisions having reactions, conflict of feelings, attachment to experiences and consequences as processes are applied with an outcome that may end in the same place or it may vary all creating an interactive experience.

The story is being created by the player, setting their own goals and becoming their own character with personality such as likeable, reliable and being who they are wanted to be. There may be moral choices, lessons to be learnt, forced failing, reward for actions, giving something then taking it away thus becoming the nature of the medium.

With books and movies the reader and audience can have feelings about the ending without entitlement.  In games the player is doing some of the emotional work and maybe consider they have some ownership about entitlement with the endings.  Choices can matter, character is a product of choices, issues may not be resolved and there can be expectations.

Who does the story belong to, the writer or the player?

Some of the games referred to during the discussion : BIOSHOCK, HOUSE OF LEAVES, SHEPARD, BLANK SLATE, PORTAL, THE WALKING DEAD, HALO, FAR CRY, THE CONVERSATION.

15 April

13 ROOMS – found 12 of them and where was the 13th or was it the 1st or something else? A total adventure into art, was it living sculpture, was it performance, was it art at all, was it a social event bring the community together to discover, explore, question, challenge, confront, ponder or something totally different? It was not possible to have a favourite.

from the web site

There was $5 on offer in the exchange room and I could not think fast enough to find an item to exchange. The young girl there traded her thongs for that $5, even when asked how she would walk home she was still going to get that $5. The Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moroe was enjoying the exhibition and at the exchange room was asked what she had to exchange, she offered her 13 rooms program.

15 April 

Drawing trip to the zoo, totally intimidated by drawing in a public space there I was enjoying the company of some of my class mates and drawing away.  These animals could not stand still for a moment and those 2 minute class drawings were way too long. No chance to ponder or measure something, get that shape, line, feeling, size or whatever not to mention no time to ponder materials to use. When we found the kangaroos lying still in the heat what to do with a still shape? The sounds of the art lecturer saying when it did not work, change it and learning to draw what I saw.

3 April

Sydney ACM SOGGRAPH– Kym Wattstrained at the Enmore’s Design Centre and now works in Canada in 3D and VFx. Kym spoke about his experiences, worked towards his first industry position, the direction this has taken him, his work inspiration and challenges and gave his insights into how it has been working in Australia and overseas.

17 March 

Jamie Engelkindly agreed to speak with our small dynamic group Inspired to Writeabout various ways to build an audience, multi-platform marketing, alternative funding and distribution, branding, interactive design and business models. How much can a person take in? Let’s see?

What about THE MOVIE?

Interview with the makers.

Is it all about creating a connection, communities, relationships, sharing, passion, empowerment, social currency and who would it appeal to?

Jamie’s web site, is well worth a look, also his Alchemy Fun House facebook page and on LinkedIn

Some other interesting places Jamie suggested to look and visit for inspiration.

General Assembly, Creative Mornings, Crowd Funding, Kick Starter, Veronica Mars, Double Fine, Kevin Smith – ‘Sundance’, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia – Airbnb, David Garland – ‘The Rise to the Top’,  ‘The Naked Brand’, Meet Up, Bruce Lipton– ‘The Biology of Belief’, Cloud Atlas.

TED Talks : Seth Godin, Rachel Botsman – ‘What’s Yours is Mine’, Amanda Palmer.

Jamie is speaking at General Assembly in Ultimo on April 18, 6:30 – 8 pm 2013 and click here for booking information.

17 March 

Notions of Portraitureexhibition, Alpha Gallery group exhibition as part of Sydney Art Month.

exhibition room sheet

15 March 

Sydney Olympic Park – ArtExpress, Newington Armory.

I’m interested in building a mixture of media in my movie making. This has started to include animating people’s art works. Many artists are building imaginative sequences into their drawings and paintings and artexpress is a wonderful expression of many stories.

ARTEXPRESS_education_resource

15 March 

‘Microstories’ pilot screening

Supporting Sydney Independent Filmmakers

21 February

Orientation week and I’m off to enjoy a public lecture at the College of Fine Arts about design – what a treat.

The event was organised by  Social Innovation Sydney who’s aim is to build community and networks for like-minded people to share ideas and create sustainable social innovations.

From November 2012 until April 2013 we are traveling the world and spend some time on all five continents in order to: (a) visit (entrepreneurial and design related) projects that are claiming to contribute to poverty reduction; (b) ask people around the world (professionals, end-users etc.)  about their opinions on design, entrepreneurship and poverty; (c) collect data to support or refute our assumptions and (d) hopefully even contribute a little bit to poverty reduction ourselves by sharing our own knowledge through workshops, advice, design etc.

Jeroen and Boukjefrom Netherlands who started Am I A Designer launched straight into their thoughts and experiences. This  included what they have learned from the first few months of their trip in Africa and Asia.  Where is the social responsibility of designers, is it contributing to the poverty cycle, are the designs sustainable, what is the environmental impact and are we becoming the solution or the problem? Do communities need the design? For design to work maybe we need to consider – are they functional, do they need to be new or reinvented, high end or locally made and when foreign aid steps out of the project does it collapse?  What skills are needed – business, technology, information, support, empowerment or changing communities dependent on aid?  Are the needs for animals, humans or social?  What is poverty – is it money, possessions, family? Maybe it is different things for different people and different communities.

What is needed? So many questions were raised and I’m wondering as a film maker where does this sit?  Some thoughts to turn my thinking on its head. What about the Africa for Norway project,  MAGO East Africa or Yayasan Masarang Foundation? Maybe there is knowledge to be shared with developing countries with more international collaboration as it is not always about buying a solution.

Students 4 Sustainability

We were asked – What is your opinion on design and entrepreneurship in relationship to poverty reduction? I ask you the same question?

October 21, 2018 | Categories: year | Tags: 2013 | Leave a comment