Scottish-Australian poet Ali Whitelock reading her found poem – ‘this is coal don’t be afraid’. For more delights, check out her website. Ali’s poetry and my heart crumples like a coke can, 2018 and the lactic acid in the calves of your despair, 2020 are available from her publisher Wakefield Press
review
National Photographic Portrait Prize 2020
National Portrait Gallery, Canberra – until May 10 2020
and regional galleries to follow* Continue reading
William Kentridge – that which we do not remember
Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney until 3 February
free Continue reading
Friday favourites – It’s difficult (to hear what you’re writing)…
Currently, I’m reading the new edition of Cordite. The theme for this edition is ‘difficult’ and it includes some provocative poetry along with artworks from Paola Balla and Hoda Afshar, translations into English of Brazilian and Romanian writers and an interview with Bangladeshi writer Kaiser Haq. There’s also six essays including a piece on poetry on the radio by Prithvi Varatharajan and an essay by Lynn Davison, What the Repetitions of Poetry Might Help Us Remember about Home, Belonging and the Self where she discusses how poetry can…
’embed us in place and community …and is maybe why we turn to it at heightened, frightened times in our lives. It orients us, it gives us context. And what we hear is not the remnants of a seemingly separate and distant oral tradition, but the called notes for our ways of knowing and being…
Among 50 new poems, my favourite so far – is Jini Maxwell’s bay city plaza
…and the dock sits, sunk like an old dog.
They say a good body is hard to find.
It’s seven now. I’ve had braver days.
Last night, the sea tantrumed herself flat
now the shore creeps out from under waves
as if cringing away from a smack;
Cordite is well worth a read (if you can get away from the construction noise: the crew with the hammers and saws starts early next door). And if not, try something noisy like Sons of Kemet live from the Vortex Club (big hair, big tuba)
Image: Postcard of old St Georges Shopping Centre, Preston Victoria, Tony Worral Photography, Flickr
‘Protection’ – coming to a cinema near you
Friday favourites – 25 May
Cine-mania, Lisa Reihana
Campbelltown Arts Centre
12 January to 29 March 2018.
10 to 4pm daily, Free.
Cine-mania is a survey of thirty years of Maori video and photographic artist Lisa Reihana’s work. Its centrepiece is In pursuit of Venus [infected], a 64 minute super-wide screen film about the three Pacific voyages of English navigator and explorer James Cook’s (1768 to 1779). Continue reading
Kids’ stuff – Protection – update
A new funding campaign has opened for Protection the film from the team at Beyond Empathy who brought you the award-winning Rites of Passage. Continue reading
Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial
until 10 September 2017
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
free (yes really)
This major exhibition surveys the contemporary practice of 30 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, responding to the 50th Anniversary of the 1967 Referendum (1). The curator Tina Baum has done a fantastic job to bring together both emerging and more established artists from around Australia. Continue reading
Archibald and serendipity
Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prize, 2017
Art Gallery of NSW – $18 adult, $16 concession, $14 members
29 Jul – 22 Oct 2017 and then to regional centres.
Now in its 96th year, the $100,000 Archibald Prize for the ‘best’ portrait painting has been settled. Continue reading