ARTS

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Cool Tasmania: the MONA effect electrifies Launceston
First published in The Australian Financial Review (Life & Leisure), April 2019
The festival merch was a bit of a guffaw. The hats were hot pink and embroidered with eggplant and peach emojis (code for penis and butt) while the tote bags read: “London Paris New York Tokyo Berlin Launceston.” After a decade in Hobart, Mona Foma – the summer festival of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) – moved to Launceston this year, lowbrow gags and all. ...
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‘Just don’t stare’: a night of nudity and dancing at the gallery
First published in Guardian Australia, January 2017
“Here?” I ask. “We undress here?” The man beside me already has his pants off. His name is Matt and he got a head start while the Sydney Dance Company’s artistic director, Rafael Bonachela, gave a welcome speech at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. As Bonachela talked Matt had removed his sneakers and stuffed his peeled-off socks inside. About 150 of us begin ...
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Old and new speak
First published in The Saturday Paper, February 2019
I glide out of Changi Airport in a chauffeured limousine. I have a cold rolled face cloth, The Straits Times’ broadsheet and market updates murmuring on the radio. Had I not been met at arrivals with a ‘HENNESSY’ sign I’d suspect a bullish Asian businessman remained curbside for pick up. My imposter syndrome suggests that guy wouldn’t be sliding around quite so much on the ...
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Mona Foma review – heady mix of nudity, art and music lands in Launceston
First published in The Guardian Australia, January 2019
You’ve got two kinds of Australian festivals, roughly speaking: camping festivals that take place among nature, and those that infiltrate a city or town. Gigs in the bush just make me anxious for the animals. I prefer the town takeovers. One of the best things about the two festivals run by Tasmania’s Mona – Dark Mofo (winter, Hobart) and Mona Foma (summer, Launceston) – is ...
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‘I might get my boobs out’: aboard Air Mofo’s bonkers flight to Launceston
First published in The Guardian Australia, January 2019
“How was your flight?” will have a new reply in future from the 150 passengers on board Air Mofo’s maiden trip on Friday. “Fine,” they’ll say. “But did I ever tell you about that bonkers flight I took to Tasmania?” When I pass them at Melbourne airport, I assume the young women in matching yellow tees are a boisterous sporting team. Then I see the ...
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Norway’s Future Library
The Saturday Paper, January 2018
“I have finished writing my contribution to Future Library,” wrote Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón on April 27, 2017. “It is a moment of relief and exhilaration, of exhaustion and joy. From this moment on I have entered the next level of the game, where I must keep a secret to the end of my days.” Sjón had followed authors Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell into an extraordinary durational ...
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Arcadia review – flat production can’t dampen Stoppard’s dazzling play
First published in the The Guardian, February 2016
A quick flick through the program is usually enough to mainline a show’s ideas. Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, however, is the play of ideas of plays of ideas. Audiences would be better primed prepping on the basics of chaos theory, the romantic versus the classic temperament, the second law of thermodynamics, and the peregrinations of notorious shagger and poet Lord Byron. ...
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The Drover’s Wife review – plot twist leaves Australian classic spinning on its axis
First published in the Guardian, September 2016
A selection of short stories by Henry Lawson was published in 1959 called Fifteen Stories. Australian author Colin Roderick wrote in the introduction: “[Henry Lawson] never attempted to draw people he did not know … it was the world of the drover, the prospector, the miner, the rouseabout, the shearer, the railway worker, the swagman and the sundowner, the cocky, the timbergetter, the underpaid apprentice, ...
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Penis whistles and performance art: Dark Mofo
First published in The Lifted Brow, August 2016
On the bus, the duet from Dirty Dancing, ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life’, is playing too loud for the tinny speakers. Pink balloons hang from the ceiling and tassles fringe the aisles. The windows are papered over so we can’t see out. It’s cheap, nasty and there’s nowhere to hide. “Can I sit here?” I ask a guy with a spot beside him. ...
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Dark Mofo, 2016
First published in The Wire magazine, August 2016
A mirror hangs from a tree reflecting the clean Tasmanian sky. I’m in the exercise yard of New Norfolk Hospital For The Insane, taking a break from what’s inside. The asylum – originally built for sick convicts – sprawls over both sides of the River Derwent in this small town 40 minutes from Hobart. Many locals worked here; others were family of inmates. The asylum ...