ARTS

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‘The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic’ (review)
First published in the Australian Book Review, June 2016
Were I to mimic the style of Chicago-based music critic Jessica Hopper, we’d be off and running by now, or grappling with a question that had bulleted straight to the topic’s heart. When this anthology’s 42 think-pieces, reviews, and ephemera first appeared in Village Voice, Chicago Reader, SPIN and elsewhere, a few words of context may have preceded each of them. Here, we just have bald beginnings such ...
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Godspeed You! Black Emperor/Monumental (Adelaide Festival)
First published in The Guardian, March 2016
Post-rock is a loudly ponderous, insistently serious kind of music: all brooding soundscapes, apocalyptic themes and long, instrumental songs that are fanned into vast fire-fronts of noise. Everything emotes. Once I thought it to be very important music. But the drama that sucked me in eventually spat me out. At a gig, I found myself furiously agreeing with a guy who yelled “crescendo is cheap!” ...
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King Lear review – fails to sate craving for fury
First published in The Guardian, November 2015
It is King Lear’s unreasonable expectations that drive Shakespeare’s plot. After abdicating in order to “unburden’d crawl toward death” Lear expects the fawning and flattery only power can procure to continue undiminished. It doesn’t, and so his suffering begins. ...
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Broken Heel festival: ‘Even Australia’s founding fathers dressed in drag’
First published in The Guardian, September 2015
As a kid, Anthony Carthew watched Mad Max 2 car chases from his front door. It was 1981 and the crew was staying in the outback town of Broken Hill and filming on Silverton Road where Carthew lived. “We had a property on the edge of town,” he says. “Out the back door, the red dirt went on forever with the saltbush and sunsets.” Now, ...
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Culture and politics merge for Garma Festival
First published in The Guardian, August 2015
Held on an escarpment in north-east Arnhem Land, the Garma festival site is called Gulkula in Yolngu language. Traditionally owned by the Gumatj clan, it overlooks a pandanus and stringybark forest that ends at the Arafura sea. It has long been a place for clans to gather and talk. Garma’s three-day key forum honours that spirit of discussion, causing long-timers to claim it is more ...
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Lawrence English: our relationship with sound is problematic
First published in The Guardian, August 2015
When a rat runs over Lawrence English’s foot, it’s a shock to both of us. For English, because the rat is “the size of a small cat”. For me, because I’m returned to a here and now our conversation has seen me slip from. “I’m interested in the idea of the body as an ear,” English continues. “I want to explore the point at which ...
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Barunga comes bittersweet full circle
First published in Australian Book Review, June 2015
Opposite the outdoor basketball court, the Karungkarni Arts Centre is selling dot paintings by Gurindji woman Biddy Wavehill. Later at the riverside acoustic stage, Peter Garrett steps unexpectedly from the long grass to sing ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’ with Paul Kelly – a song about the Wave Hill walk-offs in the 1960s lead by Gurindji man Vincent Lingiari. At the Barunga Festival in ...
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Lore – fusion of Dreamtime & contemporary dance (review)
First published in The Guardian, June 2015
Bangarra dance theatre’s 29th production, Lore, is a double bill featuring Sheoak, by experienced Bangarra choreographer, Frances Rings, and I.B.I.S., a co-creation from Deborah Brown and Waangenga Blanco, two Bangarra dancers making their main stage choreography debut. Without knowing the works’ development challenges – which are presumably many given Bangarra’s commitment to keeping its connection to country and elders fresh – you can’t help but ...
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Barunga Festival: Gurrumul, Paul Kelly, B2M and Briggs
First published on ABC Arts, June 2015
Barunga Festival’s 30th anniversary pulled big crowds, ecstatic performances and a tour lead by Indigenous kids that epitomised the hope captured in the lyrics of Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody’s song ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’. An hour from Katherine, Barunga Festival is the Northern Territory’s largest and longest-running remote community festival. Held on the Queen’s Birthday Weekend – between the seasons of Banggarrang ...
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Frame of Mind: STC captures love’s big notes (review)
First published in Guardian Australia, April 2015
Wearing shorts and a T-shirt as though he’d decided just a moment earlier to surrender to his excitement, Sydney Dance Company artistic director Rafael Bonachela introduces us to his first show of 2015: a double bill featuring Quintett, by game-changing American choreographer William Forsythe, and the premier of Bonachela’s own piece, Frame of Mind. “If you like it,” he gushes, a hard-to-resist archetype of Latin ...