One of the great joys of working with Ninbella is meeting the artists and interviewing them for its blog. Here is a short video of a zoom session I did with Iningai man Ethan James-Kotiau. It’s a fascinating story of a young homeless man who’s life was changed by art. Now he creates Iningai Iconography as he …
Check out these gorgeous geometric formations by Sharnie Shield, derived she explains “from the red native flowers in the Wollongong Botanic Gardens”. I bumped into the lovely Sharnie whilst perambulating around the grounds and chatted with her as she repaired one of the many forms she has on show. They’re made of simple straws and …
Who doesn’t love the Archibald Prize? Every year it comes around with a fresh set of forty-odd faces to enliven our mid-winter musings. When I was working on the ABC TV’s arts program ‘Review’ in the early ‘90s, we’d always cover it in great detail. And we were all over it as producers for …
Fashion lovers thronged to the Powerhouse last week for a chat between me and four of Australia’s most fabulously creative and inspiring designers – Linda Jackson, Jenny Kee, Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales. Interestingly, this quartet of extreme talent has collaborated in various configurations and incarnations over the past 4 decades – first it was …
Dad and I went to see the exhibition ‘Pop to Popism’ when it was on at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in preparation for a public talk we’d been roped in to give about the advertising world in the 60s and how the pop art movement had influenced it. My father had been …
About three and a half hours north west of Sydney you’ll come across a little town called Kandos. Nestled beneath the escarpments of the Great Dividing Range with the spectacular Wollemi National park as its backdrop, this classic country town was created back in 1915 to provide housing for workers at the newly commissioned cement …
When I was a teen babe grommet I used to keep my surfboard in a grotty old basement under a block of flats at the back of Sir Thomas Mitchell Rd in Bondi. I also stashed an old record player there with a small collection of vinyl including the classic psychadelic rock album ‘Cheap Thrills’. …
For a night of pure camp swathed exclusively in leopard skin print, you can’t go past Little Ones Theatre production of Charles Busch’s ‘Psycho Beach Party’. This crazy theatrical extravaganza takes its cues from the 1959 classic ‘Gidget’ and amplifies them til your head nigh on spins with references to Neitzsche and Luaus and every …
Caught the wonderful exhibition of photographs of Old Paris by Eugene Atget at the Art Gallery of NSW and am inspired to start examining the details of my own suburb in more detail. Atget’s love of old door handles and hidden cracks and crevices captured a slice of Paris that doesn’t exist today. His glass …
It was writer/curator Kevin Murray’s idea to stage a hypothetical at the Powerhouse Museum. I’d never hosted one before but I had facilitated Dfactory there every month for three years so the powers that be knew that I could handle a panel. I’m used to dealing with around four or so people at one time …
Annabelle Gaspar is a dark horse. Not only is she an awesome DJ who can keep folk dancing like demons til dawn, she’s also an incredible photographer. Her current focus is underwater photography and she has donated a really powerful work of art to the silent auction that we are holding as part of our …
It’s amazing what you can do with an ipad! Last Saturday’s Mardi Gras broadcast was presented by the unflappable Mark Trevorrow and myself with the help of a autocue operator using his ipad. He was scrolling down the text with his finger all night! The intro was a particularly interesting adventure in improvisation given that …
Sunday night sees the return of Big Nelly to the cabaret stage after an absence of over a decade. Drawn back into the spotlight after several years of persuasion by my darling friend Mark Trevorrow (AKA Bob Downe, pictured) , I will sing an old favorite from the Patsy Cline songbook (no, not the one featured …
Back in the olden days when I was a reporter on the ABC’s weekly arts show ‘Review’ I worked with a fabulous producer called Paige Livingstone. Together we humped our blueys all over Australia in search of exciting arts stories that veered off the beaten track onto all sorts of rugged bush tracks. I lost …
Whilst pounding the pavements of Wellington on a recent window shopping spree, my eye caught sight of a gorgeous little red merino wool dress on an old fashioned mannequin in a quaint shopfront on the corner of Willis St and Te Aru. Upon venturing in to Good Score, I noticed that all the labels had …
Popped in to Monstrosity Gallery last night to deliver two art works by The Stoked for the exhibition ‘Fur’. The show, which opens tonight, is a group exhibition by “some of Sydney’s most dynamic and talented contemporary artists” responding to the theme of fur. Curated by West, who has a particular penchant for fur herself, …
In preparation for a gig to launch Sydney Design 2011 I popped into the Powerhouse Museum to take a squizz at their contribution; ‘Love Lace’. Contrary to popular rumor this is not an exhibition about Linda Lovelace, star of that infamous porm flick ‘Deep Throat’, but a show about Lace Love. And we’re not talking …
It was a vintage New York kind of night. We had tickets to see the fabulous Miss Peggy Lee who was still singing and swinging at the age of 72 albeit from the confines of a wheelchair. Our ex-pat Aussie contingent included Peggy’s greatest fan Stephen MacLean, who wrote the film ‘Starstruck’ and the original …
Caught K.I.J.E. at the Old Fitz last night and what a pleasant surprise it was too. Being ‘Cheap Tuesday’, the tiny garage theatre space was packed to the rafters so my buddies and I had to take the front row seats which was all well and good until the cast started to let loose with …
Big thanks to Margot Gordon for introducing me to the magnificent Ali Hughes who performed with her fab jazz ensemble last night at The Basement. The gig was a one-off fundraiser to help get the band to the Big Apple for The New York International Fringe Festival in August and they performed the show that …
It really is a wonder that there are any birds left in Papua New Guinea given the passion that the locals lads have for dressing up in their plumage. The extent of their fondness for feathers is revealed in an exhibition at the Australian Museum called ‘Rituals of Seduction’ in which a comprehensive collection of …
In Melbourne this weekend with my gorgeous mother Anne who has a stall at the inaugural Australian Antique Dealer Show at the World Heritage Listed Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton Gardens. Mum has the most divine collection of antique jewellery, some of which she has brought down from her shop in Queen Street Woollahra Sydney …
Paid three consecutive visits to the new and very fabulous Museum of New and Old Art (MONA) in Hobart last weekend with Lisa George Michael Cruise Brando nee Bourne. She and the seven other women in our party were blown away by the place – so radical, so chic and so free! Arriving first by …