Boomtown, Queensland Festival of Music
The Queensland Music Festival has always done things big but this year’s director, jazz trumpeter James Morrison, has gone really big. Continuing the festival’s state-wide focus there’s a large-scale community event coming up in Gladstone (18-21 July) and a huge performance in Tambo has already taken place at the end of June. Morrison is also trying to break the Guinness World Record for the largest orchestra (more than 6500 musicians) and the largest trumpet ensemble (more than 1200 players; July 13). More moderately-sized pleasures include 1001 Nights, a collaboration between physical theatre company Zen Zen Zo, Queensland Theatre Company and Persian and Middle Eastern ensemble Pezhvak (18-28 July) and the Brodsky Quartet’s Shostakovich celebration performing the composer’s entire string quartet cycle (19-21 July). The Brodsky Quartet will also team up with Brisbane’s Topology to present Elvis Costello’s Il Sogno (18 July).
Queensland Music Festival, various venues, 12-28 July; www.qmf.org.au
Northwest, Michael Noer
Melbourne International Film Festival is fast approaching and there’s a particularly exciting development for those of us who don’t reside in Melbourne. All films from the TeleScope: Visions from the EU program will be available for online screening around Australia (at a cost of $10 per stream). Twelve films will be available for 24 hours after they first screen at the festival and include films by directors Mark Cousins (UK), Katrin Grebbe (Germany), Sophie Letourneur (France) and Michael Noer (Denmark).
TeleScope: Visions from the EU, online screenings, Melbourne International Film Festival, 25 July-11 August http://miff.com.au/program-categories/telescope (There’s also a selection of previous festival fare available on iTunes – http://miff.com.au/itunes)
courtesy the artists
Intra-action, MOP Gallery
A companion event to the Australian Animal Studies Group Conference (University of Sydney 8-10 July), Intra-action is an exhibition featuring work by Australian and US artists exploring “multispecies entanglements” (website). Artists include Trish Adams whose Urban Swarming is a locative interactive work inspired by bees; Maria Fernanda Cardoso whose oeuvre includes performing fleas and a Museum of Copulatory Organs; and Andre Brodyk who creates images using genetically modified DNA.
Intra-action: Multispecies becomings in the Anthropocene, curators Eben Kirksey, Madeleine Boyd; MOP Gallery, opening 11-28 July, http://intraactionart.com/
As part of their Creative Forum series NIDA will present a panel discussion on “where indigenous arts practitioners in Australia fit into the mainstream theatre landscape” (press release). Discussion will be led by UK director Kristine Landon-Smith, currently a lecturer in Acting at NIDA who previously ran “black and minority ethnic” theatre company Tamasha, joined by Lydia Miller (Australia Council), Jane Harrison (playwright), Nakkiah Lui (playwright) and Glenn Shea (actor and playwright).
Creative Forum: Taking Centre Stage–Telling Indigenous stories in Australian theatres, NIDA Parade Theatres, 15 July, http://www.nida.edu.au/default.aspx?ArticleID=690
photo Ponch Hawkes
Maude Davey, My Life in the Nude
Even though it’s chilly, it seems some Melbourne performers can’t keep their clothes on (see last week’s entry on Finucane & Smith’s Glory Box Paradise). Maude Davey, member of Crying in Public Places and former artistic director of Vitalstatistix, is a veteran of the performance scene starting back when it was de rigueur to disrobe to be contemporary. She’s decided maybe it’s time to cover up but is going out with one last naked hurrah in this one-woman show, directed by twin sibling Anni Davey.
Maude Davey, My life in the Nude, till 21 July, La Mama Theatre, Carlton; http://lamama.com.au/
Rapidly becoming an annual event is Ensemble Offspring’s Sizzle, a winter afternoon frolic at the Petersham Bowling Club. This year, curated by percussionist Bree van Rey, the Sizzle features contemporary classical music by John Cage, Erik Griswold and Elena Kats-Chernin in the mix with folk ballads by Grand Salvo and new and newly arranged works for the Bellevue Public Wind Ensemble. And of course, there’s also the lawn bowls.
Sizzle, Sunday 14 July, 3pm, Petersham Bowling Club, http://ensembleoffspring.com/the-music/upcoming-shows/sizzle-2/
photo Pia Johnson
Meredith Penman, Persona
In RT112 Andrew Fuhrmann wrote about Fraught Outfit’s adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona: “In order to escape the cinema-face and rise above a mere capitulation of doubtful events, Persona must be de-faced for the stage. It must discover, to use the vocabulary of Deleuze and Guattari… the ancient ‘volume-cavity system’ of the theatre, or the theatre-body.” For those who missed it last time there are a few days left to catch its reprise at Malthouse before it moves to Belvoir.
Fraught Outfit, Persona, based on the film by Ingmar Bergman, conceived by Adena Jacobs, Dayna Morrissey & Danny Pettingill; directed by Adena Jacobs; Malthouse, Melbourne; until 14 July; www.malthousetheatre.com.au; Belvoir 24 July-18 Aug, http://belvoir.com.au
Personal Space at Fremantle Arts Centre is a series of playful performative interactions with the flatlands of suburbia. In her debut solo exhibition Tanya Lee creates short videos of figures elaborately camouflaged to match the fencing of the houses they walk past. While part of the landscape the wandering figures are also essentially walled or fenced in.
Personal Space, Tanya Lee, Fremantle Arts Centre, until July 21http://fac.org.au
photo Joel Stern
Dylan Martorell, Instrument Builder’s Project, Yogyakarta
A merry band of Australian instrument makers has been in residence at the Indonesian Contemporary Art Network (iCAN) in Yogyakarta working with local artists “to create new sounds and new ways of playing” (website). Co-curator Joel Stern tells us that one team, Pia van Gelder, Michael Candy and Andreas Saigain will actually be installing their sensor ‘instruments’ on the side of Merapi volcano. For those on the balmy isle, the residency will culminate in a performance and discussion.
Instrument Builder’s Project, curators Joel Stern, Kristi Monfries, artists Michael Candy, Rodney Cooper, Dylan Martorell, Pia Van Gelder, Ardi M P Gunawan, Asep Nata, Lintang Radittya, Andreas Siagian, Wukir Suryadi; iCAN (Indonesian Contemporary Art Network); Yogyakarta;
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Indonesia-Contemporary-Art-Network-iCAN
NAIDOC Week
7-14 July
http://www.naidoc.org.au/
Live and Deadly, Carriageworks
27 Jun-1 Aug
http://www.carriageworks.com.au/?page=Event&event=LIVE-AND-DEADLY
My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia
Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, 1 June-7 October
http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/my_country
Collaborateurs, Artereal
3-11 July
http://artereal.com.au/home/collaborateurs
With Open Arms
Blindside, 10-13 July
http://www.blindside.org.au/2013/screen-series.shtml
Revelation Film Festival
various venues, Perth, 4-12 July
www.revelationfilmfest.org/
Show Off, Performance Space
till 17 July; Carriageworks
www.performancespace.com.au/2013/show-off-season/
Helium Season, Malthouse
8 June-5 Oct, see website for following productions
www.malthousetheatre.com.au/helium-2013/
Finucane & Smith’s The Glory Box…Paradise
45 Downstairs, Melbourne, 10 July -11 August
http://www.fortyfivedownstairs.com/events/
Fright or Flight, 3 is a Crowd,
Judith Wright Centre, Brisbane, 6-13 July judithwrightcentre.com/event/fright_or_flight
Anne Ferran, Box of Birds
Stills Gallery, Sydney; 26 June to 27 July 2013
www.stillsgallery.com.au
Vocal Folds, Gertrude Contemporary
21 June-20 July; performances 11 July, 18 July
www.gertrude.org.au/exhibitions
RealTime issue #115 June-July 2013 pg. web