Blog — Page 240 of 275

Nude: Art from the Tate Collection
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Sydney, AUS
November 5, 2016 – February 5, 2017

It was the invention of clothes and certainly not nature’s imperative, that made “private parts” private. The things we do not usually see.

The Nude: Art from the Tate Collection follows the nude through two hundred years of art and as the title suggests, draws on a single source – the collection of the Tate. It is a spectacular thematic tour de force through a mélange of major art movements, including romanticism, cubism, expressionism, realism, surrealism and feminism.

More than one hundred artworks are divided into eight chronologically arranged sections: The Historical Nude, The Private Nude, The Modern Nude, The Real and Surreal Bodies, Paint as Flesh, The Erotic Nude, Body Politics and The Vulnerable Body, intended to reveal the perception of bodies through time and to raise questions about beauty, desire, truth, mortality, equality and power.
The highlight of the exhibition is Rodin’s iconic marble sculptural blend of eroticism and idealism, The Kiss in the Erotic Nude section, with its fluid, smooth modeling, the dynamic composition and the charming theme.

Picasso’s portraits never disappoint and the depiction of his mistress Marie-Therese Walter and his redefinition of the human figure is not an exception: In line with the school of the British Vorticists, he channels the signs of their times into something dynamic, angular and at times completely abstract.

The theme of Harem girl or odalisque pervade the works by Matisse, while Pierre Bonnard’s rich chromatic range with his cropping of figures lend an interesting and different perspective, accentuated by his focus shifting the main incidents to occur at the edges of the canvas.

Francis Bacon’s expressively brushed and suggestively distorted nudes following the suicide of his lover, Georg Dyer, and Lucian Freud’s naked portraits dominate the Paint as Flesh section.

Bacon’s Triptych feels like a memento mori with Dyer struggling in vain to survive and with what death has not already consumed seeping incontinently out of the figures as their shadowblood.

Body Politics presents artworks from the 1970s, when the unclothed body in art became a political statement as feminist writers and artists began to question the imbalance of power in traditional nudes and thereby challenging stereotypes.

The Vulnerable Body features more recent artworks with a focus on vulnerability, imperfection and a sense of mortality.

Photographs of women holding their babies shortly after giving birth serves as the reminder that the way all of us enter the realms of this world would have made us prime candidates for the exhibition.

Ron Mueck’s astoninglishly lifelike verisimilitude, the nearly three-meter high Wild man looks so uncomfortable in his own (fore-)skin as he would like nothing more than join you as we exit through the exhibition’s gift shop – a display of anxiety, intimidation and vulnerability as a result of objectification. A turning of the tables.

The journey through human emotion and representation of its physical incarnation in its purest state is curated by Justin Paton, head curator of international art at the Art Gallery of NSW, in tandem with Emma Chambers, curator of modern British art at the Tate.
They have set out to show that the nude has changed dramatically over the last two hundred years with the constant being that the depiction of the model has always been closely tied to social, political and personal relationships between the artist and his object.
A constant that is reinforced through the segmentation of the exhibition, which underlines the continuity of the evolution of the artists’ engagement with the respective models.

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For related imagery, visit Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Peaches
Metro Theatre
Sydney, AUS
December 9, 2016

Peaches shows are somewhat of an orchestrated parallel universe – an equal opportunity, body positive, shame-free and deliberately absurd cosmos with gender-bending pan-sexuality in all its variations at its centre.

Despite the focus on sexuality and an abundance of suggestive poses, titillation is not the point of the exercise.

The point of the Berlin-based Canadian’s transgressive art is subversion.

Depending on the context also provocation.

When it comes to live incarnations in front of her faithful disciples, the point is celebration.

Peaches' mission is to push boundaries, thereby playing with traditional notions of gender role representation and consciously blurring the distinction between male and female stereotypes. Accentuated by a multitude of costume changes and flanked by a dancing, submissive couple, Peaches is essentially a fun one-woman show pervaded by DIY spirit.

Anthemic electro pop and sexually explicit lyrics is the skeleton.

There is hip-hop.

There is drama.

Cabaret.

There is a punk attitude and a low-fi, minimalist approach executed with executed with surgical precision with maximum impact.

There is political statement.

There is energy and frenzied fun.

And there is professionalism.

As David Lee Roth would have put it: “A result-oriented performance.”

Peaches is an accomplished, charismatic singer with an extensive vocal range. The quality of her delivery is flawless, no matter if she is being carried by her followers as she sings and prances into the audience inside an inflatable condom, showering the audience with sparkling wine, chanting choruses in intricate yoga poses or runs to the back for a quick costume change while she operates the samplers to create a seamless transition into the next track.

Peaches is authentic, seeing her backing herself and watching her modus operandi is an empowering experience in itself.
As part of the upcoming MONA MOFO Festival in Hobart, Peaches will be performing Peaches Christ Superstar in January 2017 – singing all the parts of the rock opera herself and accompanied only by piano.

A new lesson from the teaches of Peaches to look forward to.

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Photos by KAVV

Electronic Music Conference
Nov 28 – Dec 02, 2016
Sydney, Australia

Founded in 2012, Sydney’s annual Electronic Music Conference has established itself as Asia Pacific’s premier industry event. 
The two day 2016 incarnation of the Electronic Music Conference presented a wide variety of work shops, master classes and presentations that covered everything from how to master tracks, via the strength of Berlin’s club scene, to the importance of art in electronic music, which attracted hundreds of tastemakers, thought and business leaders, artists, delegates and aspiring DJs and producers.

Junkee Media CEO, Neil Ackland, opened the conference with a keynote before Amsterdam’s “night mayor” (yup, that’s a thing) Mirik Milan showed the Sydneysiders, whose nightlife has been recently been dramatically diminished by lock out laws and related regulations, how a vibrant night life spawns social, cultural and economic benefits.

The Coming to you panel with reps from Boiler Room, the world’s leading independent and underground music broadcaster, Sydney Opera House and Red Bull shed light on the world of live streaming and its merits in a world of increasing ticket prices and festival costs, especially with the advent of virtual and augmented reality enhancing the way performances can be experienced.

The Art of Rave forum accentuated the importance of the medium being the message and that art is not merely an ornament for music, but an essential component with the visual aesthetic enriching the experience for the recipient.

It was good to hear from Sydney based production house Toby and Pete’s Toby Pike that the importance of a live show should be a priority for electronic musicians and that they should feel obliged to create an experience out of their live shows in order to compete with a ‘live band setting’, a thought backed up by Bionic League’s Martin Phillips (the creator of Daft Punk’s ALIVE 2007 Pyramid stage show).

Alison Wonderland’s opening keynote on the second day of the conference covered a lot of topics, including her thoughts on Sydney’s controversial lockouts, her thoughts on her live show ideas, and her new album.

Ministry of Sound’s Duncan Collins and Inertia Group’s Colin Daniels agreed that Spotify is definitely the way forward in music listening, going as far as claiming that it will eventually replace radio as we know it. 
Given aforementioned prognosis, the takeaway was that surrounding yourself as budding artist with a capable team that is aware of where technology is headed and how it will impact on the music business.

The over-saturation of Australia’s festival landscape was also a topic: With the abundance of boutique-y small festivals, it was identified that a need for multi-day, large scale festivals is being created and that the move of big name festivals from overseas is both anticipated and will be welcomed around these shores.

The conference concluded with EMC Play – a mini-fest spread across multiple venues around Sydney with a myriad of high caliber electronic artists spinning until the wee hours – an excellent bookend for a conference that despite its specific title has a lot to offer for anyone remotely interested In music in general.

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Photos by KAVV

German Film Fest

Goethe Institut

Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra)

November 15-30, 2016

The 15th year incarnation of the the German Film Fest in Australia is going to be the last one for a while.

Four film industry guests and filmmakers were invited to attend the Australian premieres of their films, participate in talks, panels and Q&A sessions: 
Young hopeful Jella Haase attended the Festival. 
The young actress who received the European Shooting Star Award at the Berlinale earlier this year presented her most recent films; 4 Kings and Looping. 
Stage and screen actor Clemens Schick, known on international terrain for starring in Casino Royale (2006) and Point Break (2015), presented his two films featured in this year’s festival programs; drama 4 Kings, and sci-fi film Hidden Reserves.

Leonie Krippendorff traveled to Australia to present her first award winning feature film Looping at the German Film Fest and former head of corporate affairs with Football Federation Australia and one of the first people to publicly raise concerns about the integrity of FIFA Bonita Mersiades joined the Dirty Games panel discussions in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne to share her insights into the ethics of international sports.

Having been involved with the topic of queer identity and how it translates to the big screen, Jella Haase, Clemens Schick, and Leonie Krippendorff were joined by Australian film industry members for an open talk following the screening of Looping.

In addition to the opening and closing night parties, the Goethe-Institut presented themed events, e.g. the Swiss Soiree (an evening organized in tandem with the Swiss Consulate, which culminated in the screening of Alain Gsponer’s adaption of Johanna Spyn’s classic Heidi and the audience being sustained with delectable Swiss specialties).

A highlight of the German Film Fest was a tribute to one of the most controversial characters in German film history: The gradnmaster Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Fassbinder, who notoriously never ceased to burn the candle from both ends, is not for nothing  held responsible for the injecting much needed fresh blood into German cinema in the 1970s.

Fassbinder has been heralded as ‘’the most original talent since Godard” and while his films are intentionally a  little strange and never dull. Indifference has certainly never been a reaction his emissions elicited.
With Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, featuring beloved Brigitte Mira of Drei Damen vom Grill fame, demonstrated what the critic Manny Farber called a ''radical mix of snarl and decoration.''

It would have been fantastic to have Fassbinder grace the German Film Fest in Australia with his paunchy presence, given that in 1977, being at an alltime height career-wise, he announced in perfect English that he was not able to speak English, only to then indulge in extense arguments  his interpreter about every phrase that was conveyed to the English speaking journalists.

Pure class.

Celebrating Germany’s vibrant underground party scene, a Club Night with a screening of the anarchic, drug filled As We Were Dreaming, followed by AKIZ’s It Follows meets Spring Breakers teen-oriented German horror Der Nachtmahr, which was followed by a silent disco.

Western and Eastern philosophies clashed during the insightful panel discussion following the screening of My Buddha Is Punk, a thoughtful documentary looking at a group of young idealists in Myanmar who combine punk and Buddhist philosophies.

Paying homage to the classics of German film history, the DEFA Retrospective celebrated the work of former East German film studio:The Murderers Are Among Us (1946), the first DEFA production, featuring Hildegard Knef; Divided Heaven (1964), based on Christa Wolf's internationally-renowned novel; The Legend of Paul and Paula (1973), a controversial love story and one of DEFA’s greatest successes; andComing Out (1989), the only East German film to discuss homosexuality and depict punk culture. In Melbourne the DEFA screenings were introduced by film experts Peter Krausz and Cerise Howard.

The festival was bookended with a collision of music, circus and comedy: Mic Conway and his partner in crime Sean ‘T-Bone‘ Curtis performed an array of idiosyncratic songs live at the Variete? Closing Night in Sydney, and multi-genre band 8 Foot Felix closed the Festival in Melbourne with their whimsical mix of sea shanties, hip-hop and blues.

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Photos by KAVV

Bill Bailey

State Theatre

Sydney, AUS

November 30, 2016

Rare it is that you turn up to a show expecting so little and end up loving it so much.

Bill Bailey, to most people probably known for his starring role in award-winning sitcom Black Books and as a panel show regular on "Never Mind the Buzzcocks," is a comedian, talented musician, writer and actor who – along with other accomplishments - has created his own distinctive brainy brand of stand-up comedy fusing jokes with musical interludes and parodies, extended monologues and borderline surreal tangents.

Apart from being a narrative-driven, seasoned entertainer who wears on his sleeve that the English performance poet John Hegley was a major inspiration in his formative years; Bailey is also an avid advocate of the flora and fauna: Being a patron of the International Animal Rescue, the author of a book on British Birds and the “Nepenthes Bill Bailey” being a pitcher plant named in his honour, are only few examples.

He has also been somewhat stigmatized as a “leftie funnyman” by his home country for taking a political stance when he supported Brown and the Labour Party in 2010 – a derisive label that impacted on his perception by fellow, especially conservative Englishmen and finds his way into his current show numerous times.

His “Larks in Transit” show that brought him to Oceania is an endearing, whimsical free-form and playful compendium of anecdotes, general shenanigans of twenty years as a traveling comedian and both subversive and hilarious musings on the big questions in life – politics, pursuit of happiness, philosophy and how to craft a future techno classic from random noises, play "Smoke on the Water" on cowbells and create a symphonic masterpiece based on an annoying ring tone.

He seamlessly transitions from political jokes via observational humour to spontaneous exchanges spawned by hecklers or surprising (i.e. plainly weird) repartees from audience interactions.

Bailey does not suffer fools gladly, yet abstains from foul lingo or blatant sarcasm.

What makes him compelling is that however absurd his angles might be, they are solidly grounded on moral and intellectual beliefs, which are his raison d’être.

His musical and playful interludes are funny and truly enjoyable on a variety of levels – based on his immense talent as a multi-instrumentalist and his engaging demeanor.

From the moment Bailey enters the stage he is completely in control and has the audience in the palm of his hand:

While his commentary on the political landscape and recent changes in the Anglo-centric world at the beginning of the show was lower hanging fruit yet nonetheless met with overly boisterous laughter, it segued after 20 minutes into a performance that was both heart warming and hilarious.

What elevates Bailey’s show above the merely enjoyable is the fact that he is a skilled communicator and the remarkable musicianship that accompanies his razor sharp wit.