Ideas

Post #119 Saturday 2 November 2019 – Banksy

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Letters from America

Saturday 2 November 2019

I went to the Banksy exhibition at the Entertainment Quarter. If you go, it’s better not to buy tickets online – they are a much better price at the door. Also, to avoid walking around looking for the exhibition hall, go straight to the end of the main entrance road off Lang Road (I walked all around the place before I figured it out :-)).

Even though the Banksy images are such well known street art there was nothing “old” about the look of the show – mostly original stencils and various prints. Here are some of the street images from Google:

flower violence
art for the burbs
a trusty Council contractor

The organiser of the exhibition was manager/accomplice to Banksy for many years, Steve Lazarides. Banksy himself is still unidentified.

One of the best things about the exhibition was the use of videos – streaming on loop around the hall between the exhibits. They told the story of the extraordinary rise of the guerilla grafitti artist with his witty, anti-consumerist themes. It was a very well done story and made the exhibition a really coherent experience.

There was film called “Exit Through the Gift Shop” mentioned in some of the commentary of the exhibition, a film I’d never heard of. In the evening when I was home I looked it up and found a copy on youtube to watch.

The film was an extended commentary on the consumerist art market hype that Banksy parodies (and was itself a clever hoax). It started out purporting to be a documentary on Banksy, being made by a dotty French American amateur photographer/film maker. This character had, according to the film, doggedly followed Banksy for years on his secret missions trespassing at night to plaster his distinctive stencil posters and do his grafitti on buildings and signs all round the UK and both sides of the US. When it becomes apparent about half way through the film, that the quality of the documentary is hopeless, Banksy enters stage left (appearing simply as a dark hooded figure – no face – being interviewed) and persuades the film maker to become the subject of the narrative. So he does, and somehow sets about to transform himself into a grafitti and print artist (like Banksy) with a huge output (none of it displaying any talent or skill whatsoever). The reconfigured “documentary” then follows the film maker’s hugely successful first exhibition in Los Angeles (playing to the cynical undiscriminating art market hungry for the next “thing”). It’s done with a light enough touch though, to make it excellent fun to watch.

Here is a link to the film if you’d like to watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHJBdDSTbLw

It reminded me of a documentary (but not a parody “documentary” at all), about Andy Warhol’s protegee, David Basquiat, who perished very young, apparently a victim of his own success. From the wrong side of the tracks, with no training, he suffered trying to cope with the hype of his spectacular conquest of the contemporary art market at a very young age. His tragic fate perhaps an outcome, at least in part, of the social realities that are the focus of Banksy’s work. Here are some images of Basquiat’s pictures – in a heavily worked totemic grafitti style.

And here is a link to the documentary film about Basquiat, which turned up in my internet searches when I was getting these images of his paintings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ibOFlSM6o I think the film features (the real) Andy Warhol and (the real) David Bowie.

xx MG

Post #118 Monday 28 October 2019 – more on the Whitsundays

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Monday 28 October 2019

Following on from my earlier post about adventures in the Whitsundays, I wanted to add another image. These are the Norfolk Island pines, with their very distinctive geometry, everywhere on the Whitsunday islands. This is the ridge of the cove at Refuge Bay where we anchored overnight.

I managed to find an internet link which gives the back story to how the pines came to be here. I had some ancient recollection they were not native. https://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A7952664

So it was Captain Cook who brought the seeds of the pines to northern Australia wishfully supposing they might provide timber suitable for masts.

I have always found it hard to be on the water in the Pacific and not think of Captain Cook, Joseph Banks and all the great naturalists. For quite a while one of my favourite non fiction books was a book called “Darwin’s Armada” by Iain McCalman. It’s an account of the great sailing voyages of Darwin’s peers. It’s absolutely compelling reading (if that’s your kind of thing). It’s ages since I read it but one of the passages that still stays with me vividly is an account of how the Pacific peoples must have experienced navigating, with only the simplest instruments and no charts – what resources, skills and understanding of the sea they must have had.

But then I am very partial to all things Charles Darwin (and his milieu). The Voyage of the Beagle is so engaging. Here is a favourite passage in which Darwin describes interactions with wild llamas.

Scientific method: “…if a person lies on the ground and plays strange antics, such as throwing up his feet in the air…”

xx MG

Post #104 Sunday 25 November 2018 – Theatrical diversion

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Sunday 25 November 2018

I recently went to an interesting piece of “immersive” theatre called A Midnight Visit.  It was held in St Peters in a huge old empty furniture warehouse.  The drama was based on the stories and poems of Edgar Allen Poe.  We had to sign a waiver before entering.  We were each given a black surgical mask to wear while we stood around in the foyer.  There was an MC called The Undertaker who then selected people from the audience to enter the performance through different doorways.  We went into different rooms and spaces which were variously got up in detailed Gothic sets reminiscent of Poe themes.  The actors moved around in the spaces performing in among the audience.  There were music and dance performances woven into some of the story fragments.  Then there were features of the warehouse set which can only be described as playful – corridors and stairwells to climb through, mysterious rooms to explore.  One room was filled with CCTV screens “secretly” relaying what audience members were doing in other rooms.  Another room had a small sunken pool filled with soft pink balls and a sign saying No Jumping, and of course people did.  At one stage there was a regal seeming actor strolling around, who would seat himself strategically and beckon a member of the audience to come over.  He would then have an extended private conversation with that person.   He beckoned me at one stage and asked me, whispering, what was I afraid of.  It took me ages to decide but finally I said “uncertainty”.  He said Oh no, you don’t need to be afraid of uncertainty, you need to be afraid of people who text and drive! Lol.

It was clever in parts, apparently developed from a similar immersive theatrical adventure which has been showing for years in an extended season in New York called Sleep No More (based on Macbeth).  A Midnight Visit was ambitious and intriguing.  I could happily have stayed on exploring for another hour.  There are some great photos included in the link here to the review in the magazine Time Out.

xx MG

https://www.timeout.com/sydney/theatre/a-midnight-visit-review

https://amidnightvisit.com/about-the-experience/

 

Post #40 Tuesday 4 July 2017 – Letters from America and Alistair Cooke

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  Letters from America

Tuesday 4 July 2017

It is quite fitting that I am posting this Letter on the fourth of July.

I call these posts “Letters from America” in honour of the series of weekly radio broadcasts “Letter from America” that ended  in 2004.  In Australia they used to be broadcast on Sunday evening and I loved listening.  The author and reader was the Englishman turned American, Alistair Cooke.  A lot of you will know the man already, but  it won’t be old news to some souls 🙂

Each week the letter would explore some current issue or issues of American life and politics.  It was an artfully conceived way to share the complexities of American political life with outsiders.  It was conversational but it was also serious, it was brilliant.

I have always loved America.  It was the first country I ever travelled to, and it was a trip with my beloved grandmother who had spent time after the war in Washington and had made many American friends.  The trip we took was to Hawaii where the extended family of one of her American friends were meeting up to celebrate the patriarch’s 70th birthday.  Later trips I took, generally for business – but not all business, confirmed my fondness.

Even though I thought some Alistair Cooke’s approach was from a fairly privileged position and not especially progressive, it was always interesting and intelligent, a rumination and not a lecture, it was a pleasure to be drawn in.  His speaking voice had a gentle pitch and the delivery was disarming.  And the appearance of privilege was not such a simple thing.  He had happily left England where his gifts were acknowledged but where he was also regarded as  the son of an ironworker.   Any English person would know the suffocating class realities Cooke would have experienced, no matter how brilliant.  America would have been freedom from all that.

This program ran weekly from 1946 to 2004.  That’s 58 years.

The BBC has published online a good number of the audio records of the weekly Letters, if any of you are interested.

This is the BBC link announcing the online publication.  It is beautifully written itself and describes Cooke’s life and ideas and his work bringing together the US and Britain by his weekly Letter from America: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20121597

Here is a book cover  photo of the accomplished man himself.

I have put links in here to a couple of the Letters from America, which you may be interested in.  Be warned they are 15 minutes long which is likely longer than the average concentration period required in overloaded digital times.  I used to listen to the broadcast in Australia on a Sunday night, when I was doing some leisurely cooking, so time wasn’t a problem.

This link is to the Letter from America which relates to the key triggers for Nixon’s resignation after impeachment.  It was broadcast 9 August 1974.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00yqn3p

This link is to the Letter from America that relates to Thanksgiving, with a Churchill vignette on the same.  It was broadcast on 4 December 1998. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00yjnmz

 

And so it goes.

MG xx