art gallery

It’s only two weeks until the official opening of the They Are Us ekphrastic art exhibition, and it’s getting exciting!

The exhibition has been a year in the making, combining the talents of 20 Central Highlands writers and the Soldiers Hill Artist Collective.

It’s a follow-on to the Weathering the Future exhibition of 2018. I curated that one as part of the City of Ballarat’s community arts program but this time around SHAC has been in the driving seat and I’ve had only to wrangle the writing side of the event (and that’s no chore at all; these writers rock!).

The idea this time was for the writers to go first, producing flash fiction and poetry on SHAC’s chosen theme of “They Are Us”, and then the artists were randomly given the written work to use as inspiration.

They’ve responded with a range of media, including photography, painting, linocut, woodwork and weaving.

I can’t wait to see what they’ve done!

Kirstyn and I hit 99.9 Voice FM last night with SHAC’s Neale Thompson to talk to The Arts Program about the exhibition, so got to hear how Neale went about the process of translating my 100-odd word story into a coffee table. Terrific stuff! It’ll be great to see it in the flesh (or the red gum, more specifically).

We’ve been fortunate to have the support of the Mercure Ballarat as a gallery space — they’re generous and throw a great launch party, and Radmac Office Choice in Ballarat has supplied foam core board for the mounting of the written work, which has relieved some of the burden on the purse strings.

The exhibition runs February 24 to April 5 with the launch on February 27 at 6.30pm. We’re chuffed to have Reuben Morgan again performing an original piece of music inspired by the theme – his performance at Weathering the Future was amazing – and City of Ballarat councillor Belinda Coates doing the honours. It should be a huge night. All welcome!

Kirstyn McDermott, Jason Nahrung and Neale Thompson spruiking They Are Us at Voice FM’s The Arts Program.

Melbourne’s Brunswick Street is one of happening precincts where sub-cultures come together and drink coffee — possibly with soy milk. We had a taste test last night, hitting a couple of hot spots: Brunswick Street Gallery, Polly, Polyster records and books, and Grub Street Bookshop. Ah, kulcha!

The gallery is established in a three-storey house and boasts narrow stairs and two floors of exhibition rooms of varying colour, lighting and space. Last night’s selection of opening exhibits was reasonably eclectic: a photographic display of the zodiac using friends of the photographer and another showcasing the female form in a largely empty room; pop art protests; still lifes perhaps aimed at the cafe set; a projected installation; big photos of kids in cages with A Message; an ode to Kodachrome using a Chinese scene. My favourite showing, though, displayed in a delightfully red room with defunct fireplace where its black and white drawings really popped, was Transform by Hannah Mueller: her pictures had narrative, dimension due the overlaying of cutouts, and lots of skeletons and other repeating motifs, including birds, vivisection and masks. Mueller’s bio, if I remember it accurately, said she was a Sydneysider still at art college or uni, in which case, whoa! Sadly, no web presence that I could find to point you to (I don’t think this Hannah is the one in Assassin’s Creed, though it might explain some stuff!), and the BSG website is kind of obtuse and annoying.

Anyway, within staggering distance of the gallery and on opposite sides of the street are the two Polyster stores, one dealing in alternative books — lots of tattoos and art, social commentary and Interesting Stuff, and the other in alternative cds and vinyl. Nearby is Grub, complete with secondhand bookstore smell and narrow aisles, a minuscule genre fiction section but a truly drool-worthy non-fiction section heavy on the arts and the humanities.

The jewel in the crown of last night’s stroll was Polly. Oh, Polly! With its concrete floor and red velvet couches, its classy nekkid ladies upon the stressed red walls, its funky brass handles on the door of the loos, and its separate smoking antechamber at the front. It offers a fine array of absinthe and cocktails, and the tastiest little $6 pizzas, and pretty darn good service, too. Its decadent lavishness would suggest it to be the natural environment of a goth/burlesque crowd, but I think the hipsters might’ve outpriced them. I haven’t been in town long enough to know the tides of the sub-culture drift. Regardless, it’s a comfy space and one of my favourite Melburnian drinking holes so far.