May 2012
1 post
4 tags
That One Time I Spoke to an Activist
I moved to London almost one year ago now, only weeks before the first night of riots poured out into its historic streets. I had no money (I’m still pretty skint), I barely had a room in a flat and I had just scored myself the worst job I’ve had yet in my life (not because of the job, but because of the venue) - working as a ‘pretty-girl’ (i.e., receptionist) at an...
April 2012
2 posts
4 tags
1 tag
Too Taboo: Single ladies, married men
I recently made friends with a married man - let’s call him Roger, because that’s his name (he’s British). ‘So what’, you say? Oh that’s because you’re an awesome independent chick who makes friends with other awesome people and also thinks a persons marital status shouldn’t determine whether chatting and splitting-sides around the water cooler is kosher because their sense of humour is as...
February 2012
1 post
5 tags
Alex Hartley: The world is still big
Waiting for Daylight to End (Kaczynski’s cabin), Alex Hartley, 2011. Images courtesy of Victoria Miro, London.
There’s nothing altogether unusual or striking about Alex Hartley’s The world is still big. That’s the impression given at first glance. On closer inspection, the photographs on the walls and their unusual split-framing, reveal a ‘wonkiness’ that your eye needs to adjust to, an optical...
January 2012
2 posts
4 tags
White Walls:||:Part 2:||:Tate Modern
Kasimir Malevich, Dynamic Suprematism (1915 or 1916)
If you were to stand outside the Tate Modern, on the south bank of the Thames River, gaze up at the building and think, ‘Ergh!’, most people would forgive you. Luckily, once inside the turbine hall (where Tacita Dean’s Tate-commissioned FILM (2011) is screened in the dark), the magnitude of the transformed Bankside Power Station elicits the...
4 tags
White Walls:||:Part 1:||:Saatchi Gallery
Andro Wekua, Sunset, (2008)
As an arts writer from Sydney with a firm finger on the pulsating vein of that city’s contemporary and emerging art scene, I arrived in London as one might imagine a goldfish to the Atlantic. Staring out at that humbling ocean, mouth agape, I flapped my way through a few miniature galleries and the odd Art Fair until finally I found a guide (life saver?) in curator,...
October 2011
2 posts
1 tag
So I was in Sappada, Northern Italy, hanging...
June 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Q&A with ArtsCareer →
In May, ArtsCareer and NAVA asked me to present a lecture on arts coverage in alternative media, at the Sydney College of the Arts. They later asked me to take part in an interview intended for their email updates. This is it.
April 2011
5 posts
2 tags
Commissioned package for 702 ABC Local Radio,...
1 tag
1 tag
Coagulated
When I was a little girl I used to get a lot of nosebleeds. It would be a hot day, I’d get a nosebleed. I’d run a two kilometre cross-country race, win second prize (which pleased me well-enough) and get a nosebleed. I’d pick my nose and yep - get a nosebleed.
I learnt there were all kinds of methods to stop a bleeding nose.
Method #1 was to pinch your nostrils really, really...
1 tag
2 tags
Grace Woodroofe: It's only natural
A tiny bedroom and a cute little dog called Bessie is what Perth-based musician Grace Woodroofe looks forward to coming home to after her debut tour, supporting Ben Harper.
“I feel like I get post-tour blues,” she tells me from that tiny room, Bessie hanging out next to her. “It’s just so much fun being out on the road. It’s literally like another world, you sort of forget about your home-life...
March 2011
2 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Little Red: Big hits
Dominic Byrne is a little embarrassed to admit that his parents are Little Red’s biggest fans. The Melbourne group’s single Rock It was voted in at #2 on Triple J’s Hottest 100, so while he’s still trying to fathom what it all means, he admits that his folks are fussing that #2 might not have been high enough…
“My dad only liked two other bands [in the Hottest 100],” the singer laughs,...
February 2011
1 post
1 tag
January 2011
1 post
2 tags
Canyons: Musical Men of Mystery
The year was early 2000-and-something and Perth, Australia was swarming with, with… well maybe not swarming so much as stirring with the rise of bands like The Sleepy Jackson, The Panics, the John Butler Trio. And then there was Leo Thomson and Ryan Grieve.
“We were into all this stuff that no one else was doing (in Perth anyway).” Grieve tells me, “We couldn’t go anywhere and hear that sort of...
October 2010
3 posts
2 tags
Jai McKenzie: Superstructure (2010)
There is something immediately ‘likeable’ about Jai McKenzie’s Superstructure (2010). Perhaps it’s the colourful warmth of this bare-bones structure that instantly draws the viewer in? But then there’s an obvious contradiction of ‘warmth’ and the fluorescent tubes that emit it. Adding to this incongruence of ‘warmth’ and ‘fluorescent’, is the implication of indestructiveness in its title, whilst...
1 tag
2 tags
Kyü: Meet the enigmatic Alyx Dennison and Freya...
“How on earth are you going to play that live? That’s going to sound like shit.” I sit across from Freya Berkhout, one half of Kyu, with my mouth dangling agape, eyes wide with disbelief.
“Yeah, our parents were really worried!” kyü’s other one half Alyx Dennison adds in response to my expression. She continues, “The first time we played, there were so many people there and I think it was to watch...
September 2010
6 posts
1 tag
2 tags
Richard in Your Mind: My Volcano
If you have ever uttered the words, ‘I’ve got the most eclectic taste in music!’ Richard In Your Mind’s latest album has made a liar of you. My Volcano presents a real conundrum to the reviewer that thrives on categorisation. How can you begin to categorise their music? Its pop, its hip-hop, its psychedelic, its 60s folk and surf-a-billy blended with shoe-gaze. It’s even the sound of a band not...
1 tag
1 tag
Klaxons: Touching the Void
Klaxons switch their brains off, find their marbles and release their sophomore album, Surfing the Void.
The classic line sings, ‘Girls, just wanna have fuh-hun!’ but on the line from a rainy-day-London, Klaxons guitarist/vocalist Simon Taylor-Davies, tells me fun is for the boys too. “Our motto’s always been huge[ly] about having fun.”
With their latest album, Surfing the Void, in their hot...
2 tags
Primavera
Spring only comes around once a year. In the Northern Hemisphere that means baby chickens and copious amounts of chocolate. More significantly (ahem), in the Southern Hemisphere that means Primavera. Each year the Museum of Contemporary Art hand picks the spring chickens of Australia’s contemporary art world to exhibit their work in Primavera, an exhibition of artists 25-35 years old....
2 tags
Brook Andrew: The Cell
“Don’t put your finger in your nose, you’ll lose it.” You know how there was always a ‘logical’ explanation for why you couldn’t do stuff as a kid? Well someone is yet to give me a logical explanation for why adults aren’t allowed on jumping castles. It’s an unspoken rule that Brook Andrew is tired of obeying too. Andrew’s installations are...
May 2010
16 posts
3 tags
Circle Pit – Heads in the stars, souls in the...
Photo: Pedro Ramos
The Sydney music scene has been fatigued by indie-pop bands of late but - thank Buddha (for diversity’s sake) – there are a handful of bands lurking below the surface of the city that shirk off that label. Circle Pit are teetering on the brink of mainstream media acknowledgement but despite being chuffed and flattered by the attention, are determined to ‘keep it gutter’....
1 tag
4 tags
The 17th Biennale of Sydney opened this week and I...
1 tag
2 tags
Broken Bells: Self Tilted
Why has the notion of the ‘odd couple’ always been so intriguing? People are always banging on about the way ‘opposites attract’ and all that, so why are we so stunned when those opposites get together and show us how good things can be? I mean, Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney seemed to be on two very different musical missions and yet managed to collaborate in style and made plenty of likeable...
1 tag
2 tags
British India: Avalanche
Don’t confuse Avalanche with a landslide. Sure both involve large amounts of ‘mass’ moving quickly from a high place to a low place but avalanches involve ice, landslides involve land (duh) and British India’s third album has nothing in common with either. Compared to Thieves (released 2008), it has a lower production quality but it seems as though that’s the only way the band has evolved...
1 tag
2 tags
We Have Band, Will Travel
When husband and wife Thomas and DeDe W-P and mate, Darren Bancroft got together for a dinner party a couple of years ago, it’s unlikely that they were expecting to write a song that night which would lead them down the indie-dance music band path of glory. Despite not having released an album, We Have Band have spent the last 18 months happily traipsing around Europe and Oz, playing at festivals...
1 tag
The Book of Everything
Photo: Heidrun Lohr
Thomas Klopper is a nine year old who records in a book, the unordinary things the grown-ups around him don’t see. This story is engaging for children, humbling for adults and fun for both.
“When I grow up, I’m going to be… happy!” declares Thomas Klopper, age nine – nearly ten. Weren’t we all? The exception with Thomas, (Matthew Whittet) is...
1 tag
2 tags
Ladies of Punk: Super Wild Horses
On the verge of releasing their first 12”, I sat down with Hayley McKee and Amy Franz from Super Wild Horses after their set at Meredith’s Golden Plains Festival to talk whiskey, vinyl and plain ol’ girly punk music.
Punk music has never been pretty. Think Johnny Rotten, Iggy Pop or ah, Billie Joe Armstrong but then Deborah Harry (and Blondie) hit New York’s New Wave...
2 tags
Pikelet. Stem. Launch.
Pikelet is a sweet name for a songstress but there’s a healthy punk attitude behind Evelyn Morris’ petit, saccharin stage name, “I have a very, very strong obstinate, non conformist streak” she tells me. Pikelet first sauntered onto the well-nourished Melbourne music scene way back in 2003 with her unique one-woman band performance which featured 1 x Pikelet, 1 x looping pedal and many x...
1 tag
2 tags
TTT Lands: The perfect soundtrack for a strange...
I can’t help but wonder if Tic Toc Tokyo’s name change to TTT was some kind of prank to make you sift through The Ten Tenors (TTT) listing’s that come up in a google search, or perhaps that site of geeky gamers The Tremendous Trio (TTT)? Either way, their latest album Lands will inspire you to hunt down and sift through your mums Devo and Bowie collection because they did it first and honestly,...
1 tag
