Livening up walls out west

• first published …
• 10 Jan 2012
• Maribyrnong Leader
• Art | Anna Bourozikas

Fine arts graduate takes to the streets to make art accessible to more people

MELBOURNE’S drab inner west spots are being transformed one space at a time by the artwork of street artist Baby Guerrilla.

Her works include an image of a large nude girl surrounded by birds and one of a couple romantically holding hands while floating in the air. She also has a series on men who appear to be climbing out of windows.

Baby Guerrilla, a stencil paste-up artist, is the most prominent female street artist, possibly the only one, operating in the inner west.

Her images are popping up everywhere including on the wall opposite West Footscray’s Central West, the Sim’s supermarket carpark on Barkly St, Cross St in Footscray and on a wall outside Post Industrial Design in West Footscray.

Barren spots have become little galleries with a character telling a story.

‘‘The locations are based on my daily experiences,’’ the artist said. ‘‘Many walls I will pass by each day and dream about possibilities. Most of the paste-ups are based upon my various travel routes.’’ So who is Baby Guerilla? We arrange to meet at her house. Given that she does most of her pasting late at night, and her nickname is Baby Guerrilla, I was expecting a tough-looking woman in a hoodie, camouflage cargo pants and trainers. I had not expected a lady in the 60s Barbarella inspired outfit, complete with knee- high boots, A-line dress and long honeycoloured hair. But I shouldn’t be surprised given the strong feminine streak in her work.

Her characters are drawn from her personal experiences often representing herself or people she knows. She stencils images on large pieces of paper, cuts them out, climbs a ladder and glues them to the wall.

‘‘I love drawing and paste-ups are a way of giving my drawings a second life,’’ she said.

Baby Guerrilla shows me her studio at the back of her house where she is preparing works for an exhibition. She is a Victorian College of the Arts graduate and has exhibited paintings and sculptures.

Street art began as a hobby five years ago but the artist says she finds the work exhilarating.

Making art accessible to a wide range of people is important to her.  ‘‘I love the idea of setting art free, setting our souls free to dream and imagine and to go floating across a wall,’’ she says.

The Best Doughnuts in Melbourne’s West

Although I shouldn’t eat wheat I make a few exceptions. For desserts. Of course. The humble doughnut, probably one of the ‘wheatiest’ of all desserts, would have to be number one on my list of favourite desserts. My love for doughnuts dates back to my childhood and growing up in an outer south eastern suburb that couldn’t boast for much at the time. But inexplicably it had one of those silver and purple doughnut vans and sometimes my parents would buy me and my brother and even half dozen. Three hot, sugary, jam dripping goodnesses each. Times were different then. No one cared about `too much sugar’.

Anyway, enough about me. Let me recommend two places in Melbourne’s west where you can get a doughnut. I’m generous like that.

1. Olympic Doughnuts.
No doughnut list in Melbourne is complete without a mention of Olympic doughnuts at Footscray station. No one ever talks about Olympic Doughnuts without moaning gutturally in deep pleasure. Doughnut van owner and doughnut maker Nikos Tsigliris makes about 500 doughnuts a day. He and his little van have been in the same place for 33 years. That’s a lot of doughnuts.

Nikos Tsiglaris, Dude.

large image

So revered is Nick, his doughnuts and his van, the Regional Rail Link has taken the unusual step of allowing Nick to remain in business throughout the Regional Rail links Demolition works. In a notice they created and pasted onto the front window of his van, the Regional Rail Link Team says they worked closely with Mr Tsigliris and his family to `allow the doughnut van to remain in place while the work is undertaken thus minimising the impact of the demolition on the business.’

While every other business at the train station was demolished and the area fenced off and under scaffolding, the little van continues to operate in the same spot it has been in since 1981. Now that’s respect.

Olympic Doughnuts Eat me.

large image

Nick is quite the charmer too. He can still make a woman swoon. When I told him my parents were from Larissa, central Greece, he recited some lines from a Greek song about fair skinned, fair haired Greek women like myself, being the most beautiful in Greece, before handing over a couple of free doughnuts. Smooth.

Where: Footscray Station, 51 Irvine St, Footscray.
Hours: Mon- Sat. 9a – 5p
9689 4819
80c a doughnut or $4.80 for six.

2. Papa Bear Bakehouse.
Actually in the heart of the middle of nowhere is this tiny gem of a bakery that specialises in Filipino bread and delicacies. The friendly owners are too shy to reveal much about themselves. All you need to know, is the Filipino doughnuts are very good. They come in a plait, and are dusted with sugar and/or cinnamon. And they are 50 cents each, very much worth the trek out to Braybrook. Fifty cents people. Fifty cents. And while you are out there, pop into here. That will make for a lovely afternoon tea.

Plaits never looked this good. Papa Bear.

large image

EAMES: The Architect And The Painter

Cannot wait to see this.

3012 Exhibition by Sarah Watt @ Post Industrial Design

When film maker and photographer Sarah Watt and her husband, the actor William McInnes, moved to West Footscray in 1990, they did so because it was “the cheapest place to live”.

“The skies are really wide. So, you get a great feel for space,” she says.

We are speaking at the launch of her latest exhibition titled simply 3012. This is West Footscray’s postcode. The exhibition is at West Footscray’s stylish Post industrial Design.

On this perfect Melbourne spring day, where the sky is as blue as it is wide, local residents and friends’ of the couple have crammed in to celebrate one of their own.

Watt has secondary stages breast cancer. She looks beautiful and radiant. Her wide smile never leaves her face as she greets friends and fans of her work, her husband never far from her side.

Sarah is probably best known for her feature films. In 2005, she won the Australian Film Institute Best Director award for her film Look Both Ways. In 2009, she released her second film, My Year Without Sex.

“Films take so long to make. I like being able to take photos,” she says.

Anyone familiar with West Footscray would instantly recognise her images. There is a photo of the op shop on Barkly street; the skeletal brick remains of the old Dunlop tyre factory on Rupert street; the Uncle Toby’s silo on Sunshine Road; the unused train carriages resting at Tottenham station that look bleak by day but come alive at night when rows of lights – like thousands of fairy lights illuminate the tracks; the airplane at Central West; Indian saris on mannequins from the Indian shops on Barkly street – classic images of West Footscray.

“They (the images) open your eyes to the everyday that is around you. And the beauty of light and how it works on buildings”, says local resident Andrew.

Sarah paints over her photos with acrylic paint. Sometimes she uses crayons or coloured pencils. It gives the photos greater texture and depth and the illusion of a painting or a sketch rather than a photo.

All around me people are reacting with delight at images they recognise from their home. One woman, standing next to an image of 501 Receptions on Barkly Street, is laughing at the centre’s slogan, A Touch Of Class.”

“It’s funny. Could you imagine getting married here?” she asks. Many have.

Sarah exhibited another series of images at Post Industrial Design several months ago as part of this year’s Victoria’s State of Design Festival. It is not surprising that Watt would choose a new gallery close to her beloved home to exhibit her work.

I ask Sarah if she has any final words she would like to share for this story. Unsurprisingly, she generously credits gallery owner Mary Long for opening the little gallery and shop, and for her contribution to West Footscray.

“Mary, has achieved a bit of a breakthrough with this place. She’s showing that art and design can have a function. She’s gathered a little gang of people from the area, a collective of people who work on all the exhibitions together.”

The gallery is also selling her calendar, 3012/2012, which features images from her exhibition.

I leave Sarah sitting with her mother, Anna. Her husband strides towards her, a tender look on his face. On one perfect day, everything she loved merged; family, community and art.

Sarah Watt, with husband William McInnes and artist Trish Holleley

large image

Art by Sarah Watt Uncle Tobys and Dunlop

large image

Sitting Around by Sarah Watt

large image

A Touch of Class by Sarah Watt

large image

Dunlop by Sarah Watt

large image

Sarah Watt’s brave battle with cancer ended with her death on 4th November 2011. Her attendance at the launch of her exhibition was to be her last public appearance.

Her photographic tribute to her home is made more poignant because she knew she was leaving it behind.

Update: 3012 Exhibition by Sarah Watt has been extended to the end of November.

Story originally printed on  http://www.weekendnotes.com/melbourne/

Joan Didion reading from The Year of Magical Thinking

I finally read the bestseller `The Year of Magical Thinking’, by American literary giant Joan Didion. It is an exceptional book – part memoir, part journalism – that she began writing eight months after the sudden death of her husband John Gregory Dunne.

The pair had just returned from visiting their only child in hospital.  She was in a coma and on life support after falling seriously ill.  Didion made a fire.  She served her a husband a drink of whiskey while he read, then made dinner.  As they sat at the table, she tossed the salad and listened as he spoke before noticing he had fallen silent. He had died from a massive heart attack.

She opens her book, “life changes in the instant, the ordinary instant.” So ended one of America’s greatest literary partnerships.  The Didion-Dunnes had been together 40 years. Literally. The writing couple had spent very little of their marriage apart. Didion jokes in her book that her mother and aunt would warn her, `till death do us part, but not for lunch’, in response to the amount of time the pair spent together.  Both worked from home. They would spend each day in their separate offices writing; before meeting for lunch and dinner, often at a restaurant.  I think they were in lifelong limerance.

They enjoyed separate success as writers  but did collaborate on several screenplays including A Star Is Born, a huge hit for Barbra Streisand.

Four weeks after Dunne’s death, their daughter pulled through only to suffer a massive hematoma in her brain, necessitating a six-hour operation and beginning  a slow decline in her health.

Didion began writing this book 8 months after her husband’s death.  It chronicles that awful year without sentimentality, with a cool, lucid eye.  It is telling of her fierce nature that she could write with such clarity in the midst of heartbreaking, bewildering chaos. It took her three months to write .  The novel is an elegant and dense treatise on the nature of grief and grieving, and the crazy thinking that accompanies mourning.

“Marriage is memories. Marriage is time,” she writes at one point. And one can feel quite keenly the loss of her mate and all the shared memories that bind together the lives of two people.

Shortly before its publication, Didion’s daughter died.

This is Didion reading from The Year of Magic Thinking. Close your eyes and listen.

18th Greek Film Festival 2011

“I think it’s interesting in a country like Greece, that’s really struggling these days, that films as exciting and innovative as this can be made.”
David Stratten, At The Movies, ABC.

 

The Greek film industry is undergoing an incredible transformation at the moment that some people have called the`Greek Weird Wave’. Anyone who has seen the brilliant, Oscar nominated film, Dogtooth, by director/writer Giorgos Lanthimos, would have to agree.

Anyone unfamiliar with Greek films will have the chance to become better acquainted in the coming days as the18th Greek Film Festival begins its Melbourne season, running from the 12th to 30th October at the Palace cinemas.

Need for Lies, Opening night film. Image courtesy of 18th Greek Film Festival.

large image

The festival will open with the lightweight political satire `Need For Lies’ (Dir. Ieroklis Michaelidis), an adaptation of one of Greece’s best-loved stage comedies.

The festival program includes a range of feature films and documentaries.

Dir. Michael Cacoyiannis. Image courtesy of 18th Greek Film Festival.

large image

The festival will also screen several films by director Michael Cacoyiannis, best known for his film Zorba the Greek. He died earlier this year.

via weekendnotes

The Royal Melbourne Show

Devonshire tea, Country Women's Association.

 

Amy Winehouse cake, Art, Craft and Cookery stall

Magic Circus

puppets

showbag pavillion

Elvis and friend, Rockin’ Roll Cafe.

Helen Mirren

I was reading this interview with  Helen Mirren  in The Guardian yesterday where she discusses this sexist interview she did with Michael Parkinson.  She certainly held her own and good to see he evolved as an interviewer.

Then I found this really crazy piece of footage from very early in her career. Enjoy.

Cicada by Amiel Courtin-Wilson

From the hailmovie channel on YouTube, I found this gem:

While documenting a production staged by a theatre company comprised of recently released offenders (Plan B), Amiel Courtin-Wilson was struck by the presence and natural story telling ability of Daniel P Jones whom he met on the day he was released from prison.
Over a 5 year period a unique artistic collaboration evolved which found initial expression in the short film CICADA (selected to be screened in the prestigious directors fortnight program at Cannes Film Festival in 2009) which went on to win and be nominated for several major awards in Australia.

When you were mine

So 80s, so cool. And wasn’t dancing in the 80s so much easier?