Still 'At the Frontier' - day 2 Wednesday

One of the amazing things about the city of block of Perth on which the conference is being held is that, looked at a certain way, EVERYTHING is on it: bordered by Roe, Williams, Francis and Beaufort streets, it contains the State Theatre Centre (where the conference sessions are), AND the Art Gallery of Western Australia AND the Western Australian Museum AND the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA, which I visited yesterday) AND the State Library of Western Australia and something called Arts House too, probably just for good measure.

Above, my afternoon coffee godzillas the Western Australian Museum, which is run by the bloke who spoke first today, Alec Coles. He has been the CEO at WAM for about 18 months, and spoke this morning

about a regional program for the many museums operating in WA, particularly from the viewpoint of his years of experience with a regional approach to museums in the north-east of England. In his talk he was really showing us the many models from which Western Australia might choose to develop the relationships between its museums, particularly those of differing sizes.  In this way it echoed John Holden's talk of yesterday, but with the engagement in this case being between museums, rather than museums-to-visitors.

Next up was Margaret Anderson, from the History Trust of South Australia, who spoke brilliantly about their work in raising the profile of history in South Australia, and their grand gamble in creating a 'History Week' program in the mid 1990s, which took off to such an extent that this year they needed to expand it to a history month (!) whose name you can find above.  She also spoke about an amazing web history project called Bound for South Australia, which is a blog from 1836.  True. Have a look.

I then attended a session about travelling exhibitions, featuring presentations by Catherine Czerw

Jane King, from the Museums Australia WA branch,(but not for very much longer) who delivered the best line I have heard thus far:

And Catherine Belcher from the Geraldton location of the Western Australia Museum whose great-sounding exhibition about mining in the mid-west is going to close on Sunday - I'm going to miss it! Gnn!

All of this talk about shows on the road and remote locations made my feet itchy, so I went over and crunched again on Fujimoto Yuri's 'Broom' at PICA

And checked out the very beautiful 'Perth Cultural Centre Play Space' which is outside the museum, featuring sittable-onnable sculpture and outside musical instruments (David Perkins, these shots are for you...)

And then I cycled Brian down to the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre (actually he and I got lost, and then trapped, in the bus car park underneath it for awhile, but we needn't dwell on that) to go and see

A really quite incredible exhibition which opened in Canberra at the National Museum of Australia earlier in the year, and now it's over here which is its home, because the Canning Stock Route is in WA and so is FORM.  These guys - and it turned out that I knew two of them, and how great to meet Carly Davenport and Monique La Fontaine again - have put six years into the Canning Stock Route project, out of which this major and massive exhibition has developed.  It features paintings from Aboriginal artists from the many language groups along the Route and their stories and songs and films and objects.  It's pretty immersive and amazing and the Canning Stock Route works brilliantly as a central braid that ties together so many stories.  Next it's going to Sydney to the Australian Museum 17 December 2011 - 22 April 2012, so all my easterly friends, plan your trip to Sydney. But really, you should see it here. You have until November 27.  And over here, it's free.

I reckon this exhibition will come to mind each morning that I cycle into Melbourne Museum along the Canning (Street) Bike Route.

'At the Frontier' day 1 - Tuesday 15 November 2011

So today was the first day of the Museums Australia/ Interpretation Australia joint conference, 'At the Frontier' - all 500 or so of us delegates set off to sea together in the very new Heath Ledger Theatre in the State Theatre Centre (opened in January of this year).

The conference was introduced, we were welcomed to country, the Western Australian Minister for Culture and the Arts declared the conference open, and then we heard from this guy, John Holden, about 'Next Generation Cultures' - it's anarchy, folks, in the UK!

Yes, apparently everyone is.  And museums need less to deliver to their audiences than to find their relationship to their audiences.  In fact 'audience' might not be the right word any more,  What about 'participants'?  This next generation want to: 1) enjoy 2) talk and 3) do, according to John's friend Charlie Leadbeater. So there's that.

Morning tea time! Let's head down the stairs running parallel to Roe Street, shall we?  Yes, lets!

Later in the day I attended a panel called 'Ancient', which was brilliant. Kevin Thiele, the head of the WA Herbarium, hails from 'the east' and is always putting his foot in it with his Perth colleagues with statements like

But he was a great speaker about the challenges faced by herbaria in terms of becoming more open to their audiences/participants.

And Ken Mulvaney

spoke passionately and brilliantly about the rock art petroglyphs on the islands of the Dampier Archipelago - he estimates that there are probably about one million pieces, which would make the archipelago the richest area of such art in the world.  And he eloquently painted a picture of the destruction of such art that happens when we allow development to occur pell-mell.

In the next session, I delivered a petcha kutcha presentation (20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds) about our theatre work at Melbourne Museum over the last 10 years and rather think I stuffed too much in. Ah well.  Also in that session was the wonderful Lily Hibberd, though, talking about her research and writing and artwork interrogating the use of solitary confinement and the persistence of the 'model prison' system in the treatment of prisoners, refugees and mentally ill people for 150 years.  It was chilling stuff, Jeremy Bentham's rotting head being used for a football notwithstanding.

At the end of the day I went to PICA to hear the curators of the exhibition 'Alternating Currents: Japanese art after March 2011' talk about the works on show.  Above, someone 'plays' Fujimoto Yukio's giant record made of charcoal - you walk on it and it crunches. Great.  Curator Hashimoto Azusa commented that Fujimoto-san has said that 'listening is a very creative act'.  I tend to agree.

Looking down from the first floor onto Izumi Taro's massive sugoroku board installation - it was described as a game without beginning or end.  We ended our tour at the 'Yellow Cake Street' cafe, devised by Nadegata Instant Party, which was the PICA bar remade as a...

cafe place to buy yellow cake (delicious) and beer.  I drank and ate and then cycled Brian back home, only realising that I'd overlooked dinner after a phone call to Susan - it's time for a late night visit to the 2 minute noodle shop, folks!  Ahh.  That's better.

Ready for bed and a sleep and a dream and then day #2.

New Norcia and talking papers

Artist unknown, early 18th century, head of Saint Benedict.  Wood.

Part of the exhibition, 'The Saints: Ancient + New' at the New Norcia Museum and Art Gallery

Today was my first day of conference-related activities - at 9am outside the brand spanking new State Theatre Centre I jumped into a bus, and Martin Moyle drove a bunch of us museum types (hi Edwina and Craig in the picture above) 130 kilometres north of Perth to a place he described as "a most surprising village out in the middle of the wheat belt".

And by gum but he was right.

We were most privileged to be met by Carmel, the CEO of New Norcia, Margie from the New Norcia Museum, and Dom Christopher Power, one of the monks in residence.

Here he is, telling us the story of the way pictorial representations of New Norcia proved a vital means for one of founders, Dom Rosendo Salvado to convince people back in Europe to donate to the monastery town.  And throughout his never less than charming, informative and funny narrative, Dom Chris kept reminding us that financial survival remains a constant challenge for the community.

He introduced us to New Norcia's full-time archivist, Peter.  Dom Chris explained that the archive was anything but a place for 'old moths', that indeed it was a 'glamour department' of the town.  Peter explained that he has plenty to work with because

Sound like my kinda guys.  We saw remarkably painted and appointed chapels, we saw an exhibition detailing the interactions of the monks with the local Aboriginal people, the Yuat (Moorara-Moorara) people, whose language Dom Bernard Rooney has compiled a dictionary for, we saw the olive press shed and the olive orchard, the restored blacksmithy, we ate lunch at the New Norcia Hotel (good ale!) and we scooted through the museum because we ran out of time.

And now I sip (swig, you mean!) at a VERY good New Norcia Abbey Vintage Port 2004 - thick and sweet and fruity - and reflect on some words from Dom Rosendo Salvado, really the main founder of the monastery in 1846 (recall that Perth itself was founded in 1829):

"This is an appropriate place to mention the kind of veneration which the natives have for books or any papers with writing - 'talking papers' as they call them.  They credit them with an almost magic power of revealing hidden things..."

The title of a plan drawing of the layout of the town - Norcia was the original birthplace of Saint Benedict, so here, two hours drive from Perth, would be the new one.

Back in Perth, it was time for the conference opening/welcome drinks at the Perth Town Hall, and boy, were they welcome!  Brian the bike and I swerved back down Adelaide Terrace to my hotel (the Goodearth - thanks Pearl S. Buck) to have a cuppa and prepare for the 'petcha kutcha' (Japanese for 'chit chat') presentation which I'm giving tomorrow afternoon and which is entitled, 'But is it Real?'

Well?

Is it?

Way out West

Yep, fresh from WA, here comes the news from Perth. I'm over here this week to attend a Museums Australia/ Interpretation Australia conference called 'At The Frontier' - I'm guessing a whole lot of people in the museum world have come to Perth for this, come over like Brownes' cows. I have been part-funded for this by Melbourne Museum, where I work part-time, so that makes sense.

Today was Sunday, and quite blowy - a westerly I think, coming up the Swan River.

I was looking to hire a bike to get me around, so I thought I'd ask at that tall pointy thing ahead.

 Turns out that it is The Bell Tower, home of the Swan Bells and "probably the largest musical instrument in the world", and furthermore, because this weekend is Heritage Perth's Heritage Days, it's free to go in.  So I go in.  It's a pretty amazing place, you can climb stairs all the way to the top of those sail things and look down over the river or over Perth

 and see what's been going on here recently - oh, I do love that word, CHOGM.

Some of the bells are pretty big. Pretty big.  And today they were ringing constantly, and the whole place was shaking, almost subliminally, underfoot.  It was great.  And, the people there knew where the bike hire place was!

I dropped into the Old Court House Law Museum to see painter Thomas Hoareau talk about his picture 'John Gaven Parkhurst boy #422 - Appears a very good lad' from the exhibition 'Heroes or Villains of the Swan?' which just opened there last week.  15 year old Gaven was the first European hanged in Western Australia.

There were lots of open public buildings, including the Perth Town Hall where there was an exhibition about Perth hosting the 1962 Commonwealth Games, and 'leaving the lights on' earlier in that year for astronaut John Glenn to glipse as he passed over in Friendship 7.

Some of the public art really grabbed me, too, like Anne Neil's 2006 'Memory Markers'

On the border of the Stirling Gardens on Barrack Street.

As a ink-dip nib user myself, to see these big ones

 was pretty exciting. And around the corner on St George's Terrace, I was really amused by these

For which I couldn't find the name of the artist.  But look, the tip of the one lying on the ground

is even crumpled! - great, eh?  Well enough of all this art and culture and heritage - I need a way to get around, and David Byrne is always talking about how good it is to have a bike in a foreign land.  And you know?  He's right!

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Brian.  As in, "a brown like Brian".

Tomorrow, New Norcia. But not by bike.

Melbourne Writers Festival - August 2011

Once we got back from GRAPHIC up in Sydney, it was time for the Melbourne Writers Festival in Melbourne.  This festival has had more and more comics content over the last few years, which is great to see, and above you can see me, Pat Grant and Mandy Ord talking about graphic novels in general, and their ones in particular, as part of the MWF schools program.

Also for the schools program, I presented a kamishibai session at Artplay, in which I spoke about the form and told 3 kamishibai stories: a new one, 'A Box of Stories' (a kamishibai kamishibai); the Fuji snail story (from 'What It Is' #4), and my very first story, 'The Legend of Rat Boy'.  In the lead up to this session, Michael Shirrefs on ABC Radio conducted an interview with me about kamishibai and even filmed (for radio!) the Fuji snail story - and that's all here.

There were cartoonists drawing live outside the National Gallery, there was the launch of a beautiful new comic book from a new-to-comics book publisher (more about this next post), there was a session with the great and terrible Jim Woodring (and anybody who has heard him talk about 'the Age of Cake' will know what I'm talking about here), there was of course the Oslo Davis-edited comics newspaper 'Drawn From Life' and there was the 'Martin Martini In(k) Concert'.  Hoo hah!

This last was at the venue The Toff in Town, where Martini and band played a suite of songs from his 'Vienna 1913' cycle (of which I am a big fan), while Jim Woodring -

- and a rotating cast of three fine local cartoonists -

- Pat Grant, Andrew Weldon and Jo Waite - kept drawing live while the band played on.  The audience got to listen to music and look at pictures:

Yes, it's some sort of bliss, as this crowd of cartoonists shows.  The idea comes from the Angouleme Comics Festival in France, where Mike Shuttleworth had seen some 'Concerts du Dessins' (Drawing Concerts) in January of this year and come back to rave about them to Steve Grimwade, the director of the Melbourne Writers Festival and a hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is, to boot.

Photos in this post are courtesy of Dan Hayward and Stephen Elliott, cinematographers supreme!

Other GRAPHIC 2011 folks...

The wonderful Peter Kuper, who presented his 'Revolutions and Art' show as part of the 'Wordless Storytelling' panel on the Saturday. Bloody great.

"The revolution will not be televised, but I am convinced it will be illustrated."

Eddie Campbell pointing out another great image in his slideshow, presented on the Sunday, all about his upcoming book, 'The Lovely Horrible Stuff', which is all about money.  He even went to Yap.

" Came across this interestin' story..."

Also on the Sunday, Andrew Weldon presented the prizewinners in the 'Air Your Grievances' one-panel cartoon competition, as well as showing us some of his own, quite hilarious work.

****************************

So GRAPHIC #2, another great event for comics.  And I just found out today that the conversation that we didn't get, between Gary Groth and Robert Crumb, has just been posted, here, with the non-attendance, amongst other things, discussed.  Okay, he didn't make it over, but in the end it all happened.

In the end?

Ha.