This week on SmartArts...

9.15am

As Lucinda Strahan has new, study-determined obligations which have forced her to hang up her hat, John Born Dancin' Bailey joined us for his inaugural edition of SHOOT THE MESSENGER, our fortnightly arts news and gossip segment, this week. John scribes Beat's Art of the City column (although not for much longer) and was recently appointed the chief arts writer for The Sunday Age. He'll be joining us in this timeslot fortnightly from now on.

9.30am

Artists Dave Last and David Porter came in to talk about painting en plein air and their group exhibition THE BOAT SHOW, now showing at Brightspace Gallery.

"Group shows are two bob a dozen but a group that paints together and shows together … that’s a rare thing.

BRIGHTSPACE is showing the work of a group of St Kilda based artists who paint together en plein air around the docks every second Sunday. The group includes a few very well known painters. There is some wonderfully fresh and lively work amongst the 40 pieces in the show and the range of different talents is amazing…"

When: 13 – 30 July 2006
Where: Brightspace Gallery, 8 Martin St, St Kilda
Hours: 12 – 6 Wed - Sat, 1 – 5 Sundays

10.00am

Artist Jo Darvall (and small child) joined us next, to talk about her latest, untitled exhibition, currently showing at the Jackman Gallery.

"Jo Darvall has long been a stable in the Melbourne art scene. Best known for her position as director for ‘Artists for Kids Culture’, Darvall’s most recent body of work captures the fluidity of the female form. Subtle tones are washed onto the canvas to create a dreamlike backdrop for what are visually strong and empowered women. "

Where: Jackman Gallery, 60 Iinkerman St, St Kilda
When: 5 July – 23 July 2006
Hours: Tues-Sun 12pm-5pm

10.30am

My next guest was the urbane and charming Kristy Edmunds, Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. This year marks Kristy's second year at the helm of MIAF, and once again she's programmed a diverse, contemporary and fascinating mix of works which are guaranteed to annoy those people in the arts community who miss the bad old days of a festival devoted almost exclusively to 'high Art' - ballet, opera and dead composers.

"The 2006 Melbourne International Arts Festival Program is one that centres on contemporary artists who have turned their formidable insight and accomplished aesthetics into an investigation of place in their current work. If 2005’s Festival examined the journeys and odysseys human beings are taking to “somewhere else”, an altogether unfamiliar place, then 2006 is about the journey to come to terms with home and country and self in times of tremendous dynamic change. It's about the place that is nearest to us and yet one that can become unfamiliar at any given moment.

For some artists the celebration of home, place or cultural identity is at the core of their work. For others a lament for what was or could have been is central. Other projects address the issues that provoke unfamiliarity or uncertainty within a given place. However differently this idea of "place" features, each of this year's productions, with diverse artistic approach, asks each of us to look deeply into what gives us a sense of belonging (and what makes us hold onto whatever that is, either gently or with a vice-like grip).

Putting together this program, with this seemingly general subject matter, has involved the finding of cohesion in projects whose makers hail from over 21 countries, and many of whom are engaged in projects that are cross-cultural in make-up, or whose casts/ensembles are from more than one country. I wonder what “home” means for these creative teams who work across continents often and who balance the nuances of their work with living both in and away from their country of origin?"

When: 12-28 October
Where: A range of venues throughout Melbourne.
What: Check the online program for event details and booking information.

11.15am

Choreographer Phillip Adams, the Artistic Director of Balletlab, and set designer Matt Gardiner were the morning's next guests, coming in to discuss ORIGAMI, the latest Balletlab production.

"Origami is a new dance work from BalletLab, which collides Japanese ancient paper art, industrial modernist architecture and the living body in space. As the title of the works suggests, the starting point for Origami is the ancient Japanese paper art. The work interprets the central principle of this art form, that of folding, in both a literal and a metaphoric sense. On a thematic level, Origami plays with Western perceptions of Japanese culture drawn from both traditional Art and pop culture – from Astro Boy to Ikebana, Samurai and Kimba the White Lion, to Manga and Mount Fuji...

In Origami, the set is blended meticulously into permutable architectural crevices and abstract panels and partitions. Modular panels form and fold together to create myriad sculptural states onstage. Bodies have the ability to slide through cavities and over platforms, folding themselves through the set while interacting with other dancers, so that the choreography becomes a landscape of origami."

What: Australian Premiere Season
When: Thursday July 13 – Sunday 23 July 2006
Where: Space 28 Drama Theatre VCA, 28 Dobbs Street Southbank
Dates: Wed – Sat 8pm, Tues – Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm
Bookings: 9685 9255

11.30am

The morning ended with the studio's graced by the lovely Cerise Howard, presenting our fortnightly screen culture segment, A FISTFULL OF CELLULOID. This week Cerise reviewed the new film Hard Candy, and gave it two thumbs up, but also warned that it was perhaps too intense for some tastes.

She also pointed cinephiles towards Ubu Web, a “distribution center for hard-to-find, out-of-print and obscure materials, transferred digitally to the web.”

The site features the likes of:

• The Cut-Up films of William S. Burroughs (1963-1972)
• Maya Deren's Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti
  
• Jean Genet's Un Chant D'Amour (1950)
• And much more, including Guy Debord, Vienna Actionist films (not work friendly!), Marcel Duchamp, Jack Smith and Man Ray.

That's Maya Deren ('the high priestess of experimental cinema') pictured at the top of this post, in case you were wondering.

As always, you can find this week's playlist over here, on the SmartArts page of the RRR website. Think about subscribing while you're over there... ;-)