Art Speak

I have been a corporate leader for several decades and am still a parent (no “have been” here!) of four children and one grandchild. I have been travelling with the arts all my adult life. I have been associated with Metro Arts for 30 years, where I have witnessed the...

In a filmed interview, photographer and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto gives some advice to the young: My advice is to look for some other jobs before trying to become an artist. At first, you should expose yourself to many experiences – because you must have a profound...

I am drawn to items and articles that inform and that have directly affected my family and my trajectory that exists within the settler nation of ‘Australia’. This is evident in my previous artworks, and again in WE KOPPEL, WE DALA. Many of these items represent, for...

We met at an opening last night; you were dressed in plain black (because you are so neutral and authoritative), and I was wearing a Thundercats shirt (admittedly a strange choice). Your blue eyes tended to look upwards—making me think you’re a dreamer—while your feet...

I’m a playwright and theatre-maker who works with climate scientists. I do a lot of work around climate and systems science. I wrote a play called Kill Climate Deniers which is going on at Metro Arts in May 2019. Here are some things. The Wangan and Jagalingou...

“The purpose of art…” Oh dear. I’ve started with that old chestnut. Please don’t click away! This won’t be a dry essay, I promise. One little quote, and we’re done. “The purpose of art,” Viktor Shklovsky wrote in 1917, “is to impart the sensation of things as they are...

“It’s sort of about the fragility of love” Stephen Sewell narrowed his gaze and flared his nostrils like a swine who had just caught the scent of buried truffles, “which is strange because you’re such a bastard”, which was of course followed by his distinctive...

The announcement last week of the news of Metro’s future felt monumental.  To me. To the Metro Board and staff. And I suspect to many who heard or have since read the news.  Change is challenging to say the least, but I know we can’t see what’s over the hill if we...

I have exhausted one third of my probable life expectancy. So says a website that offers death predictions based on health and demographic data. I found this estimate a couple of years ago and recorded milestones in my calendar so that I would know exactly how I was...

When I read Aaron Dora’s blogpost (Art Speak #7) about pathways for emerging artists, I felt the urge to express my support for his positive approach. Jo Thomas suggested I might like to expand this into an open letter, so here I am! My original message:Hi Aaron, I...

Mel: Oi, I’m sick of people thinking this show is just two obnoxious women being like “OOOOO REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE SLUTS, MEN ARE TRASH.”Lia: Anything but… (That’s what I say to my boyfriend, zing)Mel:  Yeah, I always think about when our dear friend Aleea said to us,...

So I’ve been asked to get up on my soap box and write a little spiel about pathways for emerging artists in Brisbane. How do you find your way into an industry that seems so hard to crack? As an emerging director and producer, I feel there doesn’t seem to be any clear...

Imagining Futurity in Aishla Manning’s Soft Blow 2018 The leaf blower, through its own efforts, only meets dull thuds. All it can do is blow, or not blow. Do, or not do. These are its only choices. When not blowing it dangles limply, in isolation, bungee cord and...

Attendance figures dictate our livelihood and means of production. We rely on the numbers gleaned from door counts, ticket sales and surveys and are held hostage by the ebb and flow of patrons through the thresholds of our galleries. Sadly, the echo chamber that...

Under an Indigenous curatorial premise of ‘interconnectedness’, my sculptural work Continuing Connections 2018, will feature as part of a collective of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists invited to participate in the 2018 annual Brisbane festival of...

Director Heidi Manché writes for Art Speak about making live absurdist art in an absurd contemporary digital world. Our communication in the digital age has indeed taken an absurd turn. We are inundated by hyper-sexualisation, curated images, the meme, the troll,...

Brisbane Arts organisations came together to empower future female leaders at the 2017 Matilda Awards.Elise Greig, Chair of the awards, writes for Art Speak about the new award added for 2018 Emerging Female Leader and why it matters. When Penny asked me to write a...

Metro Arts artist and performer Brian Lucas discusses the ongoing potency of art, empowerment and despair in the age of celebrity sex scandals in the first of our regular series of blog posts ART SPEAK. When we first began the process of transforming Oscar Wilde’s “De...

In January this year when I launched the 2017 Metro Arts program I said the following: “I’ve thought a lot about our 2017 program – the works we’re creating and presenting and the artists we’re collaborating with….  They are a reflection of the...