visual arts

Yulugi launch

Sydney-based cross-cultural music duo, Yulugi (meaning to play, dance in Gamilaroi) launched last night at Foundry616 with their first live performance. And I’m really glad I was there, because I’m super interested to see where Keyna Wilkins (flute, piano) and Gumaroy Newman (yidaki, recited poetry) will take their collaboration and their music from here.

Yulugi offered up to the audience a series of structured improvisations. These alternated between purely instrumental pieces (piano and yidaki or flute and yidaki), and other pieces in which Gumaroy performed his original poetry while Keyna improvised alongside this spoken element. Thematically, the poetry resonated with simple but deep messages as Gumaroy shared his personal perspectives of connection to country, nature, family and experiences of racism. Music and poetry were accompanied by projections of Australian landscape photography by Wayne Quilliam, the images serving as a prompt to the musicians for their inspired on-the-spot music jam and as a stunning visual evocation to the audience at the same time.

The end result wasn’t just cross-cultural, but also cross-artform, and in my opinion really interesting, immersive, new contemporary Australian art music. As pretentious as that description might sound, the music was anything but. Though stemming from divergent musical traditions, this duo works on so many levels. And there is a real sense of a partnership of equals here, no one voice is more prominent or more powerful than the other and there are exciting moments – with both musicians bouncing and riffing off each other intuitively – that make total musical sense.

If there was one thing I was left wanting, it was a more expansive mood palette. Last night’s performance was dynamic, bold and full-sounding a lot of the time, which was cool, but I found myself wanting more of the quieter, reflective, slowly unfurling musical moments to balance that energy. Overall I really enjoyed the set. And I reckon anyone who appreciates improv as a genre, will really appreciate Yulugi. Their next gig is at Johnson St Jazz on May 9, 2019.

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Additional ranty thoughts…

As much as I love this club (their programming is great, the staff are great, the food is good and I’ve only ever experienced audiences that are there, on the whole, to listen to and appreciate the artists), I just couldn’t let myself be as immersed or enjoy the show as much as I wanted to. Kudos to Foundry616 in the first place for providing the space and platform for these artists when not a lot of venue options exist out there, but for me, the distractions of food and drinks being served, of chairs/punters facing away from the stage, of people scrolling on their phones, and of the incredibly beautiful photography projected obscurely on a side wall, where half the audience couldn’t see it anyway, just felt like too much of a compromise. I want to see Yulugi and other artists like them programmed in other types of venues as well – like Performing Arts Centres – you know, the ones that our (public) money funds the activities of. I want to see these artists programmed into the core offerings of these PACs, regularly, and not just as add-ons to some random annual cultural calendar celebration event. I know I’m not alone.

(Header artwork by Mowena Wilkins)

NICK CAVE: UNTIL

Sixteen thousand spinners hang in the narthex that is the Carriageworks foyer.

They shimmer, dispersing the light, casting shadows and patterns on the floor. It’s mesmerising. Its vastness envelopes. But it’s calming too, like sitting in a garden with a breeze blowing, mobiles swaying, chimes chinking.

The rows are ordered like a grid. The brain begins to make out the shapes: starburst … circle … concentric circles. Then: gun (!?) … bullet … tear-drop. The calm now replaced with a menacing. And in that subtle, personal moment of recognition, the exhibition’s message is transmitted and received.

This is Nick Cave’s Kinetic Spinner Forest, the first work you experience as you enter Until.

Until, is a meditation on racism, gun violence and power. The title references the phrase “innocent until proven guilty”, while the exhibition itself appropriates it, then inverts its meaning completely.

Like the issues it highlights, Until is immense and deeply thought-provoking. But Cave’s offering and invitation to us to respond is also beautiful and hopeful. Until is activism as art, coaxing the viewer to think about the issues it casts light on and to question our own response to them, as individuals and collectively in our communities.

Read my full write up for Audrey Journal here.

Singular/Plural

Last night the New Beginnings Refugee Arts and Culture Festival was launched with a beautifully curated exhibition on the theme of ‘the singular’ and ‘the plural’ aspects of being. The festival has expanded over the last couple of years to include exhibitions and a series of participatory cultural events at different times in the year, as well as the flagship free outdoors community whole-day festival event at Tumbalong Park, Darling Harbour (save the date – 18 Nov).

I got to chatting with festival producer and Arts Coordinator at Settlement Services International (SSI), Carolina Triana, at the opening of Singluar/Plural. She commented about the importance of being able to respond to need and not be tied into a pre-existing model for the festival. The festival is re-imagined to a degree each year to best serve the artists and communities it was established to support. In her welcome speech, she said the festival is “all about the art” and this was clear by the quality of the exhibition itself as a whole. The mission of the festival is spelled out on its website:

The New Beginnings: Refugee Arts & Culture Festival is a celebration of the artistic vibrancy, cultural expressions and heritage of people from refugee backgrounds

Singular/Plural showcased exactly that and presented it from various viewpoints – the individual as artist, the artist as teacher in the community, artists in collaboration, community participation and celebration of heritage. The call out went to artists both from refugee and non-refugee backgrounds; the open-ended, non-prescriptive approach to curation ensuring different, inclusive, multi-dimensional, pluralistic takes – both by artist and viewer. This is the sort of exhibition I love – not being guided or coerced towards any pre-determined end point; not being asked for any action. Just a gentle invitation to enjoy, contemplate, experience.

Some stand out pieces for me were:
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