Arts news

The shape of things to come

18/4/2019

Time stops for Lisa Kane when she’s working with clay

By Catherine Watson

HUNCHED over the potter’s wheel at the Rescue Station arts centre, Lisa Kane is absorbed in the vessel that’s emerging in her sure fingers. Time stops for her when she’s working with clay, she says. “I love it!”

At a long table nearby, Margaret Abrahamson is painting some small dishes she made at an earlier session. She has no affinity for the wheel, she says, but she likes shaping the clay by hand. She’s looking forward to seeing her first works fired.

I’ve come down to the Rescue Station Arts centre to do a story on the clay makers group.

Tutor Alan Whitmore, who taught art at Leongatha Secondary College for many years, says that even after decades of potting, he still gets pleasure from working with clay.

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Grand jams in Grantville

18/4/2019

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Saray Iluminado will take participants on a journey through Balkan music at Community Music Victoria’s annual music camp. Photo: Dave Wayman

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Tall tales and true of San Remo

17/4/2019

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Mysterious lady on the bridge, San Remo, Good Friday, April 11, 1941. Featured in this month's San Remo movie matinee.

By Kirsty Mawer

HAVE you heard the one about the San Remo Cork Club? Or the local Robin Hood Club?

You’ll learn about the clubs, and much more, at Movie Matinee: San Remo Stories, later this month. Narrated by locals, the 10 mini movies – each four to six minutes long – provide an entertaining insight into events, practices, and people that have shaped the San Remo.

We’ve sub-titled the matinee “Probable Truths or Plausible Lies - You be the Judge”. That’s because the movies are based on people’s memories and someone’s view of one thing could be quite different from someone else’s view.

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Lifting the curtain on small town Australia

5/4/2019

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Jasper Jones the play, from the novel by Craig Silvey, adapted by Kate Mulvaney. Leongatha Lyric Theatre, September
13-21, 2019.

With its engaging characters, dark mystery and a 1960s small town setting, Jasper Jones is a rich work for the stage, writes director Sue Lindsay

By Sue Lindsay

I WAS having a conversation with my mother recently about head lice. When we were kids, she was horrified when we got the nits. “It was the Butts kids who spread them,” she said. The Butts was a place on the edge of the rubbish tip where these children lived in a house without electricity or running water. After the nits alarm, they came to school with their heads shaved, isolating them and confirming their role in the community as the persons to blame. Sixty years on, those poor Butts kids remain in my memory.

Jasper Jones is a teenager who is the scapegoat in the (fictitious) mining town of Corrigan. Set in the 1960s, the play reveals dark secrets behind the windows of respectable families, and evil intentions behind the smiles of respected adults. An old man with a car wreck in his front yard is the bogey man who grows large in the minds of the young people playing out all their fears and horror fantasies.

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Thanks for the memories

5/4/2019

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Artist Kathy West, centre, with Liane Arno and Matt Stone who helped to produce her memoir Reflections.

By Ellen Hubble

AT THE age of 80, Wonthaggi artist Kathy West held her first solo exhibition at ArtSpace Gallery. At 90, she has just launched her first book.

Covering almost a century, Reflections is a collection of Kathy’s memories of horse and cart days, of new frontiers in Papua New Guinea, of riots in Malaysia and the rag trade in Australia.

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Reading from the same song sheet

3/4/2019

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Have you ever wanted to sing? Here’s your chance with the Sisters and Misters singing group setting up a local branch.

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John John is back

22/3/2019

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Japanese Celtic band John John Festival has chosen Wonthaggi for the Australian launch of their new album.

Following a successful concert here in 2018, the Celtic band John John Festival return to launch their 2019 tour and new album in Wonthaggi this month.

Arguably Japan’s most popular celtic band, John John Festival have continued to delight and thrill audiences around the globe with their exuberant and joyful Celtic grooves. The band members are Mana Okubo (John) on fiddle and vocals, Hirofumi Nakamura (Annie) on guitar and vocals, and Toshi Bodhran on bodhran and tambourine.

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Coming to a screen near you

21/3/2019

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Click to watch a trailer of The Favourite

By Marny Javornik

NOT too many small Australian towns can boast an international film festival but Wonthaggi’s returns this weekend for its ninth year.

The 2019 Wonthaggi International Film Festival opens at 7pm tonight with the The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos’s offbeat take on the story of Anne, Queen of Great Britain, and the two young women who vie for her favours.

The film is gorgeous to watch and has won multiple international film awards, including an Academy Award for best actress, Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and a BAFTA award for the Best British film.

Dress up and come at 6pm to enjoy the red carpet and bar before the film.

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Ensemble in island debut

20/3/2019

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ENSEMBLE Goya will make their debut on Philip Island this weekend with a concert at the Cowes Cultural Centre.

The group comprises three experienced and internationally seasoned musicians: Alexander Waite on piano, Marisa Hatibi on violin and Belinda Bolger on clarinet.

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Sounds of summer

21/2/2019

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A perennial favourite, Pippa Wilson returns for this year's
Inverloch Jazz Festival

Now in its 26th year, change is a constant for the Inverloch Jazz Festival and yet some things stay the same, writes Carolyn Nield.

By Carolyn Nield

INVERLOCH today is a very different town from the one that hosted the first Inverloch Jazz Festival 26 years ago. Over the decade or so that I have been a festival volunteer, the growth of the town and the expansion of the festival have gone hand in hand. Presidents and committees have come and gone, with each new team adding something special to the next year’s event.

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50 years of exits and entrances

5/2/2019

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Where it all began … the Wonthaggi Theatrical Group’s first ever production,
The Pirates of Penzance, in 1969. All photos courtesy of the Wonthaggi Theatrical Group

As the Wonthaggi Theatrical Group begins its second half century, Gill Heal reflects on a troupe that's changed many lives, on and off the stage.

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Return of the stars

4/2/2019

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Jake Amy and Emma Volard

LOCAL pianist Jake Amy and singer Emma Volard combine with Canadian singer/pianist Paul Gellman in the next Stars of tomorrow concert in Wonthaggi.

Jake is a multi-award winning pianist from Wonthaggi who draws inspiration from both the classical and jazz realms. A music student at Monash University, he toured Australia’s east coast in January 2019 with fem-funk band The Mamas.

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What’s wrong with this picture?

13/12/2018

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The Shallows, by Susan Hall

By Liane Arno

WHEN I interviewed Susan Hall I discovered a woman who conveys her passion for the environment through her art.

She showed me images of birds' stomachs which had been opened out to show a scene as colourful as a handful of M&Ms but far more sinister. Inside these defenceless birds were remnants of the plastic rubbish thrown away by our society. The parent birds feed their chicks a concoction of fish and plastic – mistaken for fish. They suffer a painful death.

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New horizons

12/12/2018

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After 25 years in the construction industry, Frank Schooneveldt revels in the freedom to create landscapes, on canvas and in real life.

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Art of the people

28/11/2018

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Gippsland Thylacine, part of the Bronze yarns sculpture park at Coronet Bay created by David Murphy in 2013

CALLING local artists, here’s your chance to create a contemporary and enduring public artwork for the Bass Valley and hinterland region.

Artists are invited to submit design concepts for an “innovative and engaging creative artwork” as part of Bass Coast’s annual public art program. The commission is worth up to $47,000.

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We will remember them

2/11/2018

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Larry Hills conducts the Bass Coast Chorale and orchestra during a performance of They Went with Songs at Foster on Anzac weekend in 2015. Composite photo: Catherine Watson

THE Bass Coast Chorale will perform local composer Larry Hills’ acclaimed cantata They Went With Songs in Inverloch next weekend as part of a program marking 100 years since the end of the First World War.

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In the flesh

19/10/2018

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Josephine Allen’s Ecce Femme Strength

By Josephine Allen

MY EXHIBITION Figurescapes was inspired by a trip to Europe and seeing Renaissance religious art in the flesh. I love the way they use everyday people and stories of the time to illustrate social themes.

This body of work was inspired by a conversation with artist friends debating the concept of erotism verses aesthetics in Renaissance religious art. l started thinking about whether females were crucified and found they were. All the female figures are on imaginary crosses and follow the concept of Ecce Hommo (Latin for “Behold the man”), said by Pontius Pilate when he presented Jesus, crowned with thorns, to the crowd before his crucifixion.

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Out of the depths

5/10/2018

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Coming to a cinema near you

5/10/2018

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The Legend of Ben Hall opens the festival in the Wonthaggi Cinema tonight and will be followed by Q&A with the director, producer and cast members.

Films from Australia, France, Lebanon, Iceland, Japan, Israel screen in this weekend’s Wonthaggi International Film Festival.

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The art of living

4/10/2018

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James Glover in trademark shirt sleeves and sleeveless jumper
during one of his art classes at the Wonthaggi Technical School.

By Catherine Watson

ARTIST, teacher, an early conservationist, a man who spoke his mind … James Glover made quite an impression on Wonthaggi from the time he arrived as a young teacher in the early 1940s.

His artistic legacy is celebrated in a new book co-written by his daughter, Jill Miles, and Arnis Heislers. The Art of Living: Life and Artistry of James Glover will be launched at the Wonthaggi Library at 11.30 am on Saturday.

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Write here and now

3/10/2018

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The Bass Coast Writers 15th anthology is hot off the press.

By Jellie Wyckelsma

In 2003 a small group of writers discovered the need for a writers’ support group in the local area, so Bass Coast Writers Inc. was formed.

Ever since its foundation many writers have enjoyed and benefitted from this vibrant group; providing positive feedback to members if desired, and also promoting and encouraging creative writing.

Meetings are held at the Inverloch Community House, in the Inverloch Hub, from 1-3 pm on Thursday afternoons, except for a break during the summer months. New members are always welcome.

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Step this way for old-time bush dance

20/9/2018

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Dancing a reel at a Boulia picnic, Queensland, 1921. Photo: State Library of Queensland

By Mary Whelan

THE great traditions of the bush dance will be revived in Cowes next month when the Bass Coast Acoustic Music Club teams up with Cathy Jones and Judy Lawrence to run a community dance with an eye to the past.

The bush dancing style means everyone can join in as fiddle player and dance caller Maggie Duncan gives instructions until everyone has got the hang of it. No need to bring a partner, just join a set and learn the dance steps as you go.

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The art of mystery

13/9/2018

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Liane Arno gets up close with Ken Griffiths’ enigmatic Mardi Gras 1, the winner of Bass Coast’s top arts prize for 2018.

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Men at war

13/9/2018

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Jake Benson, left, Nick Carver and Anthony Kennedy are "The Boys" in Sophie Cuttriss’s production for the Wonthaggi Theatre Group.

By Gill Heal

AT FIRST glance, The Boys mightn’t be your top choice for a good night out. Most people would opt for anything rather than a drama responding to the rape and murder of a Sydney woman back in 1986.

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Straight from the heart

12/9/2018

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Post readers can win a double ticket to Kavisha Mazzella’s concert in Inverloch on Sunday.

By Sandy Guy

MULTI-award-winning musician and singer Kavisha Mazzella loves crossing musical boundaries and creating community experiences, and she’ll be doing just that in Inverloch on Sunday.

At a special afternoon performance at the Anderson Inlet Angling Club, Kavisha will perform original songs from her new album The Fearless Note. Kavisha accompanies herself on acoustic guitar, while violinist Nic Lyon wreathes soulful violin lines into the songs.

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