By Ursula Theinert
 
LAST year ArtSpace Wonthaggi hosted a series of workshops called ‘Across the Waters’ that celebrated the migratory birds of Western Port.

As many as five million shorebirds from 36 species arrive on our shores annually after making the epic 12,500km trip from their Arctic breeding grounds.  The route they follow is called the East Asian-Australasian Flyway and it passes through 23 countries. For many of these birds, the mudflats and beaches of Western Port/Warn Marin are home from October till May.​

INVERLOCH writer Judy Vradenburg has pulled off a quinella with her history of a community campaign pulling off a second major award.
​
On Monday Wallace Avenue Community Park Inverloch: A Short History took out the Collaborative Community History Award at the 2024 Victorian Community History Awards. 

The book is a fly-on-the-wall account of community activism to save a local park from being sold by the council to a developer. ​

By Louisa Waters
 
VISITING Jan Learmonth’s studio and home at Inverloch, the phrase “salt of the earth” is befitting of the experience; quite sensorially as you take in sweeping views to the south-east of Andersons Bay, inhale the salty yet delectably clean air, which instantly calms one’s fraught inner self. But then also, less tangibly, when you are greeted by Jan’s warmth and humble disposition.

​It is the first sense you get of her practice, which is almost completely of the land. While humanly and humanely constructed, it feels devoid of an anthropocentric view. While Jan’s work rarely seeks to directly represent the unique landscape around her, the view from the studio is not one that can be ignored. The ocean is an ever-present force and so it seems to make itself present in the work in subtle if not overt ways. 

By Martin Cox
 
SOLACE and The Red Rattlers are groups with eerily similar people, mainly because they are mostly the same people but playing vastly different types of music.
 
The two groups will perform at Dalyston Hall at 2pm on Sunday December 8. For this concert we are very lucky to also be joined by the Stringz Costero virtuoso Dayna Roberts on violin.
 
Solace performs classical and folk music from the 14th to the 19th Century with a sprinkling of film and popular songs from the 20th Century. They include a nonet (that’s nine!) of singers plus recorders, violin and keyboard.

By Josephine Allen

WHEN I met Russell Kent in Perth in 1978, we were two eastern staters ... I was doing my final year at secondary teachers’ college and Russell had come west from Phillip Island and Melbourne to fulfill his itch for art and travel. He was living the life of an artist.

It wasn’t the life that had been mapped out for him. Born in the Cowes Hospital on 31 May 1954, he was a fourth-generation descendant of a Dalyston farmer and the first son of three to Jean and George Kent, bulldozer contractors. He spent his formulative and schooling years in Wonthaggi.  When Russell was thirteen his parents bought the Anchorage General store in Ventnor and the family came to live on Phillip Island.​

By Catherine Watson
 
Just over a year ago, at Berninneit’s opening event, Remi D'Agostin sat in the audience and wondered what it would be like to perform in such a beautiful space.

As a member of a local community theatre company, it seemed unlikely she’d ever find out.

But next month, Remi and her colleagues at Offshore take over that “beautiful space” for their new production My Sister Jill.

What’s more, their opening performance will be part of the first birthday celebrations for Berninneit.

​“Berninneit has been such an asset to our community in this past year,” Remi says. “It’s a beautiful community space and a bit of a dream for us, a community theatre group, to be performing in such a lovely space.”

By Catherine Watson

RAY Dahlstrom and Ellen Hubble were going to call their joint exhibition Depth, until they realised there were too many floating things in their paintings. 

​So they have called it Real & Imagined, the idea being that the title would challenge them both.

While Ray found inspiration in the depths of the ocean, Ellen looked beyond the clouds to outer space.   

​Long-time painting friends, these two award-winning artists work very differently.
​
For Ellen, painting starts with an emotional, aesthetic response to a colour or the play of light on the sea or a hill. Despite 30 years of art practice as an artist and secondary school art teacher, she cherishes the moment when the unexpected happens in her art.​

Robyn Arianrhod’s new book celebrates the power of signs and symbols.
Without them, Einstein wouldn’t have been able to imagine the curving of space-time 
and you wouldn’t have a smart phone. The Post asked our resident mathematician and science writer ​to tell us more – in simple terms. ​

Words: Catherine Watson
Photos: Laura Brearley and Catherine Watson
 
IT STARTS with chaos. Over 70 works of art of varying sizes, colours, shapes and textures for the Woodlands Exhibition in the Goods Shed … A fabulous collection of works but how do you even start arranging them, especially in a makeshift gallery?
 
You call in the A team: Karin Murphy Ellis, Susan Hall and Ursula Theinert, who’ve been hanging the exhibitions at ArtSpace for the past 12 years.
 
They approached the woodlands exhibition with their customary skill and good humour. Their mission: to make every artwork show its best side. ​

By Catherine Watson

“IF YOU go down to the woodlands you’re in for a big surprise …” That’s the theme of next weekend’s Woodlands Exhibition and it’s prompted an outpouring of creativity from our local artists.

Curator Ellen Hubble says it has been a thrill to watch the diversity and quality of the works as they arrived. They range from landscapes and botanical art to political art, sculptures, weavings and carvings.

All works will be displayed and on sale in the Goods Shed, Wonthaggi, next weekend.

Coronet Bay artist Ann Brown’s “Neighbours” portrays some of the many woodland dwellers. “The galah is showing off to the birds and other animals. The koala is not happy to be woken from his sleep. The goanna ignores the commotion intent on getting breakfast. The possum sneaks behind the kookaburra.”

By Larry Hills
 
THE title of the Bass Coast Chorale’s mid-year concert this year comes from a song in the soundtrack of the film The Diary of Anne Frank, which I've arranged for the chorale.
 
“If, at the sound of a wish,
The summer sun would shine and
If just a smile would do
To brush all the clouds from the sky.” 

​Maybe the choir’s wish is fitting for the concert on our shortest day of the year!