Bass Coast Post - Liane Arno

A man of many words

30/4/2020

Writer’s block? No problem for Kit Fennessy

By Liane Arno

Kit Fennessy sweeps into ArtSpace like someone out of one of his novels. A man in black, from his boots to his cowboy hat. Jeans and a thigh length trench coat seal the picture.

I, wearing the Covid-19 uniform of trackie dacks and floppy jumper (well at least I changed out of my slippers for the occasion), feel somewhat underdressed.

This whirl of energy stalked through the gallery drawn to some of the more (naturally!) flamboyant items on display.

I must say it was wonderful to show off some of the work of our artists given we had been closed for many weeks now.

Man of many parts

17/3/2020

Geoff Ellis, writer, photographer, councillor, activist
and petrol head. Photo: Shaun Inguanzo

By Liane Arno

“START with the gory details!” I am getting advice from Geoff Ellis on the technique he used when gaining the attention of meeting-weary colleagues in OH&S meetings. It’s a technique he still uses.

So – where do I start? What gore and guts can I reveal of our local councillor’s history? I quite like how he got here. Geoff reveals that his place in Australia was realised through the “assignment” of two Irish Catholic convicts.

One – his great-great-grandmother – a feisty, five-foot, cranky woman who was sent to Australia for stealing a cloak. Head shaved as a public humiliation as she never did what she was told, she was forced to work crushing rocks and boulders that would become the roads of the new settlement of Sydney. I can just imagine this gritty woman swinging a mattock and cursing, as the Irish are wont to do, imagining that every rock she bashed was the head of a person in authority. She met the man to whom she would bear 10 children (only four survived into adulthood) who had been transported himself at age 14 for pickpocketing. What a combination of genes for Geoff to inherit several generations later!

Making his mark

23/1/2020

Bricklayer, masseur, clay artist … Pat Wishart lets
his hands do the talking.

By Liane Arno

AS PAT Wishart rose to greet me, I saw he had a back brace on. “I know a really good masseur if you need one,” I quipped. Because in fact Pat is that really good masseur. Not long after I met Pat, I put my back out and could hardly walk. The agony when I tried to change the gears in the car as I drove to his studio brought me to tears. As Pat worked on my back, he told me that he could almost see through the skin and visualise the musculature of a person. When I went back for my second appointment, I told him I felt like a fraud – my back problem had completely gone.

What's the catch?

20/11/2019

He’s finished the paintings, he’s commissioned the music; now John Mutsaers just needs the words for his intriguing new collection.

By Liane Arno

IN THE midst of organising the Archies Bald Portrait Prize in honour of the hairless head and cancer fundraiser, chair John Mutsaers was diagnosed with prostate cancer. As he stood on the podium teasing people into answering whether they would have liked to be at the inaugural Archibald Prize in the same way that they were this evening at its tongue in cheek take-off (“Of course not – you’d be dead,” he quipped), he was not thinking of his own mortality – but what he still needed to do.

And what he needed to do was to finish his Infinite Birdcage series of paintings, which symbolises the human need for freedom. As John shows me around his home and studio I am thrilled that the series will have its first official showing at ArtSpace. Each piece is so different from the others and yet it is also such a cohesive series.

Banker finds his mojo

24/10/2019

Artist and ex banker Matt Stone with Loan Shark, his response to
the exposes of the banking industry by the Royal Commission

By Liane Arno

IT WAS only a few years ago and Matt Stone was already in his mid-60s that he completed his MBA. After years of mentoring senior executives in one of the top four banks and encouraging them to gain their qualifications, did Matt gained the courage to commence his own. School was no friend to him, as he says himself, “only a good place to play sport”.

The artist’s eye

13/9/2019

Burnt-out cars, disused factories and coal-fired power stations inspire Amanda Thompson’s intricate woodcuts.

By Liane Arno

AMANDA Thompson was home alone, cosily ensconced in her jammies, when an almighty noise came from next door. With her husband away, there was no way she was going to investigate. She buried herself deeper into the lounge chair and hoped that whatever caused it would go away, but she couldn’t ignore the urgent banging on the door that followed. Amanda opened it to find a young woman on the doorstep shouting at her that there was a car on fire at her neighbour’s place.

Let there be light

17/8/2019

Waking or sleeping, artist Joy Brentwood’s world is infused with colour.

By Liane Arno

I REMEMBER as a little girl when we first emigrated to Australia being given a book of Dreamtime stories. I am sure you will remember it if you were also lucky enough to have one. It wove wonderous stories of how Australia was created according to the peoples who have the oldest most accurate oral history in the world. I absorbed everything in it.

When I was interviewing the brilliant artist, Joy Brentwood, whose world is so infused with colour, I was taken back to that time when my young mind took me on its own colourful journey to a land of long ago.

Beyond words

2/8/2019

Chelle Destefano

By Liane Arno

MY INTERVIEW with artist Chelle Destefano was one of the most remarkable I have ever been a part of. I have just come away from the most remarkable interview I have ever been a part. Remarkable for two reasons.

The first is that it took place through two AUSLAN interpreters who not only translated the sign language of profoundly deaf Chelle Destefano but also relayed her passion. As much as I tried to understand how the minimalistic gestures of Chelle could be interpreted into full sentences with complex words full of expression I failed.

The art of fusion

2/5/2019

Frenchwoman Sofie Dieu uses Chinese inks, Japanese techniques and Australia’s natural world in her pursuit of "the numinous".

By Liane Arno

WHATEVER your faith, or even if you don’t have one, you cannot help but be moved by the majesty of a cathedral. It is what draws so many of us to explore these edifices to experience the vaulted archways, the gothic buttresses and the weeping angels adorning the majestic towers that were built to reach an all-powerful God.

magine, then, what it was like to be a young girl living in Reims, only a few metres away from a cathedral where the kings of France were crowned. Imagine you step over the threshold only to find yourself surrounded by a scene rich with stained glass windows, white robed priests and gold ornaments in a cathedral built over centuries with its origins in the fourth century.

The bald and the beautiful

17/4/2019

Deb Rielly attended one of the portrait workshops in the Archies Creek Hall just a fortnight before she died.
Photo: Mez Oldham

By Liane Arno

ON THE other side of a pile of diaries, scraps of paper and notebooks stuffed with cuttings sat a tiny framed woman with a shiny bald head, bright blue eyes that never lost their focus and a deep strong voice that gave no hint of anything wrong. Deb Rielly was dying. Having acknowledged finally that she had to get her affairs in order, she had decided she needed to write her life story.

The ties that bind

3/4/2019

Common garden plants and discarded objects are the raw materials for a group of abstract artists now showing their work at ArtSpace Wonthaggi.

Back to the drawing board

8/3/2019

Jackie Moss’s exhibition Coast Lines is at ArtSpace Wonthaggi until April 1.

No matter what distracted her, Jackie Moss always found her way back to art.

In a class of his own

4/2/2019

Arthur Nilsson. Photo: ArtSpace

By Liane Arno

ARTHUR Nilsson turned up for this interview with his long fingers bearing evidence that they had recently been engaged in painting in readiness for his solo exhibition at ArtSpace.

After a number of solo painting exhibitions, the current exhibition at Wonthaggi ArtSpace is titled Land and Sea. It’s inspired by the changing moods of nature and the grandeur of the Bass Coast, and also by his travels around the world.

New horizons

14/12/2018

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

The final chapter

15/11/2018

By Liane Arno

DEB Rielly is dying. She’s been told many times over the years to get her affairs in order. She’s refused every time. Until now.

She has written a book entitled Just Because – the title chosen because there is no point in asking why one person gets cancer, and another doesn’t, why one survives, and another dies. It is – just because.

Queen of the cast-off

16/10/2018

Regina Dudek collects the stuff discarded by less imaginative people and creates something wonderful. Report by Liane Arno

The shape of things to come

21/9/2018

Henry Moore sculpture, Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Photo: Sheila Thomson

John Mutsaers looks to another former mining area to see how art might transform Wonthaggi’s future.

Mature-age delinquents

16/8/2018

Cartoon by Natasha Williams-Novak

Research shows that after 55 our emotional intelligence begins to decline. Liane Arno can believe it after a recent stint in hospital.

Welcome to our world

17/7/2018

Artist Safina Stewart speaks at the NAIDOC Week opening in Inverloch.

A moving NAIDOC Week opening in Inverloch left Liane Arno feeling a welcome guest in this place.

A world of wonder

4/7/2018

After turning her back on her scientific studies, author Robyn Arianrhod was lured back by some great men and women of science.

Brett’s legacy

31/5/2018

In every Graeme Myrteza work, you will find the initials of his son Brett because it was Brett who drew him back to the world of painting.

Hard-earned knowledge

4/5/2018

"07.02.09 Trauma" by Ray Dahlstrom

Bron Dahlstrom has no doubt climate change was a factor in the 2009 bushfire that nearly killed her. ClimArt is part of her mission to spread understanding.

Out of the darkness

4/4/2018

The world of commercial photography has long been digital but Trevor Foon still enjoys the alchemy of film.

Looks like trouble

7/3/2018

W C Field and that nose

A temporary disfigurement gives Liane Arno an inkling of what some people have to endure their whole lives.

The well of creativity

21/2/2018

Filippa Buttitta with her portrait of artist Judy Cassab, a finalist in the 2015 Archibald Prize.

An isolated childhood forged Filippa Buttita's pre-occupation with art.