Bass Coast Post - Liane Arno

Fancy footwork

13/12/2022

Gay Gibson, front, with tap dancers Jenny Adrichem, left,
Terry Guilford and Christine Lay. After a lifetime of dancing, Gay is still spreading the joy of a good workout for the body and the mind.

By Liane Arno

WITH my early childhood in England I had no idea who Gay Gibson was referring to when she talked about finger-clicking, plaid suited and hatted Happy Hammond. I googled him when I got home and found a YouTube of this infectiously smiling fellow singing, “Happy Days are Here Again” with Princess Panda and Lovely Anne. Much of the film stock of this Channel 7 children’s program is now destroyed. If it wasn’t, we would be able to see Gay dancing on stage as a pre-teenager.

Gay was ‘discovered’ when a talent scout raced out from the Myer Emporium (as it was called then) when she was walking past as a four-year-old with her mother and three-year-old sister and said, “Oh!” the talent scout said. “That’s just what I’m looking for!”

Surf’s up, Nauru style

19/10/2022

Nauru Surf Club. Wonthaggian John Short is at rear. Photo: Darrius Abel Detenamo

By Liane Arno

“WHERE do you come from?” We were in Nauru doing our volunteer work when we met up with an expat. You know from your own travels that this is a common first question.
“You won’t have heard of it.”
“Try me,” he responded.
“Right down the south of Victoria, a bit past Phillip Island,” I said.
“Yes – but what’s the name?” he persisted.
“Wonthaggi,” I eventually provided, knowing full well he didn’t have a clue where it was.
“You’re shitting me! I was born there.”

The good oil

10/9/2022

Frank Cimino shares some tips on growing good olives.

By Liane Arno

IN A rare fit of anger, Matt threw down his paring knife and declared, “That is the last olive I am ever going to pickle.”

In front of him was a huge jar of olives that he had religiously sliced a small cut to enable the brine in which they were immersed to take away their bitterness. Not only had he laboriously slit every one of the olives he was now ‘looking forward’ to a daily regime of changing the water until he could then separate them out into smaller sterilised jars and then immerse them in oil.

Sound familiar?

Here’s to you, Tex

2/6/2022

$Picture$ Tex Abrahamson, pictured in his element at the Royal Mail bar, claimed
to be “a man of few words and no principles whatsoever“.

By Liane Arno

MANY of the drinkers at Archies Creek were creatures of habit. Tex was no exception. Without fail Tex would turn up at the Creek on a Saturday night – because he always had. Despite the fact that there were no longer bands on a Saturday night, and despite the fact that the rest of the locals came in the afternoon to place their bets in the front bar, and would be gone by 5pm, Tex doggedly came in on Saturday nights. Sometimes it would be only him and me in the bar, but with the restaurant full.

The coal miner’s daughter

17/5/2022

Wendy Crellin, left, with her father Allan Opie, at a union rally. Community service is in her DNA.

By Liane Arno

NATURALLY I had known of Wendy Crellin, as most of us do who have anything to do with art and community in Wonthaggi – so I was most intrigued to learn of her history.

Wendy’s father, Allan Opie, was a fascinating man. His working life started at 14 as a brace boy following his father’s footsteps in the Wonthaggi Mine and has been variously described as a communist, radical, person of interest to ASIO, union man, activist, fighter (he fought under the name of Tiger Opie), influencer, community leader and loving husband and father.

It took a great deal of courage to take on this dangerous work in the most appalling conditions. He became passionate about ensuring the safety of his fellow miners. As a young man he was part of a stop work meeting over conditions on the very day that an explosion killed 13 men. The Rescue Station mobilised the would-be rescuers but to no avail.

Tutus not required

7/4/2022

Rapt attention as Wendy Crellin leads the seniors’ corps be ballet. Photos: Catherine Watson

By Liane Arno

WHEN I first met my husband Matt (or should I say a little bit after I met him for decency sake!) I used to laugh that when he took his knickers off he would pick them up by his toes, fling them into the air well over his head and catch them on the way down as they sailed past his shoulders. I told him that I would know he was an old man when he couldn’t do that any more. Without giving too much away I noticed that he did this less and less – but lately there has been a resurgence. And why? Because Matt has joined Wendy Crellin’s ballet barre classes at the Rescue Station.

Smooth moves

11/2/2021

When it comes to Vinyasa yoga, it’s all about the belly button, Amy Wallace explains to Liane Arno.

By Liane Arno

I KNOW. You are probably, like me, struggling to work out what the Bee Gee’s hit song, “Staying Alive” and yoga have in common. After all, the song takes us back to a time of long hair, tight clothes and falsetto voices as we danced beneath disco balls scanning the heaving mass of bodies to see if the man or woman of our dreams had the right rhythm. Yoga, however, makes us think of a cross-legged Indian gentleman wearing a loin cloth and turban and emitting a sonorous sound, seemingly without taking a breath.

My day in court

28/1/2021

The attack on Capitol Hill reminded Liane Arno of the day she found herself in court, transformed from witness to accused

By Liane Arno

LIKE many of us, I looked on in horror as the US Capitol was invaded. Scenes of people carrying guns, looking like something out of Mad Max (or worse, in op shop fatigues) screaming out to kill whilst the legislators hid under desks had me glued to the screen.

It made me think back to the last time I was in a place of law in Australia. I was there to provide a character reference for a fellow we had befriended. I rarely carry a bag – but on this occasion I brought along my laptop so I could continue to work whilst waiting for the court appearance. My friend went through the metal detector first. Being so tall he almost skimmed the lintel. Giving my bag to the burly security man, my 5’3” (1.6m) self followed closely behind.

A dash of colour

17/9/2020

Pippin by Monica Smith

By Liane Arno

I DON’T think I have laughed so much for a long time. Starved for company, Monica Smith and I meet in person rather than do the interview over the phone in order to see and talk about her works of art hanging at ArtSpace.

But what is tickling my fancy is not her art – but her wonderful joie de vivre. Unless I am very much mistaken the demographics of Bass Coast Post’s women audience would suggest that the vast majority have been through both puberty and menopause. So you can imagine my hoots of delight as Monica described her relationship with her pubescent daughter some years ago when this terrible and confusing mix of hormones was raging in equal measure in both the female members of the household.

The golden touch

16/7/2020

Jeni Jobe with her entry for this year's Archies Bald Prize 2020 -
a 2D Portrait of Chris and 3D Medicine man in Stoneware)

By Liane Arno

JENI Jobe and I first got to know each other in 2019 when she saw that I was wanting to put a book together about the Archies Bald Portrait Prize that she had been a part of.

Out of the blue I got a message from her asking if I would like some pro bono help putting it together. I was on the one hand reluctant to accept as I knew how much work it would involve but on the other hand thrilled as to do the Prize justice it needed a professional graphic artist to compile the book – but we had no funds as we were all volunteers and all the funds we raised went to the Cancer Council. She did the artists proud.

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. 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 second reason is that Chelle Destefano is quite simply a remarkable woman.

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.