Newsletter
Red Rock Regional Theatre and Gallery
Newsletter
Edition 8/17
http://www.redrockarts.com.au
520 Corangamite Lake Road,
Cororooke,Victoria.
Cover: Painting by David Menzies
September 2017 September 2017
2 IN THIS EDITION
Contents:
In This Edition 2
Art Gallery: ‘Ichi-go ichi-e’ 3
Art Gallery: coming up 4
Carolyn Theatre: Mystery in the Air 5
Carolyn Theatre: coming up 6
Focus on Film 7
Been and Seen 8
Let’s Chat: Victoria Howlett 9
Artist profile: Janne Kearney 10
Monthly events 11
Calendar of Events 12
Around the Community 13
As always, there are plenty of initiatives
Welcome to the Red Rock Regional Theatre and
Gallery’s September newsletter.
August has been a huge month in the gallery
with the exhibiting of the annual
Corangamarah Art Prize works. On page eight
this year’s prize winner, Victoria Howlett,
shares about her art practice. Janne Kearney,
who is profiled on page ten, was awarded the
small art prize and the people’s choice award
went to Robyn Mackay.
On Friday September 29th
at 7.30pm RRRTAG
together with Regional Arts Victoria will put on
a great show with Mystery in the Air. We’d
love to see you come along and support your
local theatre venue. For more information
about this show and future performances see
pages five and six. What’s Mystery in the Air all
about?
…this is the show that transports audiences
back to the style, the fashion and - let’s face it -
the sheer political incorrectness of the 1940s.
Of course, back in those days, such luxuries as
a proper cast and a sound effects department
were the norm, but in these economically
stringent times, it’s all down to just our boys -
costumes, sound effects, scene changes, music,
voices - they’ll do the lot. It’s a big ask, and
occasionally they might even succeed.
The People’s Choice Award and also the Colac Area Health 'Packers Prize' –
Robyn Mackay ‘The Ridge’ – intaglio, relief and embossed woodcut.
ART GALLERY 3
4 ART GALLERY NEWS
CAROLYN THEATRE: 5
6 CAROLYN THEATRE:
By Sandra Fiona Long, Presented by La
Mama Mobile, with project partner For the
Crowded House.
What is hoarding? Why can’t it just be
‘cleaned up’?
Genevieve Picot features alongside Sophia
Constantine in this new Australian work
about Hoarding.
Performed in the round to a physical
rhythm of telephone calls, bird calls, lawn
bowls and dance moves, within a
transforming interactive set by award
winning installation artists Joanne Mott, an
ageing mother resists her adult daughter
every step of the way towards an important
inspection. Birdcage Thursdays takes a
theatrically innovative and tragicomic look
at the issue of hoarding and some of the
complexities around communication across
services and the families of those who
hoard.
Sylvia Mary Middleton sailed from Scotland to Australia in 1946
with nothing more than her trunk, a wedding cake and three
bottles of malt whisky. She was to marry her Aussie Flyboy.
Written and performed by Christine Middleton and
accompanied by a violinist and Scottish piper, this production
is a tribute to Christine's mother and the thousands of other
women who travelled to Australia post WW11 to become War
Brides.
2.00pm Tuesday 14th November
Memoirs of a Scottish War Bride
7.30pm Saturday 14th October
Birdcage Thursdays
Hoarding is a serious mental health issue which
affects 1 in 20 households. According to the
Melbourne Fire Brigade, 24% of preventable fire
deaths occur in hoarded homes. Hoarding puts
sufferers and their families at risk of
homelessness, ill health, family breakdown,
isolation and suicide. An estimated 46% of people
who hoard live with someone else, including
children.
For this event, Phase One Intent, we welcome to the Carolyn Theatre
Revival House Project, an interdisciplinary artist's run initiative which
is interested in combining art-song with contemporary film. Louise
Keast soprano, Shikara Ringdahl mezzo-soprano and Mark Connors
piano, will perform two German song-cycles alongside a 'filmic
accompaniment' by artist Alex Hobba. The song-cycles, Gustav
Mahler's Kindertotenlieder and Unvergänglichkeit by Erich Wolfgang
Korngold, touch on themes of immortality and mortality, tragedy,
loss and release. The film that will be screened alongside the live
performance of the song-cycles, is the product of an artist's
residency in Stolzenhagen, Germany, that Revival House Project
undertook in February 2017.
7.30pm Thursday 26th October
Phase One Intent // A Reflection on Mortality
Red Rock Film Society
Spring Season 2017
September 20/21 The Red Violin
A perfect red-colored violin inspires passion,
making its way through three centuries over
several owners and countries, eventually
ending up at an auction where it may find a
new owner.
2h 10min. Drama, Music, Mystery.
April 1999 (UK)
October 18/19
Umrika
A small village in India
is invigorated when
one of their own
travels to America
(aka, UMRIKA) and
details his adventures
through letters home,
sparking community
debate and inspiring
hope....
1h 38min. Comedy,
Drama
2015 (France)
November 15/16
The Fencer
Fleeing from the
Russian secret police,
a young Estonian
fencer is forced to
return to his
homeland, where he
becomes a physical
education teacher at a
local school. The past
however catches up
and puts him in front
of a difficult choice.
PG 1h 39min Drama,
History, Sport
2016 (UK)
7 FOCUS ON FILM
Films
start at
7.30pm
Library
RED ROCK FILM SOCIETY
members have access to all
the movies we have screened
since July 2012. The DVD
library is housed at
Rhodes Veterinary Clinic,
74 Gellibrand St. Colac.
Members are asked to return
the borrowed DVD within a
week.
The library includes films
from the 2012 Season.
Titles include:
A Separation
The Kid With A Bike
Four Minutes
Hannah Arendt
The Babadook
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Cloudburst
The Angel’s Share
A Hijacking
In A Better World
8 BEEN AND SEEN: Corangamarah Art Prize
Peter Kilby, ‘You Yangs’
Victoria Howlett, ‘Picnic in the Hills, Still Life in Imaginary Landscape’
Janne Kearney (Small Art Prize winner) with Richard Riordan and Merle Hathaway (judge)
Marion Manifold, ‘Drowning Raby 1’ Robyn Emerson and Monique Pope ‘A Single Drop’
9 LET’S CHAT: Victoria Howlett
Victoria Howlett is this year’s winner of the
$7,500 Corangamarah Art Prize, a
prestigious yearly award in the Colac region.
Victoria, who has been painting for over fifty
years and currently works from her studio in
Marengo, has her work in many national and
international galleries. Victoria returned to
further study in painting in her early fifties
after achieving much success as a potter.
Your CV is very impressive, Victoria.
You’ve been prolific in the art world for
quite some time…?
I knew from when I was eighteen months old
that I would be an artist. I remember walking
around in my grandmother’s farm house
garden in Mona Vale and staring at the sweet
peas and the vast blue sky with clouds
scudding across it. I’ve written about this in
The Bluest of Blue for my PhD about women,
memoir and art.
Where and how was the winning piece
created?
Currently I work from a studio in Marengo,
near Apollo Bay. My studio looks out on the
Barham River valley. We had a holiday home
in Apollo Bay from the 1970s to 90s so I was
familiar with the area and I moved back a
few years ago as I knew it would be the ideal
place for my arts practice.
This piece, Picnic in the Hills/Still life in
imaginary landscape, took quite some time
to come together. I had returned to one of
my sketchbooks from the 1970s containing
still life with landscape works and decided to
reimagine this as a basis for my
Corangamarah 2017 entry. Working on this
and other pieces can contain periods where
everything flows beautifully and then it can
be followed by months of block. Eventually
this piece came together as you now see it.
As mentioned, your CV outlines an
accomplished list of further study and
exhibitions. Please share some highlights?
When I was straight out of matriculation, I
tried to enrol in art school in order to study
Industrial Design but at that time in the
1960s I was told “girls don’t do Industrial
Design” and I was redirected to study
pottery. This led me to a successful career as
a potter. Then in my early 50s I went back to
art school at the Victorian College of the Arts
and continued painting, something I had
always done. I have taught art in many
institutions to a wide range of students,
been in many mentoring roles and also led a
lot of women on creative trips to the
outback, including women writers, painters,
photographers etc. I would often return
home from my different teaching roles at
RMIT, the VCA, other positions and various
field trips, pumped with excitement at the
creative spark and engagement with
students. My teaching career has always
remained on a sessional basis in order to
protect my own arts practice.
For future information about Victoria
Howlett’s upcoming November exhibition
see Metropolis Gallery’s website:
http://www.metropolisgallery.com.au/artists
/victoria_howlett/index.htm
For visits to Victoria’s studio please contact:
Suzanne Frydman spoke to Victoria Howlet on 9th
August
ARTIST PROFILE: Janne Kearney 10
RRRTAG is very privileged to have
exhibited the work of Janne Kearney in
both 2016 and 2017 for the
Corangamarah Art Prize. Janne Kearney’s
work has been chosen for the Small Art
Prize two years in a row – in 2017 for
‘Love’ and 2016 for her work titled
‘Don’t’.
Janne Kearney is a Geelong-based artist
who came to art later in life when she
started painting at the age of forty three.
Since then Janne has mastered the
photorealistic portrait form and her
recent work ‘86’ has been chosen as one
of only 53 finalists from over 2,500
entries from 90 countries for the BP
Portrait Award’s 2017 exhibition at the
National Portrait Gallery in London. The
National Portrait award has been running
for 38 years and this year runs at the
National Portrait Gallery from June 22-
September, 2017.
Janne’s 2017 Corangamarah art prize
piece titled ‘Love’ recently sold to a lucky
member of the public. Janne’s portraits
combine and present her passion and
dedication to presenting thought-
provoking and emotionally powerful
subject matter and viewers who have
passed through RRRTAG have been drawn
to these works and much discussion and
pleasure has been generated. Thank you
to Janne Kearney!
For more information about Janne’s art
practice see:
http://www.jannekearney.com.au/
Love, 2017
Run, 2017 Don’t, 2016
11 Other events at RRRTAG
Saturday
9th
September
Wednesday
27th
September
CALENDAR OF EVENTS 12
13 AROUND THE COMMUNITY
WINDOWSPACE BEEAC
September 2017
Lunette Lights, (2016)
Lunette Lights, (2016), is a series of five
photographic images that acknowledge
the substance and profile of the
landforms along Main Street Beeac. The
lunettes, or ancient sand dunes, are
understood to have formed over the
millennia as grit from the lake, driven by
winds from the south west, built up in
the north east a short distance from the
lake perimeter. To the contemporary eye
looking from the west, the lunettes
present as a simple graceful horizon line
waving about ten to fifteen metres
above the general land level.
Approaching from the east they present
as very buxom landforms, apposite
given the matriarchy of their Gulidjan
custodians.
The photographs document an
installation of December 2016 - January
2017: strings of small solar-powered
lights sought to draw attention to the
lunette profile. Entry to the Stinchcombe
property and assistance is gratefully
acknowledged, as is the photographic
collaboration of Tim Lucas.
More images/info at: http://windowspace-
beeac.blogspot.com.au
AROUND THE COMMUNITY 14
Please contact Suzanne Frydman at [email protected] with any queries, ideas and feedback.
Deadline for items in the next edition – September 21. Thank you for your ongoing support.
If you no longer wish to subscribe to our newsletter, please let us know.
Spring Madness
ISHA PAASSE
First solo exhibition by Isha Paasse,
showcasing a collection of mixed media,
honouring her favourite artist Monet.
A burst of colour and serenity that aims to invite
the season of Spring happiness into your life.
Exhibition Dates
September 1 – 30
Studio 92
70 Murray St
Colac