Scrambling for the dictionary

In my mind’s eye I can see streams of puzzled Age readers heading to their bookshelves this morning and dusting off their dictionaries. The headline  “Dignified, tasteful epithets for hero” over a report of Jim Stynes’ funeral yesterday certainly jarred me. Doesn’t ‘epithet’ describe a term of abuse? Did they mean ‘epitaph’ instead?

Apparently not, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines it as:

a. An adjective indicating some quality or attribute which the speaker or writer regards as characteristic of the person or thing described.

2. A significant appellation

3. A term, phrase or expression (obsolete)

And ah! there it is- under “Draft Additions 1993″

b. An offensive or derogatory expression used of a person; an offensive term; a profanity.

Well, well- there I was thinking that the headline was just plain wrong and inappropriate.  Do newspapers still have an educative function in teaching us the precise meanings of words (if indeed they ever did)? I’d like to think so, but given the sloppy proof-reading dished up in issue after issue, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Why this man is the quintessential Opposition leader

Margaret Whitlam died yesterday, aged 92.

Here’s what our Opposition Leader had to say:

On behalf of the Coalition, I offer my deep condolences to Gough Whitlam on the passing of Margaret. Margaret was a marvellous consort to a very significant Labor leader and an epochal Australian Prime Minister. There was a lot wrong with the Whitlam Government, but nevertheless it was a very significant episode in our history and Margaret Whitlam was a very significant element in the political success of Gough Whitlam. She was a great patron of the arts, she was a woman of style and substance and we should mourn her passing as we extend our deep sympathies to her friends, to her family and especially to her husband.

What does sexism look like?  When a woman can spend sixty years in public life and still be defined almost solely by her husband. Just thirteen words about her.

What does obsession look like? When even in extending condolences, he cannot help himself plunging the knife and twisting it.

Susan Ryan, former Labor minister:

It sounds an old-fashioned thing to say these days, but women were supposed to be in a servile relationship with their husbands, particularly if you were married to a famous man.  You were seen as the consort, whereas Margaret saw it as an opportunity to be engaged.

What does old fashioned look like? “She was a marvellous consort to a very significant Labor leader and epochal Prime Minister”.

What does churlishness look like? When we “should” mourn her passing, not that we “do”.   We do mourn her passing. We do.

‘Dickens’ Women’ with Miriam Margolyes

Having recently read Colonial Voices, I was very much aware of what an anachronistic performance Miriam Margolyes’ ‘Dickens’ Women’ is.  Generations past may have been the audience for a series of readings and impersonations, but it seems a particularly quaint genre now: a “nice night’s entertainment” as Barry Humphries’ Sandy Stone might have said.

But to describe this performance as merely “readings and impersonations” is to undersell it, because it is more like a theatrical essay, with a clear argument that is supported by the anecdotes and examples that she weaves into the work.  She argues that Dickens wove his own biography into the female characters he created, colouring them with his own anger, sense of betrayal, and often misogyny.  She moves back and forwards from argument and explication, to readings and then to performance of both male and female characters, sometimes in soliloquy, sometimes in dialogue.

The performance opens with Sairey Gamp from Martin Chuzzlewit, and I must admit that it took me a couple of minutes to recognize and recollect her.  Would I know who she was playing each time? I wondered, aware that even though I have read quite a few Dickens, I haven’t read them all and I often forget which character appeared where.  But I need not have feared: she wove into the narrative a clear identification of who each character was, often with a bit of contextualizing information.  It didn’t matter that I hadn’t read Dombey and Son, or The Uncommercial Traveller or The Old Curiosity Shop.

Margolyes has been performing this show since 1989 and it is a very tight, confident performance.  In creating her 23 characters, she uses everything – her body, her beautiful clear voice, timing, lighting, gesture and stance- and at times, she almost seemed to change physically before your eyes.  I found myself scarcely daring to breathe watching her embody Miss Havisham, afraid that the spell would break.  It didn’t.

A very nice night’s entertainment indeed.

My Prime Minister and Sexism

Thank you, Anne Summers, for your article “The gender agenda: Gillard and the politics of sexism” in today’s Age.  I have written, and then discarded several posts on this blog on this very topic, unsure whether I wanted to insert a current political event into what is, on reflection, a rather rag-tag blog.  But Anne Summers, among other things,  is a historian (author of Damned Whores and Gods Police)  and her article encapsulated many of the things that I have sensed about the treatment of Julia Gillard.  And, as I am working through in my own thesis about Judge Willis, “personality” is the most slippery and yet visceral factor in leadership, and when it lies at the heart of a dismissal, it is one of the hardest things to prove.  It is nowhere and it is everywhere.

I have not agreed with everything that Julia Gillard has done (her treatment of Wilkie is a case in point) but I am immensely proud of her as Australia’s first female  Prime Minister.  She is graceful under pressure, she has managed to negotiate with the cross-benchers, and as she has said over and over the last few days, she got things done.  The carbon tax, the mining profits tax, the tapering off of subsidies to private health insurance- these are big policies, passed in the teeth of trenchant criticism by vested interests with very, very deep pockets.  Kevin Rudd did not deliver these: she did.

I was one of the ALP voters who started rolling her eyes and slumping once Rudd began to speak as Prime Minister.  If you look back at my response to his speech at the Bushfire Memorial Service back in 1999 here and again here,  I was troubled by his tin ear and nationalistic grandstanding even then.  Everything was talked up, but nothing happened once the going got tough.

I was delighted that my yet-t0-be-conceived granddaughters will know that a woman can be a Prime Minister.  And yes, I even sent Ms Gillard a birthday card on her 50th birthday, telling her that.

The invective that has been directed towards her by Sydney shock-jocks in particular is appalling, and the criticisms of her “legitimacy” and “authority” (even though Rudd had so little support in the 2010 “coup” that he did not even demand a vote) have an undercurrent that she wasn’t a “proper” Prime Minister.  I liked the quotation from Mary Crooks:

‘Every time someone makes an attack on her authority to lead (as distinct from her policies), they are sending a subliminal message to every woman and girl that they are not welcome to sit at the table of real political power.

As David Marr pointed out on Friday, this is the missing piece of the puzzle over the decision to oust Rudd from the leadership in 2010. It was part of the decency, yes decency, of his colleagues that they did not elaborate on the contribution of his personality to the whole situation then.

I laughed at the irony this morning of Rudd praising “Albo’s” decision to plump for him, channelling every cricket and football captain you’ve ever seen interviewed after a match.  But clearly Rudd is no team player, no matter how many “o”s  he attaches to his colleagues’ names.

We do not have a presidential system: we vote for a local member who is a party member, and it those party members who choose their leader.  Rudd seems to have forgotten his constitutional history.  I’m surprised and disappointed that John Faulkner seems to have done so as well.

And as for Michelle Grattan in The Age?   For the past few weeks, I’ve decided that she falls into the same category as Peter Costello or Chris Berg from the IPA. Her columns are no longer commentary, or analysis: you know what she’s going to write even before she types the first word.

I did not contact my local member Jenny Macklin.  Even if she were a Rudd supporter (which she is not), I would not do so.  Our democracy does not work that way and I think that it is all the better that it does not.  I shall exercise my constitution-given judgment at the ballot box.

‘Sea of Dreams: The Lure of Port Phillip Bay 1830-1914′ at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery

If, like my husband, your appreciation of the beach is best bolstered by being in an air-conditioned building, far from the sand and the water, then you too might like this exhibition at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery.  It’s on until 19 February so you still have time to get there (just!), have lunch at Mornington, and if you feel so inspired, even walk down to Mother’s Beach, as we did on a beautiful warm summer afternoon.

Source: http://www.travelvictoria.com.au/mornington/photos/

The exhibition has been divided into five themes which highlight different aspects of Port Phillip Bay.  I can hear my uncle Peter reproving me for the tautology, but Melburnians generally call it Port Phillip Bay and I’m not absolutely convinced that a port and a bay are the same thing. (Did you know that it was originally named Port King (after King George)  by Lieutenant Grant? It was renamed Port Phillip by Governor Phillip Gidley King to commemorate NSW’s first Governor, Arthur Phillip “my worthy and dear friend, the Admiral, who, until now has not had his name bestowed on either stick or stone in the colony” [King to Murray, 31 Oct. 1801 HRNSW, iv, p. 602]  Although I wonder if King was being a bit bashful, thinking that people would think it was named after him?).

I digress.  The exhibition is divided up into five themes, which are arranged in different sections of the gallery.  The gallery, which is not large, has a long ribbon of the names of different spots along bay displayed just about the skirting board, spooling  from room to room.  I think that Melbourne people tend to be rather parochial over ‘their’ beach, identifying more with the Mornington Peninsula side or (for me) the other side over at Queenscliff. Seeing the scroll of names brought home to me just how many there are.

The first theme, “Land of Promise” examines emigration- both the experience for the emigrants themselves and for the families they left behind.  As well as emigration literature painting for a British market, it had paintings of the landing at Queenscliff, and a painting that one would hope the “home” audience didn’t see: the wreck of the ‘Asa Packer’ c. 1861 at Point Nepean as it was passing through the heads.  Although not directly related to Port Phillip, there was also a depiction of the wreck of the Loch Ard- after all, who can resist that story?- although I think that it undermined the focus of the exhibition somewhat to include it.

The second theme “Unsettling the Land” examined early depictions of the Port Phillip settlement.  A printed notice on one of the pillars was the Gallery’s response to criticisms that there was no Aboriginal representation of what we know as Port Phillip.  It explained that approaches had been made to the local Aboriginal community to become involved with the exhibition, but no response was received.  It reveals an interesting twist on the politics of depiction of indigenous presence, and the expectation that it will be represented- and what is to be done if the local community chooses not to become involved.   It pointed to the Tommy McRae painting of a corroboree (1890) included in the exhibition, but admits that otherwise the depictions of Aboriginal people in the paintings were executed by white painters.  I found it interesting that George Gordon McCrae, the son of Scottish painter Georgiana McCrae, painted a corroboree at Arthur’s Seat on the Mornington Peninsula in 1844-9 that looked very similar to the indigenous Tommy McRae painting (no relation or contact, despite the similarity of their names).  I had seen quite a few of the early Port Phillip paintings in this section of the exhibition before, but there was one Robert Russell sketch in particular that reinforced how scrappy and primitive that first white settlement on the Yarra was.

“Defending our Shores”, the third theme, highlighted the strategic importance of the Heads and their fortification, but also the ceremonial aspects of military and government display with visiting royalty, and navy and military manoeuvres intended to reinforce sovereignty.

The fourth theme picked up on trade and commerce, especially in the wake of the gold rush.  “Riding the wave” depicts the presence of American ships after the repeal of the Navigation Acts from the mid 1850s, and highlights the activity and wealth generated  around the bay.  Several of these paintings were themselves commissioned as a way of advertising the prosperity of ship-owners and entrepreneurs.

The final theme, “Whiff of the Briny” was perhaps my favourite, with paintings that showed the pursuit of leisure around the bay.  Artwork from different eras is placed side by side, so that you can move from a very detailed, almost draftsmanlike rendering of clothes and ships from the mid 19th century to the adjacent painting that might be a bolder, brighter and more impressionistic piece by one of  the Australian Impressionists. Conder, in particular, painted several works down at Mentone and Rickett’s Point, but other Australian Impressionists are represented too.

So, as is often the case, here I am telling you about an exhibition that is in its closing stages- so if you want to catch it, you’d better go soon!

Frocking up for the theatre

For a little treat the other night (well…a rather expensive treat actually) it was off to see the MTC production of The Importance of Being Earnest.  To get ourselves in the mood we watched Wilde starring Stephen Fry the night before, and sitting in the Sumner Theatre on Tuesday night, I was very much aware that we were laughing away at the same lines, probably delivered in much the same way to the audience at its opening night on St Valentine’s Day 1895.  It was a very traditional performance- no postmodern trickery or contemporary insertions here- and I felt rather overawed to be three rows away from one of the world’s greatest actors, Geoffrey Rush, right here in our shared home town.

What a striking, imperious and handsome Lady Bracknell he makes! (even though I don’t particularly think of Geoffrey Rush as handsome.)  He clearly relished rolling around in  the language, and being so close, we could see every raised eyebrow and every moue.  The rest of the cast was very good too, although if I had to name any criticism it would be at the slightly over-rehearsed delivery of Algernon’s lines. I recall Fry’s character in Wilde issuing the injunction that the lines should be delivered as sparkling, off-the-cuff repartee, rather than something that had been memorized and enunciated, and I think that the same observation could be made here too.

Two odd things about our night at the theatre though.  One was the sight of a very pushy woman, approaching everybody in the front row, asking them if instead of enduring their front row seat, they would be willing to swap with her seat at the back (“See, where the man is waving?”). When someone asked her if there was a particular reason, she said that she liked to be able to see their faces close up- well, don’t we all?  What amazed me was that someone actually did swap with her.

The second odd thing was an email we received a couple of days prior to the performance.  We have just endured a couple of hot days, and the email cautioned that the stage was heavily airconditioned for the comfort of the actors on stage in heavy costumes, and that as we were sitting in the front rows, we might want to bring a jacket or shawl.  It was good advice- it did get chilly after a while.

Patrons might have appreciated advice about their big night out at at Melbourne’s first theatre during the 1840s too.  The Pavilion, later renamed the Theatre Royal, was located on the east side of Bourke Street, between Elizabeth and Collins Street.  Garryowen describes it as:

one of the queerest fabrics imaginable.  Whenever the wind was high it would rock like an old collier at sea, and it was difficult  to account for it not heeling over in a gale.  The public entrance from Bourke Street was up half-a-dozen creaking steps; and the further ascent to the “dress circle” and a circular row of small pens known as upper boxes or gallery, was by a ladder-like staircase of a very unstable description. Internally it was lighted by tin sconces, nailed at intervals to the boarding filled with guttering candles, flickering with a dim and sickly glare. A swing lamp and wax tapers were afterwards substituted, and the immunity of the place from fire is a marvel.  It was never thoroughly water-proof, and, after it was opened for public purposes, in wet weather the audience would be treated to a shower bath. Umbrellas were not then the common personal accompaniment they are now in Melbourne, but such playgoers as could sport a convenience of the kind took it to the theatre, where it was often found to be as necessary within as without. The expanded gingham would of course, very seriously incommode the comfort and view of the adjacent sittings, but that was a consideration so trifling as to be scarcely thought about.  (Garryowen ‘Chronicles of Early Melbourne’ p. 452)

I know that we often complain about people with their mobile phones in the theatre, but there are worse things:

… the Pavilion would at times be turned into a smoking saloon, and even when some of the more mannerly persons in the pit would take off their hats and place them on the floor, the bell-topper, cabbage-tree, or pull-over, whichever it was, would be utilized as a spittoon for shots expectorated with sure aim from the dress circle.  If any of the unhatted individuals happened to present a bald pate, the spot was regarded as a justifiable target for hitting at short range, and terrible would be the indignation with which an unoffending spectator, somewhat sparse in hair, would find himself patted on the bald crown-piece with something analogous to a molluscous substance “shelled” at him from one of the side boxes.  In hot weather or cold the moist application was an unpleasant sensation, and naturally resented. The person so “potted” would pull out his handkerchief, wipe his head, jump up, and “rush the batter” whence he would be probably repelled with a black eye or enlarged nose. (Garryowen, p. 456)

So, are we ready and all frocked up for our night at the theatre? Let’s see …  umbrella, hat, handkerchief….I’ll settle for the shawl or jacket thank you.

At the NGV: ‘The Mad Square: Modernity in German Art 1910-1937′

Some months ago we went to the NGV to see the Vienna Art and Design exhibition.  As you walked around that exhibition, which took a largely chronological approach, the 20th century works in the final rooms became increasingly fractured, subversive and unsettling, and the political chill of the approaching Nazism was almost palpable.

However, entering this current exhibition, part of the Art Gallery of NSW’s travelling exhibition program,  what had seemed to be subversive in the Vienna exhibition now appeared defiant and brave.  As a child, one of my favourite stories was The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson, where a shard from an evil, broken mirror enters the eye and makes everything appear ugly.  Shards have warped the vision of the world here- a perverted, edgy, dissonant world- but it’s also a world clearly responding to the ugliness outside of  war, defeat, inflation, radicalism and increasing totalitarianism.

The shadows of World War I are long, and they manifest themselves through confronting depictions of maimed soldiers, pushed to the margins of society.  Were disfigured soldiers found in English art of the same period?- I’m not aware that they were.  I’m sure that the wounded were just as present but their meaning was different for the side that ‘won’ the war.

There is also the underlying menace of sexual violence, exemplified by Davringhausen’s painting of Der Lustmorder (The Sex Murderer) where a sickly, boyish prostitute lies on a bed oblivious to the murderer lying underneath (see here)  and there are film clips of abducted women in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, and debased women in Metropolis.  This is an ugly world.

The last room of the exhibition has archival footage showing Hitler’s Degenerate Art exhibition, where works such as these were collected and shown, captioned with ridicule, before being destroyed or sold off onto the international market.  One of the final paintings in the exhibition is The Mad Square, from which the exhibition takes its name, by Felix Nussbaum, depicting artists protesting against their exclusion from the Prussian Academy of Arts, their artworks tucked under their arms.  It is sobering to remember that Nussbaum and his entire family perished in the concentration camps.

This is an unsettling exhibition.  After a while, the blockbuster exhibitions tend to merge into a bit of an blur  (did we see that at The Impressionists? or Vienna? or Dutch Masters?) but I think that this exhibition stands alone. Well worth seeing.

There’s an excellent companion website here at the Art Gallery of NSW.

‘Pioneers of Bushwalking’ Exhibition at the RHSV

I’m up to my habitual practice of catching an exhibition in its closing days again. This time it is the ‘Pioneers of Bushwalking’ exhibition at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.  It was officially launched on the 24th of October by that intrepid bushwalker, Tim Holding M.P. and closes this coming Friday 9 December.

Between 2004 and 2010 the RHSV was donated archival material from the Melbourne Walking Club  including photograph albums, maps and archival material. The club was founded in 1894 as a male-only enterprise: a status which it (rather surprisingly)  still holds today, although women are welcome to attend ‘many’ of their events as ‘visitors’.  Early on it encouraged race-walking, and the exhibition shows two Edwardian gentlemen strutting along in that curious gait. However, it seems that a major part of their activities involved bushwalking, particularly in the high country mountain areas.

The photograph albums in particular are fascinating.  They are beautifully presented and labelled, and they document trips particularly in the 1930s around Healesville, Gippsland and the snowfields.  It looks to be a damned uncomfortable hobby, sleeping on groundsheets under the stars, or under tents with do-it-yourself waterproofing.  There’s a curious flavour to the exhibition though- lots of jolly-ho, rather private-boys’-school humour, and an unsettling hint of homophobia in one particular publication discreetly placed on a lower display shelf.

Looking at the names of the stalwart members, I was attracted by the name ‘Chris Bailey’, a now-deceased but well known Ivanhoe resident who was, among many other things, President of the Heidelberg Historical Society and heavily involved in conservation of the Yarra River. My husband noted R. H. Croll, prominent in athletic, literary and arts circles.

I thought of both these men whose names seem to pop up in varied contexts as I browsed the glossy magazine that came with The Age this morning.  It lists Melbourne’s 100 most “influential, inspirational, provocative and creative” people for 2011.  The 100 are arranged by theme: ‘provocateurs’ (the men and women shaking things up around this place); ‘power partnerships’ (when two heads are much better than one); ’cause and effect’ (the people encouraging us to give a little bit- or a lot; ‘social glue’ (Who brings everybody together to make things happen?); ‘bright ideas’ (Why didn’t we think of that?) ; ‘My first time’ (i.e. people’s debut events);   ’20/20′ (twenty inspirational people all in their twenties); ‘global sensations’; ‘changing lives’ (making a difference to people’s lives; ‘music’ and ‘from these hands’ (creative people).  Just flipping through, there is a strong entrepreneurial theme running through them, along with activism, sport, politics,and an emphasis on youth- although that may well just be me getting older!

I wonder what themes a similar list for the early 1900s would emphasize?  I think that early 1900s examples could be found under each of these headings- for example, there would be examples of young men, clever inventions, and provocateurs- but I think that the language to talk about them would have been different.   I’m sure that formal clubs and societies, organized with archives and meetings (just like the Melbourne Walking Club), would be far more prominent than the more ephemeral and individual-based networks that we see today.

‘The River’ at Bundoora Homestead

A wet, humid day and nothing to do on a Saturday afternoon so up we went to Bundoora Homestead to see their current exhibition ‘The River’. I’ve written about Bundoora Homestead previously.  It’s a beautiful Federation-era house, well worth seeing in its own right.

Chandelier in dining room, Bundoora Homestead

Another homestead that was once a gallery, Banyule Homestead, is very much in my thoughts at the moment.  More than ever I realize that if you value a gallery or a library or a museum,  then you need to visit it- you need to walk right through that door and go in.  In the case of Bundoora Homestead, it’s free and it literally costs you nothing: the gain is all yours.

Stained glass skylight, Bundoora Homestead

The current exhibition is called ‘The River’ and it centres on Melbourne rivers (well, creeks) the Merri  and the Darebin Creeks. In recent years of drought these creeks have dwindled to small puddles connected by a fitful ribbon of water.   One of the joys of the recent rains this year has been to look down from a train into the city, as you cross over the creek, and to see the water gushing and tumbling along waterways that had seemed so dismal just a few years ago.

The exhibition contains well-known works, most particularly Burtt’s depiction of the purported signing of the Batman treaty and several Heidelberg school paintings of river scenes around Melbourne, as well as 19th century photographs and engravings.  These are juxtaposed against more recent works on the Merri and Darebin Creeks, including reflections on the ‘treaty’ painting and more surreal and threatening depictions of these urban places.  There will be a lecture panel this coming Thursday 24th November at 2.00 discussing Burtt’s painting.

This is a terrific exhibition. I’ve seen reproductions of the Batman painting before, but not the original, and I was delighted to see Sarah Susannah Bunbury’s painting of her house on the Darebin Creek in 1841.  I liked the sense of fun in many of the modern depictions, and it was lovely to see it in a beautiful suburban gallery, close by to the two rivers featured in the exhibition itself.

 

Vale Diana Gribble

Many of us will have heard or read that Di  Gribble, of the now-defunct McPhee-Gribble publishing house died several weeks ago.  I read and reviewed Hilary McPhee’s book Other People’s Words a few months back here and when I heard the news, I wondered what had happened after McPhee’s book had been published.  How did Di Gribble react? I wondered.  How did they feel about each other’s career in the wake of McPhee-Gribble’s demise?

Hilary McPhee answered many of my questions in a tribute that she wrote for The Drum recently.  I urge you to read it here.