In the loop July 17: quick picks

Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano, Hidden Spaces, Ready Stages

courtesy of the artist

Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano, Hidden Spaces, Ready Stages

Winter Season, Arts Centre

In addition to a very impressive season of major works in the main theatres— Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach (31 July-4 Aug), ADT’s Proximity (15-18 Aug) and US Dance company MOMIX’s Botanica (7-11 Aug)—Melbourne’s Arts Centre is also filling its hallways, foyers and rehearsal rooms with new commissions and site-responsive works. Visual artists Gabriella and Silvana Mangano have been prowling the underground tunnels and forgotten chambers of the complex to create a video installation titled Hidden Spaces, Ready Stages (27 July-4 Aug). Poet-in-residence Kate Larsen will be live tweeting poems displayed on the venue’s signage in Poetry by LED (5-11 Aug). An interactive audio tour, 5 x 5 x 5, sees emerging composers, mentored by leading artists, create works for five different locations around the centre experienced via personal MP3 players (27 July-18 Aug). Showing in the rehearsal rooms will be Saskia Moore’s Dead Symphony, a music and light show inspired by near-death accounts (7-10 Aug) and Swiss company Trickster-p will present .h.g., a haunted house version of Hansel and Gretel through which the audience amble with torch and iPhone app (8-11 Aug).
Winter, Arts Centre Melbourne; from July 27-18 August; artscentremelbourne.com.au

Old Kings in Exile, Soundstream Collective

Guest curator Brett Dean will be conducting the Adelaide-based Soundstream Collective in this program featuring leading Australian composers. Along with Dean’s Sextet (Old Kings in Exile) will be Richard Meale’s Incredible Floridas (the inspiration for Dean’s work), along with pieces by Anthony Pateras and James Ledger. The concert is co-presented by the New Music Network in both Adelaide and Melbourne. Look out for a review on the Matthew Lorenzon-RealTime new music blog, Partial Durations http://partialdurations.wordpress.com/.
Old Kings in Exile, Soundstream Collective; Adelaide, Elder Hall, 19 July, 7:30pm; Melbourne Recital Centre, 23 July, 7pm; www.soundstream.org.au/

The Capital Gains Consultation Project, Teik-Kim Pok

Teik-Kim Pok, The Capital Gains Consultation Project (2013)

courtesy of the artist

Teik-Kim Pok, The Capital Gains Consultation Project (2013)

Performer Teik-Kim Pok has been chatting to passersby and business owners in the Haymarket/Chinatown area of Sydney for the last year in an attempt to formulate a new transactional economy based on micro-narratives. You can join him for a meaningful exchange of wares on Friday night at the Dixon Street Markets. You can also submit stories and images to the blog.
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, The Capital Gains Consultation Project, Teik-Kim Pok, Dixon Street Night Markets, Sydney, 19 July 2013, 5-9pm; www.4a.com.au/

White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, Malthouse

White Rabbit Red Rabbit, writer Nassim Soleimanpour stops the performance by Richard Fidler and introduces himself to the audience at WTF2013, Brisbane

photo Studio Impressions

White Rabbit Red Rabbit, writer Nassim Soleimanpour stops the performance by Richard Fidler and introduces himself to the audience at WTF2013, Brisbane

Witnessing Nassim Soleimanpour’s White Rabbit, Red Rabbit at the World Theatre Festival in Brisbane this year Stephen Carleton wrote: “It is an extraordinary theatrical experiment… It will influence writers, theatre stylists and experimenters of form and structure for years to come” (RT114). Melbourne audiences can now witness this unique theatrical creation in which, each night, a different actor is handed the script (previously unsighted) and must perform it, ably assisted by his or her audience.
White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, project curator Janice Muller, performers Rodney Afif, Alison Bell, Alan Brough, Shareena Clanton, Daniela Farinacci, Ming-Zhu Hii, Bert LaBonté, John Leary, Caroline Lee, Brian Lipson, Genevieve Morris, Brian Nankervis, Sam Pang; Malthouse, 23 July-3 August; www.malthousetheatre.com.au

Hello, Becky Hilton & Producciones La lagrima

Alejandra Lopez Guerrero, Hello

courtesy Producciones La lagrima

Alejandra Lopez Guerrero, Hello

Hello is a cross-cultural long distance collaboration between Melbourne choreographer Becky Hilton and four young dancers from regional Mexican dance company Producciones La lagrima. Hilton has worked with the dancers via all communication conduits—Skype, Facebook, YouTube, text and chat—as well as face-to-face to create intimate dance portraits of these young people’s lives. The audience experiences the work first as an installation followed by a seated “traditional spectacle.”
Hello, Becky Hilton & Producciones La lagrima, 1000 £ Bend, 361 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, 23-25 July;
www.helloprojectmelbourne.com/

Here&Now13, Lawrence Wilson Gallery

Clive Collender, Stilfontein, South Africa, December 1957, 2013, pencil and pen on paper

image courtesy and © the artist, photo Acorn Photo Agency

Clive Collender, Stilfontein, South Africa, December 1957, 2013, pencil and pen on paper

Here&Now13 is a survey exhibition showcasing the work of 11 Western Australian artists. The artists have been in a year-long development and mentorship program produced by DADAA (Disability in the Arts, Disadvantage in the Arts WA). Curator Katherine Wilkinson sees the exhibition as part of a “growing national and international trend to contextualise disability arts practice within the larger narratives and discussions of contemporary art…not attempting to define its lineage or rely on the model of Outsider Art” (press release). The exhibition will be accompanied by a symposium featuring keynote speaker Carrie McGee, Educator in Community and Access Programs, Department of Education at MOMA, New York.
Here&Now13, artists Katrina Barber, Patrick Carter, Clive Collender, Aquinas Crowe, David Guhl, Tim Maley, Julian Poon, Jane Ryan, Robert Turpin, Lisa Uhl and Robin Warren, Lawrence Wilson Gallery, University of Western Australia, Perth; 27 July-28 September; www.lwgallery.uwa.edu.au; http://www.dadaa.org.au/

Home 3, Olaf Breuning, IMA

Home 3, Olaf Breunings

courtesy the artist

Home 3, Olaf Breunings

Wandering through a gallery in Denmark a few years ago I came across Swiss artist Olaf Breuning’s Home 2. It’s a disturbing half-hour video in which a bumbling American, Brian Kerstetter, with alarmingly red hair and reptilian contact lenses, tramps through Japan, Papua New Guinea, Switzerland and Ghana. He talks incessantly, portraying the Western world at its most idealistic, naïve, misguided and often offensive. Kerstetter (who possibly may be Breuning—one of art’s little secrets) has all the cringe-worthy yet compelling and revelatory qualities of Ali G. The final work in the Home trilogy sees Kerstetter take on New York, and is currently screening at IMA.
Home 3, Olaf Breuning, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; 8 June-27 July; http://www.ima.org.au/pages/exhibitions.php