Whip It

Rewatched for the feelgood factor. Seems like I've watched it more than just the once before.

The Exam

Two sisters, Iraqi Kurds, become involved with a university entrance exam cheating scheme. There's a built in tension - maybe not fully exploited - but what lifts the film a bit is the way it depicts the various social and cultural forces in play and how they crush women. Via MIFF streaming.

Joy Williams - Harrow

Lacerating, bewildering, endlessly opaque and alarming. There's revelation here but I couldn't say what. Joy Williams might be just about the best writer going around, especially her short stories (and her shorter stories). Harrow is a novel, and a bit like the other novel of hers that I've read, The Quick and the Dead, I felt the whole time that it was slipping by without my grasping it properly, but also that the novel is her least ideal form. Maybe both are true? I don't have the words for the style in which she's working - Harrow has something of the parable in its depiction of environmental, social and moral collapse and the surreal (irreal) networks and institutions that populate its hollowed out future America, but its meaning is deliberately difficult to grasp, and its form uninviting in a way that mirrors the devastation it's about.

Hiromi Kawakami - People From My Neighbourhood

The loose interconnections between these short short stories add a bit to their enjoyability, with the cumulative effect of all the whimsies and unrealities building as the occasionally recurring characters acquire marginally more texture across them. I liked this, didn't love it - the register in which it works is appealing, and rarely slips into being overly precious, but the intimations of depth never quite coalesce either. (In that way, and others, it reminds me of much of Amelie Nothomb.)

Mickey Guyton - Bridges ep & Remember Her Name

Some great quality songs across these two records - some appearing on both (Bridges is particularly strong) - and others that are a bit generic. The mix of country and (Black) pop elements feels unforced and of a piece, and Guyton's voice is consistently strong. "Heaven Down Here", "Bridges", "Rose", "Black Like Me", "All American".

"Light: Works from Tate's Collection" (ACMI)

'The history of light is essentially the history of human perception', the introduction to "Light" (the exhibition) declares, and that's probably a good 50 per cent of why I'm so drawn to art that's specifically about - or of - light. Of all art's subjects, perceptions of the world might be the one that most consistently resonates with me, tied up with that everlasting interest in phenomenology and equally everlasting seeking out of art - of all kinds - that is able to render experiences of the world in a way that (aptly) illuminates. The other 50 per cent would be the sensory and aesthetic attraction of light as subject/object and medium/form - an appeal that's immediately accessible, as well as deep. So I wasn't surprised to really enjoy this exhibition, given its combination of theme and source - ie the Tate. 

Olafur Eliasson - "Stardust particle" (2014)

It starts at the end of the Enlightenment, and explicitly plays out the competing - and sometimes mingled - forces of religion, science, the spiritual and the aesthetic (notably more or less wholly missing is the political) that can be traced from that time on, moving more or less chronologically forward but with a couple of anachronistic placements, notably the Yayoi Kusama piece, "The Passing Winter" (2005) - you look through the small circles cut into its reflective surfaces, to see yourself and others reflected and refracted over and over. 

John Brett - "The British Channel Seen From the Dorsetshire Cliffs" (1871) - almost too much, but remarkably sumptuous

Liliane Lijn - "Liquid Reflections" (1968) - hypnotically rotating, the artist's aim being to capture light and 'keep it alive' within a sculpture, and I was startled to see how far back it dated

For me, it was a fast forward through several of my absolute favourites (Monet - "The Seine at Port-Villez", 1894 - Kandinsky, Eliasson, Turrell) interspersed through others whose quality I well know (Turner, Constable, Sisley, Pissarro, Albers, Bridget Riley, Kusama) which together provided most of the highlights, along with a few discoveries, most notably the Liliane Lijn piece and Tacita Dean's 14 minute video piece "Disappearance at Sea" (1996) which has a churning quality in which light and density coexist and struck a chord that I haven't felt for a while but was unmistakeably the real thing.

"Swinging" (1925)

"Disappearance at Sea"

"Raemar, Blue" (1969) - one of his whole room pieces

(w/ R)

Regina Spektor - Home, Before and After

Regina Spektor is an artist for whom I'll probably always have a soft spot, and Home, Before and After is pretty sweet.

Wilco - Cruel Country

I almost didn't get there with this one. 21 songs, 77 minutes (the ingrained habit of a long time ago reminding me that's nearly the upper limit for what will fit on a single cd), and a prevailing monochrome-ness in sound and dynamics presented a barrier. Lucky I kept with it though, as amongst those 21 understatedly Wilco-country songs there are many that reveal themselves, with a bit more attention, as quite lovely, and the whole thing as worth the time.

"Ultra Unreal: New myths for new worlds" / "Vivienne Binns: On and through the surface" @ MCA

A disproportionate number of the greatest experiences of art that I've had in Australia have been in the MCA, but the current offerings didn't offer me much.

"Ultra Unreal" had a few cool pieces, and I watched the whole of Lawrence Lek's "Geomancer" (2017; 48 minutes) even though I found it more interesting for its surface and style than for its substance in its depiction of artificial intelligence in a future Singapore where much of the world has been drowned by rising sea levels, and quite a bit of Club Ate's (Justin Shoulder, Bhenji Ra and collaborators) "ANG IDOL KO / YOU ARE MY IDOL 2022" (29 minutes) which had a real warmth in its storytelling of Filipino mythology melded with queer, trans and animist ways of being.

Some of the Vivienne Binns paintings were interesting and nice enough, but nothing really stuck with me, across the wide field that she's covered in her career.

"Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes" @ AGNSW

There wasn't much on at the AGNSW so I had a look at this. Favourites below.

Wendy Sharpe - "Witches with green light"

Noel McKenna - "Tamara entering the room"

Laura Jones - "Brooke and Jimmy"

Nick Stathopoulos - "The Man in the red scarf: Wayne Tunnicliffe"

Natasha Walsh - "Dear Brett (the blue room)"