In a world that seems to scream “More Womaen in High Places Please!” Australia’s penultimate writers award – the Miles Franklin – has an all-female shortlist its 2013 Award, Australia’s most prestigious literary prize. First timer – novelists that is –  Romy Ash, Annah Faulkner and Drusilla Modjeska are among the five nominees competing for the $60,000 prize.

Author of Questions of Travel, Michelle de Kretser, and Carrie Tiffany, who penned Mateship with Birds, complete the shortlist. Romy Ash says she is excited to be a part of the female dominated list. She says her book Floundering is a simple story about a mother who effectively kidnaps her two sons from their grandmother’s house ::::

Image above: 2013 Miles Franklin prize shortlist authors – clockwise from top-left – Romy Ash, Michelle de Kretser, Drusilla Modjeska, Annah Faulkner, and Carrie Tiffany.

The 2013 Shortlist

• Romy Ash – Floundering
• Annah Faulkner – The Beloved
• Michelle de Kretser – Questions Of Travel
• Drusilla Modjeska – The Mountain
• Carrie Tiffany – Mateship With Birds

“It would mean a great deal for my book,” Ms Ash said.”It would mean so many more people would read it.”

Ms Ash believes there will always be a demand for books despite a shift toward e-books and digital downloads.

“I like to take a real positive look at things,” she said. ”Maybe the big chains of bookstores might close but I think there’s always a place for a really beautiful local bookshop. I think people will always buy books.”

The Miles Franklin is considered the country’s most prestigious literary award for a novel which represents Australian life. The winner will be announced on June 19 at The National Library of Australia in Canberra. The five authors will also receive $5,000 in prize money from Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.

Judging panel member Richard Neville says at a surface level all five novels feature the same themes.

“The five novels are at a surface level all about family – the searching for their comfort, the crises when they fail, escaping their pervasive grasp, or the despair when they do not seem possible,” Mr Neville said. But more deeply these books write about the intersection of people’s lives with national, indeed international, stories and ideas. Each approaches their subject from very different perspectives, but all deliver complex, engrossing narratives which persist long after the books are closed.”

Simon Lewis, head of philanthropy and community at the Trust Company, has welcomed this year’s shortlist.

“Congratulations to all the shortlisted authors,” Mr Lewis said. ”The shortlist demonstrates how strong Australia’s pipeline of female literary talent really is,” he said

source: miles franklin

source: abc

]]> http://www.galleryview.com.au/2013/05/01/miles-franklin-goes-all-female/feed/ 0 http://www.galleryview.com.au/2013/04/22/legendary-divinyls-front-woman-chrissy-amphlett-dies/ http://www.galleryview.com.au/2013/04/22/legendary-divinyls-front-woman-chrissy-amphlett-dies/#comments Sun, 21 Apr 2013 23:49:30 +0000 Verity Penfold http://www.galleryview.com.au/?p=894 One of Australia’s most revered rock legends, Chrissy Amphlett, best known as the singer of the Divinyls, has died in New York aged 53. The charismatic front-woman was surrounded by family and friends at her home when she died on Monday morning.

Her husband of 14 years, former Divinyls drummer Charley Drayton, says Amphlett died of breast cancer and multiple sclerosis. In a statement released by ARIA, he added she had fought the diseases with “exceptional bravery and dignity”

Christine Joy Amphlett was born in Geelong, Victoria, in 1959.

She gained fans – including this fan – for her energetic performances, complete with a signature outfit of a school uniform and fishnet stockings. Amphlett revealed her fight against multiple sclerosis in 2007 and in 2010 announced she had breast cancer ::::

In a statement released via Australia’s music industry body - ARIA, Drayton added she had fought the diseases with “exceptional bravery and dignity. Chrissy’s light burns so very brightly. Hers was a life of passion and creativity; she always lived it to the fullest,” Mr Drayton’s statement said. ”With her force of character and vocal strength she paved the way for strong, sexy, outspoken women.”

In March this year she shared her feelings on her health troubles via her official Facebook page.

“Unfortunately the last 18 months have been a real challenge for me having breast cancer and MS and all the new places that will take you,” she wrote. ”You become sadly a patient in a world of waiting rooms, waiting sometimes hours for a result or an appointment. You spend a lot time in cold machines… hospital beds, on your knees praying for miracles, operating rooms, tests after tests, looking at healthy people skip down the street like you once did and you took it all for granted and now wish you could do that. I have not stopped singing throughout all this in my dreams and to be once again performing and doing what I love to do.”

Rock Pioneer’

Amphlett formed the Divinyls with Jeremy Paul after meeting guitarist Mark McEntee at the Sydney Opera House in the early 1980s. The bands early performances were insanely incredible, Amphlett’s vocals lit the stage and her presence was wonderfilled. In the seedy smoke filled clubs and pubs of Sydney and Melbourne – I was lucky enough to see the Divinyls a half dozen times through the early eighties, at Sydney’s Coogee Bay and Melbourne’s Northcote Hotel, as well as a few of their Kings Cross gigs, WOW - Amphlett was Australian Rock Royalty, cousin of 1960s Australian pop icon Patricia “Little Pattie” Amphlett, who had been married to Keith Jacobsen—younger brother of pioneer rocker Col Joye and leading promoter Kevin Jacobsen. In her autobiography Pleasure and Pain (2005), Amphlett described breaking into the music scene from the age of fourteen, being arrested for busking at seventeen, Amphlett said her performances drew upon childhood pain.

“She was courageous, she was original, she was a great poet. She had an incredible voice that was instantly recognisable, and she was, underneath all that, delicate,” Mark McEntee said.

Despite an ever-changing line-up, the band released six albums between 1982 and 1996. Their 1991 single I Touch Myself market the group’s highest point, reaching No 1 on Australian charts, No 4 in the US and No 10 in the UK.

“Everybody has always seen it in one way, but I see the beauty of this song,” Amphlett said of the song while speaking to Enough Rope host Andrew Denton in 2006. ”It’s about both of those sides, our higher self and our lower self and our sexuality and everything.”

Drayton says Amphlett hoped the song would also inspire women to a more serious task. ”Chrissy expressed hope that her worldwide hit I Touch Myself would remind women to perform annual breast examinations,” Drayton said in a statement. ”Chrissy was a true pioneer and a treasure to all whose lives her music and spirit touched.”

Former partner and guitarist Mark McEntee says Amphlett was an exceptional talent. ”Chrissy had a lot of the gusto, and the raw, the raw talent, and the ability to come up with something original and different,” he said.

In May 2001, APRA – Australasian Performing Right Association – as part of its 75th Anniversary celebrations, named the bands “Science Fiction” as one of the Top 30 Australian songs of all time. The band was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2006, the band played a short series of live gigs in Australia in late 2007.

“It is with great sadness that we learn of the passing of the beloved Chrissy Amphlett, a true pioneer and inspiration to a generation of Australian musicians and music fans,” ARIA said in a statement.

Andrew McManus managed the Divinyls for 11 years says Amplett had a dominating presence on stage.

“She was brilliant. As I said, she wasn’t only a great singer, she was a great songwriter. I think people don’t realise that,” McManus said. ”On stage, people couldn’t hold a candle to her. I remember when we did some of the big shows – festivals and what have you – no-one wanted to follow Chrissy Amphlett.”

Along with music, Amphlett also acted for both the stage and screen, starring alongside Russell Crowe in the musical Blood Brothers in 1988.

Glen A Baker described Amphlett as  ”…so ferociously larger than life. Pop music had trained us to expect that women in rock were kind of like accessories – pretty things in short skirts and winsome smiles,” he said. We didn’t really expect to see anyone who came on like a cavewoman. She was such a mighty singer, but she was innately so rock ‘n’ roll. Which is not to say that she wasn’t, when you were with her and knew her, a delight. She knew what she was doing and she played it like all rock performers would do, with a certain theatricity.” Baker said Amphlett would be remembered as an absolute original. ”She wasn’t trying to be anyone else, She was an innate, natural rock performer and she’ll be remembered for being so brave.”

source: apra

source: aria

source: facebook

source: twitter

source: wikipedia

source: abc

Avid art collector Leonard Lauder has given New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art an astonishing, no-strings-attached collection of Cubist art worth an estimated $US1 billion. The enormous collection, which Mr Lauder assembled over four decades, includes 78 works by Picasso, Braque, Gris, and Leger, and “will transform the museum,” a museum statement released said.

The Met has long suffered a hole in its early 20th century art collection, will be transformed by the completeness and quality of the sudden addition. The museum will also establish a new research centre for modern art, supported by a $22 million endowment created by donors including Mr Lauder, the gallery announced. The Lauder Collection will be unveiled late in 2014, the museum said ::::

“Leonard’s gift is truly transformational for the Metropolitan Museum,” Met director and chief executive Thomas Campbell said. ”Although the Met is unique in its ability to exhibit over 5,000 years of art history, we have long lacked this critical dimension in the story of modernism. Now, Cubism will be represented with some of its greatest masterpieces. This is an extraordinary gift to our Museum and our city.”

Mr Lauder is a major art collector – he began by buying Art Deco postcards at the age of six – his particular focus, hass on works by the Cubist masters Picasso, Braque, Gris, and Léger. He also collects Klimt. Much of his art comes from some of the world’s most celebrated collections, including those of Gertrude Stein, Swiss banker Raoul La Roche, and the British art historian Douglas Cooper

In a statement, Mr Lauder, 80, said his gift is for “the people who live and work in New York and those from around the world who come to visit our great arts institutions”.

“I selected the Met as the way to share this collection because I feel that it’s essential that Cubism – and the art that follows it, for that matter – be seen and studied within the collections of one of the greatest encyclopaedic museums in the world.”

Philanthropic Gesture

Experts estimated that Mr Lauder’s painstakingly put-together trove immediately catapults the Met into the forefront of world collections of Cubist art, equal or even ahead of renowned institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, also in Manhattan. Forbes magazine said the collection was worth about $US1.1 billion and that Lauder had therefore given away 13.5 per cent of his $US8.1 billion personal fortune. It also “enshrines him in the pantheon of the most generous philanthropists of all time,” Forbes said.

According to the magazine, which specialises in tracking the super wealthy, Mr Lauder becomes the 24th individual in the world to donate more than $US1 billion over the course of their lifetimes.

“He now stands shoulder to shoulder on that list with the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Eli Broad, George Kaiser, Michael Bloomberg, George Lucas and others,” Forbes reported.

The collection “distinguished by its quality, focus, and depth,” includes 33 Picassos, 17 works by Braque, and 14 by Gris and Leger apiece, the Met said in its statement.

Lauder has long been a major benefactor of the arts, in particular the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he became president in 1990, he’s been chairman since 1994. He has donated both money and many works of art to the Whitney, and is the museum’s most prolific fundraiser. Through the Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Fund, he and his wife have also sponsored several exhibitions at the Whitney. The fifth floor permanent collection galleries were named for the couple. Most recently Lauder donated $US130 million to the Whitney endowment.

Highlights of the Met’s donation  include Picasso’s The Scallop Shell – Notre avenir est dans l’air – from 1912, and Woman in an Armchair (Eva), from 1913.

source: afp

The library has launched a new iPad application called Forte, which can access more than 13,000 individual musical items, dating from the early 1800s through to the 1950s.

Downloading the digitised musical scores is popular among musicians and historians, but also art lovers wanting to study the elaborate illustrated covers. The app was written by Canberra techy Jake MacMullin using an open data set from the Government’s data website.

Some of the online favourites include the Advance Australia Fair sheet music of the 1900s and the iconic Aeroplane Jelly song. The music collection contains over 300,000 musical scores and the largest collection of music research resources in Australia. ::::

Senior curator Robyn Holmes says the application name is a play on words.

“Forte is a musical term meaning loud and of course this is a good way of shouting to the world about our wonderful sheet music collections at the Library,” she said. ”It is a fantastic record of Australian culture from the first days of importing music, then publishing music in Australia, right through to when rock music and recording took over in the 1950s as the mainstay of communicating songs. Sheet music was really the way in which people accessed music, played it in their homes, distributed it and shared it. Just like we do with MP3′s today, that was the role of sheet music.”

The music includes:

• Australian published and unpublished sheet music covering a range of musical styles, some digitised
• Historical and contemporary music, in notated form
• Archives of composers, performers and music organisations, sound recordings of folk music and dance
• Memorabilia and photographs capturing musical performance and music trade
• Music information to support research and study

The Library primarily collects music in notated form, though not generally multiple vocal or instrumental parts. Commercially recorded music is held at Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive.

The application was written by Canberra developer Jake MacMullin using an open data set from the Government’s data website.

“The collection is available at the library and online, but it’s the new user interface that makes the difference,” Mr MacMullin said. ”Having an iPad app allows you to do some clever caching so the pages can load a little bit more quickly, and you can flip from one to the next. You can also do things like allow people to save copies of scores offline for use when they don’t have an internet connection. I don’t think it will ever replace paper, but I think what this allows is that you don’t actually have to physically visit the National Library to access some of this material.”

Ms Holmes says it is like having a personal, browsable, portable music book.

“You can sit it [the iPad] on your piano, you can sing from it and it is actually easier to turn the pages than it is using paper on the piano,” Ms Holmes said. ”Which means that you can use it as a browsing function. Instead of having to go, find something, print it out then take that to an instrument, you can explore it at your leisure in front of an instrument.”

Highlights of the collection include:

• Australian Sheet Music – highly decorative covers of sheet music documenting performing arts history. Includes advertisements for stage and cinema productions, the latest musical instruments and recordings. This collection can be accessed for iPad via our Forte app.
• State Theatre Collection – over 13,000 published orchestrations, band arrangements and instrumental music composed or arranged for small orchestra to accompany silent movies. Primarily used in Australian film theatres from 1900 to the 1930s. Many record film screening dates and distribution stamps.
• Symphony Australia collection – a collection of chamber, choral, operatic, orchestral, piano and vocal works by Australian composers and arrangers from colonial music to the 1970s. Includes scores and parts used by the ABC for performance and original manuscripts.
• Helm collection – c.7000 scores of 18th and 19th century European and English vocal music.

Downloading the digitised musical scores is popular among musicians and historians, but also art lovers wanting to study the elaborate illustrated covers.

“Part of its marketing strategy, in a funny kind of way, was to make it as decorative as possible,” Ms Holmes said ”If you go to your Grandma’s old piano stool you will see sheet music that almost looks like posters, or programs or advertising material. ”It’s full of colour, life and information.”

The composers also captured the wartime and patriotic spirit of different eras.

“There’s a song for nearly every location of Australia,” Ms Holmes said. ”Manly by the beach for example, with beautiful depictions of Manly in its heyday as a tourist venue, and it was published through the daily newspapers as a kind of advertising. In fact Waltzing Matilda was a way of advertising Billy Tea when it was produced as sheet music in its second iteration, after the original was written.”

Some of the online favourites include the Advance Australia Fair sheet music of the 1900s and the Aeroplane Jelly song. For more info, check: www.nla.gov.au/what-we-collect/

A Sidney Nolan artwork which sat in storage for 40 years until it was unveiled at Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art in 2011 is being taken down. The spectacular mural is comprised of 1,620 individual paintings, which when hung as a polyptych creates a snake winding subtly across the paper mural.

MONA is the brainchild of eccentric millionaire gambler David Walsh, his acquisition of Snake was the catalyst for the museum.

Nolan’s serpent mural, Snake, was hung on a purpose-built 40 metre wall, it’s been a centre-piece of the museum which opened two years ago. Snake was described as a major structural component of the museum and one of the Nolan’s best, most dramatic works by Mr Walsh.

Snake will be replaced by an installation from the Japanese digital artist Rioji Ikeda in June 2013. If you haven’t had a chance to view Nolan’s spectacular work, hurry! More info: www.mona.net.au