Art Smitten is SYN's weekly guide to arts, culture and entertainment in Australia and around the world. With a focus on youth and emerging arts, we're here to showcase culture ahead of the curve. From our base in Naarm/Melbourne, contributors interview, review, and cover the very best of what the world’s second-most liveable city has to offer. Whether it's film, fashion, photography or Fauvism you're into, Art Smitten is the place!
Hamish and Christian interview singer-actor Rhonda Burchmore, who’ll be performing in Morning Melodies at the Arts Centre of April 3, at 11am & 1.30pm. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Christian chats with artist Tristan Meecham, the ‘Marathon Man’ playing a starring role in the Fun Run at the Arts Centre on Sunday March 12 at 4.30pm. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Rebi, Molly and Jim chat with the members of Open Spatial Workshop, an artist group who's current exhibiton, Converging in time is on now at the Monash University Museum of Art until April 8. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Molly, Jim and Rebi chat with Amy Boyd, manager of the Vivien Anderson Gallery, about the 2017 Women's Show, featuring 20 Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander female artists, including Maree Clarke. The exhibiton is running until March 25. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Rebi and Molly chat to Brunswick Music Festival programmer and performing musician Chelsea Wilson. The festival runs over 2 weeks from Sunday March 5-19. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sandra Thibodeaux’s The Age of Bones is an ambitious, playfully political Indonesian-Australian coproduction now being hosted by La Mama in Carlton. For a play that extols (and some might say preaches) the virtues of working together across national and natural borders, it’s very pleasing to see how the production itself has exemplified this cultural harmony at every stage of its development. It also comes to Melbourne as part of the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts festival, which, for...
The Homosexuals, Or Faggots, is a new stage production at the Malthouse written by local theatre maker Declan Green, of Sisters Grimm, and directed by Griffin Theatre Companies artistic director Lee Lewis. I’ve been a fan of everything I’ve seen of Declan Greens works, and The Homosexuals, Or Faggots is no exception. It is a contemporary farce, set in a luxury apartment in Sydney owned by a married gay couple Warren and Kim, played by Simon Burke and Simon Corfield, Kim and Warren are both white...
Smithers reviews actor turned writer Camilla Blunden's solo show All This Living . Click here to listen to our interview with Camilla. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Molly interviews Nella Themelios, one of the curators of High Risk Dressing / Critical Fashion , an exhibition that's on at RMIT Design Hub in Carlton until March 18. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Aquarius is a three-part feature film depicting the life and struggles of its central character Clara, an ageing music critic played by Brazilian actress and former Golden Globe nominee Sonia Braga. The film opens in 1980, where Clara lives with her family in Aquarius, an elegant nineteen forties apartment on the beachfront of Recife, a seaside town on Brazil’s east coast. During a family celebration, it is revealed Clara is a breast cancer survivor. Flash forward thirty-six years, Clara is a 65...
The one person show is an exhilarating performance for both player and audience. For one, the performer is completely alone on the stage and must accept the accompanying pressures and risks. There is nobody to pick up the slack if the performer forgets a line, bumbles a scene, loses energy or has an attack of self doubt. If the audience reacts poorly to a line, or to a scene, or an act, there is nobody else to share the mortification with. And yet when the stage belongs to one person, that perso...
The Love Witch is a 2016 release written and directed by Anna Biller. It follows the story of a young beautiful witch Elaine, played by Samantha Robinson, who uses spells and potions to make men fall in love with her and ultimately kill them. The movie itself is shot on 35 mm film and is visually a homage to technicolour 1960s and 70s sexploitation cinema. The use of this film gives the movie a soft visual quality and sort of decentralises it in time - this is emphasised by the 70s costuming but...
Casey Affleck has been in the paper a lot recently for not the right reasons. Without getting involved or placing an opinion of the alleged allegations against Casey Affleck, I believe his career in Hollywood and acting should not be judged by his actions outside of acting. This is my own personal viewpoint, and shall be throughout my review of Manchester by the Sea. Directed by Kenneth Lonergan, Machester follows the events from the perspective of Joe Chandler, a handyman from Quincy, Massachus...
Gill and Molly discuss their thoughts, feelings and impressions of Aaron Posner's play Stupid Fucking Bird , before, after and during the intermission of its new production byLightning Jar Theatre, playing at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute until February 26. Click here to listen to our interview with director Peter Blackburn See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Andrew and Molly interview Adelaide Fisher, Ariel Cameron and past Art-Smitten host Will Dawson about their brand new community arts festival Happenstance , taking place along the Merri Creek in Coburg North on Saturday February 25. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Molly, Andrew and Jim chat to actor, producer and director Shane Savage about North of Eight's production of Mark O'Rowe's play Terminus , on at The Courthouse Hotel until March 11. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Andrew, Molly and Jim chat to theatremaker Nicole McKenzie about one-person show, Being a Good Person is Bloody Hard Work , now being performed at Hares & Hyenas in Fitzroy as part of the Sustainable Living Festival. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Christian interviews Rosie Jones, director of the documentary The Family which premiered last year at the Melbourne International Film Festival and is now in limited release. Click here to listen to Christian's review See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Molly and Andrew chat to Angela Conquet, the Artistic Director of Dancehouse, about their participation in the upcoming Dance Massive festival, which runs from March 14-26. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Andrew, Gill and Hamish chat to Gary Hillberg, one of the two artists behind the video art exhibition, Montages: The Full Cut, 1999-2015 , now showing at the Shepparton Art Museum until May 19. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Family is Rosie Jones and Anna Grieve’s ominously titled documentary about a bizarre Australian cult that was finally discovered by police in the late 1980s. Consisting mostly of corrupt doctors and forcibly adopted children, its leader, Anne Hamilton-Byrne, proclaimed herself to be the female reincarnation of Jesus Christ. She had prophesised a coming apocalypse and was desperately trying to build a master race of bleach-blonde stolen children that could survive it. Anne’s sect had the numb...
Theatre review, An intimate look into the human cost of China’s decades long one child policy. Playing at the Malthouse A’beckett Theatre, Melbourne. A tale of two cities one family, and the reflective story of a billion, Director Wang Chong navigates the immense human consequence of the One child Policy, with an ambitious production, that overthrows many old stage techniques in favour of relevance to the 21st Century. The story in which our characters navigate is one that is highly symbolic, fr...
Lifetime Guarantee is a new theatre production written by Ross Mueller. It follows the lives of a group of people living in perhaps Melbourne,in perhaps the present. The two principle charters are Charlie, a young architect and property developer, and Dan, an slightly older news reader. Dan has just left his wife and children to be with Charlie. Charlie has just hired a personal assistant Jodie, who is new to the city. Jodie's dad has tracked her down in this new city and Dans ex wife got picked...
Andrew, Hamish and Gill chat to Padraic Fisher, director of the National Wool Museum in Geelong (the city he left New York for!) about the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibiton, on loan from the Natural History Museum in London, which they will be hosting until May 14. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Finley chats to actor Charles Purcell from the cast of Theatre Works' production of Ross Mueller's play, Lifetime Guarantee , about the politics of putting on a conservative work that features queer characters. Click here to listen to Finley's review of the show. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Andrew, Gill and Hamish chat to folk rock musician William Crighton about his first time performing performing on a paddle steamer and returning to the place of his childhood, the Murray River, for the Riverboats Music Festival in Echuca-Moama. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Andrew, Hamish and Gill talk to 18-year-old violinist Lily Hidgson-Spence, Stonnington Symphony Orchestra's Emerging Artist of the Year, about her upcoming performance in The Classics series in Malvern gardens at 7pm, Saturday February 25. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Andrew, Gillian and Hamish chat to actor Alice Qin about her Australian theatrical debut, Little Emperors , on at The Malthouse until February 26. Click here for Matthew Toohey's review See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hamish, Gillian and Smithers chat to actor, writer and director Camilla Blunden about her new solo show All This Living , on at The Butterfly Club from February 22 to 26. Click here to listen to Smithers' review. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Gill chats to sculptor and ceramic artist Penny Byrne about Brutal , her politically charged exhibition that's on at the Linden New Art Gallery in St Kilda until March 8. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
