Melbourne has a great variety of every changing laneway graffiti, which is sort of like the creative engine bellowing and churning away below the city. Street Art in Mebourne has become an attraction in its own right and meant that tourists mark out their stay in the city by visiting these modern monoliths of culture. I love that these murals always change and shift and that each time I go back to Melbourne, my old stomping ground and home town, that there’s always something new to experience on the walls. Often the street art is controversial, cheeky, provocative and downright political.
If you want to see where to go in Melbourne to see the best street art, Time Out have done a great guide to the city’s street art. Unlike in other cities, the street art here won’t disappoint and will exceed your expectations. Hosier Lane, Centre Place, Caledonian Lane, AC/DC Lane and Duckboard Place are some of the quirky haunts to check out.
A psychedelic koala in AC/DC lane. Copyright Content Catnip 2014
And below we have one of the more provocative murals, a direct commentary on the mindless, selfie culture that now parades itself in front of the street art of Melbourne.
Hosier Lane which runs adjacent to Flinders st is a must-see for street art in Melbourne. Copyright Content Catnip 2014A lovely fox that I found hidden in a laneway I can’t quite place in Melbourne. Copyright Content Catnip 2014
A still, melancholy and hushed photo of a vacant military hospital chapel in 1915, prior to the outbreak of the Great War. The King George Military Hospital opened in October 1915 in London. At the height of the Great War, in October 1917, it was said to be the largest military hospital in Britain with 1900 beds (cited in Medical Services in the First World War). See original
We Are Not Ourselves is the story of an Irish-American family, and the life of the protagonist Eileen Tumulty, which is shaped largely by her marriage to academic Edmund Leary and son Connell.
Eileen comes from a hard-drinking, hard-living Irish working-class background. As a child she’s scarred by alcoholism and attempts throughout the book to gain a stronghold on her surroundings and those she holds dear. Her labour of love and sacrifice for her family causes her melancholy and isolates her. That feeling of familial isolation is poignantly realised throughout the book.
Thomas has created an intense character in Eileen. She is a passionate woman but someone who stultifies her own feelings and comes across as cold towards her family, a trait that isn’t very endearing.
She relentlessly pursues a better more middle-class life for them throughout the book. This is at times compelling and at times is also completely boring. I found it hard to care much at all for her as a character.
It’s not until ¾ of the way through this book that we gain the knowledge that Eileen’s husband has Alzheimer’s disease. This shocking realisation comes along far too late in the novel in my opinion. There is a whole lot of seemingly pointless scene-setting early on making this a long and meandering book that tends to focus too much on tiny minutia and has a slow-burning plot, which quite frankly I tired of after reading three quarters of the way in.
I don’t know what I was expecting from this kitchen sink and Alzheimer’s drama, but it didn’t deliver it.
All kudos and respect to Mathew Thomas, this is his first book and it was celebrated by critics for its sensitive and poignant emotive touches. Also in terms of capturing a family in the midst of a turbulent emotional rollercoaster of Alzheimer’s disease, it was deftly put together. There seemed to be a lot of filler at the start though. I just didn’t find this book dynamic enough or its characters likeable enough to finish it.
Last night I went to see Jack Charles V The Crown at the Auckland Arts Festival.
Jack Charles is an Australian legend. He has traveled from movie sets to state prisons in Australia and run the full gamut of life as child of the stolen generation as well as a gifted Indigenous Australian actor, potter and musician.
Charles has lived through the challenges of drug addiction, homelessness and crime. The opening scene of the one-man show is a large-screen projection into a dark memory of his past, him injecting heroin into his ravaged veins.
Born in Cummeragunja in 1943, his formidable eye brows protrude over deep brown eyes that are full of sparkle and wisdom. He has an activist’s soul and an actor’s charisma. This compelling demeanour led to comedian, actor and artist Anh Do to paint the portrait of Charles in 2017 and win the Archibald Prize People’s Choice Award.
“We insist. We insist you know our story of resistance and of our warriors. We just insist you know it” Jack Charles
But this award-winning theatre show isn’t a cautionary tale of crime and punishment. It’s so much more than that. Charles’ warmth, humour, wit and enormous gravitas packed in a pint sized package, all transform a tale of a life of hard knocks into an amazing story of overcoming complex racial and economic challenges to become a celebrated actor.
Charles appeared in several movies, including The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), Blackfellas (1993), Bedevil (1993) and Tom White (2004). He then had a role in Pan (2005) and Woodley (2012).
This powerful story on the stage moves lyrically between raw video footage projected onto the wall, Jack swaggering about the stage delivering charismatic monologues and rousing, beautiful musical numbers with a three piece Jazz band who provide the emotional backdrop to the intense narrative.
Created by Charles himself under the wing of the ILBIJERRI theatre company of Melbourne, the oldest and most respected Indigenous theatre company in Australia, Jack Charles Versus the Crown has just come off a highly acclaimed premier season at London’s Barbican theatre. It also ran through years of sold out seasons at the Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth Festivals and the Push International Arts Festival in Vancouver, Canada.
Throwing clay and turning it into beautiful pottery is used as a compelling set piece in the play, with Charles sitting among his pots and turning some clay. He highlights the oft missed analogy that the earthen minerals are the rightful property of his people, having lived in Australia for some 60,000 years.
What makes this show so thrilling is that the narrative is vitally woven by Charles himself who isn’t afraid to delve into his own complex story of his own life and finding within it immense hope, deep humanity and a redemptive healing power of storytelling.
After the show the audience gave him a standing ovation. Tonight is the second and final show and if you don’t go and see it you’re crazy, it was incredible! Probably the most high quality and compelling show I’ve seen at the Auckland Arts Festival so far.
National treasure, raconteur and badass, Jack Charles is a force of be reckoned with
The See Now Blind Simulatorallows the viewer to experience what it’s like to be blind with a variety of degenerative eye conditions, while walking around your own neighbourhood.
This ingenious idea of immersive and experiential marketing comes from the Fred Hollows Foundation, who don’t shy away from innovative ways of talking about blindness and campaigning for more funding for eye conditions.
Their message is one of prevention. Although 223 million people suffer from vision loss or blindness the majority of eye conditions are treatable, and preventable. These conditions keep children from excelling at school, grandparents from seeing their families grow, and individuals from living their best lives.
The See Now app allows the viewer to experience eye conditions first hand and to raise global awareness of the challenges.
Created in 2011, Storymap is still an oldie but a goodie. It’s the creation of two Dublin filmmakers, Andy Flaherty and Tom Rowley. They had just been abroad and were sick and tired of the notion that Dublin and Ireland in general was a gloomy place with rampant unemployment and nothing to offer visitors. They have created this interactive map-based app which is rich in video stories, narratives from Irishmen in bars with pints of Guinness in their hands. This app brings the lived and legendary history of Dublin’s culture, art, literature and folklore back into the public eye and encourages visitors to the fair city. It’s evident from the app that there’s an abundance of things to do to stay occupied in Dublin.
As a lover of wandering the streets of Dublin and Irish history myself, I concur that exploring the city on foot was one of the greatest pleasures of travelling for me.
Dublin is a small and walkable city and during summer, a very pleasant series of walks can be had there.
If you ever head to Dublin then this multimedia Storymap is all you’ll need for all the shits and giggles you can handle. A charming and layered collective vision of Dublin city made by the people of the city.
Satisfy your inner control freak with this delectable selection of painstakingly colour coded and intricately arranged foods by Adam Hillman on Instagram. Hillman is now at the helm of one of the most popular Instagram accounts in the world due to his amazing collection of art which is funny, obsessive and quirky. Here is a selection of his art that the anally retentive and impeccable organised among us will enjoy. And also what makes him tick and motivates him to create these collections of juxtaposed objects in such precise ways.
“I began creating these images, which I refer to as Arrangements, a little over a year ago as a part of a Facebook group called Unedited Smartphone Aesthetic Pics. The group features unedited photography taken with low-quality devices such as smartphones, I originally began by taking unedited abstract photos of everyday things, but then later switched to arranging everyday objects to forgo the use of image manipulation. I would describe them as unedited photos of everyday things, arranged utilising abstract patterning and conceptual constructs such as puns,” he says.
“My process can be wildly different from photo to photo, but my usual process will begin with a phrase in mind to depict, which I use as a kind of visual plan. A picture of Matisse’s “Dance” constructed out of Fruity Pebbles, I originally went to the grocery store to find a cereal by Post to depict a piece of “Modern” art, and while I had a small selection of possible paintings I could make and cereal I could use, the pun I wanted to construct came first. Following completion, I took around 30 photos until I found the right composition and angle, making sure that all of the edges were straight and undistorted,” says Hillman.
“I am always obsessed with creating and looking at art, and right now I’m specifically obsessed with Minimalist line drawings by artists such as Sol Lewitt and Agnes Martin.I am also more generally obsessed with checking Instagram, Tumblr archives, anime, making obnoxious puns, and vegan Mayonnaise,” he says.
There are approximately 53 volcanoes in Auckland, which have over thousands of years produced an array of interesting lagoons, tuft rings and lava flows in Auckland city. The biggest, most active and most visible volcano – Rangitoto sits on an island of the same name in Auckland harbour.
This has erupted repeatedly over the past thousand years, with ash clouds and lava flows lasting for several weeks to years. It’s the only volcanic eruption here witnessed by humans. This exciting and dynamic landscape lends Auckland its unique features including mound like hills all over the place which provides ample places for nice picnics, photo-ops and so on.
When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 parts of it remained up as a monument to the dangers of state control. On these remnants of the Berlin Wall are a series of constantly changing murals and street art which makes a statement about the current political state of the world. Some of them simply are designed to look beautiful and provide pleasure to the eye while other murals have a distinct political bent to them. I loved visiting the Berlin Wall while I was there and checking out the latest pieces. It’s a photogenic and iconic piece of history.
In some ways it’s like putting lipstick on a pig, making something that once represented division and communism changed into an art monument. This is great though in my opinion, it means that new meanings can come out of it.
I think in these troubled times when fuckwits like Donald Trump want to build up walls, we have to remember the lessons of history and how walls were once heroically destroyed and what that moment meant for the world. Only when walls come down do to civilisations grow and prosper, never when they are erected.
Eileen comes from a hard-drinking, hard-living Irish working-class background. As a child she’s scarred by alcoholism and attempts throughout the book to gain a stronghold on her surroundings and those she holds dear. Her labour of love and sacrifice for her family causes her melancholy and isolates her. That feeling of familial isolation is poignantly realised throughout the book.
Content Catnip 
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