Monthly Archives: August 2013

Evicted from his home 20/11/2008

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The Kimberley Echo

Text and picture by GEOFF VIVIAN

Halls Creek has not had enough houses for a long time.

Click on this image to read the story

Many people live in caravans at workplaces and parked in other people’s driveways.

Halls Creek Shire had fallen into the practice of renting houses out to services it wanted to attract to the town.

Unfortunately this meant it was unable to fill important vacancies of its own when there was nowhere for outside applicants to live.

The shire evicted Russell Tremlett when it needed the house he was in for a new staff member.

From The Kimberley Echo

Women in Politics: Julie Bishop, Deputy Leader of the Federal Liberal Party – 13/8/13

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TEXT BY GEOFF VIVIAN

Australian Women Online has published my first-ever profile of a living politician.

I really don’t see myself as a celebrity chaser but this one turned out fairly well.

Among other things, Julie told me she was inspired to change her career after meeting Aung San Suu Kyi, who was then under house arrest.

Australian Women Online [read this story]

Artist crowd funds her overseas study – August 2013

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PICTURES AND TEXT BY GEOFF VIVIAN

A needle-felted dog by Liz Marruffo

Perth artist Elizabeth Murruffo used the crowd funding utility Pozible to fund study trips to Florence and Mexico.

After missing out on a grant, she hit upon the idea of attracting orders for needle-felted portraits of people’s childhood pet dogs.

This story is published in the current edition of the Artsource newsletter.

Judgement and the vulnerable male July 2013

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TEXT BY GEOFF VIVIAN

This appeared as a catalogue essay for Paul Trinidad’s latest Bali exhibition. It also appears on his website here.

JUDGEMENT AND THE VULNERABLE MALE

 

“… though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow….”
– Isaiah 1:18
Judgement and the vulnerable male are recurring themes in Paul Trinidad’s life and work.

He grew up in the Western Australian Goldfields towns of Kalgoorlie and Leonora. These communities began as temporary settlements for men who dug and scraped for gold. As deep mines replaced mine shafts dug by hand, male mine workers still vastly outnumbered women. The preponderance of single men in the Goldfields saw the state’s first Premier, John Forrest, reluctantly give women the vote rather than have his conservative government overturned by working men.

In his youth Trinidad spent several years in the wilderness, but not in harmony with nature. With his father and brother he worked a three-man gold mine at Lake Darlot. Together they pitted their minds and muscles against the hostile desert. They were pursuing a universal measure of men’s worth, extracted by toil and fire – gold. Continue reading →

Wanjina Art causes offence 2009 and 2011

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A serious cultural debate keeps popping up since Worora elder Donny Woolagoodja first displayed a giant Wanjina at the Sydney Olympics.

Vesna-Tenodi-with-Wanjina-sculpture

Vesna Tenodi

Several non-Aboriginal artists felt that Wanjina images, until then confined to Kimberley caves, were theirs to reproduce and re-interpret. Elders of the Worora, Ngarinjin and Wunambul tribes disagreed, and have expressed distress and disappointment at what they see as outsiders’ appropriation of their sacred imagery.

Dutch musician Randolph Smeets – aka the Phlod Nar – created a suite of musical pieces, even though he had never visited the Kimberley.

You can find my 2009 WA Today story about Randolph and his work here.

Croation-Australian gallery owner Vesna Tenodi had likewise never visited the people of Mowanjum. Nevertheless she commissioned a giant sculpture of Wanjinas carved in the side of a massive stone block, outside her gallery in Sydney’s Blue Mountains.

You can find my first KimberleyPage story about Vesna and her cultural adventure with the Wanjinas here. More stories about the unfolding drama are here.