The Internet has brought previously unheard-of opportunities for writers to engage with the wider world without even having to emerge from their burrows. However finding time for all the ancillary jobs a writer must do these days to attract public attention – reviews for Goodreads, blogs, chats, keeping up with Facebook, connecting with writers’ groups, taking workshops about whether to e-book or not to be e-book – there no…
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The Hotham Street Ladies Serve One Up to Picasso, with a Nod to Judy Chicago
On a recent visit to Melbourne I gravitated to Federation Square attracted as much by the vibrant people-filled forecourt as the grandeur of its architecture and sense of civic space. Melbourne Now was on, a vast sprawling exhibition showcasing Melbourne art, craft and design of the here and now. I was in town for the annual conference of the AAANZ 'Interdiscipline'. 'Contemporary' and 'contemporaneous' were much discussed at the conference, in…
On the Subject of Books
On 18 November I attended the 2013 David Scott Mitchell Memorial Lecture, given by Dr Rick Gekoski – writer/editor, academic, broadcaster and author of the highly entertaining Lost, Stolen Or Shredded: Stories of Missing Works of Art and Literature (Allen & Unwin, 2013). Talking on ‘The Life and Death of the Book’ Gekoski took us through the history of written texts from stone tablets, to papyrus scrolls, illuminated manuscripts…
Experiences in Vietnam
John and I recently made a brief visit to Vietnam on our way home from France. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience – not only pleasurable excursions to the old town of Hoi An with its Hoi An Historic Hotel (a gracious building set in cool green gardens with huge old trees) and sunset over the beautiful World-Heritage listed Ha Long Bay, but also challenging visits to the War Remnants…
A Feminist between the Wars
A Feminist Between the Wars In Eilean Giblin: a feminist between the wars (Monash University Press, 2013), Patricia Clarke sets up an interesting scenario in paralleling Giblin’s life with that of many women who have gone missing in action in the twentieth century. Women whose quiet achievements did not grab the headlines but who contributed much that was vital to the fabric of Australian society. The invisibility Clarke found 'in…
Books Under The Bed
As I said in my last blog, reading challenges of all stripes and colours are quite the rage these days. Last week (before surgery), while scrabbling on the floor under the bed, looking for the pencil I’d dropped (I always have paper and pencil handy to jot notes from books, ‘must not forget’ email to send and phone calls to make on the morrow) I found – or perhaps re-found…
Fisherman's Creel
I have just finished Tony Taylor's 'Fishing the River of Time'. While it is ostensibly the story of how he took his eight-year-old grandson fishing in a wilderness area on Vancouver Island, Canada, it is much more - or other - than this. There had apparently been some family tension and Taylor, who had loved fishing as a passion all his life -as well as being passionately interested in geology…
BIOGRAPHY, HELEN ENNIS AND OLIVE COTTON
‘Olive Cotton at Spring Forest’ (ABR, July-August, No.353, 2013), by Helen Ennis is a long essay that not only allows us insights into the life of one of Australia’s major 20th-century photographers but also reveals details of the author’s often frustrating search for the reasons why Olive Cotton disappeared from public view for almost twenty years following her marriage to Ross McInerney in the mid 1940s. Ennis gives a…
Thoughts on Writing Biography
In 2001 after finishing a Master of Art Theory degree on the lives and careers of some Australian women sculptors, I was looking for a new project. I’ve always been interested in writing biography – my first book, ALPINE BEACH, was a family biography. I was fascinated as to what motivated Joan Kerr. She was plagued by ill health and suffered from severe asthma for much of her life, but…
Thoughts On Launch of A Most Generous Scholar...
A very gratifying response, both in terms of attendance and ambience, at the launch on 28 April of my book, ‘A Most Generous Scholar: Joan Kerr, Art and Architectural Historian’. Everybody – from art history academics, colleagues from the Independent Scholars Association of Australia (ISAA), fellow writers from the Northern Beaches Writers’ Group, family members and friends generally – enjoyed Peter Alexander’s excellent launch speech. Peter not only gave a…