Analysis – Carol Altmann

I must admit that I thought it would have happened by now: that the Warrnambool City Council would have asked survivors of sexual assault what they thought should be done with the Rolf Harris mural at the Lighthouse Theatre.

Especially given that the council met last night (23/2) for its briefing – which is closed to the public – and was asked to adopt a recommendation at its meeting next Monday (2/3) that the mural be kept, but covered by black perspex, as it is now.

It is nine months since the council knew it had a problem on its hands, when Harris was convicted and sentenced in the UK on a string of sexual offences against young girls.

It is three months since his avenues of appeal lapsed.

But as of today, Tuesday February 24, only one person from within the entire council and its elected officials had bothered to contact the South Western Centre Against Sexual Assault or Emma House Domestic Violence Services to ask their opinion. (That was Cr Peter Hulin).

In the meantime, in light of his conviction, Harris’s works have been removed from public galleries around the world, his impromptu mural in a Melbourne paint shop has been painted over, he has lost his place in the Australian Recording Industry Association hall of fame, he has been stripped of a fellowship in the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and, as of earlier this week, was no longer an Officer and Member of the Order of Australia.

In Warrnambool, however, the council has apparently made up its mind to keep the mural without consulting anyone.

We contacted SW CASA manager Mary Clapham today for her thoughts on the mural.

This is Ms Clapham’s written response in full:

“Previous comments by the South Western Centre Against Sexual Assault as part of the public discussion of whether or not the local mural painted by Rolf Harris should be removed, have highlighted the very real possibility of this mural causing significant additional distress for people who have previously been impacted upon by the sexual abuse of children by paedophiles.

Many people, if not necessarily a victim themselves, may have been a parent, brother, sister, friend or relative of a child who was sexually abused and bear witness to the devastating impact it has upon individuals and families.

With sexual assault being as prevalent as it is within most communities (1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men are abused before the age of 18 years), the community discussion currently being generated will include the voices of people who have been impacted upon by sexual assault and these are the people who have a right to be asked and listened to regarding the next steps for the Rolf Harris mural.

Regardless of the assigned artistic virtue of an art installation, an integral part of the public display of art is the honour associated with having that work displayed.

The Warrnambool City Council has rightly negated the honour previously afforded to Rolf Harris by covering up the Warrnambool mural. The South Western Centre Against Sexual Assault supports no community honour being afforded to any perpetrator of sexual violence against children, including Rolf Harris.”

We also contacted Emma House manager Pat McLaren to ask her opinion.

“We would like to see it painted over. It needs to be painted over so that it is obliterated forever, just like Frank Penhalluriack did in Melbourne without any problems whatsoever,” Ms McLaren said by telephone.

“This not censorship: this is about taking a stand against pedophilia.

“It is a piece of art on council property. It is not a piece of art that is bought and sold. Council needs to take a stand against sexual assault and grooming and all of the other things that Rolf Harris has been convicted of: these are not allegations, these are crimes proven in a court of law.

“The Australian Government has taken a stand, we need to do the same,” she said.

Ms McLaren said the council had quite rightly waited for any appeal before taking any permanent action, but now that the appeal had failed and Harris’s conviction stands, the council needed to renew the conversation about the future of the mural.

“It is not just a decision for the council to make, but one that the community must make. The council needs to be talking to people across the community.”

None of this matters, however, because the councillors, it appears, have made up their minds already.

The vote next Monday – and the arguments put forward – will no doubt be fascinating, but if anyone other than Cr Hulin claims to have consulted with those who support survivors of sexual assault in making their decision, they are wrong.

By Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”]T[/dropcap]he greatest compliment you could pay young artist Bronwen Arnold, who works under the name Bronwen Rose, is that you find her work disturbing.

Because that is exactly what she wants it to be.

“I am fascinated by a world where everything is beautiful and everything hurts,” she says.

The 20-year-old, who was raised in Dunkeld but now lives in Warrnambool, believes that art should take the viewer out of their comfort zone by twisting the familiar with the unexpected. Hence most of her works, be they digital painting, traditional painting or sculpture, look appealing at first glance: but then reveal a darker side.

Doe-eyed, pixie-faced characters are missing limbs, or have been disembowelled. Eyes are bloodshot, teeth are crooked, skin is disfigured.

It doesn’t make for pretty work, but it is absolutely memorable in that it is confronting, yet clever.

“A lot of (artists) in Warrnambool are inspired by coastal scenes and while they are beautiful to look at, and you can say ‘that is nice’, that is the end of the conversation,” Bronwen explains.

“I want my art to be unsettling and for people to talk about it; I want it to have an ugly beauty.”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”]B[/dropcap]ronwen is in her second year of a Diploma of Visual Arts at South-West TAFE where her teachers include the wonderful Jeanie Gleeson whose work explores the boundaries between comfort and discomfort and what is regarded as “beautiful” art. (See our earlier story on Jeanie here).

Another influence – or even a hero – for Bronwen is contemporary artist Patricia Piccinini, whom she met while volunteering at the Warrnambool Art Gallery during Patricia’s recent exhibition that, despite its confronting themes, was among the gallery’s most popular.

“I love how people react to Patricia’s work. One of my jobs (as a volunteer) was to invite people to touch this little furry, strange critter (made by Patricia) that I was carrying around and most people refused to even touch it,” she laughs.

While Bronwen may sound like a dark thinker, she is in fact the opposite.

Her preference for wearing black, the striking arm tattoos on the soft underside of her forearm, and a 24mm gage tunnel in her ear (kind of like a sleeper on steroids) belie the fact she has an easy laugh, and the down-to-earth charm of a young woman who grew up in the country.

“My parents bought the Dunkeld Post Office which is, like, as old as old (it dates back to the 1850s), and I grew up there. Yep, in a post office,” she smiles.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”]B[/dropcap]ronwen also admits that her favourite colour is not black or blue, but pink, rose pink.

“My bedroom looks like an explosion of grandma florals – pink everywhere – with my collection of teapots all around the place,” she shrugs.

This is not the space of a tortured soul, but someone who loves playing with the juxtapositions of life: the gaps between pretty and ugly; black and pink; teapots and tattoos.

Her next series of work will explore skin and its many variations. Bruises, birthmarks (Bronwen has one), discolourations, pigmentations, freckles, albinism and a condition called vitiligo, where patches of dark skin lose their pigment, will all come under scrutiny.

“I saw a woman once who had vitiligo, and she had the most chocolate, velvet skin with white patches. She was absolutely amazing, so beautiful. She looked absolutely beautiful,” Bronwen explains.

I wondered how many times that particular woman had been told, because of her imperfection, that she was “absolutely beautiful”?

And therein lies the secret to the work of Bronwen Rose.

[box]Bronwen is the recipient of the Lukasz Chomentowski sponsored studio space at The Artery, Warrnambool. She will be part of Arts on the Grass at the Fletcher Jones Garden Christmas Market, Sunday December 14, 11am-3pm and you can also view more of her work on the South West Arts Atlas.[/box]

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By Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] F [/dropcap]or those left behind after a suicide, the question is always and agonisingly the same: why?

On Monday, August 11, this question reverberated around the world as news spread that actor Robin Williams – a person who seemingly had it all – had taken his own life.

A day later, the friends and family of Warrnambool man and musician Nick Fox were grappling with the same heart-breaking question. Nick was born in 1985, the same year as my own brother, Ian, took his life at the age of 24. It is almost 30 years since that terrible day, and I still don’t know why.

In trying to understand the “why“ we hope, of course, that we can stop another suicide from happening: that we will know what to look for, or know what to do, or say, to help change a person’s mind.

This is the premise, in many ways, behind the “R U OK?” campaign. That by asking a troubled friend, family member or colleague if they are okay, we might be able to change their course. The hard part, however, is when someone says “no, actually, I am not okay”. What can we say or do then?

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] P [/dropcap]anmure artist Lisa Firestone has been grappling with these questions since a friend and fellow artist took her own life earlier this year.

At that time, Lisa used her art to deal with the “raw grief and shock” of losing someone who was a treasured friend, cheerful neighbour and artistic colleague.

“Doing that work really helped me process my grief and to work through it. I wanted to show the ripple effect that suicide has and how many people are affected,” Lisa said.

Her collection of nine paintings – a series of sentences across brightly coloured, sunset or ocean-like backdrops – capture the anguish and helplessness felt by those who have lost a loved one to suicide.

[box]Reads one panel:

“Depression, anxiety and pain are a deadly mix.

I wish there was more I could have done.” [/box]

The series of paintings was recently exhibited in Melbourne by the Mental Health Foundation of Australia, but Lisa’s most recent work broadens the focus from the personal to the collective and asks us to contemplate how we, as a society, can make suicide redundant.

[box]One asks:

“What is the message that humanity isn’t getting regarding suicide?

What needs to be lifted in us all to make suicide redundant?

Enough is enough.” [/box]

They are not easy questions to ask, or to answer.

“I am asking people to go deeper with their thinking, to really look at how we operate as a society and how we can better address these issues,” Lisa said.

“One woman who saw the painting (on display during the recent open day at Factory Arts, in the Fletcher Jones building), scoffed and walked away, but I hope it will touch other people’s hearts.”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] W [/dropcap]hile suicide is universal, it is far from uniform.

Why is it, for example, that South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world (24.7 per 100,000 people) while Greece has the lowest (2.9 per 100,000)? Australia sits in the middle on 11.2 per 100,000  – double that of Mexico or Italy. What different social and cultural factors are at play?

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the national suicide rate has fallen significantly among men since 1997 (23.3 per 100,000 down to 16.8) and for women (6.2 down to 5.6), and the peak age group is not among younger people, as we might assume, but the elderly (37.6 deaths per 100,000 in men aged 85 or over). Indigenous men are also at a much higher risk than non-indigenous men.

Although we are headed in the right direction, the statistics are still too high and have a way, like numbers do, of removing the individual stories.

Lisa believes we need to share more of these stories – to let the air and light in and to remove the shame – and she speaks openly of her own battle with depression and suicidal thoughts in the past.

Her healing came not from thinking about the impact her death would have on others – “I actually thought people would be better off without me, which is part of what depression is about” – but from a holistic approach that involved medication, art, Reiki and “spending a lot of time in nature”.

“My art is now a way of helping others, to reach out to people and to start a conversation about how we can make suicide redundant: if we are talking about it, the answers will come.”

[box]Lisa will have her work on display at the Brophy Community and Youth Complex, 210 Timor St, Warrnambool during National Mental Health Week October 6-11. ABC Open is also running two projects – Speak Your Mind and Mental As – for full details visit here.

If you need to reach out to someone, please try any of these contact numbers for 24/7 support: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Callback Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78. [/box]

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[dropcap style=”color: #8f9f59;”] T [/dropcap]extile artist Ruby Richardson has had a life full of twists and turns, but joining a circus was perhaps the least expected.

It was while Ruby, from Warrnambool, was studying costume design at Swinburne University in the late 1990s that she secured a work placement with The Women’s Circus, based in Footscray, and not only created some of their wonderful outfits, but ended up being part of the show.

“I learnt to do static trapeze, which is where you do various swings around the trapeze but don’t leap from it, and acrobalance,” she explains.

“I was so strong back then!”

[dropcap style=”color: #8f9f59;”] A[/dropcap] circus was the perfect – if unpaid – world for Ruby, who was entranced by “the sheer visual spectacle” of costume design and human movement that allowed for so much more experimentation than mainstream fashion.

“One of my lecturers at the time used to ban the ‘f’ word and say, ‘we make outfits for characters – not for the masses!”’, Ruby recalls with a laugh.

During her course, Ruby learnt the tricks of the costume trade – from millinery to creating “fat suits” – and also tried her hand at screen-printing for the first time.

Despite her love for the field, however, the opportunities for paid work were (and remain) limited, so Ruby also became a personal care worker for the City of Yarra, before deciding to return to south-west Victoria in 2002.

It was here that all the threads of her past and present life began to combine.

[dropcap style=”color: #8f9f59;”] A [/dropcap]s a child growing up in Woolsthorpe, Ruby had always been a “good drawer” at school but hated sewing classes, until she decided to try her hand at sewing her own clothes at home.

Her father, a shearer, had a sewing machine in the house to make the calico bags he used to store fresh meat: it was not unusual for old-time farmers to know how to use a needle and thread.

“I bumped him off the machine and yeah, there was a fair bit of swearing about that,” Ruby laughs.

Ruby began to make and wear her own clothes; shirts without collars, skirts without hems, a kind of rustic chic .

“It was very rough, but also quite fashionable at the time, so I could get away with it,” she says.

Ruby went on to study art and design at TAFE, before completing a Bachelor of Fine Art at Deakin University, during which refined her drawing and design skills and began to explore printmaking.

After returning from Melbourne, Ruby re-enrolled at TAFE to study screenprinting under the guidance of Donna Dixon and, a year later, began her own label, Pattern & Print,that combined her printing and sewing skills.

“I decided to start making things from what I was printing, little bags, cushion covers, that sort of thing,” she explains.

[dropcap style=”color: #8f9f59;”] A [/dropcap] decade on and Pattern & Print is well known for its bold, geometric designs and colours that are inspired by Ruby’s deep love of the natural world.

“I can spend hours just looking at a plant, examining it and looking at its structures and colours,” she says.

“If you look closely, you can see how all the tiny pieces of a plant form into one piece and this is repeated over and over: I love that.”

Retro images from the 1950s are another common theme and, again, Ruby uses bold, monchromatic colours and repetition to create her own unique “look”.

These days Ruby has also moved from being the pupil to the teacher, and, three years ago, replaced Donna Dixon as the screenprinting lecturer at TAFE. She also continues to work in personal care, at Lyndoch, where she is known by her first name of Alison (Ruby is one of two middle names).

Like any artist, her work continues to evolve and Ruby is currently working on her first ever collaboration, with ceramacist Clare (Claybody) Fennessy, that will lead to an exhibition of “Prints and Clay” at TAFE on October 20.

“I am loving the process of working with Clare, who’s work I have always admired, and experimenting with different techniques to see what works and what doesn’t,” she says.

Ruby is also keen to produce larger wall hangings of her work, where the print is viewed as a work of art in itself, rather than as part of a functional object such as a cushion or bag.

“I see it as part of a natural evolution, working through processes, trying different things and not really knowing how it may end up: that is the exciting and enjoyable part.”

[box] Ruby’s work is available at the Warrnambool Art Gallery gift shop, The Artery gift shop, the Little Yellow Owl hair salon, W’bool, and at her home by appointment. Commissions upon request. e: ruby.rich@yahoo.com.au [/box]

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[dropcap style=”color: #ddce8d;”] A [/dropcap]n exhibition of whimsical sculptures by artist and illustrator Jenny Laidlaw is in its final days at Blarney Books and Art, Port Fairy, with a talk by the artist herself this weekend (May 25).

Jenny, who lives in Jan Juc, on the Great Ocean Road, creates beautiful, eye-catching works by manipulating the pages of a humble book and then adding Prosculpt human figures to each piece.

As Jenny says in her promotional material for the work, “the figures sit atop their literary throne, creating a vessel for emotion, message and imagination”.

The “Pages, Pen and Paint” exhibition also features Jenny’s highly detailed and colourful illustrations that, once again, capture the world of fantasy and imagination through pen, ink and watercolours.

Jenny will speak about her work at a free event next Sunday (May 25) at 3pm at Blarney Books and Art, 37 James St, Port Fairy. You can also find out more about Jenny’s work on her website here.

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