Image credit: Rachel Kara
I’ve been a long-time admirer of Berlin-based culture magazine FreundenvonFreunden so was a real pleasure to spend some time profiling Danielle Ryan, a talented Sydney documentary-maker whose poetic films revolve around marine conservation as part of a collaboration with Werde magazin. It’s also the first time my work has been translated into another language! You can read the full feature online here.
When I was growing up in Perth in the nineties, few artists summed up — or skewered — the surreal nature of suburban Australia with as much as wit as Reg Mombassa, who, along with designing for MAMBO, is also an incredible landscape painter. Had a lot of fun chatting with Mombassa in his Glebe studio and writing about the political ideas in his work for The Sydney Morning Herald’s SPECTRUM section, out in print last weekend. You can read it online here.
A few weeks ago, I sat down with rising musician Vera Blue to talk female artistry and the power of collaborating with other women for my second profile for the Sydney Morning Herald’s SPECTRUM section. You can read the whole story here.
Last month, VAULT held its first-ever symposium in partnership with the Heide Museum of Modern Art, the legendary birthplace of Australian modernism. I had the pleasure of chairing the panel, joined by artist Abdul Abdullah, Gertrude Contemporary curator Mark Feary and international collector Mark Feary. The symposium, which delved into the place of Australian art on the international stage and the changing role of Asian art capitals, concluded with twilight drinks on the Heide terrace to toast 20 issues of VAULT.
My tenth — and final — edition as editor of VAULT magazine is out across Australia right now.
It’s hard to play favourites but number 22, which features profiles of the South African video artist Candice Breitz, the Belgian painter Michaël Borremans and the legendary Korean performance artist Lee Kun-Yong as well as a photo essay on the new wave of female photographers from London is pretty high on the list. For this issue, I profiled Katharine Grosse, wrote on the cultural necessity of James Turrell and was lucky enough to speak with one of my all-time favourite writers and photographers, Teju Cole ahead of his Australian appearances. You can subscribe to the magazine here.
Happy to share my first feature for The Guardian, on the ways in which the underpayment of early childhood educators in Australia is linked to our culture’s devaluation of female labour. It was an enormous privilege to work on this story and share the voices of these women. You can read the piece, which features portraits by Noel McLaughlin, here.
The world of online journalism often prioritises speed over substance. Frankly, that model has never really worked for me. Of course, timeliness is important, especially if you’re writing something in response to the news of the day. But finding a hook that’s original, that spotlights an element of a story that’s being overlooked or adds something new to the conversation is crucial. It’s also part of our responsibility as writers. As Rebecca Solnit put it in a May 2016 article in Lithub, “There are stories beneath the stories and around the stories.” It’s our job to find them and make editors and readers care.
Broinowski believes that Trump and Hanson were both able to use their status as reality TV stars to forge an intimate connection with future supporters and translate it into political power. She also says that she was attracted to Hanson’s story because it mirrors Australia’s transition from a nation that celebrated inclusiveness to a nation obsessed with borders — one whose media and politics increasingly skew right.
I knew very little about the world of Youtube beauty blogging before profiling Zoe Sugg, the force behind Zoella for the cover of Collective Hub but found the fandom she inspires incredibly fascinating. You can buy the issue at good newsagents and bookstores in Australia and around the world.
A few weeks back, the lovely folks over at ABC’s Radio National had me on Drive to chat about my favourite internet ephemera (clue: it involves books and slightly tasteless party food). You can listen to the show here.
