Tag: melbourne

Interview with Wendy Catling of Ettamodern.com

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I had the chance to interview one of my heroes, the Australian artist and educator Wendy Catling of ettamodern.com, during my recent visit to Melbourne.

Wendy works with digital and photographic processes, particularly cyanotypes, to create artworks which address private history, psychological disturbance, Australian landscapes, and the natural sciences.

The interview comes in advance of a new series of artworks by Wendy which combine narrative, memoir, family archives, and technical experimentation to tell stories of hidden violence, resilience, and renewal.

Viewers and listeners should be warned that Wendy’s work addresses histories of family abuse and domestic violence. Australian listeners affected by these issues can can contact the 24 hour counselling service 1800RESPECT by telephone at 1800 737 732, or online at 1800respect.org.au.

State Library of Victoria Interview with Peter Miller

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I joined multimedia artist Peter Miller a.k.a. Scribbletronics to talk about his work creating art from the digitised collections at the State Library of Victoria.

Our conversation ranged across questions of serendipity and creativity, empathy and respect for historical figures whose images we use, and the sheer delight of experimenting with visual art in the archive.

You can watch the full interview on YouTube.

Marvellous Finale

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It’s the final edition of Curious, Mysterious, Marvellous, Electrical today – the newsletter I’ve used to capture stories and secret histories from Australasia and beyond over the last two years.

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We started out by walking the coasts near Lisbon back in January 2016 and we finish the journey more or less where we began, exploring the history of one of Portugal’s most illustrious artistic families.

In the intervening years, highlights included:

And that’s not even including the drug counsellors, the Nazi hunting comedians, the dancer turned paramedic, the time travelling arts worker, or the Argentinian sisters running a horror-themed cake shop out on the tropic of Capricorn…

…or the pastry.

Check out the complete Marvellous, Electrical on Google Maps.

Marvellous, Electrical: Distant Lands Are Not So Far Away

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Pop stars at the fall of Communism. A man who builds imaginary tools to solve problems that never were. A mining engineer who made a ten-tonne truck disappear through a metre-wide tunnel.

Approaching the end of the year and the final instalments of Marvellous, Electrical, we’re joined by two humble figures with secret artistic careers.

Andy MacDonald, factory supervisor at Queensland’s Cobb + Co Museum, recounts a life spanning mining, sculpture, stage design, and jet fighter maintenance in Part 1 of The Fitter And The Handyman.

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Then Alf Klimek, doing odd jobs and broadband installation in Melbourne, reveals an unexpected career as a Berlin-based Cold War pop star.

You can also see two years’ back catalogue of Marvellous, Electrical over at the newsletter’s Google Maps page. Distant lands are not so far away…

Guest post: Adele Walsh on blogging your way to a dream job

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Adele Walsh, aka Snarky Wench, runs the Centre for Youth Literature at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne.

Adele Walsh, Centre for Youth Literature programmer

Adele’s one of my writing heroes because she used her blogging skills to shift from a career as a schoolteacher to a dream role as champion of youth literature in one of the coolest and most hipsterious* cities on the planet.

After I blogged on the unexpected joys of copywriting, I started to think of other writing careers that don’t focus on the ‘hunched over a desk cranking out a Great Novel’ model, and Adele came to mind.

There’s a lot of waffle written on the Internet about following your heart and living the dream – but Adele really did find a way to turn her passion into her career, using her writing skills as a springboard.

*Yes, hipsterious.

Here’s Adele on ‘how to get your dream job in 10 (easy?) steps’:

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