“…landscape architect and film-maker, Gavin Wilson, was researching the artistic heritage of Hill End and the region for his 1995 exhibition The Artists of Hill End: Art, Life and Landscape for the Art Gallery of NSW. Aware of Bellette’s bequest, and withthe support of Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Evans Shire Council and the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Wilson invited a third wave of artists to respond to Hill End. Contemporary artists including Richard Goodwin, Anton James, Tom Spence, Wendy Sharpe, Peter Wright, Geoff Weary, Peter Kingston, Mandy Barrett, Emma Walker and James Rogers participated in a series of pilot residencies at Haefligers Cottage in 1994 and 1995. Works from these residencies were exhibited alongside historic works in The Artists of Hill End exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW.
“The historic Haefliger Cottage at Hill End and the spectacular surrounding scenery are prividing an ideal location for artist in residency, Geoffrey Weary, who is finding it a welcome respite from Sydney. Mr Weary, who describes himself as a video artists also working with more ‘traditional’ mediums, is the latest participant….Hill End artist in resident, Geoffrey Weary and Tatiana Pentes who are, living and working with the spirit of Paul Haefliger and Jean Bellette in the famous Haefligger Cottage…The house has all their things still intact, the cottage is pretty much as they left it…” in Inspiration For Visiting Artist: Hill End Artist Residency: Geoffrey Weary: Bathurst Regional Art Gallery Advocate, 24 January 1995.
Photograph: Geoffrey Weary & Tatiana Pentes
The foundations of the Hill End Artists in Residence Program were laid. In 1999, under the auspices of Bathurst City Council and Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, the Program was officially launched. In 2002 Murrays Cottage was refurbished with the assistance of the NSW Ministry for the Arts and added as a new studio residence alongside Haefligers Cottage in 2003.Since 1994, a total of 283 residencies have been awarded to artists from a diverse range of disciplines including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, ceramics, textiles, new media, writing, animation, film, sound and performance. Over 150 works by 70 of the artists participating in the Program have entered the collection through donation and purchase. The selection presented here represents just a small portion of the work produced in response to the landscape, history and heritage of Hill End.”
“Celebrating 20 years of the Hill End Artists in Residence Program,works in this exhibition are drawn entirely from BRAG’s permanent collection. Featured artists include Jean Bellette, Ray Crooke, Russell Drysdale, Donald Friend, Ben Quilty, David Strachan, Rosemary Valadon, Greg Weight and Nicole Welch. A Bathurst Regional Art Gallery exhibition.”
MONASH Catalogues: http://www.artdes.monash.edu.au/gallery/catalogues.php# Geoff Weary, prints 8 and 9 from the series: TIME WAS…, 2003, digital prints on photographic paper, 200cm x 100cm each. Image courtesy of the artist
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat…And the eyes of them both were opened… Old Testament, Genesis Chapter 2: 6 & 7
A sublime female body descends from the heavens, illumined upon the black painterly digital surface. These selected prints from Geoffrey Weary’s photographic series
TIME WAS…emerged from his residency at the British School at Rome, in 2000.
Exploring notions of the flow of time through cinematic representations of the human form, the artist presents and reveals both the precious object and the visceral shape of the corpus. The images represent the flow of time in the photographic realm. Time passing through and enveloping the body in frozen motion. The concealed female form transforms and reveals a knowing subject. The dualism of the clothed and the unclothed woman allegorise for the viewer the Biblical myth of the Fall. However, the artist transcends this idea through the repetitive exploration of these motifs, exemplified in this series.
Weary’s practice in the field of video art has shifted in the taking up of creative new media technologies and multimedia processes, to incorporate digital media, photomedia collage, where photography alchemically mingles the interplay of historical visual traditions: referencing sequential narrative film, modernist expressionist picture space, and the dark void of mannerist aesthetics. In a self-reflexive mode, Weary calls attention to the materiality of the paint on canvas
and pixels, the legacy of early avant-garde experiments. However, in true multimedia fashion, the fusion of stylistic impulses coalesce on his electronic surfaces, forming both abstract and figurative motifs, the convergence of art historical traditions, media types and knowledge.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. Old Testament, Genesis Chapter 1: 3 & 4.
From the darkness emerges the virtual play of light sources, signifying the shift from perspectival representation to the creation of an imaginary horizon, floating world.
Tatiana Pentes Doctor of Creative Arts (Digital Media) Communications, University of Technology, Sydney, 2006.
CosmoShanghai is a growing online portal that launches digital research projects exploring Shanghai’s re-emergence as the cosmopolitan metropolis from its glorified memorial status in the 1930s – part entrepot, part settlement, part escape- that finds expression in the multiple contradictions of the struggle over the preservation and development of Hongkou and other districts of the cosmopolis.
In one online documentary projects The Menorah of Fang Bang Lu – Dee Lay Jao Police district, becomes the focus for the local and international and diasporic forces seeking to define what the Jewish heritage of the city means in the current era. Set against an examination of a number of preservation and renewal zones, current Chinese modernity encompasses an historicised cosmopolitanism that accounts for the variegated social histories of the city and its global positioning as part of the New China on the one hand, and as a city state on the other. However to be effective this will require cross-cultural collaboration over the meanings of cities’ pasts and futures.
In another interactive BlackBox: Painting a Digital Picture of Documented Memory the artwork evolves from an imaginary electronic landscape that can be uniquely explored/ played. The artwork/ game is a search for the protagonists hybrid cultural identity. This is mirrored in the exploration of random, fragmentary and non-linear experiences, where the protagonist Nina’s discovery of musical forms reveal her cultural/ spiritual origins. As a musical composer arranges notes, melodies and harmonies, and sections of instruments, so too, the multimedia producer designs a ensemble of audio-visual fragments to be navigated. Dance also becomes a driving metaphor, analogous to the players movement in and through these passages of image/ sound/ text and as a movement between theories and ideas explored in the content of the program. The central concern is to playfully reverse, obscure, distort the look of the dominating/colonialist gaze, in the production of an interactive game and allow the girl to picture herself.
An interactive digital work/ Musical CD-Rom by Tatiana Pentes (Writer/Director) & Geoffrey Weary (Co-Development/ Cinematography & Photography), Eurydice Aroney (Producer), Roi Huberman (Sound Design), Glenn Remington (Interface Design). Produced in association with Screen Australia (AFC). Online exhibition Australia-Japan New Media Gallery, Australian Embassy, JAPAN http://newmedia.australia.or.jp/artist/info.php?name=tatiana
AWARDS
Strange Cities CD-ROM has been exhibited inter/nationally & winner of Best Arts/Cultural Title/Site, AIMIA Awards, 2000, and Most Innovative/Creative Multimedia Title, ATOM Awards, 2000, Australia. Acquired by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) Multimedia Collection, Australian Film & Television School Library, University of Hawaii, University of Sydney, UTS, the National Library Australia and many inter/national archives.
Strange Cities was selected for Dart 99 dLux Media Arts in partnership with Sydney Film Festival, the 1999 Experimenta Media national travelling Exhibition, The Red Room, & promoted New Talent Pavilion, MILIA Games, Cannes, France in February 1999
Interface still Strange Cities: A musical CD-Rom (2000)
Strange Cities is an experimental interactive multimedia work authored for CD-Rom release and exhibition. Through the disclosure of evidence, Sasha dreams, discovers and remembers the exotic identity of her grandparents Xenia and Sergei Ermolaeff (a composer and orchestra leader) in fragments and traces of their music and struggle to survive the Russian and Chinese Communist Revolutions. The dulcet tones of the legendary voice of ABC Radio – Tony Baldwin as Newsreader deepen the nostalgia of this interactive drama/history.
The inspiration for the work is a tune of the same name – a musical illustration, an imaginary vision of old Shanghai, Chinese metropolis and international settlement which conjures mythic, filmic, musical and personal images of the city port.
Interface still Strange Cities: A musical CD-Rom (2000)
Coined capital of the international underworld, the city of Shanghai became a seductively strange locale symbolized in the Western imagination. In reality however the city was most often the final port of call for political refugees. The visual imagery for the project was shot in St Petersberg, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Sydney and involves found photographs, film footage, simulated radio archives, and original musical compositions.
Interface still Strange Cities: A musical CD-Rom (2000)
Strange Cities experiments with performance, sound, image and text and their dramatic representation in the interactive environment. Providing a challenging approach to traditional modes of story-telling and music in the interface design, the user is provoked to discover the Strange Cities tune in the graphic portrayal of its musical script, sonic perception of its vocal lyric, and orchestration through user interactivity.
In the exploration of Strange Cities the user will experience a questioning of the relationship between fictional, biographical, historical and musical narrative possibilities produced through the slippage between and across a series of interactive screens. Participation with the interface provides for the user an experience which challenges traditional modes of narrative in audiovisual presentation, the perception of musical structure, storytelling and in historical, biographical and fictional texts in the multimedia environment.
Interface still Strange Cities: A musical CD-Rom (2000)
Strange Cities was selected for the 1999 Experimenta Media Art CD-Rom Exhibition and has been promoted at the New Talent Pavilion, MILIA Games, Cannes, France in February 1999.
NEW MEDIA AWARDS FESTIVALS
Best Arts/Cultural Title/ Site, Australian Interactive Multimedia Industry Association (AIMIA) Awards November 2000, AUSTRALIA
Most Innovative/Creative Multimedia Production, Australian Teachers of Media, (ATOM) Awards May 2000, AUSTRALIA
This project has been produced in association with Screen Australia (Australian Film Commission)
Serge Ermoll Snr: Shanghai Symphony: Japanese identity papers
Shanghai Nostalgia” as a Cultural Industry by Pan Tianshu
Shanghai Nostalgia: Historical Memory, Community-Building, and Place-making in a late Socialist City
Pan, Tianshu. “Historical Memory, Community-Building and Place-Making in
Neighborhood Shanghai.” in Restructuring the Chinese City: Changing Society, Economy, and Space, ed. Laurence J. C. Ma and Fulong Wu, 122–37. London: Routledge 2005.
“For the first time in post-Mao Shanghai, the local people found their colonial past was no longer baggage to carry but a rich resource to be fully utilized. “Shanghai nostalgia” thus “became entangled with a (dys)utopian fervor to embrace global capital and its ideology, the appearances and normalcy of the Shanghai modern entered intellectual and commercial circulation at the standard version of historical memory” (Zhang 2000: 354). Shanghai quickly became a “re-colonized” site for various kinds of joint ventures in film production. Old buildings in the Municipal Concession and small villas in the west end were renovated in order to attract more Spielbergs and boost the tourist industry. Those sinified cafes and European restaurants that somehow managed to survive communism changed their names back to their original western names. The famous Red Mansion Coffee House, for example, was once again Chez Louis. So did the theaters, movie houses, department stores, and dance halls. The Old Man Jazz Band, who had a brief appearance in Spielberg’s movie, started to perform all year around in the Peace Hotel (Sasson House, previously owned by a famous Jewish billionaire). Colonial Shanghai rekindled collective memory and in the process of remembering, itself was re-invented. With its success in the colonial past in setting trends, finding opportunities, and witnessing miracles, Shanghai provided a somewhat “infectiously decadent, but alluring background and setting” (Dai 1997: 158) especially for those working in the film industry.”
Zhang, Xudong. 2000. “Shanghai Nostalgia: Postrevolutionary Allegories in Wang Anyi’s Literary Production in the 1990s”, in Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, pp. 348-387. Duke University Press.
“Selling cosmetics by vending machine?”
April 19th, 2008 “In Japan you can find all sorts of things for sale in vending machines. Since I’ve lived in Hong Kong however, I’ve never seen an explosion of this sort of retailing in the city. So it came as a surprise to encounter a lonely looking vending machine while walking through Silvercord shopping center last week. The vending machine had a traditional 1920’s era graphic of two girls covering the outside.
“The image looked like a cigarette ad from old Shanghai, the type that tourists purchase on “antique” posters featuring beauties from the time period. On closer inspection, the image actually represented the logo of a brand of cosmetics, Two Girls.
“This sort of vintage look doesn’t really match a vending machine. Vending machines typically denote a sort of modern, mechanized and impersonal shopping experience. You don’t normally associate this type of experience with female shoppers. Further, a product like cosmetics would usually require the purchaser to read the labels and check the ingredients, which isn’t possible from inside a machine. Typical products that are sold in this way are ultra well known products. Perhaps the cosmetics are well known, however if I were a shopper unfamiliar with the brand, not being able to read the label and study the product would be a major impediment to sale.
“The location of the machine was also somewhat off. It was buried near the side of an escalator in an alternative entrance to the shopping center…”
“Yet another factor to consider, does the product match the target consumer of the youth-oriented Silvercord mall?
“So in essence, the product, the brand image, the target consumer, the location of the machine and the technology all need to be considered when selling a product by vending machine. In this case, the factors appear to be a bad match.”
“Darcy took me out to see Australia last night – and boy, what an epic! Sweeping scenery, soaring soundtrack, cattle drives, the Stolen Generations, World War II, and a reprehensible villain to top it off…But what really caught my eye were the costumes, created by Baz Luhrmann’s wife Catherine Martin. When Nicole Kidman’s character had to dress more elegantly, her costumes often had a distinct “1930s Shanghai” aesthetic to them that is discussed in this slideshow.
“The basic lines and structure of the cheongsam, also called a qipao, have remained essentially unchanged for decades, and for good reason. There is just something about a high collar, princess seams, and curve-skimming tailoring that oozes class, taste and glamour regardless of the decade. But there are some tricks to making sure you do end up looking glamourous in a dress like this:
“*Perfect fit is crucial. It should be body-skimming, but not so tight that you bust your seams when you sit down. If there is too much loose fabric around the waist, the curvy silhouette will be ruined. Conversely, if the dress is too tight across the bust, it will flatten you out and again – ruin the silhouette. Bottom line: if the dress does not fit perfectly off the peg, have it tailored.
“*Make sure the collar is neither too tight nor too loose. If you find yourself perpetually tugging at the collar to loosen it, of have to wear it unfastened, it is too tight.
“*Side slits can be tricky – sometimes there is only one, sometimes there are two, and sometimes there are none at all. Make sure that when you sit, you smooth your dress down over your hips to make sure you don’t reveal too much thigh. Go barelegged if possible to avoid showing off the tops of your stockings below the slits. If you are uncomfortable with the height of the slits, again – take your dress to a tailor and have them stitched together an inch or two to boost your confidence.
“*If your dress is made from a bold, eye-catching color or fabric, limit your jewelry to just simple stud earrings. Long earrings do not pair well with a high-collared dress. If your dress is a solid color, you can add a sparkly brooch for some visual interest, but keep the earrings minimal to highlight the collar area of the dress. Avoid necklaces – they distract from the dress, and can get tangled on the closures.
“*Don’t theme your entire outfit as “Chinese.” This is not the time to bust out your charm bracelet, handbag and hairclip that all have Chinese characters on them. A little bit of Shanghai style goes a long way, and your dress has just the right amount. Any more would be too much.
“*Keep your hair sleek but soft. If you have long hair, twist it gently back into a low bun or chignon but make sure the front frames your face. If you have short hair, style it simply in a way that suits your profile. The idea is not to distract from your dress, but to treat your hair as a key accessory.
“*Makeup should be simple and clean, but without sacrificing glamour. Classic bold matte lips, the tiniest brush of rouge, and minimal eye makeup is ideal – the same Hollywood classic look
“*The key words to remember when trying to create 1930s Shanghai glamour with a cheongsam or qipao are fit and simplicity. If your dress does not fit properly or if your makeup or hair are too distracting, then the entire effect will be ruined. Take the time and plan well in advance to ensure your dress has the perfect fit. Don’t fuss too much over your hair and makeup. Less is truly more! that is now in fashion. Avoid heavy eyeliner and blush, and overly glossy or frosty lips.”
“Shanghai Surprise”
One could not go without mentioning that cinematic blunder Shanghai Surprise (1986) panned by critics. The film had a solid producer in ex-beatle George Harrision and his Handmade Films company and acclaimed director Jim Goddard. It was based on an adaptation of Tony Kendrick’s literary novel Faraday’s Flowers (1978). However the ill-fated stars (newly weds) Madonna Ciccone and Sean Penn ensured a box-office failure. The film popularised the Shanghai 1930’s opium, coolies, and spies narrative once more. Shot in Hong Kong the film was set in Shangha, China 1938 – Maddona played Gloria Tatlock a US Missionary to Penn’s Occidental tourist adventurer. According to Paul Katz (posted 6 April 2007) “…Some bad films become kitschy-cool with age, but Shanghai Surprise continues to rot. Penn teams up with then wife Madonna as a ’30s rapscallion charged with helping the Material Girl’s missionary/nurse…we lost you at ”missionary/nurse,” didn’t we? While the tabloids claimed that the duo had chemistry in real life, those sparks never showed up on the screen. EXTRAS D-list celebs like Melissa Rivers riff on fave scenes; and in a doc, supporting players dish about paparazzi and Madonna’s prima donna antics.” http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20033920,00.html [Accessed 10 February 2009]
The legacy Shanghai gesture in theatre, cinema, literature, photography and music is an elegant motif and contested space – a dialectic between East & West (Chinglish, Chinoiserie, Europeanoiserie et al) and not only a reminder of Shanghai between the Wars, but so too a powerful evocation of the Japanese occupation.
‘An Eye for An I’, film on video 3mins
Photograph: Geoffrey Weary & Tatiana Pentes
The studio at the historic Haefliger Cottage
Strange Black Box 