Green Room: Afrobeats and a worthy fellow

5 albums in two nights

Adelaide’s Shaolin Afronauts will take to the stage on the Competition Centre subsequent month to premiere the music from 5 – sure, 5 – new albums over two nights.

The 12-piece afro-soul ensemble was shaped in 2008 by composer and electrical bassist Ross McHenry, and the brand new five-album field set The Basic Nature of Being showcases the “spectrum of sounds” the musicians have developed over their time performing collectively.

The entire venture was recorded over simply 5 days in 2019. It’s mentioned to “draw on the band’s wealthy affect of Nineteen Seventies West and South African music, jazz, psych-rock and soul, whereas additionally exploring the transatlantic intersection between Sixties digital avant-garde and religious jazz”.

McHenry guarantees The Basic Nature of Being LIVE on the House Theatre on September 16 and 17 ­– during which half the five-part launch will probably be carried out in full on one evening and the opposite half the next evening – will probably be one thing particular: “I actually really feel like this physique of recent music captures what’s particular about our band. Its scope may be very broad, however it additionally has managed to distil our entire strategy into probably the most focussed providing we’ve put ahead so far.”

The limited-edition five-LP field set may also be launched subsequent month (see extra on the Afronauts’ Fb web page) and tickets for the dwell exhibits are on sale from as we speak (right here).

‘I can now name myself an artist’

South Australian artist and self-described “paint-brush warrior” Tom Phillips has been named because the 2022 Guildhouse Fellow, securing a 12-month fellowship valued at greater than $50,000.

Phillips – whose work is on present this month in SALA’s twenty fifth anniversary exhibition SILVER on the Queen’s Theatre ­– is an expressionist artist who creates works that seize experiences resembling loneliness, vulnerability and hardship.

The Guildhouse Fellowship, awarded yearly to a mid-career South Australian artist with the help of the James & Diana Ramsay Basis, helps the creation of recent work. It culminates in an exhibition end result on the Artwork Gallery of SA.

“I see myself as a paint brush warrior and social commentator. As an artist, I consider artwork ought to say one thing concerning the world that we dwell in,” says Phillips, who was additionally the recipient of the 2021 SALA Competition Don Dunstan Basis Award.

“The Guildhouse Fellowship will change my life, giving me the chance to additional develop my portray method and discover new material, to work with curators and the Artwork Gallery of South Australia, and most significantly enable me to turn into a full-time painter, which has not been doable till now. I can now name myself an artist.”

Phillips offers extra of an perception into his work on this Within the Studio story revealed on InReview final 12 months, and within the video under.

Earlier Guildhouse Fellows are Troy-Anthony Baylis, Sera Waters and Liam Fleming, with Waters set to current an exhibition at AGSA this November that may exhibit “how historical textile traditions can craft hope within the face of local weather change”.

New inventive director for chamber music pageant

Musician Simon Cobcroft – principal cellist with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra – has been named the brand new inventive director of the Coriole Music Competition.

Cobcroft takes over the reins from Anna Goldsworthy, who has directed the chamber music pageant since 2019 and offered her last occasion at McLaren Vale’s Coriole Vineyards in Might.

“The previous few years have offered unprecedented challenges to all humanity, and for musicians, the virtually unthinkable prospect of extended silence and isolation,” he says. “In 2023, the Coriole Music Competition will replicate on the themes of exile, isolation and reunion, exploring the music that flows from those that, unwillingly or with alacrity, have embraced introspection and solitude.”

Anna Goldsworthy and Simon Cobcroft.

The total program for the 2023 pageant will probably be introduced later within the 12 months, however Cobcroft says it would embody works by Rachmaninov, Britten, Stravinsky, Finnish composer Olli Mustonen, Australian composers Paul Stanhope and Nigel Westlake, and a particular fee from South Australian Anne Cawrse.

The life and instances of Jeffrey Good

A brand new documentary giving perception into the life and studio apply of Adelaide-born artist Jeffrey Good will display screen subsequent week on ABC Plus and iview.

Directed and co-produced by freelance documentary maker Catherine Hunter – who has beforehand labored on docos about artists resembling Margaret Olley, Trent Parke, Glenn Murcutt and Ben Quilty –  Jeffrey Good incorporates archive materials (together with interviews with the artist and long-term companion Ermes De Zan), insights from portrait topics and associates, and commentary from artwork students.

Good studied on the South Australian Faculty of Arts and Crafts (earlier than later transferring to Sydney after which Italy), and Hunter says the documentary options a number of the locations in SA that had been vital to his early work, resembling Adelaide, Port Elliot, the Flinders Ranges and Wallaroo.

In 2006, Hunter and the movie crew visited the artist at his farmhouse in Tuscany and in addition captured footage of locations the place he discovered inspiration close to the Tuscan metropolis of Arezzo.

The Nationwide Gallery of Australia lately offered a serious retrospective celebrating the centenary of Good’s beginning, whereas the Artwork Gallery of South Australia final month introduced it had acquired a major work, The Argument, Prenestina, which he painted in Italy in 1982.

Jeffrey Good will display screen on ABC Plus / Channel 22 at 8.30pm on August 10, and also will be accessible on ABC iview.

Unceded Seeded

Guildhouse is internet hosting an occasion later this month to rejoice the launch of a brand new neon-based paintings by Brad Darkson that adorns the north aspect of its constructing within the Lion Arts Precinct.

Darkson, who lately spoke about his arts apply on this InReview story, was the recipient of the Voice of the Artist public artwork fee and consulted with senior Kaurna girl Aunty Lynette Crocker to create his work, Unceded Seeded (Ngampa).

Brad Darkson with Aunty Lynette Crocker outdoors the Guildhouse constructing.

In addition to the phrases of its title, the paintings options an illustration of the ngampa (yam daisy), a perennial root vegetable that could be a meals staple for Kaurna folks. It acknowledges that  Kaurna tradition has all the time existed on the land the place the constructing sits, with using neon mentioned to behave as a beacon of reality – “and in homage to the basic neon motel signal, the crimson and inexperienced allude to the aesthetic of ‘No Emptiness’.”

The launch occasion will probably be held from 2-4pm on August 21 on the Lion Arts Centre (tickets right here).

Celebrating all issues G&S

State Opera South Australia is promising lashings of satire and silliness in a G&S Fest introduced for Might 2023.

The corporate says the celebration of 19^th-century British comedy opera will happen over two weekends, with the complete program to be launched subsequent month.

“Not solely is their [Gilbert and Sullivan’s] work a number of the most interesting music and lyrics ever put to paper, however they form every part that comes after them,” says inventive director Stuart Maunder. “We now have no trendy musical theatre, no Monty Python, and no filmmakers like Mike Leigh and Aaron Sorkin with out the game-changing fashion of G&S.”

The pageant is more likely to be one in every of Maunder’s final occasions earlier than leaving the corporate, after the latest announcement that he’ll step down in mid-2023 to take up a brand new position with Victorian Opera.

Inexperienced Room is a daily column for InReview, offering fast information for folks , or concerned, in South Australian arts and tradition.

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