Above, pink-haired Louis Vuitton “it girl” Fernanda Ly, and below, fellow Sydney University student – and instagram-famous photographer, stylist and now fashion world heavy-hitter – Margaret Zhang.
Photography straight from the Aussie ‘burbs by Elvis di Fazio, Frank Ocean’s visual collaborator:
And below, another Elvis di Fazio collaborator, former Sydney club dancer and now top New York model, Daniel Garofali.
This weekend was marked by two great – and very different – movies. Despite their differences, both films had one common element; they powerfully explored the idea of a sense of place.
Ghost in the Shell was, surprisingly, fabulous. The film is a blazing rush of CG-bling shot in a techno-enhanced Hong Kong. Yau Ma Tei alleyways, Quarry Bay, the Lai Tak Tsuen tower and Aberdeen cemetery appear behind filmy layers of GIF-like holographic billboards and Blade Runner Asia-futurism. Plus: creepy robo-geishas, handsome men, Juliette Binoche appearing in almost a parody of the sci fi blockbuster role her character derided in “Clouds of Sils Maria” and an intelligent script that stayed true to the spirit of the original and made short work of those would decried Scarlett Johansen’s casting as whitewashing (no spoilers!) I saw it twice.
“Wake in Fright” by contrast is an oldie, 1970s “Ozploitation.” A schoolteacher finds himself in the isolated Outback town of Bundayabba (“The Yabba”) and descends there into a circle of alcoholism and degradation. Its classic 1970s Australian cinema in its horror and loathing of the Australian landscape, portrayed as vast, cruel and trapping. As they say though, the past is another country. The Australia of the 1970s – both in the Hellish Yabba and the free-spirited and progressive outlook of the film itself (hello, male nudity!) both now seem like things of the distant past.
Well, not quite. Still this “Lego Tower” apartment block is definitely a colourful break from Melbourne tradition – and I love it. I missed it on my recent trip and only learnt of its existence from a friend’s facebook pictures; when I asked where it was, I was surprised to hear her answer “St Kilda!”
And meanwhile, there is also the jaunty “Hello” house in Richmond:
The brightly tiled lower walls of a traditional Aussie pub are not only attractive to look at, but easily hosed down – after being thrown up on!
…like a well-placed shoe.
Tucked away in the leafy well-t0-do suburb of Canterbury, and little-visited by outsiders, is the determinedly quaint Maling Road. This well-preserved stretch of early Victorian shophouses culminates in a cafe in the old post office and, around the corner, one of Melbourne’s most glorious surprises: the Egyptian revival Freemason’s hall.
Flyers for Melbourne party (and its interstate offshoots), Barba, by aptly-named club promoters “Bearded Homo” and featuring the vermillion-bearded and excellently-named drag queen Dandrogyny.
The palm-fringed terrace and taxidermied Alice-in-Wonderland interior of the Carlton Hotel, on Bourke Street.
Among its other treasures -a safari of stuffed animals, dinosaur skeletons, Papua New Guinean outrigger canoes, a living rainforest in a courtyard and the remains of champion racehorse Phar Lap – the Melbourne Museum is home to two of only seven remaining nineteenth-century Aboriginal possum skin cloaks in the world. These capes were items of huge ceremonial significance to the Yorta Yorta and other Aboriginal peoples of Victoria, who after all, had to face the Melbourne winter. I was disappointed to find the collections’s 1853 cape not on display but there were several newly-sewn versions and a video about the revival of this once steeply-imperilled craft.
As a child, I remember camping out on our dining room floor on hot Summer nights, the back doors to the garden thrown open, lying in wait for a dim shape to emerge from the backyard foliage: possums on the prowl for food. Both common species of Australian possum are commonplace in Melbourne, from the smelly, hissing larger brushtail possums to the agile little ringtails, often seen scurrying along power lines.
But there are other creatures of the Melbourne night, almost as common, which I have never glimpsed. The city is, surprisingly, sometimes said to be the world’s urban fox capital. Researchers recently discovered that in the suburb of Port Melbourne for instance, the creatures live at a density of up to 20 animals per square kilometre – and yet they are invisible during the day and almost as invisible at night.
Jenny Brompton, Sea Country Spirits at the Ian Potter Centre for Australian Art
Another tribe of foxes is more visible though, the flying foxes – a colloquial name for the squawking fruit bats with a wingspan of up to one metre – which migrate into the city in the warmer months. They provide a surreal and beautiful spectacle, streaming out of treetops at Studley Park in Kew at sundown to fan out in the search for food, over the river and the inner Eastern suburbs. I loved to watch them. It is a sight both beautiful and awe-inspiring.
Barracuda is the ABC television adaption of the book by the same name by Melbourne author Christos Tsiolkas. It tells the story of a young aspiring swimming champion transferred to an elite private school, and expounds on Tsiolkas’s usual themes: what it takes to be a man in a modern, multi-ethnic Australia, how masculinity can be a toxic quagmire of anger or a positive force, and how gay men can reconcile the different parts of their lives as men, as gay men, as brothers and sons, and members of their ethnic communities. If that makes it sound dour though, its not. The series is wonderful – delicate and tender at times, searingly blunt at others, and searching. It was also, I thought, exceptionally well-acted, my favourite character being Rachel Griffith’s all-too-familiar Eastern suburbs harpie.
Me, with Philippe Parreno’s room full of floating sharks, at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
The serene and sunny grounds of Abbotsford’s beautiful and historic Convent building. It is now home to a low-key network of vintage stores,arts workshops and of course, cafes, by the Yarra River.
Tucked between the State Library and Spring Street, along Little Lonsdale street and around there are a bunch of interesting, low-key Asian eateries: a bak kuh teh palce nearer Chinatown, this Uyghur restaurant, places serving Shanghai-style dumplings and Chongqing noodles, and an Indonesian “mohon doa restu”.
My favourite discovery though was Thailicious on Exhibition Street, a straight-out-of-Chiang Mai hangout for expat Thais, with beer towers, fermented raw pork (among more conventional menu options), posters for visiting Bangkok rock bands and, when I was there, a lovely acoustic duo performing. If I were living in Melbourne, I would be a regular.
ilbonito blog 2007 