Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
Back to Queensland Art Gallery
Happy as a pig at QAG
(Southbank, Brisbane, December 2023) We had previously visited in 2021, and were keen to return, not merely to beat the heat. We had not been totally impressed with some of the work on offer before, either, but today we ignored the tat and saw some great things new and old. Agitprop can be beautiful too. Anne Wallace’s “Passing the River at Woogaroo Reach” (2015), inspired by survivors of Wolston Park psychiatric hospital, which gave Bedlam a bad name, is a gorgeous rendering, fit to accompany a tale with a mythic theme: We loved Rupert Bunny’s “Bathers” at QAG previously, and…
Continue Reading →The Ring in Brisbane
(Lyric Theatre, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Second Cycle: 8, 10, 12, 14 December 2023) Like Wagner’s monumental work, the first ever staging of The Ring in Brisbane grew in the telling. It was commissioned in 2017, and advertised in early 2019, with bookings in a ‘shuffle format’ scheduled from 13 June of that year, for performances in November/December 2020. Then a Sino/American research project let a bat loose from Hell, and gross inconvenience, and death, ensued. The Ring was set aside, although not as long as Wagner did while he fretted, and tinkered, and researched. With a revised cast, it was…
Continue Reading →“It’s in the App!”
Travelling north, the beautiful North, Our brains in summer remission, An epidemic of uselessness Fully met with our bullish permission. At a nice public house on the river We selected some seats, unreserved Within a cool room, away from the throng, Baking outside as deserved. The inside bar was deserted A sign told us to order by App; Our humour had died, neither Q-code we spied Nor a manner of bridging the gap. From a neighbouring table we borrowed a card Displaying the requisite code, But after twelve minutes no answer there came We thought about hitting the road. Ultimately,…
Continue Reading →Back to Otto’s
(Southbank, Brisbane, December 2023) We were last at Otto in 2021 – and had a wonderful lunch. Dinner this time, and just as good, actually even better. It was prefaced by a 90-odd minute power cut at our hotel (and the Queensland Premier hadn’t even formally stepped down yet) but after we were able to return to our room and freshen up, it was a short walk along the Brisbane river to this lovely restaurant. Service was impeccable; tables were not too close but not overly distant either. We were under cover but over the water’s edge, making us feel…
Continue Reading →The Modern Metternich
Henry Kissinger (27 May,1923 to 29 November, 2023) Like Klemens Metternich, he’d been a refugee, entered into the realm of international diplomacy early on, and took a realist, conservative view of world order, based on the equilibrium of power and interests. Always a ‘foreigner’ in his adopted country, one could impute to him, after Metternich, the line: “I governed the World sometimes, America never.” Kissinger became a bête noire of the left: for example, Christopher Hitchens wrote an incendiary polemic about him, declaring him guilty of war crimes. One doubts not that Henry cringed when remembering the coup in Chile, the…
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