Quilts: The Fabric of War
(1760-1900) Exhibition at the Roche Museum, 22 February, 2024 / Book and collection by Annette Gero This exhibition of applique and geometric masterpieces, all made from military fabrics, was simply stunning. Dr. Annette Gero, an acknowledged expert on quilt history, has collected these sumptuous pieces, featuring complex, intricate patterns, to mythical and historical narratives. Her book based on this collection is published by The Beagle Press and available through the David Roche Foundation House Museum, Adelaide. We saw a dazzling array of styles and subject-matter. The main image is an English Intarsia Quilt, c. 1870, by Michael Zumpf, a Hungarian,…
Continue Reading →The Threepenny Opera
(Die Dreigroschenoper) Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide, 10 March 2024 It might not be opera, more cabaret Singspiel, but it was still pretty good. Brecht’s rosy worldview, his ‘Berlinized’ take on John Gay’s balladic Beggar’s Opera, was presented with great élan and sophistication under the direction of TVC’s bête noire, Barrie Kosky, with a subtly simple staging of moving Jungle-Jims, up and over which the cast nimbly climbed and clambered, and a cabaret-style spangly curtain through which heads, and sometimes feet, would peep. Brecht’s libretto is extremely witty but it isn’t really a Marxist social satire, rather a nihilistic view of…
Continue Reading →All of Us Strangers (2024)
(Director Andrew Haigh) Adam (Bill Paxton look-alike Andrew Scott) is a desolate would-be writer, living alone. After a fire alarm in his London tower block he meets Harry (Paul Mescal) who is, strangely, the only other inhabitant of the building. Harry wants to party the night away, but Adam sends him home. Soon after this, for reasons which are not clear, Adam goes to a park near his childhood home (set in the house in which director Haigh was raised) and meets his father, apparently by chance. Adam starts to spend time with his parents whom he hasn’t seen since…
Continue Reading →Menzies versus Evatt
By Anne Henderson (2023) Robert Menzies and Herbert Evatt were both born before Australia was – in 1894 to be exact, in the colonies of Victoria and New South Wales respectively, but they would blossom under the soon-to-be-created Federal Commonwealth. Their natural intelligence and Victorian work ethic set them on the path to success, and to some degree, Australia became the better for their struggle, in that they brilliantly represented, and advocated for, different yet necessary principles and practices of the nation’s democracy. Menzies went to the Victorian bar, and still in short pants lead in the Engineers’ Case (1920),…
Continue Reading →The Zone of Interest
(Directed by Jonathan Glazer, based on the book by Martin Amis) (2023) Poland is one beautiful country; with a plethora of mountains, verdant meadows, sea-coast, and more lakes than most. Which explains why so many imperialists wanted their grubby hands on it. In 1939, for example, as a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Poland was neatly sliced into two zones. One zone, the Russian one, executed an unknown number of Poles, sometimes with organisation, at other times in a haphazard panic. The German zone, where Poles (and others) were dealt with under typical Teutonic efficiency, is the ‘Zone of Interest’…
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