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OCTOBER
2007
Sue
Dodd and Enza Gandolfo
Inventory: on op shops
$ 29.95
978-0-9775047-5-6
I
op Therefore I am
(blog site response to Inventory)
 Op
shops are places of mystery and adventure that inspire ‘treasure
hunting’. They are ‘museums’ displaying
cultural artifacts – objects, clothes, books—that
often bring back lost memories. They are places that trigger
many emotions—including nostalgia, longing and passion.
Op shops are crowded with narratives that are lined up on
shelves, piled into boxes, hanging on racks—lost personal
and cultural narratives waiting to be told.
There
has been very little written about op shops in Australia—hardly
surprising as op shops are predominantly staffed by volunteers,
the majority of them women over 65; they are run by charities
who are inevitably more focused on the programs run with the
money raised by these shops; and they tend to be frequented,
though this is changing, predominantly by those in the margins—single
mothers, the unemployed, the elderly and others whose limited
income means they cannot afford to buy from commercial retail
stores.
Yet
most local shopping centres have an op shop or two and they
have been part of our communities for over 50 years. Sue Dodd
and Enza Gandolfo, have spent several months in op shops interviewing
volunteers, staff and customers. Inventory: on op shops tells
the story of that exploration. It is polyphonic work–
textual, visual, and performative—that explores the
role and meaning of op shops to individuals and communities.
The
original project, Op Shopping: More than Retail Therapy, was
a collaborative arts project that utilized a mixed-media and
multi-disciplinary approach. The project was funded by Arts
Victoria through the Art for Communities program and supported
by Victoria University and the Living Museum of the West.
The exhibition opens 13th September 2007 at the Living Museum.
Enza
Gandolfo is a lecturer in Professional Writing
at Victoria University. Her short fiction, essays, autobiographical
pieces, reviews and academic articles are published in a variety
of literary magazines and journals including: Overland,
Tirra Lirra, Hecate, Outskirts,
Going Down Swinging, TEXT,
JAS Review of Books, and Australian
Women’s Book Review. Recent publications include:
‘The Robust Imagination’ in TEXT
2006 and ‘Fiction Making: A dialogue’ in Art-Based
Research: a proper thesis? Edited by Elaine Martin
and Judith Booth 2006 Common Ground Melbourne
Sue
Dodd has developed an artistic practice that
incorporates simultaneously performance, video and installation.
Her performances and video work are an acutely post-modern
reflection on contemporary life. Dodd is part of the performative
group Gossip Pop (with Phil Dodd) which employs an amalgam
of performance and video to create a simulacrum of pop and
celebrity culture, and serious performance art. Gossip Pop
utilizes sampling, displacement and deconstruction in the
tradition of beat poetry, feminist performance and karaoke.
Dodd has performed and exhibited in widely in Melbourne and
throughout Australia. She has recently returned from a residency
in China. Sue is currently lecturing at Victoria University
and completing Phd research in Creative Arts at RMIT.
MAY
2007
Glenn
D'Cruz
Class Act: Melbourne Workers' Theatre 1987-2007
$ 39.95
978-0-9775047-3-2
Review
in Age
 The
Melbourne Workers Theatre is one of this town’s great
successes. Not only has it nurtured talent […] it
has also expanded a long way from its origins. It is a tribute
to the strength of Melbourne’s theatrical tradition
that this company is thriving as it begins its 16th year.
Robin Usher, Arts Editor, The Age, 5 May
2002
With
a few notable exceptions, middle-class themes and middle-class
personnel dominate professional theatre in Australia. Melbourne
Workers Theatre (MWT), which celebrates its twentieth anniversary
in 2007, has redressed this imbalance by creating high quality
theatre that represents the lives of the most disadvantaged
members of our community. In short, the company has made a
major contribution to Australian theatre culture by giving
voice to marginalised Melburnians including people from impoverished
backgrounds, indigenous communities, various migrant groups
and persecuted minorities like asylum seekers.
Class
Act celebrates the Company’s artistic
achievements and successes over the last two decades through
interviews, essays and high quality images of key productions.
It recounts its history, its evolving relationship with the
embattled trade union movement, and its on-going engagement
with working class, indigenous and migrant communities.
Class
Act is more than a history of a theatre company.
It documents a particularly turbulent period in Melbourne’s
history that witnessed consistent attacks on trade unions,
asylum seekers, aboriginal and working class people by state
and federal governments, and the forces of globalisation.
In an era when the very concept of ‘class’ has
been discredited, Melbourne Workers Theatre remains committed
to principles of social justice and revels in using theatre
as a form of political activism and protest.
The
book contains new interviews with founding members of the
company and key artistic personnel, including Patricia Cornelius,
Irine Vella, Andrew Bovell, Andrea James, Julian Meyrick,
and Christos Tsiolkas. It also includes production images
drawn from the company’s extensive archives, and essays
that document the company’s history and analyse its
landmark productions such as Who’s Afraid
of the Working Class, Yanagai Yanagai,
and Tower of Light.
NOVEMBER
2006
Mark
Phillips
Radio City: The First 30 Years of RRR
0 9775047 1 9
$ 39.95
see
feature article in Age on RRR and Radio City
 It's
been proven by some of the greatest observers and researchers
in the world that the secret to the economic and business
success of a city is its creative heart. Whilst businesses
at 101 Collins Street don't even fucking know it, the reason
why they are succeeding is because up the road in Nicholson
Street is a radio station that is beating a heartbeat through
this city that is unique in the world.
James 'Hound Dog' Young
We
are not a would-be commercial station and our presenters should
not be would-be disc jockeys. We should offer a real alternative
to the inanity of high-powered and raucous commercial presentation.
Sue
Mathews, the first station manager of 3RRR-FM
Over
the course of three decades, 3RRR-FM has become an indispensable
part of Melbourne’s cultural fabric, a vital hub of
the city’s renowned music and arts scenes and an independent
voice among a chorus of repetition.
But it wasn’t always so. Born in 1976, the product of
an experiment in public radio just as the DIY spirit of punk
music was hitting the streets, much of Triple R’s existence
was fraught and surrounded by chaos.
Released
to coincide with Triple R's 30th anniversary this November,
Radio City is the unvarnished history
of Australia’s most innovative and successful community
radio station, a jewel in the junk heap that has spawned talent
like Greig Pickhaver, the Coodabeen Champions, Kate Langbroek,
John Safran, Lawyers, Guns and Money, and Leaping Larry L.
Uncovered are the behind-the-scenes tales of crisis, fighting
and perpetual money struggles along with the back stories
of the much-loved program presenters who have called the station
a home.
Melbourne journalist Mark Phillips spent two years piecing
together the previously untold story of how Triple R came
about and developed its unique ethos and ground-breaking style.
In the process he learnt a little more about what makes Melbourne
tick.
A vivid account told in the words of those who were there
and chock full of illustrations, Radio City
reveals how community radio holds the key to discovering alternative
music, films, arts and political topics that would otherwise
be left in the dark.
Appealing to Triple R listeners and those interested in the
history of alternative culture alike, Radio City
is the riveting story of how a radio station became part of
a city’s soul.
But
mum . . . It’s educational!
NOVEMBER
2006
Sean
Scalmer
The Little History of Australian Unionism
0 9580794 7 1
rrp $9.95
 Fiona
Capp's review from the Age
Rowan Cahill's review from Workers
Online
One
of the reasons a good number of Australians don’t know
their own history is the failure of publishers to publish
good, readable histories in a form and price that makes them
accessible to all. Sean Scalmer’s, The Little
History of Australian Unionism is published
with this in mind.
A
compact, complete and up-to-date history, The
Little History of Australian Unionism
tells the story
of the development of Australian unions over the past 200
years.
With the support of 13 Australian unions, including major
sponsorship by the ETU and CFMEU,
the book is aimed at everyone interested in the history of
Australian society and the formation of its values and institutions
and particularly at students of history as well as unionised
and yet-to-be-unionised workers, old and young.
Scalmer provides a history of trade unions that is clear,
accurate and engaging. He records their achievements, explains
how they were won, and provides an invaluable context for
the urgent defence of the union movement.
Priced at $9.95, and printed in pocket-sized format, The
Little History of Australian Unionism
is an affordale and portable lesson in the history of a movement
that is vital to the future of a decent and compassionate
Australian society.
Sean Scalmer's incisive and engaging account shows how
trade unions have made a vital contribution to the improvement
of workers' lives and a fairer Australia. He provides invaluable
support in the present struggle to maintain the rights of
unions to organise and represent workers.
The
history of trade unions is more than a record of sacrifice
and achievement; it is an account of the lessons of that
experience, and a precious resource in mobilising support
for the union move-ment as it responds to the present attack
on their very rights to organise and represent workers.
Professor
Stuart Macintyre
click
here for author interview
JULY
2006
 Adam
Muyt
Maroon & Blue: Recollections and Tales of the Fitzroy
Football Club
0 9580795 9 5
$39.95
In
1996, the Fitzroy Football Club, the Roys, played their final
game of AFL football after more than a hundred and ten years
in the competition.
Maroon & Blue is a social and
oral history that captures the rich story of the Roys in the
words of those who played for, supported and loved the club.
It celebrates various aspects of the club’s roots, culture
and traditions, captures the passion and joy for all things
Roy, and offers heartfelt observations on the sacrifice of
the club at the altar of corporate AFL football.
Lovingly
crafted from hundreds of hours of interviews and archival
research, Maroon & Blue features
the words and voices of: Paul Roos, Jonathan Brown, Chris
Johnson, Martin Pike, Bill Stephen, George Coates, Ron Alexander,
Jamie Cooper, Bill Jacobs, Greg Champion, Barry Dickins, Martin
Flanagan, John Blackman, Peter Temple, Jas H. Duke, Ken Morgan
and many more.
About the Author Adam Muyt became a Royboy
when he moved from Sydney to Melbourne in the early 1980s.
Along with the joys of following them, he, along with all
Fitzroy barrackers, suffered terribly through their final
years. Since 1997, he’s barracked for the Brisbane Lions
and is thankful he was there at the MCG to witness each premiership
of their triple flag triumph, particularly as he was surrounded
by lots of other Royboys and Roygirls. Adam now lives in Canberra
and works in native vegetation management. He is the author
of Bush Invaders of South-east Australia, undoubtedly
the only weed book to feature footy references and people
weeding in Fitzroy jerseys. He will always be a Royboy.
 Fitzroy
Reds Football Club, as part of its commitment to celebrate
community football in the heart of Fitzroy, is proud to support
the publication of this memorial to the people who loved and
love the Fitzroy Football Club.
SEPTEMBER
2005
A.L. McCann 0 9580795 6 0 rrp $29.95
 1977.
The fibro-belt suburbs of Melbourne’s south. The names
of West German terrorists crackle through the white noise
of television news, but barely penetrate the soundtrack of
the seventies. Endless summers, mass-market pornography, sport,
and a sexual freedom precariously close, yet always just out
of reach. Only when Julian meets Martin Bernhard, a ratbag
of a kid who smokes, drinks and shoots model soldiers with
his air-rifle, does the world start to look a bit larger,
and a bit more dangerous. And once you get a passport and
a plane ticket, it seems, you can be anything you want to
be.
This
is a novel of ideas, ideas that are fascinating and troubling.
The writing style is that rare combination, punchy and elegant.
You can smell the suburbs – the asphalt, the boredom
and the beer breath. There is a truth in the friendship
between Martin and Julian. It is honest, funny and bitter.
It is a real story of the petty betrayals that so many of
us have committed but are too scared to write or talk about.
So we make up lies.
There’s a lot going on in this novel and we
bloody need that; it doesn’t disappear into thin air
the way so much writing does these days. Christos
Tsiolkas
The
best novels speak the truth, literally or figuratively,
and Subtopia resonates with the stuff. A bitter truth, sure,
but one that needs airing. Subtopia is astutely observed
and neatly delivered. Full of intelligence and sensitivity,
this is the best Australian novel I've read in quite some
time. Sacha Molitorisz, Sydney
Morning Herald
The
precariousness of mental states is frighteningly imagined
by McCann. Subtopia – which takes
on so much – has the courage of its ambitions, and realises
most of them. Its range makes most contemporary Australian
fiction seem parochial. The momentum is nervous, hurried,
but sustained to the last words: Julian's benediction for
his lost companion, “already long gone, perhaps never really
there”. Intelligently alert to the politics, literature
and failed beliefs that inform his novel, McCann's is a
name to be watched. Peter Pierce,
The
Bulletin
A.L.
McCann’s first novel, The White Body of Evening,
was published in 2002 by HarperCollins
Australia.
 Andrew
McCann (A.L. McCann) teaches in the Department of
English at the University of Melbourne. As an academic he
has published extensively on British and Australian literature
in a wide range of local and international journals.
APRIL
2005
Black
Diamonds and Dust
Greg Bogaerts 0 9580795 1 X rrp $25
 Set
in Newcastle, Australia in the bleak 1880s and 1890s, Black
Diamonds and Dust excavates a rare seam in Australian
writing, the coal-mining novel. It tells the story of the
miner Edmund Shearer and his family. The opening scene depicts
the central character's narrow escape from a disastrous collapse
in an estuarine mine in which his likelihood of drowning is
about equal to his chances of being crushed to death under
the black diamonds.
Through
Edmund, a strange and moody man, we are told the story of
a community, its tragedies, its struggles and its ever-present
capacity for outbreaks of humour and festive joy in the face
of adversity. Afraid of the bush and the bowels of the mine,
Edmund prefers his home and the cleared spaces around it.
He can be read as symbolising white Australia's relationship
with the Australian landmass – until events force him
away from his place of comfort. The novel is ultimately one
of reconciliation, an uplifting story that suggests nobody
is irredeemable and no society has to remain the way it is.
Save yourself from the American cultural
Tsunami. Read Greg Bogaerts’ distinctively, shamelessly
Australian story and chuck away your Deputy Sherrif's badge.
Be your own cultural copper and find Australian black gold.
Bruce Pascoe 2005
Unaffected, humane, knowledgeable about people and places,
the elemental earth and the people who work upon it, Greg
Bogaerts' voice is an important one for Australian literature.
Newcastle needs its stories told, and Greg Bogaerts is well
equipped to tell them.
Nicholas Birns, Editor Antipodes
Greg Bogaerts
is a Newcastle writer. He has been a schoolteacher, solicitor,
BHP labourer and taxi driver. His stories, generating from
his working life experiences and centring upon Newcastle and
Novocastrians, have been published in journals, newspapers
and anthologies in Australia and America. Black Diamonds
and Dust is his first novel.
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