195 – Pulling the Social Revolution Leaver

My niece, Lauren Bonnet, is one of the prime movers behind a great start up in Adelaide. From Found is a not-for-profit fashion social enterprise that encompasses style and quality with ethics and sustainability. They will be producing clothing for people like Steve and Nigel, you know, the trendsetters and groovers who move ahead of the fashion game with conscious steps!

Made in Adelaide, each piece is crafted by women from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds. They will use ‘found’ fabrics, including reclaimed, recycled and recovered textiles, to ensure our unique colour-popping creations take a stand against the environmental and ethical issues that result from fast fashion. Stand out and stand up for what you believe in with our one-off pieces.

I encourage you to help them because integrating and empowering women from marginalised communites is proven as the most effective way of bringing prosperity and harmony. They’ve raised $11,000 of their $35,000 target, but I’d like to see them reach their stretch goal of $50,000, to give this thing a great shake!

https://startsomegood.com/from-found

Listener survey underway. Go to theadelaideshow.com.au/survey

Between now and May 28, Hughes Gallery at the Fullarton Park Community Centre in Adelaide is home to an exhibition by Nick Leaver, entitled. Social Revolution. In the pieces I’ve seen so far, Nick uses a simple style of words against images to shift context and land home some content that requires much pondering. Tonight, we have enticed him to embrace the digital tools he critiques by joining us to explore his ideas through the social medium of podcasting.

Nick’s GAF Facebook Group

Nick, have we just had a social revolution, are we in one, or do we need one?

There is a piece with the picture of a sad man, with the caption, I am responsible for the violence I don’t see. Are we really? Can we be? Surely we have the option of pushing the guilt leaver to both ends of the spectrum, with very sound arguments.

Will the right people get the message?

Who are those right people?

Ned Kelly imagery?

Has art ever changed anything?

Dr Jane Goodall was on our show in episode 42 and argued that meditating on the world’s woes can paralyse us. Better to start on your patch of turf and work out.

 Nigel challenges the panel to pick the fake story from three stories from South Australia’s past.

Chronicle April 1940
NATIVE ART
Mr. Mountford To Lead Expedition The Board for Anthropological Research at the Adelaide University has arranged for Mr. C. P. Mountford, who is a member of the board, to lead a small expedition to totemic sites in the Mann, Musgrave and Petermann Ranges, and at Mounts Olga and Connor and Ayers Rock in Central Australia. The symbolism of the Central Australian aborigines was the most primitive in the world and was only approached by the simple paintings of the cave men of Europe and the drawings of children, said Professor Cleland. Investigation should yield results that would be of considerable value in elucidating the origin of art and writing. The need for investigation was urgent because of the rapid trend of the natives towards civilisation. In contact with Europeans,
the aborigine soon lost all memory of his ancient art and its associated myths and legends.

News July 1945
ART SCHOLARSHIP FOR NUDE STUDY
Art students under 28 years are reminded that entries for the “Grace Joel Scholarship” must be lodged at the Melbourne National Gallery by September 7. The prize of £50 is for a nude study whose principal qualities should be “artistic feeling and beauty of color and line. and not technical exactness.” This scholarship is open every two years. Other particulars of eligibility for entry can be obtained from the Adelaide National Gallery.

News October 1950
Modern Art Unhealthy
Modern art in Australia was assuming a “really unhealthy character”, Russell Drysdale, noted Sydney artist, said today. Drysdale is a passenger in the Orion which leaves for London late this afternoon. He will hold a one-man exhibition in the Leicester Galleries London next month. Drysdale, whose “Woman in a Landscape” caused such a controversy, said he had been particularly unimpressed by the uncreative and dull work built up by Australia’s young people in the past 12 or 15 years. Although they are looking at art “with new eyes and an awakened consciousness”, their works are simply not exhibiting any new found insight. He admitted he had received critical letters about “Woman in a Landscape,” but criticism did not worry him. “I wanted to paint something which had an heroic quality but was essentially human and typical of those wonderful women who go to the far corners to make a home,” he said. It was to be accepted, he added, that most beauty standards nowadays were based on something “as artificial as a corset advertisement”. “With this sort of influence it is of no surprise that modern artists simply have no idea as the true ideals of beauty”, deploring what they call the “old standards” as stuffy and out of date.“It’s not really their fault, they no longer have any real examples in the modern world to be guided by”.