Edwina Preston’s Bad Art Mother (2022) is a narrative about motherhood leading to an artist’s withdrawal from the arts industry and vice versa. Veda, an ambivalent housewife and zealous poet in 1960s Melbourne, grants legal guardianship of her young son to a wealthy couple, the Parishes, to allow her more time to write. As implied by the title, this exchange isn’t so simple. She’s a complex figure in a world where sexism and artistic precarity overlap, and motherhood and creative labour remain mutually exclusive. The book is a historical mediation that endures: even if doors look open, gendered expectations still often freeze women out of full participation and recognition in the arts.
“The way I write feels like a stream of consciousness,” says Melbourne-based singer, songwriter and producer Jessie Hill, explaining that she often relies on setting and mood. “It’s like the song already exists and it’s just about channeling it.”
. . . TJAKA are more than ready to celebrate Elevate, the band’s energy-pulsing debut EP, at their upcoming headline tour.
The self-produced EP sees the band – made up of two Fabila brothers, Geoff and Jake, plus their cousin Luke, and close friend Felix Fogarty – put their music into recorded form after years of gigs and festivals.
After moving to France, I stuck to some trusted-albeit-bland foods until a succulent bell pepper dish in Marseille induced my desire to eat all things delicious in this country.
At the onset of a 5-year renovation-slash-asbestos-removal project, Centre Pompidou has been pumping out marketing about the closure while, in equal measure, plastering metro stations with posters promoting the latest programming. Are they open or not?
The career of Melbourne-born Carol Jerrems (1949–1980) was short-lived, leaving one wondering what she might have achieved if she had lived beyond thirty years of age. Yet these anxieties subside knowing what trailed her untimely death: a potent legacy that has only intensified over time.