Culture

The Live Red Art Awards and Festival is taking place on October 17 at the Addison Road Community Centre in Marrickville, Sydney. The day will feature an exhibition and live performances. Submissions for the multi-disciplinary competition, which was open to anyone, closed on October 1. As well as the winner announced by the judges, there will be a “people’s choice” award. For more information on Live Red Arts, visit here. Below is a run-down on some of the artists whose work will be on display at the festival. * * *

Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone & No One Can Pay By John Lanchester 224 pages Penguin, Allen Lane Review by Mat Ward If you don't know the difference between a credit default swap (CDS), a collateralised debt obligation (CDO) and a cheese sandwich, this highly readable book could help you in a painless, entertaining way. Its author, John Lanchester, grew up in 1960s Hong Kong. He says the contrasts of obscene wealth and crushing poverty were “like a lab test in free-market capitalism”.

What is most interesting about Newcastle’s annual This Is Not Art (TiNA) festival, is that what started 12 years ago as a community festival of independent, emerging art and culture, is still a community festival of independent, emerging art and culture. In an era when it’s not uncommon for even the most intimate art show to be sponsored by a massive alcohol company, the non-commercial nature of TiNA is remarkable. Australia is being hit by a relentless, daily gauntlet of live music and art festivals, but TiNA retains a truly artist-run schedule of events.

One of the greatest living exponents of Peruvian musica criolla (creole music), Eva Ayllon, performed at the Sydney Opera House on September 25. Finding my seat, I felt as if I’d walked into an exuberant family gathering full of animated conversation, laughter, waving and group photography.

The Mountain City Murders By John Tognolini Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide, 2010 The Mountain City Murders is a tale of crime, corruption and politics. Set in 2008 in the fictional New South Wales town of Mountain City (about 120km west of Sydney), the novel tells a story critical of criminal and capitalist greed.

“I want to make films with a social purpose”, Newcastle-based film maker and activist Simon Cunich told Green Left Weekly. “I think every one has got a responsibility to persuade people and to inspire activism.” Cunich, a member of Socialist Alliance, is completing a certificate in Screen and Media. Newcastle is the largest exporter of coal in the world and Cunich said this “environmental destruction” has led to a hub of activism in opposition.

Into the Woods: The Battle for Tasmania’s Forests by Anna Krien, BlackInc, 2010, 304 pages, $29.95 REVIEW BY TIM DOBSON “I was the premier of Tasmania but these bastards were infinitely more powerful than me.

artRiot September 11-26 Upstairs at the Annandale Hotel, 17 Parramatta Rd, Annandale, Sydney Sydney is currently swathed in artist run spaces and ecologically concerned art. The Museum of Contemporary Art’s latest show, In the Balance — Art for a Changing World, is just one of a range of recent exhibitions that explore climate change and community involvement in solutions. It’s in this context that artRiot has emerged. artRiot is a new art collective comprised of Sydney and Newcastle artists whose mandate is to combine art and activism.

The use of art as a commentary on social and political injustice is becoming increasingly innovative. Artists are embracing their varied mediums to share stories and ideas calling for a challenge to the status-quo. From radical independent art, to mainstream artists using their influence, the fusion of social justice and art has been embraced by photographers, musicians, painters, filmmakers, fashion designers and more. Many commercial artists who have enjoyed mainstream success have used their reach to convey messages of protest and encourage social change.

In 1992, Michael Franti from The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy warned that television was “the drug of the nation, breeding ignorance and feeding radiation”. Almost two decades later, the addiction and the ignorance are accepted as the norm. Anyone who questions the authenticity of how crime is depicted on television must be an extreme sceptic who spends way too much time online, questions the material reality of the world and thinks The Matrix is a documentary.

Never Ever Again By Caroline de Costa Boolarong Press, 2010 www.carolinedecosta.com A teenager and her boyfriend are catapulted to national notoriety when they are charged with procuring an abortion under Queensland’s archaic Criminal Code. Their identities are plastered across the internet, their home is fire-bombed and religious zealots shriek triumphantly from the pages of the local rag. Is this Caroline de Costa’s latest novel? Think again. Welcome to Cairns in 2010.

Over the past decades, civil libertarians have warned that right-wing politicians were moving towards an all-embracing police state, using the media-generated panics of the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terror” as their stalking horses. The Australian Crime Commission (ACC) is one of many police organisations set up after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US. Supposedly established to fight organised crime, the ACC seems to find this task too difficult, and its operations instead target drug enthusiasts and smaller criminal networks.