Exhibition curated by Derham Groves.
Derham Groves
His Wunderkammer
Barbie and Ken Meet Sherlock Holmes
Recently a group of third-year architecture students at the University of Melbourne had to read a Sherlock Holmes story and then portray the victim in that story by altering the appearance of a Barbie or Ken doll. (I got this idea from the ‘Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death’, 18 dollhouse-sized dioramas of grisly crime scenes that were built by the International Harvester heiress Mrs. Frances Glessner Lee during the 1940s.) They produced a horrifying collection of dolls that had been bludgeoned, garroted, hanged, mauled, poisoned, scared, shot, stabbed and strangled. (The three featured dolls were constructed by Chen Gong, Nicholas Antoniou and Morsaleena Moytree Paruque.)
Watercolour by the late Melbourne architect, Philip Sargeant
More King Corky
The dreamy eyed Geoff Corke in his cardboard crown as King Corky and the very lovely Susan Gaye Anderson appearing on The Tarax Show. What a colourful set for black and white television! We never guessed.
Jerzy Faczynski
Jerzy Faczynski (1917-1995) was a Polish architect who migrated to England in 1939. He is perhaps best remembered for writing Studies in Polish Architecture (1946) and designing St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Leyland (1964). He was also an inveterate scribbler and recently hundreds of his sketches have come on the market, often selling for only a couple of dollars apiece. Here are three delightful ‘post modern’ sketches by him.
Do you know the way to San Jose?
Last week I attended the annual Popular Culture Association conference in San Francisco. I also visited San Jose to see the Sarah Winchester House, which was built by the widow of the gun manufacturer to appease/confuse the spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles during the Indian and Civil wars. It has 160 rooms and includes a staircase that leads nowhere and doors and windows that open onto blank walls. But the visual highlight of San Jose for me was the 1950s vintage ‘Pure Pork Sausage’ sign near the railway station.
New Year at Linton
Dr. Watson Holmes Jackamara
Mudrooroo’s Aboriginal detective Dr. Watson Holmes Jackamara is one of the most interesting characters in Australian detective fiction. He is certainly a lot edgier than Arthur Upfield’s Aboriginal detective Napoleon Bonaparte, although Jackamara owes much to Bonaparte. Jackamara is the subject of an artist’s book that I’ve been working on for far too long now, which I must finish in 2008 (my first New Year’s resolution!). In Mudrooroo’s Christmas story ‘The Healer’ (1991) Jackamara dresses up as Santa Claus (very appropriate for Christmas Day!). Following are four of the seven little linocuts for the artist’s book Dr. Watson Holmes Jackamara (L-R: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Jackamara’s namesakes; Napoleon Bonaparte, Jackamara’s predecessor; Jakamara as Father Christmas; and the unnamed crooked Queensland businessman/politician in The Kwinkin by Mudrooroo):
Happy Birthday!
The Naval Treaty by Vane Lindesay
In 2002 I published a little book titled The Rebuses of Sherlock Holmes containing eight Sherlockian rebuses devised by the Australian book designer, cartoonist and graphic artist Vane Lindesay. This one is my favourite:
