Innholdsfortegnelse for July - August 2017 i frankie Magazine

I love my friends and family. I enjoy my job. I’m keen to hear about the companies and organisations I choose to support. But do I want to be bombarded by all these people and groups every day? No. And yet, I am. We all are. Like most (semi) adults, I wake up to two bulging inboxes: work and personal. Eyes barely functioning, I scan the 30-plus new emails in my personal account for news from my sister in the northern hemisphere. Then I switch to my work account, and filter for the most urgent emails – those with the greatest number of red flags and exclamation marks. After a short commute and several cups of tea, I sluggishly plough through the remaining batch. The process begins with a ritual…

1900s THOSE WERE THE DAYS The turn of the 20th century was an exciting time for folks who called Australia home: the country was officially founded, with Federation in 1901; ladies finally earned the right to vote and stand for parliament; and focus was turned to making Australia a harmonious and prosperous place to be. That is, if you were white and affluent – with most settlers sailing straight in from the British Empire, existing Indigenous and ethnic groups suffered under the so-called White Australia policy. SCHOOL LIFE Aussie students in the 1900s lived a fairly meagre existence. Many went to school barefoot, in an unfussy tunic-style frock or sailor suit. Their textbooks tended to be hand-me-downs, and it was common for a community to have just one teacher (males…

First things first: it’s not Tarriona. It’s Tank. And this New Orleans spoken word artist wasn’t always so confident behind the mic. “My grandmother gave me a poem to recite at her anniversary,” Tank recalls. “It was ‘A Great Somebody’ by Adrienne Sealy Hardesty. I memorised it; I was ready to recite it. But then the whole poem ran away from me. I couldn’t catch it.” Her grandmother’s solution? Take Tank to every church where her preacher grandfather delivered his sermons, and get her to recite that same poem, again and again. “Children would be laughing at me because of the way I spoke with such – I don’t know – authority,” she says. “I was very loud and very animated. But I didn’t care that they laughed. I just…

Getting your period at the pool is not usually something you’d want to broadcast, least of all with giant novelty tampons and 40 metres of red tulle designed to look like blood trailing you in the water. But one evening in March, at a quiet suburban pool in Melbourne, a sold-out crowd turned up to watch 30 women clad in crimson bathers perform that exact spectacle, in a water ballet billed as “a bloody good show”. The ladies – who call themselves The Clams – didn’t initially set out to create a ballet about the slightly taboo topic of menstruation. They’d met as part of a feminist book club, set up by Joanna Cooney in late 2015, but somehow ended up doing very little reading. “We weren’t really that good…

It started with a big box from the Salvos. My dad christened my sharehouse life a week after my 18th birthday with a carton of old cutlery and crockpots and cracked and mismatched plates. They were treasures that had seen more meals than I had – each flowered beige surface more beautiful than the last (which was also beige; so much ’70s-era beige). I bundled the box into my secondhand car, alongside a small TV with an in-built VCR that hadn’t been used since 1999, some well-used clothes and a stack of magazines, and I drove 14 hours to my new house. I bought the cheapest mattress from the closest store and planted it on the floor like a flag on the moon. From there, the collection grew. The logic…

I dream of living in a small town. The fantasy is always the same: waking up in my spacious home, which is on the edge of a small lake or surrounded by lush greenery. Going to the local coffee shop – the same one every morning, naturally – and greeting the townsfolk as I pass. Perhaps I would work at the local bookshop or movie theatre or video store (in this town there’s still the need for a video store). I’d know all my neighbours personally, and they would know me. At dusk, we would sit on our porches, sipping mulled wine and watching fireflies dance, comforted by the knowledge that we’d be able to do this every night for the rest of our lives. You can probably guess that…

TYPO FLORA IN A SENTENCE: Combining our passion for beautiful flowers and illustrative design, we create original, high-quality stationery // WHAT WE SELL: A range of sophisticated floral-inspired stationery, including greeting cards, notebooks, art prints and gift tags. We also design bespoke stationery for weddings, branding, packaging and more // PRICE POINT: From $6.95 to $29.95 // WHAT MAKES THE SHOP SPECIAL: We hope to remind folks of the beauty of handwritten notes, and the deep, personal connection they represent // FIND US: Online at typoflora.com.au CREATURES OF INDIGO IN A SENTENCE: An online space providing a mix of statement and everyday pieces for your wardrobe, from labels that epitomise the Australian and New Zealand fashion landscape // WHAT WE SELL: A carefully curated selection of women’s and men’s fashion…

THROWING A FRISBEE IN THE PARK (MAYBE AT SUNSET WHEN THE LIGHT IS NICE) I own a bright pink frisbee with a hole in the middle, which glides through the air like a big spinny ‘O’. There are lots of benefits to playing frisbee: you get to leap dramatically through the air; you attract lots of pooches who want to join in; and even if you can’t catch or throw or jump, you can still breathe in the twilight air and play in the shadows of tall gum trees. Which is maybe nicer than being good at a weird disc game, anyway. DANCING Here’s the most important piece of dancing advice you’ll ever receive: throw your hands in the air like you just don’t care. The first part is easy…

Dear frankie, I'll shamefully admit it: it's been a while since I've picked up one of your issues. But as I opened issue 77 and came across Mia Timpano’s “Creature of Habit” article, I was reminded yet again how insanely connected I feel to your pages. I, too, am a creature of habit. I don't take change very well, and can worry every day over the tiniest things. Thank you, Mia, for reminding me that shit happens – let's just make the most of it, yeah? All my love, Ash Dear frankie, I’ve loved reading about the winners of your Good Stuff awards. I’ve recently been having doubts about choosing a creative uni course, but these talented people have made me realise I made the right choice. I can't wait…

Tell us a bit about this project. Seasonal Abandonment of Imaginary Worlds is a photographic collection of ageing Japanese playgrounds. The playscapes are either abandoned or empty due to seasonal snowfall, but the absence of life creates a space, ripe for the imagination. Where were these images taken? They were shot in Shiga, Japan – a place between a lake and the mountains. Shiga is east of Kyoto and north-east of Osaka. What’s your relationship with Japan? My partner is Japanese and my daughter is half Japanese. When these pictures were taken, we were staying with my daughter’s grandmother and great-grandmother in the family home, located in a rice-farming village. We visit once a year and try to go during a different season each time. Describe the winter landscape for…

For an activity that requires bugger-all effort, trying to sleep can be a real pain in the arse. The whole point of sleeping is that you do nothing. Zilch. You just lie there, close your eyes, and proceed to do sweet F.A. for the next seven to eight hours. Supposedly, it’s easy. But is it, really? You can probably figure out that I’m not very good at sleeping. I’ve tried. A lot. Every night, in fact. But I just can’t seem to get the hang of it. Some people are tremendous at sleeping. Some people can do it on cue, and I’m intensely jealous of those well-rested fiends and their ongoing success with a serene nightly slumber. How dare their unboggled brains refrain from irregularly waking them with thoughts of…

Tell us a bit about yourself. I’m a self-taught paper artist and graphic designer based in Singapore. I studied product design and photography, with the hope of one day ending up as a toy designer or fine art photographer. Obviously none of that happened! What is paper illustration? It’s a meticulous process of transforming a flat piece of paper into something three-dimensional. My illustrations only truly come alive and resonate with me when I construct them from paper. What kinds of themes do you like to work with? I enjoy creating whimsical or surreal works of everyday, ordinary scenes, sometimes with a touch of humour. It’s an invitation for the viewer to pursue the subject of play, and to reimagine the little world we live in. Why paper? I love…

THE DISTANT ELDERLY RELATIVE HUG According to some etymologists, the word ‘hug’ may derive from the German term hegen, meaning ‘to enclose with a hedge’. Whoever transmuted the word from a gardening activity to a physical embrace must have been thinking of one particular type: the distant elderly relative hug. I, too, have been clamped within the rigid arms of a great-aunt in a harsh woollen cardigan, and it bears more than a passing resemblance to bodily entrapment in a scratchy, twiggy hedge prison. Unlike most hugs, which release lovey comfort hormones, this one triggers only deep guilt and a piercing fear caused by proximity to death. THE BEAR HUG All you have to do is google ‘hugs health’ and you’ll find thousands of pages of evidence that bear hugs…

Up until a few years ago, Ninna Larsen didn’t drink coffee – now she spends her days talking non-stop about how good it is. Not that she’s suddenly started guzzling down cups of joe, though. Instead, Ninna’s concerned with what’s left over from each brew: the mountains of rich coffee grounds that make phenomenal fertiliser. Most often this potent residue ends up rotting in landfill, spewing forth tonnes of toxic greenhouse gases, but since 2014, Ninna’s been helping cafés in the heart of Melbourne divert their used coffee to community gardens and home veggie patches, via her cleverly named social enterprise, Reground. Ninna first noticed the crappy environmental impacts stemming from our global caffeine addiction after moving from Denmark to Australia in 2012, hoping to sharpen up her English. She…

suren jayemanne Suren Jayemanne makes quite a few jokes involving his girlfriend, which, understandably, she’s not always super-thrilled about. “I reassure her that no one in the audience will know anything about her, except that she likes cheese. I could be describing any white girl,” the Sydney-based comedian says. He perseveres because, as a “brown man dating a white woman”, their relationship is a handy segue into the meatier issues of race and identity that he likes picking apart during his stand-up routines. Suren actually started out doing fairly typical one-liners, avoiding jokes about his cultural background for fear of being pigeonholed. Then, someone urged him to change direction, saying audiences wanted to hear his unique perspective. Subtext: do funny accents. “My parents grew up in Sri Lanka and Malaysia,…

My sister recently procreated. Her labour lasted a couple of days, although she was told that part of it was “pre-labour”, i.e. not real labour, so we went out for Macca’s. When we returned, a doctor said he’d induce her labour, whipped out a chopstick and spiked her vagina with it. I was blogging while all this was going down, because I’d nicked off from work to be there for the birth. My form of support was holding my sister’s hand (the hand I wasn’t using for typing) and occasionally saying, “Holy fuck, I don’t know how you’re doing this.” I don’t even know if she heard me say it – she was slipping in and out of consciousness most of the time. Annoyingly, the baby exploded out of my…

Describe Artemisia in a sentence. A beautiful, private, creative space in which to adorn and be adorned. Where is it? 1553B Burwood Highway, Tecoma. How did it all begin? After having my son three years ago, then moving to the Dandenong Ranges, I felt the need to make my work situation fit more comfortably with my home life, and my personal sensibilities. Having my own tattoo studio makes it possible to prioritise my family, while also fulfilling my artistic ambitions in a place where I love spending time. Is there a story behind the name? I have a fondness for the imagery and mythology of the Greek goddess Artemis, and have a large tattoo of her on my leg. Some years ago, when I came across the word ‘Artemisia’ (a…

I always wanted to be a scientist; I’m very interested in evolution, and how genes change over time. This is particularly easy to study with insects – and in my case, fruit flies – because the generation time is very small. It only takes two weeks for them to go from an egg to an adult. I’m in the second year of my PhD, but this is my sixth year doing fly stuff. I basically take different types of fruit flies with different genetic backgrounds and get them to mate, crossing them together and looking at their fly children to see what’s physically changed. It might be that they have different eye colours or wing shapes, or flies with a certain genetic change might not survive. This can tell me…

I’ve always known I was a girl. When I was two-and-a-half, I went up to my mum one day and said, “Mum, I want a vagina.” It was very simple and straightforward. I was watching movies by then and loved the Disney princesses – I was obsessed with Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Mum said, “Oh, but you’re a beautiful little boy,” but I knew I was actually a little girl. No one really questions whether a kid knows who they are when they’re cisgender. If there’s a four-year-old girl who’s born a girl and who identifies as a girl, there’s no question as to whether they know they’re a girl or not. But if they’re trans, they’re told they’re not mature enough to know who they are yet. I knew…

LOOK AT SOMETHING BLUE The University of British Columbia recently tracked 600 people’s performances while undertaking cognitive tasks. Some of the tasks required attention to detail; others required creativity. When the computer screen was red, the participants nailed the detailed jobs. When it was blue, their creativity soared. The reason? We’re culturally wired to associate red with vigilance (well, all those stop signs will have an effect), and blue with openness (because, you know, the sky and the sea). Interestingly, Juliet Zhu, who ran the research in question, said that results would have differed if they’d studied folks in her native China – there, red is associated with prosperity and good fortune. GET SOME DISTANCE Perspective can make all the difference, as we all know from those instances when we’ve…

BABS BODYCARE Once we needed a natural deodorant for our kebab-scented sweat (hence the name, Babs) – now we make all-natural body and skincare products, from deodorants, face and body oils to balms, scrubs and facemasks.babsbodycare.com.au PIMELIA Sustainable, locally produced and hand-painted jewellery, celebrating pattern, colour and timeless design. Pimelia customers are a wonderful tribe who choose to support artists, not corporations – we create with them in mind.pimelia.com.au UPSWITCH Quirky industrial lamps made from upcycled and repurposed materials – and they each come with a low-wattage LED bulb, so you can save the environment and money on your electricity bill, too.upswitch.com.au SUSTOMI We aim to open people’s minds to reducing waste and living a sustainable lifestyle with our reusable beeswax food wraps for the home and lunchbox. Handmade in…

Tell us a little about yourself. I’m a Melbourne-based artist and quiltmaker living with my partner Steve, our children Casper and Daisy, and two dogs. What drew you to quiltmaking? When I was 15, my parents took my brother and me travelling for six months. Mum told us we didn’t have to go to school, but we should choose something to learn about while we spent three months in Marin County, California. I walked to the library a few days a week to read about the Salem witch trials – one document had references to quilt blocks having hidden meanings, so I started to read about American quilts. It was then that I discovered the world of quiltmaking, and developed an obsession with the inherited history, language and ritual of…

CRACKER FIRST TRACK Mara Williams: “A Quality of Mercy” – RVG. A moving and defiant declaration of self in the face of prejudice, from one of Melbourne’s most stunning artists. It’s a classic sound, it’s instantly nostalgic, and the song ends with a cry of: “There’s no evil in me!” Heartfelt words. Jay Williams: “Cherry Pie” – Warrant. It has a big sound and killer beat. Makes me wish I still had long hair. Leigh Barker: “Needle in the Camel’s Eye” – Brian Eno. Eno swiftly and drastically departed from this style, but he may well have gone on to be the ultimate pop powerhouse with more songs like this. SONG TO IMPRESS WITH YOUR OBSCURE MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE Paul Maybury: “Now” – Dion DiMucci. Best song ever written, and one…

Jessica Mentis is a trained architect, a flavour connoisseur, and The Jellyologist: essentially, the real-life incarnation of Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka. Over the past year, she’s created thousands of wobbling, jiggling, architecturally inspired jellies in her Auckland kitchen, among them a towering transparent mosaic; snack-sized jelly replicas of the soap from Fight Club; a room full of glowing gelatinous gems; and countless jellified champagne cones. There’s no such thing as a ‘typical’ Jellyologist creation. Blurring the lines between dessert and art, everything Jessica and her team of merry jelly-makers build is designed to make you feel like a kid in a candy store. “It’s such a nostalgic food,” she says, “and we’re trying to play around with that.” Most of the time, when people think of jelly, images of gelatinous…