Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 101 - May/Jun 2021 i frankie Magazine

1. You don’t have to be a good cook to make a tasty meal – chucking some ingredients in a jar and shaking them about can be enough. 2. On the scale of pancakes to hot dogs, Aussie tongues tend to be on the more bulbous side, which is part of what gives us our distinctive vocal twang (and why other folks struggle to mimic it). 3. Fun dates can sometimes include maggots and cadavers. 4. Chickens are actually big snugglebugs, and use a different voice when ‘speaking’ to humans they know. 5. It’s possible to be a feminist and go absolutely wild for household chores. (A Sunday spent vacuuming and washing the dishes? Bliss.) 6. We have more in common with worms than we realised: the squirmy invertebrates struggle…

How would you feel if I asked you to sing at someone? No, not for money. No, you don’t get to choose the tune. Yes, it will be uncomfortable for them, you, and everyone involved. I’m not a social scientist, but I do have a clipboard and a hunch that most people wouldn’t respond enthusiastically if asked that question. And yet, every birthday, that’s what we do. Friends, family, colleagues we barely know – even strangers in public! – inspire this bizarre behaviour. It only takes one singer to get a crowd going, and even if that person is the only one invested, we all respond like Pavlov’s dogs. A dusty switch inside our brain flicks on, our eyes go black and the song drones out of our gaping maws.…

BIC 4 COLOUR RETRACTABLE BALLPOINT PEN I have a confession. I never got my pen licence. My handwriting was, and remains, abysmal. Somehow, probably due to poor teacher-to-student ratios in Queensland, I got away with using pens anyway. Screw the system, right? One of the first pens I yearned for was this: a four-colour BIC. The fancy kids had them and that satisfying click of changing colours echoed through the classroom – a kick in the teeth to us single-colour pen kids. This pen is beautiful in the way 1970s architecture is beautiful: it’s functional, slightly futuristic, bold. Ugly and bold, which is sort of how I’d describe my aesthetic. The pen writes fine, but the ink is not the point. It’s the convenience and the look – the power.…

Among all the trucks driving the streets of Melbourne, you might spot one that looks a little different. It’s bright pink, with the words ‘Queer Move’ hand-painted on the side, and it’s here to change your expectations of removal services. The truck has been making its way around town since 2019, when Myles Farmer and Camel Love – who met working at another removal company – started a venture of their own. “My boss said I could use the trucks on weekends to do cash jobs,” Myles explains. “I asked Camel if she wanted to work with me, and we found a Facebook group called Queer Housing Melbourne. We sent the admins a message and asked, ‘Hey, can we advertise here?’ We were booked every Sunday for a month or…

What do you do for a crust? I run a company called The Design Kids: a free graphic design community of 300,000 designers around the globe. I also run Designers’ Bootcamps in exotic places, where we workshop design careers over beers (though now it’s all online – boo!). Whereabouts do you live? I’ve been a nomad for 12 years, but for the past six months I’ve lived on a magical tropical island called Magnetic Island, 20 minutes from Townsville in Far North Queensland. (I hope I live here forever!) Why did you move there? Mid-2020 I was doing a big Australian road trip because the international borders were closed and my feet are permanently itchy. I went to Magnetic Island for 12 hours on a whim, fell in love and…

SPRING By Eleanor Robertson - Being born in the middle of an Australian summer is one of the worst things that has ever happened to me. Every year on my birthday I endure the kind of weather that makes you feel like you’re trapped inside an unwashed belly button: close, slick, humid. Half the time it’s gloomily overcast, as well. If I’m lucky, the air will become so thick with moisture that there’ll be tropical rain in the afternoon, drenching my laundry and pissing all over my al fresco birthday drinks. Not so for my friends whelped in the blessed months of September and October, whose efforts at surviving yet another fucking year outside the womb are rewarded with the second-best birthday present you can get: the bliss of spring.…

GISELLE AU-NHIEN NGUYEN Growing up in a Vietnamese household, food was a primary love language. I have childhood memories of picking the stalks offrau muong(water spinach) beforeMe–my mother – fried it up, and folding filling into pâté chaud pastries with her. When I went vegetarian as a teenager (and later, vegan), she adapted my favourite dishes – her vegan bún riêu (a tomato-y noodle soup traditionally made with crab) is legendary. I moved interstate at 23, and whenever I come back, she serves up my old favourites and sends me home with armfuls of vacuum-sealed bags: vegan versions of cá kho (caramelised fish), gà xào sa ót (lemongrass chicken) and cha lua (pork roll). She sends me recipes so I can make things myself, as well – I’ve mastereddochua(pickles) andgoi…

TAKING THE REINS At the start of my career as a singer, I really struggled being a woman in the industry. I felt like I was battling off a lot of shit all the time – people very subtly trying to manipulate me into wearing certain things, or I was being made to feel like I needed to be a certain way. Often people would take credit for my ideas. Just the usual stuff women put up with all the time! I felt pretty low about it for a long time, like I wasn’t cut out for the music industry. But then I was like, “You know what? I can actually express this in an album if I want to,” and that’s kind of what I did with Californian Soil.…

Much ink has been spilled over the dangers of running a business with your partner, but not enough has been said about the unparalleled convenience. When Chrisney Formosa decided to start a greeting card brand in the middle of a pandemic-inspired lockdown, enlisting her husband Adam was a no-brainer. Not only were the pair already cooped up side by side every day sharing a workspace, they knew each other’s working styles inside out. “It really just makes sense,” Chrisney says. “Your significant other is there all the time, and they’ve got your best interests at heart.” The Brisbane couple met 14 years ago at an architecture firm – Adam was one of the senior designers and Chrisney had just started as a student architect. (Long story short, Chrisney wooed Adam…

MARYANNE Grief can also be a time of joy. Dad had Alzheimer’s and was deteriorating. In his last year he was 80 years old, but felt more like a teenager. He had an overwhelming love affair with my mum – he would call her “my queen” and serenade her and stare at her with doe eyes. He was a little confused and would forget our names, but was always so appreciative and beautiful. He passed away before the disease took his autonomy, and we were able to spend time together as a family, playing music and sharing photos and stories right to the end. TANIA As a funeral celebrant, I’ve learnt that the annoying clichés are true: everyone grieves differently, but you will get through it. A funeral can often…

MARY BAKER (AKA PRINCESS CARABOO) It was the beginning of April, 1817, when a strange woman appeared in the rural town of Almondsbury, just north of Bristol, England. She was young, pretty and dressed in tattered clothes with a turban on her head – she also seemed worn out and totally confused. The locals were just as baffled: who was this mysterious lass spouting an unknown language and toting only some toiletries wrapped in fabric? They put her up in an inn for the night, where she refused meals and performed unusual prayers – she also got inordinately excited about a painting of a pineapple, prompting staff to assume she hailed from a far-off tropical land. As luck would have it, a sailor soon passed through town who happened to…

Sometimes it feels like the actions we take to help the environment don’t make much impact in the grand scheme of things – but Lily Dempster is showing us we really can make a difference on a personal level. She’s the founder and CEO of the One Small Step app, which helps people reduce their carbon footprint by making simple, achievable changes that benefit the world around us in a big way. Hi Lily! What led you to advocate for the environment? I became really concerned at university about climate change being the biggest social justice issue of our generation, so directed my degree into studying environmental law and policy. How did you come up with the idea for One Small Step? I was working at GetUp, the activist group,…

EYES ON THE PRIZE Start the process of whipping your finances into shape by first defining what you’re working towards. Whether it’s a holiday in a year’s time, a house in a decade or a pet ferret by Christmas, you need to figure out the costs involved, decide on a deadline, then work backwards to budget for it. SET AND FORGET Create separate bank accounts so when your pay lands, you can set it to automatically funnel specific amounts into each of your little pots. There might be a rent and bills pot; an everyday, boring groceries pot; a special hobby pot. Automating this process can help remove some of the scary deliberation (aka panic and anxiety) around budgeting. DO SOME RESEARCH We each bring our own uniquely weird tangle…

The first thing I noticed: First was that the weather was super-hot and humid – it actually kicks you in the face. I also remember seeing the signs in the airport with Arabic characters, which are beautiful. It stood out how luxurious the place is, too. Things like renting a yacht for the weekend are accessible to regular people, or spending time in a luxurious hotel. Unfortunately that means people sometimes act quite superficial or just care about material things. The thing about the architecture: In Dubai’s Old Town, which I’ve mostly captured in these images, the architecture is totally different to what you might expect. The working class lives there, so it’s pretty inexpensive, and all the buildings are old with unique and lovely designs. You can really see…

Chucking a compost caddy on your kitchen bench or setting up a balcony worm farm doesn’t exactly feel like a grand save-the-world act. But it can make a huge environmental difference, because food waste dumped in landfill spews forth tonnes of toxic greenhouse gases as it rots, contributing to climate change. Instead, you can turn your scraps into rich fertiliser at home, and send that good stuff back to the soil to grow yet more food. And it’s doable even if you live in the world’s smallest apartment. THE NO-SPACE OPTION: BOKASHI BINS If the shoebox you affectionately call home has zero outdoor space, try fermenting your scraps indoors using the bokashi method. It’s less gross than it sounds, promise, and won’t fill your room with icky smells. First up,…

companion hats As any paleskin can attest, the sun is an enemy. A big, hot, fiery enemy that sometimes wears sunglasses in pictures drawn by kids. Wearing a hat is the best way to flip the bird at the solar bully (aside from actually, you know, flipping the bird), and if you’re going to pop something large and protective on your head, it may as well look good, too. Enter the clever folks from Companion – a New Zealand label that’s been churning out some pretty sweet brims of late. They’re made in collaboration with refugees and migrants in Aotearoa, and if you’d like to see more, you can visit companion-store.com v. happy co Your ABCs have never looked better thanks to Melbourne dames Vanessa Perilli and Esther Navarro-Orejon –…

Talk us through your journey into art-making. As a kid, I loved drawing and crafts. My parents turned a tiny closet under the stairs into a studio for me, and I would sit there for hours pretending to host Art Attack episodes. Later, my instinct was to do something academic at university. I ended up graduating with a philosophy degree, but I knew I wanted to pursue art. I moved to Toronto, got two part-time jobs and started working in the arts community. I applied to the illustration program at OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design), got in, and it was the best thing for me. I gravitated towards painting, with a few illustration gigs on the side to help pay the bills. It’s been a slow and steady…

Hello! Tell us a bit about yourself. I’m Kait James, a proud Wadawurrung woman and visual artist born and raised on Wurundjeri Country. What is the concept behind the series Dry Your Dishes on My Culture? Dry Your Dishes on My Culture is the first series of Aboriginal calendar tea towels that I subverted with embroidered images to change the narrative, basically giving them an Indigenous voice. It all started with “Stolenwealth Games”, a 1982 tea towel that I embroidered with Indigenous issues of that year, including the Brisbane Commonwealth Games protests. Where have the tea towels come from, and what kind of history do they have? I’ve been collecting these Aboriginal tea towels for quite a few years now – they were produced from the late ’60s through to…

Tkay Maidza has been on the airwaves for a solid eight years, but in many ways, she feels like she’s reintroducing herself to the world. “It’s almost like I’m starting again,” she says of her EP trilogy Last Year Was Weird (the final instalment is due for release in the coming months). “I felt like I was always trying to convince people of my sound, so when I saw the reception for Last Year Was Weird, Vol.2, it felt liberating. The feedback just solidified that I was doing what I was supposed to do.” Born Takudzwa Victoria Rosa Maidza in Zimbabwe, Tkay moved to Perth with her family when she was five years old. Her parents worked in mining and shifted the family from Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, to Whyalla, South…

What motivated you to start your label? Starting my own label has been my dream since I was a little girl. After completing a fashion degree I spent a few years working as a designer, then another few years running my own online business selling vintage clothing. I decided it was time to use my skills and experience and create something of my own. Also, while running my online vintage store, I was inspired by the unique vintage clothing I came across, and collected images of all the details and shapes I loved to one day use in my own collection. Those images really helped shape the aesthetic of The Only Label. What type of inspirations went into the New Normal collection? I was pregnant while developing this collection and…

Hello! Tell us about Mouchkine and how it came to be. When I was little, I drooled in front of luxury jewellery windows, but of course, could not afford anything. So once I got home, I’d try to reproduce the designs with cardboard, glue, beads and some glitter. I had caught the virus of creating. Now, Mouchkine is the opposite of what we see everywhere in shop windows, especially in Paris: simple and uncluttered little gems, which ultimately all look alike. Mouchkine is a universe of overload, colour and imagination, while remaining elegant and feminine. What were you doing before starting the label? Quite the opposite! I was a criminal lawyer. I think I finally realised I was too sensitive for such a trying area. So I dropped everything and…

What do you do with your phone when you upgrade to a new model? If you don’t manage to sell it or pass it on, chances are you simply plonk it in a drawer and never think of it again. Well, you’re not alone. According to statistics in recent years, there are 23 million unused (and often perfectly functional) phones across Australia, just sitting there gathering dust until they’re inevitably KonMari-ed out. When Sydneysider Annette Mayne realised the global scale of this e-waste, she couldn’t look away. To someone who’d grown up in a family of fixers and makers (and who proudly uses an iPhone 5 to this day), the numbers seemed ridiculous. So, in 2019, Annette founded The Reconnect Project, a Sydney-based social enterprise that wipes and refurbishes pre-owned…