This year the Byron Bay Film Festival celebrates one of the nation’s greatest artists, with the film The King Sun; John Olsen at 85, writes Digby Hildreth.  The BBFF and Verandah Magazine are offering a free double pass to the film, which also includes two other fascinating documentaries on Garry Shead and local artist Scott Trevelyan.  Simply post a comment on the FB link below the story, or on our Verandah Magazine FB page to be in the runnning to win a free double pass to the films which will be showing on Sunday, March 8.

 ‘An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing.’

W. B. Yeats, Byzantium

The years and many illnesses (a stroke, a double-bypass and two knee replacements) have taken their toll on John Olsen’s body.

The revered Australian artist borrows from Yeats to colourfully describe old age as “a crooked back upon a stick” in The King Sun; John Olsen at 85, a colourful and inspiring cinematic tribute to his talent, creative drive and courage, and one of several enriching films about artists showing at the Byron Bay Film Festival.

Olsen continues, misremembering Yeats’s poem but conveying its gist: “The soul must sing, and louder sing.” And it’s his singing soul that shines through this stunning film, which is a record of his work on the second largest painting he has created – a 6m x 8m mural called The King Sun, his salute to the brilliant, life-giving orb.

Revered Australian artist John Olsen, with his work King Sun.

Olsen’s aged mottled face becomes boyish, radiating his joy in this outrageously ambitious work as he sweeps brushes across the surface of eight huge panels on the floor or bangs the paint down on them, forcing it to do his bidding. But while the singing spirit was willing, the flesh was weak. He had to be supported through much of it and he became exhausted and collapsed, though still laughing, joking about “swinging by” the mural in the ambulance to put his signature onto it before it’s too late.

Filmmakers Tony Williams and Anna Hewgill’s 54-minute documentary captures each day’s progress, starting with the arrival of the huge blank panels to the empty studio. There are interviews with Olsen’s son, Tim, with his old friend Barry Humphries and others, and Olsen himself shares his philosophy of life, reflecting on mortality, the creative process and the sun itself.

The King Sun by John Olsen, 6m x 8m, commissioned by Lang Walker for Collins Square.

The King Sun now graces the foyer wall of a Docklands high rise building, bringing cheer to all those who enter – as does this film, which is as joyful, energising and uplifting as the man himself.

Garry Shead’s carefully premeditated work is very different to Olsen’s.  This idiosyncratic documentary, In the Steps of Lawrence, takes us on a very different trip – starting in New Guinea, where Shead first came across a book of letters by D.H. Lawrence and became fascinated by the man, his beliefs and, above all, his time in Australia, when he wrote Kangaroo. Shead found out all he could about the British author, and embarked on a series of paintings focussing on Lawrence’s sojourn at Thirroul with his wife Freda in 1922.

Garry Shead, D.H. Lawrence series, Le dejeuner sur l’berbe; oil on board, 1992, 91cm x 121cm.

The series, painted in the 90s, starts on the ship that brought the couple over: Lawrence wanted to flee a Europe devastated by war (he foresaw the second rise of Germany, and World War II) and without any real motive, ended up in Australia.

There is a sexy and fantastical quality about the vibrant, colourful paintings, which feature exaggerated figures of Lawrence and his wife seeming to fly, the ubiquitous kangaroo sitting in various postures, or inter-acting with a mythological, even God-like authority. Narrated by Jack Thomspon, In the Steps of Lawrence reveals Lawrence’s fascination with the landscape, the classless society and, weirdly, Australia’s ‘Secret Army’, a bunch of volunteers, many of them ex-Diggers. It’s still a controversial thesis, but Shead believes that Lawrence met many members of this anti-communist militia, including its charismatic leader Rosenthal, the Kangaroo himself.

Through historical footage, mock re-enactments, interviews and close-ups of this fabulous series, In the Steps of Lawrence tells us a lot about the painter, about Shead as an artist, and about Australia.

North Coast artist Scott Trevelyan works on a smaller scale, but with the same focus and purposefulness, and a most unorthodox style, collaborating  as he does with bees (yes, bees!) to create beautiful nature-infused prints. The festival film The Man Who Works With Bees is an absorbing documentary about Trevelyan and his unique methods.

Scott Trevelyan in action with one of his ‘hive’ art works.

After creating an image through a process known as ‘relief print-making’, Trevelyan secures it to a wire frame and inserts it into the bee hives, then uses the honecomb they create in the final artwork. It’s random, he never knows what to expect, and he is always surprised by the result.  Trevelyan has been a bee-keeper for 20 years – as long as he’s been an artist – but the avian collaboration is more recent, following a severe motorcycle accident in 2002 which left him with a brain injury.

It took him a year to learn to walk again and as part of his recovery, Trevelyan found that both his art practice and the calming bees were highly therapeutic – the combination of the two providing him with a new way to practice art, and in which to see the world.  “I found the repetitive nature of printmaking very cathartic and almost meditative,” he says.  Trevelyan runs regular workshops for people with ABI (Acquired Brain Injury) at his Willowbank Sutdio in Alstonvale, not far from Lismore. ( scott-trevelyan.com)

The Byron Bay Film Festival runs from March 6-15, with screenings in Byron Bay, Ballina, Lismore and Murwillumbah. Program and ticket sales available from Monday, February 23 at venues and www.bbff.com.au

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Australian native Blue Banded Bee

 Life in the city, in the fast lane, living on sugar, white flour and caffeine, rushing, oblivious of others, from one meeting to another, playing nonstop with the iPhone, cuts us off from real life, and from our original nature, writes our Political Potter Richard Jones…

British philosopher and writer Alan Watts commenting on the human experience put it like this:
 “As it is, we are merely bolting our lives—gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in—because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to us more boring than simple being. If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched and tasted yesterday, I am likely to get nothing more than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of those only what you thought worth remembering. Is it surprising that an existence so experienced seems so empty and bare that its hunger for an infinite future is insatiable? But suppose you could answer, ‘It would take me forever to tell you, and I am much too interested in what’s happening now.’ How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of its environment—from the minutest electrical designs to the whole company of the galaxies—how is it conceivable that this incarnation of all eternity can be bored with being?”

“This is a Flame tree I planted years ago, covered in these brilliant red flowers. Above, half way up, is a mistletoe bush and another baby one has established further down. The Mistletoe bird a regular visitor. On the right of the flower is a self sown epiphytic hanging moss. The pumpkins have doubled after two nights of rain and another shower is on the way. I just went for a walk through the young forest. It’s damp and lush. The sandpaper figs are heavy with fruit and the endangered Small-leaved tamarinds are covered in flowers as are the Silky oaks- with masses of orange blossoms. It all changes so fast after good rains…”

Here in Possum Creek we constantly experience the subtle, gentle movements of nature, whisper of leaves, ever changing shadows through the trees, distant calls of the whip bird and kookaburra, cheeps of finches and buzzing of bees as they busy themselves on numerous fragrant blossoms. 
If you put your ear to my studio wall you can hear the hum of many thousands of bees going quietly about their business. We could never separate ourselves again from this existence to live amongst the raucous sounds of traffic, smell of car fumes and hoards of rushing strangers and where birds are a rare sight, let alone other wildlife.

Alan Watts is right, every second is a precious jewel to be considered and relished and not just “gulped down”.

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