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Table for Two
No full textFletcher, a widower, embarks on his first date in decades, but things quickly turn south when a darker secret begins to emerge.
Rating: Genera
Cowboy LA
No full textLachlan's belligerent attempts at 'playing cowboy' are usually endearing... but when his old ranch partner and next-door neighbour, Isabelle Frasier, ages out of his games and into the arms of the new kid in town (Nick Patel), Lachlan plans to settle things the Wild West way - with a duel.
Rating: Genera
Uncovered Lives: Australia's Fight for Funded Trans Healthcare
No full text"Uncovered Lives follows filmmaker Kai Wharton as he searches for ways to help other transgender Australians seeking gender-affirming care. Knowing first-hand how life-saving this care can be, Kai sets out to examine the obstacles that impede trans people seeking medical care. He investigates why Medicare does not cover trans healthcare, and how this lack of financial accessibility takes a massive toll on transgender Australians. Through intimate interviews with trans people struggling for the care they desperately need, a leading professional in Australian trans healthcare, and a trans politician, Kai uncovers a loving and powerful community with a real shot at making change—against insanely stacked odds.
Uncovered Lives follows filmmaker Kai Wharton as he searches for ways to help other transgender Australians seeking gender-affirming care. Knowing first-hand how life-saving this care can be, Kai sets out to examine the obstacles that impede trans people seeking medical care. He investigates why Medicare does not cover trans healthcare, and how this lack of financial accessibility takes a massive toll on transgender Australians. Through intimate interviews with trans people struggling for the care they desperately need, a leading professional in Australian trans healthcare, and a trans politician, Kai uncovers a loving and powerful community with a real shot at making change—against insanely stacked odds.
Uncovered Lives follows filmmaker Kai Wharton as he searches for ways to help other transgender Australians seeking gender-affirming care. Knowing first-hand how life-saving this care can be, Kai sets out to examine the obstacles that impede trans people seeking medical care. He investigates why Medicare does not cover trans healthcare, and how this lack of financial accessibility takes a massive toll on transgender Australians. Through intimate interviews with trans people struggling for the care they desperately need, a leading professional in Australian trans healthcare, and a trans politician, Kai uncovers a loving and powerful community with a real shot at making change—against insanely stacked odds."
Rating: Genera
Untold Origins
No full textUntold Origins is a documentary series that brings the incredible stories of our grandparents to life. In the first episode, we meet Fotine Charalambous as she shares her experiences growing up as a farmhand on the island of Lemnos in Greece, as well as her journey immigrating to Australia in the '60s.
Rating: Genera
Endslate 2022 QUT Film, Screen & Animation Students
Get PDFNarratives:
Salvation; Table for Two; This is trying; Claremont; Cowboy L.A.; He devours; Moving Day Runaway
Documentaries:
The buyback; Invisible; Jenny Woodward storms the stage; Part of the pod; Uncovered lives: Australia's first for funded trans healthcare; Untold origins; Whiskey Au Go Go; Wildfire
Animations:
A child's imagination; Crossing; Paper thin
Virtual Production:
Cock fight; Judge Jurassi
Salvation
No full textWhen a journalist breaks into the TRIUMPH Space Centre seeking answers about her sister’s suspicious message, she starts to unravel the truth about TRIUMPH’s mission to save humanity. This groundbreaking production is the first narrative short film lensed at the Queensland University of Technology to use Virtual Production. Selected for Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival.
Rating: Matur
Moving Day Runaway
No full textA young Vietnamese-Australian woman is forced to confront her mother after an attempt to move out escalates into a car chase throughout Brisbane.
Rating: Genera
Glass: QUT Guild student magazine:2022
Get PDFGlass was born out of the struggle to gather
writing credits and the endless cycle of write,
submit for a unit, and forget.
As journalism and creative writing students, we
know how hard it can be to get work published,
be it creative, journalistic or academic. We also
think your work deserves to be shared with not
only your tutors, but your peers as well - the
people who you will inevitably be working with in
a professional capacity. A student magazine should
be full of student work and we’re so pleased to
revive the rag at QUT
Dr Cherrell Hirst AO: Business Leaders Hall of Fame interview
No full textDr. Cherrill Hirst, AO digital story: Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame 2022, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. Dr Cherrell Hirst was Queensland University of Technology's first female Chancellor from 1994 to 2004
William Robinson: Love in Life & Art: 27 September 2022 to 10 September 2023
Get PDFLove in Life & Art
Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward
together in the same direction.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry1
Love in Life & Art is so much more than a traditional exhibition exploring
themes in an artist’s oeuvre, teasing out influences and nuances,
or focusing on particular periods. It’s about people, relationships,
collaboration, creativity and what it takes to be an artist or pursue
any type of sustained output in a field—to bring about change, or
truly make a difference. We all recognise that great things are not
created in isolation and that it takes a particular environment—one
that is nurturing and supportive of a shared vision—to bring forth this
quality of work. Broadly, Love in Life & Art shows artworks by William
(‘Bill’) Robinson that speak to and owe their existence to life and love.
Through over 50 artworks produced from the 1970s until the recent
decade, viewers witness the relationship Robinson shared with his
wife Shirley Robinson (1936-2022), and in turn, the role she played in
nurturing his prolific artistic output.
The words on the pages that follow provide unique glimpses into Bill
and Shirley’s universe through very intimate observations and treasured experiences of close friends. Dame Quentin Bryce AM suffered the
loss of her husband, Michael Bryce, in early 2021 after 57 years of
marriage. Dame Quentin acknowledges the journey and processes of
grief after losing the love of your life, and how partnerships based on
shared love, support and vision provide the grounds for meaningful
life and purpose. The other contributors, June Tupicoff, Joe Furlonger
and Helen Fuller, all artists and life-time friends of the Robinsons, allow
us access to precious moments of their time spent with the couple
over the years. These memory fragments paint a bigger picture of this
exceptional union.
Love in Life & Art is a response to a very particular time, to a set of
emotions—grief, loss and absence. In the exhibition and catalogue, we
can see the presence of the two figures who made the art presented
to us possible. While Bill concentrated on making art, Shirley focused
on arranging preparation of works for exhibition, maintaining a
methodical archive, and navigating the complexities and expectations
of the artworld. The special relationship between Bill and Shirley
can challenge our understanding of ourselves, our relationships and
the world around us. Although throughout her life, Shirley preferred
anonymity and was deeply private, she is immortalised in these
artworks and numerous others held in collections around the world, as
far flung as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. But Shirley was
foremost a wife, mother, granny, friend and advocate, and her humility
and strength touched many. While we grieve her loss, solace can be
found in art.
The exhibition includes many artworks never publicly exhibited before,
and for these we are indebted to the Robinson family for generously
lending them for the exhibition. Paintings such as Shirley in candy
striped pants 1975 perfectly capture the essence of Shirley as a selfassured
39-year-old in an effortless and practical style—hair cropped
short, white t-shirt and casual wide-legged trousers. Produced during
Robinson’s post-impressionist ‘Bonnard’ period, this painting stands
out from others as one of the few actual portraits of Shirley, with
her gaze directed firmly at the viewer. There are none of the artist’s
inventive embellishments or accoutrements found in the farmyards or
later works to distract us from the ‘real’ character. Sprig of wattle 2010
is another rare more traditional portrait, and when displayed together,
these two paintings act as bookends to the exhibition, portraying a
pure and quintessential ‘Shirley’.
Interior works from 1978 onwards are dotted with Shirley in familial
scenes of everyday life—at the dinner table with family, on the veranda,
or enjoying a rare quiet moment alone—and they all radiate a tender and
private quality. In viewing a selection of these works en masse, it is clear
that Robinson’s art is not purely composed of visual meditations on the
environment in which he lives but are broader treatises on life and being
in the world. Whether crafting a sweeping vista or an intimate interior,
Robinson’s artworks are deeply imbued with the personal; he has always
sought to convey the atmosphere and emotion of his experiences and
perceptions within all his work. He has described artworks depicting his
wife as the ‘Shirley works’ and, to a degree, these works suggest thatthey weren’t produced so much with a public audience in mind. Rather,
they are personal narratives where the viewer can at times experience
competing feelings of voyeurism and participation.
The farmyard works produced in the early 1980s when the Robinsons
had a property on the outskirts of Brisbane chronicle the personal
relationships, attachment, care, and responsibility that arises between
both husband and wife and farmer and animal. Yet they also speak
to broader metaphysical concerns, and one can perhaps recall the
Medieval bestiary where there is always a moral to the animal stories
and imagery featured in the compendium. Robinson depicts Shirley as
the confident one managing work on the farm, wielding an axe or milking
the cow, while Bill dreamingly peers up at the sky or out from behind a
sheet of corrugated iron. From these images, it is easy to surmise who
is in control of the animal husbandry and who may be the idle observer.
Shirley was fiercely competent and a dab hand at so many things.
Although the farmyard drawings produced in 1984 when the family
relocated to the hinterland property of Beechmont could be considered
preliminary works, their diagrammatic inventiveness reoccurs throughout
the following decades. In works such as the French lithographs of 2004
or, more recently, the gouache paintings of 2015, the same spirited
characters of Bill, Shirley and their beloved brood of animals can be seen
posed in familiar scenes—sitting in a discarded chair, poking their heads
around farmyard miscellany, or ruminating in their shelters. Created by
Robinson in a studio space confined to a small kitchen alcove that once housed the stove, these recurring images suggest that the responsive
quality of the early drawings is in no way an indication that they are
secondary works; rather, their significance is much greater.
While the playful chaos of the farmyards has been realised in graphite,
ink and gouache, few people outside of close friends and family of
the Robinsons know of a far larger iteration, one that sits at the centre
of the Robinson home. After Bill and Shirley generously donated the
last work from the Creation Series paintings, Dome of Space and Time
2003–2004 to the QUT Art Collection in 2014, there was a major wall
left bare in their living room. In response, Bill created a nine-metre
multi-panel oil stick composition, showing a cohort of animals playing
out across this fabulous work, with one of Shirley’s beloved Nubian
goats playing a leading role, sitting in the mid-century swivel chair. The
following year, Bill began creating the smaller-scale gouache paintings
exhibited in this exhibition. Shirley was the impetus for Bill revisiting
the farmyard motifs in these works. While this return can be framed
in terms of practicality—the Robinsons needed a new artwork for the
living room—in the context of this exhibition, it is important to note that
this major work was created for Shirley. It is a tribute to her beloved
animals, an homage to a shared moment of their lives on the farm, but
most obviously, a grand gesture of love.
Shirley’s artistic strengths come to the forefront in Robinson’s
lithographic series produced during five trips to Atelier Bordas in Paris
between 1995 and 2005. Robinson had been introduced to lithography at the Australian Print Workshop in Melbourne, where he produced
works such as Farmyard 1 1990, but it was under the tutelage of
master printmaker Franck Bordas that he found his stride. Lithography
is the most exacting and technically difficult of the print media, yet,
true to form, Shirley excelled as an artist’s assistant; the years spent
studying art at the Central Technical College in the 1950s prepared
her for this labour-intensive process. Duly diligent in ensuring that
graphite remained sharp and that mirrors were kept close at hand,
Shirley was instrumental in preparing the prints themselves, putting
pencil to paper and stone, to alleviate some of the work for Bill. Hours
spent tracing each colour, sometimes up to 12 on one work, and then
tracing the reversed image onto the lithography stone, required great
patience, dexterity and attention to detail, all strengths of Shirley’s. Her
willing contribution freed Bill to concentrate on drawing and the more
conceptual components of the prints.
Artifice and metaphor take precedence in much of Robinson’s art as
he is primarily concerned with picture making, the placement of line,
composition and colour, over simply describing a view. Robinson has
often said that when he paints himself, he is in disguise, a mannerism
quite evident in the group of official self-portraits he entered into the
Archibald Prize, and a trait that has carried through in his approach
to illustrations of Shirley. Throughout the Shirley works, we see
Bill’s fecund imagination and intellect coalesce in riotous scenes of
ambiguity and mayhem. The lithograph Farmyard 1 1990 shares the
same qualities as the farmyard drawings: the interplay of sinuous lines against the sharp whiteness of paper effect depth and perspective.
While whimsy and humour are employed as subterfuge, one need only
look at the figure of Shirley as she shares the superimposed rooster’s
saddle feathers—Shirley wears them as a frou frou skirt as if she were
dancing on the stage of the Moulin Rouge. Not quite disguise, but
definitely costume.
In fact, Shirley is often caught in dance, as seen in the preliminary
ceramic watercolour, Untitled (Ceramic 21) 1989, where her pose is
reminiscent of the divine cosmic dancer Nataraja Shiva. The tight curls
she is depicted with in the series of work from this period are also
suggestive of an array of sacred female figures, such as the Venus of
Willendorf. At night, Bill and Shirley cavort in pools of water and by day
they float in the air with cloud-like wings and aureole hazes around their
heads; they are always otherworldly beings. Their figures drift through the
landscape in oneiric forms evoking a sense of wonder that prevails in the
transitional paintings of 1985 to 1990. Works such as Sunset with riders
1986 exhibit qualities both of the farmyards as well as the conceptual
interests of grand multi-perspective landscapes. These merge into
fantastical images of a uniquely ‘Bill and Shirley’ microcosmos. At the
time, the Robinsons were literally exploring the possibilities of their
spectacular surrounds—the ancient Springbrook plateau—and as Bill
sought to capture all its complexity within a two-dimensional medium,
he let his imagination run wild. There is a raw and unbridled emotional
quality to these works and they are ripe with symbolism that arouses the
emotions of awe and wonder in the viewer too.
There is an abiding spirituality in Robinson’s practice which is due in
some part to his Christian faith, but more so to his deep connection
to, and understanding of, ‘place’ as a set of principles, of a lived
experience rather than an idealised notion. Interestingly, Robinson was
brought up an Anglican and converted to Catholicism upon marrying
Shirley. Some commentators have labelled him a religious painter,
with others remarking that his paintings are “postcards from God”.2
Yet, when viewing the ‘Shirley’ works, it becomes apparent that they
are actually postcards of love to his wife, testament to the sanctity of
their marriage as a union of fidelity, belief and faith. Much of the work
suggests the presence of a sort of church of domesticity full of the
messiness of life, work, creativity, music, conversation, laughter, play,
care and compassion: a place where the big questions can be asked
and pondered on.
While Shirley played an invaluable practical role in supporting William
Robinson’s art practice, she also brought something entirely unpragmatic
to his practice too. Love in Life & Art explores how all-embracing her very
being was in the creation of these works, and how Bill and Shirley’s
reciprocal emotional connection was not only a private affair within
their home and marriage, but also something larger: a lived ground
that lent its own texture and cadence to the beautiful objects we see as
her husband’s art. For that generosity of spirit, we are indebted to Shirley.
Vanessa Van Ooye