Artscape

10:00pm – Tuesday, November 13 on ABC1

In May 2012, Richard Tognetti, Artistic Director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO), led a band of musicians, surfers and cinematographers to the rugged surf coast and tough desert landscape of Ningaloo Reef in northern Western Australia. Their task – to create a new performance piece for the ACO called The Reef.

The Reef is to be a fusion of powerful live music featuring Richard Tognetti, Mark Atkins, Steve Pigram and members of the ACO, accompanied by breath taking ocean footage projected onto a big screen.

Leading the temporary artists’ camp on the edge of the World Heritage-listed Ningaloo Reef is creative director Mick Sowry. He has the task of delivering the film that will play as the backdrop to the ACO’s performance. He hopes to explore the idea of timelessness and the links between surfing, the ocean, landscape and music.

The mix of artists contributing to the project includes didgeridoo musician Mark Atkins, singer/songwriter Steve Pigram, composer Iain Grandage, cinematographer Jon Frank and finless surfer Derek Hynd.

LIQUID NOTES – THE MAKING OF THE REEF follows the process of a creative collaboration to discover what can grow out of a loosely defined, original inspiration.

“Unless you try to evolve and push yourself and others, I think you’re rotting,” says Tognetti. “We don’t know what the main purpose is, other than to take people out of their and our comfort zones.” Sunday 18 November at 10pm, ABC2 LIVE presents The Reef recorded at the Sydney Opera House.

10:00pm – Tuesday, October 30 on ABC1

As The Australian Ballet approaches the 50th anniversary of its first performance, Artscape looks back at its origins and goes behind the scenes during the company’s latest take on the classical ballet, Swan Lake.

Swan Lake was first performed by The Australian Ballet at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney in 1962 and in its 50-year history the company has performed four different versions. The latest iteration is by The Australian Ballet’s resident choreographer Stephen Baynes.

Swan Lake – The Australian Ballet at 50 follows several young dancers including Principal Artist Amber Scott through the rehearsal period to opening night and looks at some of the challenges of staging a new ballet.

The documentary also looks at how life has changed for the dancers over the past half a century. There are stories from current Artistic Director David McAllister AM as well as a host of other ballet luminaries, including Marilyn Jones OBE, Garth Welch AM, Marilyn Rowe OBE, Graeme Murphy AO and Colin Peasley OAM, who has played a role in every Swan Lake in the ballet’s history.

McAllister says the collaboration with ABC TV Arts is a wonderful opportunity for fans across Australia.

“It’s fantastic that we’ve been able to capture all the magic of our 50th anniversary year by giving ABC TV unfettered access to what goes on behind the curtain. It will be a must-watch program for any arts fan.” Swan Lake – The Australian Ballet at 50 pirouettes through the changing profile of ballet in Australia over a 50-year period.

10:00pm – Tuesday, September 18 on ABC1

Adrian Doyle is the dynamic face of Melbourne’s art world in Melbourne. He is part artist, part academic, part entrepreneur and part social activist. In 2008 he set up The Blender Studios as a co-op for street artists. Now he has opened the Dark Horse Experiment (DHE) gallery in partnership with the Dickerson family, scions of the traditional art world.

Sales at the gallery’s first solo shows are lacklustre, so Doyle reinvents himself as a commercial mural artist, scoring a major commission for a 45-metre mural on the banks of the Yarra.

But the gallery continues to struggle and the co-op really needs Doyle’s upcoming solo show to be a hit.

Doyle goes back into the studio to pump out ten pieces.

Doyle travels home to Frankston – the suburb of his childhood – to visit his long-suffering father and sick mother. Terrible tragedies have befallen the Doyle family – the accidental drowning of his nephew (Doyle left the pool gate open) and the foreclosure of his parent’s home. However Doyle has succeeded in exorcising these tragedies through his art.

Stephen Nall, who manages the DHE, is confident that Doyle’s show will make an impact – his previous shows have sold out. But opening night tells a different story. Doyle wants to keep the prestigious gallery but his partner Piya is reluctant to keep anything that isn’t making money and tempers fray.

Maybe opening a gallery in a post GFC world was a little naive after all? Art, life and commerce.

Something’s got to give…

10:00pm – Tuesday, September 11 on ABC1

Adrian Doyle is the dynamic face of the urban art world in Melbourne – part artist, part academic, part entrepreneur and part social activist. In 2008 he set up The Blender Studios as a co-op for street artists. The old warehouse has become a hub of Australia’s finest practitioners. He runs an enormously successful council program that gets ‘young punks’ to stop doing graffiti and instead ‘beautify’ the walls of Melbourne.

All this is on top of his own art that is increasingly obsessed with the suburbia of his upbringing. He’s not sure if he loves it or hates it but he has such a deep fascination with it that he’s doing a PhD studying the aesthetics of suburbia. Doyle frustrates and excites the art establishment in equal measure. Many see him as a breath of fresh air, while others regard him as a pushy kid with a runaway ego.

Doyle’s girlfriend and business partner Piya is the brains behind the highly successful Melbourne Street Art Tours that operates out of the studios. With street art now the top tourist attraction in Melbourne, the couple have continuous media attention that has placed mounting pressure on their relationship.

Their latest venture is a gallery called Dark Horse Experiment, a partnership with the Dickerson family, scions of the traditional art world, in an effort to bring wealthy collectors to street art.

With multiple projects on the go, can Doyle manage to balance his bohemian lifestyle with his super strict girlfriend and the maelstrom of his fractured existence?

10:00pm – Tuesday, August 21 on ABC1

Jenny Sages’ portraits have been exhibited 20 times in the Archibald Prize. This year her self-portrait ‘After Jack’, painted after the death of her husband, was both runner-up in the Archibald and winner of the People’s Choice Award.

Born in Shanghai to Russian parents, Sages came to Australia in 1948.

She studied at East Sydney Technical College and the Franklin School of Art in NY. After working as an illustrator for 30 years, she has painted full-time since 1985. She won the Wynne Prize in 2005 and Portia Geach Memorial Award for portraiture in 1992 and 1994. Her work is represented in numerous public and private collections including the Art Gallery of NSW and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.

In 1983, at the age of 50, Sages went to the Kimberley on a life-changing trip and experienced an epiphany. It was the start of a full-time commitment to painting, and for the next 20 years she would ‘walk the country’ with a group of female artists – it was on one of those expeditions she met Emily Kame Kngwarreye.

Sages’ ‘Emily Kame Kngwarreye with Lily’ was the first portrait purchased for the newly established National Portrait Gallery in 1998. She would go on to paint Emily’s niece, painter Gloria Petyarre, ballerina Irina Baronova and the writer Helen Garner to name a few.

The essence of her work lies in the process of using the ancient technique of encaustic (hot wax) mixed with pigments. Rarely does Sages use a paintbrush but rather her fingers and knives are the tools of her trade.

10:00pm – Tuesday, August 14 on ABC1

For 60 years, Australian photographer Jeff Carter traversed this country in search of stories. He wrote books and articles for the magazines of the time like People and Pix. And he never travelled without a camera.

From the outset, Carter was drawn to document and celebrate the lives of working folk in the bush. From charcoal cutters and kangaroo shooters to dog trappers and drovers, his archive of wonderful images records a way of life that in many ways no longer exists.

In July 2010, director Catherine Hunter and cameraman Bruce Inglis joined Carter on a road trip to western New South Wales. Carter was keen to renew acquaintances with people he had first photographed back in the 50s.

It was to be his last photographic journey. On October 25, 2010, Carter died aged 82 years.

He left behind one of Australia’s most remarkable and historically-significant photographic archives – more than 50,000 images of Australian life.

INLAND HEART draws together the themes and passions of a lifetime of photography and includes Carter’s final interviews.

9:30pm – Tuesday, July 24 on ABC1

Margaret Olley: A Life In Paint is an intimate one-hour documentary about one of Australia’s best-loved painters. A well-known figure from the time she was painted by William Dobell in 1948, Olley’s celebrity status tended to overshadow her life as a painter. This film puts Margaret OIley the painter on centre stage. Many believe her last works – those painted in the 18 months leading up to her death on 26 July 2011 – were amongst her finest.

Emeritus curator Barry Pearce calls the Sydney house in which Margaret lived her ‘inner sanctum’. The house is the starting point for this documentary, as Pearce takes an intensely personal tour through the house which over time became more studio space than living space.

Olley bought the house in Duxford Street, Paddington, in 1964. It was a large Sydney terrace with an annex previously used as a hat factory. Between the ‘hat factory’ and the main house was a kind of transit area with bedsit room, small kitchen and bathroom. This was the ‘yellow room’ where she lived initially while renting out the rest of the house. In time, it became her muse and the subject of what Pearce calls ‘her greatest masterpiece’.

The footage of Olley’s house is all the more poignant now as the house is in the process of being archived and packed up for its re-creation at the Tweed River Art Gallery in a purpose-built extension.

Margaret Olley: A Life in Paint contains rare footage of Olley using her very distinctive painting process – with a board on her lap. She first chalks in a picture, then paints over in acrylic before using oil paint in the final step.

10:05pm – Tuesday, July 17 on ABC1

By Spring 2010 at the newly created Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) the renovations are in the final stages, the first international teachers – violinist William Harvey from the US and Afghan clarinettist Farid Shefta from the Ukraine have settled in, and the timetable issues are solved.

Along with personal attention for every student, ANIM director Dr Ahmad Sarmast has to micro-manage the whole school environment from raising international funds to tidying the classrooms, supervising the school lunches to choosing uniforms, always worrying that without constant care, everything being established will collapse.

Students continue their lessons now with great hope – they have proper soundproofed rehearsal rooms, books, a syllabus and teachers working towards new student ensembles and an orchestra. But anxiety starts to build as the three truckloads of new instruments and equipment which Dr Sarmast promised more than a year ago, still have not arrived from Germany. Until they have a safe room to store them, students must continue on broken and damaged ones.

As Dr Sarmast strives to fulfil his promises, in a country of ongoing conflict where music is still under attack from some parts of society, will he be able to realise his vision to return the musical rights back to the children of Afghanistan?

10:05pm – Tuesday, July 10 on ABC1

In the unlit rooms of the bullet-pocked Kabul Secondary School of Fine Arts, music students persist with broken instruments, no books, no syllabus and no specialist teachers. After 30 years of conflict and a loss of musical rights during the Taliban regime, the musical culture of Afghanistan has been devastated. Despite all the rebuilding in the country, little has been done for music.

In the midst of this despair, Melbourne-based Afghan musicologist Dr Ahmad Sarmast returns to Kabul determined to create the first National Music Institute of Afghanistan.

Wanting his students to ‘hold the future of the country in their hands’ Dr Sarmast recruits orphans and working kids off the streets, convinced that music education will transform their lives. But attending classes means they can’t work the streets supplementing their families’ meagre incomes. Survival threatens the students’ new found chance at an education.

Disruptive building renovations mean classes are conducted in the yard or tents; the timetable is in chaos and the small group of teachers revolt. Dr Sarmast is stretched in every way as his dream threatens to derail. and working in a war zone presents its challenges.

The Doctor and his students persevere and things look brighter when the first international specialist teachers arrive. But where are the promised instruments? The students have pinned their hopes on Dr Sarmast, but can he do what he says he can? Or are they empty promises?

10:00pm – Tuesday, May 22 on ABC1

The first Australian citizen to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, Patrick White endured a life where it seemed his work was criticised more than it was praised. At one point White was described as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist’. Today he is regarded by many as one of the leading Australian authors of the 20th century.

Monday 28 May, 2012 marks 100 years since White’s birth. In the leadup to this anniversary, Artscape’s Patrick White: Will They Read Me When I’m Dead? looks back at a great Australian writer’s life through interviews with some of his biggest fans, critics and the man himself.