Green Room: Tribute to Yankunytjatjara trailblazer, Tony for Snook
South Australian arts and culture news in brief.
Exhibition celebrates life of Lowitja O’Donoghue
A little over a year since Yankunytjatjara trailblazer Dr Lowitja O’Donoghue AC CBE DSG passed away, a new exhibition celebrating her life and legacy has opened in Adelaide’s West End. Curated by Deb Edwards, O’Donoghue’s niece and head of the Lowitja O’Donoghue Foundation, the exhibition places O’Donoghue’s headline-grabbing moments of advocacy in the context of her very full life.
“The idea was born from her, really,” Edwards tells InReview. “I wanted to do it because my aunt always called her home her ‘gallery’. She’d show all the things that she collected — and she had some beautiful photographs of people that were important to her on the walls.”
Edwards wanted to tell the complete story of her aunt’s personal story, which is also the story of Edwards’ mother and grandparents.
“There’s a couple of never-seen-before, black-and-white images that I found, probably in her late teens to early 20s, and they definitely haven’t been seen by anybody — and I’d probably get in trouble with her if she knew I’d put them on a wall in a gallery!”
Edwards assembled the exhibition alongside her own daughter, making sure the whole endeavour was grounded in family, trust, and legacy.
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“There was a very strong relationship of trust between my aunt and I, for me to be able to create the foundation and then to do work like this. So, you know, we’re definitely full of pride, but I suppose there’s a bit of truth telling in there [as well].”
LOWITJA – A Life of Leadership and Legacy is on display at the Kerry Packer Civic Gallery in the The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre until July 25.
The trophy cabinet of Dorian Gray
Globe-conquering Adelaide expat Sarah Snook racked up another big win in New York this week after clinching her first Tony Award for her turn in the Oscar Wilde redux The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Fresh from an Emmy and Golden Globe-winning run in hit HBO drama Succession, Snook scored the Tony for Best Actress in a Play after taking on the lead role — and indeed every other role — as director Kip Williams’ Sydney Theatre Company production went worldwide, first in London’s West End and more recently on Broadway.
“This means so much for a little Australian girl to be here on Broadway,” Snook said while accepting the award. “It is billed as a one person show, but I don’t feel alone on any night that I do this show. There are so many people on stage making it work, and so many people behind the stage making it work – in particular a huge thank you to Kip Williams who is incredible to create this.”
Featuring moving screens, onstage cameras and a dizzying number of wig and costume changes, the play has proved as big a hit overseas as its original Australian run — which local audiences will remember from the 2022 Adelaide Festival with original star Eryn Jean Norvill.
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“In the production, particularly with one performer playing all the roles, it looks at this idea that is central to Wilde’s novel, that is the way an individual has multiple selves and constructs multiple selves both in life and in art – and the very notion of life as theatre, the performance of identity,” Williams told InReview at the time.
“The work is a meditation on performance, and we use theatre, the Brechtian deconstruction of theatre to interrogate the idea of performance, and in particular this idea of life as theatre, that in different context people are on some level always performing – they’re always in a form of drag, if you will.”
Back at the Tony’s, among the most stoked people in the room was apparently Oprah Winfrey, who was filmed chanting ““Of course! Of course! Of course!” when Snook’s win was announced.
Winfrey apparently saw the show the night before — are there any pop culture mountains left for Snook to climb?
Sky’s the limit for Unley Art Prize
A few weeks ago we brought you the 25 shortlisted finalists for the Unley Art Prize, which saw record-high number of entrants vie for a $5,000 prize and the glory of being featured on council bins.
Well, we’re not sure how they’ll do the latter part with the news that Unley-based artist David Doull has taken out the top prize with his digital video work ‘Above Us Only Sky’. Borrowing a line from John Lennon’s Imagine, the work features time-lapse footage of a familiar suburban skyline at dusk, with Doull digitally highlighting the flightpaths of various satellites orbiting the sky above our backyards on any given evening.
It’s the latest data-based endeavour from Doull, whose previous work has explored digital algorithms as a creative tool and an influence on our daily lives.
You can see ‘Above Us Only Sky’ and the rest of the finalists in a free exhibition at the Hughes Gallery until June 27.
Green Room is a regular column for InReview, providing quick news for people interested, or involved, in South Australian arts and culture. Get in touch by emailing us at [email protected]