19 Monday Aug 2019
Tags
abstracts, ANIMALS, ART, Australia, autumn, EVENTS, LANDSCAPE, Mental Health, NATURE, PHOTOGRAPHY, Self, Spiritual, TRAVEL, TREES, WATER
This gallery contains 22 photos.
INTRODUCTION Welcome to NEW WORK – my photography exhibition for this year’s South Australian Living Artists (SALA) festival. My focus this past …
16 Sunday Sep 2018
Tony’ Top Australian Films: #6. THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND (1934)
Ken G. Hall’s The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934) is not a great film, but it has something rather intriguing about it that makes compulsive viewing. Furthermore, it throws a particular mirror up to its contemporary society with certain issues still relevant today.
The film is based on the romantic melodramatic novel of the same name by Maxwell Grey (a pseudonym for Mary Gleed Tuttiett) that was first published in 1886. It was a best-seller, adapted into a play, and later two silent films in 1914 and 1915. It involves a minister, Dean Maitland who is seduced by the local sex-pot, Alma Lee who becomes pregnant. Ben Lee, Alma’s father, when he finds out physically attacks Dean Maitland, who then accidentally kills Alma’s father. Rather than confess, Dean Maitland allows his best friend, Dr. Henery Everard to take the blame. Everard goes to jail for twenty years, whilst Dean Maitland enjoys a successful life. Eventually, however, all is revealed.
There is a story that Ken G. Hall and his friend Stuart F. Doyle went to see a production of the play by The Rockdale Amateur Society in Sydney, and ended up in fits of giggles due to its overt melodramatic sentimentality. Nonetheless, Hall sensed there was something about this story that would appeal to contemporary audiences – and he was right. Despite reserved contemporary critical assessments, the respective film versions were popular successes, particularly Ken G. Hall’s 1934 film.
Today it is very awkward at times to watch, nonetheless, there is something about this story. Furthermore, despite all the melodramatic sentimentality The Silence of Dean Maitland had, and I think still has, the power and capacity to upset numerous people in religious communities and government institutions. Raymond Longford wrote and directed the 1914 film version, and ended up in court over distribution problems. It is perhaps the issue of decadence, hypocrisy, corruption, and betrayal by a supposed respected religious leader that is why The Silence of Dean Maitland has its appeal and fascination, and would, if re-made, probably be as successful and popular with Australian audiences as it has always been. A curiosity, perhaps, but there is something there….?
TONY KNIGHT
22 Thursday Mar 2018
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Looking through a window, any window, is to gaze on a number of possibilities – some good, some bad. Stepping through that window, by choice or by force, means engagement – some good, some bad. Either way, it is a journey – from the scourging of a past life to a re-birth, a re-awakening, and a re-discovery of self-worth. This was my journey over the past several years, represented and exemplified by the following photographs.
Through a Window: Inneston, Innes National Park, Yorke Peninsula, South Australia
Everyone faces, at least at one point in their life, an experience that wipes away a past life. This can be quite painful and devastating, combined with feeling like one is going through a ritualistic cleansing – a scourging of fire and water.
Prologue: The Scourging of Flaming Waters – Fountain, Brisbane, Queensland
After the scourging comes the re-birth and re-awakening. We greet the new day with a smile in the hope of better life.
Re-Awakening: Sunrise – Maslin Beach, South Australia
We look around our immediate environment and notice the ruination. Feelings of being confined and trapped complement a sense of isolation.
Re-Awakening: Isolation – Port Willunga, South Australia
We rise to face the day. Gazing into what seems vast as well as beautiful there is the juxtaposition of various figures and positions that reflect our current sense of self.
Re-Awakening: Moon, Sky, Sea, Sand, Rock – Maslin Beach, South Australia
We need to accept what was and move forward to what may be. In order to do that we must seek solace; to calm, to nurture and re-nourish, to be inspired and to re-invent. This place of solace can be nature, a place of religious worship, and in art galleries. In all cases, it is a source of spiritual solace as well as slowly but steadily re-connecting with a living world.
Solace: Nature – Dancing Trees – Murdoch Walk, Botanic Gardens, Adelaide, South Australia
Solace: Spiritual – St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Adelaide, South Australia
Solace: Art – National Museum of Australia, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
In these places of solace, there is always the possibility of being inspired by something – such as a work of art. Emerging from these places, hopefully re-nourished, you are more open to the wonders and beauty that surrounds you on the street.
In Adelaide, there is wonderful ‘Street Art’, which is often breathtaking in beauty as well as scale. This includes the first work of ‘Public (Street) Art’ in Adelaide, which is a statue, a copy of Canova’s ‘Venus’. It was first unveiled in 1892, and caused a minor scandal due to its nudity and conservative tastes and morals of the time. It shows the goddess Venus stepping from a bath and being surprised; by what or by whom is up to the imagination of the gazer.
In the contemporary ‘Street Art’ of Adelaide there are numerous other re-imagings of a modern ‘Venus’, which can be found down laneways, and even in car parks, such as this one by Adelaide Street Artist Jimmy.C.
Inspiration: Canova’s ‘Venus’ – North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia; Jimmy.C’s ‘Venus’ – Rundle Street, Kent Town, Adelaide, South Australia
From the nurturing honeyed waters of solace and inspiration, the re-invention of self begins.
Re-Inventing: Honeyed Waters – Fountain, Martin Place, Sydney, New South Wales
Re-invention means re-engaging, and the realization that there really is, as Shakespeare’s says, ‘a world elsewhere’. There are multiple worlds, none of them perfect, in which one can find inspiration, hope, and adventure. Looking out, not in, moving forward by accepting the past and the present for what it is…and the next journey begins.
Re-Inventing: Adventure – Temples, Indien, Lake Inle, Myanmar
Re-Inventing: Adventure – Cow & Temples, Bagan, Myanmar
Re-Inventing: Adventure – Fisherman, Lake Inle, Myanmar
Re-Inventing: Adventure – Temple Entrance, Bagan, Myanmar
EPILOGUE: The New Self
Photography was a major source of re-invention for me. After the devastation and sense of isolation and abandonment, I discovered a means to release a dormant creativity. I thank the various people involved in helping me to re-invent my fractured self in a way that I never knew could be possible.
The New Self: Portrait – Sie and I
‘Never Stop Believing’ and continue ‘Making the Ordinary “Extraordinary”
TONY KNIGHT
