Hello, welcome to this Lockdown Special newsletter. With most specials you get more, but with this one you get a whole lot less. I’m not buried away in Sydney but still in the country on family matters. I know that as soon as I return home I’ll be sequestered away for at least a fortnight, so I’ve no choice but to stay put until everything has been stabilised.
I’ve written a column on the Hilma af Klint show at the Art Gallery of NSW, but the Herald has decided to sit on it for a week (mainly because the gallery is presently closed), so as per my agreement, I have to wait until the newspaper runs the piece before I can put it up on my own site.
In the meantime, with the cinemas also closed in different parts of Australia, I’ve turned to cable to find content for the film column. There was a distressing lack of good choices, but I settled on the 2-part HBO documentary, Elvis Presley: The Searcher, not because I’m a mad, keen Elvis fan, but because it’s great overview of a popular cultural phenomenon.
Tell the truth I’m not the least bit interested in most of Elvis’s music, but I’m fascinated by his story and his myth. I may have high-falutin’ preferences in art, music, film and literature but this is no reason for ignoring the expanded cultural sphere. Cultural snobbery is merely a way of cutting onself off from the wider world, a retreat into pedantry. Not for this little black duck!
As a small extra, in the absence of an art column, I’m posting a blog, written quickly for the Herald, in response to the unveiling of a bronze statue of Lady Diana, another great pop cultural icon. I can’t pretend to be enamoured of the sculpture from what I can see on-line, but it raises lots of talking points.
The main news this week is the complete hash Scummo and Greg Hunt have made of the vaccination roll-out. The more information we get the more reprehensible it seems – although there is a certain bleak satisfaction in seeing our leader living down to expectations yet again. The failure to deal sensibly with the pandemic is reminiscent of the disastrous mismanagement of the 2019 bushfires. On both occasions the government has been more concerned with pretending everything is great than with doing anything of practical value. This is what happens when a failed marketing guru is allowed to run the country. I wonder what Elvis would have done? Or Colonel Tom Parker?