Design
Les Mason: Solo, in Melbourne
Ever downed a can of Solo lemonade and wondered who designed that yellow and black packaging? The answer: Les Mason, the father of Australian graphic design.
The California-born designer spent his early years on the US west coast before settling in Melbourne. In the 1960s, advertising agencies and printing companies made decisions on packaging design and branding. Mason revolutionised this by establishing graphic design as a profession in its own right, which worked at the heart of this process.
He was one of the first designers to set up a graphic design studio in Melbourne, and included photography, typography and modern art influences such as Dada and surrealism into his designs. Now the National Gallery of Victoria’s Design Studio opens with a retrospective of his work.
• Les Mason: Solo is at the NGV until 21 February
Comedy
Carl Barron’s Drinking with a Fork, in Darwin
Carl Barron made his film debut this year in the romantic comedy Manny Lewis, playing a celebrity standup on the brink of a lucrative contract (while all he really wants is a good woman). Touché!
Now he’s back on tour around the nation, hitting up Darwin with his particular mix of observational-style humour, wordplay – and guitar. The son of a Queensland sheep shearer, Barron has been making Australians laugh since 1993. The Melbourne International Comedy festival regular also routinely appears on TV, from Rove to Thank God You’re Here and Good News Week, and will be back blending structure with chance, or as he calls it, drinking with a fork.
• Carl Barron is at the Darwin Entertainment Centre from 9– 14 November
Music
Future Classic x Museum of Contemporary Art, in Sydney
Does the ubiquitous x in art, music and fashion events represent a new era of art based on creative collaboration? The Australian music label Future Classic has teamed up with Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art for the second time to present a summer concert series. In the past decade the dance-pop label has introduced a new style of Australian music to the world, launching the likes of Chet Faker and Flume to the international stage.
The gallery’s sculpture terrace will host a selection of international and local electronic talent, with Kenton Slash Demon and Melbourne’s Harvey Sutherland opening the series on 15 November. The museum will extend opening hours exclusively for ticket holders, in a nod to New York’s MoMA’s Warm Up sessions, where Future Classic curated sellout shows this year.
• FC x MCA opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art on 15 November
Theatre
Time Capsule, in Brisbane
Brisbane site-specific theatre company Seeing Place debuts a very different theatrical experience. Based on the time capsule buried by Brisbane’s city fathers at the launch of the 1969 Sundale shopping centre, Time Capsule is an audio tour performance that begins at Southport library and moves into Southport central.
Sundale was the first large-scale shopping centre in Australia and, in that original time capsule, the men buried greetings to the people of the future: newspapers and predictions of what life would be like in the year 2000. No one would have known the shopping centre would be a distant memory by the time Y2K clocked over.
Audience members will be given a Wi-Fi headset and guided to a series of empty shops, where the physical theatre meets recorded memory. The performance has been built on 60 hours of interviews with local residents about their memories of the mall.
• Time Capsule starts at Southport library and runs until 14 November
History
Life Interrupted: Gallipoli moments, in Canberra
As Australians commemorate Remembrance Day this week, it’s also your last chance to catch the Life Interrupted exhibition at the National Archives of Australia.
The exhibition features personal diaries, service records and photographs from the Canberra archives and the State Library of New South Wales digitised and restored for the first world war and second world war centenaries.
More than 100 years ago, teachers, farmers, clerks, architects and newlygraduated students paused their lives to board ships in soldiers’, doctors’ and nurses’ uniforms. While their story has been told by historians and journalists, these servicemen’s diaries tell their personal stories: from the excitement of enlistment, to the monotony of the trenches, the taste of tinned vegetables and the exhilaration and horror of the battlefield.
• Life Interrupted: Gallipoli Moments is at the National Archives of Australia until 15 November
