Author: Branden Zavaleta

Aussie Indie Artists is a Q&A series with smaller Aussie creators that shares exciting new works, finds new angles towards the art, and peeks behind the scenes. Faces, and colours, and abstractions, and feelings meld together in Magali Feuga’s work. Somehow, they look both freeform and intricate – it’s a delicate balance, with the weaving…

Aussie Indie Artists is a Q&A series with smaller Aussie creators that shares exciting new works, finds new angles towards the art, and peeks behind the scenes. Fabian Artunduaga’s collages are seamless worlds for you to inhabit, if just for a single dramatic moment. Working under the name HouseCatStudio, the Sydney-based artist layers photography, collage,…

Alt/punk/art rock icon PJ Harvey might’ve looked out of place among the towering gums and native flora of Kings Park’s botanical gardens– not to mention the thousands of picnic blankets and content couples sipping drinks– but Harvey has never wanted to play to type. In fact, the subject of her new tour– her latest album,…

Big names like Bjork and PJ Harvey have headlined at the Perth Festival. They draw you in with a little international renown and spectacle; then they surprise you with their selection of local artists too. But in this metaphor, home-grown Jordan Rakei isn’t the local artist. His five albums, hundreds of millions of listens, and…

In Anthony Bourdain’s travel & food series, Parts Unknown, he goes to Portugal to join his boss’s traditional pig-slaughter feast; it’s a beloved event in much of Europe. In the morning, they have the whole family come around – a good thirty or forty people – before six strong men hold the pig and slit…

In the 70s, Hailu Mergia was on the organ in the Walias Band, playing his part in the golden age of Ethiopian music. In the 80s he quit the band to stay in the U.S. and escape the Derg dictatorship. In the 90s he released a final album, opened a restaurant, and became a cab…

Aussie Indie Artists is a series of interviews with lesser known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes. Experimental artist LOUV’s career so far has had the inspiring trajectory of a woman who never gave up…

If you’re Australian, you know those cute fish-shaped bottles of soy sauce you get with your salmon sushi roll– red cap, white bottle, maybe you even use the tail as a scoop for the wasabi. Google says that they were invented in 2008 by “Little Soya” in the US, but that’s a smokescreen. In fact,…

A diary is the only place that someone writes with complete candour. So, only in a diary do we often get the truest insight into a person’s life and motivations. Dune: Exposures may be billed as a photo book, and although it’s true that Dune 2 cinematographer Greg Fraiser has taken some gorgeous photos capturing…

Aussie Indie Artists is a series of interviews with lesser known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes.  Punk rock trio Kill Bell play it loud with fuzzy, distorted guitars and battlecry vocals. In the lead…

Flipping through this unassuming pocket book, you become privy to a kaleidoscope of exotic rooms. One has seedy fluorescent lighting and a gritty VCR playing an unknown pink film, another is done up like a convenience store, another looks like a child’s playroom, and yet another has steel doors, brick walls and a dentist’s chair….

Dune Part Two is so successful in blurring the line between reality and science fiction that you might not want to break the illusion and know how this magic trick of a film was pulled off. But reading The Art And Soul Of Dune Part Two gives such specific and incisive insight into the design…

In patent leather shoes and a skirt and coat like a school girl’s, Sahara Beck took to the stage and enveloped the bar in warm tones and bright anthems. She might be relatively unknown, but seeing her sing makes you feel like you’ve found a hidden gem–the guy next to me nudged me and asked,…

Aussie Indie Artists is a series of interviews with lesser known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes. Tess Hannah’s music is grungy, moody, and frayed with overloaded electric guitars– often likened to Wolf Alice or…

Last night at the Rechabite, jazz-prodigy duo Domi & JD Beck finished up the last set of the tour for their first album. It was a full house, packed to the rafters with jazzheads shouting out “je t’aime Domi!” and “we love you!”. If you expected something smooth and transcendental like their album NOT TiGHT…

Aussie Indie Artists is a series of interviews with lesser known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes. Perth is a city that has been photographed once, twice, and a million times, but Anton Wilk never…

The AU review has a long history with Frank Turner, but I have to admit that despite loving punk rock–like A Day To Remember, The Bouncing Souls, and The Story So Far– I hadn’t heard of him until this tour crossed my desk. But after my night at The Astor, I’ve heard of him alright,…

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa inspired Murakami and Kurosawa, but what’s it like reading his work today? The Akutagawa Prize is one of Japan’s most prestigious literary prizes. Kurosawa’s beloved 1950 film Rashomon, was inspired by Akutagawa stories, and Haruki Murakami counts him as a favourite. But what would today’s readers think? And what about translating it? Ryan…

Aussie Indie Artists is a series of interviews with lesser known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes.  Lara Villani’s music journey began at age 6, when her big sister started singing lessons. Like all little…

Aussie Indie Artists is a series of interviews with lesser-known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes.  Woody Samson has been a musician ever since the first tan-ta-ra-tan of his trumpet at age 7, but he…

Aussie Indie Artists is a series of interviews with lesser known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes. You’ll never see dull, grey gravel in a Leon Holmes painting, it’ll be flecked with mint, royal blue,…

Aussie Indie Artists is a series of interviews with lesser known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes. You could easily mistake the brilliant swirling colours, and twisting alien shapes of Tania Malkin’s photos for abstract…

Aussie Indie Artists is a series of interviews with lesser known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes.  Mo•Louie’s singing vibrates between soulful, jazzy and poppy. She’s sometimes Charli XCX, sometimes Dorian Electra, and sometimes Sia….

Georgia Mooney, vocalist and mandolinist of All Our Exes Live in Texas, has taken a bold and beautiful step towards a solo career with her debut album. Following EP Another Year On, released back in 2012, new release Full of Moon is light years ahead and a treat to listen to. Full of Moon is…

Aussie Indie Artists is a series of interviews with lesser-known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes.  Singer/songwriter Eliott’s lovely, powerful singing voice has often been likened to Adele, James Blake or Florence Welch, and her…

Aussie Indie Artists is a series of interviews with lesser known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes. Singer/songwriter/producer Poppy Rose is a self taught artist who has gone from singing to Garageband in her bedroom…

Aussie Indie Artists is a series of interviews with lesser known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes. The colour and light in Belinda Wiltshire’s oil paintings turn the mundane into the magical. The soft glow…

If you’re not familiar with John McPhee, he’s considered “a pioneer of creative nonfiction” and won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1999 book Annals of the Former World. That book is the complete collection of two decades worth of road trips he took with eminent geologists, through which he tells the history of North America’s…

Aussie Indie Artists is a series of interviews with lesser known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes. The Comforting Weight of Water is a spec-fic, coming-of-age story in a world of endless rain. Tools have…

Aussie Indie Artists is a new series of interviews with lesser-known Aussie creators across all forms and fields. The goal is to share exciting new works, find new angles towards the art, and peek behind the scenes. The adventure RPG Undertale starts with a kid falling down a hole into a fantastical world of silliness…