Margaret Gregory

National Gallery of Victoria is currently exhibiting prominent 1960s fashion photographer Henri Talbot who brought invigorating internationalism to Australian fashion photography.

Closing  21 August 2016

See it at National Gallery of Victoria

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Federation Square, Level 3.

Henri Talbot was a commercial photographer and artist photographing major editorial campaigns for many of Australia’s fashion houses. He studied commercial art at the Reimann School in Berlin before fleeing Nazi Germany. He then developed a strong interest in photography and also was interested in design.

Talbot approached photography as an artist approaches a canvas, forming images by fashioning blocks of colour, compositional lines and depth of field, employing lighting and techniques to illuminate details, manipulating the model and drape of a fabric to finally capture his subject in a unique and extraordinary result.

Talbot’s career in Melbourne began in the late 1950s when he went into business with renowned international fashion photographer Helmut Newton. Together they ran a prominent photography studio in Melbourne’s fashionable Flinders Lane working with many prestigious fashionable clients including Sportscraft, the Australian Wool Board, Hilton, Kayser, Ford, GMH, Lucas, Pelaco, and worked with renowned models including Maggie Tabberer, Helen Homewood, Maggie Eckardt and Janice Wakely. This exhibition includes more than one hundred photos from Talbot’s photography work for Australian fashion editorial and advertising campaigns, with many of Talbot’s striking never-seen-before photographs from fashion shoots in campaigns for these and many other clients, and from working with these models as his muses.

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In 2002, when Anj Barker was just 16 years old, her life changed forever when she was brutally bashed to near death by an ex-boyfriend. She suffered severe brain damage and was in hospital, rehabilitation and a nursing home for three years, before being able to return home to full time care.

Anj continues to amaze everyone with her recovery and currently lives independently, despite needing a wheelchair for mobility, and is employed part-time at the National Australia Bank. Despite the enormous challenges she faces daily, Anj is determined to open the hearts and minds of others.

Anj campaigns to educate the public on anti-violence, pushing the boundaries for disability rights and fighting for better rehabilitation faculties as well as fighting for more appropriate accommodation for Young People in Nursing Homes through talking to students, men, women, health workers, Police and Politicians. She has spoken to around 30,000 young people around Australia so far, spreading the message of empowerment to say ‘no’ to violence by advocating respectful relationships.

Anj has been working on increasing her independence and is slowly overcoming all the obstacles that face someone with a disability. However, a specific challenge she is currently facing makes it hard for her to get around to talks, therapy and to visit family;

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This month the scientific community celebrated the 155th birthday of the late Nettie Stevens.

 Nettie Maria Stevens, born July 7 1861, discovered that male sperm are the key to determining the gender of offspring.

In a time when career choices for women were limited to teaching, nursing or secretarial work, Nettie strove to defy the norm and realise her passion: scientific research. A passion which made her one of the most prolific researchers of the late 19th century, she published around 40 papers in her field in 11 years.

Nettie was a biologist, with a particular interest in gender determination. She studied mealworms, examining their sperm and ova (egg cells) under a microscope. She discovered that where the female’s eggs only carry X chromosomes, the male’s sperm carry both X and Y. Nettie was the first to realise the significance of this, that the gender of offspring is determined by fertilisation of the egg by the sperm.

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The Sydney Science Festival kicks off on Thursday 11 August at the Powerhouse Museum with a FREE, adults-only celebration of astronomical proportions at MAASive Lates: Science.

The Museum doors will be flung open for a full-on night-time science celebration where you can expect the unexpected. Enjoy an in-conversation with astrophysicist Dr Alan Duffy, speed meeting a geek (or two), hands-on science encounters, science-inspired dance and music, periodic table scrabble, plus so much more.

You’ll also have the chance to be one of the first to take a tour of the Museum’s brand new Collider exhibition, from the Science Museum, London*.

Last year’s MAASive Lates: Science event booked out so be sure to get your tickets now.

Powerhouse Museum, Thursday 11 August, 6–9pm. Adults 18+ only.

FREE, bookings essential. Limit of four tickets per booking.

*Tickets must be purchased to enter Collider and are discounted for the night.

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– Conducted via email. 5-6 June, 2016 | The Girl in Green launch, SCRIBE

Today I’m very lucky to be interviewing Derek B. Miller author of THE GIRL IN GREEN

Hi Derek, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself and your background?

I’m a native New Englander, born and raised in Greater Boston. I lived in New York and then Washington DC for college and graduate school and later moved to Europe in 1996, making this my 20 year anniversary. That’s something of a milestone for me, and its odd to think that in only six or seven more years I’ll have spent more of my life in Europe than America, given how relentlessly American I am (just ask my Norwegian wife).

I worked in international affairs for over twenty years at the UN, with think tanks and now as director of The Policy Lab® which I founded in 2011. We mainly work on helping organizations turn knowledge and creative thinking into strategic assets in the design of solutions, most often on humanitarian, development, and peace and security matters. This has given me a distinct footing into the material in the novel.

In terms of writing, I started on fiction in 1996. I did this quietly and didn’t mention it most people because it was probably considered weird or pretentious or socially “off.” Also, people aren’t interested in hearing you blather on for a decade about your efforts to write one or more manuscripts that never become novels. But I loved everything about it and I toiled away at the art and craft of it until 2008 when my first novel (but not my first manuscript) was finally sold. That was Norwegian by Night which met some very positive critical reception. Today, I’m writing more and more. I see myself doing this until I drop dead or the critics kill me.

What was your inspiration when creating the characters Thomas Benton and Arwood Hobbes?

The Girl in Green is set in Iraq, and about two-thirds of the book is firmly planted in the year 2013, which was an interesting time. The U.S. troops were mostly gone, Iraq was kind of on its own (though with constant international interference, including from Iran), and ISIL hadn’t quite broken off from al-Qaeda and become its own, distinct problem. In that turning-point moment, the international humanitarian organizations were still operating in refugee camps and around the country trying to protect civilians and provide support to the local population. So this novel is not a war book, and it is not about soldiers. It’s something else. To some extent, it’s something still undefined. Maybe it’s the first “peace book?” I don’t know. But it’s stepping into an uncharted space, anyway.

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