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Pianos are a recurring motif in the art of Melbourne-born sculptor and installation artist Ken Unsworth, who is the subject of a major retrospective opening at the National Gallery of Victoria this week. But his relationship with the instrument has been a rather tortured one.
As a nine-year-old in Mallee country, Unsworth gravitated towards the upright Collard & Collard that his adoptive parents kept in their front parlour, and to the sheet music of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata that sat upon it.
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Zoë Coombs Marr was doing drag long before she dressed up as comedian-character Dave, carting his metaphorical swag of dick jokes. As a child living in the Northern Rivers town of Grafton, where her parents kept a hobby cattle farm, she would dress as Huckleberry Finn.
“I used to wear overalls with one side undone,” she says. “I was a real tomboy.” Humid, subtropical Grafton was home to the yearly Jacaranda Festival beginning in the last week of October, and Jacaranda Thursday was the highlight of the calendar.
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Fifty essays and dispatches on what it means to be gay today.
On sale at Amazon and iTunes.
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