Arts
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Do the time warp
When Castlemaine’s Leslie Thornton was a schoolboy he lived next door to the school – but was always late. In class the young Leslie would stare longingly at the schoolroom clock and today reports that he could often observe the second hand slowing down – or even stopping completely. Now the acclaimed contemporary artist gets…
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New festival collapses
An arts and wellness festival awarded $450,000 in state government funding has been cancelled. Eyebrows were raised when the government announced the significant funding allocation earlier this year for the new Live.Love.Life Festival, which aimed to showcase Daylesford and Macedon Ranges, while established festivals including the Woodend Winter Arts Festival had their funding reduced. Daylesford…
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Dames, drinks … and drawing
It’s amazing what goes on in little country halls. Just ask the folk out Guildford way where the local music hall has turned its hand to hosting regular life-drawing classes – with a twist. While most would associate life drawing with efforts to capture the human form in the raw – sans threads – the…
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Local finalist
Castlemaine artist Mark Dober has been announced as a finalist in the prestigious Black Swan Prize for Portraiture in Western Australia, the third richest prize in Australia after the Archibald and Doug Moran. Dober’s work is a self-portrait and was selected from more than 500 entries to feature in an exhibition of 40 finalists at…
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Indie rock wins battle
Indie rock group Dr. Frisco brought the wow-factor to win Macedon Ranges’ Battle of the Bands heat on Saturday. The Braemar College schoolmates will take their talent to regional finals in December. The Macedon Ranges heat attracted a 150-strong crowd at the Kyneton Town Hall. The runner-up was Crane and a judge’s talent award went…
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Chicken art hatches enterprise
There’s something about chicken art. People seem to go just a bit clucking mad about it. “It’s just egg-cellent really,” said artist Linda Newton, almost deadpan, as she showed the Express around some of the inclusions in Manu Feto Chicken Art Show that opened at Castlemaine’s Drying Shed Art Space on the weekend. Linda is…
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On the write track
Preparing for this month’s Bendigo Writers Festival, Barkers Creek-based festival founder Rosemary Sorensen has cause to celebrate. After working on some of the nation’s leading metro writers’ festivals, the Castlemaine district local accurately identified the potential for a writers’ fest in Bendigo more than seven years ago. “Now we have more than 15,000 seats during…
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Curiosities of old Castlemaine
There’s the crib board crafted from the timber of a wrecked paddle steamer, the officious rubber stamp and elaborate holder once used to mark urgent yesteryear telegrams from old Castlemaine, and the original 1851 gold licence of one industrious Mr Lillicrap. They’re just some of the tale-rich treasures carefully held by Castlemaine’s Pioneers and Old…
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An extraordinary festival of ideas
The 2018 Bendigo Writers Festival is set to kick off on Thursday August 9 and run over three days, featuring some spectacular talent from across the region. Castlemaine’s Suzanne Donisthorpe will conduct two live interviews on stage, each about an hour long, with the opportunity for a question and answer session at the end. The…
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IMPORTANT EVENT UPDATE
Academy Award nominated filmmaker Feras Fayyad will not attend the 2018 Castlemaine Documentary Film Festival screening of his film Last Men in Aleppo due to visa administration issues. Instead, he will join the audience live by Skype after the special screening of his film at the Theatre Royal Castlemaine on Saturday at 7.30pm, for an…
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Letters from the inside
Insights into life on the inside is at the heart of a unique live production being staged at the Old Castlemaine Gaol this Friday. Letters from the Inside is a spoken word performance of letters written by men and women serving sentences in central Victorian prisons – Tarrengower, Middleton and Loddon. The project’s creator is…
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Fiesta de Salsa!
Castlemaine may be a long way from Colombia but for local salsa dance instructor Camila Serrano that’s no reason to leave the rhythms of her Latin birthplace behind. Camila’s passion for salsa dancing is catching on with an increasing number of locals keen to acquire the smooth moves and racy repetitions that is salsa. In…