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Studio Visit: Colourful African Wax Fabric Designs With Melbourne Label Ulo
Up the rickety stairs of the Sacred Heart building on the sprawling grounds of Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne, you’ll find a tiny studio and retail showroom brimming with colour. “It hits you like a tonne of bricks,” says Ulo founder and designer Dinzi Amobi-Sanderson. “What I’ve tried to do with the showroom is build a space…
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JOANNE MAKAS: AN EMBODIED EXPERIENCE
The ambience of Joanne Makas’ studio is starkly different depending on what she’s working on. “When I am painting, I like listening to music; but when I am drawing, I work in silence and focus on my breath,” the Sydney artist explains. Joanne, who has a background in fashion, attended art classes at Waverley Woollahra Art…
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JAMES KING: A NOT SO FORGOTTEN LIFE
For Sydney-born artist James King, 2003 was a watershed year. He won the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize, organised by the South Australian Museum. “It was the year that changed everything, and I started to believe that painting was my true calling,” he tells. James’ figurative oil paintings and works on paper, re-contextualise found photographs from the…
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LEONIE NGAHUIA MANSBRIDGE: A NEW FRAME OF MIND
Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, Dr Leonie Ngahuia Mansbridge is of Ngāti Maniapoto descent, a tribe based in the Waikato-Waitomo region of New Zealand’s North Island. Leonie wed and moved to Fremantle, Western Australia in the 1970s – where she has lived ever since. “I have always been creative, out of necessity,” she says. “I made all…
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TOBY RAINE: BEYOND ENTERTAINMENT
“There are a few defining moments I can recall that shaped me in terms of realising I was an artist,” Toby Raine tells me. “One was a scene in Tim Burton’s Batman in which the Joker’s goons are vandalizing paintings in a museum; he prevents them from destroying a gruesome looking Francis Bacon. Bacon would come…
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In a Room Full of Ostentatious Furniture, Melbourne Icon Franco Cozzo Still Looms Largest
“Megalo, megalo, megalo!” It’s the slogan Italian-Australian Franco Cozzo used to spruik his Baroque-style furniture in low-budget ’80s TV ads. But “megalo”, meaning “large” in Greek, is just as true of the 85-year-old’s charismatic personality. The furniture mogul, who came from Sicily to “Foot-is-cray” in 1956, commands the (show)room with his tongue-in-cheek humour, unmistakable thick accent and…
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The Cannoli Bar Team Opens 25 Tilba Street, a Quaint Espresso Bar Brimming With Italian Nostalgia
Written for Broadsheet Entering 25 Tilba Street is like stepping into the photo albums that document my parents’ childhoods. Retro leather dining chairs in a mix of burnt orange, chocolate and beige are tucked neatly under mismatched tables. Brown floral-printed tableware is near identical to what my nonna’s had for years. There’s a bar and…
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Australian Puffer Jacket Label Toast Society (Made With Vegan Down) Is Inspired by Tokyo’s Vibrant Street Fashion
Written for Broadsheet Puffer jackets. They’re practical, sporty, stylish – and best of all they keep you warm. But are you aware of the cruelty often involved with stuffing them? In most cases, the staple jackets are stuffed with down –feathers found closest to a bird’s skin. Feathers are often plucked when the bird is alive,…
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Studio Visit: Actually Existing
Anna and Olivia Nicholas’s Melbourne studio is quiet and minimal, but its surfaces are abundantly covered with crates of leather scraps and stacks of recycled fabrics. “In our eyes it’s got a lot of order, but to others it looks like total mayhem,” says Olivia. When Broadsheet visits the studio, inside a former hosiery factory in a…
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Now Open: A Bigger, Bright-Yellow New Home for The Social Studio in Multi-Level Arts Hub Collingwood Yards
Not-for-profit social enterprise The Social Studio – which operates as a fashion school, clothing label, retail shop, digital-textile print studio, clothing manufacturer and community space – has supported young people from new migrant and refugee communities since opening on Smith Street, Collingwood in 2009. “All of the work that we do feeds back into the school and…
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Stephanie Vigilante 