Four Sydney designers are injecting some creative energy into one of Oxford Street’s long-vacant retail spaces.

He Made She Made is an art and design collective formed by friends and designers Patrick Chambers, Laura Kepreotis, Maaike Pullar and Bent Patterson.

It is one of 15 creative start-ups to be granted a partially subsidised, short-term lease on City-owned studios as a part of a City of Sydney strategy to revitalise lower-Oxford St.

Mr Chambers said: “It’s beneficial to both parties because the City wants to boost its creative profile, especially in somewhere like Oxford St where it’s generally [populated by] clubs and retail food chains, so it’s great that they’re helping the design community to break that barrier.”

The new gallery, workshop and retail space will promote and exhibit the prototypes and projects of established, emerging and under-represented conceptual furniture designers and artists in the notoriously difficult Sydney market.

“We’re not your typical gallery – we’re here to be accessible. If someone’s interested in the process, then we want them to be involved in it. The whole process has to be really honest,” Mr Patterson said.

These types of enterprises are often difficult to establish because of an increasingly expensive rental market, and while most designers rely heavily on their web-presence for exposure it must be actively sought to be effective.

“Having a group of designers and artists that can relate to each other and that can talk amongst themselves within the design community, and also to have a shop-front that thousands of people walk past every day, is a huge opportunity,” Mr Patterson said.

Anastasia Phillips of Rouse Phillips – a textile design duo and Oxford St ‘creative space’ success story – agrees that the City’s initiative has simplified the transition to a retail space.

“[It] gives artists a platform to develop their work in an environment that is supportive,” she said.

He Made She Made has already had a huge response from designers and creative professionals keen to showcase their work to the general public, with new exhibitions planned for every four to six weeks.

Many designers produce work that is not necessarily commercially viable in mainstream furniture stores and galleries, but He Made She Made provides a platform for experimenting with those pieces in a different market, Ms Kepreotis said.

The Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore MP, said: “Making these spaces available, at lower rents and specifically for artists and creative enterprises, is about bringing a bohemian feel back to the strip.”

He Made She Made is online at www.hemadeshemade.com.

By Kristen Amiet

They’re letting Andrew Kalajzich out of jail soon. It’s been 25 years since the Manly hotelier, Chamber of Commerce president and Tourism Commission bigshot went down for his part in the 1986 murder of his wife, Megan, who was shot twice in the head as she slept. The big iron door closed on Kalajzich a couple of years later.

The hit itself is a complex tale of pure hubris and dumb lunacy that would  be grimly comic if it wasn’t for the long and, for the taxpayer, very expensive , campaign run by shock jock Alan “The Parrot” Jones to overturn Kalajzich’s conviction.

The very bare bones of the story are that Kalajzich, a womaniser,  had grown tired of his wife. In 1985 he began a none-too discreet search for a hitman to bump her off. His first port of call was his disco manager, Warren James Elkins, who provided the boss with three guns because he felt “threatened”. The tools obtained, Kalajzich told Elkins he wanted somebody bumped off. Elkins, obligingly, asked around, and through a friend came up with Franciscus Wilhelmus (“Bill”) Vandenburg, who asked his mate at Kurri Kurri, who asked around and came up with a reputed hitman, George Canellis (aka Noel Sherry). By now just about every petty crim on the East Coast knew something was afoot.

Canellis agreed to do the hit for $30,0000 ($5000 upfront ) with a $5000 discount if the weapon was provided. All this arranged, Elkins told Kalajzich and Kalajzich revealed that his wife was the target.

Trouble was, Canellis took one look at Megan Kalajzich and decided it was a domestic. Canellis didn’t do domestics. He gave the rifle and silencer back to Vandenburg but kept his deposit. Kalajzich, idiotically, wanted his money back but Vandenburg, who couldn’t pony up five grand and didn’t want to pester Canellis for it decided to do the job himself even though he’d never used a gun in his life.

His first attempt on Megan failed because he didn’t cock the rifle. He bashed her over the head, breaking off the silencer, and fled. Plan B was that Mrs Kalajzich should be shot while she slept next to her husband, who the gunman would fail, accidentally, to kill.  Several attempts to enter the Kalajzich home, arranged by Kalajzich, failed for one reason or another but on the night of 27 January 1986 Vandenburg succeeded.

It was Canellis’s turn to panic. He wondered whether the murder weapon had been the rifle he’d handled and decided to talk to the cops. The whole tragi-comic conspiracy began to fall apart.

1986 was also the year The Parrot pulled out of a Liberal preselection bid for the seat of Wentworth and the year he supported the ludicrous “Joh [Bjelke-Peterson] for PM” campaign – a sort of forerunner of the Pauline Hanson push.

In 1989 Kalajzich wrote to Jones who soon after, with his researcher Tim Barton, visited Kalajzich in jail. In November that year the High Court refused Kalajzich’s application for special leave to appeal. In December he applied to the NSW Supreme Court for a judge to direct an inquiry but in September 1992 the application was dismissed as “fantasy”.

That was the signal for Jones to start a noisy on-air campaign for a special judicial review of the case. It was full of high-flown sentiment. To hear Jones tell it, his listeners would have thought Kalajzich’s conviction was as dangerous and important an example of state-sanctioned injustice as the celebrated Dreyfus case. “It is much larger than the man Kalazjich. It goes to the very heart of our system of the administration of justice”, of Struggle Street Guru opined.

In September 1993 Jones – who had by then reached the status of being almost a mini-Murdoch and was widely feared by the political elite – triumphed. The NSW Solicitor-General overrode the Supreme Court and recommends that the Kalajzich case be reviewed.

The exhaustive inquiry, headed up by retired NSW Supreme Court Justice John Slattery QC, ran for a year. In the wash up, Slattery concluded, from all the material presented – including additional evidence –there was “no doubt” about Kalajezich’s guilt. The whole unnecessary farce cost the taxpayer $5million

• More Nick Possum at brushtail.com.au

A photographic exhibition depicting the extremes of human emotion will take centre stage at a Leichhardt gallery this month.

Photographer and activist documenter, Barbara McGrady, will fill the rooms of the Boomali Aboriginal Arts Cooperative at Leichhardt with her Protest and Performance exhibition until February 22.

The exhibition curator and fellow photographer Tina McCarthy said the collection’s two themes are fuelled by human emotion. Ms McGrady’s Protest photos witness activists at rallies.

“In Protest where she is covering so many rallies, it’s all about the emotion of the people in the shot who are trying to say something. And in the Performance, she captures the emotion of the artists in the moment.”

As activists themselves, Ms McGrady and Ms McCarthy met at an anti-intervention rally three years ago. Ms McGrady said that while she stands back to capture protests like Occupy Sydney, she cannot help but get involved.

“I look at things sociologically for that’s how I see my world,” she said. “I was [at Occupy Sydney] to document it with my photographs.

“Of course I was all for the 99 per cent and of course that’s how I saw it, and I think my photographs reflect that.”

As a sociology student at Sydney University, Ms McGrady said she studies people and has always been involved in activist movements, making her mark in Aboriginal land rights movements from the “early years”.

Yet when asked about her upbringing, Ms McGrady sees her identity as multilayered as her photographs.

“I call myself Kamilaroi and Murri is the area and I am a Yina,which in my language means woman.

“I say that I come from three places. As a child I spent alot of time in my father’s country, Toomelah, and I went to school at Mungindion, the Queensland border.

[Toomelah] is an unusual town made up of three quarters NSW and one quarter QLD. The hospital where I was born is on the Queensland side, so technically I was born in Queensland.”

After school, Ms McGrady went on to study nursing. However, she said she had always been passionate about photography.

“I just always loved images. I was the official photographer in my family and at about 14 or 15 I would take family portraits.”

From family portraits in the sixties, Ms McGrady went on to capture intense moments of competitive sports such as Indigenous Rugby League.

“I realised the power in images a long time ago and I am absolutely trying to achieve the storytelling and the communication of those intense moments I capture.”

Ms McCarthy said Barbara McGrady has an unending source of energy and her photographs are a medium through which she communicates her study of people.

“Let’s show the world the world as her study about people has now come through the lens.”

By Kristie Beattie

As the specterof tyranny casts a pall over
the inner city news landscape, what few heroes
still stand against the mighty
Murdoch Empire, fight tooth
and nail just to stay afloat in a
sea of vicious mediocrity.

Despite Rupert Murdoch’s
ubiquitous presence in Sydney
publishing with News Limited’s
the Inner West Courier, Southern
Courier, Wentworth Courier,
Central Magazine and Mx, other
independent underdogs have
shone their light on local
alternative content for decades
with skinnier budgets and
rebellious spirits.

South Sydney Herald
The SSH was founded
by Trevor Davies in 2002
and evolved out of several
antecedent publications
including the Roadrunner and
the Redfern-Chippo Herald.

The monthly newspaper,
published by the South Sydney
Uniting Church, survives on
the backs of several volunteer
writers, photographers,
commentators and distributors.

Managing Editor Andrew
Collis said: “Independent
media plays a valuable and
essential role, to give voice to
people sidelined by mainstream
media and commercial interests.

“The congregation saw an
opportunity to celebrate diverse
lives of people in South Sydney,
to encouragecommunity and to
counter negative stereotyping.”

The Big Issue
The fortnightly magazine has
a legacy of hard news, satirical
articles and light-hearted
profiles which often reveal the
human aspect of critical social
issues.

Sold in-person by street
vendors, the national
publication started in the UK
before migrating to Australia
in 1996.

While it receives
significant support from
charities, The Big Issue maintains
a DGR (Deductable Gift
Recipient) status and its day-today
operations are sustainable
through sales alone.

Half of the sales from the
30,000 circulation immediately
goes to assisting the socially
disadvantaged vendor by
providing him or her with
opportunities to develop social
skills and connections.

The magazine will soon
celebrate its 400th issue.

Star Observer
Originally the Sydney Star
Observer, the lesbian and
gay newspaper was founded
in 1979 when homosexuality
was illegal.

The Sydney Star
Observer – or the Sydney
Star as it was known – was
one of the few underground
outlets that catered to gay
men providing them with
community news and opinions.

The Star changed publishing
hands several times before
going public in 1988. Since
then, the paper’s publishing
structure has favoured
community ownership.

Late last year the Star went
national with a dedicated paper
covering Brisbane. Publisher
Scott Abrahams said the
expansion into the Queensland
Market was a natural
progression.

“It was natural when looking
at ways of expanding the reach
of the product. There were
certainly strategic business
reasons for the move that will
unfold as time progresses,” he
said.

The Star Observer has a
strong reputation within the
LGBT community and is
usually the first port of call
for larger news organisations
seeking updates on lesbian and
gay issues.
SX
The Star Observer’s main rival,
SX is a privately owned weekly
glossy publication which caters
to a younger demographic of
LGBT Sydney.

Less focused on controversial
community news, SX typically
covers light celebrity centred
stories in its free pages.

The magazine’s owners
Evolution Publishing
attempted to publish a second
paper called City Voice in
June 2010 to compete with the
Star Observer’s Wednesday
publishing date.

But after a year, City Voice ceased to be,
mainly for financial reasons.
General Manager of
Evolution Publishing, Dean
Bell, pegged City Voice’s
failure to overlapping content.”

There was a great deal of
overlap with SX and City
Voice and it did not meet the
revenue targets that we set for
the product,” he said.

LOTL
Lesbians on the Loose or
LOTL as its affectionately
known, is a free monthly
magazine which first published
as an eight-page newsletter
in 1989. Owned by Avalon
Media, it caters to Sydney’s
lesbian community which
historically.
Aside from covering Lesbian
‘scene’ events (parties in
Lesbian bars), the magazine
emphasises well-being and
lifestyle issues. Think Healthy
Wealth and Wise, but lesbian.
Food and wine, travel and
tourism, home and garden
issues tend to get a better run
than hard news or political
content.
LOTL is regarded as more
‘rainbow family orientated’
with less sexualised
photography than its male
counterparts.

Drum Media
Known as the Drum by its
125 000-strong readership,
the free weekly publication
has been running for 15 years
and is generally regarded as
the oldest independent music
paper.

Album reviews, band
interviews, opinion columns
and the all-important events
listing dominate its pages.

The Drum is distributed in
cafes and restaurants and
almost exclusively targets the
17-35 age bracket. Owned by
Street Press Australia, The
Drum is considered essential
reading for the gig conscious
inner west resident.

The Beast
The Beast introduced its 40-
page magazine to the eastern
suburbs in February 2005
when its producers saw a gap
in the market.

Publisher Dan Hutton said:
“We thought there was a lack
of good print media focusing
on the stretch of beaches
between Bondi and Maroubra,
incorporating the whole
coastline.

We put together a
rough design of the mag in
InDesign and went out and
pounded the pavement selling
ads.”

Mr Hutton said he tries to
make the magazine interesting
and accessible to all readers.

“I still believe there is a future for
print media, particularly in the
format in which we present it.”

Green Left Weekly
The grassroots publication is
sold on Sydney’s footpaths
by volunteers and promotes
itself as an alternative to ‘big
business media’.

According to co-editor Stuart
Munckton, the Green Left
Weekly’s editorial board is run
independently, but the Socialist
Alliance is mainly responsible
for “getting the paper out there”.

“Though many of the writers
are members, the Green Left
Weekly aims to publish a
broader range of progressive
views and struggles than
the Socialist Alliance,” Mr
Munckton said.

“I don’t think ‘objective’
means you don’t have to take
a side. Being objective means
basing your article on the
facts.”

By Jason Marshall and Alex Pittaway

Myopic coverage of the tent embassy protest in Canberra on Australia Day painted a very different picture to what actually happened, say attendees.

Both the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph told a story of violent protest and a heroic rescue.

But the City Hub spoke to University of Sydney student, Timothy Scriven, who was present at the protest.

“The tent embassy protest simply did not happen like you probably think it did.” Mr Scriven said.

“Unless you consider throwing two water bottles at the windows of a car or banging on windows violent, I saw no violence from the protestors, none.

“I did see numerous instances of pushing, shoving and snatching from police, including some very dubiously legal behaviour. The meaning of the world violence is being eroded by a media that can’t get enough of the term… there wasn’t even any property damage.”

YouTube footage has emerged in which a police officer appears to punch an indigenous protester in the face after the Prime Minister had already left.

Two days later, articles on the Telegraph’s website were still describing the incident as a ‘riot’ and coverage in both major newspapers was focused on how the confrontation started rather than the underlying problems causing such anger.

“Clearly the people in that protest felt that the embassy should and must remain, that it had not achieved its goals,” Mr Scriven said.

“Such structural causes were simply not discussed in the papers. To read some reports, one would think this protest came from a lark or a whim…standard media practice is to cover such events without the briefest explanation of underlying circumstances,” he said.

“People simply do not form a large group, yell and bang because it’s a Thursday afternoon.”

During a press conference after the protest, Aboriginal activist Barbara Shaw explained why there was such anger.

“The rest of Australia needs to come out of their comfort zone and actually realise why we are here today. And that is because human rights breaches are against us every day of the week,” Ms Shaw said.

“Aboriginal people have been struggling for years, deaths in custody, lack of housing and infrastructure, stolen generations, stolen wages for the hard earned work that aboriginal men and women throughout Australia have done. They built Australia on Aboriginal hands, blood.”

By Jason Marshall

In the lead up to this year’s festive Mardi Gras season, the Sydney Opera Trust sent a legal letter to the Harbour City Bears demanding that the gay social group for big hairy men immediately cease using its sixteen year old logo which features a bear paw over the sails of the Sydney Opera House. Each sail is a different colour of the gay rainbow flag. The Sydney Opera House Trust was established by the State Parliament in 1961 and manages the publicly owned site. The Trust’s own vision statement asserts: “Sydney Opera House belongs to everyone.”

While the Sydney Opera House is an iconic symbol for the Harbour City and the whole of Australia, the Trust’s legal department asserts, “The Sydney Opera House Trust manages the use of Sydney Opera House’s image and brand on behalf of the New South Wales Government.” The Trust does not distinguish between non-profit and commercial organisations in sending out legal threats to anyone using the Opera House sails as part of its own symbol, logo or marketing campaign.

In 2007, Telstra was threatened with legal action by both the Sydney Opera Trust and Uluru’s administrators when it used images of Australia’s two most famous landmarks as part of an online marketing campaign. The matter did not go to court. Whether or not a legal challenge against the Bears would stand a chance is problematic. Under the Australian Copyright law of 1968, it is not illegal to use “a painting, drawing, engraving or photograph of a building.”

The President of the Harbour City Bears, Jonny Bastin sent a statement out to all members vowing not to cave in to legal threats from the Trust: “We know that many people love our logo as it symbolises our city, our club and our community. The fact that we have been using it unchanged since 1995; and that it is recognised in the bear community worldwide means it is now part of our history. Please be assured that myself and the current Harbour City Bears Committee will be doing everything possible to protect our club’s history.”

Gays and lesbians are a large part of Sydney’s ever shrinking arts’ audience. Whether or not the Trust would ever succeed at winning a legal challenge against the Harbour City Bears, its actions are certain to lose the hearts and minds of an important market in Sydney’s struggling arts scene.

By Lawrence Gibbons

The history of Australian burlesque will be
stripped down to its antique undergarments in
Marrickville this month.

On February 11, The Factory Theatre will
host A Living HIstory of Australian Burleque,
with archival footage of some of the most
prominent eras in Burlesque, from the 1800s
to Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

Organiser of the night, Imogen Kelly,
said: “Due to the nature of burlesque as an
underground artform, most of our forbearers
are not known and aren’t archived at all. I
decided this must change but I didn’t really
know how.”

“For those of us still living, it is a battle to
be acknowledged as an artist as our art is
so transient – it exists only for the moments
that we are on stage and then we are either
committed to memory or forgotten.”

Ms Kelly, named the Queen of Burlesque,
has been dancing for 22 years. “I often feel
like the last woman standing of an era of
showgirls.When I started there was no table
dancing or lap dancing. Striptease artists did
proper stage shows.

“I feel very privileged to have had such a
start in performing and to have learned the
traditions of show business first hand.”
Along with Ms Kelly, modern burlesque
dancer TASIA will take to the stage in a
recreation of the whiskey a go-go years.

“It thrills me that we are now giving our
Legends the same opportunity. Our burlesque
history in Australia is not widely know,” TASIA
said. “I am so glad that Imogen has created a
chance for us to share this knowledge and to
honor these amazing women.”

The legendary Elizabeth Burton, who began
her career in the 1960’s, will also feature on
the night, making up to three generations
of dancers.

“When I first started, I went to America without
a green card, a job as a burlesque dancer was the
only job I could get,” Ms Burton said.

“I’ve since worked in places like
Luxemburg, Spain, Austria, Germany,
Singapore, Malaysia, Finland and Norway”.

The admirable past of Elizabeth Burton
includes entertaining troops during the
Vietnam War.

“It was fabulous and frightening; you might
be performing and some ammunition gets
blownup and everybody was thrown from the
vibrations on the stage” she said.

“The people were so keen to be entertained. They loved
those dancing girls, I was really fortunate, they
were always extremely respectful”.

Ms Burton noticed Burlesque change over
the decades. “Everybody has a got an idea in
modern Burlesque, I’m glad to see they’re all
trying them out” she said.

“Some girls go for grotesque strip
nowadays, and that’s for your own taste -
there’s room for all of us in this world.”

Street fundraisers, known to many as ‘charity muggers’, aren’t going anywhere.

Sydney’s boys are taking back the stage in this year’s only all-boy burlesque night in Surry Hills.

With the recent success of their Sydney Fringe shows, and live music burlesque event ‘Good Ol’Days’, Gallery Burlesques’ “Boylesque Extravaganza”, Oh Boy Oh Boy, promises to be a night of steamy debauchery.

Gallery Burlesques’ founder/director, Onur Karaozbek, said: “Oh Boy Oh Boy is a celebration of male presence in the performance art and burlesque community, a night of all men/boys on stage showing how great we can be… and a little about taking back the stage from all the beautiful burlesque ladies.”

“The most obvious difference of Oh Boy is that there will be more testosterone on stage. It’s all up to the boys to shock and entertain us.”

Gallery Burlesque has been alive and kicking since early 2009 and Mr Karaozbek believes every performer brings something unique.

Herbie Strangelove has been performing burlesque for eight years.

“I didn’t feel that heterosexual male sexuality was being performed accurately, it’s actually ludicrous and demeaning, and so I set out to do it accurately, without undermining myself,” he said.

“With Boylesque, the audience is expecting something different, because there’s no real classic context, there’s more room to explore ideas and characterisation.”

“No matter what the gender is of the performer I try to look for a creative mind and an entraining character, because burlesque is not just about the strip but about the tease and story” Mr Karaozbek said,

Another performer, Matthius The Libidinous, describes his act as “Sexy, fast paced, slightly tongue-in-cheek Boylesque”. His shows always involve over-the-top costumes and are bursting with rough and raw masculine sexual energy.

“I also like to push boundaries of what the accepted symbols of “Masculinity” and ramp them up until they become quite camp in order to demonstrate that gender is always a performance whether on stage or off,” he said.

“Me dressing up as a cowboy or business man is just as much “Gender Illusion” as any drag queen putting on a frock and pantomiming femininity.

“I am very focused on challenging the status quo with my performance. In the context of our western culture where men are prescribed to be the pursuer and women are almost brainwashed into believing they must present themselves as sexual objects, the mere act of a man getting on stage and presenting himself as sexy, and able to be desired is confronting.”

You can catch Herbie, Matthius and the other boys at The Standard above Taylor Square on Sunday, January 29.

By Jason Marshall

The City of Sydney has announced plans to recommence the development of the Glebe promenade after four years of stalled works.

A City spokesperson said that financial considerations in 2007 led the council to assign its capital works budget to other projects, which postponed the development’s execution.

The Council said it is sought to restart the foreshore project’s final stages – five and six – which date back to 2003. Stage five of the project involves an easement across Sydney Secondary College’s Blackwattle Bay campus, while stage six will improve Bridge Road’s footpath leading to the Sydney Fish Market.

The Glebe harbour walk, estimated to cost a total of $15 million, will provide continuous public access along the Glebe foreshore, stretching from Chapman Ave to Bridge Rd and the Sydney Fish Market.

The Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP said the development would benefit walkers and cyclists.  “[A] promenade will stretch more than two km and link more than 27 hectares of open space”.

The City is currently in negotiations with NSW Education about the Blackwattle Bay campus.

“Negotiations are needed because the City does not own the land over which the easement is sought,” a City of Sydney spokesperson said.

NSW Education described the negotiations as legal and technical in nature, but said it fully supported the harbour walk project.

“It will provide benefits to the school community as well as the broader community,” an Education Department spokesperson said.

Landscape architecture firm JMD Design won the initial tender in 2007 and has been granted an exemption from tender, enabling its involvement in the development’s final stages.

The City of Sydney’s Director of City Projects, Michael Leyland, said: “The consultant team has in-depth knowledge of the project, including technical issues relating to the site.”

President of the Glebe Society, Mairéad Browne, voiced her support. “We are in favour of anything that extends the existing walkway towards the fish market.”

She said the Society has advocated public access to the Glebe waterfront since the late 1960s and said they “were the champions of that whole walkway being developed in the first instance.” Construction is expected to begin next year.