A mother's climate change lament and other paintings

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Find the article on my art exhibition on now at the ACT Legislative Assembly

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Pokemania a sad indictment on the state of play

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Nintendo's mobile-gaming "miracle" Pokemon Go may be bringing millennials out of the house – of their own free will – but its success says a lot about how the whole idea of play has changed, for the worse. The app may be free for smart phone users, but this is pure commerce. It's created what marketers want: more spending in the shops that have shelled out fees to become physical destinations for Pokemaniacs. Yuk. Play has always been about constructing and imagining reality. Now it's about flogging products. It's transforming and reducing homes, memorials and cemeteries into spaces for so-called play, with an eye to profit. It's cannibalising real-world geography, in contrast to traditional play that's bounded inside a "magic circle" in which children play act without corporate scripts. Children of my generation born in the 1970s had the freedom to get dirty, to climb trees and experience real danger. My parents and their friends did e...
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South Africa: The end of the rainbow nation?

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The Canberra Times, May 24, 2008 It shouldn't surprise us that South Africa's townships are embroiled in fresh violence. Apartheid was South Africa's Berlin Wall. It was the great divider. With its passing, poor black South Africans, accustomed to prejudice but more disaffected, have turned on those they think are robbing them of better lives. This past week dozens of foreigners, other Africans, have been killed by South Africa's poor. Tens of thousands more have fled into refugee shelters since the violence began earlier this month in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra. Locals with the support of trade unions and some sections of the media accuse outsiders of stealing jobs and fueling a spate of crime. The tensions have been there for years. But what is surprising is the intensity and rapidity of the violence. Opportunistic mobs have raped women and burnt former neighbours to death. The xenophobic violence has spread from poor areas of Johannesburg to Cape ...
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Aboriginal 'embassy' future in sharp view

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The Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra - the iconic and, to some, offensive site that kicked off a national conversation about indigenous rights - turns 40 this week. Governments starting with Billy McMahon's have never quite managed to shut it down or belittle it as a symbol of resistance. That, says activist Gary Foley, is a spectacular event in itself. The three-day corroboree in front of Old Parliament House beginning today will draw a big crowd representing scores of languages, Aboriginal nations and communities. Many of the class of the 1972, comrades in the struggle, will not be there. They died too young. Those present will be charged with emotion shouting ''Sovereignty was never ceded!'' They will talk about the road ahead and what should become of the proudly untidy site. Self-proclaimed embassy ambassador Michael Anderson will play on the notion of being an alien in Australia by offering an official stamp from his country in north-west NSW...
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