Razor Club – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition: ‘Juvenilia: Peter Milne’ at Strange Neighbour, Fitzroy, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 27th February 27th – 28th March, 2015

Curators: Helen Frajman and Linsey Gosper

Peter Milne (Australian, b. 1960)
Untitled (Peter Milne and Rowland S Howard)
1977
From the series A Day in the Life of Rowland S Howard 1977
Digital photograph
© Peter Milne

For those of you that remember The Venue, St Kilda and Razor Club, this posting is for you.

This is a FAB exhibition of the life and times of Nick Cave, Roland S Howard, Genevieve McGuckin, Polly Borland, The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party et al. Peter Milne… the photographs are fantastic, perfectly capturing the spirit, youth and electricity of the times. My god, everyone is so young, so skinny and Roland is SO androgynous in quite a few of the photos – all eyeliner and come to bed eyes.

Although I never mixed in these circles I occasionally went to The Venue, but Razor was definitely the place to be. One enduring memory was of me, totally off my face on a big party night, climbing up past the ladies loo using the gutter down pipes up to the first floor balcony and clambering over, so that I could go and get someone from management to let us all in.

The hang of the exhibition is perfect. In a flow of images, here is Peter Milne at 17 sitting on a couch with Roland S Howard reading Playboy; Polly Borland at home with a broken, unlit fag hanging from her mouth; and the most beautiful, colour photograph of Nick Cave and Rowland S Howard after Birthday Party gig (1982, below) with arms around each, Nick planting a kiss on the dapper Roland, flocked wallpaper behind. Youth, innocence, life, love, beauty and nostalgia all rolled into one. Gen (Genevieve McGuckin), long-time partner of Roland, has been a friend of mine for years and so it is wonderful to see photographs of her in her youth, as vivacious and as delightful now as then.

I loved every second of this exhibition. The creativity of the people, the vibrancy of the ad hoc poses and the sheer joy of living the life – coupled with the magic of the insightful, intuitive images – make this a must see exhibition. If you do anything in Melbourne this coming week, go see this show (ends Saturday, 28th March).

Dr Marcus Bunyan

.
Many thankx to Strange Neighbour and Peter Milne for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All images courtesy of the artist and M.33. Download the Juvenilia web essay (2.7Mb pdf)

Installation photographs of the exhibition Juvenilia at Strange Neighbour, Melbourne
Photography: Alex Bell Moffat

Juvenilia brings together for the first time 100 astonishing photographs of friends and family taken by renowned Victorian artist Peter Milne when he was a very young man. Warm, intimate, surprising and already displaying the great compositional skills, originality and humour for which Milne is known, these images offer an unprecedented peep into mid 1970s to mid 1980s Melbourne and a milieu of people who would go on to play pivotal roles in Melbourne’s burgeoning cultural scene.

Starting in 1976 when Milne was 16 and photographing school friends Gina Riley and Rowland S Howard, through to images of the legendary band, the Boys Next Door lounging in Nick Cave’s bedroom in his parents’ house, the first Boys Next Door gig and photo shoot, parties, trips to the country, outings to the beach, rehearsals and a full length photo essay tracing A Day in the Life of Rowland S Howard, the photographs feature a dazzling cast including Anita Lane, Blixa Bargeld, Tony Clark, Polly Borland and Mick Harvey as well as Milne’s less famous but equally interesting friends and family.

Peter Milne is based in Castlemaine. He has exhibited extensively around Australia and internationally. He has had three monographs of his work published: When Nature Forgets (M.33, Melbourne, 2013), Beautiful Lies – Notes Towards a History of Australia (QCP, Brisbane, 2011) and Fish in a Barrel – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds on Tour (Tender Prey, London, 1993). He is represented by M.33, Melbourne.

Text from the Strange Neighbour website

Peter Milne (Australian, b. 1960)
Untitled (Rowland S Howard)
1977
From the series A Day in the Life of Rowland S Howard 1977
Digital photograph
© Peter Milne

I was initially quite dubious when curators Linsey Gosper and Helen Frajman approached me about exhibiting this work because it is so obviously the product of a callow youth (the earliest images on show here were shot when I was 16 years old, soon after the dismissal of the Whitlam government in the mid 1970s).

I was placated by the argument that the work had some kind of historical value that negated my concerns about poor technique and the visible signs of decay in an archive that has been poorly stored for the last four decades but I still felt uncomfortable. I think my key anxiety was the possibility that I would come across like one of those figures we’ve seen in numerous, recent documentaries about the Punk days in Melbourne – fat, balding, middle-aged individuals banging on about how amazing they were when 18 years old. As a fat, balding, middle-aged artist (with visible signs of decay) I try to be more focused on my next body of work than I am on images I produced so very, very long ago.

However, having pulled the negatives and slides out of their dusty boxes, I now see some merit in them. I am immediately struck by the evidence that I really did hang out with some lovely, clever people who went on to fulfil much of the creative potential that they so clearly promised.

I cannot say that life in Melbourne in the late 1970s and early 1980s was bliss (because the city had some meagre, stale and forbidding ways) but it was a time and a place where I found myself in the company of a cohort with great inventive energy and all the joyous arrogance of youth.

Looking at these images now, I see that my friends and family were every bit as beautiful as I remember them.

Peter Milne
2015

Rowland S. Howard – A Short Biography

Peter Milne (Australian, b. 1960)
Untitled (Rowland S Howard)
1977
From the series A Day in the Life of Rowland S Howard 1977
Digital photograph
© Peter Milne

Christmas holidays 1977…

My friends and I were in our mid-teens and we’d heard about the coming of Australian punk: the Saints in Brisbane and Radio Birdman in Sydney. We’d been to a few gigs at Burnhearts, a gay venue housed in the old ‘Thumping Tum’ that had given up its Tuesday nights to punk. We’d seen Fiction, the Negatives and News there. Punk had exploded across the world, not that you’d know it in Melbourne unless you were one of the few hundred weirdo kids who listened to the new Community Radio station 3RMT FM.

Every form of popular music culture was about something from outside of Australia, untouchable and inaccessible to us. On the other hand, punk was raw and exciting, friends who could strum a few chords had started picking up guitars and all of a sudden, some of us were playing something that resembled music, sure it was dumb and clumsy but it was also empowering and exhilarating.

There was a girl at my high school, Jenny Shannon. Jenny had been telling me and my mates of when her good friend Anita Lane had taken her to see the coolest punk band in Melbourne, so we had to check them out, but each attempt was thwarted with false gig listings and cancellations. Finally, we heard of a gig in Footscray Gardens where Suicide Records were promoting the release of their ‘Lethal Weapons’ compilation LP with a free open air punk gig. We rolled across to Footscray on a beautiful sunny day with the occasional sun shower. In the old red rattler, we were amongst about 50 curious, pimply kids with our hair becoming shorter as our conviction for this new thing grew.

On this particular day punk bands played, loud, distorted music with no frills and minimal production. The Boys Next Door, a tall skinny gang of guys in black, stove pipe pants, long black duffel coats, high collars turned up and mean, superior stares saunter in. “Rowlands here” Jenny whispers “He’s not a member of the band he’s just a friend of Nicks.” Who’s Rowland? Who’s Nick I’m wondering? “We’re the Boys Next Door” one of them spits. With that, the sky suddenly opens and people run for the cover of the trees.

The promoter jumps onto the mic and announces that due to rain they won’t play. There’s a round of booing from 50 people who wanna witness the spectacle of some real punk bands like animals in a zoo. The tall skinny guy grabs the mic, “We’re not fucking playing!” “That’s Nick” says Jenny… more boos… “Fuck off” says skinny guy, so we’ve seen them now, they seem like real assholes and I can’t wait to actually hear ’em live. As we walk back to the station in the drizzle I’ve got Dum Dum Boys by Iggy Pop ringing in my head…

“The first time I saw the dum dum boys I was fascinated”

I didn’t get to catch the Boys Next Door properly until a few months later at the VCA, it was Rowlands 1st gig as the new member of the band…

“I was most impressed. No one else was impressed… they looked as if they put the whole world… down”

This era was exhilaration, bright, skinny, sharp, obnoxious vitality, compelling handsome boys with eyeliner, well-spoken brats with beautiful intelligent sharp witted girls hanging off their arms, the birth of a movement in popular culture that had come to kick the ass of everything that had come before it, to burn brightly and then splinter off into a million shiny pieces. Peter Milne was there at its birth, captured the first sparks of this Super Nova going off. Fortunately he was the only kid around at the time with a good camera who actually knew how to use it to recognise a bunch of ascending stars and shoot those “Fish in a Barrel.”

Quincy McLean
2015

The Birthday Party
Nick The Stripper
1981

Band Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Track: Nick The Stripper
Album: Prayers On Fire
Composed By: Nick Cave
Produced by: Tony Cohen & The Birthday Party

Peter Milne (Australian, b. 1960)
Anita Lane and Nick Cave, The Venue, St Kilda
mid-1980s
Digital photograph
© Peter Milne

Peter Milne (Australian, b. 1960)
Anita Lane at a party
mid 1980s
Digital photograph
© Peter Milne

Peter Milne (Australian, b. 1960)
Boys Next Door first photo session after Rowland joined. Nick’s bedroom, Caulfield
c. 1978
Digital photograph
© Peter Milne

Peter Milne (Australian, b. 1960)
George and Troy
mid-1980’s
Digital photograph
© Peter Milne

Peter Milne (Australian, b. 1960)
Janet Austin and Katy Becle
1977
Digital photograph
© Peter Milne

Peter Milne (Australian, b. 1960)
Polly Borland at home
early 1980s
Digital photograph
© Peter Milne

The Birthday Party
Deep in the Woods

Peter Milne (Australian, b. 1960)
Rowland S. Howard, Gina Riley, Simon McLean. TATROC gig, Greville Street, 1976
1976
Digital photograph
© Peter Milne

Peter Milne (Australian, b. 1960)
Rowland S. Howard and Genevieve McGuckin, St Kilda rooftop
1977
Digital photograph
© Peter Milne

Peter Milne (Australian, b. 1960)
Nick Cave and Rowland S Howard after Birthday Party gig, Melbourne
1982
Digital photograph
© Peter Milne

Strange Neighbour

This gallery has now closed

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Review: ‘The Rennie Ellis Show’ at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 3rd April – 8th June 2014

Ponch Hawkes (Australian, b. 1946)
Rennie Ellis photographing at the Gay Liberation march, Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, 1973
1973
Silver gelatin photograph
© Ponch Hawkes

In researching photographs for the upcoming exhibition Out of the closets, onto the streets: Gay Liberation photography 1971-73 I came across this photograph taken by Ponch Hawkes of the Gay Liberation march that was part of Gay Pride week in 1973. Ponch had never seen this image before until I scanned the negative. And there, front and centre as always, is Rennie Ellis capturing the action… What a special find and a wonderful photograph by Ponch!

We Are Family

This is FAB, one of the best experiences I have had this year at an exhibition in Melbourne. You know you are having a good time when you laugh out loud at so many photographs, sharing the experience of the artist as though you had been there. As indeed I had, for in many cases the clubs pictured in Rennie Ellis’ photographs are the ones I went to.

I remember: Wednesday nights at Inflation in the late 80s, where to satisfy licensing restrictions you had to be served a “meal” so that you could drink alcohol (Dining Out, Inflation, 1980 below). The famous Razor Club (1986-1992), based at the Light Car Club of Australia’s clubrooms on the corner of Queens Road and Roy Street, opposite the Albert Park Lake and golf course. “It was Melbourne’s version of Studio 54, the hedonistic, off-the-wall New York disco of the late ’70s – both places notoriously hard to get into but once inside a wonderland of celebrities, freaks, transvestites and fantastic music free from the tyranny of genre.” Once on a big party night the gang of us tried to get in but the queue was so long it was impossible – so I went down the side, climbed up the drain pipes past the ladies loo, and up to the first floor balcony where someone pulled me over – completely off my face, just to get my friends in. Zu Zu’s, Cadillac Bar, 397, Commerce Club, Tasty, Freakazoid, Dome, Baseline, Hardware Club, The Peel and so many parties you could poke a stick at – what a time we had!

There to capture it all – affectionately, non-judgementally – was Rennie Ellis. He wasn’t like Diane Arbus, who thrust her camera as an outsider at people, waiting for a reaction. He was always part of the action because he was part of the family. He was a humanist photographer in the true sense of the word, for he loved photographing human beings, their social relations and their habitats, whatever that might be – sunning, partying, boozing, smoking, picking up. He referred to himself as a “people perv.”

Ellis had an eloquently clumsy eye, and for the type of baroque photographs he took this is a great thing. No perfect framing, no perfect tension points within the image, no regular alignment of horizontals, verticals or diagonals – just instinctual images taken in a split second, with his own particular brand of humour embedded in them. And always with this slight eccentricity in his vision. Look at the image of Dancing People, Razor Club (1991, below) and notice the odd hand poking in at the left hand side and the attitude of the dancers, or Fully equipped, Albert Park Beach (c. 1981, below), with the angle of the three cigarettes, the drink and the bottle of sun tan lotion strapped to the hip – FIERCE!

But he was not averse to understanding the structure of his images either, as can be seen by my comparison between the tight, formal structure of Paul Strand’s The Family, Luzzara, Italy (1953, below) and the looser, more natural gathering in Ellis’ The Gang, Windsor (1976, below); or the influence of other artists on his work, for example Norman Lindsay in his My Bare Lady, The Ritz, St Kilda (1977, below). Ellis also liked to push and pull at the pictorial plane; he liked to use pairs of people; he was not afraid of out of focus elements in the foreground of his images; he used chiaroscuro; and his use of light is always excellent. Above all, there is a consistency to his vision that never falters – a concatenation of images that is his style?

This is not just nostalgia. These are bloody good images, and Ellis takes these insightful type of images over and over again – the excesses of hedonism, the influences of wealth, the see-and-be-seen syndrome, things erotic and bizarre and, most importantly, enduring friendships. He photographs what he sees with a love and affection for his subject matter. None of this “staged” vernacular photography that I recently featured in an exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This is the real deal. A friend said to me recently, “Ah, but you know, he never did in depth photo-essays like Mary Ellen Mark did of the circus, for example.” To which I have a one word reply: BULLSHIT. His whole oeuvre is a huge photo-essay on the human race, specifically the construction of Australian identity as evidenced in sections like portraits, gangs, sharpies, Aboriginals, Kings Cross, Social Documentary, Decadence, Graffiti, Life’s a Parade, Life’s a Beach etc…

When you look at his photography it would seem to me that his images dissolve the barriers between image / subject / viewer. It’s a strange phenomena to feel so connected to a person’s work. It’s the journey that he takes us on, that we went on too – not so much the destination but the rejoicing in this journey… of company, of environment, friends, places – the joy of being human. He was allowed entry into these public/private spaces because he earned our trust. He lived with the people, and they allowed him to take a bit of their life with him – as a photographic memory, to be retold and relived in the present, allowing us all to relive those times and places. It’s the love, trust, humour and anticipation of the journey that make Ellis’ images truly unique in the history of Australian photography.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to Manuela Furci, Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive and the Monash Gallery of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Dancing People, Razor Club
1991
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print
26.7 x 40.7cm
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Robyn Dean
Marcus dancing at an unknown club, Melbourne
c. 1991-1992

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Dining Out, Inflation
1980
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print
26.7 x 40.7cm
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

SISTER SLEDGE – WE ARE FAMILY (1979) OFFICIAL VIDEO

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Fitzroy extrovert
1974
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print
40.5 x 50.8cm
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Dino Ferrari, Toorak Road
1976
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print
26.7 x 40.7cm
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Bon Scott and Angus Young, Atlanta, Georgia
1978
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print
26.7 x 40.7cm
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Ronald Belford “Bon” Scott (9 July 1946 – 19 February 1980) was a Scottish-born Australian rock musician, best known for being the lead singer and lyricist of Australian hard rock band AC/DC from 1974 until his death in 1980.

Angus McKinnon Young (born 31 March 1955) is a Scottish-born Australian guitarist best known as a co-founder, lead guitarist, and songwriter of the Australian hard rock band, AC/DC. Known for his energetic performances, schoolboy-uniform stage outfits, and popularisation of Chuck Berry’s duckwalk, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Young as the 24th greatest guitarist of all time.

AC/DC’s popularity grew throughout the 1970s, initially in Australia, and then internationally. Their 1979 album Highway to Hell reached the top twenty in the United States, and the band seemed on the verge of a commercial breakthrough. However, on 19 February 1980, Scott died after a night out in London. AC/DC briefly considered disbanding, but the group quickly recruited vocalist Brian Johnsonof the British glam rock band Geordie. AC/DC’s subsequent album, Back in Black, was released only five months later, and was a tribute to Scott.

Text from the Wikipedia website

AC/DC – Highways to Hell (Official Video)

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
At the Pub, Brisbane
1982
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print
26.7 x 40.7cm
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
The Gang, Windsor
1976
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print
26.7 x 40.7cm
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
The Family, Luzzara, Italy
1953
Silver gelatin photograph

The photographer Rennie Ellis (1940-2003) is a key figure in Australian visual culture. Ellis is best remembered for his effervescent observations of Australian life during the 1970s-90s, including his now iconic book Life is a beach. Although invariably inflected with his own personality and wit, the thousands of social documentary photographs taken by Ellis during this period now form an important historical record.

The Rennie Ellis Show highlights some of the defining images of Australian life from the 1970s and ’80s. This is the period of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Paul Keating and Bob Hawke; AC/DC and punk rock; cheap petrol and coconut oil; Hare Krishnas and Hookers and Deviant balls.

This exhibition of over 100 photographs provides a personal account of what Ellis termed ‘a great period of change’. Photographs explore the cultures and subcultures of the period, and provide a strong sense of a place that now seems worlds away, a world free of risk, of affordable inner city housing, of social protest, of disco and pub rock, of youth and exuberance.

Text from the MGA website

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
My son Josh learns to swim
1972
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print
26.7 x 40.7cm
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
My Bare Lady, The Ritz, St Kilda
1977
Digital C Type photograph
Fuji Crystal Archive print
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Norman Lindsay (Australian, 1879-1969)
The Olympians
Nd
Oil on canvas
Collection of Hamilton Art Gallery

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Richmond fans, Grand Final, MCG
1974
Chromogenic print
40.5 x 50.8 cm
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Interesting to note that Ellis must have been shooting both black and white and colour film during the VFL Grand Final of 1974. He must have had two cameras with him (this is more likely than swapping between films in the same 35mm camera) to shoot the photograph above in colour and the black and white image of Robbie McGhie (1974, below).

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Mr Muscleman, Albert Park Beach
c. 1986
Chromogenic print
26.7 x 40.7cm
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Fully equipped, Albert Park Beach
c. 1981
Digital C Type photograph
Fuji Crystal Archive print
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Don and Patrizia, St Kilda Beach
1985
Chromogenic print
40.5 x 50.8cm
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Berlin Party, Inflation, Melbourne
1980
Digital C Type photograph
Fuji Crystal Archive print
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Rennie Ellis book covers: Decade: 1970-1980 (left) and Decadent: 1980-2000 (right)

Decade: 1970-1980 is a photography book showcasing Rennie Ellis’ (1940-2003) contribution to photography and social history. With an introduction by film maker and Rennie contemporary Paul Cox and an essay by academic Susan Van Wyk, Decade highlights Ellis as one of Australia’s most important chroniclers of the 1970s. The photographs, predominantly black and white, are drawn from a core selection originally made by Rennie from his own unpublished book, supplemented by other significant and iconic images from 1970 to 1980 drawn from the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive and the State Library of Victoria Rennie Ellis collection. Many of the photographs are accompanied by extended captions written by Rennie himself, published here for the first time. Decade explores the cultures and sub-cultures of the seventies: the political upheavals, alternative lifestyles and counter culture, the women’s movement, gay liberation, the new religions and cults, pop festivals, Vietnam and other protests, massage parlours, the disco scene, the blossoming of Australia’s film industry, the new sexual freedom, Aboriginal rights, street festivals, the new theatre, fashion, drugs and the emergence of a decadent and hedonistic society that would later characterise the 1980s.

Decadent: 1980-2000 is a photography book showcasing Rennie Ellis’ (1940-2003) contribution to photography and social history. It is a fascinating snapshot of the wild, opulent, sometimes tacky and always decadent 1980s in Australia by a true original. With an introduction by photographer and Rennie contemporary William Yang and an essay by photographer and art critic Robert McFarlane, Decadent highlights Ellis as one of Australia’s most important chroniclers of the 1980s. The photographs, both colour and black and white, are drawn from the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive and the State Library of Victoria Rennie Ellis collection. Decadent explores the rise of the hedonism that we now associate with the 1980s. Ellis’ boundary-pushing, racy and sometimes voyeuristic works capture a society that seems to be revelling in its abandonment of the politically charged 1970s documented in Decade.

About the Author

No other photographer has documented – in such depth – the life and times in Australia, throughout the 1970s until his death in 2003, with such insight into the human condition as Rennie Ellis. His non-judgmental approach was his ‘access-to-all-areas’ pass. Ellis used his camera as a key to open the doors to the social arenas of the rich and famous and to enter the underbelly of the nightclubs, bearing witness to the indulgences and excesses. In today’s post-Henson era, these captured moments offer an intimate access to an Australia tantalisingly, but sadly, now almost out of reach.

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Robert McGhie, Grand Final, MCG
1974
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print
50.8 x 40.5cm
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Robert ‘Robbie’ McGhie is a former Australian rules football player who played in the VFL between 1969 and 1972 and again in 1979 for the Footscray Football Club, from 1973 to 1978 for the Richmond Football Club and in 1980 and 1981 for the South Melbourne Football Club. His height was 192 cm and he weighed 85.5 kg. He played 46 games for Footscray, 80 games for Richmond and 16 games for South Melbourne. He was a Richmond Premiership Player 1973, 1974 (the year this photograph by Rennie Ellis was taken at the Grand Final).

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Property of Hells Angels, Kings Cross
1970-1971
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print
50.8 x 40.5cm
Courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive