Phil Brown: Don’t take this the wrong way but your dress looks like a tent

Don’t take it the wrong way when I say her dress looks like a tent. This Brisbane designer is not offended, writes Phil Brown.

It could be misconstrued as insulting to say that someone’s dress looks like a tent. But fashion designer Ivy Niu’s latest creations are supposed to look like that.

Niu’s art-emblazoned tent dresses can be seen as part of the Brisbane Art Design festival, otherwise known as BAD.

It just so happens that BAD, an initiative of the Museum of Brisbane at City Hall, is good and much bigger than its first iteration two years ago. Luckily, it’s a biennial event so the pandemic year was just used to plan for this year. BAD begins this weekend and is a month-long program of ­dynamic exhibitions, open studios, outdoor interventions, talks, tours, workshops and other events across Brisbane at more than 60 venues.

Ivy Niu’s tent dresses will be on display at Newstead Studio as part of BAD from May 21 to 23. The Brisbane designer has collaborated with 10 featured artists whose designs adorn the expansive cotton garments.

Fashion designer Ivy Niu and artist Bianca Mavrick with dresses that will be displayed in an exhibition during the Brisbane Art Design festival at Brisbane City Hall. Picture: Liam Kidston.

“Fashion is art,” Niu says.

“I like to think so. I am an artist and have always loved fashion and wanted to combine the two. I have collaborated with a few of the artists before.”

Rachel Burke, Chantal Fraser and Ellie Hopley are among the creatives whose work you will see on Niu’s tent dresses. Also Bianca Mavrick, a jewellery designer and Queensland College of Art graduate.

“I wanted to use some jewellery components in my design so I have made an apron that features parts of earrings and it can be detached from the dress,” Mavrick says.

“For the dress I had a great time doing tie dye. I’ve tried it on myself and it fits well.”

The BAD program will happen across weekends all this month and gives us all the chance to visit artists and ­creators in their natural habitats and to explore the world of art and design across Brisbane. ­ Museum of Brisbane director Renai Grace, the brains behind BAD, said it was time to see a celebration of visual art and design animating a network of parks, laneways, galleries. artist spaces and studio across the city and online.

brisbaneartdesign.com.au

ANTHONY’S ART’S IN THE RIGHT PLACE

An innovative arts program designed especially for seniors to support their creative, emotional and social wellbeing sounds like a lovely idea.

It’s called Tree of Life and it starts this Friday at the Nundah Memorial Hall and runs until June 11. It’s an idea that well known guitarist and composer Anthony Garcia and his wife Jen came up with.

Garcia is artistic director of Sounds Across Oceans, a new not-for-profit arts organisation that has been programming innovative mindful arts workshops, performances and festival programs these past few years.

Anthony Garcia.

Participants will work with garcia and other creatives during the course of the program.

“This wonderful program brings together a collective of teaching artists from diverse cultural backgrounds working alongside seniors to create, play, dance, sing and jam,” Garcia says.

“The workshops are designed to inspire and connect seniors, to provide a calm and relaxed space for creative experimentation.

“You don’t have to be an expert or have experience to participate, just a desire to explore your creativity, have fun, learn and meet people,” Garcia says.

The 8-week program costs just $120.

soundsacrossoceans.com

BOB IN BRISVEGAS

Bob Downe.

For the past few years, Bob Downe has been cruising. P & O cruising that is.

“For the last four years I have been doing P & O comedy cruises and loving it,” says the man behind Bob, former Melbourne journo Mark Trevorrow

The pandemic put a stop to that and to everything else. But now, with “a bit of glitter and a gold lame tracksuit” Trevorrow’s flamboyant alter ego is on tour on terra firma again and heading for Bris Vegas with his new show Viva Bob Vegas! This is an old style crooner nightclub show with the Prince of Polyester and comedy himself (nobody wears a safari suit like he does), which comes to Twelfth Night Theatre in Bowen Hills this Saturday night at 7.30pm and on Sunday at 2pm.

Trevorrow created Bob Downe in 1984 and turned him into an international star.

“And until a year ago I had never been out of work,” Trevorrow says. “But now I’m busier than ever.” To book visit bobdowne.com

CREEDENCE REVIVAL

OK all you Creedence Clearwater Revival fans, here’s some good news, so grab your walking frames and your flannelette shirts and head for QPAC on June 18.

There you will see a band of hot musos channelling John Fogerty and the boys in the show Creedence Clearwater Inspired played by the Proud Mary band. That consists of Ryan Rafferty, Paul Cushing, Eddie Parise and Frank Celenza, those last two being former Baby Animals band members.

Creedence Clearwater Inspired.

This show is the brainchild of producer Phil Bathols who says he has long wanted to celebrate the music of the incomparable Creedence Clearwater Revival, a band that was “here for a short but good time with a huge number of memorable hits that are loved to this day by people of all ages”.

The show is on in the Concert Hall at QPAC on Friday June 18 at 8pm. Visit qpac.com.au

OPERA STARS UP CLOSE

Mums are special and some of our top opera stars will be singing about that this week with two Mothers Love opera galas.

A series of intimate opera galas at the City Workshop basement venue in the CBD in recent months has been a chance to see up close and personal some great singers, who would normally be globetrotting. Up very close in fact. The pandemic has kept them all home and rather selfishly, we’re happy about that.

Eva Kong will perform at City Workshop.

There’s a performance on Thursday at 7pm and on Sunday, Mother’s Day, at 3pm and wouldn’t that be a lovely Mother’s Day present.

You will hear Eva Kong, Hayley Sugars, Timothy Newton, Bradley Daley, Kang Wang with accompanist John Woods. If you known anything about opera you’ll know that’s a hell of a line-up.

Tickets are $90 and you can book at cityworkshop.com.au