Inspirations in isolation
About three dozen of Australia’s greatest performing artists stepped into a metaphorical space called Review’s Isolation Room, a series that offered great art and hope in our time of need.
It started with Missy Higgins in a pink wig, singing a Beatles tune, and Deborah Conway howling along to a blues song with her musical family, and it ended with Ian Moss covering a classic Bonnie Raitt ballad and Marina Abramovic asking us to stare unblinking into her eyes as a kind of psychic reset.
Between those bookends, about three dozen of Australia’s greatest performing artists stepped into a metaphorical space called the Isolation Room, where they switched on a camera, turned on their talent and welcomed us inside intimate spaces most fans had never seen.
John Williamson sang a 34-year-old song with his back to the bushy backyard he calls home on the Gold Coast hinterland. Brian Cadd sat at his piano in Woodstock, New York, to bang out one of his favourite songs by the Band.
Vika and Linda Bull sent goosebumps tingling and eyes pricking with tears as they sang Amazing Grace a cappella from a kitchen table in Melbourne. Sarah Blasko, eight months pregnant, covered Talking Heads in her Sydney living room.
The Wiggles stuck to the title of their newly written song, Social Distancing, by filming in four different locations. John Butler and his wife, Danielle Caruana (Mama Kin), sang in their West Australian backyard backed by a chorus of birds in the fading light.
Trent Dalton gave a reading from his unreleased second novel in his Brisbane bunker, and Thomas Keneally read from a favourite Charles Dickens novel.
Colin Hay and the Living End frontman Chris Cheney sent in songs from their homes in California, which felt like transmissions from another world as the US stumbled and fell in its response to the health crisis.
But, aside from the contributions from those much-loved Australian artists holed up stateside, one of the enduring joys of presenting Isolation Room across its eight-week lifespan was that each performance offered a respite from the news of the day, much of it troubling, frightening or just plain depressing.
As most of us have found of late, we turn to the arts when we need comfort or solace, or even just to be distracted from thinking about some of the deeply unpleasant things our species has been experiencing this year. Like many great ideas, this one started small. On March 21, Review editor Tim Douglas sent me a few lines suggesting that we contact a few artists and ask if they’d like to send in videos. “Just something really informal — solo, casual performances in their homes,” he wrote. When I began asking musicians and their managers, I explained the general brief on what we were looking for was “something uplifting, because I think we all need it right now”. On that front, this diverse group of performers certainly delivered. We thank them for sharing their talents.
Two months ago, our nation was changing dramatically as we grappled daily with an invisible threat to normalcy. One of the few aspects of regular life that has remained largely unchanged is the high value we place on the creative expression of our fellow humans and, as we tentatively emerge from our homes to survey the costs of those two months of isolation, we here at Review are pleased to have brought you a series of 39 videos that together tell one small part of one of the strangest stories in our shared history.
Hopefully, it’s a story without a sequel.
Now is not the time to turn our backs on writers’ festival debate
Thousands of people will this week converge on Adelaide for the annual writers’ festival. Attendees will be keen to meet the writers, hear their stories, and celebrate in the sunshine. But some people won’t go.
Honeymoon exhumed: ‘It’s very traumatic, being in a band’
Life, loss and longevity: behind the scenes with The Cruel Sea amid a surprise victory lap for the veteran rock act — with no less than Cold Chisel watching on in a packed arena.