Ronnie Scott and Elizabeth MacFarlane recently published an academic article in Text Journal about The Long Weekend in Alice Springs and matters to do with authorship, voice and adaptation. It’s quite a comprehensive article that I must admit blew me a away a bit with its thoroughness.
Five years today since the Alice Springs launch of the most emotionally difficult art project that I suspect I’ll ever do, and also the first huge art project I ever did. Grateful that I stumbled into it, completely unaware that it would change me.
Recently I finished a minicomic called ‘The Tension’ which is about making ‘The Long Weekend in Alice Springs’ and what happened to me afterwards, which isn’t something that I’ve talked about much; it will be riso-printed in time for the Other Worlds Zine Fair in Sydney. I’ll have some mini launches later on once I’ve pulled my brain together.
My art-colleague Craig San Roque just had this showreel made up by David Nixon and Fiona Walsh in Alice Springs, some of his big hits over the years. He’s done quite a bit actually, strange and wonderful fellow he is. Some elements of the live performance of The Long Weekend in Alice Springs are at the beginning.
Craig San Roque from David Nixon on Vimeo.
Woop !
I’ve been on big art-adventchas lately, it’s been grand.
But i’m back home now and it’s super nice to be back in my own bed after 5 weeks.
It’s almost the end of the year: it’s always surprising when it sneaks up on me like that. Not sure what you’ve been up to this year, but looking back I reckon the thing that I’ve spent most of this year trying to get better at is being a good friend to the people that mean a lot to me. I’m often away with the fairies in my own head reading books and writing and sometimes forget to tell my peeps that I love them. I’ll probably keep trying to get better at that next year too.
I’m grateful you’ve all been interested in stuff I do. I always hope that people find it interesting. Secretly (shh) I think I make comics because I’m not great at starting conversations the normal way … so I’m always super glad when people talk to me about ideas in my comics. It may not be the most efficient way to start a conversation … but I’m glad it works! 🙂
Xmas pressies
Hey … I just had an idea … perhaps you should get onto Christmas presents right now. By which … I mean you should buy my books and comics for your friends and family. San Kessto publications has free shipping til Christmas on both my graphic novels ->>>>>>>>
* Swallows Part One (a tale of immigration and family) – $15 (FREE postage)
* The Long Weekend in Alice Springs (has turned out to be a cult hit over the last four years) – $29 (FREE postage)
* I wanna be a travella: Sri Lanka (a nice little travel comic/sketchbook from my trip there) $5 + postage
But now that my overly forthright sales pitches are all done
– I’d like to say that 2017 has been smashing for me and I hope that it’s been pretty damn smashing for you too. Whether it has or not – I hope that 2018 will be a WONDERFUL an super creative year for you all.
jxo
In 2016 Josh ran the third annual Her Majesty’s Favourite Really Great Graphical Festival and had super special guests Eleri Harris and Mandy Ord interview each other at the final event. It was an impressive conversation and Josh decided he wanted to see more artists interviewing artists. Leonie also visited Tasmania as part of the festival, having a solo show of her comics and one image of hers of Kunanyi (Mt Wellington) that was made into a billboard in Hobart. Josh asked Leonie if she’d be interested in talking comics with him – she said SURE!
We talked for about 40 minutes (sadly my phone camera passed out at the 25 minute mark) and it was a great chat. Leonie is a wonderful artist and you should all get to know her work really well. I wrote some stuff about her earlier this year HERE. Hopefully her finished book “Raw Feels” is published one day – in my opinion, it is a TOTAL gem. I asked Leonie at one point about the Kunanyi image, which you can see below. Leonie drew it when she first came to Hobart, and was sitting on the MONA ferry looking at the mountain. She was forced to stop drawing the image because the ferry went around a corner and she could no longer see Mt Wellington: a chance creation of an extraordinarily minimal and perfect image.
Leonie’s website
Josh’s website
Things that we referred to if you’d like to read more
* Tom Hart’s wonderful book “Rosalie Lightning”
* John Porcellino
* Mandy Ord
* Julie Doucet
* You can read more about Sarah Firth’s image (below) at this link –“The Neurotic”
We have recently managed to find time to record Craig’s narrations (much thanks to Ross Muir at Reddirt Records in Alice Springs for taking the time to do this) and put them to animations of some of the art from the graphic novel. Have a looksee at what we got down here!!
Pt 1 – The Long Weekend in Alice Springs: Manka Maru
Pt 2 – The Long Weekend in Alice Springs: Around the campfire
Pt 3 – The Long Weekend in Alice Springs: The Hospital
Pt 4 – The Long Weekend in Alice Springs: Sunday
Pt 5 – The Long Weekend in Alice Springs: the weekend is over
Mental Health language project poster by Joshua Santospirito with design by Elliat Rich. Language and translations by NPY Women’s Council.
I was a bit surprised but very chuffed (I must say!) to find this morning that The Long Weekend in Alice Springs had been awarded the Comicoz Award for Best Australian Original Comic Book for 2013!
Thanks to Nat Karmichael and Comicoz – very much appreciated.
Joshua Santospirito Art 