Ochre Series – the dis/connection of lockdown days

Born and raised local, artist Rhiannon Power is showing her most recent paintings in Ochre Series at the Lennox Arts Collective from the 5–18 November.

Figurative and botanical, we see realism suspended in the abstract, and themes of dis/connection, belonging, and an experience of our lockdown days.

River ochre gathered from her local creek brings warmth; anchoring each piece with a direct connection to the earth and to Country. With these raw minerals, the surfaces are embedded with a richness and energy Rhiannon says is not found in store bought paint.

The exhibition features both small intimate pieces and larger works, along with a range of hand signed prints and cards, all available for sale.

Ochre Series

Friday 5 tillThursday 18 November.Open every day 10am–3pm,

Lennox Arts Collective,

2/72 Ballina Street, Lennox Head.

Mandy Nolan gets her guests to tell all on Byron Live…

There is something about Byron. This wildly eclectic creative community has been the media’s muse for the last decade. Everyone wants to talk about us. Our real estate. Our celebs. Our beaches. Our influencers. Our anti-vaxxers. Our lives. So instead of them talking about us – how about we share some of the colour of who we are? That was the creative genesis that saw the creation of Byron Live, hosted and co-created by Mandy Nolan and Astronaut Media.

Mandy Nolan is as iconic in Byron Bay as the lighthouse itself. Her opinions and humour have warned many philosophical travellers about dangerous terrain… and sometimes she’ll lead you straight onto the rocks!

Mandy Nolan hosts a chat show with a difference. For a start, it’s live; with a swinging three-piece house band, aka The Lovejoy Trio; an opening dance routine choreographed by Danni from Sassy Salsa, with the big girl herself busting some moves; and one you didn’t know was on your bucket list until you’ve seen it – a live penis painter! Yes, Pricasso, the world-famous bloke who paints portraits with his penis. He’ll be on stage capturing the moments throughout the show.

Byron Live’s featured guests are author and award-winning journalist, Kerry O’Brien; Australian comedy sensation and local dweller, Akmal; media personality, actor, activist, glorious and original surfer chick, Nell Schofield; the extraordinary power duo of Hussy Hicks, Leesa Gentz and Julz Parker; as well as Byron’s very own ADFAS Young Musician of the Year, Francis Atkins. 

Byron Live is music, dance, conversation, comedy, inspiration… and it’s off-the-wall funny! 

Mandy Nolan, the Greens candidate for Richmond, is giving it her all. If Mandy gets voted in next year she may not get to host another Byron Live, so she is giving this show EVERYTHING!’ ‘There is also a surprise guest,’ says Mandy. ‘Can’t say who yet, just waiting to announce!’ 

Byron Live. Thursday 2 December. Byron Theatre, Community Centre. Tix mandynolan.com.au or byroncentre.com.au. Doors 6.30pm, show 7pm. Early bird tix now $45. Full Price $60.

Share a year of Sundays with Belinda

Mullumbimby’s Belinda Jeffery is one of Australia’s best loved cookery writers and teachers – if you patronise local produce markets, then you’ve probably bumped into Belinda at a fresh food stall.

The most popular of Belinda’s bestselling cookbooks is the classic Mix & Bake, but there might just be a new title holder for that honour.

In A Year of Sundays Belinda shares the recipes, musings and memories that inspire her cooking. This book is a collection of Belinda’s much-adored and anticipated Sunday morning Instagram posts accompanied by beautiful recipes. A Year of Sundays holds recipes gathered from Belinda’s cooking school on the Far North Coast and those crafted from the harvests of local producers and her own garden, and others embellished with the imprint of personal memories.

If you seek to cook from the heart, to relish in the beauty of just-picked produce, or to simply indulge a craving, Belinda imparts her recipes with both encouragement and genuine joy. 

From her reassuring instruction in the art of pastry and baking to her relaxed approach to everyday dishes made from the freshest ingredients, A Year of Sundays is as much a conversation with a friend as it is a cookbook, and you can join the conversation when Friends of the Libraries Byron Shire, and the Bangalow CWA, present Belinda Jeffery and A Year of Sundays next week in Bangalow.

Numbers will be limited owing to COVID Safe conditions*. So get in quick.

A Year of Sundays – Moller Pavilion, Bangalow.

Friday, 12 November at 2pm. 

Tickets: $25 at TryBooking.com or email [email protected] for further information. Price includes afternoon tea from the Bangalow CWA. The book will be available for purchase.

*Vaccination restrictions apply.

The Brits are at the Palace!

The Palace British Film Festival’s full programme is a stunner, celebrating the best of British in a remarkable lineup of 31 films – a number of which are screening for the first time in Australia. 

Excellent performances from Festival favourites and brilliant newcomers will delight audiences and ignite their senses in a lineup that includes the best contemporary cinema, and documentaries, as well as the chance to experience some of the most significant British films of the 1970s on the big screen.

The Festival opens with the highly anticipated Australian Premiere of The Duke, a heart-warming tale based on a 1961 true story of 60-year-old taxi driver, Kempton Bunton, who steals Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. The Duke features beautiful performances from Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren. 

Kenneth Branagh wrote and directed Belfast, a personal eulogy to his home town. Starring Jamie Dornan and Judi Dench, the film is a poignant story of love, laughter and loss in one boy’s childhood, set amidst the music and social turmoil of Northern Ireland in the late 1960s. 

Edgar Wright’s psychological horror fantasy, Last Night in Soho, starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Thomasin McKenzie, follows an aspiring fashion designer who is mysteriously able to enter the 1960s where she encounters a dazzling wannabe singer. The director has issued a message for patrons, urging them not to divulge the plot so as not to spoil it for others. 

Premiering at this year’s Cannes Film Festival’s Directors Fortnight, writer-director Clio Barnard’s Ali & Ava is a compelling contemporary love story set in multi-cultural Bradford. Enveloped in music and imbued with humour, the film stars Adeel Akhtar and Claire Rushbrook.

Documentary highlights include My Father and Me, a personal film from acclaimed documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield about his relationship with his father, renowned industrial photographer Maurice Broomfield.

For music lovers, Eric Clapton: Lockdown Sessions, is an intimately staged concert film from Clapton and his band, following the recording of a new live album, featuring acoustic renditions of past hits, and filmed in the English countryside during the pandemic.

The amazing life story of legendary author, Jackie Collins (sister of Joan), is told in Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story, which reveals the untold story of a ground-breaking author and her mission to build a one-woman literary empire.

Food and wine lovers will rejoice in Sparkling: The Story of Champagne, a documentary exploring the world behind the pop of the cork, narrated by Stephen Fry, plus high drama over one evening in a restaurant in Boiling Point, which follows an emotionally scarred London chef who struggles to keep it together, starring Stephen Graham.

Comedy drama Best Sellers stars British icon Sir Michael Caine as a cranky, retired author who reluctantly embarks on a final book tour. The hilarious Off The Rails (Kelly Preston’s last film) follows three female friends in their 50s as they attempt to recreate an inter-rail journey across Europe they made three decades earlier, with their friend’s 18-year-old daughter taking her mother’s place. Also starring Sally Phillips.

This year’s Festival features a special sneak preview of the highly anticipated Operation Mincemeat, starring Colin Firth and Matthew McFadyen, based on the Allies’ deception effort to keep the Allied invasion of Italy hidden and to outwit German troops in WWII. Also centred around true events, but during WWI, is The War Below, which focusses on a group of British miners called upon to dig a strategic tunnel in no man’s land.

Some notable films are in the retrospective, 7 From the ’70s, featuring a selection of the best British films from the 1970s, four of which celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2021, A Clockwork Orange (1971), Stanley Kubrick’s cult classic, and Barry Lyndon (1975), also from Kubrick, starring Ryan O’Neal as an Irish rogue.

Other films from the ’70s are John Schlesinger’s multi award winning Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), Straw Dogs (1971), Quadrophenia (1973), The Go-Between (1971) and The Railway Children (1970).

Previously announced, The Last Bus is a touching adventure across Britain starring Timothy Spall, which follows the journey of a pensioner who travels from Britain’s most northerly to its most southerly point, using only local buses. 

Olivia Colman, Colin Firth, Josh O’Connor and Australian star, Odessa Young, star in Mothering Sunday, a romantic period drama set in post-World War I England about a maid who secretly plans to meet with the man she loves before he leaves to marry another woman. 

There are other great films like Falling for Figaro, To Olivia, Benediction, Miss Marx, It Snows in Benidorm, Nowhere Special, and The Electrical Life of Louis Wain and The Obscure Life of the Grand Duke of Corsica; an intriguing meditation on life, love and architecture set during a pandemic in two different eras. 

For Bowie fans, there is the biopic Stardust, which follows a young David Bowie, played by Johnny Flynn, on a 1971 road trip across America when he was developing his Ziggy Stardust persona.

This is going to be a great festival – for full programme and tickets for the British Film Festival are now on sale, including the limited pre-Festival release of specially priced eTicket Bundles, exclusively at Palace Cinemas.

The British Film Festival will be hosted at the Palace in Byron Bay from 3 to 21 November.

To find out more and to book tickets, visit: britishfilmfestival.com.au.