While loosely based on Australia’s Heide artists circle, it’s the central female characters in Emily Bitto’s debut that give it Stella award-winning substance
The Strays follows the sliding fortunes of the Trentham family and group of artists living together in 1930s Melbourne. Lily, the first-person narrator, is an only child bored of her own ordinary parents and drawn like a magnet into this glamorous circle. It is her best friend Eva, one of three Trentham daughters, who brings her here, but Bitto’s unravelling story is viewed through Lily’s child’s eye, as community and family fall apart around her.
Loosely based on the history of the Heide circle, these avant-garde artists have hived themselves off from the mainstream, disillusioned by the stasis of regular society. They share a belief that art holds a deeper truth about society and in conversations across the dinner table, full of idealism, they dream of a higher purpose. Artist Evan Trentham speaks about his responsibility to imagine an alternative way of living. He is someone “who sees the structures of order and recognises them as arbitrary.”
More
Loosely based on the history of the Heide circle, these avant-garde artists have hived themselves off from the mainstream, disillusioned by the stasis of regular society. They share a belief that art holds a deeper truth about society and in conversations across the dinner table, full of idealism, they dream of a higher purpose. Artist Evan Trentham speaks about his responsibility to imagine an alternative way of living. He is someone “who sees the structures of order and recognises them as arbitrary.”
More
No comments:
Post a Comment