Arts Monday’s Jane Raffan Soaks Up Sydney’s Suburban Noir of the ’50s and ’60s

Jane chats with curator Nerida Campbell from Sydney Living Museums (formerly Historic Houses Trust) about Suburban Noir, the latest exhibition employing the talent of crime novelist Peter Doyle, who has been delving into the police forensic photographic archive to uncover stories of crime in suburban Sydney during the 1950s and 1960s.

In tandem with the cache of over 200 photographic images on film, to which Doyle wrote and narrated an evocative voice-over, Doyle invited 15 artists to respond to the archive, and their works offer a fascinating contrast. Responding with “diverse visual sensitivities and understandings, and finding drama and tragedy alongside stateliness and dramatic beauty”, the artists are: Vanessa Berry, Dallas Bray, Rhett Brewer, Charles Cooper, Theresa Darmody, Di Holdsworth, Bruce Latimer, Michael Lewy, Frank Littler, Reg Mombassa, Peter O’Doherty, Ken Searle, Susannah Thorne and Anne Wallace.

Interview 1 – the archive

Interview 2 – the artists

Program blog: https://eastsidefm.org/2014/03/arts-monday-10-march-2014/

Di Holdsworth – detail, courtesy Sydney Living Museums