KEY POINTS:
In a week of financial firestorms and the Australian dollar plummeting to earth, Patti Smith, headline act at the Melbourne International Arts Festival, was singing the classic rock song, Free Money, and shafting greed with an encore of Rock 'n' Roll Nigger.
The legendary writer, artist, performer and activist electrified Melbourne for the first time in a decade with two sellout concerts and a visual arts residency.
Included was Dream of Life, a film shot by Steven Sebring over 11 years showing her creative spirit, a show of her evocative photography and another work in conjunction with Sebring, an exhibition of photos and objects ranging from her childhood dress to an ancient urn containing the remains of her close friend, the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
In a festival interview, she said: "I have always been attracted to any form of art, but I would have to say music has been the most important for me. While poetry and photography are no less fulfilling in my artistic life, it is music and performing live that are my greatest loves."
The decision to bring the American rocker to Melbourne was made by the festival's artistic director, Kristy Edmunds, following a similar residency last year by another American legend, the contemporary dancer Merce Cunningham.
In fact, Edmunds has determinedly run contemporary programmes in her four years and now final hurrah at the annual festival; programmes that run wide and deep when viewed from the three biennial festivals in Auckland which have run since 2003.
Over 17 days, Melburnians have had a choice of more than 1200 artists, 93 ticketed and free events and 15 world premieres. The Victorian Government contributes $5.9 million annually and after the first few days, organisers were hopeful of box-office revenue hitting the $2 million mark, about $300,000 more than last year.
With 23 festivals under its belt, Melbourne is a grand-daddy to Auckland's festival, just starting to hit its straps under director David Malacari.
The full programme for AK09 will be released in November. It will include 45 productions and concerts along a theme of the restless and turbulent energies of the Pacific Ocean.
Malacari has given a sneak preview of what to expect at AK09, including a major new work by dance company Black Grace, Gathering Clouds, where choreographer Neil Ieremia responds to an academic report in May claiming Pacific Island immigrants were a drain on the economy.
Other works are Siren, a surprise sellout at last year's Edinburgh Festival by British sound artist Ray Lee; and The Andersen Project, a Canadian theatre production based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy story.
One thing the two festivals have in common is a paucity of major private sector sponsors. Big sponsors, like SkyCity in 2007, have scurried off and the $250,000 tab they picked up for a spectacular free fireworks display put on in the Domain by French experts Groupe F, has been rescued by the Auckland City Council.
In addition to the $1 million annual council grant to the festival, councillors slipped away from the festival launch in August to vote another $425,000 for the event, including $190,000 to support a major free public event. The rest will go to cover the hire cost of various Edge venues.
The ASB Trusts, strong supporters of the arts, are back for another season and New Zealand Post is the festival's major private backer.
NZ Post chief executive John Allen says the partnership is an "outstanding opportunity to celebrate arts and culture within New Zealand's largest and most vibrant city".
Edmunds, in an interview with The Australian, was enormously appreciative of Victorian Government backing and the fact it shared the view that the festival was not just an economic tool, a kind of ornament for the city, but a living, breathing part of the human ethos and a free society.
Some of the Melbourne highlights included Israel's Batsheva Dance Company with two spectacular works. One of these, Three, explored the themes of beauty, nature and existence in a spell-binding and humorous production that finished with a rapture of the Beach Boys.
Australian festival favourites, Chunky Move, premiered a new show, Two Faced Bastard, at the Meat Market. Known for an unpredictable brand of dance, the space was divided by a curtain of vertical blinds, with the audience seated on either side.
Dancers and actors stepped through the curtain as they transformed into other versions of themselves. At one stage, the audience was invited to swap sides. The show finished with the curtain being raised and the illuminated audience staring at each other across the stage.
One Hundred Sound Works by One Hundred Arts from the 21st century was developed by Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces in Fitzroy. A maze of suspended wires was connected to headphones chronicling new directions and innovations in sound art.
The art space was founded in 1983 with federal and state government funding to provide professional support to contemporary artists in the early stages of their careers. Above the gallery are 16 studios where artists, local and from overseas, are in residence for two years. One of those at the moment is New Zealand artist Richard Lewer, who won this year's Paramount Wallace Art Award.
Down the road in Fitzroy at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, visitors to the Steven Sebring and Patti Smith exhibition were greeted with Ice Blink, a substantial body of documentary Antarctic work by New Zealand photographer Anne Noble.
The mostly large and unframed images included work as a New Zealand Antarctic Arts fellow but also from museums, research centres, theme parks and discovery centres in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Norway, England, Scotland and the United States between 2003 and 2007.
On the web: www.visitvictoria.com/nz
* Bernard Orsman travelled to Melbourne as a guest of Tourism Victoria.
