marcus westbury

Just when i thought that my short lived TV career had gone to the great archive in the sky the fairfax web site currently has both series of Not Quite Art available on live streaming I’m not exactly sure how or why, but i’m not complaining. Unfortunately there is no function to embed them and [...]

MakeSpace – a Renew Newcastle project I’m on the road for about a month in the USA and Canada and meeting a lot of people who are interested in Renew Newcastle but don’t know too much about me, Newcastle, the project or its history. I thought i should try my best to put a few [...]

Sometimes something so amazing happens that you pinch yourself. As regular readers — and irregular ones, anyone who has known me or met me or had the misfortune to be stuck next to me in transit for an hour  – will know if i have one obsession in life it’s with my home town of Newcastle. [...]

Hand made Nick Cave, by Lucy of Newcastle. MEMO to anyone tempted to frame a cultural debate as a choice between “high art” and “popular culture”: don’t bother; you are missing the point. It’s not just that the terms are frustratingly polarising or that they frame the world as a simple hierarchy of quality based [...]

I was commissioned by Meanjin late last year to write an essay about the role that funding bodies play in Australian culture.  It appears in the current edition of the magazine and is now available online. Meanjin is one of Australia’s oldest and most esteemed literary journals and one that is currently enjoying a renaissance [...]

I am not sure whether I should chalk this one up as a plus or a minus. Those of you who follow my TV adventures as closely as I do (OK, no one!) will remember, Not Quite Art took out the highly competitive “best arts show of the year” in 2007′s Sydney Morning Herald “Couch [...]

I’d resisted posting this for a while because i wasn’t exactly sure how to introduce it. Part of me was tempted to launch into an elaboration of my theory of why and how Adelaide is the least interesting cultural place in all of Australia. It is. Honest. Part of me was tempted to elaborate on [...]

One of the strange things about being on television is that it creates the impression that you’re busy, jetsetting and living some sort of glamorous, high profile existence. To be fair, i did get to go to the Logies but it isn’t all tedious and bizarre nights surrounded by people who dig up people’s gardens, [...]

The second episode of Not Quite Art Series Two goes to air on TV on ABC1 across Australia at 10pm local time tonight. If you’re in Australia, it is possible to download all episodes of the series in full and for free from the ABC web site. However as a lot of people have observed [...]

The new series of Not Quite Art begins on ABC1 tonight at 10pm. You should also be able to download it from 10pm tonight from the ABC web site. Here’s also a little piece i wrote the relates to the content of tonight’s episode. Anyhow, I thought i’d open up a thread here for anyone [...]