“Out of the Ordinary is one part unembellished documentation and one part verbi-visual equivalent of a Pro Hart work made with nineteenth-century, paint-loaded canons. It is a cultural history, resource for contemporary designers, imaginarium and luminous almanac of an explorer of the stranger species of creativity – from brick art to letterboxes, junk mail, mail art, television, fashion, food, model trains, Disney’s imagineering, amusement parks, feng-shui, Postmodern architecture, human-scale craftsmanship, forgotten Australian architects in China, famous architects (that, perhaps, should be forgotten save for their bow ties), collectors of Sherlock Holmes memorabilia, outsider artists and clients – and none of these things exactly. Everywhere Derham Groves attends to and finds significance in the minutiae of everyday life, inter-association, and those things that affect us so profoundly but remain just outside the purview of the ‘normal.’ And in these things – objects, art, architecture, environment(s) – he finds stories and teaches his reader how to do the same. Out of the Ordinary is also a motivational text. It begins with bricks, perhaps the most standardized and repeatable units of construction, and reveals how they can be used as vehicles for unfettered creativity and not merely for the creation of containers. Groves shows how art and architecture can emerge and receive nourishment from the garbage of the everyday and creative collisions. Groves also calls, albeit subtly, for a turn away from homogeneity, the standardized, and unimaginative or ‘lazy’ design informed by principles of economy, efficiency, utility and function conceived in abstraction. Rather, Groves celebrates the reanimation and/or rejuvenation of place by the makers of anything out of the ordinary (who don’t necessarily pray to the demiurge of good taste) who have created spaces and things through which the creative imagination shines.” – Dr Andrew Chrystall, School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing, Massey University
“Derham Groves has written this illuminating story of an exceptional but hitherto unsung Australian architect whose distinctive designs in China as well as his homeland may still be seen and enjoyed. In this book Groves has for the first time revealed some characteristic strands of Arthur Purnell’s talents, whereby his subject’s remarkable creativity is now clear for us to enjoy.” - Robert Irving, architecture historian and pupil of Arthur Purnell Arthur Purnell’s ‘Forgotten’ Architecture: Canton and Cars focuses on two early phases in the career of the much overlooked and underrated Australian architect, Arthur Purnell (1878–1964). In 1903, Purnell teamed up with the American engineer, Charles Paget (1874–1933) in Canton, China. Between 1903 and 1910, Purnell and Paget designed many important and impressive buildings, including the Arnhold, Karberg & Co. building (1907), one of the first reinforced concrete buildings in Southern China, and the South China Cement Factory (1907), which would later become the headquarters of Dr. Sun Yatsen (1866–1925), the first president of the Republic of China. Not many architects can design a cement factory fit for a president’s palace! When Purnell returned to Australia in 1910, he had to start again from scratch. As cars were taking over from horses in a big way, he saw that designing for cars would be the next big thing in architecture. The fledgling Australian car industry was full of colourful, larger-than-life characters like Col. Harley Tarrant (1860–1949), who built his first car in 1897 and Australia’s first petrol-fuelled car in 1901, and Alec Barlow Sr. (1880–1937), the archetypal dodgy car salesman. Purnell wanted in, designing many buildings for both men, including early car factories and car showrooms. In this unique book, Groves asks: why isn’t Arthur Purnell more famous?
Australian Western in the Fifties: Kangaroo, Hopalong Cassidy on Tour, and Whiplash looks at Australian Westerns from three points of view—film, personal appearance, and television at the beginning, middle, and end of the 1950s, the American Western’s golden age. It looks at three significant but “forgotten” cases: (1) Kangaroo: The Australian Story, the first Technicolor film made in Australia, produced by the Hollywood movie studio 20th Century Fox, directed by the Academy Award-winning filmmaker Lewis Milestone, starring Maureen O’Hara, Peter Lawford, and Richard Boone. (2) The successful goodwill tour of Australia by the Hollywood actor William Boyd who played the film, radio, and television cowboy Hopalong Cassidy. (3) The British-American produced black-and-white TV series Whiplash, made in Australia and starring the Hollywood actor Peter Graves. The American filmmakers’ ignorance of Australia meant they learned the hard way there was more to Australian Westerns than simply replacing the prairie with the bush, bison with kangaroos, and Native Americans with Aboriginals. Indeed, the depiction of place and the presentation of Aboriginal culture are two of the most intriguing aspects of Australian Westerns. In retelling the filmmakers’ stories, a unique picture of the Australian film and television industry and everyday life during the 1950s is revealed.
A collection of projects by some University of Melbourne students involving dolls made up to look like victims and villains from Arthur Conan Doyle's books about Sherlock Holmes.
A book chronicling the 1939 visit of famous movie star Anna May Wong to Australia, coupled with a contemporary design project - new lucky shoes for the star - written and curated by University of Melbourne based senior lecturer Derham Groves.
An Outline1. It begins with an ?academic? essay about William Boyd aka Hopalong Cassidy's visit to Darwin, Australia, in 1954.2. Next it has a storyboard (41 collages with accompanying dialogue), which has an academic introduction.3. Finally it has over 100 photos of surreal puppets of the storyboard's characters.
Synopsis - In There's No Place Like Holmes: Exploring Sense of Place in Crime Fiction, author and architect Derham Groves examines the 'architectural' dimension of the work of several crime fiction writers, focusing primarily on British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but also including Australian authors Marshall Browne, Peter Corris, Michael Jorgensen, Mary-Rose MacColl, Barry Maitland, Peter Temple, and Arthur Upfield. Groves discusses how these authors create a dramatic or suspenseful 'atmosphere' through their vivid and detailed descriptions of the scene of the crime in particular, and the built environment in general. In the case of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Conan Doyle, Groves also identifies some of the actual places that inspired the fictitious places. For example, Groves suggests that the captain's cabin on the S.S. Hope, a whaler on which Conan Doyle served as ship's surgeon in 1880, inspired the building in which Captain Peter Carey was murdered in 'The Adventure of Black Peter' (1904). While other books have examined sense of place in (crime) fiction, such as Literary Architecture: Essays Toward a Tradition - Walter Pater, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Marcel Proust, Henry James (1979) by Ellen Eve Frank, and Dwelling in the Text: Houses in American Fiction (1991) by Marilyn R. Chandler, Groves looks at crime fiction more exclusively from the points of view of artists, architects and designers. Groves discusses at length the art, buildings, exhibitions, interiors, projects, and stage sets that have alluded to or been influenced by crime fiction. These include works by Block Architecture, Robin Boyd, Derek Walker Associates, Buckminster Fuller, Mark Galea, Sharon Goodwin, Derham Groves, David Harris, Christopher Langton, Lyons, Gordon Matta-Clark, May Design Group, Edward Merrill, Moriyama & Teshima Architects, Nat & Ali, SITE, Sally Smart, and students of architecture from RMIT University and the University of Melbourne. Groves concludes that in the areas of place making and place-recording, architects especially can learn a lot from authors of crime fiction. There's No Place Like Holme will be extensively illustrated with colour photographs and black and white drawings.
Includes the libretto for a 'science fiction space opera' based on Hopalong Cassidy's visit to Darwin in 1954, and a non-fiction account of that visit.
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