The term ‘cross-mending’ refers to the archaeological process of piecing together fragments of objects that have been dispersed across a site. Through crossmending, archaeologists can uncover information not only about the fragmented object, but about the history of a specific site.

The exhibition takes ‘crossmending’ as its title to describe how we make meaning from the past; what we inherit and learn from those who have gone before us; how we honour and celebrate them; and how we go forward. The exhibition acknowledges and values a multiplicity of voices that speak to the past, present and future.

Cross-mending brings together new and recent works by Robert Andrew, Christopher Bassi, Hannah Brontë, Jessica Enkera, Callum McGrath, Sancintya Mohini Simpson and Athena Thebus.

Through painting, drawing, video and sculpture, the exhibition will explore ideas surrounding denied or forgotten family histories, the nature of identity, the role of women, female empowerment, maternal relationships, colonial history, queer history and migratory experiences.

Cross-mending is co-curated by Lisa Bryan-Brown, Katherine Dionysius and AmyClare McCarthy. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with intergenerational perspectives, featuring newly commissioned texts from well-known Brisbane-based artist and QUT visual arts lecturer Leah King-Smith, and Brisbanebased
emerging writer Hilary Thurlow.

Outer Space’s most ambitious project to date, the exhibition will spread across both galleries, taking up the entire warehouse space in its West End venue, which is conveniently located on Montague Road, between GOMA and the newly relocated Milani Gallery.

Cross-mending Exhibition
Saturday 24 November – Sunday 15 December 2018
Outer Space, 1/170 Montague Rd, West End, QLD, 4101
www.outerspaceari.org

Where the film hits its stride, though, is in the painting of its characters – which are a marvelous, dysfunctional and irreverent bunch of varying galactic species with individual agendas converging on a common goal of claiming the reward on a valuable artifact, oh, and maybe saving the galaxy.

Bradley Cooper is wonderful as the feral, sentient raccoon, Rocket. Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill (AKA Starlord) is a good, funny, charismatic hero. Vin Diesel is mostly MIA as the tree creature, Groot, and Zoe Saldana provides some jade eye candy and sass as the honorable assassin, Gamora. It also has John C. Reilly and Glen Close in perfunctory supporting roles.

With such a great eclectic gaggle of characters it’s a shame they don’t have something more interesting to do but it sure is fun watching them do it. But, sadly, when the action ramps up, the character interactions ramp down and the film is far less interesting. If it were closer to 90 minutes it would be all the better for it as the meager plot creaks a little under its given 120 min running time.

But, on the whole, this is a very entertaining movie with a great set of characters and will possibly become a more interesting story when it meshes with The Avengers in a future project.
Stuart Jamieson
www.marveluniverse.com.au

And all this for a superhero team that not many people know, and the first Marvel film not to feature one of the Silver Age group of characters created by Stan Lee.

The Guardians are a bunch of undesirables who find themselves fighting together to prevent one of the Infinity Stones from reaching Thanos. If that all sounds a little crazy, then welcome to the Marvel Universe (not just Earth, or Asgard, or wherever it is that Agent Coulson buys his suits) where universe destroying gems and intergalactic, death obsessed super villains are the norm. The preposterous synopsis hides an entertaining film.

The Guardians are in the vein of Blake’s 7 or, for the people born after the 70’s boom of more realist and thoroughly depressing science fiction or even the crew of Serenity, except they are substantially less human. Chris Pratt is Star-Lord (possibly human, maybe more), Zoe Saldana is the green Gamora (known in the comics as ‘the deadliest woman in the whole galaxy’), professional wrestler Dave Bautista is Drax the Destroyer (more than just muscle), Bradley Cooper lends his voice to Rocket (a gun toting raccoon), and the wooden acting of Vin Diesel is put to good use as he voices an anthropomorphic tree called Groot (Vin’s never been better). The big bad, Thanos (Josh Brolin moving from DC to Marvel), is seen little, leaving his minions Lee Pace (as Ronan, the least interesting aspect of the film) and Karen Gillan (as the slightly more interesting Nebula) to do the dirty work. Better villainy comes from Michael Rooker (doing what he does best as Yondu Udonta).

Director and co-writer James Gunn has a history in irreverent comedy. His early work includes Tromeo and Juliet (for the legendary Troma Entertainment) and The Specials (who as a team of less than exemplary superheroes, not the band, may have been something of a dry-run for this film). He also wrote the Scooby Doo movies, but don’t hold that against him, and that experience has helped him create a PG film from a comic that is generally anything but.

The questions I have already seen on social media include “Is it better than Star Wars” and “Is it better than The Avengers”. The answer, quite obviously, rather depends how much you like those films. Like the two films in question, Guardians has brilliant dialogue and interplay between characters hesitantly working together, coupled with enough action scenes to satisfy the teenage boy in all of us. See the film for yourself and decide which is better. I am certainly looking forward to seeing Guardians again, at my earliest convenience, and that is the best recommendation I can give it.

Fabulous Sebastian
www.marveluniverse.com.au