As someone who these days has trouble understanding actual reality, I’m not the person to turn to for explanations – or sympathy — when virtual reality falls on its face.

General bewilderment, I can manage. In fact, my own computer problems aside, I can even raise a faint cheer when accidents befall any up-to-the-minute, state-of-the-art, mind-bending, must-have technology at all.

This is especially the case if it’s a gadget for which, encouraged by a greedy, Australian-tax dodging but internationally revered manufacturer, a young person has saved up their money and camped outside the store in order to be among the first purchasers of the gadget’s latest model — all in full expectation of this expensive, must-have thingamajig’s planned obsolescence in 12 months time.

Actual reality not enough for you at the moment? How about North Korea? Syria? Trump’s America? The ice drug problem? Governments everywhere who don’t know which side is up? Floods? The Barrier Reef? Being a parent of teenagers?

It was in this numb and semi-Luddite frame of mind that I appreciated hearing about Dean Smith, the man who’s taking legal action after losing a race against a virtual Cathy Freeman.

Visitors to Melbourne’s Scienceworks museum are urged to “Pit your skills against Australia’s best-known sportspeople and investigate your body’s abilities for particular sports.”

Thus encouraged, Dean Smith decided to pit himself against a simulation of the Sydney Olympics 400 metres gold medallist. But when the 44-year-old pool-glass installer gave the interactive exhibit a go in June last year, and sprinted after Cathy on a 10 metre long, dual-lane track, he ran head first into a wall and broke his back. Mr Smith is now suing the Museums Board of Victoria for negligence.

Dean Smith is suing Melbourne’s museum, Scienworks. Photo: The Age

He says he fractured one vertebra and crushed another one; broke an occipital bone and a rib; and lost feeling in his arms, hands and fingers. He now has a psychiatric disorder and has subsequently suffered a stroke. He can no longer work.

“I got a bit competitive, thinking I could take on Cathy Freeman,” he told The Age. “They made me think I could beat her. But no one wants to run flat-out over 10 metres and smash their head into a wall.”

No, indeed. Nevertheless I imagine the Museum will argue that Mr Smith’s brain should have retained enough actual reality to reason that donning a virtual-reality headset wouldn’t automatically expand the museum floor to an actual 400 metre track.

The web is full of examples of virtual reality accidents. Not surprisingly, virtual cliff-scaling and mountain-climbing are particularly fraught with potential peril, both in-game and in real life. Such spills outline the danger for virtual reality: it can be too real.

That’s the whole point. To home enthusiasts of virtual zombies or virtual sporting events, or virtual porn for that matter, what virtual gamers call “an immersive experience” is what it’s all about. So the manufacturers are hardly likely to dial it back. Meanwhile, small pets, children, coffee tables, plate-glass windows and other household obstacles should keep clear.

Gamer safety manuals offer advice for first-time VR home users. They recommend playing alone, and seated — or at least standing still.

Just a tad too realistic – virtual reality can take its toll.

As one safety manual says: “Dumb accidents routinely happen. We don’t want people vomiting, having seizures, stepping on their pets, maiming their children, or smashing their hands through plate glass. In the real world if you cover up your eyes and ears and start wandering around, all bets are off, so take the full-motion VR hardware seriously.”

In the circumstances, it’s good to hear of virtual reality being used for something helpful. Steve Shelley, Information Management Officer for Parks Victoria, uses the technology to map sallow wattle, an invasive weed, in the Grampians National Park. Shelley came up with the novel approach through his love of virtual gaming. “Being a gamer I thought ‘Geez, I could apply this at work.’” Whereas ground surveys were time-consuming, labour intensive and not always safe in wild terrain, the technology can transform conservation, from assessing the health of native vegetation to monitoring wildlife.

It works by overlaying aerial photographs to construct three-dimensional images, which are displayed using computer software called PurVIEW and observed using 3D glasses.

“It’s incredible when you put the glasses on and everything comes to life,” says Mr Shelley. “The forest just leaps out at you.”

That sort of leaping hasn’t happened since 2010 when the Wonderbra company erected a giant 3D billboard in London displaying the semi-naked frontage of the Brazilian model Sabraine Banando as part of its Full Effect virtual reality brassiere campaign. And provided the requisite glasses.

Numerous traffic accidents immediately occurred. Actual accidents.

Robert Drewe’s latest novel, Whipbird (published by Penguin/Viking) will be available in August.

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Early in the 90’s, David Coles moved from England to Australia bringing with him his passion for pigments, his expertise in art supplies and his youthful determination. What he could not know at the time though is that this red continent would offer him something most unexpected and surprising: a desire for new colours.

David’s first factory’s location – on Langridge Street – gave his company its name and, despite rather what he laughingly calls “bohemian” beginnings, hard work and excellence always flourished there. Manufacturing professional quality oil mediums, varnishes and grounds to supply artists with artist grade dry ground pigments and other quality raw materials kept David happy and busy for nearly two decades.

But being the invisible medium of the oil paint world was not his long term dream.  Urged on by artists who told David they wanted a paint of the same quality as his mediums, Langridge’s Handmade Oil Colour finally came on the market in 2011. The company started its foray into paint modestly, with 32 on the initial production line, and eight extra added 18 months later.  That was only three years ago, and last year they added 16 new colours, with the intention of having 80 colours on their final list.

This May, David is celebrating the first quarter of a century of his ‘young’ company  – young in the colour world that is – with a delightful exhibition about pigments, colours and paint making, Chromatopia, opening at Tacit Contemporary Art space in Melbourne on May 31.

Master Paint-maker David Coles and his artist partner Louise Blyton.

In a perfect match for a paint-maker, David’s partner Louise Blyton is an artist who runs an art store in Melbourne – full of all the Langridge products and the Golden acrylics David distributes here in Australia.  Their enthusiasm for their projects and creations is infectious – and I’m increasingly intrigued, as they talk about their love of paint, about the title of Master Paint-maker.  It certainly isn’t an honour bestowed on everyone.  David tells me that the name reflects the dedication involved with the formulation of paint from scratch.  “Being a Master Paint-maker as well as the founder of Langridge Artist Colours, I’ve grown very sure about following my philosophy of what paint should be.  For me paint should not only have the highest pigment load possible to so that artists can get as much colour of the paint as possible, but it should also have a certain feel,” he says.

As he describes the quality of paint, it sounds almost like a chef describing a cooking method or food. “The paint is going to be reflective and honest about the way the pigment actually is and creates certain qualities. You have some colours that are naturally soft and quite fluid. Some which are quite buttery,” he explains. “Some are quite stiff, some clotted. It’s the pigments’ action upon the vehicle used creating that. You don’t see that with most of the other paints out there because they use some additives, mostly stabilizers, in quite large quantities which, in essence, homogenizes and evens out the natural qualities of each colour. I think that a pretty important part of an artist’s craft is understanding how paints operate slightly differently from colour to colour because they reflect what the pigment is actually all about.”

Despite the title however, it’s not exactly a degree you can go somewhere to obtain.  This title is really learned on the job.  “There’s nowhere you can go and learn to become a Master Paint-maker,” says David. “I learned a lot of my craft when I went to work for Roberson & Co. back in London in the 80’s, but in the end, I really learnt it on the mill. When you’ve got wads of colour coming at you from the triple roll mill, you start to learn. For example, with modern colours where you have to tease the colour, the pigments need to be separated from each other much more gently whereas the older inorganic pigments, like the Cadmiums and the Cobalts, are much easier to disperse – and something like Zinc White, which is a very soft pigment, needs hardly any work done to it to actually make it into a dispersed paint. And when we talk about dispersion, I’m talking about separation of the pigment particles evenly throughout the actual vehicle so that all the pigment particles are separated from each other and coated evenly in the minimum amount of oil possible to make it into a paste. Which is what we call paint!”

The process of making paint at the Langridge factory.

If there is a range of colours that are perhaps more difficult than others to work with, it’s the earth colours.  “Some of my children are very obstinate,” David laughs. “The Umbers are very naughty. They’re thirsty pigments so they need a lot of oil. Our Siennas are naturally of a gritty consistency and that’s not because we’ve under-milled them but because that’s the nature of Sienna pigments. The Earth colours, because they’re naturals, have their own real individual qualities.”

I’m intrigued by the use of the word ‘our’, but as David explains he now has long term relationships with the major pigment manufacturers around the world. “I buy from the Germans, the British, the Americans, the Taiwanese, the Japanese, and we select pigments that are built to the specifications we need as artists. The most important factor is that they are not reactive with other painting elements, like solvents, that there is no solvability etc. and that they are highly lightfast. Also that, when they are dispersed, they have a working quality that makes a paint artists can work with,” he says. “There are now a lot of pigments available that are surface coated. For example, these days most Titanium White pigments have some kind of surface treatment which allows it to be dispersed in different types of vehicles for different applications. We’re offered a vast variety of them and so we have to be ultra careful about what we choose. It would be very easy for someone to be waylaid and pick the wrong pigment. You have to know a fair amount about chemistry. Not that I’m trained as a chemist, I trained as an artist. So my starting point is always – are these colours artists will want to use?”

Originally David had imagined that he would become an artist.  “In fact,” he says, “I don’t think I had any doubts about that – actually I still am an artist. I have a studio, I still go in the studio although not as much as I used to, but my art informs very much what and how I make the things I do.  Also my conversations with fellow artists don’t stop at selling them or supplying them with materials, it’s a constant ongoing conversation. All my friends are artists. I go to their studios, gallery openings, and over dinner at home we might start talking about their painting.  I’m very open to helping artists because it feels, naturally, the right thing to do.”

Mediums of all kinds – but always of the highest quality – all made with non-yellowing Linseed Oil.

His Australian career came about by accident when he first visited Australia on a holiday while he was working for an art retailer in the UK. “I became aware of what was available to Australian artists. Obviously there were a couple of Australian manufacturer’s brands here. Having worked for Roberson & Co. and in their venerable art materials store in London, Cornelissen & Son, I knew a lot about art materials and the benefits/negatives of each raw material that goes into a manufacturer’s formulations and products.”

One of the biggest issues for David remains the use of linseed oil, which he uses as a  binding oil for paint.  “It’s magnificent,” he says, “but obviously it’s kept to an absolute minimum because used excessively, particularly in mediums, it promotes yellowing. The mediums that I could see here were basically, unfortunately, detrimental to the artists’ practice. So that’s why all of the Langridge’s fluid mediums are based on stand oil – polymerized linseed oil because it’s a non-yellowing oil. So I very quickly realised there was a gap in the market for a world-class medium for artists. Before I came back out here, I knew what I was going to do: set up an artists’ products manufacturing company in Australia. Even then I knew I wanted to make paint.”

David began his company by formulating mediums, rather than the more usual manner of creating paints for the simple reason that it was all he could afford to do at the time. “It took me seven years to be able to slowly find and buy all the machinery needed to start making paint,” he tells me. “The first mill I bought was a small mill. We still use it in the factory to make very small batches and often now trial batches. But it took me many years to be able to afford to get to that stage. So I started making oil paint mediums, which I formulated myself from scratch, again knowing what I wanted to get out of a medium for myself and what I knew was important for artists.”

Listening to David describing paint and pigments is fascinating. “Of course,” he says, “pigment is pure colour. Some disappear and we introduce more colours but, as a general rule, we stock and sell about a hundred pigments here because some artists want to make their own paint and because they are so delicious in their nature as pure colour. In the paint something has already been denatured. It’s colour with a binder and depending on the binder, it can alter the optical vibrancy of the paint. Ultramarine is a classic. You can see the pigment vibrate but when mixed with oil it becomes very dark. You have to add white to it to start to see that light come back into it. I’ve always been in love with pigments anyway. I remember when I was around eleven and my mother had opened up an art shop in Henley where I grew up, and one Christmas she gave me a set of pigments, just little 30ml pigment jars and it was for nothing else except to be able to look at them. Like jewels.”

Empty tubes waiting to be filled with Langridge paint.

David has also always been interested in the history of art materials. “I’ll experiment by making something using a 14th or 15th century recipe… at the moment I’m making a traditional walnut ink made from their husks,” he says. “They’ve been fermenting in the pot for about two years now and the fermentation breaks down the sugars which creates a darker colour. I’ve also made a whole set of traditional lake colours from dyes. Things like Brazil wood and turning it into pigment and in the same vein I want to make some genuine madder but these are not commercial exercises this is purely out of curiosity and to understand I suppose how pigments used to be made and probably from that realise over again how incredibly lucky we are now. I’ve always been a big believer in this idea of science and art, technology and art actually, working hand in hand. I mean the history of technology is always written out of the history of art in regards to why artists started to paint in a particular way. Often it has to do with a technological breakthrough not an aesthetic or cultural breakthrough.”

What David is constantly striving for is a quality of paint that can compete with the best in the world.  And that, in turn, feeds into his desire to create paints that reflect Australia.  “Do I think there’s room in the world for another paint? There are already quite a lot of brands out there,” he says, rhetorically. “Where I think Langridge can make a difference is because of my interest in these modern highly chromatically intense colours. Creating a palette that reflects the Australian light in a way that light floods and energises the colours that it strikes and which comes from the dryness of the continent. There’s very little moisture, there’s very pure light and the scale of the skies are enormous. It doesn’t really afford the opportunity for much shadow. And when you do get shadows, the shadows vibrate as well. They become violet and vibrate that way.”

Sixteen beautiful new colours – designed to capture the Australian light.

He is determined to offer an Australian palette in his range.  “I suppose for example, that Zinc Blue attempts to fill the colour space that used to be filled by the old Manganese Blue which is a pigment that has not been in production for almost twenty years,” he says, “and that particular blue is very relevant to the Australian sky and Australian water, especially ocean water which has that kind of brightness and again that lack of moisture, or perceived lack of moisture to the eye because of the blueness of the sky as it strikes a liquid material! It’s the same with our Cold Brown Oxide. It’s a blend that replicates a colour very useful for artists, an old colour that was Cassel Earth or Van Dyke Brown. Those pigments unfortunately have strong problems with regards to drying rates, they’re very erratic. So, once again, I wanted to create another blend for this colour so useful to artists in particular for creating receding shadows, etc. without those drying problems. Of course as we go to the 80 colours, yes there is going to be more blends. And then I’ve got to be extremely careful about why I’m making them. That’s why I’m interested in what we call our brilliant range. We already had Brilliant Pink, which is almost like a hot bubble gum pink and have proceeded with a Brilliant Magenta and a Brilliant Green and we’ll continue to expand that range. The philosophy of that range is to offer the kind of vibrancy of a fluorescent pigment, but highly lightfast. So, again, these  non-real or unrealistic colours are there because I know artists find them very useful.”

Talking with David it’s easy to feel that there was a sense of destiny to his arrival in Australia and to his career.  “Langridge did have a sense of destiny unfolding,” he agrees, “a whole set of coincidences, accidental meetings, that led to me very easily settling here. And it’s interesting about you mentioning it being an old continent because Australia is of course the oldest continent with the oldest continuous civilisation in the world, and it’s something that I’ve thought long and hard about in regards to Langridge: what is our relationship with that part of Australian culture?   I’m not working with a traditional aboriginal palette but we have a lot of aboriginal artists who buy our pigments and some of the very bright colours. At this point in time though, most of the indigenous artists I’m connected with work in acrylic paint not in oil. So there isn’t immediately some kind of connection to the actual materials. For the pigments we have a constant interaction and dialogue with communities West, up North and in the Centre. Our oil paint is not something they are particularly interested in at this moment. Acrylic is probably much more sympathetic to their painting style: waterborne, fast drying.”

The rich colours are almost a painting in themselves…

Which brings us to the question of whether, in this age of fast-changing technologies, something as ancient as oil paint can survive.  David is sure it can.  “Oil paint is here for the future absolutely. I’ve made oil pastels, oils sticks, compressed chalks, charcoals, gouache, drawing inks, even shellac based ones…I do it more out of a personal interest, a curiosity. I would love to make commercially soft pastels but, again, there is so much to be done with oil paints I’m not quite sure I’ll ever find the time. Not just the oil colours themselves, I’m constantly inventing and formulating new mediums and new products when I see a gap in the market. A possible new tool for painters. I have just developed a more fluid medium, which has a more slippery quality than some of our existing ones, and a high impasto medium. We’ve been experimenting with some glass bead and we’ve just released a new encaustic wax… a modern formulation of a very traditional recipe. Encaustic, at this moment in time, is back in favour. We have a lot of artists interested in working as encaustic artists. All the materials available had to be brought in from overseas but I knew we could produce here a product as good, if not better, than those imported products. And again because I worked with encaustic 20 years ago, and on and off since that time, I do understand the working qualities and what this product needs to be, as a tool for artists. So far the feedback from encaustic artists with lots of experience themselves has been extremely positive. We do believe we’ve created something quite unique. Something we could even launch onto a world market and it fits, of course, beautifully into our pigment colours so in a sense it closes the loop all the way back to the very beginnings of Langridge. 1992 to now. A completion of the first circle really.”

Photographs: Sabine Amoore Pinon and David Coles

Sabine Amoore Pinon runs Still @ the centre, an art store in Byron Bay, and is a fan of great art materials. Check out her supplies here: https://the-centre.com.au She also writes a blog about her interviews with colour men and women all over the world. Follow her on inbedwithmonalisa.com

‘Chromatopia’ opens on May 31-June 18 at Tacit Contemporary Art Gallery – 312 Johnston St, Abbotsford Victoria.

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Looking for a place for an overnight stay in Melbourne, Candida Baker chanced across The Cullen hotel, part of the Art Series group, and was intrigued not just by the concept but by the fact that they wanted to review her!

What a wonderful idea the Art Series hotels are – one of those ideas that from the minute the first one, The Cullen, opened in 2009, it seemed as if they had always existed – or should have always existed.

I’d heard of them, but I’d never stayed in one, so I considered myself lucky to have the opportunity to stay at the Adam Cullen cullen hotel in Commerical Road, Prahran, a few weeks ago when I was down in Melbourne for, appropriately enough, a book launch of an art book I’d edited – the Pat Corrigan Collection of Sally Gabori Paintings.

From the first moment I entered the hotel with its full-size cow in the foyer, I was enthralled. The mainly black and fawn interior was a perfect foil to Cullen’s cheerful, colourful, chaotic and occasionally, it has to be said, grotesque art. Cullen, who won the Archibald Prize in 2000, is well known for his caricature-like style and bold use of paint.  Inside the hotel the walls were festooned with prints of his works – and I loved it.

Thinking about it afterwards I think what appealed most was that it was like sleeping in an art gallery, or more correctly in an exhibition by one artist, and it allowed me time to reflect on the pieces, as I went about my business, to notice each time I walked in or out of the hotel, or took the lift to my room, different things about each individual piece – and there are 450 pieces throughout the hotel. I found the idea inspirational to be honest.

The hotel has also instituted a somewhat radical promotion – a reverse review where the hotel reviews the guest. I’m not sure where this idea came from, but asked to participate I willingly agreed, without, it has to be said, fully thinking it through. I mean, where to do you start or stop?? Do you take the sheets off the bed, for instance for the housemaids? No, I decided. Do you try and make sure that the sofa cushions are at exactly the same angles they were at when you arrived? Yes. Do you take much more care about your rubbish, hanging up towels, washing out mugs and generally being as tidy as you can be? Yes. It was kind of fun – a bit of a game, really, although I have to confess I was a bit disappointed with my three star rating, even if they did call me ‘sophisticated’, which never goes amiss when you’re swapping your gumboots for your city heels.

Artist Adam Cullen in front of one of his artworks at the Cullen Hotel.

‘Like budding authors to a Parisian coffeeshop, or perhaps impoverished musicians to electric New York dive bars, we like to think that The Cullen attracts a particularly in-the-know clientele. So when Candida arrives, wearing glasses, all in black, air of sophistication, and writing a magazine article, we like to think we’re doing something right,’ read my review. (And if I was going to be snippy and edit my review I would point out that they’ve used ‘we like to think’ in two consecutive sentences. Just saying.) A few other guests were shameless in their (successful) attempts to get five stars, including stripping the bed, dusting the room and sweeping the floor, which I have to say makes me wonder about the point of being away from home, but perhaps that’s just sour grapes because without a five star review I don’t go in the draw to win a free night!

The Cullen has a funky bar and café attached to it, and is attached to one of Melbourne’s most famous dumpling bars, the Hu Tong Dumpling Bar, where we went for dinner after the book launch, and I can highly recommend it as a place to eat. The Cullen is also directly opposite the Prahran markets, which is a huge drawcard – I met with friends for a coffee and I could have spent hours wandering around the food stalls.

To be more conventional and review their rooms I would say that the furnishing theme is fairly minimalist, and, whilst they are pleasant, they’re not really out of the norm in any way. It’s the art that makes them, and obviously that’s the point. It’s a concept that’s worked, with more boutique art series hotels opening all the time – including in Melbourne The Olsen and The Blackman, and in Adelaide The Watson. Personally I wasn’t entirely sure about the tiny kitchen stove-top when you’re staying in one of the great eating areas of Melbourne, but I guess it’s a viable alternative to eating out, and the hotel doesn’t do room service, although the restaurant below will deliver for a price.  They also have a gymnasium, which I didn’t have time to try out, and if you hire the Penthouse suite you get a zippy little car to nip about Melbourne in.

I also discovered the Star bus alternative to a taxi or to the city bus – $25 each way to go straight from the airport to the hotel – which took 45 minutes door to door. The Star bus runs every ten minutes from the airport, and is easy to find.

As an art lover I found the experience unique, and I can’t wait to try more Art Series Hotels, but I’m not doing the dusting!

For more information on The Cullen go here:  artserieshotels.cullen

For more information on the Art Series Hotels go here: artserieshotels

Candida Baker stayed at The Cullen hotel as a guest of the hotel, and hopes to get five stars next time.

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“It wasn’t on my list of things to do,” says Derrett, over a cup of coffee. “It was just one of those things that fell into place.” Derrett, who recently retired as a senior English and Drama teacher from Trinity Catholic College in Lismore, received an email from Melbourne-based author Suzanne McCourt (whose first novel, The Lost Child was published last year). She’d written a book – Old Dogs, lessons in loving & ageing, and she needed somebody to photograph the dogs for her. “She’d heard from a mutual friend that I do quite theatrical photos and so we talked about what she wanted – and that’s how the project came about.”

The Lismore dogs were well-behaved in comparison to the Melbourne ones, Derrett says. “I did ten up here in my home studio – and they were great, very easy to work with. In Melbourne I went down to shoot 40 or so dogs. I must say they were very punctual – they turned up at half-an-hour intervals on the dot, rain or hail, which isn’t our strength in the Northern Rivers! We’d made a studio in Suzanne’s spa room and one huge Old English Sheepdog with hair all over its eyes, bounded into the room leapt straight into the pool and sunk to the bottom. We did CPR on it, took it down to the beach for a run and it was fine.”

Photographer Peter Derrett turns the camera on himself…

Never one to miss an artistic opportunity Derrett turned the incident into a photograph in the book with the shaggy sheepdog shaking its hair while being blowdried.

The book, with its quotes about what old dogs can teach us, came about because of McCourt’s experience of her own dog’s ageing. It made her wonder how she would age, and it spurred her interest in the relationship between old dogs and their owners. It was a project that appealed to Derrett. “We’d had an old dog, Dante,” he says, “so we’d travelled that road, and I’d taken lots of photos of him. I loved meeting the owners of the dogs when we were doing the shoots, and listening to their stories.”

McCourt rustled up the dogs from everywhere. “She stopped people on the beach, she asked dog-rescue people, owners of vineyards, friends and friends of friends,” Derrett says, “and she ended up with this wonderful collection of mixed characters and breeds.”

There’s a wonderful photograph in the book (page 27) of an elderly Boxer looking longingly at a doughnut, which, I have to say as the owner of two small and very naughty dogs is very impressive. “That dog stared at the doughnut without moving for 30 minutes,” Derrett recalls. “Then the owner snapped his fingers, and bam, the doughnut was gone in one mouthful!”

Rags – ageing gracefully. Photograph: Peter Derrett

Did he think, I wonder, that some of the owners looked like their dogs, or vice versa? “Absolutely!” he says. “Not always, but a lot of the time there was a similarity at least between dogs and owners that was very endearing.”

The book, published through McCourt’s personal publishing label, Posh Dog Publications, was the first of four projects McCourt and Derrett have created together. The next one, Old Dogs, Mindfulness and Meditation, like the first, raises funds for the Black Dog Institute to help aid research into depression. It was a chance for Derrett to use some of his personal favourites from Thailand, where he and wife Ros are based for much of the year these days.

“The Thais have a lot of temple dogs,” he says, “and many of the temples are sanctuaries for dogs. The photographic opportunities are endless there, and the monks pay the dogs a lot of respect. I think it’s a beautiful little book – and certainly if there’s one thing dogs can teach us it’s how to live in the moment!”

The inside cover of ‘For the Love of Elephants’ – another Derrett McCourt collaboration.

The Derretts first started going to Thailand regularly almost twenty years ago, and as Ros, an academic specializing in cultural tourism, began to get work lecturing at Naresuan University. A visit to an elephant sanctuary in Ayutthaya, 80ks north of Bangkok, led to an enduring friendship with the two Australian women Ewa and Michelle who run Elephantstay. Originally a graphic artist and zoologist respectively, the pair now run the biggest breeding program in the world for Asian elephants. “The sanctuary is owned by a Thai,” says Derrett, “but our friends run it. People can stay there for at least three days and are assigned an elephant. We’d been going there for years and it occurred to me that with Susan’s words and my photos we could make a great book.” The collaboration produced the beautiful little book – For the Love of Elephants which was also published last year.

Last but by no means least is the delightful Dogs in Venice which came about from the Derrett’s regular visits to the Venice Biennale. “We go every two years and stay for a month,” says Derrett, “so when Susan and I agreed that Venice would make a lovely book, I spent every day photographing dogs to demonstrate the city’s essence.   I had a little sign translated into Italian asking people if they wanted to participate and every single person answered me ‘yes’ in English!”

According to Derrett there are literally millions of dogs in the residential area of Venice, and basically dogs rule ok. “They’re everywhere,” he says. “Dogs sit on people’s laps at cafes and restaurants, or on the vaporettos (water taxis), or even on their scooters. They are literally everywhere, and part of people’s everyday lives in a way we don’t see in Australia.”

But whether they’re in Venice, Lismore, Melbourne or Thailand or hail from elsewhere, it would seem that at least for the dogs in these books, it’s a dog’s life.

All the books are available from poshdogpublishing

or Amazon, Book Depository or good local bookshops.

More of Peter Derrett’s photographic work can be found at peterderrettphotography

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