Tim Harris, Kim Hope, Judith Lucy, Michelle Wild and Matt Parkinson c1996/2019

MILNE, Peter

Registration number

1756605

Artist/maker

MILNE, Peter

Title

Tim Harris, Kim Hope, Judith Lucy, Michelle Wild and Matt Parkinson

Production date

c1996/2019

Medium

archival inkjet print

Dimensions (H x W x D)

39.7 x 27.4 cm

Inscriptions

lrc: peter milne xxx

Credit line

Donated, 2019 City of Melbourne Art & Heritage Collection Courtesy of the artist and M.33

Keywords

Peter Milne, Tim Harris, Kim Hope, Judith Lucy, Michelle Wild, Matt Parkinson, Melbourne Comedy Festival, Fool's Paradise, c1996

Summary

Melbourne-born photographer Peter Milne was part of the vanguard of emerging musicians and artists from the late 1970s. Counting Nick Cave, Rowland S. Howard and Polly Borland among his friends, Milne became an almost accidental documentarian of the formative years of Melbourne’s alternative royalty of performance. The creative milieu in which he thrived was occupied not only by musicians but also by a coterie of brilliant stand-up comedians. Milne says of live comedy that it’s his ‘favourite performative art’, and his huge visual archive pays homage to it. In 2018, he published ‘Fool’s Paradise’, a tome illustrating the first 11 years of the Melbourne Comedy Festival (1987–98), comprised of just a selection from his photographic archive. In 2019, the Art and Heritage Collection acquired eight of the black-and-white photographs from this early era of what has become a key event on the international comedy circuit. Milne’s visual records of the festival show his talent for carefully balancing candidness with creative intention, often announcing his own particular humour. Rather than focus primarily on the very public stage performances that frame stand-up routines, these photographs reveal the rather more intimate encounters and antics between comedians that occur backstage. They open a window onto the culture of comedy that’s lived by the performers. Taken around 1996, this signed limited-edition photograph was donated to the collection. It shows Judith Lucy with Tim Harris, Kim Hope, Michelle Wild and Matt Parkinson.