Director Ray Argall’s major new documentary about one of the world’s most inspirational rock bands, Midnight Oil opened in cinemas around Australia on 10 May.
The idea for the documentary, titled Midnight Oil 1984, got a helpful push-along from the Manly Art Gallery & Museum.
The film’s opening sequence is set in Manly Art Gallery & Museum at the time of the Gallery’s acclaimed record-breaking 2014 touring exhibition, The Making of Midnight Oil.
The Making of Midnight Oil exhibition drew record crowds to Manly Art Gallery & Museum between June and September 2014 before touring over a three-year period to major cultural venues and regional galleries in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT.
We speak with MAG&M's exhibition curator Ross Heathcote…
The Making of Midnight Oil was a huge success for the Gallery before touring other cultural venues and regional galleries in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT over a three-year period. How many attended the exhibition overall, do you think?
The response to The Making of Midnight Oil from audiences was massive! It began here at Manly Art Gallery & Museum with more than 18,000 visitors in just a couple of months.
The momentum grew on the exhibition’s tour. At the Arts Centre in Melbourne, there were 175,000 visitors over the summer (breaking their previous record attendance).
Almost all the smaller city or regional venues broke attendance records, but what was really pleasing was the overwhelmingly positive reaction from each venue’s visitors.
What was so special about the exhibition?
We worked really closely with the Oils and tried to latch onto their ethic and ‘fearless audacity’, and to soak up the aesthetics of Australian rock music and its part in our popular culture. For the first few months of the project, I worked solely with band member Rob Hirst - and we decided early on that this would not be a vanity project and that we would make a show the grit and authenticity of a Midnight Oil gig.
The design of the exhibition was based around genuine performance stages with the real Midnight Oil road-cases converted into showcases, graphics, a hundred gig posters, original lyric scrawls on hotel notepaper, audio-visuals, real band instruments and other artefacts - and loud audio!
The other truly special aspect was that we aimed at every turn to show hitherto unseen images, footage, artefacts and sounds.
One component of the show was a small booth that was created to replicate the sounds sights and even the smells of witnessing Midnight Oil in the late ‘70s at say the Royal Antler Hotel at Narrabeen.
Our Australia Council grant enabled me to work with designers Virginia Buckingham and Wendy Osmond, and installer Duncan Harrex.
I sought advice and input from filmmakers, photographers and writers who had worked with the Oils, and even members of the Oil’s road crew were consulted.
And I had plenty of encouragement from my Manly Art Gallery & Museum colleagues all the way through. Rob Hirst’s personal collection and his energy may well have been the X-factor in an exhibition about a rock band.
What were the highlights of the exhibition tour?
We scheduled in unique public programming for each venue. At Manly we screened the world premiere of Robert Hambling’s doco on the making of the album ‘10,9,8 ..1’.
There were great Q&A evenings with Rob Hirst and Jim Moginie, amazing song writing workshops in Melbourne and Canberra.
Other musicians, like Adalita and Henry Wagons, came to talk with me and others about ‘music and politics’.
There was a hugely entertaining Newcastle evening event focussing on songs - the panel with Rob Hirst, Dave Faulkner (of the Hoodoo Gurus) and Dave Mason (of the The Reels) deconstructed their own songs live, sang and gave rare insights.
I’ve never seen a happier museum audience!
At Manly, the launch was delivered by Andrew Denton, at Newcastle it was H.G Nelson, at Melbourne it was ‘The Chaser’ lads, the band Powderfinger opened the show in Queensland…and on it went.
Whenever we mentioned that a request (for support) had something to do with Midnight Oil, everyone said ‘Yes’.
There was some great live music too: The real stage in our exhibition became a performance space.
In the early development of 'The Making of Midnight Oil', I approached filmmaker Ray Argall and asked if he would cut together for us a short piece from his footage from the mid-80s (the band had told me of its existence).
Ray came back with a marvellous 20 minute piece that was simply beautiful and sounded fantastic.
It was one of the centrepieces of the exhibition. It had never been seen publicly before. This was a fragment of the footage that Ray has gone on to use to make the feature length Midnight Oil 1984.
What were your favourite parts of the show?
It’s very hard to say. There were nearly 400 items in the show. I suppose icons like the ‘Sorry Suits’ worn at the 2000 Sydney Olympics closing ceremony gig - or the giant Exxon Oil spill protest banner from the Oil’s guerrilla protest gig in New York.
The band’s gear– Jim’s Gretsch guitar, Martin’s Stratocaster, Giffo’s Bass and Peter Garrett’s skyscaper high one-piece microphone stand.
The film components were great because they were such rarities. I loved the previously unseen footage of the band playing at Tanelorn in 1981...I’d watch on in the gallery as visiting grown men in black T shirts were reduced to tears!
The gig posters made a magnificent collection that ‘spoke’ a social history of accessible world class live music, lost venues - including those of the Northern beaches, lost bands and the amazing career of the Oils along with other snippets of our recent popular culture.
The soundbites, including an unreleased Midnight Oil track, and a recording of Jim, Rob and Bear as teenagers in their trio Schwampy Moose.
But perhaps my favourite element were the hand-written lyric sheets that showed the development of a song that would go on to be an anthem in Sydney pubs - and then sung along to by audiences at massive festivals around the world - some becoming part of the nation’s significant cultural and political collateral.
A song like Dead Heart or Beds are Burning with its beginnings scrawled by Rob in a ute driving through the Western Desert as the Oils made their way to a gig for a remote indigenous community in somewhere like Kintore or Yuendumu.
What has been the enduring impact of the exhibition, do you think?
Making the exhibition meant that the members of the Oils needed to be on the same page, to be taking time out of their very busy lives (Peter Garret was the Federal Minister for Education when we started the project!) and to be talking to each other about their music, and journey, and legacy once again.
One band member said to me recently that the astonishing comeback world tour by Midnight Oil last year was not to be separated in his mind from the energy and outcome of the The Making of Midnight Oil exhibition. I’d like to think then, that The Making of Midnight Oil - and the audience reaction to it - created some of the momentum that brought the band back together. I could be dreaming?
From Manly Art Gallery & Museum’s perspective – a place that often punches above its weight - The Making of Midnight Oil delivered a knockout left hook (If I may extend the boxing analogy!).
For Northern Beaches’ locals it was an opportunity to connect with the Gallery as a cultural centre, in a different way, to celebrate one of the region’s most successful cultural exports - and perhaps relive some of their own history.
The Making of Midnight Oil kick-started our music programming here at Manly Art Gallery & Museum and Jim Moginie from the Oils has been a great contributor to that program as a performer here and as a patron of the Gallery.
On one of his visits here Peter Garret decided to donate his 1950s balsa Malibu surfboard to our collection! Rob Hirst is a constant patron and supporter of Manly Art Gallery & Museum.
The Making of Midnight Oil changed the way we regarded some of the physical spaces in the Gallery and what we could do with sound, some technologies, and our approach to popular culture subjects.
As an exhibition maker, it showed me how cross-generational conversations and visitor story-telling (the ‘Holy Grail’ of museum visitor experience) could be achieved.
Since The Making of Midnight Oil, we now have Ray Argall’s documentary screening in cinemas around the country - and another Midnight Oil documentary to come!
Midnight Oil’s ‘Great Circle Tour’ in 2017 became one of the most universally acclaimed reunions by any music artists, anywhere.
The band lived up to - and surpassed - anything we said about them in the exhibition.