1950s Sydney was a cosmopolitan stew of bohemians, artists, radicals, and larrikins.
Visual artist Rosaleen Norton was smack-bang in the middle of all this creativity and debauchery. Unfortunately, her art often took second-place to her reputation as a witch, sex-maniac and subversive. Director Sonia Bible has sought to bring Norton’s work back out into the light with this documentary The Witch of Kings Cross.
Born in New Zealand, raised in Australia, Norton grew up in a fairly standard, middle-class home. But she was always an outlier, living for two years in a tent in her parents’ backyard! She escaped the suburbs as a young woman, and quickly found herself at art school, and in the bohemian life of mid-century Kings Cross. She used her art to explore themes of feminine power (sexual and otherwise) pagan gods, Christian iconography, and her fascination with the dark-side. These preoccupations also pervaded her lifestyle, which lead to run-ins with the law, and with polite Sydney society. She even got embroiled in a major scandal with Eugene Goossens, the seemingly respectable first conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
The Witch of Kings Cross defies genre: certainly it is a documentary, but Bible has also chosen to incorporate balletic, dramatized scenes, in an effort to explore Norton’s extraordinary inner world. Kate Laxton stars as Norton, giving a remarkable, physical performance. She is joined by dancers Damien Grima as Pan, Lukas Rose as Lucifer, and Karlee Misipeka as Lilith: all mythic characters with which Norton was fascinated. Fellow-artists and friends are interviewed, giving a delightful portrait not just of Norton, but of the Sydney art scene at the time. And Bible does not hold back on lingering shots of Norton’s incredible works.
There has been a spate of excellent Australian documentaries recently, and The Witch of Kings Cross is one more. Bible gives us a cinematic and poetic portrait of a Kings Cross which is no more, an Australian society still immured in bourgeois Christianity, and a woman truly ahead of her time. There is no doubt that this film will see a resurgence of interest in Norton’s work. And producers lining up at Bible’s door!
The Witch of Kings Cross releases on Amazon, iTunes, Vimeo and GooglePlay on 9th February, and in selected cinemas from 11th February
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MESMERIZING 4 stars
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