As published in the June newsletter. Sign up here.
George Liddle APDG, President
Welcome and thank you to all the members who attended the AGM and volunteered their time to take on one of the office holder positions in APDG state committees. We are edging towards a truly national organisation with Casey Van Sebille chairing the inaugural South Australian APDG committee this month. Welcome Casey along with all our SA colleagues. We only need Tasmania and the Northern Territory to complete the picture.
I would like to offer a special thanks to our retiring vice president Julie Lynch APDG. Julie has been such a creative and positive force in her position as vice president since 2014. Her contribution to the big picture advancement of the guild and her forensic eye for detail has in no small way helped the guild succeed in achieving the goals of raising the profile of design, designers and design professionals. I’m happy to report she will not be lost to the guild entirely as she will remain an active member of the APDG Live Performance committee. Thanks, Julie, we could not have reached this point in the guild’s existence without you.
With the relaunch of our website we owe huge thanks to our website manager Daniel Willis, our administrator Caitlin Flett and ACT APDG committee Chair Peter Sheehan for the hours of painstaking work getting the new site up and running. It looks amazing and has improved functionality. I encourage members to update their details on the new site.
Ross Major
On a very sad note we mark the passing of Ross Major a superbly talented production and costume designer. Ross was an inspiration to many young and emerging designers with his bold approach to design. He thought outside the box, his bold use of form and colour was always exciting. I had the pleasure of working with Ross on a number of projects; I was costume designer and Ross production designer on the feature film Burke and Wills and he was costume designer and I was production designer on the mini series Tracks of Glory. Watching his work on both of these projects was a joy. Burke and Wills was the biggest budgeted Australian film at that time and it really did take in the full sweep of that amazing story and Ross’s work on the production design was outstanding. His interiors sets were breathtaking in their use of colour and period detail and when we saw the entire expedition assembled with camels, horses, wagons and all their accoutrements it was awe inspiring to behold. Jump forward a few years to Adelaide and the period piece Tracks of Glory. I again saw the creative thinking behind Ross’s design this time as costume designer. One day in preproduction he showed me these beautiful heavy period lace table cloths, the next time I saw these cloths they had been cut into the most beautiful Edwardian dresses gracing our leading actors. He had a brilliant eye and his colleagues will miss him dearly.