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Set for Catalyst, 1991, showing Andrew Carter can be a hard man to commissioned to bring to life new works by a number of Australia's foremost dancers negotiating the rope sculpture. catch as he flits between Malaysia, choreographers, amongst them Barry Moreland, Graeme Murphy and Chrissie This set won awards for design. London and Australia exhibiting his Parrot. He has worked with the Australian Ballet, Nederlands Dans Company, paintings and putting his talents to Australian Bicentennial Authority, Bermuda Arts Festival, Denver Centre Theatre work creating the ambience to bring Company, State Theatre Company of WA, WA Opera, WA Academy of ballets, plays, opera and modern Performing Arts and the ABC. Other projects include illustrations for Access Press, dance to life. staging for television presentations, a 'light painting' for the Sci-Tech Centre in Perth and street lighting for the suburb of Joondalup. A trained singer, he plays The young Western Australian has flute and guitar and writes plays . become a sought-after theatre designer. Since graduating in industrial design Carter was a student at WAIT at a time when art and design were part of the same from the Western Australian Institute of department, with students having the ability to move between the two, drawing Technology-WAIT (now Curtin from both disciplines. This has had advantages for him and a number of the other University) in 1979 and following this talented graduates whose practices now include both design and fine art. Carter with a master's in theatre design at does not remember his time there with great affection, but it was one of excitement Yale in America, Carter has worked in and expansion, with frequent international travel for visitors and lecturers alike and New York, Denver, Bermuda, Sydney, increasing international interest in the arts of Australia. Contacts were made, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and the particularly in the crafts, which made Australians international players. Carter's Hague. The creator of interesting and education, which spanned fine arts and industrial design, was particularly suitable innovative sets, he has been for the path he was eventually to take. Indeed, Graeme Murphy has said of him: 'He has the craft and knowledge of the came upon a volume which was to alter his life. The book fell open at a page of theatre, the vocabulary of the watercolour sketches of sets by acclaimed American designer Ming Cho Lee. backstage world, the draughtsmanship Entranced, Carter spent the rest of the day engrossed. He knew at last what he and knowledge of perspective-of how really wanted to do. Noting that the designs were lent by Yale University, he wrote to draw and then of how to make that off to find out if Lee was teaching there and, if so, how to enrol. Papers were soon perspective real in a theatre situation. forthcoming for entrance to the highly competitive postgraduate course. How ideal can you get!' Before he left, he designed The Magic Flute for the WA Opera Company. To his Carter was born in the Western intense disappointment, it was mortally altered by the visiting director once he Australian wheatbelt town of had departed. His delightful watercolour sketches for the sets of Lear, undertaken Goomalling into a gypsy lifestype as whilst at Yale, give an indication of the spare modern style which he he moved with his parents, opera developed-a style which leaves the imagination of the audience free to fill in singer Elizabeth Hatfield Carter and the detail. Critic Jill Sykes has described them as having 'a power of suggestion scientist-chemist and concert pianist all too rarely seen on stage ... Without taking up valuable performing space or Keith Carter (who had by this time dwarfing the dancers, they make a bold yet abstract statement that leaves room become a Methodist minister) to for individual interpretation.' various rural centres and later to the United States whilst his father When designing for dance Carter has certain conventions to consider. The centre completed higher degrees at Yale. stage must be left empty-dedicated to the dancers-with room for the diagonal Early contact with the earth stimulated movements as well as lifts. He considers the peripheral areas and anything above by creative and gifted parents has three metres 'my space'. The rest is 'their space' and if his proposed design cuts produced an innovative multi-talented into 'their space', he has to make a model and barter with the choreographer to artist bonded to his land who, although provide alternative areas. he works internationally, prefers to remain based in Western Australia. Modern dance is easier in this respect. Chrissie Parrot, for whom he designed Mirror Coda-staged for the 1989 Festival of Perth-and Terra Nova, rises to his Carter's path to success has been a challenges. Her dancers gallantly clambered over the sets of Terra Nova and winding one. His father died when he undertook aerial episodes. was ten. He became a troublesome student, was expelled from high Before designing, he had long talks with Parrot, took her ideas and made them school and went into the printing concrete. He described the set as domineering and powerful-the Brothers Grimm trade before winning entrance into crossed with a World War II bunker meeting Jung. Two huge concrete pyramids (a fine arts at WAIT. After clashes with brooding tower and rickety castle) were used to ground the powerful dance lecturers, he transferred to industrial movements, a difficult concept which fortunately worked as a space as well as design and on graduation set up as looking good. an industrial designer. For Mirror Coda, he created a timeless place where light made sound and His main practice was designing shadows glowed. 'The two worlds of reality and unreality come together for a brief furniture for upmarket office suites and moment to dance and touch', he said. 'The space I have designed is like a special it was while researching a commission portal in which this dimensional transformation takes place.' As with all his that he became lost in the library designs, they were influenced by music and words, the words of Chrissie Parrot stacks, strayed into the wrong aisle and and the music of WA composer Peter Hadley. Carter has a consuming passion for his work. He sets high standards for himself, engaging in considerable Watercolour concept sketch of King Lear research for each project. painted whilst at Yale. In 1986, as resident designer with the Royal Queensland Theatre Company, he designed Love's Labours Lost-a modern setting for a traditional play. As this was set on an island, he went off and lived on one for a while, setting up his camera to take photographs at regular intervals-sunrise, midday and sunset. He later incorporated these into the design, projecting them onto three screens behind a jetty and beach where most of the action took place. Scene changes were arranged by a Model showing the curtains for change of lighting. For instance, the The Lady of the Camellias. posts on the jetty could be lit to become a runway of an airstrip. He rarely uses walls in his sets, preferring to use an object to describe a wall and letting the audience use their imagination. Much of Carter's work has been for the WA Ballet Company's Barry Moreland. Moreland commissioned designs for Pu/chine/lasoon after Carter returned from America (without his American records, design folio etc. which were stolen from a container en route to Perth). This was not only the first ballet he had designed, it was in fact the first he had ever seen. He was obviously entranced not only with the dance but also by the dancers. The talented ballerina Natasha Middleton became his leading lady for some years. For the WA Ballet, Carter has designed Pavilions, The Owl and the Pussycat, Vast set design of Act l segment : the Coast line, mangroves by a sunny shore. Vast: Concept painting used to develop the backdrop and reproduced in the programme . A Bicentennial event choreographed by Graeme Murphy . Cinderella, Seven Deadly Sins, Orpheus, Invisible Choirs, Strange Territory, The Lady of the Camellias, Billie and Hamlet. Carter found the freedom of working with ballet refreshing after the constraints of theatre. 'Working with Barry Moreland, I found a way of using first words on paper, then drawings and paintings, to articulate my understanding of what we are doing.' Moreland has said of him: 'He is a true collaborator. He doesn't just give you what you think you want. He collaborates until ultimately he designs what you both want.' Seven Deadly Sins, based on Bertolt Brecht's play, featured Jill Perryman with Natasha Middleton as her alter ego. Carter designed a somewhat surreal, richly polychrome set evoking a semi-conscious dream world. He described it as a skeletal design avoiding walls, with lots of levels appearing to float in space set in a black void . He reads prodigiously, visits sites, soaks up the atmosphere, immerses himself in the project and expects the same commitment from the other professionals for and with whom he is working. Graeme Murphy has said of him: 'You get more input from him sometimes than you can handle. This is in part because he takes total responsibility for his own design. The best thing for me to do is to give him the music and let him get on with it. Andrew has the rare ability to hear the secrets that the music is speaking.' For Murphy's Sydney Dance Company, colour and the slow curve of a distant horizon. Most unexpected was the intensity he designed Shining, following this of the colours.

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