By Helen Musa

A recent visit to the Museum of the Riverina was a timely reminder of the diversity of arts in our immediate region and the lively summer exhibitions that can attract attention among locals and visitors. 

The first of the twin exhibitions in Riverina’s council chambers site was the 2024 touring Bald Archy Prize on its final stop since opening in Canberra last February. The prize and exhibition have, since the death of founding father Peter Batey, transferred to the management of the museum. 

The second, the Lex Factor: from Wagga to the World Stage, was my real reason for travelling to Wagga Wagga. A fun exhibition with a poignant touch, its subject, the Wagga-born actor, broadcaster and multicultural advocate, Lex Marinos, had ended his life under a voluntary assisted dying program on September 13, 2024. 

This colourful show is made up of photos handpicked by Marinos, with objects from the museum’s collection and his friends and family. He has even left a posthumous video message modelled on a notorious Pauline Hanson video.

Jointly curated by Marinos and Museum of the Riverina’s Michelle A Maddison, the show exudes the city’s pride in one of its own.

After a quick foray into his origins and a look at his elaborate February 1, 1949, Greek Orthodox baptismal certificate and his upbringing in the country Greek café milieu, the exhibition uses photos and objects such as his multicoloured, multicultural shirts to trace an acting career that began at the University of New South Wales under director Aarne Neeme. 

Marinos was academically trained as a theatre historian and, indeed, I typed up his thesis, but he leapt into the acting profession to take full advantage of the dearth of ethnically appropriate actors, playing Pakistani student Ahmed in his first professional engagement during 1970 for the Arts Council of NSW. 

This “ethnic casting” was Marinos’ strength and it was not long before he became a household name all over Australia as Bruno Bertolucci, “the Wog from Wagga Wagga”, in the long-running TV series Kingswood Country. 

Marinos told a tabloid newspaper he thought he was “giving a lot of identity to kids who feel displaced” while breaking the mould of having Anglo actors play “ethnic faces” with fake accents.

In a similar line, Marinos was later cast as the Asian bureaucrat Tariq Abdullah in the TV series, Embassy, and as the Kralahome in The King & I.

A bit like Forrest Gump, he was everywhere. He and his mate Ted Robinson, later the director of Good News Week, burst on to the airwaves of the fledgling 2JJ in 1975 with The Ted and Lex Show, full of artfully amateurish chitchat, favourite records and dubious sporting coverage. “We didn’t have TV but radio was everything,” he would say.

Always a sports tragic, in 1984 he joined the TV Bodyline writing team, but also kept up a cracking piece as a TV personality on Live and Sweaty with Andrew Denton and as an actor and director on the stage and on screen. 

Mid-career, Marinos was appointed director of the revived multicultural festival Carnivale from 1995-96, curated a segment about immigrants for the opening ceremony of the 2000 Olympics, was Wagga Wagga City Council events co-ordinator from 2003 to 2005, during which he appeared on Strictly Dancing.

His love of sport, nurtured in the town, saw him play a bit part in the Wagga-based movie, Backyard Ashes.

In a change of pace from 2006-14, he joined Scott Rankin’s innovative company Big hART that, by entering communities and working with them, brought about both social and artistic outcomes. He worked on productions such as Ngapartji Ngapartji, Namatjira, and with Canberra Theatre, Hipbone Sticking Out and Ghosts in the Scheme.

As a mature actor he joined the TV series based on Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap, playing the ageing patriarch, Manolis, and he was afterwards the subject of an episode of Who Do You Think You Are?

Honoured with an OAM in 1994, Marinos was a source of pride to the Wagga Wagga community, the acting profession and Australia’s multicultural community at large.

The Bald Archy Prize and The Lex Factor: From Wagga to the World Stage, Museum of the Riverina’s Council Chambers site until February 2.