In 2018, charismatic West Australian printmaker and painter Leon Pericles held a major 50-year retrospective in Perth. For most of his career his wife Moira had handled the business side of his art practice, distributing his artwork to galleries, managing staff, and taking a curatorial role. But with the dementia that Moira had first begun to experience 10 years earlier, when she was 59, now escalating, this was no longer the case. Instead of focussing solely on his art as he would have done in the past, Leon found himself juggling roles as artist, husband and carer as he worked frantically to assemble work and create new pieces for the exhibition.

Moira and Leon Pericles in Storm in a Teacup. Photograph © DOP Darren McCagh, Artemis Media

Leon and Moira’s daughter, Nia Pericles, who is a film and television producer/director, has been filming her family since she was a child, and naturally wanted to cover her father’s important retrospective. But this almost meant putting a lens on the Alzheimer’s disease affecting Moira. The resulting documentary, Storm in a Teacup, which airs on ABC-TV at 9.30pm tonight, and then on ABC iView, is a...