Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Diary Entries - end of august

Are There Bored People in Sydney?
Is there anyone who lolls around the house wondering what to do?
they probably don't have internet access - and hence don't spend half their lives trying to clear their email inbox or update their blog.
So - if you've had your electricity cut off and can't watch telly or enjoy your home.
Or your cat/dog died
Or you're recently single
or you are a fine connossieur of cutting edge contemporary visual culture then note the following in your diary:

(I recommend buying a red zone travel weekly. DOn't drink & Drive - and try to reduce the global warming - this Brisbane winter is getting uncanny).


tonight (tuesday)
you missed the KUDOS opening - You have until saturday to see the curent show. or you could blink and miss it.

You also missed 2 openings at Legge Gallery (183 Regent Street Redfern) but you have until September 3 to wander in and see the work.

James Rogers is a former man of steel who has undergone a sea change (or whatever the equivalent is in Walcha) - to start making softer compositions of painted wooden discs and rods. This body of work follows on from a previous show of paintings of circles. (What?) This is where I get to use the conry line of "I dunno much about abstract art but I know what I like"
I got the impression from a long hard stare at the circles, whihc bore into my brain at the upstairs gallery that the crcles were a conduit for his preoccupation with the plane play of push and pull. (an addictive painters obsession of "if I put that colour next to that shape - what bit comes forward and what bit recedes - and then what if it is this hape or that shape....... and how can I make space with colour"?????).

Rogers' work over the past 2 years has taken this painterly concern back into sculpture - with his constructions of angled discs forming an evocative play of light and space with the 'ground' of the space around them. Syncopated Beach is a nice title for a body of works that reminded me of the time I sat on bombo beach eating a biscuit......

I hope he's donwstairs because Evan Salmon's big grey paintings of figther planes are a bit off putting for someone in a meditative frame of mind. If anyone reading this knows Damien Nugent or is passing the Green Park diner - tell him to go down to Legge - to cop an eyeball of err.. big grey fighter planes.

Wednesday

Craig Waddell's solo show opens at MAry Place Gallery. Its a little 2 story artists' hire space in Paddo - just behind the scarey strip of Glenmore Road. You can duck in behind dirty nelly's or "token oyrish pb inc" at top of Glenmore near okker street - and wander past the nice carports. Or you can head up Brown Street. I think it is Number 6.

We chatted about this on air. Craig is a fellow alumni and very much a painters painter. "Extreme sports painterly" with lots of gelato colours and drippy, swirly chunky gestures all nealty fattened out with the right amount of gel medium to ward off any fear of snot like crusts in the future. I think I'm meant to imply something edifying by the experience of looking at sensuous abstractly landscapes, but I won't. If you want to know why painters paint with oil and not acrylic - go and sniff the magic.

Braced from Mary Place - you could wander down the less scary end of Glenmore and chekc out Steve Lopez opening at Brian Moore (just past 5 ways). I'm not sure about the invite image. Maybe the wine is good.

Otherwise you could go and support those poor meadowbank students - who are having a graduation show at GLobal Gallery on COmber Street. I think I'll be sued if I explain my pity factor - but I'm not casting any nasturtiums on the sydney gallery school, its students or teaching staff. Judging by the usual standards of meadowbank, the work should be ecelctic, considered and energetic and probably worth a more fitting space.........

Thursday there is something on but I'm going to hear Michael Taussig instead. He's not an artist but I do have some small life outside of the art world.

Friday - there is something REALLY interesting - hosted by Marrickville COuncil - so its at the Makko town hall (catch 426 bus) on makko road. Maybe I'm just obsessed with finland. and Alvin Aalto. (I've always wanted to know how a v-shaped roof would work in FINLAND).

anywa check out following:

Liisa Roberts
2006 Biennale of Sydney Artist
Screening excerpts from her work 'What's the Time in Vyborg?'
(2000-2004) Marrickville Library
Marrickville Town Hall
Cnr Marrickville and Petersham Roads
Friday 19 August from 5-6.30pm

***************************************************

http://www.artmargins.com/content/feature/kopenkina.html


For the next month Liisa Roberts, an international artist from
Helsinki, is based at the Artist Residency at Petersham Town Hall, courtesy of
Marrickville Council.

Liisa Roberts has been selected for the 2006 Biennale of Sydney from 8
June to 27 August 2006, and is undertaking preliminary research to
develop work for the exhibition.

Since the early 1990s, Liisa Roberts has exhibited internationally,
including group exhibitions at Artists Space, New York; Helsinki
Kunsthalle and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland.

Liisa is also a filmmaker. She will screen excerpts from her work
What's the Time in Vyborg? (2000 - 2004), which was inspired by the
restoration of the Alvar Aatlo Library, Vyborg, at the Marrickville Library on
Friday 19 August from 5-6.30pm. Liisa will introduce the film, and be
available to answer questions.
Saturday - is probably going to be one of those sunny days ideal ofr an art stroll. Check out the art & desgin wshow at dockerty for some good taste, then wander around the corner for the Erwin Olaf show and have a hurl at the creepy gory royalty. Or troll donw to Agnes Wales and get edified by MArgaret Preston, or Powerhouse and William Morris.

Actually there is some big symposium thing on at Powerhouse on satrudya arvo combined with the William Morris show. It ain't free - but hell - think of the money you've saved on wine and or movie tickets with all the art openings you can go to for free?

On the other hand you culd wander down to the Cross Arts Project. there's somehting informative amazing and FREE on at the same time.

WHAT COMES AFTER WAR?
ELIZABETH ASHBURN & A. KARIM RAHIMI
Miniature paintings of Afghanistan, Australia and Iraq
With Chireh, vernacular drawings by H. A. Wakil Zadhah and family of Herat

The Cross Art Projects warmly invites you to the opening of work by A. Karim Rahimi, a master of Afghani miniature painting, now resident of Sydney and Elizabeth Ashburn, a Sydney avant-garde artist who studied miniature painting under Rahimi.

OPENING: SATURDAY 20 AUGUST, 3.30 PM

BY DR ALISON BROINOWSKI, former Australian diplomat and author of The Third Try: Can the UN Work? (Scribe, Melbourne, October 2005).

At The Cross Art Projects
33 Roslyn Street Kings Cross Sydney 2011
(opposite St Luke’s hospital entry gates)

PRECEDED BY OFFICIAL OPENING
SATURDAY 20 AUGUST, 2 PM
At Tusculum,
3 Manning Street, Potts Point

OF “CHIREH HUNTING CLOTHS OF HERAT", SILENT AUCTION
In aid of the artisans of Herat

Andrea Neild, Curator
By H.E. M. Saikal, Afghan Ambassador to Australia and architect
And John McInerney, Deputy Lord Mayor, City of Sydney

WHAT COMES AFTER WAR? ON VIEW to 3 September 2005
Tusculum installation and auction closes Saturday 20 August, 4PM

----------

WHAT COMES AFTER WAR?

Traditional miniature painting is an unlikely form of war documentation in the age of embedded journalism, selective briefings and non-stop cable television. In this exhibition Ashburn and Rahimi question the human and cultural impact of the twenty-first century’s first imperial wars, seeking to return meaning to places of devastation. The Afghan war is widening, with growing anxiety that an Iraq-style conflict is developing.

---------

The Cross Art Projects
A space for independent art & curatorial studies

33 Roslyn Street Kings Cross Sydney 2011
Wed–Sat 11–6
T: (02) 93572058
E:
joholder@aic.net.au
www.crossart.com.au


sunday sleep in.

monday listen to the show and then you can come and hit me in person at some QUEER ART SHOW. Its in the UTS tower so I have few excuses to miss it - even though Gay and Lesserbeing Art makes my bile rise just a bit, I'll drag my bilious eyeballs in with an open mind to prove myself wrong.

I also hope to prove myself wrong at KUDOS on tuesday night. I bagged the womyn word last week. Dissonance *might* be fully Deleuzian. Or like SHeila Jeffreys.

ON Monday I think I've got Ruark Lewis to come in and give his version of events in the art world.

I'm also hoping to get Zanny Begg in in a couple of weeks to plug the Disobedience show at Dockerty in September.









Friday

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