On tuesday:
KUDOS gallery has an exhibition opening for GROUND FLOOR, which presents the finished works and works in progress of COFA's 2nd and 3rd year Sculpture, Performance and Installation students.
GROUND FLOOR opens 6-8pm Tuesday 20 June
Kudos Gallery
6 Napier St. Paddington NSW 2021
exhibition continues to 1 July 2006
open Wednesday to Friday 11am - 6pm, Saturday 11am - 4pm
this is round the corner from the Ivan Dougherty Gallery - where they've got some GREAT stuff as part of the Biennale Of Sydney.
Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Maria Isabel Gaudinezz Aquilizan have filled a room with perfect cubes - made from folded clothes, shoes, bags and mementos. If you've ever moved house - you'll totally love this piece... and in fact it is a public performance of migration. Each cube is a collection of immaculately ordered items from a group of CUBANs - asked by the artists to imagine what items they would pack if they were to leave cuba forever and emigrate.
Before this wonderful nest of post-cubist brilliance - there's a big fat video installation (extremely spooky 3 screen split still life shuttling thing that gave me a headache) and a great little cubby house constructed by Muruvvet Turkyilmaz - which consists of all sorts of little objects, images and a small video screen - all connected with nice wiggly lines and some writing which is probably in turkish.
but yes, go sip goon at KUDOS and support the baby artists.....
My favourite bit of the biennale so far has been Olga Chernysheva's video pieces at the ACP (australian centre for photography) - which is up the fashion strip end of PAddo. (257 Ocker Street). Nice weird, quirky details- like little boys grimacing in front of gyrating cheerleeders, and some old woman polishing her medals and preparing a picture of Stalin at the end of some march - meld nicely with a longer moving peice gogn through a train..... the room has a nice couch and thick black curtains too.
Actually maybe my favourite biennale bit is the foyer of 4A in Haymarket. Its all Pink! FLOURO PINK - with HELLO KITTY curtains!!!! (mayhem reccommends that you buy a pie or some chocolate nearby and then just go and stand in the pink space and you'll feel ocmpletelly happy even if you don't understand the art)
After wetting myself with sheer joy I wandered upstairs and enjoyed the highlight videos of Cao Fei - sshowing grey side of chinese techno industries. Extremely cinematic.
a few people have been baggin the amount of VIDEO ART in the biennale - but to be honest - I rekcon it's adamn cheap alternative to the Sydney Film festival. you can wnader into a nice dark space, out of the rain and cold and sit there for as long as you like (so you can walk out in 5 mins, or 5 seconds or 5 hours)- AND IT'S FREE!!!
I was going to suggest an artists stroll approach - for you flanning fans out there - which is to foregt straggling pas tthe roadworks to walsh bay and instead write a stern and cross note to the Sydney City COuncil for the disgraceful state of Cowper wharf road.
ahem.
Before the disaster area there are 4 musuems that should not be missed. the MCA - known and loved and loathed. There are some OK paintings in there by Milenko Prvacki that reminded me just a bit too mucc of Rosalie Gasgoine - but that's not his fault. There's a very big err painting by Imants Tillers which ruins a whole room. Contrast this laboured construction with the neat, squared multilevelled funhouse approach of Ruark Lewises 'Banilities' room and you'll see what I mean.
anyway - you could spend a whole day in the MCA, or two - so maybe you should wander up the road first - and check out Ken Done. Ignore the fact that you are in Ken Done - and try to look at what you are looking at as colours and shapes on fabric. what do you think? really?
across the road - there are 2 buildings devoted to my favourite artist: charles billich. ONe houses 2 floors of monumental nipples and writing flesh coupled wiht some bad graphic design. the other houses the current ARt ON THe ROCKS exhibition. ART ON THE ROCKS Is a staple of sydney painters doing their stuff, and quite sadly, most of it is extemrely grey. My friend steve has asked me to ask people to go and vote for him. he spent the whole weekend playing with a footpump powered airbush and couple of drills with some carmine and liquin - so i rekcon he's worthy of peoples choice award. Plus he's broke and needs the money. so please go in, avert your gaze form the doom and gloom (unless you want to think that the most exciting contemporary painting in australia is Imants Tillers) and vote 1 Steve Kirby.
I've just attempted to insert a jpeg version of a text based invite into this posting. Detials below. SUBTEXT: Free goon in marrickville this wednesday night
4 comments:
so glad you wrote off the imants tillers piece as well - it completely ruined the room and i felt like throwing up at the sight of such drudgery. i also felt like throwing up at the glorious praise he received last weekend from The Esteemed Critic in SMH, but hey, what would i know :)
the aquilizans cubes are actually their OWN possessions. rumour has it that they used the biennale budget to start moving their household items to australia, with a view to migrating here soon...!
I thought the aquilizans cubes were comprised of aquilizan chattels too -which is why I described it as a moving house as performance art thing - but then I was checking my facts ( a rare event) on the catalog sheet and it said they were collected in Cuba.... err... so, there you go. there's a hello kitty backpack in there, and a big dagger thing too.
bummer, the catalog must be wrong! (ahem, surprise surprise) cos i stood in there with the aquilizans while they pointed out to me particular items belongin to their individual children etc.
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