September, Jesus, disasters, Art

Apparently there are 80 checkpoints up around the city looking for weapons of Mass Distraction! so i-pod wearers BE WARNED!!!!

Well I could write something long and preachy today.

It's 5 years today since NYC got hit by terrorists.

It's 33 years since chile got it's prime minister killed and its government dissolved by a bunch of terrorists. They took that nice ship "La Esmeralda" and imprisoned anyone not extremely boring and tortured them to death on the ship, moored outsid ethe port of valaparaiso.

And they played STRAUSS non stop for a week on eveyr loudspeaker across every major town.
Women wearing pants in public had them slashed into split skirts by members of the new junta.
And the terror continued until the early 1990's.

Augusto Pinochet was far more of a menace to society than osama bin laden.

but apparently that has fuck all to do with art (but plenty to do with mayhem)

so. I went to some intense and delightfully earnest chinwag at artspace on saturdya. More to be posted soon.

on the way upstairs I cought snathces of the lelmeprier finalsits.

My favourite piece was Sari Kivinines nail biting video. (it's a MUST)
Owen leong has exquisite pink milky moving bits on a flat screen too.
and some dude had great fluffy inside out footballs stuck on a wall

The lemprier - is a great little 'survey' of what lots of the nice new funky art youf have been up to. It's great if you wanna see what's been happening lately (good bad and ugly) and if you missed some great show at some ARI and read about it on the artlife and have been castigating yerself for missing it - then you can often see an excerpt at the Lempriere.

Mayhem missed Zanny Begg's glass half full last year. (I was checking out relationsla Aestehtics in Paris - but I still cursed myself)
so it was good to catch it in the corner of artspace - and then swipe one of the accopanying zines wiht interviews with the supjects of the plaquards.

I took it, read it and got even more inspired thn by Alex Gawronski's manifesto upstaris at the reframing art symposium. Zanny's work is a delightful and empathic testimony to current/former activists - a delighfully human evocation of people who don't get a lot of humanity - not form mainstram press and certianly not within strident aggro activist sources - whose humanity so often gets overrun by sectarian desperation.

So It was really great to read and look at the pretty painted bits - and I gave my zanny zine to a bunch of young squatting relationally aesthetical youf later that evening. one of them runs 'cultural dissent' at some pub on abercrombie street -and he was moved and inspired.

Everyone needs culture - stories, images, songs for those of us engaging in the grim business of struggling against the current fuckup of society or desperately dreaming of another one. Culture ain't a panacea - but as seductive as a good old horizontal folk dancing frolic - it leaves you shagged but euphoric enough about being alive to keep on trucking on. - and cutlure is for eveyrone to create, make, improvise, cut up apprepriate, basterdise and enjoy. (imagine if eveyrone stopped screwing coz they couldn't do it like a porn star???)

On a smilar vein - Jumaadi's lovely little works on paper arre coloured jewels at Legge. SOme have bits of poetry in bahasa and english. some are based on folk dances from sulawesi, some on Jumaid's onwn performance poetry, other's on his own readings of joseph campbell (which i ain't a faan of - but I ain't a book burner either). Jumaadi's brand of 'fusion' isn't some kind 'authentic' exotic gado-gado experience - he's done his visual arts training in Australia - but a delightful exposition of the lively and playful links between life, imagination, play and the coloured pictorial form on paper principals........

I gusss you're all reading this to find out where to get pissed this week.

Hell just go and stand outside! man what weather!!!!

tongiht UTS galery has an opening (see above)

then:

A regular feature of the Loose projects program is the LOOSE week.

One week in each month is dedicated to impromptu and quick response
events, projects and activities (talks, sound nights, publications,
workshops, exhibitions, production space) coordinated by the rotating
roster of Loose players.


this month...


"just checking to see what condition your condition is in"
Lucy from Peanuts, psychiatrist 5 cents (Sarah Goffman)
Local Correspondence, letters to artists (Carla Cescon)
wall works by Tanya Chaly and Drew Bickford

performance/opening wednesday 13th september 6-8pm
continues to saturday 16th

ongoing in the BLACK BOX: Ryszard Dabek

Loose projects: level 2, 168 Day Street, Sydney
gallery hours: thursday & friday 12-5pm, saturday 1-6pm

THURSDAY 14th SEPTEMBER

Film fundraiser for Lebanon at Mori Gallery
Here you can check out the GREAT ART in T'FOUH AND SUPPORT A DAMN FINE CAUSE


6-9PM @ 168 day Street, Sydney CBD

for info ring Alissar on 9649 5559 / 0405 206 617

The money raise goes to support hte relief effort via : Samidoun - The Sanayeh Relief Centre. The money will be used directly to assist those people who have been displaced by the invasion. Thank you again.

If you can't make the film fundraiser tbut would like to make a donation to the fund then make a deposit directly into>

ACCOUNT NAME: BEIT EL HOB
ACCOUNT NO.: 693829
BSB: 032-044
BK/BRANCH: Westpac Banking Corporation 275 GEORGE ST, SYDNEY

but i rekcon the thursdya will be tops: films, food, and hundreds of boyd bags, amazing DVD's, lots of stuff. turning rage and despair into culture and life.


Gaffa Also has an opening:
:::LOVE LOGO::: @ 330 crown street Surry hills

(exhibition runs 15-26th September)

Love Logo is a 3 person exhibition combining sculpture, installation and design practices. Love Logo questions the effects, on people, on society, of branding in our culture. We are perpetually surrounded and saturated by media images of companies and their products regardless of our own desires, Love Logo questions its effect through works asking if ‘are we all unique?’ or indeed ‘is this branding enriching our life?’. Love Logo is an interactive concept research seeking to explore the implications of branding on us as individuals and what it is doing for the society at
large.


FRIDAY 15th December

DACCHi DANG has an opening at 4A gallery (asia sutralia art centre)
6-8pm @ 181-187 hay Street Haymarket

Last time I saw Daachi he said he barely had time to get to studio - so god only knows how he's found the time to pull LIMINAL together.(oh - yeah - I have't seen him for 6 months.... I take that back)

show runs until October 14.

the same night is the opening of a QUEER ART SHOW

place: Aurora Gallery at GLCS (Gay and Lesbian Counselling Service
premises) at 43 Bedford Street, Newtown

I'm plugging th above coz i'm innit - but also scragg is doing somehting for their perfomrance arvo at the same place on sunday......

meanwhile - there's an amazing show at CROSS ARTS: 33 Rosyln Street, Kings cross.

MARGARET GRAFTON: WEAVING IN METAL
The exhibition of metallic works by Margaret Grafton (1930-2004) is a great success. This is the first public showing of her work in Sydney for five years and her aluminium and copper weavings positively shimmer under the gallery lights.

Please see: www.crossart.com.au - for a selection of images and biographical details
The exhibition continues until Saturday 16 September.
Contact: Daniel Grafton - 9818 8758 / 0407 242 955 or dgrafton@tpg.com.au or Jo Holder - 0406 537933
Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat, 11-6PM