Placing

this is one of those apolagetic posts about saying nothing.

I've been reading about art, writing about art, talking about art but not doing any of it and seeing almost none of it.

so scarily I can see myself turning into one of those stange refractory individuals that eveyrone loathes...... an expert.

Acutally it's not as dire as that. I wnet and saw gilbert and geroge at some cafe donw the road and then at their tate modern retrospective.

and I had to go in and gasp at the rothgo room at the Tate modern.

why? - because some works are just so immensely incredibly moving - I felt myself drawing into the works - and wanted to come and wanted to cry and felt incredibly glad to be alive at that moment.

I had a similar experience eeing the world's greatest carpet at the V&A - something about the minutae of obsessive intense work - just by looking cross, staring, being drawing in as I slowly walked around - placed me in one of those trance states - that reminded me of listening to a really good ragas - and I felt alive and bizzing and very very glad to be alive.

and I've heard great wonderful inspiring things about drawing and what drawing can be.

I've also realised - depressingly that life drawing not only exists in a critical vacuum - but is being repidly and extensively cut from art school curriculm in the UK - not in the olden days of whatever ism reactionary turds like to cast apon attempts at pregressive critical culturla pedagogy - but due to plain old neoliberal reforms to higher ed...

bloody depressing

Out of Place

I know Baudrillard died two months ago, but lately I've been feeling his presence, ever more intensely.

last night, I dragged up and went out to a London queer bar (my ultimte fantasy age 13) and danced to the ska music I totally adored age 18.....

SCHAPPYLLE SCRAGG BOOTIED ON DOWN TO THE DEAD KENNEDY'S

how fucking cool is that?

I wasn't really sure what was real, here I was, living a strange amalgam of accumulated fanatsies from half my life ago.... and everything seemed more familiar than it ever did in my head.....

which I thought was a nice way to introduce danielle freakly: aka the artist formally known as artists running space and now known as: the quote generator

for the past few months, Danielle has been exclusively speaking and writing in (cited) quotes from films and cheesy songs, in a performative endurance project in which all comunication is reduced to a series of citational references. Performing the JB mantra that reality is only an illusion, and only a repetition, a simulacram, a citation of another's repetition, has been a masterful endurance test......

Her current projects are being unveiled in a series of exhibitions around bleak city and brisvegas in may - and one at the end of April.

check out 'quote generator' website above for more details.

Back in sydney, which is where i am only virtually, that divine master of actualising utopian space, NOBODY WHO, is finally appearing in person to give and artists talk - about his master plan for critical cultural mapping: THE WEEDY CONNECTION

NOBODY will be giving an artists talk at SYDNEY (302 Cleveland St
Surry Hills) this monday 23rd April.
Weedy Tea served from 7.30pm Presentation at 8pm

the weedy connection is one of my favourite projects in the entire universe, so I'd highly recommend that punters go along and here the presentation.

NOBODY is part of the squatspace collective and has been involved in the the contesting cultural mapping of redfern.

In the weedy connection, he's literally grabbing Antipoodean Allochthonic Aphasia By the roots and encourage punters to actually engage with the organic world around us.

firstly; to explain the pompous alliteration above.... anitpodean - refers to Australia's suthern geography.

Allochthonic is about people who do not come from the soil on which they dwell: as opposed to authochthonic or indigenous people. In australia, koories are autochthonic, especially if they haven't been removed from homelands. and blighty, dear blighty is the home of honkys, where pallid skin makes sense under limipid sunshine.....

Last weekend I went for a ramble in the bramble in the sunshine at hampstead heath - and felt my deep ancestral connection to the old dart ssing and soar as I looked around at the scrubby undergrowth and saw recognizable herbs and familiar green things all around.....

this rarely happens in Oztrayya. I'm acutely aware that as a 6th or 7th generation rural ozzie - that I was conditioned to be constantly fearful and dismissive of my rural surrounds. Grass as a uniform mass of brown - harbouring snakes and concealing cowshit.

this latter state; of not seeing where we are, of not knowing or sensing. Of being alienated fomr a sense of self or place or time, is APHASIA. DYSPHASIA is confusion, having the wrong sense, but APHASIA is having no sense at all. Presence and being is characterised by a complete ignorance and alienation from where or what we are.

so the weedy connection, encouraging people to locate, describe and discover the random organic growing matter around them - whether in bundanoon or marrickville - is sheer bloody genius. It encourage an immersion within landscape rather than an external representation over it.. oh, and so much more......

NOBODY's Words are:

Come one, Come all to "A Weed World"!!!

As part of the ongoing InfoTainment nights at
Sydney's, local Nobody and german duo Iris-A-Maz will
share their weed experience!

Nobody's ongoing project to reconnect people with
plants (i.e. migrants with weeds) in an attempt to
remind us all that the romantic view of an "Idillic
Australian Landscape" is somewhat nationalistic, will
cross experience with Iriz-A-Maz from Germany, here at
the antipodes to look for the weedy global players!

"[...]in the industrialized western countries
everybody talks about the globalisation of world
trade,
Iriz-A-Maz want to show that plants already did it.
Outside everybody's front door: the globalized urban
vegetation."

Back ot Aphasia, Brendon Pezner has delightfuly named a new independent art space in south newtown as: AT THE VANISHING POINT

They had an opening last saturday - whihc I forgot to plug coz of blightybrambleramble experience above.

the show is still up till the end of this week, and the space sounds bloody amazing:

The show to launch the space. Artists responding to the phrase 'at the vanishing point ...' featuring Liam Benson, Diego Bonetto, Sari Kivinen, Daniel Kojta, David O'Donoghue, Naomi Oliver, Brendan Penzer, Pickafight Books, Tanya Richards, Leanne Shedlezki and What.


Gallery Hours - Wed-Fri 10am - 6pm. Sat-Sun 10am - 4pm (or by appt.)

ATVP - Contemporary Art
565 King Street
Newtown NSW 2042
(02) 95192340
0430 083 364

Mad As An EASTER Bunny

It's one of those weeks and easter is no excuse not to go and drown yerselves in lots of ART.

Bobbie Faucet has raided his shed to construct a whole heap of eclectic ensembles all in the name of reusable art. You can rock up to the opening right now - or stroll along during the day and check out the show which runs from 4th April 2007- 29th April 2007. then stroll a few dorrs down to Defiance Gallery - where they've been doing the same thing for years in Welded Steel.

M.A.D (make a difference)
Sustainable Art and Design Centre
55 Enmore Rd, Newtown, 2042
Ph: (02)95573411 Fax: (02)95573021
www.maddesigns.org.au
Opening Hours- Wed: 11-5.30pm, Thurs: 11-7pm, Fri: 11-5.30pm, Sat:
10-6pm


If that looks too cheery then you can go and check out susan stratie's latest show at KUDOS:

In Black, an investigation of the performative and transactional objects of death.

It opened tonight 6-8pm Tuesday 3 April and runs till saturday.
Kudos Gallery
6 Napier St. Paddington NSW 2021

WEDNESDAY NIGHT BLOODY eVERYTHING IS HAPPENING AND I'M NOT EVEN SURE THAT THE ROTHGO ROOM AT THE TATE MODERN CAN POSSIBLY CONSOLE ME FOR MISSING IT ALL

A NEW GALLERY OPENS In NEWTOWN - apppropriately called the Vanishing Point
TEXTA QUEEN has a show opening at MORI
LOOSE has LIBIDINAL CEMENT
DON'T LOOK GOES BURLESQUE

Readers of this Blog should be familiar by now with the location of Loose, Mori and don't Look, so I'll post the details of the latest interviention to halt the beigeification of Newtown....