Always Something there to Remind Me....

Thanks to wild man about town bimmelbimmel for the wonderful pic above - showing the motel sisters pouring cornflakes onto the promotor during the Cereal box art degree show last week at where mayhem's nepotism reigns...

Suited up in immaculate teal, the promotor segued elegantly from parody into pathos - maintaining a strangely playful vulnerability throughout.

The reason why i love this image - is it shows HOW BLOODY SIMPLE it is to make work, images and situations that are moving and fun with a few basic materials......

ART SCHOOLS ARE NOT EXPENSIVE - but require a form of intellectual freedom - and space for indeterminacy and play - which is being increasingly squeezed out of hypermanaged KPI'd campuses of late...

Aargh! do readers know that UWS faculties are charged BY THE SQUARE METRE for teaching space? and so those degrees that charge less but use more space get deemed even more 'unprofitable'? this situation is so stupid I could spit.

The promotor's alter ago and others are giving talks today and tomorrow at Blacktown Arts Centre. this should be an amazing opportunity for artists and regional gallleries to get together and work out how to save art education in Western sydney.

Teeth gnashing aside I exposed meself to some art openings this week. It was weird being out in public - wearing spectacles instead of being one. Schappylle Scragg has been taking on my mid-week persona which has saved mayhem from many a hangover...but not this week.


On Wednesday I'd been caroused by the needy students of NAS who'd hungrily soaked up my 2hour rant on feminism, queer theory and contemporary art. Somehow I'd ended up trying to explain the difference between Deleuzian schizo-analysis and the Lacanian order of the phallus using a mandarin peel - and this was probably over ambitious to students who hadn't even done an undergraduate slog over nochlin, pollock & mulvey - but wot the hell - they seemed to like it, and they decided I needed to numb some brain cells while checking out their studios....

I wandered through honours painting and third year ceramics before running (in order to ward off impending hypothermia) down the hill to catch a 426 bus to Don't Look Gallery. I was TOO COLD TO TEXT the wildboys and apologize for missing sonic yootha's birthday - and TOO COLD to note down the names of the artists at the Don't Look... so I drank goon, huddled in the crowd, looked, chatted, listened....

I remember..... the collection of pattern-making paper pret-a-porter garments hanging on a rack in the doorway. And I REALLY liked the matching window display of brown paper rolls.

Brown paper rolls?
ahahhh! no! These are infact instant DIY aesthetically relative agitprop devices. In fact this project is so cool that I'm kicking myself for not remembering if it's by Annie, Anna or Alanna.

anyway, the divine miss A, has taken it upon herself to challenge the VILE JCDecaux streetscape distraction - i.e. those non sheltering, visibility reducing advertising structures they call bus shelters... (grrr! I *hate* them). And run an effective detournement against their recuperated campaign of 'art' on bus shelters.

she does, simply unroll a sheet of perfectly matched brown paper covering hideous lightbox structure... and takes a photo. and she's invited ordinary punters to do the same! (you choose the shelter/ad that most disgusts you, you cover it, you take a hoto, and you send the image back to the artist - who is an archiver/coordinator).

wooo hoo!

this is almost as good as the project from Helsinki - where an artist has made 800 editions of 'feminist' wallpaper - given it out to 800 volunteers who stick it up where they want and send a pikki back - thereby showing that feminism is everywhere! (my roll just arrived in the post - so keep your eyes peeled)

Hell - this i almost as good as FLICKR!


so - that made me happy.

Inside I was disturbed by the most seductive piece - set in a curtain lined room - with airial ambient music piped through... to an edited loop of the fight scenes from "top gun". Ohhh god - I was being sucked into identification/aestheticisation of fascist sludge big time and it was a scary scary feeling let me tellya...

retopupping my goon - I headed for the bank of TV's - showing a series of international video bits. And then got involved in playing mix and match with the headphones. so the spooky thrummy sub bass that went with the statticky smokey figures, got teamed up with the gaffer tape pentagon boy, and his minimal soundtrack (of gaffer tape) went rather nicely with the outdoor terraces..... and then there was a very silly monologue of some guy doing art school angst in Canadian, about the gap, and blankness and the blankness of meaning - to a frozen zooming on Bert and Ernie.... he was canadian so it was ironic. so with the cold, the jampakked art, the funky crown, I felt like I was back in Brooklyn.....

Last night I strolled round to the galleria del barrio nicely called At the Vanishing Point, and consumed a very large glass of red wine. I wandered into their back space and saw something that reminded me of new york, of kiki smith, of petah coyne? of... where had I seen it before? - oh yeah UWS graduation show. Coris Evan's 'melt' is one of my favourite things - OK the wax figures are my favourite things.... the video seemed a little *too* slow and still for me - but that was during the opening which always makes me a bit hyper for some action.

Meanwhile around the corner - Bridie Connell's cat and mouse proved to be a surprise... delicate screen printed hankies..... about and accompanied by pics of her with a nose bleed.... now I really like it when a person takes their physical foibles and turns it into a broader whimsical metaphor that has a nice touch of playfulness and pathos.

P&P were fully at work in Brendan Penzer's mirrored installation - where a video shot of a waterfall was doubled into a face that looked at me, while i looked at it from various angles in the mirror panelled room - seeing my own face distorted across and infront of the waterfalled face behind me.....

Or maybe i've just been staring too long at a computer screen. I really like the SPACE of ATVP - which doesn't scream "blank room full of art" - but has little curves and corners and hidey holes where a body can lurk with the work for ages.....