Nuff and Stonsense

Mayhem went and saw some art.
Lots of it.
Drank lots of goon.
got very drunk.
then got very ill.
Now hiding from world

Writing lecture about blindness: cultural blindness, contoured blindness, visual blindness and the cultivation of the honest eye.... and drawing, and nudity and seeing as touch as impossibility

or something

I'm giving a lecture in relation to a bit of the tome in progress at me olde alma mater

this wednesday 19th October at 1pm at NAS

I'd better get back to writing it.

but briefly on art reviews:

the old fruit show at the tin sheds was TOPS - I think Simon cavanagh's hanging piece did a marvelous job of opening up the space into one of exquisite amorphous play.... my eyes went around the squiggled styrofoam, whizzing past the conduit piped ceiling, enjoying the space ballon around th form so everything became circular.

this process took about two minutes and I hadn't touched a drop of alcohol.

so as the space was ballooning and swirling in front of me, my eyes descended into the delicious shimmering light play of James rogers circles - and I was really glad to see large hollow ones, joined with the disks in a raked construction of pale glints that reminds me of light on water when I take my glasses off.....

And then I turned clockwise towards Sam whittakers bright bulbous forms on the wall bside me - they seemed to grab my forearm and beckon me closer... and THIS IS WHY I LOVE SCULPTURE - coz its all about objects in space that create weird shapes between them and beckon our bodies to head towards and away - and they distort and create spatial conversations that invite us to realy see with our bodies and not just our eyes......

I know most of the artists through the Stone Villa - and it was nice to see their work in a large enough space so that the pieces really were able to set up a substantial conversation between them and into the space.....

big fat smiley sigh

Afterwards I headed over to the whitely to see the brothers of the brush youf art show.... and I was heartily dismayed by the vast amount of greys and browns and beiges everywhere. there was a nice smattering of works from previous winners that was reminiscent of the sulman or something (especially since two whitely winners have become fixtures in the archi/sulman/wynn shows) and then a wall of some of brett's more subdued works..... early ashton's studies (groan) and some small textured landscapes, which were ok - but WHERE WAS WENDY'S BUM?

whatever the faults of the brett, his bright blue matissey buttocks had a vigour and energy and lyrical sexiness that has the same crothc grabbing brilliance of a guitar solo of Eddie Van Halen.... but the current curators have toned everything down to a dreary shania twain......

and so - the current crop of dripspent youf had their wares salonized into a corner enclave.... where each piece jostled and nestled and stared out like a bizarrely pathetic menagerie of a cat, a dog and a seagull - all begging for food.

It was hard to appproach.

None of the paintings were particularly bad - although quite a few were so earnestly boring I could barely look - the others were just earnest, and incongruous.

It's a hard call to hang a show of competing individuals - and, maybe it's a pointless exercise to even be saying this - but the lack of energy within or between any of the works was a tad depressing.

by contrast the Marrickville contemporary Art Prize was awash with screaming cacophanies of colour, form, movement and experimentation in every possible genre - including drip and scribble.

Most of the work was, as one would hope, deliciously bad - and mashed in together with crowds of punters - made for a delightful feeding frenzy of ambitous artlessness.

There were a few gems and prizes were given out for some of the 'serious notables' of the inner west art world.... but I liked the lack of ostentation of both exhibitions - basically they looked FUN - the work - impossibly overhung, impossibly incongruous wasn't trying to be anything but a jam packed eyballl, eardrum, spilly fest of creativity.