Art and Mayhem

Terminality

2008-10-18T06:32:00.003+11:00

In case this isn't blindingly obvious - I haven't been posting here of late......

In fact - it's probably time to announce the end of this blog since I've moved to melbourne - and ain't up to updating stuff on sinney art......

I'm also *still* finishing off the tome - which is keeping me in a protodoctoral purda from seeing a lot of kulcha

however I'll still be posting the odd bit of stuff on "Bodies Art & Stuff" especially as I venture out into the browning glades of melbourne.......

i'm having boundary issues about the art thing.....(as one should) - I mean, I've seen some really shite architecture here, does that qualify as "art"? and....whatabout this amazing Martial Arts film I'm about to go and see?

I spent my last 3 months in sydney working as a research assistant at Information and Cultural Exchange in Western Sydney. witnessing so many amazing projects on edge of art/multimedia/community cultural development - shook up my brains a bit about the whole ARt thing - beyond the red travelzone of inner city shabby white boxes - there is a hell of a lot of amazing stuff going on.......

Art & Mayhem ended as a 2SER segment in 2006. Daz chandler was hosting it as part of her Monder Overdrive Segment.....

Daz has also moved on from 2SER - and in now doing an amazing project, doing Podcasts with kiddies in Palestine........

Animating Space

2008-07-18T13:33:00.005+10:00

Sadly this blog continues to become more of a chronicle of stuff that I'm missing than stuff that I've actually been able to get out and even sniff out, let alone have a decent contemplative sigh over.....

I'm, still mulling over the Biennale bits that I saw at cockatoo Island. I think Susan Phillipsz piece epitomised my ambiguous feelings about the place, the work, and whatever was in my head that day... the last time I'd been to cockatoo Island was during the dockyard workers protests of 1989 - Most of my memories are heavily filtered by the haze of alcohol that I lived under at the time.... but I remember drukenly screeching "The Internationale" while on a harbour cruise filled with drunken shipping workers, and drunk and dazed ratbags like moi... the sun, VB, sweat, and a bizarre trostkyite zeal that the falling walls of the eastern Bloc would be a good thing for the revolution. Linking tianmen square and the closing of the shipyards in sydney harbour, through drunken word slurring boozy renditions of "Arise ye workers from your hunger" seems now to be completely bizarre, and testament to my complete mental absence from where I was, or... something.....

Cockatoo Island is a compellingly mournful type of venue, even on a sun-saturated day in June. Impossibly huge rusting bits of machinery, brutally modernist edifices, where the patina of peeling paint graffitti in the late winter sun, lead me stupidly towards a Rosalie Gasgoine style reification of the detritus of industrialisation.... but unlike her assemblages, the paint peeling, foreign shapes, rusted out bolts, old concrete, infinite patinas of labour, salt and seagull shit loom around us - intensely immersive and alienating. Walking through th huge halls, my body felt disconnected from itself, disarticulated... and so Phillipse's mournful strains ehcoing through the various chilly chambers added to this.

the cockatoo Island insallations all seem eerily incomplete - and perversely enough I like the fact that the curators have left the spaces empty enough to haunt the works. the rabbitwarren of Mike Parrs creepy Gruesome Silly Stuff seemed to be the best way to present the works... with just the right level of claustrophobia and mystery, to evoke a building likea body, or a collection of bodies.

I wanted to be taken out of this space, to dive into artworks as another magical sphere of utopian immersian. Part of me wrung my hands remembering a similar setting for the Lyon biennale in 2000 - where cavernous industrial spaces were transformed by installations of netted birds, remade kitchens, an immense dining room made from sheets of woven hair.... at the end of the day, I was frustrated at the plethora of screens - that the main way to use the spaces seems to have instaled little portals out of them......

Cockatoo Island is still a "liminal" space - somewhere between industrial refuse and remade recreational fantasia that actually operates as a "nice" (ok - effectively icky) corollary to the Biennale theme of "revolution". for me revolution, always implies not only a kind of endless return, but a strange spatiotemporal disjncture from the present..... our minds leave the present, fetishize history, projecting into a redemptive future that disconnects us from the present time, the present space and propells into far more enticing imperatives....

Despite such natty critiques, I'm afraid I've hardly changed. this week I found myself sitting on a bench in Parramatta Arcade, discussing Heidegger with my boss, in order to stop my face from freezing into a stony faced scowl at a random bunch Catholic Pilgrims singing loudly. Parramatta itself seems to have morphed into a bastardized version of Spencer Street station, and La defense, and I wodner where the hell I actually am.

I got a bit more gloomy when I read the weekend herald and found my views of the biennale concurred with John Mcdonald's. Mike Parr works well in the space, and WIlliam Kentridge is incredible...... I really like Lene Berg's installation too, though it was too late in the day for me to see the Pinhole reflection... TV Moore's instalation int ehd go tunnel felt like an allegory of heterosexuality itself, and I wish the space could ahve been given over to the Brown Council - but maybe that's just me...... I also think Shaun LGadwell is overrated.

I need to stop my grumpy grumblings now, so want to remid people of the delights of stuff around sydney. I staggered out to firstdraft on wednesday night - for - what looked like the tunnel of love - a flatscreen phallanx of top of the pops videos filled with crowds on non pilgrims, huddling and shuddering from the papal phillistines outside..... I was pretty feverish - so was just BEWILDERED by the guy pumping up the back chair in the back room. I loved the front room installation - complete with retro 1980's computer hardwear of the live not live, subtitle duo... Performing for the Camera was lots of fun.

the other fun thing this week was the launch of Midnight Morning by the incredible animation collective Popperbox. these guys take virtuality and space into completely new realms of fabulousness - and have used digital media as a nexus for collaborating about projects that get fed back into the real world..... My favourite project consists of the projections they did on the windows of Canley Vale Recreation Club (I kid u not).

If I miss mirroring space tonight - then I thought I'd go into the powerhouse in a fortnight for fabbo theory head funstuff at Jack Halberstam's talk on "Queer Animation". Part of me sustpects this is going to be another girly gush fest almost as silly as Judth Butler's talk at angel PLace 3 years ago, but part of me reckons What the hell, I'm officially part of the cognoscetti of queer, visual culutral critique, so one must be seen at such things.

The Missing Link?

2008-06-11T17:06:00.003+10:00

For those looking for a bit more of the Bill Henson biffo the MCA has a FORUM this Thursday at 6pm - with lots of different concerned types in attendance........

Meanwhile the Alter egos of Schappylle Scragg and her hot hubbie Darryll McGurk are donning their protodoctor caps this friday for a bit of a high falutin femininst gabfest on Performance, Porn and critical theory.

Be in the Wester tower of the camelot of camperdown (sydney uni's main quad) at 2pm as Getchen O'Riorden, Cath Davies and yours truly address "the subtle abyss"......

It's free, and should be entertaining......

It's also the first time I've attempted to theorise schappylle scragg......

Reasons to emigrate

2008-06-03T12:22:00.003+10:00

Thanks to Ruark Lewis for this image above. If *only* I had more time I'm sure shcappylle could have arranged something with Uncle Kev on a similar theme....

Is it necessary for me to join the chorus of people stating the bloody obvious - that the censorship of Hensons' show, the police intervention, the media fueled witch hunt is about as disgusting and scary as the SIEV X hypocrisy? I do not have a single shred of faith that *any* of the commentators actually give a damn about the prevention of childhood sexual abuse, but have found the unnverving and creepy aspects of Henson's images (and they *are* unnerving and creepy) a convenient excuse to insist on shunting adolescent sexuality into some sort of 4WD padded secretive suburban purda...

I *really* HATE how the child sexual abuse issue gets dragged into some smug suburban censorship push. Is it just me who feels fundamentally that it is the hidden clothed unit of the FAMILY where most child sexual abuse occurs? Is it just me who pukes at the thought of kiddies locked away in family homes, suburban cars, clean surfaces, singlets tucked into underpants, arms tucked above sheets, and freaky secular fatwahs on nudity, masturbation and pre-pubescent smut? I stopped attending reclaim the night marches 10 years ago when they got hijacked by a bunch of born again Xtians who claimed that Jesus saved them from the shame of being diddled by a bunch of satanic suburban child molesters.... somehow the personal is political feminist ideal got co-opted into 'the personal is transcendental' garbage - that still left me feeling just as confused, powerless, isolated and enraged as I did as a child.

for what it's worth - Henson's images are deliberately and consciously *creepy* due to a canny mobilisation of caravaggio-esque lighting - funny bits of collage - which interrupt any clear pictorial sense of what his images depict, ambiguous juxtaposition of decaying car bodies and naked torsos and limbs of wan youf - sans heads or eye contact, not to mention dark scrub and moody sunsets. He's utilising a lot of standard pictorial devices for evoking unease, coy eroticism and death that date from Post-Renaissance Western Art History 101. How the affective complex associated stylised unnnerving ambiguity can be reduced translated into hit and click pay per view kiddie porn is something that only the smugly distorted mind of cretinous copper or toxic swill such as my favourite gutter journo and yours could possibly fathom.

I believe culture works - when it gives a space for a collective and public expression of messy feelings of ambiguity fear and confusion. Seeing images that are both repellent and sexy, that arouse, disgust and disturb us - *can* give us space to feel and acknowledge difficult feelings and experiences are also sites for connection and communication. Ten foot high collaged prints of compellingly confusing images placed in a public venue like an art gallery OPERATE entirely differently to small pictorial snapshots on a computer screen in someone's home. they operate to disturb us - but this public disturbance can create a space for public recognition and discourse about stuff that's usually snuffled and denied.

On a proactive note: some bright sparkshave set up a blog petition - so please click and hit and add your name.

I've been buried in the bowels of academia of late - which explains my lack of posting. I've been seeing some nice art lately tho - but..... haven't had time to post about it .... bummer

Appropriation: my favourite things

2008-04-14T22:21:00.008+10:00

I've have been hideously remiss in blogging, and pretty much disappeared for the previous month. I even vanished from the blogosphere, and cut down my facebook time, and barely checked my email.

something about leaving a 24/7 wireless connection, and taking up a heap of teaching, while trying to wrestle with the dilemmas of the constativity of discursive practices versus materialist ontology...... yemmite I kid u not.

anyway - Just thought I'd start this posting with a few of my favourite things - whihc miraculously appeared on other blogs as well as in the real world:

the artlife just did an interview with Cash Brown - who has a show at robin gibson this month..... I LOVE HER WORK SO MUCH I COULD WET MYSELF.

It may have been a cheap ploy to outdo the *hot* posting from The Artswipe last month which set my heart aflutter by posting up Renny Codgers sauna pics.

Like the love pump, mayhem is quite proudly a fan of the pole and the hole, so I've been quite delighted with the arty erotics of irony on the offing of late...... especially in the live field of performance land.

I had the pleasure of heading on out to Blacktown finally to see the Bent Western exhibition and caberet. If Nanna Madge was there she would have been no doubt made a bit hot under the collar by DMC's Jodie foster impersonation, and would have flung her step ins at the stage on numerous occasions. Renny Codgers live appearance was mesmerising, and my fantasy of seeing Liam Benson as Jesus was finally realised.... and the Brown Council were tops, and the Liinas version of that lassic starella postapocalyptic punk showpiece " sickly sweet" was the perfectly underscored wrong shade of saccharine that it should have been, and there was a hell of a lot of quality quality bloody funny affecting work. It felt great to be part of a mad queercore underground, even tho I was distracted from Yourgios's poetry by some guy sitting near me who was ostentatiously picking his nose and eating his snot in such a baroque manner that I kept thinking he was part of the performance.....

anywya - I digress. My dear friend the freelance provocateuse aka the marrickville milkmaid continues to squirt bits of breast fluid in a shopfront on New Canterbury Road (bit of a change from the sex workers who were there 15 years ago, I know). The culmination of her 10 day endurance pumping action is happening this Saturday 19th april from 6-ish at Don't Look Gallery, 419 New Canterbury Road, dulwich Hill. Nanna Madge will be there, as will a host of other collaborators, and there may even be STOUT to drink (it being the traditional health bevvy for irish nursing mothers).

hmmm - so sorry it's been a pretty slim promo/roundup. I PROMISE to come up with some intelligible guff from my excursion to AGNES on thursday (if only to the students I'm teaching) - hmmm...... cash brown....... bill viola..... :)

Milky bits and Pink

2008-03-25T18:04:00.003+11:00

On the theme of Mates.... err, well... here's another plug.

Mayhem's partner in Crime - aka Schappylle's hubby darryll has an astonishing project about to gush forth onto the streets of dulwich hill

don't Look Gallery are hosting 10 days of nonnomrative lacto-madness by the performance artist and evolutionary humanoid Zoo who will sit in the shopfront making milk and doing all sort sof poetry/performance/collaboration and play with it

Her words are better than mine so check this out:

Exhibition title: Curdle
Artist’s name: Zoo

Exhibition details: Don’t Look Gallery, 419 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill, NSW, Australia (a block back from the corner of New Canterbury Rd and Marrickville Rd)
http://www.myspace.com/dontlookgallery or email dontlookgallery@gmail.com
Opening hours are 11-5, every day for the duration of the exhibition
Opening night: Wednesday 9th April 2008 6-9pm. Small informal launch, statement of project intentions, few beers.
Closing night: Saturday April 19th, from 6pm. This is the big one- art created during the installation will be on display, and I will have more to say about it!
Contact details: Through the gallery or www.galactablogue.blogspot.com

What it entails: Curdle is an endurance-based installation piece, where the main activity performed is inducing lactation. This is achieved by regular pumping and the ingestion of a variety of herbs including fenugreek, fennel and milk thistle. I have done this before, but not to the same degree, so one of the main focuses will be on seeing how much milk I can produce. The first part of the piece will concentrate on the process of inducing, documenting the changes to my body and what milk I produce. The second part of the piece, once lactation has been achieved, will involve myself and other artists creating a series of milk-based pieces, by using the lactation process and the actual milk itself as inspiration, as material, or both. Already I have photographers, painters, sketchers and musicians taking part, and am open to any other suggestions for collaboration. Artists can just turn up as they wish, but for larger, longer pieces which involve serious input from me it is best to contact me and schedule a time, or at least discuss the nature of the work. The public is invited to visit at any time during opening hours, to record their responses, stories and ideas about the work in the journal provided, to ask questions, to observe the work in progress and engage with it in any respectful way they wish.

The main point of the installation: This is part of a larger body of work that has previously centered on other body fluids and processes, most usually blood and bleeding. It has its roots in body modification practice in that it is concerned with altering the form and functionality of the body. Curdle, and the entire induced lactation project I have undertaken, grapples with questions of how bodies (and more specifically, body fluids) are gendered, how they communicate with other bodies, and what happens when bodies and embodied practices are allowed to drift loose of their traditional boundaries. Clearly, lactation is traditionally the preserve of mothers and their babies (and the odd lucky husband), but breastfeeding is not the only context in which it exists or the only function it performs. Lactation and breast milk can be used to cleanse the body of toxins, to inhibit fertility, to access new ways of thinking, to gain sexual pleasure, to nurse a partner, to comfort oneself and others, to transmit cultural knowledge, to cure or to contaminate. This installation is also largely concerned with investigating milk as language, a text, and the lactating body as producer and conveyor of meaning.

For the record: This is not positioned against maternity or breastfeeding, but rather an attempt to consider what knowledges and experienc

es lactation and breast milk might offer when allowed to speak freely outside of patriarchal, heterosexual discourses.

Spinning Out

2008-03-01T20:59:00.002+11:00

ahh the joys of AGNES!!!!

Sadly nerddom has kept me confined to the quad this Mardis Gras - and I'll probably miss out on the great painters piss-up too - next week at the Archibald, Wynne And Sulman opening.

I rarely go for the wine or the art - but definitely for the buzz - which is somewhere between sloshy goonfest of a scupture opening, and something off the social pages of the telemirror - it's all stemmed glasses, LBD's, crowd spotting and name dropping and goon splashing. all under the pretext of big name drip stuff. a delight.

by sheer chance, one of my favourite paintings *ever* has actually made the walls of agnes - in the sulman show. It's by my mate steve - who I've referred to casually on this blog before. I thought I'd chuck in a more serious and considered reference tho - ie a copy of the catalogue essay for his show in Bathurst. I hope this ain't too nepotistic - Bragging about my friend's work -and posting up an essay I put somewhere else.... but it is an amazing piece -and I'd hate to think of punters missing out on something amazing just coz of a straightforward phobia about bad photorealism celebrity mongering....

so here it is....

Steve Kirby: Between Choice and Chance

Art is that moment at which life can touch chaos, most joyously… art is that momentary
opening up to chaos where we can enjoy a fragment of chaos, now bound safely, in a
frame. In art we come closest to enjoying chaos without being destroyed by it... And this
is how art can return us to that unliveable from which we came and gives us a
premonition of an unliveable to come.

Elizabeth Grosz, Sensation: The Earth, a People, Art, lecture given at Faculty of Architecture, University of Sydney, 2 August 2007.

I’m going to start this catalogue essay with an unusual confession, which is, when I
visited Steve Kirby’s studio to view the works for this exhibition, one of the paintings
made me cry. I’m not accusing the painting of being morbid, or sad, or painful, and nor
would I anticipate that anyone else would have the same reaction. I can’t explain why
The Joining Run made me feel so sad. Generally I’m not in the habit of crying in front of
paintings, and Steve’s work tends to provoke feelings of joy rather than sadness; the
jewel like colours are spun gossamer across the surfaces of the works, often in
compositions reminiscent of lace, or marquisette jewellery. Generally I’d say that Steve’s
paintings embody a life affirming delight in the world and the capacity of paint to stretch
the eye and imagination of the viewer beyond a representation of the existing world into
remaking new worlds and new possibilities of seeing, sensing and living.

Kirby’s paintings hang somewhere just on the edge of meaning; composed of intricate
forms that remind us of things, that we can almost name, but then slip away, just like the
symmetry of much of his compositions, hinted at and then evaded. The forms that emerge
in his work are protean, reminiscent of marine life, or cells, or even fleshy protuberances
like buttocks, encased in visceral linear forms, which take our eye away from the point of
naming what they are, and into the strange rhythms of the painting itself, patterns
spreading across our field of view, marking out, filling in and moving across space and
time.

The time aspect is important to these works, as they do not represent a fixed scene or
invoke a deadening stasis. Movement pulses throughout, and our eyes are continuously
taken across, up and into the works: through the forms, enfolding and encircling each
other, along the lines that are not quite lines, that meet each other and meet our eyes with
a remarkably odd delicacy. The lack of aggression only adds to the strangeness of the
works; they nudge us with the grace of an oddly coloured butterfly, hovering on the edge
of our field of awareness.

The works are imbued with a diachronic temporality; we see the time they were painted
in, within each mark, particularly within the squelching coils of spiralling lines, spanning
the surface of the paintings, weaving in and out of the picture plane, generating their own
geometries of paradox. The painterly finesse of this technique is based on extensive
experimentation with the viscosity of the paint, and working the mediums up to a level of
flexibility that can suspend time, and sustain the delicate films of translucent colour
Kirby uses. The fragility of the paint mixture grounds the marks, the gestures, the forms
made by the paint as much in the chemistry of the paint itself, as the techniques Kirby
uses to amplify gestures, to test the limits of his body and imagination.

There is something in the paint, which manages to continually slip between its materiality
as oil paint and what we experience as viewers of the work; as we encounter colours
oscillating across a surface and the suggestive qualities of the marks and forms that Kirby
has spun and woven the paint into. This experience doesn’t belong to the artist or to us as
viewers, but hovers and slips and slides within and outside of us, like sunlight reflected
off water. Perhaps it was this that made me cry.

Maybe I was too close to the work, well within the eighteen inches that Mark Rothko
suggested to the viewers of his paintings. I was less than a foot away, slightly to the left,
where concentric amber rings fading into the white of the board caught in my eye, and
made me shudder and sob. I felt part of something lost inside, as a nameless sensation
met with the paint, and the scraping points of light seemed to expand and overwhelm me.
It seems strange to write about something that is so far beyond words, and my point is
that painting as art affects us deeply. The way that light bounces across a surface and
enters our eye, the way that colours scintillate and marks oscillate and vibrate within us
like music, affect us emotionally and physically. Painting is not about pictures, but about
paint, and the wordless intensity that can fill us with sensation and take us somewhere
else, such as an impossible intimacy with the artist, and ourselves. Kirby’s works
approach this metaphysical condition of art, a space where we can open ourselves up to
not understanding, but to experiencing the joy of looking with our whole bodies.

Weird Science and wetness

2008-02-21T18:46:00.003+11:00

My entries have been getting crappier and crappier and I *do* apologise profusely.

Punters will be pleased to know that I have been keeping up the eyeball activity - jut the connection between eyeball and blog has gone down coz I'm finding it harder to find space to articulate why certain things make me smile.....

I am *wetting* myself over a couple of things this weekend tho - firstdraft have just had a great show open and one of their studio guests is at large this weekend in the middle of the city. Kirsten Bradley's work strikes me as being a perfect combo of absurdity and mind blowing delight... the portable planetariums literally turn the viewer into a replica of a stunted cactus - but on the inside promise to transport the now dorky looking subject into an utterly incredible realm of discovery and delight. I think it's the combo of DIY (cutting up bits of cardboard), attention to detail (cutting them up very well) erudition (being into science AND art) and imaginative delight that gets me going..... so I can wait for this one....

On the theme of DIY transports of delight my favourite non-lieu's the squatspace gang - are having their annual floating regatta of human powered windbags across Gordon's Bay this saturday. Bring your inflatable objets d'art and set sail across the nicest nook of the pacific accessible with a Red TRavelpass - from about 1pm or 2pm or some hot time.

the regatta clashes with the earnest chinwag for Quick and Dirty: the mega queer performance fest at Carriageworks this weekend. Part of mardis gras - its like a combo of gurlesque AND manjam, and if you don't know how good that is - then get yerself down to eveleigh street pronto.......I'll be the one sitting in a puddle of my own making!

Flagging rainbows

2008-02-11T19:31:00.000+11:00

I've actually feasted the eyeballs on a LOT of ART lately - and acutally turning up to the shows I promote. However my fingers have been full of THE TOME lately so I kept my opinions to myself... for a change (har har)

Even in my sandstone enclave I've been made vaguely aware that it's Mardis Gras season, and flicking through the catalogue, I was anticipating one of my favourite forms of Bad Art: one or more uberkitsch Gay and Lesbian art exhibitions, ideally at a commercial gallery, or a community space.... and yet I was disappointed....

Now - in making such a sweeping dismissal i do immediately place myself in a bit of a footshooting quandary. That mask on my head is not a butterfly; I am queer, and a Queer Art Exhibitions were the first opportunity I had to show my work (before going to art school) and meeting other queer artists (which kept me sane and have inspired me since). the first one was at Raw Nerve in 1996, and the second was at Pride Centre in 1997. Straight out of art school - I once again showed in the SGLMG 'out art' and the luscious lezzo fest that was 'word of mouth' . so I've definitely been a big beneficiary of the identity politics of art, and I sometimes long for the halcyon days of well endowed queer community spaces! supporting budding little rainbow butterflies.......

I wonder about the passing of queer art shows, and why. Is it that lots of queers have infiltrated and seduced the art world to the extent that we don't need our own spaces? Is it that moneybag queers with good hearts got sick of being lumbered with some dodgy didactic crap? Is it (gasp) a terrible sign that the sydney queer community is in a frightful state of decline?

I'm trying to write some chapter about sexuality for the tome so will stop the pontification for the moment - coz even tho new mardis gras ain't organised an official GLBIT* Art Show there are two endorsed official queer eyeball events.

the first is in Western sydney - and has been organised by Blacktown regional gallery - who have been on a desperate (and reasonably) successful mission to recoup their cred after the Begg Distraction Panic of 2005. MOP man, and general icon Daniel Maudie Cunningham has assembled a great group of interesting and credible artists into a cutely named show: Bent Western. rahter than being a standard hotch potch of people who make art who identify as queer, Bent Western is a conidered blend of artists with a connection to queerness and western sydney , whose work is both formally and thematically compatible. I was deterred by the rain on thursday nights opening - but can't wait to see the results.

Where :
Blacktown Arts Centre, 78 Flushcombe Rd, Blacktown
When :
08/02/2008 to 29/03/2008
Tues - Sat 10am - 5pm
BENT WESTERN
8 February - 29 March

Curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham.
.
Featuring Ron Adams, Lionel Bawden, Liam Benson, Drew Bickford, Michael Butler, Karen Coull, Jose Da Silva, Christopher Dean, Tim Hilton, Marius Jastkowiak, Erna Lilje, Arthur McIntyre, Jessica Olivieri, Kurt Schranzer, George Tillianakis, Anastasia Zaravinos.
.
Bent Western is an official event of the 30th Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival 2008.
.
EXHIBITION TALK
11am Saturday 16 February
Join curator Daniel Mudie Cunningham and a selection of the Bent Western artists as they discuss the exhibition.
.
Meanwhile the best named magazine since FLAPS has another leg spreading opening - which is also happening VERY SOON.

SLIT is a lesbian DIY porn politics culture mag that has been running since 2002, and has it's latest edition launch coinciding with an exhibition at mori gallery.

The girls and bois from glossy sexy Slit dyke trans sex magazine present their fifth annual exhibition, this year with a little romance! Celebrating the launch of Slit's 13th issue, this exhibition explores the wonderful world of Fairy Tales. Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming, the Princess and the Pea, Goldilocks, Rumpelstiltskin and the Wizard of Oz are included amongst the tales given a thorough queering.

Featuring works by Nicole Barakat, Penelope Benton, Tallulah Brown, Scary D and The Cake Lady, Kelli Jean Drinkwater and Jess Coughlan, Jane and Emmy, Tina Fiveash, Sam King, Debs McCann, MegaBixel, Chris Michaels, Jade Muratore, Vixen Noir, Cat O' Nine Tails, Sindy Ray, Empress Stah, Tank, Stella, Julio and MsMatt, Anastasia Zaravinos

Curated by Lady Penelope

MORI GALLERY
Telephone +61 2 9283 2903
http://www.morigallery.com.au
Exhibition dates: Wednesday 20 February - Saturday 1 March 2008
Mori Gallery open hours: 11 - 6pm Wednesday to Saturday

*Gay Lesbian Bisexual Intersex Transgender

OMIGODOMIGOD!!!!

2008-01-27T11:01:00.000+11:00

I tried to pretend that January consists of some sort of major art hiatus just coz the ACGA galleries are closed till feb, but it's a lie... a silly fantasy.

Sydney art NEVER stops, just like the parties and the cockroaches.

Having sworn off red wine and tomato sauce, I've decided to brave the SEEN again.... so we'll see what my liver reckons.

First port of call will be Sydney's answer to Mathew Barnie crossed with the straight worlds version of Sexy Galexy.
It's happening THIS WEDNESDAY at FIRST DRAFT.
Mark Shorter survived a rough hewn apprenticeship in the welded steel school of blokey formalism to emerge a decade later as a neatly shaved icon of masculine sex appeal: Renny Kodgers. Having spurned a career path of annual appearances in SIX INCH SHOWS, he managed to flabbergast all and sundry at China Heights last year with a masterful display of refined masculine subjectivity. Having embracing Lacanian slips of the REAL, this year Shorter is moving on from THE PHALLUS and has headed straight for the 'objet petit a'. According to the press release for his new show: American Anus, Shorter:

penetrates deep into the relationship between scatological desires and caricature in the visual arts. Historically and formally linked to the grotesque, caricature provides a window into the primal machinations of the human psyche. Drawing on these ideas and the potential of the anus to provide a passageway to enlightenment Mark Shorter aims to tease and manipulate the forbidden passage through the strategy of the alter-ego.

I'm not even sure that Uncle Kev could top that one.

Shorter will be copralogically supported by the other collective collaboration opening on the same night: a group installation by Koji Ryui, Shane Haseman & Vicky Browne.

The three headed for the hills and have returned with something... I'm thinking of a Beuyss in a brown bag meeting chocolate drinking straws, but maybe their title is more evocative:
"We'll keep our cow shit in the country if you keep your bull shit in the
city"

If this isn't enough sock knocking then Lauren Brinkat has finally devised the ultimate tribute to late 20th century phallic mastery in "Live when I'm alive and sleep when I'm dead" - which promises to combine ROCK n ROLL and painting....

time and date details of this fabuloussness are:
Exhibition opens Wednesday 30 January, 6-8pm
and continues to 16 February 2008
Artists Talks on Saturday 16 February, 4.30pm.
Firstdraft open hours: Wednesday-Saturday 12-6pm
116-118 Chalmers St, Surry Hills NSW 2010
t: +61 (0)2 9698 3665 e: mail@firstdraftgallery.com

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!!!

There could be a nice continuous Lacanian little theme emerging for this post, but I'm a bit of Deleuzian so I'll avoid any references to the mirror phase.

But one of my favourite artists to play with identity, and reflection and the shifting contours of the slippery shallows of feminine subjectivity is SARI KIVINEN.
Her nail biting extravaganza in the Lempriere was a joy to behold, and she has taken the personas of various feminine stereotypes: the drunk, the bureaucrat, the trashy girl, the country singer, the experimental music artist... and pushed them into space way beyond satire, but into a quite subtle and sensitive play with the edges of her own body, and the interactions with the spaces where these personas manifest.

This is a long way of saying that her work is funny, but deep.

In Roles to Make or Break
Kivinen promises to create an intimate and confronting experience for those who seek it.

She has taken the weird sensitive spaces between herself, and her personas - or what is presented as an alter ego and she's directly toying with it... in the same spot where they've had a hologram for the past month.

There are 2 pieces, and i've enclosed the blurb from DON'T LOOK:

"Mimic" is a work that centres on the determination to fulfill a role and breaking free from a role through destruction. In this work, Kivinen attempts to mimic perfectly two ceramic faces in one video piece, and in its stark counterpart, destroys them.

"Self Determined" is an intensively created work, developed from two hours of video footage in which the artist, in front of the camera, sat alone, read books, played games, listened to music, watched television and ultimately, drank a bottle of red wine. The final result on film is only the aftermath of this binge, an erratic but intimate episode of self destruction. "Self Determined" explores the pressures of fulfilling roles and the desperation for distraction that ensues, such as alcoholism.

I reckon this will be the ideal counterpart to Kodger's stark satire, and you get 48 hours and a short bus ride between the openings too.

Roles to Make or Break opens at DON'T LOOK gallery on Friday February 1, 2008, 6pm
with a performance on Saturday February 2-9 (Thur-Sat 11-5)

DON'T LOOK Experimental New Media Gallery
419 New Canterbury Rd (Near Marrickville Rd), Dulwich Hill

Interstitial Spaces

2007-12-18T21:02:00.000+11:00

the 'true' artist is supposed to help the world by revealing 'mystic' truths about things

This was - scrawled (in jest) byt mathew hopkins, around some target style painted thing on the walls at SCA. If I was on a better computer I'd stick up the mobile phone pic I (illegally) took of Hopkin's socks that he invited viewers to imagine as a pack of ravenous bulldogs menacing them through those scary hallways of the painting block. Am I the only person in the world who finds the SCA painting block COMPLETELY TERRIFYING? Hopkins paranoid sockizo delirium was like blowing rasberries at the boeogeyman of scary pompous graduation show, like 'serious art man' and it made me laugh.

In contrast to the painting wing, I usually find the sculpture performance installation wing deliciously airy and crumbly and it makes me happy. It's hard for work to shake me from this state of contentment - and since I'd gone to see the works of two friends then I was practically BOVINE. I forgot to note the person who did the plaited hair microphone curtain installation, but it looked elegant and seductive, almost as much as the wall of empty frames... which scared me coz I was thinking that maybe I'd been reading griselda pollock too closely and was desperate to find meaning in anything.... anyway - climbing into Nick Strike's tennis racket coffee pot orgasmatron made me really delighted, on a totally embodied level and I forgot all about Lacan and any tumescent angst and just enjoyed the curves and shapes and coffee stains.... and this put me in the perfect mood to watch 'artist and theorist' Melissa Laing's airline blanket performance. Her performance consists in sitting with the work, and visible creating it, whihc in this case consist of window vistas constructed by painstakingly unthreading sections of woven airline blankets. One of the things I enjoy LOTS about textile artists is a haptic familiarity with the sheer neurotic insanity of spending HOURS ANd HOURS doing really painfully intensely minute actions on bits of cloth, and the way sweat, blood and fingerskin get imbedded into the work. Non-sewers probably don't have this appreciation so melissa's daily hours provided an accessable means for eyeballing punters to witness what made the work. time, patience, time, touching, thread, more time, and bloody sore fingers. I love the distracted prsence of studio conversations - while people are engrossed in work, so this was really nice. Meanwhile Nick Strike had some dillemma of someone asking what was the point of conceptual work.... oh... god.... concepts maybe?

Right now however I'm a long way from SCA and having regrets at not asking my dentist for a copy of my tooth xrays from this morning. He was giving me nice clear directives about the phenomenological joys of getting to know my interstitial spaces by a combination of visualisation and touch. I've spent the rest of the day flossing, rubbing my tongue in the newly polished surfaces, sucking air between each tooth, imagining the tear drop caverns between each squeezing molar... no infections, no new holes, I'm releived.

There is a very obscure connection betweent he dentist chair in rural NSW and contemporary art in sydney, and it is via Nick Bourriaud's book on Relational aeshtetics - which was published nearly a decade ago - so I'm not hyping it as the next big thing - just a set of criteria that I happen to like.

the big B - presents an attractive set of aesthetic criteria that incorproate the slick ease of negotiating the increasing squeeze on social mobility produced by rapidly intensifying hypermodernity.... am I using too many big words?

OK, once upon a time there were structures: them versus us: the avante garde versus the rear-garde, the bourgeousie versus bohemia. Artists could be edgy, there were more warehouse spaces, artists were poor, there werent' many dealers. then things got shaken up a lot, and things are still shaking.Bourriaud refers to insterstitial spaces as those slippery little nooks between established cutlurla and commercial isntitutions where creative cultural entrepreneurs slide together - this is WAYYY ore niche than niche - I'm talking extreme sports temporariness; of space, work and subjectivity. The squatspace collective (which sprung from a squatted gallery space on broadway) -which has thrived as a funny nexus of art, agitprop and community action is the best local example of Relational Aesthetics in action.

but relational aesheticis extend further such that local doyens like the artlife straw poll's artist of the year 'DMC' - shift constantly between various identities as academic, performer, writer, 'personality' paid curator, volunteer gallery manager, AND artist - with the straw poll reflecting not only his social popularity but the fact that pulling off all of the above is an art in itelf.

DMC aka Dan the Man has been involved in 2 wonderful projects of late - (of last week). One was the opening of the australiana (not) show at Hazelhurst Regional Art gallery - and I've only seen the catalogue so don't want to comment further. but the show pulled together a lot of nice notable emergings and establisheds to do some thoughtful and provocative eyeball wringing on Australia, the shire and all that jazz. (tho Scragg things Liam Bensons' alter ego might be turning her gay). so this was the serious side. the catalogue is great btw.

the other project coincided with the MOP xmas party where Mayhem DID get out to and did get really drunk and remembered why I avoid art openings.....ahem. the party of course was TOPS - and the best arty xmas party I've been too fer AYGES. the walls were festooned with $50 works by a plethora of notables and non notables, and the space reminded me so much of williamsburg on a good night I almost shivered with glee, and nearly wet myself having extended drunken conversations with some expat nooyorkans..... apart from the fun and funky art, what was tres BRILLO about this show - was the nexus between the space, the producers and the buyers, which shows how damnably delightful ARI's can be. Mayhem LIKES it A LOT when artists can afford to buy their own work and the work of their peers, and LIKE it a LOT when donated work supports a space that supports artists.

The drawcard of the evening was funeral songs...which I like coz it was collective and fun and I got to take something home, and the installation was great, and DMC's dance moves totally inspired me on the dance floor at the colombian later.... but also I really liked the poignant link to like, you know... death. It was not only an excuse for a bunch of artists and arty types to do a bit of facebook style tastemaking performativity - but coz the pretext was funerals, and coz DMC set up the whole thing by referring to the death of his brother - he actually made a really nice space for people to have some conversations about death, and losing loved ones and remembering them... and this is the magic of culture - not the content - but the connections, and making connections that don't exist otherwise.

speaking of connections, my Mum just told me about the latest dramas at the local art gallery, where one of the artists aka the Sappho of BiLo went up to a committee member in the supermarket and loudly declaimed her oringal compositions of lady lust over the loaves of wonderwhite. It's enough to give a girl THRUSH just thinking about it.

Keep Australia Beautiful

2007-12-04T13:42:00.000+11:00

(image courtesy of Jane Polkinghorne)

Dear All

I made a quick trip to Sodomy City so Scragg could knife Howard, and now I'm finding it VERY HARD TO LEAVE.

The sydney Sumer Arty Party Frenzy is PEAKING this week, with doubled up events every bloody night. the galleries are for rubbing swety shoulders and sinking swill, and it looks like are has gone out into the open.

If you're looking for ART you can go past Prince Alfred Park - the green bit between Central Station, First Draft and Cleveland street and keep an eye on the fence - coz Matt Gallois is hoping to do some 'scripto-visual' pieces with styrofoam cups.....

If you're looking for a giggle and a perve and free piss and funtimes and cheap (!) xmas presents, and leftover bits from all the commercial gallery shows this year then.......

Tuesday 4th December
Sydney College of the Arts has its Postgraduates show opening from 6.30-8.30pm . It's the one in rozelle. check it out before Callan Park gets converted to Footie Fields and a Carpark for cashed up UCLA college jock wannabees...

Legge Gallery also has it's xmas show opening (oh, how I LOVE xmas shows). BYOG or risk serious illness, but I'm hanging for another peak at Alan Jones's heads

and while in chippo I might swing over to.... nG Gallery for the dreadful planet show

Wednesday 5th December
Of course EVERYONE should be coming to Schappylle Scragg's Keep Australia Beautiful Show at Mori Gallery - if only to check out her new bikini while she pukes in the dunnies with Starella, but if extreme sports Aussie Irony ain't your thing, then there's always......

Don’t Look Gallery in dulwich Hill with
" Siamo Ieri ['We Are Yesterday']" by Greer and Julia Rochford

Thursday 6th December 2006

At The Vanishing Point – Contemporary Art in Newtown
Disturbance by Cornelius Delaney & Sub-versions by Joy Bye and Clarissa Regan

Friday 7 December

I could head out to Hazlehurst regional art gallery and Schappylle Scragg probably should and not only coz it's an opening in THE SHIRE. They have a GREAT show called: Our Lucky Country (still different) and the artists are: Ron Adams, Liam Benson, Maria Cruz, Elizabeth Day, Sarah Goffman, Michelle Hanlin, Soda_Jerk, Ruark Lewis, Adam Norton, Anna Peters, Nana Ohnesorge, Nuha Saad, Huseyin Sami, George Tillianakis and Mimi Tong.

but I'm booked closer to home (ie spewtown) for the:
Stonevilla Fundraiser Xmas Exhibition
at Chrissie Cotter Gallery, Pidcock street Camperdown.

The Stone Vila is a Marrickville council owned building where an eclectic and amazing group of sculptors have gathered to do MORE THAN WELDED STEEL. Kaz Hazwell, Nick Strike, Sam Cavanagh and Simon Calwell are some of my favourite strange object makers in the universe, and they do a damn fine pissup too.

All moneys raised will go towards “Vortex”
The Stone Villa’s first contemporary arts festival in Sydenham Green.

Saturday 8th December

“VORTEX” 2007 UNDER THE TIN AND IN THE SLIP STREAM
“Vortex” a contemporary arts event to be held under the flight path in Sydenham Green from 11am till 10pm. "Vortex" is a Stone Villa Inc initiative. The festival is open to all out door sculpture and Digital short film. Digital short films will be screened on the outside of our building at sundown. Bring your block out and a blanket and come and enjoy the art.
Corner of Henry st and Railway rd Sydenham. For all inquires email Samantha Whittingham: yannsam@yahoo.com.au or call Stone Villa Tel: 95161787
Stone villa is a stones throw form Sydneham station - which is within spitting distance of Sydney's best seafood wholesaler - so I reckon this is a BYO oysters and champers number....

If you get sick of moving things, 3-D things, interactive things and pretty things with lots of kiddies runing around and eveyrone having aball, then you can teleport yourself to surry hills for....

ARTIST TALKS 4:30PM THIS SATURDAY 8 DECEMBER AT FIRSTDRAFT GALLERY

Currently exhibiting artists Julie Burke (exhibiting as part of Firstdraft's Studio Residency program), Jacque Drinkall and Fatima
Naseer Ahmad will be discussing their work and practice.

ON the Theme of Chinwagging, Schappylle scragg will be putting on her thinking cap on Sunday arvo for...

Sunday 9 December
Tea with… the Critics will be held at the Australian Centre for Photography from 3pm. they are inviting 4 art critics, representing print, web and television. Each guest will be required to nominate one or two of your favourite (and possibly least favourite) photomedia exhibitions from 2007. The guests are Andrew Frost (the Art Life), Schappylle Scragg (who has seen more art than mayhem sadly enuff) and Robert McFarlane. The Host will be Stewart Hawkins from the Financial Review.

Next week, I'll list more of the fabbo events - which hopefully will comprise the last of the years art madness

Art in Heartland

2007-11-16T01:58:00.000+11:00

I spent bits of the past month in sydney sneaking out to delicious bits of shows in strange hours of the afternoon or night - when punters were absent and I could just look at work, and not feel the imperative to put words to it.

Highlights were Sangeeta Sandresegars 400 hand doves (this was just after hearing a paper on gloves - so I was in the mood for enfolded shapely becomings of digited pairs.....) and then some amazing performance that I missed but saw the videos and artists afterwards and it was at Don't Look and was one of the most incredible collaborations between a performance artist and an installation/video artist that i've seen since hanging out in deepest France nearly a decade ago.

sorry I can't go on - coz don't have the names or my notes on me... and my internet access is scarily limited, but that incredible little space was used sooo well - as images were reset up into nooks and crannies and the projections and their time worked in with the emerging body of the performer, moving through the space in real time/projected time... peeling paint projected onto her flesh projected onto peeling paint... which made my little phenomenological soul sing.....

*Ahem* the piece was 'Friction' a collaboration by dancer/performer Eleanor Brickhill and video artist Anne Walton. Eleanor works with using her body to explore space and how spaces can be occupied, transformed and used with the body - i the same way that a butoh artist might work with an inanimate object like a chair. So she was dancing with corners, and inside cupboards, and making full use of the multitude of nooks and crannys in the DON'T LOOK space. Anne's preoccupaiton is with time, and representation in the full derridean borken apart, temporally challenging contingency that it can be. So as Eleanor was moving, anne was recording her, and projecting previous recordings onto parts of her flesh and repeating images of the room, of movements into other areas.... and makng use of that great blind window in the gallery to perfect effect.

Apart from seeing art I am proud to say that I did indulge in a Mary Kelly detournement (not) of scripto visual female empowerment in the series of posters of Aussie Icon Schappylle Scragg. They were up at the Vanishing Point Howard Years show - and inspired a brilliant PORN collaboration between the PM , Schappylle and her hubbie Darryll... stay tuned and get ready to hurl.... given that the Scragg work in progress is pretty much a raunched up version of the brilliant Motel sisters pice that was also in the show I'm spewing at missing the latest motel sisters thing which opens in the hills this week...(BeCoz Ur Worf It) but I've already gone far far away.....

First stop was Bathurst where I was there to put my face to a catalogue essay to a friends show - of work that I really love... but was really happy that Viv Binn's retrospective opened the same night and she could explain the elegant and subdued image from the invite - was actually based on a woven flouro polyester crepe DOILY from the 1990's - of which I have about 3. There's lots of things I love about viv binns - vintage vaginas being one of them - but I love her honest approach to acrylic paint - she weilds it as a maestro because of her sculptural approach to it as a specific type of matter - pigmented skins of PVA that can be shaped and layered onto a surface in spacific wasy as felxible plastic... she doesn't try to pretend that it's oil - and her works are some of the few acrylic paintings that I love..... My Friend Steve - was the other headliner for the night - and his work... his work... ahh his work! the best words for it come from Elizabeth Grosz. It's THAT good.... sheer shimmering skeins of drippy stuff singing Deleuzian becoming into the marrow of ya bones.... and the rest of the gallery was filled with pics of the BATHURST CAR RACE... ya gotta love the country

Since then I've headed way up north into the real hills - where men are men and sheep are nervous and the weather is bloody Tasmanian... nothing like wearing a fleecy and uggies in December... or stubbies shorts in the snow -which is what the tough guys at school used to do....

Mum dragged me out to the Local art gallery "archibald" prize... which reminded me so much of the AGNES WALES version that I started to wonder if I'd lost my mind. Well - not quite... I mean the local gallery is TINY, and they had curried egg sandwiches on the buffet table... but basically the process of aesthetic appreciation seemed to be pretty similar...
Scoff goon and gossip.
Perouse work to try and recognise portrait subjects.
Perouse floor sheet to try to recognise artists.
Drink more goon and gossip.
Get introduced to someone from local readio station.
Drunkenly agree to an interview.

so the next day I found myself at the ABC Regional Radio Breakfast Broadcast from The Beardies Festival blearily trying to respond to questions about the tome. I'd been reading some nice book and starting to configure a pheomenological account of embodied spectatorship as a molecular becoming that would sidestep the intractable binarised view of gendered subjectivity into which most feminist and popular accounts of figurative spectatorship are embedded.....

and the interviewer was asking me questions like "can you tell me any stories about the kind of people that would be life models? they must be pretty weird types of people?" Mayhem stuck for words at this point. "Tell me, would you ever move back to the country? Err. No? "why not?" I think I'd prefer Finland - the weather in summer is similar and there's more light...

har har...

there's another art opening here tomorrow night... I've been here for just over a week -and been to 3 art openings! - hell this place is going off more than sydney!

Plugging away at deconstructing gender binaries and coming up with a critically engaged Deleuzian framework for spectatorship is a little bit of a challenge, still. Thing is, I have this crazy belief that even the most banal quasi-art settings - like life drawing at hens nights still need to be engaged with on an aesthetic and critical level...with the same level of seriousness that I'd apply to the wonderful figurative/representative/video/live encounter work that I saw at Don't Look. And I think vintage monolithic labels like "voyeurism", or "phallocentric gaze" do a great injustice to both.....

so, back to my word document, back to mulvey, pollock and merleau ponty....

and

Taking Leave

2007-10-11T17:28:00.000+10:00

This could be taking some time off or taking leave of my senses - and probably is about both.

Mayhem is officially heading for the hills and a temporary retirement from being an artscribe - while I head into the last long trudge of the tome.

Hopefully the thing will be mostly over by the end of the summer... so the hiatus won't be a permanent one...

I've been abstaining from the heady whirl of art gallery opening nights - largely due to complaints from my liver - and am now finding it increasingly hard to get myself out of the greying box on my neck and into big white boxes of fun and optimism and adventure that are art spaces and happenings.

I still hope to make it to the odd show and opening -but it's starting to feel like a duty - and a drain on my overtaxed synapses. Schappylle Scragg will continue to make the occasional and tasteless appearance and is branching into aussie themed erotica - keep yer hands down yer undies for that one!

I'm trying to wean myself off being a noticeboard for new art shows - and think facebook and myspace are doing a pretty good job anyway - and thorougly reccommend artswipe and the artlife for continuous critical engagement.

As soon as I receive a coherent list of works from the greens auction last week - I will - as promised - write a review of all of the pieces donated - many of which weren't able to be auctioned off due to time constraints - and the overwhelming genersoity of artists.

Plus I probably will write regular tormented rants about my life on bodies art and stuff

so for now - as schappylle would say - "i'll be off like sheep guts in the sun"

xx mayhem

Looking for Demoocracy?

2007-10-01T21:18:00.001+10:00

Mayhem's buggered off to Melbourne, so Schappylle has taken over for this week

Hope youse are all coming along to me show this thursday, eh?

It's gonna be bloody unrool, eh? Maaayyte you should see some of the art eh? ya know, just ordinary aussies, doing their bit to show what a beautiful country this is, and all those Aussie values and why it's so unrool here eh?

and there's some rool good artists tooo, eh? Like that guy from Mental as Anything, and Susan Norrie, and Deborah Kelly and Fiona McDonald, and Catherine rogers, and Dean Sewell, and Ian Milliss, and Craig Waddell, and Tim Johnson, and all these other people whose names I can't spell...

and there's even videos too, eh?

So thursday night - youse should come down. they''ll even have beer cause Darrylle said he wouldn't come unless they had a man's drink, so there'll be beer and wine - but no bundy but eh?

It's just across from Darling Harbour, ya know Sega world?

Mori Gallery
168 Day Street, sydney
thursday 4th October
6-9pm: auction starts at 7.30pm

see yas there

xx
scragg

Multiple Personality

2007-09-18T12:15:00.000+10:00

Mayhem ain't doin a lot right now except trying to cure my ice like addiction to facebook...

ohhhh what a slippery slide into chronic aphasia that is....

apart from my guest lecture at NAS tomorrow - i'll be going to the MOP show on thrushday coz the show is called multiple personality and it SOUNDS LIKE MY LIFE
also mop is an easy stroll form the sandstone castle I call home.

Multiple Personality
Mat de Moiser, Adrienne Doig, Matthew Hopkins, Robin Hungerford, Sari Kivinen, Ms & Mr, Luke Roberts, Pope Alice

Curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham
MOP is on abercrombie street not very far from Broadway

Hell - I'm in the best pozzie to promote the show! I LIVE SCHIZO ANALYSIS! between schappylle, Nanna Madge, Protodoctor and the virgin mary - I ain't had the time to form a coherent sense of self.... Irigary would approve and so would Deleuze....

constructing a 'self' composed of networks of friends and amis on the platforms of facebook and my space has been an interesting exercise.... and I wonder if I'm much more than the threads of memory, and recounted stories, and connections made between my acquaintainces as well as those with me.....

also feel weird about asking for help... but err... time to bite the bullet.

and even though artists donate too much work and work for free anyway and that really sucks and I shouldn't be asking more from poor people.....

I REALLY WANT TO KEEP THE GREENS IN THE SENATE

and I don't know how else to raise campaign money, awareness, community goodness fast apart from hocking my hole(s) - and that might not fit in with my facebook profile, and as much as I respect my genitalia - I think art might give more pleasure to more people.....

so dear readers of this blog

If you are a art collector.... DONATE A PIECE OFF YOUR WALL OR STOREROOM and then go and buy some more art.

If you make saleable objects then DONATE ONE

If I have even bought one of your pieces then PLEASE DONATE ONE.

If you make non object based work: and do performance, video, happenings etc... then PLEASE participate in the looking for democracy show..... think what scragg would love and go for it.

I need expression of interest confirmed by this Saturday 22nd September (email: mayhemrox@gmail.com)

and work needs to be at mori gallery by 5pm on Saturday 29th September.
auction is on 4th October.

Just think how much more worthwhile this is than going in some Art competition or Prize.

You don't have to pay an entry fee
Your work will be on display in a well known international contemporary art space
You work will be hung in a reasonably unugly manner
you will get a catalogue and documentation of your participation
you will get an online published review of your work by mayhem
you will get a witty humorous review of your work by scragg
Your work will support a worthy cause

how many open entry group shows can top that?

Nuff and Stonsense

2007-09-17T20:24:00.000+10:00

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.

answer to the previous post

2007-09-12T22:01:00.000+10:00

Ohhhh I've had long days and longer nights in the bowels of sydney uni's main quad.

But I'm popping my head up very briefly coz....

Marrickville contemporary Art Prize awards night is on tomorrow at 'at the vanishing point gallery" number six hundred and something king street newtown

AND - Don't Look have their first birthday and marricville ocntemproayr art prize show on Friday night

I'm acutally planning to head to the Brett Whitely shcolarship prize for budding boy painters - ohh and the odd girl.... and hope to do a quick squiz of 'youf' art talent in sydney...including primavera...

I feel *terrible* that I missed the Lempriere - but I've had a hard month...

watch this space

Where The Bloody Hell Are You? Spoof

2007-09-12T21:50:00.001+10:00

towing the Party Line

2007-09-09T22:23:00.000+10:00

Scragg ain't the only one taking a stand!

Mayhem is on the campaign trail: looking for democracy:

Part One comes courtesy of Get Up

The Prime Minister can now call the election any day, and many think as
soon he's finished at APEC he'll do just that. And when he does, the
gates of democracy will swing firmly shut.
That's because the Government has passed new laws closing the electoral
roll at 8pm on the very day the election is officially called. So click
here -- or forward this email -- to make sure that you and everyone you
know are properly enrolled:
Odds are, you're enrolled to vote -- but chances are you know someone
who isn't. What may surprise you is just how many people you know aren't
on the rolls. For instance, the Government recently admitted more than a
third of all Australians aged 18 to 25 are not enrolled. That's a
whopping 410,000 voters - four whole electorates' worth -- and we're
only talking about young people.

To make matters worse, you're not informed if you've been taken off the
electoral roll for some reason -- such as if a piece of mail addressed
to you from the AEC gets returned to sender -- so many people do not
find out until they turn up on election day, only to be denied their
vote. You may not be enrolled right now, and not even know it. You can
check your enrolment status here.
With all that's at stake in this election, let's all have our say.
Forward this email to everyone you know, because once the election is
called it will be too late.

Part Two comes courtesy of any willing artists to make, paint, shoot, scribble, graff, collect, perform, install... ANYTHING along the theme of Looking for Democracy.

Drop my a line at mayhemrox@gmail.com if you are... deadline is end of the month.

Part Three is where I out myself and my political affiliations - trying to ensure that the Greens stay in the senate - coz this country still needs a parliamentary opposition - even if we get Howard out of office!

Art, Activism, Newness

2007-09-04T22:55:00.001+10:00

Mayhem has been seriously ensconsed in thesis land. My mind is currently somewhere between Bristol, Euston Road, TriBeCa and Darlinghurst in the mid 1970's, Rozelle in the 1990's and the lining of my nostrils.....

No don't ask any more - I sent off the 7th and 4th drafts of two chapters today.....

so - ahem I *ain't* seen any art - apart from "pimp my secs" on carolyn teo's myspace site..... (hee hee)

Even scragg had to opt out of her Sandon Point Auction Extravaganza on sat - so didn't get to see ANYFINK AT ALL

At such times of cultural lapse - it's lucky that the print media steps in - in a shock turnaround the SMH Spectrum DEVOTED AN ENTIRE FOUR PAGES TO VISUAL ART. Two pages were a biog feature on a melbourne artist... and two consisted of Frosty's state of the art commentary on great young stuff.... And it was a great piece and made me wish they'd put him on the payroll....

If anyone was inspired by frosty's plug for yours truly then welcome. Please ignore the byline about the 2SER version. Lucazoid and I WERE doing a verbal version of the blog - but our lives both got eaten by PhD's, and I went overseas for 6 months and he's about to do the same. but you should listen to monday overdrive anyway. It sounds NICE.

Usually I rant more better and more misspelt about more art. and usually I see art and rave about it EVERY WEEK. but my life is being eaten up by my PhD on postwar life drawing classes. But only for another 6 months - and I've been blogging on this site for over two years - so feel free to drop back any time.

also THE DRAWING WIFE has just updated her pics of sketches and stitches - so click on 'wifey bits' on the right hand side....

ahem. to the News:

Trajectories of dissent opens tomorrow (wednesday) night at 6pm - at Mori Gallery.
There's more info about it in last weeks post - but it will provide an ideal opportunity t experience the great wall of APEC first hand - and see some serious anti kappo agitprop in the CBD. Head down to 168 Day Street - across from Darling Harbour

Marrickville COntemporary Art Prize opens thursday night at 6pm at 'At the Vanishin Point' - which is at the arse end of King Street Newtown - right down near St. Peters station almost. since Marrickville is the Local Government Area with the highest proportion of artists of any locale in Australia this *should* be good.

and Friday - Life will imitate ART - as ratbags prepare to do lots of out there stuff like exercising democratic right to protest - or walk around in the CBD with balloons, funny hats or - even placquards.

Mayhem's bet is on the 11am peace party in Hyde Park - but what looks even more fun is the "ghost Dance" which is planned for 5-11pm also in Hyde park.

apparently peeps are going to dress up in whacky caspar clobber and whoosh around holding seances..... or something like that.

Art being the exercise of extreme sports genre slides - of activities arbirarily endowed with the cultural mystique of critical contestation or just plain old sublime beauty and wonder - should ideally provide a great umbrella for testing the waters of envelope pushing during the sppectacular security crackdown that is the APEC circus.

oh, and did I mention the fart lighting competition being held at Tamarama? someone thought it might be a good riposte to the sealing off of Festival of the winds....

I'm SORRY Lauren!!!!!

2007-08-27T23:09:00.000+10:00

starella with schappylle scragg's nanna at the Sham bowling club.

Mayhem was horribly remiss and failed to publicise the really amazing important things that happened last week

but there were so many everyone would have been too busy attending them all to read up about what they missed eh? between primavera, lempriere and EVERYTHING else...

I did go and see some art: and adored the HOURS exhibition: especially the freaky colombian video, and revisiting Sastre made me happy and Echaverra made me cry again, and a pity the sound was shit in the video room near the stairs and Apprently I fisted the soft sculptures a bit too deeply and upset the attendants, and lucky the tit and anus dress was behind glass or who knows what would have happened and "Socialism o Muerte" is BRILLIANT and THIS IS THE LAST WEEK SO GO AND SEE IT.

but I did wanna give a plug for the Trajectories of dissent extravanganza, and the Sandon Point Stripperama - and I owe it to my inner Scragg to promote imminent appearances of Schappylle....

OK: so please note the following:

On Wednesday 29th the second show for Trajectories of Dissent: the official APEC agitprop art attack is opening and its being joined by the launch of the FLARE in the void Reader to Sydney's APEC. This is where we'll have most of our artists reponses and is at:

Little Fish Gallery, 22 Enmore Road, Enmore (in front of Black Rose Bookshop)
I figure most of you will be able to find this one. Its just opposite Oporto's.

if you hate newtown or wanna do 2 shows in one night then I'd strongly recommend ernest extravanganza opening at firstdraft on the same night....

THIS SATURDAY Schappylle is hosting an art auction to save Sandon Point. she'll be banging the gong to keep sartors mitts off the gong, and laying whatever she can under the hammer, while getting hammered. It's at the Mori gallery from 3pm on Saturday September 1st. The exhibition will celebrate the history of the protest at Sandon Point.

Funds raised will go towards the legal challenge,being mounted by Jill Walker, a Sandon Point local,against the planning decisions approved by Minister Sartor. There will be finger food, drinks, entertainment, as well as raffles and lucky door prizes.

The following Wednesday 5th of September, we be the big Trajectories of dissent blast off. This opening is extra special because we will be joined by guests from the Asia Pacific Research Network who will bring with them their stories and experiences of working (and dissenting) in the Asia Pacific Region. This is at;

Mori Gallery, 168 Day Street, Sydney ( towards Darling Harbour from Town Hall Station, Day Street is the very bottom cross street between Bathurst and Liverpool Streets. Closer to China Town, Day Street is the one that starts in front of the Entertainment Centre, from which its a few blocks towards the CBD)

Schappylle Scragg is also going to curate her own show Looking for democracy: It's gonna be in october, and it's gonna be fun. for more info email:mayhemrox@gmail.com

dissent, dissonance, discord

2007-08-21T16:13:00.000+10:00

I wish I had more time.

I'd love to write a long meaty rant about the delights of the Howard Arkley show up in Brisbane over the weekend.

Mayhem has long been a big fan of dayglo - but the shimmering intensities of Arkley's scintillating surfaces - moving me bodily in and out of sheer suburban horror - gripping me and my punk mate by the eyeballs was a stomach churning swoonarama delight.....

there's nothing quite like the joys of a live canvas hovering in front of you, burning out yer retinas.

so i'm a bit cheesed that the tome has confined me indoors for this week. Not only will i be refraining from a bit of ladychasing at the slyfox - i'll also be missing the COFA annual student wimmins art show - which opens tonight.

it's called 'dissonance' coz the delightful wenches of paddington have a feisty traidition of realising the problematic contingency of gender on which they are both marginalised and indeed mobilise as critical cultural agents.

IN other words - being a feminist doesn't mean creating a girlie art club or being transphobic - but assembling work that can engender new spaces of problematising, playing and trasnforming practices, identities and subjectivities marginalised as 'female'.

If you don't believe me then go check out the show yerself. Legendary luminary and occasional pornstar 'wife' is giving the opening speech tonight at 6pm. got along to Kudos Gallery - napier street paddington - right next to the Greek Orthodox church. don't forget your straws.

Meanwhile on the same night down the road at DarlingitHurts, Liverpool Street gallery is shocking it's regular fans of drip and dollar, by hosting a series of post pop performances by the romanian rebel, aida tomescue. Called "ceaucescu took my baby" Tomescue's latest show involves a radical departure from her usual two dimensional format as she has assembled a series of found objects and instaled them in the gallery wiht lashings of primary coloured acrylic paint, and text in both romanian and english. Tomescues work involves a poignant references to the Azaria Chamberlain disappearance, with the tragic fate or romanian children under the Ceaucescu dictatorship, and the current plight of central australian aboriginal communities. a Liverpool street press release states that the artist will actually undertake a durational piece confining herself to a corner of the gallery, chained to a live dingo, in homage to Joseph Beuyss.

This should provide a feisty contrast to the series of 'important works' by Gordon Bennett showing at 'the space that will be the sherman foundation for contemporary art - but is still a gallery so we should enjoy it eh'. depsite the show not opening until september, Bennet has already been lampooned by the SMH's esteemed critic for being too strident - and this is even before the show of muted monochromatic oil on canvas studies of immense immeasurable surfaces, has even bared itself to the patronizing gaze of art world luminaries and hangers on, acompanied by quality refreshments and the last chance to wear a black skivvy in 2007.

In the more immediate present, Don't Look gallery is hosting 'the sound of Failure' this saturday at the don't look gallery in dulwich hill (from 11am-5pm), and at Petersham Bowling Club - where from 6pm the titans of the time based process oriented 4D media will slug it out under the witty commentary of schappylle scragg

Unheimlich

2007-08-09T21:51:00.000+10:00

to put the following review in some reflexive perspective I'll admit that i'm feeling just a lttle mentally fragile.

OK more than usual.

My major form of stress management consists in reading obscure bits from "the Logic of Sense" and then posting random shit on various people's myspaces – of which the absolute highlight has to be ‘the motel sisters’ – well – my favourite bit is the britney Spears song – and recently I found myself singing along to ‘toxic love’ thinking of evil vicious ex-girlfriends and then I started reciting bits of the logic of sense about alcoholism splitting the eidetic into a permanent fissure from the present……

And then I thought – shit I really need to see some art…..

So scrambled out away from the house and away from the computer and found myself at mop gallery looking at Kathy cavaliere’s ‘home’ installation… which was nothing like my home at all.

In fact I walked straight past it – and found myself in a curtained room with a video that looked like two little girls sitting on the end of a bed and one was stroking the other’s hair softly and tenderly – and the she started smakcking it instead – and it turned out to be her dolly – and I had horrible horrible sinking feelings about nasty little girls and the games they play and this didn’t resolve any of my seething mysogony so I turned away….

And looked briefely at the weird threadlike extruded organ bits…. And then I saw the boarded up wall of cardboard boxes. And the milk crate, which I wanted to kick aside, and spare coins in a cup….

I scanned the surface of the cardboard which was kind of flimsy and kind of solid and then I saw a hole and of course I went up to the hole and bent over and peered through the hole which looked like it had been made with a biro.

And what I peered into was a room – a large dark room – with a central object illuminated…. What was illuminated? glowings orbs of light…..arranged..in a steel frame shopping cart.

Cathy said she’d taken the possessions, the nothing, the deadening detritus of those deemed worthless by their shifting shiftless status, the nutters, the beggars, those ‘outside’ propriety, property… taken their mark of groundlessness – the bags, only bages, and filled them with light.

There was and is an incredible majesty in the simplicity. Delightful alchemy of matter… reminding me of the architect Louis Kahn – who worked on the principle that all beings were made of light and moved to the light and that light was the basis of human techtonics, of shelter…..

So taking the chattels of the shelterless, and filling them with light – makes the absurd bundles into a delightful poetry.

Hell.. and it looked good too. Backlit chiaoscuro elegance. Diamonds of darkness between the glowing plastic orbs…. Art is the alchemy of matter, where plastic becomes light, grey becomes a multiplicity, of silvers, slates, greens, our eyes adjust and our minds can imagine things as moving into something else…

That was the nice bit.

The scary bit was visiting a friends studio to look at a work so I would write a catalgue essay – which is partly being a gun for hire – but also a labour of love and so I went and saw this painting and something about the amber sworls caught in my left eye, and brought a lump to my chest and I started to cry.

Now I’ve read, and I own, and I love “Pictures and Tears” by James Elkins – but nothing prepared me for this. I’ve been close. I’ve had tears in my eyes at rothgo – had strange shudderings in front of Van Gogh, wet my pants over Monet, Bacon, Pollock etc….. But something about this work – induced my eyes to stream tears… I repressed a wail and handed my friend a tube of Russian Carmine……

But words are failing me at present.

Between Schappylle Scragg and Jacques Derrida

2007-08-01T16:42:00.000+10:00

Oohhh this is going to be a bit of an angst fest so I apologise in advance.

Readers familiar with my personal - aka suicide blog will know I ain't been having an easy time of late - which may explain the lack of activity on this blog.

I've found the life of mayhem a bit hard to handle lately -and have only survived by escaping into schapppylle's world. Part of me thinks i should forget about being me and just become her forever...... but maybe she'd be less funny if she was permanent.

Skanky Jane seems to keep me happily with feet in scragglands and the culturati blogosphere - so - thank yee kindly....

Online worlds are a funny thing - blogs seem to be getting a bit tired, and apparently myspace is already 'so last year' and the latest thing is FACEBOOK.

i've been invited to join facebook a few times - coz it seems perfectly matched to the thirty something-creative class networking fiends like moi - but then i heard one story about someone with a surname of "Gay" being refused admission - and there's the suual trans/intersex/phobia stuff - but the scariest thing is that it seems to be less amenable to avataritis - ie maintaining a cover identity that is separate from one's realworld identity - coz you can be found and traced and commented on more easily....

Me - i like the gap between mayhem, scragg and the other people I am offline....

anway - the other angst - is me wondering what and how I should use this blog - and yeah - reader feedback (all 3 of you) would be welcome.

i'm not doing the radio show - coz i'm in PhD panic mode.... (explains the need for constant time wasting online)

And i'm unsure if this should remain as merely a postings site - when ACME and other email distributions and even the artlife do that....

and I seem to be fusing long ranty essays wiht bits of art in them - into my 'suicide blog'... and sparing other words for the tome in progress.....

Part of me things I should still force myself to get out and write decent thoughtful reviews of emerging artists especially - coz critical feedback and writing on the visual arts is really thin on the ground - but then I wonder 'who reads this anyway' - and I wonder when I'll get time to see all the show sI want to - in a way that can do them justice... and how often

so if any one has any suggestions or feedback - lemme kno....

aside from angsting and arsing about on myspace i've been reading and attending seminars and stuff - an I'll write something about derrida and hospitality on my personal blog - but it's pretty desperate times when the only reality you can cope wiht is either derrida or schappylle scragg....

I went to the Orlan talk at AGNES
i'm going to the Liz Grosz talk at Usyd Architecture
and I'm going to the Kathy Cavaliere show at MOP

Reviews are on their way

Always Something there to Remind Me....

2007-07-20T16:02:00.000+10:00

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.....

It's About a GAP

2007-07-12T15:33:00.000+10:00

Aporia is one of those big philosophical words that gets bandied about a bit.

Literally it means GAP - a blank space between stuff. In relation to the big stuff of the world (the grand scheme of creativity and 'the sublime' TM) it's meant to evoke the gap between experience and explanation.

I make it sound so simple.

it's something I experience every friggin day right now. Writing is hell. even for a florid individual like mayhem.

At the moment I've been shutting myself away from art openings, from art, from immersion and experience in order to let myself sink into the gap - and hopefully slide across it into some state of articulated intelligence.

I DID go to the cereal promotor show last week - but strayed away from letting my feelings and joy of the show crystallize into words - ARTSWIPE has done a damn fine review instead.

I wandered past ATVP is it getting hotter in here and gazed wistfully at the video of artists on a ferry and thought of the harbour, and thought of the MCA and thought of THE HOURS, and quite intensely wished I could get down there to see the ECHAVERRA video "bocas de ceniza" which I RAVED about last year and is up there with the ten best things I've ever seen in my entire life for sheer heart-breaking brilliance.

But i haven't been down to see it - coz I'm trying to write a chapter and only interrupt my life for little political demos, little sexual demos, food, conversation, meditation, other essential things like dressing up and dancing...

Enough about me. each time I write - or try to write I slide into a scary gap where nothing makes snese and I can barely string a text message together. this gap - is aporia - and I'm slowly working up to a catalogue essay about paint/bodily extension/aporia and the shudder of contagion and possibility. My mouth waters thinking about it....

In the meantime - back in the ghetto it's all going off!

I've been intrigued by the use of 'underground' lately. My neighbour organised and 'underground' club night on the weekend - which all the neighbours attended. It was in some schwanky place in the CBD - which was so intensely and randomly different to anything I'd experienced that I was really quite amazed at this new culture that I was coming across. but was it underground?

Feeling overwhelmed at my sheltered little barrio life, I headed off back to the ghetto to hear some band with a rather kinky and frightening name and saw a bunch of naked people wearing mutant pig masks thrash around while someone set fire to their pubes.OK more accurately - I glimpsed bits of them - while chatting to lotsa people I ain't seen for ages - and feeling relieved to not be the most outrageously dressed person there. Is this underground? the people I knew weren't trying to be particularly posey and transgressive and we chatted about heartbreak, yoga, firends, family etc. - and mad projects like animating fake foetuses and performances involving shit and painting genitalia.... and it reminded me of that Raymond Williams classic essay, Culture is Ordinary.

Culture is part of the activities that people do as part of their everyday lives, that is a response to and a way of linking ourselves with the world around us. I like when hanging with the muso friends how they'll be strumming or plucking or blowing into something while watching TV or eating dinner - and me - I've always got to have my hands on something - drawing, scribbling, making, folding....

Culture is the stuff that bridges the unmentionable unspeakable gaps between ourselves and the world, between our bodies and other bodies - between experience and understanding.... and how bloody preachy am I today? I just don't seperate 'underground' culture from 'underground' living - and I don't like the thought of either culture or life being 'underground'. I guess my life is a world away form supermarkets, chainstores, consumer culture, gourmet beige product land... and culture is something I create rather than consume, but can't it actually be that way for EVERYONE?

and why would people go out and consume something they don't feel a part of?

that's my opening segue for the performance space's 'underground' fest this weekend: i've promoted it coz I recognise the names of the 'artists' and as lots of them hang doing collaborative stuff in the backyard or each other's loungerooms - I reckon it sounds like a *treat*.

Meanwhile SLOT has an interesting display of Clare Martins detourning "blockbuster of 20th century art" - aka miniature replicas on display in the window on botany road alexandria.

and NEXT Wednesday I'm even going to miss my yoga class to go the the opening of:
Distance Yourself at DON'T LOOK Experimental New Media Gallery
419 New Canterbury Rd (Near Marrickville Rd), Dulwich Hill

WHO: 16 international artists:
Amber Phelps Bondaroff, Erin Bosenberg, Joy-Loi Chepkoech, Andrew
Fisher, Nikolai Gauer, Amanda Griffith, Stefan Hancherow, Bonita
Hatcher, Alana Hunt, Ryan Ling, Annie Macmillan, Gavin Maitland,
Kristy O'Leary, Shaun O'Reilly, Audrey Wang and Anna Williams.

WHEN: Opening: July 18, 6pm, Exhibition: Jul 19-28

CONTACT: Greg Shapley - Ph: 0401 152 434
EMAIL: dontlookgallery@gmail.com
WEB: myspace.com/dontlookgallery
______________________________________________

Underbelly: public arts lab
100 Sydney artists and performers collaborating, creating and evolving over 10 days
3rd - 12th July, 2.00pm – 10.00pm FREE!

Underbelly: festival
Indoor winter music & arts festival with projection, DJs, VJs, performance, bars and cafes on Saturday 14th July, 12 noon - 11pm Tickets: $17/$25 pre-sale available thru Moshtix www.moshtix.com.au; $20/30 at the door.

CarriageWorks: 245 Wilson Street , Eveleigh

Underbelly: public arts lab and festival at CarrriageWorks from July 3-14 will bring over 100 of Sydney ’s fringe artists together for a ten-day public-access artist residency, finishing with a one day music and arts festival on Saturday July 14.

A social and artistic experiment of sorts, the Underbelly Public Arts Lab is about creating a space for Sydney artists to collaborate, exchange, rehearse and cross-pollinate in a communal environment, whilst inviting the public to witness and engage in this process first hand. From July 3 - 12 the lab will be open free between 2 – 10pm to watch and interact with works evolving daily.

On Saturday July 14, the Underbelly Festival will transform CarriageWorks into a massive indoor music and arts festival, showcasing an unpredictable collection of performance, music, digital media and art installation. As well as featuring performances and works produced during the ten-day lab, there will also be talks panels, DJ’s, VJs, live music, bars and cafes.

Artists include: Aural Adventures, Entropic, Kate Smith & Drew Fairley, Lynda Roberts & Ceri Hann, Meem, Miss Death & Jay Katz, Pig Island, Pixel Vision, Pork, post, Power Media Industries, Reef Knot, Stephanie Carrick & Sumugan Sivanesan, Tesseract, Tetronomicon, The Synaesthesia Collective, The Vespertine Project, Token Imagination, Trevor Brown (The Distillery) and more TBA!

Greenhouse Daze

2007-07-03T20:15:00.000+10:00

Mayhem apologises for the lack or recent art updates or reviews.i've been blithering about art on my other blog and writing a PhD and even doing some ART.

In an effort to promote things that I'm NOT exhibiting in or performing at and are not associated with or held at Mori Gallery, I'll hereby offer up the following art delicacies:

Briefly for your diary:

Tuesday - UTS Gallery - the trouble with the weather
Wednesday - don't Look gallery - Dulwich Hill DayZZZe
Saturday - - at the vanishing point - Is it getting hotter in here? forum

(PS: click on titles above for directions & opening hours...)

and now for the extended rants:

tomorrow night Dulwich Hill DayZZZe is going to open - but you can pop in an visit the artist ANYTIME over the next few weeks as he does an extended sit in at the gallery.

Matt Rochford (AKA 'Rochy' from the current season of 'Nerds FC')
needs somewhere to live for a couple of weeks. I've offered him the
gallery window. He will, of course, be furnishing it to his liking;
installing his bed, TV, the odd pot plant or two and anything else he
can fit into this very modest living area.

The downside to this arrangement is that he will be on constant
display. He won't be able to scratch his butt without the whole street
seeing. Further, seeing he's getting this space rent free, Matt will
become my circus animal, my freak show. At least eight hours a day a
commentator will provide thrilling updates on Matt's every move. Every
itch, every scratch will be analysed and replayed in slo-mo for the
public's edification.

I will also expect Matt to play to the camera and the transient
audience. He will put on little performances to get the attention that
he craves. He will try his best to communicate to the passing traffic
with hand gestures and scribbled signs. Matt will also have
houseguests. Come join the show, have a chat to Matt on his
laissez-faire talk show. Have your 15 minutes of fame in Don't Look's
front window.

Join us for Matt's house warming on July 4. American Independence Day
will mark the end of Matt's independence for the next couple of weeks.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT GREG SHAPLEY ON 0401 152 434 OR
EMAIL dontlookgallery@gmail.com

If the hothouse theme gets you warm then you'll LOVE the show opening tonight at UTS gallery...

The Trouble with the Weather: a southern response hass got an allstar line up of amazing artists and should offer a thoughtful, interesting engagement with the phenomenon of climate change.... as it is happening.....

Participating artists:

Isabel Aranda (Chile), Peter Bennetts (Aus), Vera Bighetti (Brazil), Elizabeth Day (Aus), David Haines (Aus) & Joyce Hinterding (Aus), Niki Hastings-McFall (NZ, Samoa), Jonathan Jones (Aus) & Jim Vivieaere (NZ/Cook Islands), Zina Kaye (Aus), Dani Marti (Aus), Maria Miranda (Aus) & Norie Neumark (Aus), Jason Nelson (Aus), Regina Pinto (Brazil), Janine Randerson (NZ),

Te Vaka (Tuvalu, Tokelau, Samoa), John Tonkin (Aus) and H J Wedge (Aus)

In order to match their current amazing show,
Is It Getting Hotter In Here? - which runs till Juy 15,

At The Vanishing Point – Contemporary Art presents a forum outlining the work of artists concerned with issues pertaining to climate change: this saturday from 3-5pm

the show features another impressive line up of local talent, such as Jenny Brown, Anna Chase, Amanda Hills, Thomas Hungerford, Mitra Jovanovic, Daniel Kojta, Tom Loveday, Tony Nolan, Adam North, Masaaki Ohno, Brendan Penzer and Pickafight Books

Temperatures Rising:Art and Climate Change
will;

*be introduced by special guest keynote speaker;

Dr. John Kaye, Greens MLC in the NSW Parliament

*illustrate examples of artistic projects that are happening globally.

*introduce networks and forums for artists to engage in.

*present projects and practices of the exhibition artists and other local artists that engage with climate change issues.

*provide a platform for an ensuing discussion and debate.

RSVP by Friday 6thJuly. (02) 9519 2340

Country AND Western Mayhem

2007-06-19T18:40:00.000+10:00

Mayhem don't actually know much about the burbs - migrating swiftly from the deep north (and I don't mean Lismore) to Newtown about 18 years ago (tho I did live in randwick for about a year - *shudder*).

So I'm an ex-country gal at heart, but still ain't that parochial. In my globe trotting travels over the summer/err winter or whatever it was- the stuff about Sydney that struck me as dynamic and new and fascinating - all - OK - not all - but LOTS of it - came from artists connected with Western Sydney and UWS - either as ex-students or part time staff - or residents, or whatever.

Western Sydney is not some scary region beyond the red travelpass zone - but is actually a central part of the Ozzie art world and the stuff that makes sinney inneresting. UWS graduate form an integral part of some of the amazing projects and collectives such as the squatspace collective, the Wildboys, Lempriere Winner Ben Denham, various members of Loose Projects, plus At the Vanishing Point and Don't Look galleries. and that's just off the top of my head..

Inspired by The artife's focus on suburbia as a site of meaning - I've decided to take the bull by the horns and jump on the Sari Kivinen Serial Promotion bandwagon -and start blabbing about how great western sydney art and culture is and how much greater it could be if it is able to keep and expand a decent university art school.

Ben Denham's current work has taken DRAWING to such astonishing levels that the guy deserves a bloody logie. and he's not from COFA or NAS but UWS. the SMH and other press trumpeters of 'back to basics' view of drawing as ye olde necrophilia seem to overlook that it's an incredibly dynamic and challenging practice.

Ben has written a great and reflexive account of his art education at UWS - and I reccommend it as a critical source of consideration of what art education can be and why it's so important.

so: in this spirit - I'm going to plug the Serial Promotion show at Mori (yes, again, call it nepotism but why isn't patron of contemporary art Gene Sherman taking this stuff on?). Organised by Sari Kivinen. opening is July 4th and their looking for contributions. for more info click here

Serial Promotion is not just about 'saving UWS' but is a demonstration of the interdependency and necessity of a VARIETY OF ART SCHOOLS IN SYDNEY. Having at least 4 different art schools with distinct pedagogical cultures produces a variety of graduates that CAN and DO depend on the diversity of our education and influences to feed off and stimulate each other's practice.

Sari and Mayhem are part of a BROAD ALLIANCE of artists, community groups, galleries, academics, researchers and others out to prove that WE CAN Save Arts Education in Western Sydney!!!

We have an email list, and are having meetings and are going to start a big media lobbying campaign... SOON! It's big, and it's getting bigger. Even Schappylle Scragg is getting involved

And we want yer support and interest and input. so drop a comment on this blog - or email: autonomouspromoter@yahoo.com.au

suburban mayhem

2007-06-14T02:47:00.000+10:00

I saw the film during my flight back home and I was SO INSPIRED. I really just want to BE Katrina!!!! (finally a brunette evil twin to scraggg)

but I digress. This week has had some delightful synchronicities.

Over the sodden weekend as I trudged into the rain in my mukmuks and trakkie dakkies and hoodie and brolly and snapped the pic that appears on my other blog..... I had 2 experiences: one good and one bad.

the good one involved wandering into the well arranged splash of colour that is at the vanishing point.

To be brutally honest i wasn't crazy about everything. Peter Mcguinness's brightly coloured tiled collaged canvases were attractive, punchy but a bit too heavy on ideas and lite on slow ponderous work and the collages on paper by the trio of Louise Brissenden, Mitra Jovanovic and Simona Jovanovic seemed a little too... art school?

but - o but the Springtime of Salad Days presented a nice combo of eclectic works - I loved the soft sculptures and the wall piece worked in REALLY well with Mccguinness's canvases and I adored the puppet theatre and it paved the way nicely for Naomi Olivers's ghost train video in the back room.......

and hell - here is a gallery in south spewtown showing a canny combo of all works (paintings), sculptures, installation AND a video piece in a manner that alllows each to breathe and they are fun and engaging and not trite or commercial and what a bloody miracle that is! hooray!

the bad experience involved a desperate rainy day lashing out on the weekend SMH. After ditching the 60% of retail based advertorial for wageslavery, planetfukking mobiles, compulsory gambling (investment) and property speculation - my eye spied aida tomescue on the cover of the good weekend.

'inside the studio of 61 australian painters' promised the cover! hooray! i thought. but no. hell no, writing about art IS too much for the herald - and they had to confine themselves for a gushy advertorial for johnny mac's latest arty mates coffee table book. after a few cliched quotes from some nice ACGA stalwarts (the storrier, the shead, insert other broad midriffed genuine aussie bloke - coz we don't wanna think artists are sheilas or poofs do we?) well the poor little SMH scribe decided that johnny mac's 'studio' would be more interesting than any of the artists....

was she perchance scared of getting paint on her sass & bides if she ventured into a real artists studio? or even if she put words to the weird drippy stuff that didn't come off someone elses cliched pres release? I don't want to strictly bash the Mcdonald - coz to a certain extent I'd like to believe we share a love for the same thing - nice well placed, serious bits of colour and gesture on a well mounted bit of flat. and most of the artists in the tome - are genuinely interesting and engaging and accessible individuals with work that is also interesting, engaging and accessible....

which is why mayhem spits blood and has head rolling fire breathing fits when writers, journos, publications, academics, who bloody ever - do things, publish things, say things, divert things in such a way that it makes looking at painting, or looking at art seem HARD. It's not. It's an odd thing to do, an unsettling thing, but it's not HARD or yuk or awfully difficult or mysterious. art appreciation involves looking and letting ideas and associations form in the minds eye as they bod's eye does the staring. or otherwise.

So it was a damn delight to see aunty roll over and give some air space to THE ARTLIFE on tuesday night. and it was damn nice of THE ARTLIFE to invite various rifraf to watch the show on a big screen. (mayhem doesn't actually own a telly.... I sit around the loungeroom watching paintings.... seriously!)

the show was the official 'outting' of artlife doyen andrew frost - in the frame on the box, walking, talking, revealing his 'personal' view of art. Actually it was more than that. As the latest ARTLIFE blogpostings testify - it was a very conscious attempt at a populist approach to ART for a general STRINE audience.

ohh god such moments make me cringe for the days when aunty could send up provincial crass middle ozztrayyanism in 'the channel nine show' instead of having to reduce arts coverage to reality TV or game shows. day by day the ABC is having to dumb itself down into a broadcast version of that scary canberra holden/mower/clothesline museum they have on that island in the lake. this means that my chances of enticing my friend at the BBC (who works full time researching mediaevel campanellas for yet another earnest british musicology documentary) onto these sunny shores are getting slimmer and slimmer. this then means I spend more time on gaydar and less on this blog. Everyone suffers.

I digress.

the bits I really liked about the ARTLIFE on telly were seeing lots of brick veneer. I liked frosty's self deprecating humour - especially with the sofa paintings pulling a joke about some generalisation about 'australian art' (TM). and I REALLY liked the repeated and reflexive links between different experiences of how suburbia is represented (seeing arkley's paintings in venice - then hearing about his suicide) and then personal little asides and reflections.

the nearest I've ever been to suburbia is probably hanging out in Paris banleiu - which I was reminded of in Rachel Scott's video pieces - the scene of her dad walking through her studio reminded me so much of painting for my last show (about tasmania) in the garage/car workshop/cellar of my former inlaws in paris.(also made me realise - TV is a GREAT medium for critically representing/engaging with video/performance time based art innit?)

and it made me realise that suburbia ain't strine at all - it's an international condition of expanded affluent anomie - like cheese singles - but something that only australians try to claim as a national identity.Scott's lovely piece - miming to the pussy cat dolls and then stopping, going .... err. shit, no.... was wonderful- and reminded me of the delightfully tragic possibilities of always trying to be someone/somewhere/sometime that we're not.

I think TAL has done a nice little detourning movement - mobilising the 'aussie-ness' (TM) of suburbia - taking a neighbours view of art - in order to open up 'the art program' as a nice space for a bit of De Certeauian musing.. on the everyday on the minutae of what surrounds us as being a meaningful site for questioning. I thought it was elegant and impressive and a nice way of shifting an 'art program' through the cracks of what TV should be in the same way that ART (tm) also can and does slip through funny little spaces between an autonomous sphere of sanctioned cutlural performance and something else a little more unsettling. ONYAS

so, suburbia, dreaming spaces of postwar nostalgia. bake-a-lite and t-bone steaks. vinyl records, brown beer bottles and brown knitted cardigans. Nick strike has deconstructed grandad fixtures into something exquisitely postduchampian at first draft and made suburbian fragments into something wonderfully odd.

'drunk in the sunken cinema' was meant to be a complete projection machine - but has instead evolved into a discretely sensitive situation of some rather strange possibilities in space and time. Strike has walked the line between using found objects as found objects and transforming thin them into something else. Brown cardigan becomes frecnh knit cord passing through a brown bottle, transorming into old electric cord - a chain link of associations and suggestions that are infintiely intimately subtle and delightful.

I hope my friend simon sees this. how can mad mayhem screeds convey subtle beauty? Remember Mary kelly's 'post partum project'? the stained nappies? Strike has reperformed these - not with an infantile anus and ideological dissasociative bludgeoning but with a much stranger machine based on a pressing vinyl turntable coffee squelching processing automatic painting delight. they are not abject or inviteng- but very very inviting - we get drawn in - like arm of a turntable.... and then there's the weird hole at the centre winking out against the blobs. It'sn john cage meets mary kelly meets beuyss. only better. the tableau of framed 'nine records of an afterimage' have an incredible humility - they just are, and encompass a delirious tribute to the world's finest drug.... coffee.

Overall mayhem enjoyed first draft a lot. Teo Treloars fine weird post-war pop sketches on nice fragmented ink stained paper remannts reminded me of my favourite ever belgian 'bande desssine' but that's another story... and out the back... conductors 'template' made me very ver glad to be alive.

Conductor - a collaboration of drawing done wiht a pick-up: drawing as choreography, as accoustics, as composition as divine live synaesthesia made me so damn glad to be back in sydney right now that I could shout....

HOORAY!!!!! this is as good as anything anywhere and it's happening here1

they are actually doing a performance of the drawing this saturday the 16th june from 4pm. that's at first draft, chalmers street surry hills.

go. if you can. and don't whinge about the lack of art in this silly town. just the lack of decent media coverage.

Back in Orange

2007-06-04T14:07:00.000+10:00

I've been back for a week and I love it.

I've been posting long jetlag ridden rants about paint and stuff on my other blog which i used to call my suicide blog last year coz I was so depressed.

I'm not depressed - so readers, relax and enjoy the screeds.

Havne't got the motivation to declare the word about sinney art seen

Jo frosts bright balmain made me smile, Anton Pulvirenti's inredible colleciton of suitcase pictorial fragments made me smile a lot- - and also ponder.......

yep. they are really good.

anne kay's intimate installation at loose also made me smile. It was a very small viewing booth - ie a telly wiht a hood - for a video of crinkled plastic unfurling - whihc reminded me of long myopic hours spent on my bed alone, glasses off, crinkling up splastic and watching it unfurl. (this was before I bought the wonderwand adaptor)

I'm pissed at missing Melissa Laing's airline hostess performance at china hieghts on friday night.

Melissa's work is all about the exploration of international travel and contemporary artists - so it's a bit fucked that my jetlag prevented me from getting out and seeing her work.

bugger!

Back Under Wearing

2007-05-24T04:47:00.000+10:00

Dear All -

heading in to town åpresently so heres some innerestin news to get me in the syndey mood

in brief: artspace has a publiciyt opening this thursday 24th may and LOOSE has its closing opening NEXT WEDNESDAY 30th may. Details follow

Stay tuned for extesnive review of fun finnish art

x

Gallery Projects
Upcoming

25 May - 23 June 2007
Opening Thursday 24 May 6pm

Publicity
BRIDGET CURRIE, ASTRA HOWARD, LUCAS IHLEIN, ASH KEATING, MATTHEW TUMBERS
Curator: Reuben Keehan

In its original usage during the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere, the term 'publicity' described a general public-ness, a state of being public - publicly known, publicly owned or publicly available. Only later, with the development of reproductive technologies and systems of mass dissemination, did it come to refer to the mechanisms of marketing and promotion, and to denote strategies for the use of such media for the formation and communication of identity. With this etymology in mind, Artspace presents the work of five artists whose practices traverse performance, installation, video, archiving and action research to explore the role that art, considered as creative and aesthetic experience, can play in the construction of a 'public'. It seeks to raise questions of agency and autonomy in a culture of media saturation, and to posit the studio and the gallery not as hermetic spaces but as discursive fields, sites of social transaction, public spaces that are, as with the public itself, constantly under negotiation.

Loose ends

a closing exhibition of Loose folk & friends

Mark Titmarsh
Justin Trendall
Anne Kay
Ian Haig
Josie Cavallaro
David Haines
Vicky Browne
Alex Gawronski
Shane Haseman
Stephen Birch
Philipa Veitch
Jane Polkinghorne
Paul Borderi
Trevor Fry
Carla Cescon
Kevin Sheehan
Lisa Andrew
Sarah Goffman
Lisa Kelly
John Borley
Bronia Iwanczak
Luke Strevens
Lisa Jones
Vanila Netto
Liz Day

join us for a drink & last hurrah!

wednesday 30th may 6-8pm

continues to 16th june

Loose projects

level 2
168 Day St
Darling Harbour, Sydney

gallery hours.
thursday and friday 12-5pm
saturday 1-6pm

0417 024 957
info@looseprojects.net

http://www.looseprojects.net

Sure, Ditch!

2007-05-06T06:10:00.000+10:00

For Ruark and Anna

A prochay. A prochay. Laah shahnts duh vot rah vee. Ven-ay ven-ay. Jes wee-lah. La mis air. Say fin-ea. Jes wee-la. No sool mon. Juh voos am-port la poor-toon. May lah g’lwaah voo cher-shay do trav-ey. Juh voos on ah port. Kell trav-eye. Le plu bo. Le plu no bluh. Pour la plu gron g’lwaah der vot-tra fameal. Por la plu gron g’lwahh du la pat-tree. Duh la nais-sion. Voos allay con stweer v’wah-chur door-toe-m-beel. Poo-joe.

There are 2 Sydney artists with stuff happening this week – and I have a fantasy tht one of them reads out to the other a bit of writing I saw in a London gallery recently.

That master of the type face and dulcet tone Ruark Lewis, has covered slot gallery with screeds of well constructed wordy bits.

Banalities for the Perfect House
until 2 June 2007
http://www.lenscap.com.au/v/ruark/

Ruark Lewis has transformed the façade of SLOT by employing a text intervention that masks the building from eave to footpath with what he is calling 'a people's poem'. His second major public artwork, since "Relay" for Homebush's Olympic Park, Ruark's latest "Banalities" engage the surge of commuter traffic down Botany Road and the local neighbourhood of Redfern.

SLOT - at 38 Botany Road, Alexandria NSW 2015

In my fantasy he reads out the bit of a Liam Gillick drawing above to frogophone Anna belhalfaoui – whose show, "Let's Face the Borders" opens at Mori gallery on wednesday 9th May

Coz I get so much funstuff in my email inbox from the galleries I like and respect its easy to forget how small, parochial and frankly dire the Sydney art world can be. Lately I’ve been near a landline so had a few chinwags with art school friends who’ve been a bit gloomy about the dearth of decent drip in the galleries lately. A few weeks earlier I came across Johnny Mac’s review of the British Jerwood Drawing prize show which was held at NAS – and it made me want to cast out my eyes with sheer disgust and depression….

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. That I believe that art is not the same as sport, and just because the press in this country has gone down the toilet, writing art reviews like partisan football commentary is still not ON. I don’t gamble, I don’t’ give a fuck who wins the cricket or the league, or whatever else, and I don’t barrack for new vs old media or COFA versus NAS. I thing there needs to be more art and less sport, and more education, discussion, writing and research on art that goes beyond some footy fan mentality. Is it really so Unaustralian to want just one little area of life to be complex, confusing, ambiguous and strange? Huh?

After a few weeks of chewing up my passport, coughing up phlegm and chocking on my bile, I ventured out into the sunny streets of shoreditch to check out the British Drawing Revival for myself.

I’ve normally only connected shoreditch with low scores in monopoly, but lately it’s the new hotbed in international creative capital – it’s more Williamsburg than Williamsburg, even and ART is right at the centre of it all – and they’ve even still got squats, warehouses and studios happening amidst the Olympian facelift mdf spree….

A radical art collective called The London Particular did a great photo essay in Greenpepper mag, called ; Shoreditch; from shit to gold, exploring the paradox of the sudden rise to megabuck mediocrity of the areas historically marginalised activities – and, like Williamsburg, or Redfern, it’s undergoing bizarre and breathtaking change…..

Now my recently learned opinion is that The great British Drawing™ revival appears to be a product of most of the art schools being incorporated into Universities, and being obliged to adopt ‘research’ based models of inquiry and activity. I think drawing has a particular history in the UK – with beig associated with all sorts of protestant identity values of moral probity, hard work, serious investigation and rigour and so it kind of makes sense in a daffy blighty kind of way that Drawing™ would be the cornerstone, the benchmark, the Key Perfomrance Indicator of all things rigorous, earnest, investigative and modern in the modern copratised hothouses of creative economy fodder; universitised art schools.

Hence there are lots and lots of new drawing initiatives, drawing research centres, drawing research publications, drawing research programs and drawing PhD’s happening all up and down blighty. This is great for my own research it would seem. Imaginatively and delightfully enough drawing has been largely metaphorised to include a lot of other activities and conceptual prospects, which is great – but meanwhile, as stated, university programs are actually cutting budgets for undergraduate teaching of actual drawing. So there is a funny contradiction between capital D Drawing™ and the nuts and bolts of drawing pedagogy. Ho hum standard university dilemma really – but the brits seem to do really well at vapid corporatised doublespeak – the British library shut early twice last week; once to set up an exhibition for tourist customers, then once to go on strike coz there ain’t enough staff, and the place is increasingly resembling an offshoot of the novotel hotel next door.

Anyway art education aside, there has been talk internationally of a bit of zeitgeist revival of Drawing™. It’s mean to be hot on the art market, and cool in the funky indi spaces. In blighty, it’s simply not English to not be into it, Prince Charles has opened a school for it, there is even a national campaign ‘the big draw’ designed for young and old.

London has two commercial galleries devoted to drawing: one being “the drawing gallery” which is located somewhere near cold comfort farm, and the other being “the drawing room”. The latter was on the northern edge of Shoreditch at some place called Brunswick wharf which looks like a scary pre-Olympics building site. I stood in some alley, in front of a locked gate, rang the buzzer and waited – then called them on my mobile . Eventually someone came and let me in to the studio complex – and up to the gallery. Inside – they had papered all the walls with 214 works on a4 paper – which were being auctioned off as a fundraiser for the space. From the outset the aesthetic was funky, artist run, edgy – a bit like Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn or even Tracey Clement’s curated fundraiser at Peloton last year…..

Lots and lots of different things on paper – ink, pencil, biro, cartooney things, abstract things, exquisite sculptural things, minimal things, expressive things, flouro things…

Then I saw the names

Lordy – this was not Kansas

Phyllida Barlow, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Rachel Goodyear, Polly Gould, Cornelia Parker, Grayson Perry, Paula Rego, John Stezaker, Antony Gormley…

It was like having walking into an edition of Frieze only I was looking at original little paper relics – not reproductions. So I allowed myself to be swamped with the aura of originality…..

Apparently all the great art punters had donated pieces to be auctioned off in a fundraiser for the space. I couldn’t afford a £150quid bid so opted to lash out on some catalogues instead. I didn’t want to leave – coz it felt so nice to hang out with the work, in the space, with the staff, with all the nice zines, plus mags, and books, and catalogues... but eventually I thought I’d better see some more spaces.

Outside I sms’d my Australian friends that art was alive and well in east London. It wasn’t only that there were some Good Drawings™ but that drawing was operating as the site for some really interesting social relations of conviviality playfulness, altruism, good will, collectivity, experimentation, and just the right touch of speculative capital to keep the motor ticking…..

Feeling happy I wandered down the road to Flowers East – which is the nearest I could bear to get to a real cork street gallery. What drew me in (hah!) was a retrospective of Derek Boshier –one of the grand old boys of the RCA in the ‘60’s and a mate of David Hockney – who appears to be blighty’s version of Warhol – everyone wants a piece.

Boshier ain’t a YBA – but he’s a great drawer – and a challenge to the maxim that the 60’s/70’s whenever it was killed drawing. His strongest pieces for me – came from the 70’s and 80’s when he abandoned the studied modernist graphing of his RCA student days and really pushed drawing into new places; merging it with photography – taking photos and collages and ticket stubs – cutting out, re-pasting, drawing around and drawing beyond them. The line becomes a delineation, an embellishment, an index, a transformation into so many things….that slips outside language but squiggles around and scoops it up again.

His vintage; Journey/Israel project in one of the most powerful examples for me. It starts with a photograph of 3 young Auschwitz detainees, wearing striped prison pyjamas. The next image is the same photo but with the heads gouached out in grey, leaving the pyjama stripes. The following image – the pyjama stripes become tents in a field, and then furrows across a field. The final image is a coloured furrowed field, copied onto a pick-handle. How the index of an image translates and punctures through space, becoming emblematic of history, of horror and of change – is real, moving, intense. (I’m not doing real well with the adjectives today, sorry)

Not everything he did was genius – and I thought his Picasso life magazine cover sucked – but this piece was magical, so too the ‘queen’ drawing; a detournement of clippings about the royal family visiting the then poor East end in the 1977 jubilee year.

Flowers had a great library of catalogues so I spent money I don’t have on John Keane’s “guantanamerica” – coz I like what he’s done with the images and paint….. I then STUPIDLY spent the dumbest £4 ever in my entire life. This was even dumber than the time ten years ago that I kept inserting £1 coins into some skilltester machine in soho just because I liked the music… It was the vintage B&W layout that did it – coz it looked like an alternative art-zine, and the front cover had text railing against the Olympics – so I thought ‘right on’ and chucked it on the VISA. Much later I realised where Sebastian smee gets his review copy from; The Jackdaw. Some sewers are best left unexplored.

I crossed the road and wandered into a very self consciously silly show called “it was the best of time outs, it was the worst of time outs” by 3 likely lads: Peter Davies, David Ersser, Graham Hudson. There were 2 big protest/ pop art paintings, a really silly sculpture with ‘when it windy this sculpture falls over’ scrawled on it, and then my favourite piece of all, by David Errser – who embodied a beautiful marriage of Jim Dine and ricky swallow. The title of the piece was “I need sexual healing’. The title reminded me that I needed to head to the feminist erotica shop on hoxton square so I took a few small streets inwards.

En route, I wandered into my favourite gallery ever, which is my favourite gallery ever because the exhibitions ALWAYS induce me to stare ponderously at some room fixture. Last time I was transfixed by an unusual packing crate, and this time it was by the central heating duct running along the skirting board of one wall. I tried to tell myself it as a reflection of the felicitous synchronicity of the artist placing empty 7’ record sleeves just above the duct which was covered in 7’ radial discs, and I was hoping that the whole exhibition would induce me to have a quirky re-imagining of the mundane post-industrial fixtures of this converted storeroom space….. so I wandered around carefully measuring my steps, but decided that crushed white doonas arranged on 2 foot pine armatures, were a prime example of ‘stylised conceptual minimalism’; low on form, low on colour, low on content…. So I left.

Bad art always gives me a frisson of giggling glee when its surrounded by the good stuff. (should I mention that the catalogue essay mentioned Wittgenstein? Just the sheer exhuberance of such immense intellectual posturing is mindboggling when you think of the obligatoire dumbing down or Ozzie Art Writing inc.

Coz round the corner from STORE and next door to the sex shop – was the White Cube. The White Cube is an imposing and frightening space, and the staff all look pimply and posey, but…. They had a show by expat strinegirl, Jessica Rankin. She went to VCA and is now based in new york – and I wish I could have afforded 15 quid catalogue.

Downstairs there were large exquisite textile pieces – where words formed constellations and moved between wonderful spaces of form, meaning and pattern. I wish Nicole Barakat and Ruark could have been there…. She even appropriated a central desert campfire icon with some degree of sensitivity – incorporating it into a constellation map. I stared, I wandered, I paced, I stood, I sighed. I deciphered words and counted stitches.

I went up stairs because a sign on the wall said Andreas Gurzky, but I found were the small works on paper that precluded the large sewn pieces. (of Jessica’s) Small intimate sketches. And again the beauty and delight that a drawing produces. Because its easy to make a mark or a line with a pen or crayon or pencil. Because they travel anywhere – and can act as a first thought. Because seeing them on small bits of paper – makes them hand size, and you have to stand close to see them. Because they show how artists think through lines ad forms and shapes, and that drawing, like drawing breath is a constant process…

And no, it’s not dead at all…

ps sorry I havne't put in links to this space. i'm at an internet caf and some drunk guy wandred in and spilled cider on the floor.....

Placing

2007-04-30T18:48:00.000+10:00

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

2007-04-18T20:11:00.000+10:00

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

2007-04-03T19:57:00.001+10:00

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....

Paddington is not quite dead

2007-03-27T12:19:00.000+10:00

There's lots of stuff happening in Sydney this week, starting with an opening tonight at KUDOS.KUDOS is the COFA student gallery and is the last stronghold of funky youf out there kulcha on the eastern suburbs.

REVEALING AND RELIVING
Tim Anastasi and Angelo Polizogopoulos

The Greek Festival of Sydney presents an exhibition exploring the many interconnected ways in which past present and future correspond to create a modern experience for Greek Australians. The gallery space will have a dialogue between sculpture (which represents future), photography (which represents past) and the viewer (the participating audience) who create the link between past and future.

KUDOS: 6 Napier St. Paddington NSW 2021 (St. Sophia Hall)
exhibition continues to 31 March 2007
open Wednesday to Friday 11am - 6pm, Saturday 11am - 4pm

On WEDNESDAY there are 3 openings happening simultaneously (bloody hell) so take your pick.

I posted a promo last week about the Shapley Mckendry installation at Addison Road gallery, which opens THIS WEDNESDAY MARCH 28th.

You can get double the bang for your buck in marrickville that night because around the corner at FACTORY 49, they've got a viewing of - Wall Sculptures by MARLENE SARROFF plus a viewing of the Outside Wall Work painting by KATE MACKAY

at Factory 49 Showroom 49 Shepherd St, Marrickville, Sydney.
(Shepherd St runs off Addison Rd)

The same night in town, LOOSE have an opening as part of their A regular feature of "impromptu and responsive events, projects and activities (talks, sound nights, publications,workshops, exhibitions, production space) coordinated by the rotating
roster of Loose players."

this month...they're featuring a rather enigmatic happening by Shane Haseman entitled:

New Mysticism or The Steam Boiler Effect or You're Not Getting Out of
Here Alive, NO WAY NO HOW

Which Iäm not sure is the best promotional text for an exhibition, but maybe it will bring in all the suicidal claustrophobic extreme art buffs.....

opening wednesday 28th march 6-8pm and continues to saturday 31st march

Loose projects, level 2, 168 Day St Darling Harbour, Sydney

gallery hours: thursday and friday 12-5pm, saturday 1-6pm

On FRIDAY you can check out a great initiatve: featuring the sterling collaboration between Adam Hill and MArgaret Roberts

THE SURVIVAL EXPRESSO BAR Opens at 6.0pm this Friday 30th March at 137 Redfern Street (cnr Renwick) in Redfern.

hel it's a great title, linking the life giving elixir of expresso with the cultural survival of originary strine peoples AKA kooris.

There's an art gallery upstairs and downstairs will have performances by Emma Donoan and Rhonda Grovener wit lashing of the elixir of life and nibblies. Contact bonny.briggs@gmail.com for more info

On Sunday - airport doyen Melissa Laing is involved in performance art at, yep, the performance space.Coz its theatre and not art - they charge admission - I guess coz they doät expect people to do it all for free and love and free love...But they got dodgy goon so I reckon its worth a shot

Melissa says she has created a 3 minute work with two friends for their
Night Time series. (http://www.performancespace.com.au/event_8.php) A
combination of Kung Fu and insecure sound.

Sunday 1st of April, 7 pm, Performance Space @ Carriage Works, 245
Wilson Street Eveleigh

Happy April fools

Capitalist Realism

2007-03-21T00:04:00.000+11:00

Maybe it's been a quiet week in Sydney, or maybe i really have fallen off the edge of the earth.

Mayhem was off-line for a week in the wilds of finland and forgot to poste the great stuff like the graf battle at May's, or Diablo's latest show of curly organic things at the botanic gardens, or... or...

anyway - I've received notices of only 3 things of interest - and all mostly next week. Loose has an artists talk on Saturday 24th March and Addison Road Gallery has a sound art installation opening next wednesday 28th March. (details below)

In blogland, I just read the artswipe's latest posting on the artlife - about video art which made me think of Tacita Dean's recent installation at the Guggenheim. Dean had a single screen projection in a room with comfy chairs - showing the last days of manufacture of celluloid film..... (I've cut and pasted the Guggenheim blurb coz i'm too lazy to type it up).

After discovering that the Kodak factory in Chalon-sur-Saône, France, was closing its film production facility, Dean obtained permission to document the manufacture of film at the factory with the soon-to-be obsolete medium itself. The resulting rear-screen projection Noir et Blanc, filmed on the final five rolls Dean acquired, turns the medium on itself. The 44-minute-long work Kodak constitutes a meditative elegy for the approaching demise of a medium specific to Dean’s own practice. Kodak’s narrative follows the making of the celluloid as it runs through several miles of machinery. On the day of filming, the factory also ran a test through the system with brown paper, providing a rare opportunity to see the facilities fully illuminated, without the darkness needed to prevent exposure. Also on view is Found Obsolescence, a strip of unexposed 16mm negative that Dean found in the factory’s sprocket machine, the holes abruptly stopping before its production was completed.

the above worked for me. I sat on my arse, right through the 45 minutes on a single screen. And watching it was tedius and strangely compelling. Maybe i'd just been frightened by the guggenheim's architecture and way too many spooky spanish paintings but it was really nice to watch vivid colours, and weird slow murky dreamy quality of every day life refractorised.

Anyway - technology moves on. Some frogs are organising a "Pocket Film Festival" of mobile phone film clips! Deadline is 30th March.

IS THAT A FILM IN YOUR POCKET?
The Pocket Films Festival is calling for artists developing video creations using the humble mobile phone. Selected films will be presented at the international festival June 8 - 10 in Paris baby. For more info contact pocketfilms@forumdesimages.fr

Meanwhile in the land of snow, I wandered out to the
Tampere Artists Union with my friend, where they had an exhibition of works by
"Kalle Lampela"

Some of the texts were in English and the link to Kalle's Website has more english text about his work. the image above is probably the strongest piece. Most of them looked like rerun's of Sigmar Polke's vintage Capitalist Realism pieces citing photoshop or illustrator instead of ye olde screen printe thang that Polke liekd to play with.

And some of the grande statement manifestos - substituting christianity, communism and capitalism with iconic images of Marx, Mao, Jesus, Bill gates, thatcher etc. were a bit too art express for me. All that earnest angst and messaging. I know Berecht's comment "Art should not be a mirror held up to society but a hammer to shape it with" is a moving testament to the social responsibility of the A R T - but i reckon being bludgeoned over the head just brings on a migraine.

ho hum. Maybe it's just a slow week.

Back to video channel installations (artswipe - why did you skip this one?) Riszart Dabek is giving a talk this saturday at Loose projects
Saturday 24th March, 4-5.30pm
level 2, 168 Day St, Sydney CBD.

The talk will be informal or conversational and aims to foster discussion
and the opportunity for dialogue between the artist and the audience.

Fervent fans of this blog may remember me discussing this insallation as a new space of intimate architecture - not that i've been able to see it - but it sounds great!

Meanwhile Don't Look Denizon greg shapley has an aural instalation with Kylie McKendry opening on Wednesday March 28, 6pm at Addison Rd Gallery, Addison Rd Community Centre, 142 Addison Rd, Marrickville

Being Not Becoming: Aspirational longing in everyday life
is a new multi-media installation that creatively
mashes together snippets of Beckett, Beethoven, Goethe and original
material to illustrate the concept of the 'Deferred Happiness
Syndrome'.

According to Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute, in this modern
disease we "persist with life situations that are difficult, stressful
and exhausting in the belief that the sacrifice will pay off in the
longer term". A number of factors have led to this situation,
including "growing aspirations for more expensive lifestyles",
"preparation for retirement" and fear of job loss.

Just like victims of the 'deferred happiness syndrome', romantic
literature, music and art often harbour pent-up tension - holding back
gratification so that the release - the climax - is more fulfilling
(this was particularly so with the movement that Goethe is most linked
to - 'Sturn und drang' - or 'Storm and stress'). By taking a number of
works and removing this tension, thus making a state of 'being' from
'becoming', we will be metaphorically illustrating the subversion of
the deferment of happiness.

Our visuals consist of detourned romantic imagery. The humble storm
cloud, for instance, instead of being a mere symbol of brooding menace
on its way to reap havoc, becomes an object in its own right. It
becomes playful and ever-present, offering no threat of precipitation.

For the sound we have 'crunched' Beethoven's Fifth into a series of
elongated four-channel super chords. By doing this we have removed the
implicit direction, the impending release of the flood gates so
associated with nineteenth century Western music. Text from Goethe's
'Faust' (the classic tale of a soul sold to the devil) is also
incorporated seamlessly into the work as well as contrasting snippets
from Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' (the ultimate arrival deferred).

'Being Not Becoming' is the result of a year of work and we would just
like to take the opportunity to thank Marrickville Council and Reverse
Garbage for their enormous support.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT GREG SHAPLEY ON 0401 152 434 OR
EMAIL dontlookgallery@gmail.com

Everywhere but Here

2007-03-12T14:25:00.000+11:00

I'm meant to be packing because I'm getting on a plane to finland tomorrow. Meahwnile I think I'm being a guest blogger on the artlife coz they're making TV.

so my artlife review is a kinda Robert Hughes act where I rave about New york Art wiht some pretense at authority - but actually by the time it gets posted I won't be anywhere near any big apples.

so in honour of geographic confusion im going to plug 3 shows opening simultaneously in 3 east coast cities of Australia. they are all of artists who I respect and like so the reasons are sheer bloody nepotism.

i got no shame

On 13th March (Tuesday?) I'll be so jetalgged so I don't really care

ARLENE TEXTAQUEEN has a show wiht her pen pal Olivia Edith
"I'm hunting and pecking: feed me your troubles"
Seventh Gallery
155 Gertrude Street
Fitzroy, Melbourne

“I’m hunting and pecking: feed me your troubles” presents their felt-tipped and brush stroked renditions of luscious ladies from Oz and the US of A including Michelle Tea and local lasses....

On WEDNESDAY: Paper Waltz
opens at DON'T LOOK Experimental New Media Gallery
419 New Canterbury Rd (Near Marrickville Rd), Dulwich Hill

WHO: Laura McLean and Andrew Newman

CONTACT: Greg Shapley - Ph: 0401 152 434
EMAIL: dontlookgallery@gmail.com
WEB: myspace.com/dontlookgallery

Paper Waltz
Laura McLean and Andrew Newman

If 'the first casualty of war is truth' then is it also the case that
this truth lies somewhere between the extremities; between right and
wrong, good and bad, between being 'with us' or 'against us'?

'Paper Waltz' explores the binaries that are foisted upon us in times
of conflict; how we are forced to make decisions 'one way or the
other'. The middle ground is gone, swept away in the polarisation of
fear and suspicion. The 'sensible option' becomes an uninhabitable 'no
man's land' and desperation seeps into all areas of life, including
personal relationships.

The young boyfriend-girlfriend inhabitants of pre-war playgrounds are
turned by the insecurity of the battlefield into husband-wife (the
stark noir-ness of WWII movies echo these rushed consummations). This
'war-time' is accelerated and exaggerated; it is, by its very nature,
sentimental. Reminiscences of these moments therefore become
hyper-sentimentalised.

McLean and Newman portray this hyper-sentimentality with a series of
black and white figures -- cutouts that dance like clockwork, on
clockwork. They move jerkily to the binary tick-tock of timepieces
that count down their impending separation. But this dance never ends,
because it never really began. It is a figment of our collective
imaginations that is invented in times of dire consequence to humanise
these experiences. These apparitions stick in our minds and in our
throats, marking the only bearable moments in otherwise inconceivable
circumstances.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT GREG SHAPLEY ON 0401 152 434 OR
EMAIL dontlookgallery@gmail.com
on St. Patricks day: friday 16th March - a date well honored by getting pissed in the name of culture.....

In brisbanal
Julie Fragar has a show called DADISLIKITOO opening at the college art galery of queensland college of art on griffith uni. aks a local where the hell it is, It's north of balmain. The show is going to works from her current doctoral project that 'll be the Martin kippneberger goes textured and textual that she does so well - taking intimiate little scenes and drawing out the weirdness.

In sydney, Gallery 4A has a show: called Identity thieves - also opening on Fridya night.

they sent me a gif file - which can't be cut and pasted and is reluctant to be uploaded as an image file and i'm too tired to retype all the names - so you'll have to assume it's good. i'm sure it will be. - even though their PR is blogger unfriendly.

4a is 187 Hay Street. show opens at 6pm, on 16th March

Pink Bits and Milky

2007-03-05T06:51:00.000+11:00

Generally I try to keep my blog realms separate - but the latest show has gotta be one for my friend zoo - lactating femme faggot and one of the stars of the latest SLIT

Owen Leong has just completed a respendently milky website which replaces his former blog - which is an increasingly popular interrim measure for artists wishing to get info and images up on a web address somewhere.....

Anyway to coincide with his new online presence, Leong has a show at the big white box down at darling harbour. There promises to be fresh new works to check out in an embdied as well as virtual form

OWEN LEONG
Opening THIS WEDNESDAY March 7th and running to March 28th
at Mori Gallery, 168 Day Street, Darling Harbour

Readers may get a bit sick of me plugging mori gallery all the time - But there's actually not that many contemporary commercial art galleries in Sydney -(Kaliman, Ros Ox, sherman are some others) THAT DON'T HAVE ANY NORMAN LINDSAY'S SECRETLY STASHED IN THE BACK ROOM - or some other golden age of boringness vintage stock room tideover material - so I wanna support what's good. Besides Mori is right next to Loose - which is the most amazing artists run initiative since Squatspace - and both are well serviced by public transport.

But back to Leong - whose evocative egg white, honey dripping prints and video's got me really happy and gooey at artspace and 4A in 2004. His images PERSONIFIED the best bits of Alphonso Lingis, and so much more.... fluid economies, exchange, flow, surface ambiguities etc. the work was slick, meticulous and yet incredibly ENGAGING - really meditative and seductive and disturbing all at once....

fluid becomings finally made sense.....
sigh

His latest show - promises to "explore race, gender and masculinities." This is the standard stuff that he does so well, Oh the exquisite paradox of "uber-weisse" from an asian man!, ohh, the exquisite ambiguities of food, becoming semen like, milk like, plastic like... and of so gently, exquisitely oozing around the deepest feminine ambiguities of milk.

Owen promises the viewers a video performance based on being held
"in a prison of white light and his body is penetrated by milk that flows with a will of its own. In 'Milk Ring' the artist is trapped under a ring of dripping milk and struggles to solve a honey puzzle that binds his hands."

If the exquisite affect of fluid ambiguities (SEE WHY i'm a PAINTER???) get a bit too much punters can always trap upstairs to Loose where they've gt an opening the same night of Ryszard Dabek's piece called "Between".

This is a twin channel vdeo installation that is all about space, objects and remants. Bodies will be evoked but not displayed. but they will be evoked... hell the images are all about bodily imprints on spces and objects and the " specially designed system of projection" promises "to both transform the video image and re-position the viewer's relationship
to it." So this is going to be creepy ghostlike interstitial embodiment. (I think this means that we're meant to feel the phantasmic but intimate gaps of things we leave behind, like the gaps between our teeth.... whihc is what interstitial means)

On a slightly less intense note - SHEFFER has a fun figurative show opening on saturday Arvo at 38 Lander Street, chippendale. (or whatever that suburb that got eaten by Sydney uni is....)

NAUGHTY is group show featuring works by Tanya Chaly Lucinda Chambers Kate Dorrough and Tracy Keogh. the invite has a Jeff Koons goes primitive ceramic piece (the artist ain't listed on the invite so you'll have to guess that fer yerselves....) and Tanya Chaly's pieces are painterly reproductions of film stills, that are small and erotic and a bit creepy but quite exquisite (I know this coz she had an ARTSPACE residency last year.....)

so I RECKON it's worth a gander.. and besides Scheffer is another commercial gallery space that is pretty cool.

THIS IS NOT JUST A BULLETIN BOARD!!!

2007-02-26T05:38:00.000+11:00

Fans of Art & Mayhem (all 3 of you) - may have been dismayed by the quality of postings recent months - as it sems to have become like a displayable version of Marrickville councils ACME e-list.

That's largely because Mayhem has been in New York - trying to write a PhD and doing research on ife drawing. I've made some postings abut art and life generally - but alchohol abstinence has inhibited my gellery attendance somewhat....

This week - I've stuck on details about THREE EVENTS ON THIS WEDNESDAY NIGHT (Feb 28th) PLUS somhtig amazing on saturday.... ALL AT WORTHY INTERESTING GALLERIES.

you can read the details below.
It's strange about the internet - the way that even in brooklyn I can apear to have my finger on the pulse of sydney art - just with an internet connection.

I also get a bit sad sometimes realising what I'm mising out on! especially the slit launch at medium rare last week - I even shed a tear and had to go to Babeland looking for decent dyke porn and a new sex toy....

maybe the above is to much information. Sorry.

but I've also been thinking about what defines the art I like. and I think it is stuff that involves CONNECTION.

I like paint - because it connects me with sloppy snotty oozy bodily bits - and makes me feel all oozy and sexy and a bit abject.

I like bright colours - because they shimmer and remind me of mambo trumpets and evoke a vibratory jouissance - that Eizabeth Grosz is far more eloquent about than me.....

I lke 'political' art - or conceptual art that explores themes of connection, change and community - because it explores connection change and community.

I just wish more of it was more transparent about the types of 'communties" being connected - and the delirious ambiguities of semi recuperated avante-garde ant intelectual posturing combined with a strategic niche careerism.

i'm as careerist as the next person - but it would be nice if we could be a bit more playful about our own ambiguous and fragile waiverings between being radical and recuperable.... It is a rather odd tension running right through the creative economies and one that probably many thrity-fourtiy somehtings would be willing to invest in.....

I find purely conceptual or 'purely' abstract or 'pruely anything a bit frghtening because it sems to cut off and close in possibliites rather than open up and expand them. this may just be an ex-catholic thing.....

I get scared when words surrund things too much, I get depressed when paint is streaky or too linear or flat and I get nauseaous when things are to astringent or claustrophobic or pompous.....

going to the Feminisnt art confests in New yrk was both exhilarating and scary. the churchy zeal of US femininsts is a bit scary. Esepcally since they're so pale and earnest and straight and midle clas and not kinky or queer or trashy.....

I am also pale and earnest and man, I'd LOVE to be middle class AND also kinky, queer and trashy. at the moment I'm far too bookish to be the latter.....

So having given a little mainfesto - i thoguht I'd mention some of the funstuff htat's been happening. the ctationality of contemrpoary art scares me a little - and I indlge in it to. Nameing names as plugs for friends or stuff I like - wihtout acutally critically ENGAGING with the work....

But I also hope that the plugs and circulations act to remind readers, archivers whoever THAT THERE IS A HELL OF A LOT OF ART THAT IS HAPPENING. and whether it is interesting or engaging or challenging - is largely up to how we, the audiences choose to engage with it. (Seeing and talking about it is a start, eh?)

so I JUST READ that IN GOSFORD - some people did a conceptual piece wiht a tree in a shopping mall.

apparently it was a high fallutin collaboration within a larger work with artists from Canada, Korea,
Japan and Australia.

A tree in Gosford Mall provided support for a stall display board as well as leaves to pin to it, which
were sold to passersby. Conversations focused on ideas related to limits of commodification processes, who
controls monetary regimes and determines monetary values, and the broader ethical concerns of deceit and
powerlessness for many within this system.

This work aimed at providing a context to link other works in the wider event such as those relating to the
Gulf War (oil) and local environmental issues (water), as well as text I provided for the screen displays in
a week long shop display taken from Senator Ron Paul in his speech to the US House of Representatives
(2006) called the End of [American] Dollar Hegemony.

It reminds me alitte of they sydney uni greens a few years back (ie 15 - fuck i'm old) who hadned out leaves as part of their studnet election campaign...

but reading about something - doesn't acutally encompass what the work actually meant to people who experienced it, amde, it engaged with it..... I duno what i'm trying to say but I BELIVE LISA KELLY is serious about using 'art' or art spaces as a publicforum for a critical engagement with art.... and so I urge reader to explore the latest LOOSE project:

Is it possible to bring political art into the gallery?

***
feedback session, wednesday february 28th, from 6pm
***

Thumbs up, thumbs down... a wrap up and debrief on the exhibitions, workshops & newspaper project

"If You See Something Say Something" initiated by Keg de Souza & Zanny Begg

http://www.ifyouseesomethingsaysomething.net/

Loose projects, level 2 168 Day St, Darling Harbour, Sydney

gallery hours: thursday and friday 12-5pm, saturday 1-6pm

the same bloody night Factory 4 has an opening of

Constructions by Helène Barbe (from Paris), opening 6 - 8pm, Wed 28 Feb until Sat 10 Mar

Outside Wall Work painting by Kate Mackay

at 49 Shepherd St, Marrickville, Sydney. (Shepherd St runs off Addison Rd)

The Showroom is open every Thurs - Sat, 1 - 6pm

AND DON't LOOK HAS: The Adventures of Sprite

WHEN: Opening Wednesday February 28, 6pm, Thur March 1 - Sat March 10 (Thur-Sat 11-5)

WHERE: DON'T LOOK Experimental New Media Gallery
419 New Canterbury Rd (Near Marrickville Rd), Dulwich Hill

WHO: Tanya Richards

CONTACT: Greg Shapley - Ph: 0401 152 434
EMAIL: dontlookgallery@gmail.com
WEB: myspace.com/dontlookgallery
Also see www.cdm.uws.edu.au/dubiously_wholesome

The Adventures of Sprite
Tanya Richards

Why is it that clowns are at home both at children's parties and in nightmares?
In a creative exploration of the Jungian concept of Persona, Tanya Richards invokes her alter ego, a slightly deranged clown called Sprite.

Sprite, through video, sound and performance, explores the tension between conformity and the individual in the construction of self. We all wear 'masks' to cope with everyday life. We act differently, depending on who we're talking to, and what we're doing. 'Masks' help us put up with the mundane and tedious, as well as the unexpected and shocking, but at what cost?

In this exhibition, Sprite challenges the distraction, boredom, fantasy and psychotic behaviour that often lurk behind the acceptance of repetitious everyday experiences. By revealing the moral constructs behind fairy tales and rhymes (the keepers of much modern-day morality), Sprite smashes the spectacle laying bare the forced facades of modern existence.

Practically, she does this by weaving herself into the well-trodden paths of staid childhood stories and verse. By rupturing tales that should run 'automatically', she forces us to sit up and take notice – to 'think' about what we're seeing and hearing instead of humming along to some mystical hermetically-sealed mantra.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT GREG SHAPLEY ON 0401 152 434 OR
EMAIL dontlookgallery@gmail.com

MEANHWILE OUt IN LIVERPOOL Khaled Sabsabi has curated "TONE"
as part of te Arab Film Festival.

THIS IS A GREAT ALTERNATIVE TO MARDIS GRAS!!!!

Join us on 3 March at the Liverpool Regional Museum as Casula Powerhouse and Information and Cultural Exchange (ICE) launch an exhibition of audio-visual works by Arab artists as a parallel program to the 2007 Sydney Arab Film Festival.

It is about negotiation and openness of opinions. It suggests there is no singular way of communication or conflict resolution but diversity of opinion about the Arab world and diaspora.
- Khaled Sabsabi

Tone - a word rich with shades of meaning. Tone may be defined as a tint or shade, a musical sound of definite pitch, a modulation of the voice expressing meaning and feeling, or style and elegance, among many others.

Local and international artists have come together to initiate a dialogue on the many Tones of Middle Eastern and Arab culture. Their works reflect and interact with each other within the gallery space, creating the opportunity for conversation and debate. No one opinion is the right opinion.

Artists involved in this project include: Nadyat El Gawley and Fatima Mawas, Mireille and Fabian Astore, Anna Bazzi-Backhouse and Murmur Sayed Ahmed, Nabila Irshaid, and Jacko Restikian.

For more information on the 2007 Sydney Arab Film Festival, visit http://www.sydneyarabfilmfestival.com.

Exhibition Details
WHO: All Ages
WHERE: Liverpool Regional Museum
Cnr. Hume Highway & Congressional Drive, Liverpool
WHEN: LAUNCH Saturday 3 March 2-4pm
Exhibition runs until 24 March
TIME: Monday - Saturday, 10am - 4pm
COST: FREE
MORE INFO/ RSVPs would be appreciated for the launch by 28 February.
RSVP For more information or to RSVP, call reception on (02) 9824 1121 or email reception@casulapowerhouse.com

Migrating within the Slit

2007-02-21T09:12:00.000+11:00

Migrating Within - Angela Femia, Helen Sturgess, Elke Wohlfarht
Serious Play - Bonita Bub, Ben Terakes, Melody Williams
spat + loogie - futuresearch

Exhibition open: Wednesday February 21 to Saturday March 10, 2007

Opening night drinks: Wednesday February 21, 2007 6-8pm

Firstdraft opening hours: Wednesday - Saturday 12-6pm

...

Migrating Within - Angela Femia, Helen Sturgess, Elke Wohlfarht

An exhibition of immersive installation works by three female sculptors, characterised by a use of diffuse light to evoke the ephemeral rather than the concrete, questions rather than answers.

As Helen Sturgess's Objects migrate through the gallery in real space and time they interact with the other works, linking Elke Wohlfahrt's observation of 'mutedness' with Angela Femia's reflection on memory and the home.

In an attempt to put into order the ephemeral territory of memory, Angela Femia's Memory Cupboard utilises the symbolism inherent in the cupboard and the house. Found and constructed objects are juxtaposed in an endeavour to navigate towards a better understanding of memory.

Utilising the whole gallery space yet essentially 'unlocated' within it, Helen Sturgess's Migratory Objects are translucent forms that hover and sway, migrating slowly, influenced by the movements of passers by. As adults we tether ourselves to the ground, weighing ourselves down with possessions and responsibilities. To be lighter than air, to fly or to float, is an eternal dream.

Elke Wohlfahrt's heightened sensitivity as one who has migrated led to Muted Suburb, an observation of the 'mutedness' that has evolved in contemporary western society. Glass and dust unite to present and re-present the video footage, resulting in a disorientating account of suburban life.

Serious Play - Bonita Bub, Ben Terakes, Melody Williams

Serious Play features artists that employ a playful approach to a broad range of materials whether it is the body in the case of Ben Terakes’ performances and drawings, industrial materials in Bonita Bub’s objects or the ‘mock-up’ construction of Melody William’s props.

The works commonly use humour and game playing in order to deliver messages concerning awkward and slippery territory such as ideas of masculinity, outsider status and anti-authoritarian sentiment. They generally preference unpolished aesthetics over pristine surfaces, are concerned with emotions and have a strong foundation in drawing. Ben Terakes devises performances and watercolours that explore the inability to define masculinity within a post-feminist framework. Whilst Terakes uses his body or watercolours as his medium Bonita Bub prefers to construct ambiguous organic shapes from industrial materials such as cardboard, transparent plastic and furniture foam. Melody Williams makes tools and props for undefined actions stemming from her playful urges and interest in the escapist potential of theatre and film.

spat+loogie - futuresearch

futuresearch is Lo-fi DIY virtual reality based on google image search and the unknown. Magic eyes, 3D and the Internet collide- almost as good as the motion picture ‘The Net’.

futuresearch is art to hang in the office.

futuresearch is….. A google image search of words pertaining to the future, mashed up into 3D lenticular prints. Then connecting with these image-makers from all over the net and the world, to explain the phenomenon of google and the future.

Custom made magic eyes circa 1991, for the new millennium – cross your eyes and step away for best effect.

Home made video goggles taking you on lo-fi faux virtual-reality tour of the INTERNET.

New media art for those who appreciate glitter and gold. The future, as predicted in 1989, is finally here.

Futuresearch is also pictures of computers.

spat+loogie are a Sydney based collaborative duo whose practise dips into the forms of installation, video, new media and performance. Their largest work to date is new!shop, a life-sized interactive supermarket which toured through festivals last year.

_____________________________________________________________________

For media enquiries contact
mail@firstdraftgallery.com

Attached:
Migrating Within, Press Image, 2007.
Bonita Bub, Stop Sulking Edward I, 2005.
Ben Terakes, Chief of the Cherokee (Performance Documentation), 2006.
Melody Williams, Workbench, 2005.
spat+loogie, Mystery, 2007.

Firstdraft
116-118 Chalmers St, Surry Hills NSW 2010
t: +61 (0)2 9698 3665 e: mail@firstdraftgallery.com
http: //www.firstdraftgallery.com
Firstdraft opening hours: Wednesday-Saturday 12-6pm

Firstdraft is supported by NSW Ministry for the Arts and the Australian
Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and
advisory body.

Firstdraft is supported by DPM and Bristol.

Firstdraft is a non-profit gallery run on a voluntary basis by a group of
practising artists. It is one of the longest running and most successful
artist-run initiatives in Australia. Firstdraft asserts the importance of
contemporary art production, dissemination and discussion in society,
providing a stimulating exhibition space that is professional and accessible
for a diverse range of artistic practices and projects.

hi tea ladies,

next thursday we have the exhibition opening & launch of slit magazine's 11^th issue, 'the 't' show'. opens 6-8pm thursday 22 february, continues friday 23^rd to sunday 25^th february 12-5pm.

featuring tom fairweather by jamie dunbar , sex intents by cat o nine tails, mr t by lasy penelope, plus works by wife and aunties, sam king, textaqueen, zanny begg, zoo and more.

lots of sexy photographs from slit associates as part of mardi gras, not just for viewing, they'll be for sale too...

for more information visit www.slitmag.org

see you there

pete

Sherman Galleries’ Directors
warmly invite you to attend the opening of

VOICELESS: I FEEL THEREFORE I AM

on Thursday, 22 February 2007 5.30-8.30 pm

to be opened at 7pm by Mr Peter Garrett MP, AM
Shadow Minister for Climate Change,
Environment, Heritage and the Arts

in the presence of Hugo Weaving and Abbie Cornish

Exhibition dates: 23 February - 10 March 2007

for more details about this exhibition, please visit our
website: http://www.shermangalleries.com.au/


SHERMAN GALLERIES
16-20 Goodhope Street
Paddington NSW 2021
tel: 02 9331 1112
fax: 02 9331 1051
email: info@shermangalleries.com.au
website: http://www.shermangalleries.com.au

Gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday 10-6 pm Saturday 11-6 pm

Neighbourhood parking near the gallery is limited
taxis are a thoughtful alternative


Voiceless: I feel therefore I am has been generously supported by
Voiceless, the fund for animals and Ondine & Brian Sherman AM. With thanks
to Otto Ristorante and Macro Wholefoods Market for their additional
support; and to Art & Australia, Pig in the House (Organic Wine), Dinosaur
Designs and Dr Charles Green for their kind assistance.

sydney Street Art

2007-02-12T13:33:00.000+11:00

while i'm living it up in the big apple
you can still catch a little taste of new york in sinny....

those genius punters of fine culture at may street have got a great launch this week....

MAY’S PROUDLY PRESENTS

THE SYDNEY-MELBOURNE CONNECTION

DEB & PHIBS

Opening Beers:

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 16, 2007

OPENING DRINKS

MAY LANE ST PETERS

(next to St Peters train station)

Down in the lane this month we bring out the big guns as we feature a collaborative effort from Deb & Phibs. Deb is one of Melbourne’s finest, whose self portrait-inspired girls are no mere wallflowers. Her seductive style is unmistakable and is bound to stop traffic.

Deb is joined by her partner Phibs, with whom she’s been experimenting with aerosols. Originally from Sydney but now based in Melbourne, Phibs has been actively painting for the last 18 years, inspired by the art and mythology of other cultures- both ancient and modern. Solo, their work is unique- together they transcend the ordinary.

…

Each month, MAY'S invites a street artist to paint a 3 x 2.5 metre panel space installed on May Lane, St. Peters. At the month’s close, the panels are taken down and replaced afresh for the next ‘chapter’ in the project. The MAY'S scenario obviously differs from normal graffiti practice but, like all street work, is subject to ‘the elements’.

Each new artist’s work is hailed in with drinks, which this month will take place on February 16. Eventually, MAY'S will re-exhibit the panels together as a preserved account of the lane’s activity. Each artist’s feature work is for sale via MAY'S.

MAY’S also acts as a commissioning body, connecting the featured artists with people interested in funding or purchasing new street art works. For more information on each artist, check out www.mays.org.au

…

www.mays.org.au / (02) 9550 4232 / maysprojects@gmail.com

RADICAL HEROES

2007-02-05T12:02:00.000+11:00

TONIGHT: Four-person Brazilian art collective, Contra Filé, will bring local and international artists together for an exhibition and workshops commenting on the 'war on terrorism' If You See Something, Say Something.

The exhibition opens the 2007 season of Marrickville Council's Chrissie Cotter Gallery and will be held tonight Monday 5 February from 6-8pm. The exhibition runs until 18 February.

Contra Filé are currently in residence at Council’s Artist Residency, and have organised the exhibition with the support of the Mori Gallery and Marrickville Council’s Art Grants Scheme.

If You See Something, Say Something brings together eight international and eight Australian artists to contribute artworks, articles and workshops.

The works are being shown in three galleries and range from sad and serious to humourous. The artists invite viewers to engage with the world around them and challenge their understanding of the causes of violence, mistrust and war.

Contra Filé will hold a Portuguese and English language workshop at Chrissie Cotter Gallery on 10 February 2007 from 2-4pm at the Chrissie Cotter Gallery.

For more information on the workshop, exhibition or to arrange interviews with the artists contact Zanny Begg 0421 420 420 or Keg de Souza 0412 920 044. Or visit www.ifyouseesomethingsaysomething.net.

The Chrissie Cotter Gallery is located in Pidcock Street , Camperdown. Entry is free, and the gallery is open Wednesday - Sunday from 11am-4pm.

On TUESDAY KUDOS has an exhibition opening of......

A kitschy collection of works by women.
Inspired by domesticity, pin-up 
girls, advertising and 1950s housewives,
this exhibition brings a touch 
of camp femininity to this year's Mardi Gras
season and a dash of 
romanticism in time for Valentine's Day.

DOMESTIC LOVE opens 6-8pm Tuesday 6 February
Kudos Gallery
6 Napier St. Paddington NSW 2021
exhibition continues to 17 February 2007
open Wednesday to Friday 11am - 6pm, Saturday 11am - 4pm

Kudos Gallery is run by COFA students and funded by
Arc @ UNSW

On WEDNESDAY - Part 2 or 3 of the If you see something say something juggernaut will be launched at MORI gallery - 168 Day Street (near Darling Harbour) from 6-8pm

Artists at Mori Gallery: Squatspace, Grupo Etcetera (Argentina),
Contra File (Brazil), pvi collective, Al Fahdil (Iraq), Keg de Souza
and Zanny Begg, Astra Howard, Arlene TextaQueen, Taring Padi
(Indonesia). Part of the If You See Something Say Something
multi-venue exhibition and newspaper project. Performance by Justice Yeldham.

Squatspace will be exhibiting contributions to their Redfern Mapping Project
Where they've invited people to bring in maps of Redfern Waterloo area. the project is ongoing - so you can bring in your map on the night or post them later. check out: for more info: http://www.squatspa ce.com/blog/ ?p=52

Meanwhile Harrison Galleries has a special Valentines Day opening for all you Stricken Art Lovers.

Adelaide artist Loene Furler has some paintings that are boasting about being 'neither figurative nor abstract' - with the one on the e-invite looking like a bunch of cubey lines in a blue field.....

hmmm....

mayhem is happy salivating over the "contemporary fabric compositions" of Sarah Nolan. They're composed, they're fabric, they're new. both the pics on this blog come from Sarah....I wish I could do more than salivate online.....

Lotsa shit

2007-01-30T07:11:00.000+11:00

thanks to Loose for the most tasteful image of the year - and one which had me gnashing my teeth at missing the closing finale of the THE SHIT SHOW

At around the same time - I was planning to be running around williamsburg chasing zombies - but was to knackered by the feminist future symposium to do much at all.

News of the week is that the National Art School will not be amalgamated with any Universities but that the NSW department of education and training are looking at 'other options to conserve the unique character of the site' or institution - or some other weirdarse bureauspeak. In the meantime, one bright spark has started up an official shit stirring blog - whingeing eloquently about shit going down at the old gaol.

despite the cumbersome title, it offers some punchy perspectives and a timely challenge to the reactionary jingoistic anti academic guff that got peddled in the local press last year.

i've decided that even long distance: Mayhem is sydney's answer to the williamsburg 'wagmag' a monthly leaflet and map that lists the freepiss/new art happenings every night in williamsburg, the 'hip' part of Brooklyn.

so here goes:

Meanwhile - back at the ranch, don't look have an opening this wednesday Jan 31st, called 'teen dream' by jaqueline dunbar. DON'T LOOK Gallery is at 419 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill, NSW, Australia (a block back from the corner of New Canterbury Rd and Marrickville Rd).

The rise of the middle classes, compulsory schooling and the outlawing of child labour all gave rise to the phenomenon of the 'teen'. This 'in-between' period has generated an industry that exists between childhood innocence and raunch culture – between teddy bears and girly mags.

Jack Dunbar has constructed a personal response to the social construction of the male teen using evocative imagery projected from lightboxes installed in the ceiling. Like oil and water these constellation-like projections contrast uneasily with our teen's bedroom below. There is something voyeuristic about this scene. We are viewing a boy's private world – one that is becoming a bit too comfortable and a little outgrown. At the same time we are privy to his media-constructed fantasia – the supposed ideal construction of beauty – of womanhood. This 'ideal world' however, is beyond his reach and quite terrifying to the adolescent.

Dunbar has created a rare opportunity to gaze into the hormonally-charged world of a teenage boy. Filled with memories, expectations and fears, we see beyond the usual PR opportunities for 'teen' marketers into a more nuanced topography.

On the same night - and a mere few stops on the 428 bus away Factory 49 Showroom has an opening at:
49 Shepherd St, Marrickville, Sydney. (Shepherd St runs off Addison Rd)

Show #14 - paintings by MATT ALLEN, opening 6 - 8pm, Wed 31 Jan until Sat 10 Feb and and Outside Wall Work painting by KATE MACKAY

The Showroom is open every Thurs - Sat, 1 - 6pm

on saturday

GroundFloor Gallery have a group show called 'teasers' opening this saturday afternoon (3rd February) from 3-5pm

at their new address at 39 Cameron Street Balmain, Sydney NSW Australia 2041

t: 02.9555.6102 f: 02.9555.6104

Tracy Clement is in it, and says its a 'teaser' fr her solo show in October so worth a look

If you can't be bothered getting over to Breezy Balmain on saturday arvo - then try Scheffer Gallery at 38 Lander Street, Darlington for

Brendan Smith <>
Opening Saturday 3rd February 5-7pm until 24th February
SHEFFER GALLERY
38 Lander Street Darlington 2008 Sydney
11-6pm wed-sat Ph 9310 5683

The following Tuesday February 6

there's a show called UNREAL-ESQUE, opening at GRANTPIRRIE, 86 George Street Redfern

the curator says  'It has eight really great artists in it: Sarah Parker, Marisa Purcell,
Sally Ross, Bethany J Fellows, Sharon Goodwin, Jaki Middleton, Therese Howard
and Caroline Rothwell.'

Meanwhile that cultural desert Newtown - is having a NEW CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE open - and it's looking for artists!

At The Vanishing Point – Contemporary Art is a new independent
contemporary art space that will showcase a challenging and dynamic program of art
exhibitions. The gallery will be opening in March 2007 on King Street
Newtown. We are calling for proposals from artists, curators and groups
to exhibit during our first two seasons (Autumn and Winter).

The gallery places high importance on contemporary art that encourages
or provides dialogue on contemporary issues whether that be of a personal,
social, ecological, political, cultural, spiritual, psychological or
environmental context.

Our Autumn program will feature exhibitions of two and three-week
durations. The Spring program will also include four-week exhibition options.

For more information and to receive an info pack about exhibition
options at the gallery email; atthevanishingpoint@hotmail.com

or call Brendan on 0430 083 364

You're Standing In IT

2007-01-24T05:47:00.000+11:00

does anyone remember that great ABC comedy show from the 1980's? chunky custard etc.? I hope I'm not hip and happening that the readers of this blog are all under 25 or something....

anyway - thought the title: Australia, you're standing in it befits the theme of this weeks art listings - especially since I'm NOT!

Biennale Star Ruark Lewis has a blog about a show at Gymea (where?) called Our Lucky Country

Gymea is actually part of the shire - scene of surfie pogroms in 2005 - and now site of handwringing arty farty pinko ratbag angst from troublemakers such as Moi.

there'll be a pinko-nic in Cronulla this Australia Day (that's Friday 12-2pm) for artists and friends at the Gunnamatta Park at the northern end off Tonkin Street which is at the back of Cronulla Train Station.

It's meant for friends of the exhibiting artists in the show - but you could just turn up and name drop and be fine, I reckon.....

Ruark says "come to Cronulla and enjoy this beautiful parkland setting - there are bayside swimming baths, or the ferry ride to Bundeena after lunch, a walk, a snooze, just sit & read the paper or whatever - great raves and meet each other.
we'll be down there at the picnic tables - there are beautiful old shelter there
= or park on Nicholson Parade and bring the things you like to eat/drink"

It sounds a bit suss if noone's bringing any prhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifawns for the Barbie.....

Afterwards- you can cathc the train bakc into town for the mega opening of the mega month extravaganza If you See something Say Something

Friday January 26 - Opening: Gallery 4a, 6-8pm, Special guest performance.

Gallery 4A - is in Hay Street - across from Capitol Centre. Phone 9212 0380.

Gallery hours 11-6pm Tuesday to Saturday, exhibition runs until February 11.

It's curated by Carol De Souze and Zanny Begg - and is a relationally aesthetic international, multimedia anti-national extravaganza.....

Monday January 29 - Film screening Oliver Ressler and Dario Azzellini's 5

Factories–Worker Control in Venezuela . Mori Gallery, film 6pm, followed by

talk and question and answer session with Oliver Ressler 7.30pm. Sponsored

by the Bolivarian Circle , LASNET and the Australian Venezuela Solidarity

Network.

Monday February 5 - Opening: Chrissie Cotter Gallery: 6-8pm. Artists: Contra

Filé. Gallery hours 12-6pm Wednesday to Saturday, exhibition runs until

February 17. Phone 9335 2222.

Wednesday February 7 - Opening: Mori Gallery: 6-8 pm, Performance by Justice

Yeldham. Gallery hours 11-6pm Wednesday to Saturday, exhibition runs until

March 3. Phone 9283 2904.

Saturday February 3 - Workshop with Taring Padi (Indonesian with English

translation): 3pm, Gallery 4a.

Saturday February 10 - Workshop with Contra File (Portuguese with English

translation): Chrissie Cotter Gallery. 2-4pm.

Sunday February 11 - Workshop with Etcetera (Spanish with English

Translation): Mori Gallery 2-4pm.

Saturday February 10 - Closing party: The Chocolate Factory Basement 8pm,

Organised by Lauren Parker and Supported by Dual Plover.

Sunday February 18 - Squatfest: The Anti Tropfest Film Fest (text "squat" to

0428 477 128for venue details) www.squatfest.com.

Saturday 24 February - SquatSpace presents: Redfern-Waterloo Tour of Beauty;

meet at the top of Little Eveleigh St, Next to Redfern Train Station 2pm.

www.squatspace.com/redfern .

Wednesday February 28 - Feedback Session: Is it possible to bring political

art into the gallery? Thumbs up, thumbs down… a wrap up and debrief on If

You See Something Say Something, at Loose Projects 6pm, level 2, 168 Day St

Darling Harbour.

Art far Away

2007-01-21T16:35:00.000+11:00

this is a cross posting of the latest blog entry on mayhem's adventures in the big apple. i've got a whole blog of yankeephilia But I thought i'd post this one up here - coz its about art - and I don't want people to think that this blog is fading away like scragg's fake tan.

I had teckie disasters so didn't post up all the openings happening this week - like at don't look and the NOW NOW Fest. It's on NOW. the shit show has a talkfest happening on monday at Loose. (Level 2, 168 day Street Sydney)

And now - back to New york, where it's 16 hours behind australia.... I broke my new years resolution and had two glasses of wine last night. Not entirely by consent.

I’d trekked over to Chelsea after doing a gallery stroll in Williamsburg. The local galleries actually produce a monthly map and listings of the openings each night – so arty punters in search of free piss and eyeball stimulation – or just warmth amidst the pretty cool young things - can guide themselves along the circuit.

I was actually very strong and resisted the free beer, and free pastis on offer. OK it didn’t take that much self control actually. And the art was pretty orright too.

First up was a ballpoint show at Cinders gallery. Biro drawings are tres cool part of the edgy ‘anal grunge’ aesthetic that characterizes modern ‘youf’ art. You know the thing? Everyday materials – as a generous nod tho the waste aesthetic post-arte-povera thing combined with exquisite attention to detail and that self conscious focus on pop-culture trivia, or just trivia, that denotes authentic late-industrial-consumer-society angst?

Cinder’s last show was a big printmakers combo – and the back room sells jewellery, objects, zines, t-shirts and VINYL – yeah – RECORDS – by local hipsters, all for nice present level prices. I’d bought a resin cast cumquat slice enamelled onto a ring for a friend – and the owner said they were planning a t-shirt show in Melbourne of screenprints on teatowels at the 3rd Drawer gallery.

Back to Friday – the gallery was packed. The walls were wallpapered with 3 or four deep A4 sheets of mostly bond paper – all covered with mainly blue biro drawings –though there was one corner of black biro drawings. Tiling is a great way to hang serial style shows – where there are lots of works that share a formal criteria – (like size, or support medium) and evokes the post-modern trash-ironic-aesthetic that seeks to rise above the preciousness of art as reified singular object of genius – and embrace seriality and repeatability as fun facts of life. Prices ranged from $2.95 to $1,000.00 which was cute too. Most were in the $50-$100 range. I grasped all of the above at the threshold of the gallery, by peeking above the heads of the throng which filled the centre of the room, while swiping a catalogue at the doorway.

The next bit was a bit harder – doing the New York sauna slow stripping shuffle. (actually I’m becoming quite adept at this) – which involves peeling off layers of clothing – allowing enough time for snowflakes to evaporate but not condense on spectacles as steam, while in a really crowded room /subway/queue of people doing the same thing. One of the things I really like about winter is the constant doona like gentle pressure between bodies. Danes have word ford it: “hooglie” – which reminds me of “huggily”. Peoples bodies are so wrapped up in winter woollies that we forget our boundaries – and huddle and press and gently and sway together, all without eye contact. It’s kind of intimate, and cute, and kind of weird at the same time. I guess guys must have a similar thing at beats. Anyway I was doing this in a room, edging along the walls, back to the centre, peering at biro drawings in a not quite steamy bespectacled kind of way, while ferreting around for a tissue to wipe my runny nose. Behind me I felt the padded pressings and shufflings of the black clad hipsters of Williamsburg and I felt like I’d walked into some cool pub on Brunswick Street. (or maybe surry hills in the 1990’s – Sydney is too sunny and plastic to really be ‘cool’). Almost everyone was 10 years younger than me, with bad skin and bad hair (mainly facial on the men), but a certain je ne sais quoi that made me feel self conscious. Oh, yeah, I know. They were wearing duffle coats, high tops, those trendy Tibetan/Inca style beanies and all had white skin, black hair and mostly black clothing. I also have white skin and mostly black hair but also had on a stripy beanie, flouro orange polar, blue jeans with an appliquéd flower on the sides, green/white sneakers, and I was lugging a big puffy full length parka. (one of the key markers of social capital in winter cites is the confidance to wander round looking half fed- and underdressed – overdressing tends to connote homelessness – and overeating denotes white trash poverty – coolness invokes a detachment from the senses – such as the fear of cold or hunger).

I really stuck out because, I wasn’t carrying a can of budweiser, and I was looking at the art. Which was kind of cool. There were some really amazing detailed drawings, some exquisite stencil style blade cut and biro drawings, and a lot of fairly banal illustration, some fairly bland adolescent ‘protest-angst’ art, (complete with bad poetry) and lots of mad magazine teenage boy cartoony art. Which ain’t my cup of expresso. I considered forking out $10 for a drawing of exqisitely rendered diarrhoea on a garbage can – but then couldn’t be bothered fighting my way back through the crowds to do the purchase. So I rugged up and braved the snowflakes once more.

I checked my map and scurried around the corner to a place called “front room” – in a warehouse behind big metal doors up some stairs. This was a big white box of delights – miniatures and reproductions and a more heterogeneous crowd – that looked – like the other crowd – the artists and their friends – but these artists seemed to have spent more time away from their teenage bedrooms. The place was so packed – that I was forced to negotiate the space warily – peering at video installations, into light boxes, onto shelves. There was some bronze pistachio nuts, FUCK snow globes and a book of beautiful superimposed photographs by Robert Flynt – that were creepy and beautiful and so I got one for my friend who collects found photographs and stitches them up into little sculptures. There were more PLM’s (people like me) at this space so I could have happily stayed but – my friend wanted to push on. So out we went…..

And trudged for 2 blocks up the same street to Parkers Box. This was redolent of the Good Hope Gallery on a good night with more ‘serious’ artists, and buyers (with decent winter coats). It was a very clean white cube, with clean white works, and clean white people. And blissfully free of the stench of Storrier. (you know, I can’t BELIEVE how Australia is sooo small that even potentially interesting galleries are forced to take moribund turkeys seriously because the art buyers are so few and far between and so turkeyfied themselves that the only way to keep a profit is to sell big buck turkey art –and showing anything interesting is regarded as an act of fucking charity).

I’ll stop whingeing now – because the group show, called ‘the troubled waters of permeability’ had some really lovely works to make me smile for quite a while – especially animated sculpture video stuff – as in electronically interfaced kinetic sculptures…. Eergh. In English this means that one bit had a rotating sphere of wires linked to a whole heap of little daisies on wires on the wall that scintillated and shimmered, with various nice alternances, and then there was a really intense forest video placed in this great moving assemblage of old printer bits. I’m not sure what it meant but it looked good (great art review eh?). There was an amazing big funnel object by Soyeon Cho, suspended from the ceiling, that had the lyrical grandeur of similar objects made by Petra Coyne. It was made from an plastic forks and other every day things – and had the witty transformation of the everyday into exquisite fanciful otherness that Koji Rui did in Primavera this year.

At the steel school of sculptural formalism where I did my training – they wer e pretty down on assemblage art – because (apparently) it never allowed the objects to transcend their object-ness and become ‘pure’ material that can then evoke ‘pure’ form – and those hokey rustic wood and metal things that you see in bad Sculpture shows certainly prove that point. But occasionally, the plastic soul of banal objects can take flight and become both object and form, and matter, and as our eyes and minds stumble between all three possibilities, nice things happen. The Mayhem Theory Of Aesthetics‰ holds fast to the power of interstices, of gaps and crevices, of incomplete junctures and wrinkled seams as the repositories of the great stuff in life (which reminds me; I’ve run out of dental floss).

So I was enamoured of Soyeon’s funnel – as a permeable shell of meanings and troubledness, and nice imaginative possibilities, even though dusting it would prove a total shit. One of the nicest things I saw though was a great digital/kinetic installation by a duo called “electric shadow”. The gallery curtained of a corner to create a nice little booth. A shallow rectangular pool of bubbling water was in the centre, on the floor, with some abstracted elegant blue-green lines projected over the rippling surface – which then reflected up onto the wall. There was an enticingly expanding, shrinking animated circle projection on a pad at one end of the pool – which was incredibly tempting – to stick a foot in, o on. Which after a few bevvy’s punters gingerly did. The projection was mounted on a pressure pad – and standing on it –set off another projection across the pool – a weird diaphanous smokey shadow form streaming across the rippling water – in a way reminiscent of viola’s ‘ascentions’ (which is perfectly housed at MOMA right now). Ghostly presence, rippling water, light, air, and fine fine algorithms. Digital art done well can evoke the stuff of the self so well – sense, experiment, fate, form. This was nice.

After this I had a slow trudge tot he subway and a long wait at 6th avenue for a train to the Chelsea Bar where my friend was playing. By the time I arrived, my face was almost too numb to form words. She said she’d put my name on the door, but negotiating my way through two floors of a pumping Chelsea Gay bar on a friday night was not easy. Not to mention dealing with the attitude of the staff manning the caberet theatre where she was playing. “Have you got a reservation?” “Yeah, I’m with the Bass Player”. “Well, there’s no seats left” “I can stand” “You can’t stand” “Oh” “Ok, I think there’s a seat here, at this table, (to the seated clients) can you make room for this lady?” “yeah sure” “Ok, you can sit here” “great thanks” “now, you must have a drink, what do you want?” “err.. have you got a drinks list?” “Ok, come in here (so I struggle into the bar area) this is our drinks list (shows me to a wall of vodka). “err… can I have a glass of wine, please?” so they brought me two glasses of wine. (What!) but I was in no mood to protest. I was at a table of really lovely Manhattan Queens being regaled by an incredible performer - who put the soul back into country and coaxed a double bass solo off a Tammy Wynette tune from my Jazz muso friend. What a genius! Strutting, talking, singing, sobbing to blues, country and Tango. I texted Kath Ellis and told her to get her arse over here. New York is the place where Carlos Gardel meets Hank Williams with just enough Streisand…. I thought about some great lecture on CAMP that I heard at an art-history conference last month and felt very glad to be alive. At the end of the night, I handed over my plastic, and me, my friend and her tree (pet name for double bass) squeezed past the disco beats and muscle marys in the other two rooms and headed back to Brooklyn.

Last night in bed I actually kept on my pyjamas and my doona – and could hear the central heating hissing –so I knew it must have been cold. This morning I groggily woke up to a world of whiteness outside –and watched it melt while eating my fruit porridge.

today I braved biting cold winds that stung my face to gingerly crunch up the road to Dr. sketchy's burlesque sketch club. I was fearful of facing a room full of scary frat boys with scary ‘arty’ attitude, (like my last foray into brooklyn burlesque) but fortunately this was nothing like that. The model was brilliant and looked like a leftover from Klub Kooky in the good old days (2006 even) - so I felt right at home, and the crowd - OK - white, middle class and young - well were white, middle class and young - but they were more arty than fratty, and the music was great. There was one offputting thing - whihc was some guy who looked just like the male models out of those Scary Sylvia Sleigh paintings from the '70's (if you don't know your feminist art history well shame on you!) came up to some girl sitting near my in the break and tried to chat her up. and he was sooo ostentatious about it - and I wondered if I was a totaly freak for thinking he was a total freak or if he was a total freak. I guess it was the altter because he didn't apear to be very suuccessful, but you can't ever tell in New york. Molly the organiser said there was already a Dr. Sketchy's offshoot in Melbourne. (bloody hell) but i reckon sinney could definitely do a similary thing - we got lotsa models that do whacky dressups and lotsa whacky dresser-uppers that could model..... I'm inspired.

Books & Squatting, & Shit

2007-01-10T17:08:00.000+11:00

You are invited to a new exhibition...

WHAT: A Book for No Good Reason
(First exhibition of the year at Don't Look Gallery)

WHEN: Opening Wednesday January 17, 6pm
Thurs Jan 18 - Sat Jan 27 (Thur-Sat 11-5)

WHERE: DON'T LOOK Experimental New Media Gallery
419 New Canterbury Rd (Near Marrickville Rd), Dulwich Hill

WHO: Pickafight Books (a williams with special guests Jordan Woods and
Bernard)

CONTACT: Greg Shapley - Ph: 0401 152 434
EMAIL: dontlookgallery@gmail.com
WEB: myspace.com/dontlookgallery

To say that a williams makes books is like saying that an actor merely
reads lines. a williams is a maker of artist's books. He stiches and
binds, but he does much more than that. a williams 'performs' books -
the narrative, or content is focused around the performance of making
the book.

Thus his books are much more than just words on a page (in fact, they
aren't 'words on a page' at all), they are sculptural objects. For
instance, in his upcoming exhibition at Don't Look Gallery, we see a
video of the artist at work.

In creating 'IncendDIARY', a williams (and co-collaborator Jordan
Woods) fill the insides of books with sparklers, then blow the living
daylights out of them. This destructive, but spectacular, act evokes
the destruction of knowledge through the glorification of war, perhaps
illustrating the old adage that, 'the first casualty of war is truth'.
The charred remains of these books are exhibited like evidence at a
murder trial.

Most of his books don't meet such violent ends, however, but all of
them have 'lived' - they have all survived performance, and as a
result, can be read as texts (despite having no printed words).

The 'Information Bomb' is the result of a performance of a character.
This character believes that if he or she combines a book (a container
for information) with some ink (the revealer of information), an
aerial (the transmitter of information) and a switch (to make the
thing work), that they will be able to make a successful book -
perhaps a book that is more technologically advanced than others.

He describes this work as a 'prototype that never got through the
patent office, made by an inbred savant who grew up in a caravan park
on the Gold Coast' (a description that a williams thinks is a little
too close to his own for comfort).

Another work, entitled 'Preservation', is comprised of a book that has
been preserved in alcohol in the hope the book will 'last for future
generations' - yet ironically it has been ruined in the process. The
way it has been preserved denies access to that which it is trying to
preserve. The object itself has been confused with the knowledge it
contains and the book has been preserved at the cost of that which it
holds.

To a williams it is the lived experience of a book that matters. In
the words of the artist; "It's not what's in a book, who wrote it or
what it's about; but what you DO TO IT that really counts..."

a williams wishes to thank the Haswell and Macleay Museums at the
University of Sydney, Marrickville Council and Southern Cross
University for their assistance and support of this project.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT GREG SHAPLEY ON 0401 152 434 OR
EMAIL dontlookgallery@gmail.com

BANANAS!!!

2007-01-10T16:49:00.000+11:00

this was the response of a New York Poet to the latest NYPD citizen terror campaign: If you See Something Say Something.

Meanwhile back in caca land local agitprop troopers Zanny Begg and Kegroll Desouza have launched an multimedia superlineup of globetrotting arty farty pinko troublemakers.

it's gonna crap all over the sydney festival of beige - Rock on!

Exhibition, workshop and newspaper project, January/February 2007

Over January/February an exhibition, discussion and newspaper project will be held in several venues in Sydney and Melbourne. Eight international and eight Australian artists will be contributing artworks, articles and ideas for If you see something, say something which will explore another side to the debate on “terrorism”. The contributions range from the very sad and serious to the more humorous or whimsical, as artists see and say something very different to the vision of the world promoted by the government. Rather than viewing those around us with fear and suspicion the artists invite the viewer to engage with the world around them and challenge their understanding of the causes of violence and war.

Al Fadhil (Iraqi artist living in Europe), in a collaborative work with his brother Ahmed, who was tragically killed by the invasion of Iraq, sends a letter home to his parents as they are uprooted and displaced by the war that is engulfing their homeland. The images of his families belongings, packed into boxes, are a reminder of how temporary and fragile life has become in a war zone.

Grupo Etcétera… (Argentina), and the spin off collective the Errorist International, exhibit a video of their “war on errorism” in a humours look at how the “war on terrorism” has impacted on freedom and civil liberties.

Hito Steyerl (Germany) explores the connections between the Kurdish liberation movement and Western governments in her film November. November is the period of retreat after the revolution of October, her film explores questions of social responsibility, agency and violence.

Contra Filé (Brazil) initiate a “Program for the Deturnstilisation of Life Itself.” The turnstile is a key symbol in Brazilian society regulating access to public transport, education and public buildings to those with the money to pay. Their artwork sparked protests which culminated in students tearing out and setting fire to turnstiles outside the university. The initial artwork and protests are documented through photographs and press clippings.

Oliver Ressler (Austria) and Dario Azzellini's (Italy) feature length documentary 5 Factories Workers Control in Venezuela explores the process of social change in Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez. Venezuela is providing an example of different model of development for the Latin American region and presents a challenge to US hegemony in their “backyard”.

With nuclear power being promoted as the “clean” alterative to fossil fuels Taring Padi (Indonesia) create an installation which explores the consequences of a nuclear accident on the populated and geologically unstable islands of Indonesia.

Closer to home Daniel Boyd turns his eyes towards the displacement of Aboriginal people and the acts of violence which have constituted the basis for the establishment of Australia through a series of oil paintings.

Squatspace take viewers on a tour of Redfern/Waterloo as they try and comprehend the changes planned for this important and contested inner city suburb of Sydney and continue their research of this issue through a social mapping project.

pvi collective take a satirical look at what it would be like if we actually tried to enforce all the laws surrounding public space through the loyal citizen's underground (l.c.u). The l.c.u has been out and about in Perth challenging people who jay-walk, swear or break any minor laws in public.

Astra Howard exhibits her walking story booth which encourages people to talk about their lives and overcome their fear of “strangers.”

The exhibition and newspaper will be launched January 26th at Gallery 4a. Etcétera, Contra Filé, Oliver Ressler and Taring Padi will be in Australia for the exhibition.

A program of events follows.

For more information or interviews with the artists contact Zanny Begg 0421 420 420 or Keg de Souza 0412 920 044.

If You See Something Say Something

Exhibition, workshops and newspaper project, January/February 2007

Project initiators: Keg de Souza and Zanny Begg

Participating artists:

Dmitry Vilenksy/Chto Delat? (Russia)

Contra Filé (Brazil)

Etcétera (Argentina)

Oliver Ressler (Austria) & Dario Azzellini (Italy)

Taring Padi (Indonesia)

Richard DeDomenici (UK)

Al Fadhil (Iraq)

Hito Steyerl (Germany)

Arlene TextaQueen (Australia)

David Griggs (Australia)

pvi collective (Australia)

SquatSpace (Australia)

Daniel Boyd (Australia)

Astra Howard (Australia)

Keg de Souza (Australia)

Zanny Begg (Australia)

“If you see something say something,” was pasted on bus shelters and train stations around the world in the wake of the 9/11 bombings asking us to view those around us with fear and suspicion. But do we see this government sponsored vision of the world or do these advertisements move us to say something very different? In the state of exception produced by the war on terror we are asked to accept a consensual vision of fear, war, scapegoating and state sponsored violence. Yet many are moved to dissent from this.

Dissensus can mean widespread disagreement, a failure to reach consensus or a consensus only among those who dissent. Jaques Ranciere uses the term to describe rare moments of genuine democracy whereby new social actors force themselves into the political landscape demanding that their voices, which hitherto have been silent, are finally heard. While what we consider politics is often a ritualised confrontation between opposing parties, armies, or forces, with a known set of protocols on how this resolution will play out, a moment of dissensus allows a reconfiguration of how we understand the notion of politics itself by opening up pre-existing assumptions of social agency.

If you see something, say something will be a discussion, exhibition and publishing project in Sydney in February 2007. Principally this will revolve around an exhibition that will involve a small number of international and Australian artists whose work has explored aspects of dissensus - by either questioning prevailing notions of consensus or by exploring new possibilities of social agency. Rather than being an exhibition of political art this exhibition will aim to question how we actually understand the connections between politics and aesthetics.

Venues:

Mori Gallery: 168 Day St Darling Harbour

Gallery 4a, The Asia-Australia Arts Centre: 181-187 Hay Street Sydney

Chrissie Cotter Gallery: Pidcock St Camperdown

Events/openings:

Melbourne:

Thursday January 25 - Film Screening Oliver Ressler and Dario Azzellini's 5 Factories-Worker Control in Venezuela:, 6pm, Trade's Hall, followed by question and answer session with Oliver Ressler. Sponsored by the Bolivarian Circle, LASNET and the Australian Venezuela Solidarity Network. Phone: 0431 720 787.

Sydney:

Friday January 26 - Opening: Gallery 4a, 6-8pm, Artists: Daniel Boyd, Hito Steyerl, Oliver Ressler and Dario Azzellini, Dmitry Vilensky, David Griggs, Taring Padi and Zanny Begg. Gallery hours 11-6pm Tuesday to Saturday, exhibition runs until February 11. Phone 9212 0380.

Monday January 29 - Film screening Oliver Ressler and Dario Azzellini's 5 Factories-Worker Control in Venezuela. Mori Gallery, film 6pm, followed by talk and question and answer session with Oliver Ressler 7.30pm. Sponsored by the Bolivarian Circle, LASNET and the Australian Venezuela Solidarity Committee.

Monday February 5 - Opening: Chrissie Cotter Gallery: 6-8pm. Artists: Contra Filé. Gallery hours 12-6pm Wednesday to Saturday, exhibition runs until February 17. Phone 9335 2222.

Wednesday February 7 - Opening: Mori Gallery: 6-8 pm,. Artists: Arlene TextaQueen, Al Fadhil, Etcétera, Contra Filé, SquatSpace, pvi collective, Astra Howard and Keg de Souza and Zanny Begg. Performance by Justice Yeldham. Gallery hours 11-6pm Wednesday to Saturday, exhibition runs until March 3. Phone 9283 2904.

Saturday February 3 - Workshop with Taring Padi (Indonesian with English translation): 3pm, Gallery 4a.

Saturday February 10 - Workshop with Contra File (Portuguese with English translation): Chrissie Cotter Gallery. 2-4pm.

Sunday February 11 - Workshop with Etcetera (Spanish with English Translation): Mori Gallery 2-4pm.

Saturday February 10 - Closing party: The Chocolate Factory Basement 8pm, Organised by Lauren Parker and Supported by Dual Plover.

Sunday February 18 - Squatfest: The Anti Tropfest Film Fest (text “squat” to 0428 477 128 for venue details) www.squatfest.com.

Saturday 24 February - SquatSpace presents: Redfern-Waterloo Tour of Beauty; meet at the top of Little Eveleigh St, Next to Redfern Train Station 2pm. www.squatspace.com/redfern.

Wednesday February 28 - Feedback Session: Is it possible to bring political art into the gallery? Thumbs up, thumbs down… a wrap up and debrief on If You See Something Say Something, at Loose Projects 6pm, level 2, 168 Day St Darling Harbour.

With thanks to our sponsors:

NAVA

Marrickville Council

Australia Council for the Arts

Breakdown Press

Bolivarian Circle

Australia Venezuela Solidarity Network

LASNET

For more information: www.ifyouseesomethingsaysomething.net

Happy new Year

2006-12-31T17:57:00.000+11:00

Mayhem is in the big apple so sorry for lack of activity and local updates.

so far I've been on a routine tourist rampage but one of the highlights was checking out the painterliness of Marcel Duchamp at MOMA. I've chucked on a pic taken with my cell phone (argh - getting american already) - but GET THIS ONE UP YA DONALD KUSPIT!!!

2006-12-11T16:54:00.000+11:00

Lucazoid's picks this week:

super8 screening at the chauvel cinema:
DLUX media arts screening of super8 shorts including original works by Rowan Woods, Nick Myers, Virginia Hilyard, Catherine Lowing

Chauvel Cinema, Tues 12 Dec, 7-9pm, Cnr Oxford st and Oatley Road Paddington

$12/$10

==

pet photo booth at the Australian Centre for photography:

http://www.acp.au.com/exhibitions/pet_booth.php

PIMP YOUR PET AT ACP!

Pet Photo Booth is a colourful travelling pop culture extravaganza by West Australian artists Justin Spiers and Yvonne Doherty.

Following a year spent capturing owners posing with their pets at animal competitions and Royal shows in WA, the artists are setting-up their backdrops, lights and cameras in ACP's new Gallery 3. Justin and Yvonne will be hosting the booth from Friday 8 to Saturday 23 December during Pet Project.

BOOTH OPERATING HOURS:
WEDNESDAY TO FRIDAY 12.00PM-7.00PM
SATURDAY AND SUNDAY 11.00AM-6.00PM

To make your booking call 02 9332 1455 or complete the form below:

Take home a photo memento and become a part of this interactive exhibition!

==

don't look gallery has an exhibition all about text messaging.

At Don't Look Gallery we have an exciting month coming up! All

exhibitions and events are FREE and everyone is welcome.

This month we have:

1) Last exhibition of the year;

'tXt:> tranSmission' by Matt and Greer Rochford

Opening Thursday December 7, 6pm

(Please see below for more details)

2) Christmas Party:

Sunday December 17, 6pm

DJ, Drinks, all welcome!

3) The LOOK! Don't Look Short Film Festival.

Beginning Wednesday December 20.

SUBMISSIONS WANTED!

We'll be closed over Christmas on the inside, but very much open to

the outside world. Come December 20 our display window will become

home to our short film festival.

If you've got a video that's a bit experimental and under 10 mins,

please submit it and we may play it. Please drop submissions off to

419 New Canterbury Rd Dulwich Hill during opening hours.

tXt:> tranSmission

WHEN: Opening Thursday December 7, 6pm
Thurs Dec 7 - Sat Dec 16 (Thur-Sat 11-5)

WHERE: DON'T LOOK Experimental New Media Gallery
419 New Canterbury Rd (Near Marrickville Rd ), Dulwich Hill

WHO: Matthew Rochford and Greer Rochford
CONTACT: Greg Shapley - Ph: 0401 152 434, Email: dontlookgallery@gmail.com
WEB: http://myspace.com/dontlookgallery

tXt:> tranSmission

To what extent have technologies become part of us? Or, inversely, have we become part of our technologies? Where do we end and they

begin? How would most of us feel without the simple technology of clothing for instance -- exposed, cold, incomplete perhaps?

How many of us now feel exposed, cold and incomplete without more sophisticated technologies such as the internet and mobile phones?

Brother/sister team Matt and Greer Rochford are Cyborgs. Technology consumes their existence. It mediates and mitigates the flow of thought and feeling between them, and between them and the rest of the world. Theirs is a world of the cyber-polis.

For a year, separated by vast distances, their main communication was the prudent text message. Every truncated word has been logged, providing ample raw material for this exploration of long distance communication in the age of instant, electronic, satisfaction.

In the nineteenth century, time became measurable; in the twentieth, time became money. Now time is data -- gigahertz and bits-per-second. We measure the worth of technology by how fast it can transfer data around the world; by how precisely space is annihilated by time. It is this speed of digital communication that warps and recreates our perceptions of intimacy and immediacy.

Matt and Greer Rochford use a variety of media; photography, computer manipulated text, and transmission static and interference to convey this communication -- this bridging (or perhaps erasure) of distance.

In this exhibition they explore the volatility of communication and interpretation through the use of degraded signals, mixed messages, illusion and allusion.

Greer Rochford is a photographic artist who experiments with a variety of mediums, pushing the boundaries of traditional photography. She deals with ideas such as surveillance, technoscience and alienation.

Her kid brother, Matt, explodes myths and storms social barricades. He is continually searching for the point where he ends and the rest of the world begins.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT GREG SHAPLEY ON 0401 152 434 OR
EMAIL dontlookgallery@gmail.com

==

sliced brown bread dipped in mulligatawney

2006-11-27T08:03:00.000+11:00

Lately I've been receiving art reviews by SMS! how cool is that?

The above was about the entries for the paddo art prize. the writer described the winner as "the same with a garnish of parsley"

I take this person's judgement to be FACT - so, err, yeah, there you have it folks.no need to bother making the trip, unless you're a big fan of mulligatawney.

Personally I cant wait to truck on over to Dulwich Hill for "It's Time for a Climate Change". they reckon you can "Come and get your Climate Change Christmas, birthday and wedding gifts, or, something special for that impending baby shower at DON'T LOOK GALLERY from 22 Nov - 3 Dec 2006.

Are you waiting in eager anticipation for climatic shifts ahead? Can't wait for that rising tide of apathy to wash us out to sea? Neither can Brendan Penzer.

Penzer, artist and social ecologist, has set-up shop in Don't Look Experimental New Media Gallery for a two-week clearance sale; mementos, knickknacks and a range of life's essential contemporary survival items - it's all got to go! Come and celebrate our present social, political and environmental climate by spending your swelling mortgage payments on things that 'really' matter.

Direct from Cronulla we have white picket fences that have been ripped from their moorings. These 'self-de-fence pickets' make great paddles for when tides start to rise, make bonza spades to dig holes in which to stick our heads, and (when all else fails) we can come out swinging against anyone who looks different or talks funny.

Also on sale, some lovely (soon to be) relics, including bottles of water from our once great flowing rivers and some rare clean air samples from last century (including an exquisite 1988 bi-centenary vintage). 'What an investment!' Don't wait to pay $$$ on ebay!

Still want more ...? You won't be disappointed with our great selection of fashion items. We have some very stylish red-neck rashies; guaranteed to ward off both skin cancer, and undesirables. Or there's the 'Bible Belt'. This most essential of items will offer the support you require (homosexuals, women, Muslims and green's voters excepted).

But that's not all! Everything comes with a free set of mis-steak knives! And how much would you expect to pay for all of this stupidity? Don't pay the earth... ...well, yes, actually, the earth will do very nicely...

So get on down to DON'T LOOK for the It's Time for a Climate Change sale."

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT GREG SHAPLEY ON 0401 152 434 OR EMAIL dontlookgallery@gmail.com

It's that funny time of year when Sydney gets completely frenzied - art school graduation shows coincide with the 'christmas' shows for most commercial galleries.these involve a mixed bag of works on paper or smaller works by their stables and hangers on - that are meant to be a sort of a 'stocking filler' for the art buying public. I guess it beats late night shopping.....

So early december is a big sweaty frenzy of hastily pulled together group shows - that are more about the show than the group - and lashings of free piss, and sweaty drunken crowds, with the odd canape.....

and then in a couple of weeks it all dies down. Art schools close for a few months (unless they're running cash generating summer courses) - and the commercial galleries all close for their xmas holidays - which can run from 4-10 weeks.

Late December and January are pretty mordant times for an art spectator, and pretty lean times for an art critic. DON'T LOOK Gallery are running stuff on December 20th and December 30th - but I haven't heard about anything forthcoming apart from that.

Even the Sydney festival limits the ART part of its ARTS content to plugging some show at the MCA. AGNES has good aircon and free films on wed arvo and night - so I reckon its the place to be.... and if gawking/gaggin at Monica Tichaheks scarey girlie gore shadowers gets too much you can always go and eyeball the preraphaelites and ellioth gruner in the old and empty section, and vow, never again to curse trendy postmodernists and their hold on cultural institutions. think of sydney in january. Lots of cricket and not much art. total total hell. this is why I'm pissing off overseas for the summer. I like to spend january in a black skivvy.

Before the gloom of an endless beige sets in - get out and enjoy the splashing stupidity of the artyparty frenzy!

Here's a choice selection of tidbits:

On Tuesday Legge has their xmas party opening. you can see a selection of their highlights that you may have missed - including JUMAADI, Alan Jones - and hopefully Catherine Hearse - and definitely My Mate Steve.
6-8pm tuesday 28th november at 183 Regent Street Redfern.
Show runs till 9the december, then gallery is closed till 5th feb.

On Wednesday COFA has its big fine arts graduation show. Traditionally it was held on the same night as the NAS graduation show and oxford street was awash with pissed art students and coteries staggering between the two - but they've separated the nights.

so - no excuses for not making both opening nights. (except cirrrhosis). this is the last chance probably to see the two distinct art schools and examine what the hell makes them so different - or similar. ahhh F-block!, F-block! thank you for the memories!

On Thursday NAS has the same thing. ahh! - goon!, sandstone! objets d'art and angsted students! will we ever see you again?

Friday - I forgot what's on.

Saturday - Sheffer Gallery has an opening called SWEET DECEMBER - which opens from 5-7pm and runs till December 23rd.(38 Lander Street Darlo)

Sheffer is a small, but extremely attractive gallery between abercrombie street, redfern and sydney Uni. they've had some really interesting shows by unsnathced up artists with amazing results - shannon Johnston's show being a case in point.
the new show has small paintings by Sandra Winkworth of funny looking BIRDS, plus some larger paintings by HIROMI OZAKI - that look more like linear draiwings of flowers and blossoms. Tres noice. i'm goin for the photos by PAOLA TALBERT, who (in between gigs as paparazzi for Schappylle Scragg) has been working on a series of DROWNING VIRGINS for the past 5 years. Her prints are large floaty sonnets of underwater light, flowing fabric and hair and soft dabbled limbs. right up mayhems alley.

On radio today - i'll gabble more about the stuff I saw last week - especially IT's A NEW DAY - but save the UWS review for my art schools lament next week.

Claire Conroy's Lightspeed

2006-11-20T17:31:00.000+11:00

This week on Art and Mayhem, Lucazoid interviewed Claire Conroy, who has an exhibition of pinhole photographs taken inside the back of a truck as she journeyed from the eastern rim of the Sydney basin, all the way to the foot of the Blue Mountains. There's a small snippet at the end, of a sound work by Kelly Sturgess. Conroy invited several sound artists to make a sonic response to the photographs, working with field recordings taken during the exposure of the pinhole photo. You can listen to the interview here [9min 8mb mp3 file]. Claire's exhibition is on at Mori Gallery until December 2, 2006.

Daz also has a new segment on Monday Overdrive called "The Spider". This week she interviewed West Australian blogger Emma Lurie about her project "Adopt a Microbe". You can listen to that one (which includes some terrific dramatisations of talking microbes!!) here [6 min 6mb mp3 file]

This week, get along to see: (scroll down for more details on all of these, at Mayhem's posting "Pissy Season" below)...

- the Martin Sharp retrospective (including new works) at the Ivan Dougherty gallery (opening Tues 21st Nov) ...

-The UWS Nepean final graduation exhibition, opening on Friday night at Z building, UWS Penrith Campus (Kingswood).

-Artist-Curator speed dating. Sat night, 6pm, Artspace, Wooloomooloo.
Yes, that's right. Organised by Anne Kay and Josie Cavallaro. For all the details see the it's a new day blog.

-Engage art and Interactivity Conference at UTS. 26-28 November. For all the details see their site.

-another SquatSpace Redfern Waterloo Tour of Beauty, happening Sat 25 Nov, 2-6pm. For all the details see the SquatSpace website.

It's the pissy SEASON!

2006-11-20T17:11:00.000+11:00

Get you're drinking boots on - coz it's time for art, goon and sweaty hangovers!

There's so much free piss - that I've confined plugs to QUALITY ART!

Tomorrow night a big Martin Sharpe retrospective opens at IVAN DOUGHERTY galery - next to COFA in Paddington.

Wedensdya everything opens but mayhem strongly recommends

BRENDAN PENZER 'It's Time For A Climate Change'
an un(site)ly specific installation at
Don't Look Experimental
New Media Gallery.
419 New Canterbury Rd
Dulwich Hill

THURSDAY

"It's a new Day" promises to revolutionise the exclusive KLUB KOOL atmosphere of most ARTSPACE RESIDENCY OPENINGS - with a completely insane wildboys cave party!
this will kick of a month of everything from speed dating to barn dances.

so giddown to Cowper Wharf Road woolloomoolloo and go into that big old building opposite the Pie Cart!

FRIDAY

the LAST EVER ART SHOW at UWS

Bloody crying shame and worth trucking on out to Penrith for.

The opening night will be on Friday the 24th November at the infamous Z building at Kingswood Campus to be officially opened by special guest Kon Gouriotis (Executive Director of Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre).
With only ten days to go this is your chance to support the next generation of Western Sydney artists, and an exciting opportunity to venture out West if this is not the norm for you.

For more information check out: http://www.cdm.uws.edu.au/arts/gradshow/

SATURDAY

Speed Dating at ARTSPACE!

SUNDAY
If you are sick of fun and frivolity and want a nice bums on seats ponderous chingwag - then DON't MISS THIS!

ENGAGE: Interaction, Art and Audience Experience
University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
26-28 November 2006
www.creativityandcognition.com/engage06

FREE PUBLIC TALKS - Sunday 26 November 3-5pm
UTS Building 2 - Level 4 - Theatre 13 (map:
http://www.uts.edu.au/about/mapsdirections/bway.html)

Tim Boykett, Founding member of Time’s Up, Austria
Professor Ernest Edmonds, Director of Creativity and Cognition Studios,
Sydney
Professor Beryl Graham, Co-editor of CRUMB, resource for new media
curating, UK

The full symposium includes more than 30 presentations by leading
researchers in the field of interaction, art and audience experience,
plus
featured talks by:

Andrew Brown - Manager, Digital Media Program at ACID, Australia
Bill Gaver - Professor of Design, Goldsmiths College, University of
London, UK
Mike Stubbs - Head of Exhibitions at the Australian Cenre for the
Moving
Image, Australia

Provisional Programme online www.creativityandcognition.com/engage06

Sponsored by:
ACID, the Australasian CRC for interaction Design
http://www.interactiondesign.com.au/
ANAT, Australian Network for Art and Technology http://www.anat.org.au/

And, for your touring pleasure... Tour of Beauty:
In response to Engage and OzCHI conference at UTS, Sydney’s SquatSpace
will
be running another popular ‘Redfern Waterloo Tour of Beauty’, a bus and
bicycle tour of a number of Redfern-Waterloo’s housing, development and
historical hotspots. For further information, please go to:
http://www.squatspace.com/redfern/

For further information, please contact Deborah Turnbull on +61 2 9514
2384
or deboraht@it.uts.edu.au

CITYtalking - Astra Howard

2006-11-13T17:29:00.000+11:00

This week on Art and Mayhem, Lucazoid spoke with Daz about CITYtalking, a project by Astra Howard in the laneways of Melbourne. Astra, in her mobile conversation booth, roamed the inner city streets and lanes. Conversations were transcribed and became scrolling LED messages on the outside surface of the booth. Lucazoid sat in the booth with Astra and asked her about the project.

Listen to the segment as it went to air on 2ser here. (8mb 9 min mp3)

or - Listen to a chunk of conversation between Lucazoid and Astra here. (2.5mb 5 min mp3)

(Note the sound quality is sometimes a little poor due to the fact that the recording was being made with a microphone shoved up against a little intercom speaker! But it certainly gives the atmosphere of the street!)

--

Also this week, we suggested you get along to Cross Art Projects for this:

The Cross Art Projects exhibition & talks invitation

CONVERSATION: THE WORKS OF POKLONG ANADING & THE CONTEMPORARY MANILA ART SCENE

You are invited to a conversation with artist Poklong Anading and Ramon E.S. Lerma, curator Ateneo Art Gallery, Ateneo de Manila University.

When: Saturday 18 November, 4 to 6pm, with drinks after Exhibition on View: 10 to 19 November 2006
Where: The Cross Art Projects
33 Roslyn Street , Kings Cross, Sydney (opposite St
Lukes Hospital gates)
Information: Jo Holder 9357 2058 or 0406 537933

The Cross Art Projects
A space for independent art & curatorial studies
Director: Jo Holder
Wednesday to Saturday, 11 to 6
T: + 61 (02) 9357-2058
E: joholder@aic.net.au
W: www.crossart.com.au

---

and this (thanks to Mayhem for these paragraphs...)

The Performance Protest: called "Sleeping with The
Enemy" will be re-enacted THIS SATURDAY NOVEMBER 18th
from 6-8pm at "Glint Gallery", Level 1, 226 Union
Street South Newtown.

OVER THE SUMMER, SYDNEY WILL LOSE HALF OF ITS ART
SCHOOLS.

UWS visual arts and performance is being shut down,
and NAS and COFA are extremely likely to merge.

While the SMH and the Australian have had various
articles from NAS 'supporters' often dishing out anti
COFA vitriol about the great postmodern conspiracy -
this can hardly count as a credible defence of a
pluralist art education system.

In fact some nasty rumours say that under the merger
COFA will lose their fine arts departments becoming a
purely 'design' school. This would SUCK as much as
losing the NAS.

Fortunately, one woman and one gorrilla are
attempting to resist the closures/mergers/crap about
art schools in sydney.

The Performance Protest: called "Sleeping with The
Enemy" will be re-enacted THIS SATURDAY NOVEMBER 18th
from 6-8pm at "Glint Gallery", Level 1, 226 Union
Street South Newtown.

This is not just a chance to sip goon while gawking at
a whacky art student in a wedding veil pretending to
fuck a gorilla - but COULD actually be a good
opportunity for a discussion and exchange of ideas
about the current art school closures in sydney that
goes beyond the fatuous partisan name calling that has
been occuring in the press of late.

I've ranted elsewhere about why I believe in
preserving as many art shcools as possible - but I
also believe that given the politicla climate of
increasing censorship, that
PRESERVING HIGHER EDUCATION IS A CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE.
DEFENDING ART AND ART EDUCATION IS A CIVIL RIGHTS
ISSUE

art is often banal as hell - but we all know deep down
that it is also can be subversive, powerful and a
vital part of 'democracy'.

while there are still 4 TAFEs offering diploma or
certificate courses.... these are included under
'business, design and computing" and as NSW has a
state election next year - they are also a bit
precarious.

Does no one give a shit?

If you haven't signed the save UWS petition: go to
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/uws6Arts/

lets go down fighting!

NAS vs COFA part 5

2006-11-11T08:59:00.000+11:00

Cruising the blogworld - I found this GREAT posting about one woman and one gorrillas attempt to end the closures/mergers/crap about art schools in sydney.

Nasty rumours say that under the merger COFA will lose their fine arts departments: painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics and move/merge the whole lot with NAS - meanwhile becoming a purely 'design' school.

Maybe this explains the relative lack of action by NAS students - and the firey support that COFA students gave to the gorilla girl....... anyway - decide fer yerselves.......

The Performance Protest: called "Sleeping with The Enemy" will be re-enacted THIS SATURDAY NOVEMBER 18th from 6-8pm at "Glint Gallery", Level 1, 226 Union street South Newtown.

this is not just a chance to sip goon while gawking at a whacky art student in a wedding veil pretending to fuck a gorilla - but COULD actually be a good opportunity for a discussion and exchange of ideas about the current art school closures in sydney that goes beyond the fatuous partisan name calling that has been occuring in the press of late.

OVER THE SUMMER, SYDNEY WILL LOSE HALF OF ITS DEGREE BASED ART SCHOOLS. (there are still 4 TAFEs offering diploma or certificate courses.... but for how long?)

"I turned up on the NAS campus with my bed, my mini-kilt and my fluffy white gorilla, Manilla, who's a vanilla dyke, and we started performing dutifully.

At that point, some members of the staff came to me with soft smiles and asked me if I was going to stay there long, that maybe I could move, hum, before the Honours Degree Show opens at 6pm? Please? And why not right now? No?

This is a rock, a peak, a peninsula! (to quote Cyrano de Bergerac) Un comble, puisqu'il faut parler frog! I tried to contact these people during a week for them to tell me what would bean appropriate time for my perf to take place, and no-one told me THAT? Ouh là là là là là là........

Never mind, ça ne fait rien. I went on and tried to engage with students and passers-by, to try and raise questions, statements of opinion, et coetera. I got a few amused encouragements, a lot of indifference, and giggles galore. No-one seemed to take the matter seriously. ARe we so used to the masks and screens that we ignore the faces and real world behind? Are NAS people so blasés about my humour?

You want my word? I think the whole Caca thing is way out of their cognitive field because they believe in good taste, les c...s.

So off I went, je suis allée me faire voir ailleurs, namely at COFA. Believe me, pushing a hospital bed on Oxford Street at peak hour is fun. Now I've got the six packs and each time I laugh, my abds hurt as hell! Thank you RTA for the bus lane. But not for the hole in the bitumen each five meters.

At COFA, which is to some NAS people what Saddam is to George, I had a better welcoming. Not only did the students there cheer me and engage seriously with me, but the head of the marketing department and the dean himself insisted on dialoging with me. I don't think they got the Caca humour either, but well, as Gertrude Stein said, "There is, was and always will be the official art, and the art." And heads usually are on the official art side. Nevertheless, the dean invited a few students and myself to have an impromptu conference in his office, during which he exposed his vision of the future if COFA takes over NAS.
As a matter of fact, he was speaking about it in the indicative future, giving us the impression the merging had already happened. Maybe it's just like the cross city tunnel, it HAS already happened but we don't know it yet, we'll wake up one morning and there'll be twins towers instead of the good old chapel. He looked really confident and radiated with good will.
But he was still heralding the disappearance of one more art school in Sydney and finding it would be a good thing, R.I.P. National Art School.

Manilla started sobbing and I got scared she'd get upset, so we shook hands and ended the dialog."

EVERYTHING OPENS ON WEDNESDAY 9TH NOVEMBER

2006-11-06T04:08:00.000+11:00

Extending an invitation to see new work by Shane Forrest
“FLOAT”
opening Wednesday 8 November from 6pm
8-25 November
A-Space on Cleveland
420 Cleveland Street, Surry Hills 2010
9698 5156
10am – 5.30pm
Wednesday to Saturday

The title of this latest exhibition by Shane Forrest, FLOAT, is in part a reference to the erotic`floating world' of Japanese woodblock prints. Shane Forrest in his non-artist life teaches Japanese. In many of these dissected observations of very ordinary suburban houses, so typical of Forrest's home suburb of Leichhardt, floats a couple having sex amongst a kaleidoscope of interior wall papers, rugs, tiles, curtains and other patterned furnishings that is a reflection of the everyday banality of our lives.

Amusingly his titles allude to the advertising phrases and quips that real estate agents love to use to sell houses. For example `Cosy Cottage Feel' and `Delightful Brick Veneer'.

However in these collaged, painted and often three dimensional works, Forrest celebrates the individual and his `castle' despite or even because of its kitsch wonderfulness. Rooves bristle with equipment to trap floating transmissions, breezes and sunlight. The flayed interiors reveal dizzying patterned surfaces where couples play out their lives, seemingly unobserved, be it in the glare of a television set or in the jumble of their kitchen. In fractured, pop-up compostions Forrest gives a nod to Persian miniature painting with its vertical perspective and patterning.

This catalogue of suburban architecture with its erotic undertones is both highly amusing and an insightful observation into what makes Sydney more than the bland landscape that it sometimes seems.

Previous exhibitions at A - SPACE on Cleveland and in the Sydney Opera House foyer have been very popular and this collection of new works is sure to be just as rewarding.

The exhibition runs from Wed 8 to Sat 25 November 2006.

The opening of the exhibition will be on Wednesday 8 November from 6 to 8 pm

The gallery is open from Wednesday to Saturday 10 am to 5.30 pm

Media Inquiries: Pam Blondel Telephone/Fax: 9698 5156 Mobile: 0418 239 244

Gallery Hours: 10am - 5.30 pm Wednesday to Saturday

Just*ice? Antarctica is melting
Paintings by Lisa Roberts

Opening night Wednesday 8th of October 6pm-8pm
show runs to - 3rd December, 2006

M.A.D (make a difference), Sustainable Art and Design Centre, 55 Enmore Rd, Newtown, 2042,
Ph:(02)95573411, Fax:(02)95573021, Email: pr@reversegarbage.org.au
www.maddesigns.org.au

Opening Hours- Tues: 11-5.30pm, Wed: 11-5.30pm, Thurs: 11-7pm, Fri: 11-5.30pm, Sat: 10-6pm, Sun: 11-4pm (or by appointment)

M.A.D is proudly a Reverse Garbage Project
Reverse Garbage Co-Op
8/142 Addison Rd, Marrickville, 2204, Ph:(02) 95693132, Fax: (02)95609765
www.reversegarbage.org.au

Lightspeed
An exhibition by

Claire Conroy

MORI GALLERY
168 DAY STREET SYDNEY
Opening Wednesday 8 November 2006 6-8pm
Exhibition 8 November – 2 December 2006
Wednesday – Saturday
11-6 or by appointment +612 92832903

‘Nepean River’ 3m x 1m pin-hole photograph by Claire Conroy

Lightspeed: a journey across Sydney in a pin-hole camera

“The biggest piece of domestic machinery, which is an extension of our homes and our own private space, is the motorcar. When people drive they have the possibility of death at their own fingertips. And then, people are aware of a whole range of emotions that can't express when they're in their office, dealing with other people, that they can express alone in a car. You can't swear at your secretary for making a spelling mistake but you can swear at another driver behind your windshield” JG Ballard.

Lightspeed: a journey across Sydney in a pin-hole camera is an ambitious solo exhibition by Claire Conroy which opens at Mori Gallery on November 8. Conroy has transformed a 2 tonne truck into a pin-hole camera and taken a road trip across Sydney from Berry Island reserve in Sydney Harbour west towards the Blue Mountains. With a small hole drilled in the side of the truck Conroy stopped at various points along the way using the power of natural sunlight to document her journey. The results are a virtuoso series of 3 meter photographic paper negative prints of the view from the road – toll gates, motorways, bridges, roads, car parks and roadside scenery.

While the truck-stop has been a recurring source of artistic inspiration, perhaps most memorably captured in Ed Ruscha's photographs of gas stations from California to Oklahoma, Conroy's use of the pin-hole camera allows the viewer to return to the roadside image in a startlingly new way. The long exposure times - Conroy spent hours holed up inside an often sweltering truck waiting for the image to expose – has the curious affect of capturing the solid infrastructure of the road whilst deleting the moving elements of the cars. This coupled with the negative quality of pinhole prints makes Conroy's images extremely dark, brooding and ominous. The black skies, ghostly white trees, and completely empty roads imbues Lightspeed with a post-apocalyptic feeling of life after the crash of civilisation.

Conroy explains that one of her inspirations for this work was David Cronenburg’s film adaptation of the 1973 novel by JG Ballard Crash. Ballard's controversial book uses the metaphor of the car crash to explore aspects of contemporary psychology. It tells the story, through the author's own voice, of a man who, after surviving a car crash, gets involved with a group of people sexually obsessed with celebrity, death and car crashes.

At a crucial moment in the film one of the characters tell the hero “that’s the future Ballard and your already part of it, there is a benevolent psycho-pathology that beckons towards us… the car crash [is a] fertilising rather than destructive event.” Conroy pursues this metaphor in her work by opening it up to a new layer of meaning. What if the crash were not the specific experience of tragedy on the motorway, fuelled by psycho-sexual addiction to cars, but the crash of motorway culture itself?

In each of Conroy’s prints she carefully counter poses organic and natural elements alongside the empty infrastructure of roads. These subtle and gentle juxtapositions remind the viewer of the environmental consequences of a society obsessed with cars. As Conroy explains “in using an old mode of photography such as pin hole photography I have attempted to in some way slow the world down.” Conroy’s work thus situates the viewer between the autopia and the autogeddon, a strange world where the structure of the landscape if dominated by the car and yet the car itself has all but vanished from the picture.

Of course this exit is not entirely complete. Central to Conroy’s work is the understanding that the images you are looking at were taken through the medium of a truck, which was driven west out of Sydney on the motorway. And attached to several images are a series of soundscapes composed by Kelly Sturgiss (Flat Products Division), Naomi Radom (Coda), Jarrah Kidd (BumbleBeez81), Kate Carr, Toni Buck (The Necks), David Haines and Joyce Hinterding (Sun Valley), Giovanna Picoi (The Lunettes) and Sam Johnson (Swinging and Tasty Bag). Each of these artists has worked with found sound at the sites of the photographic exposures, incorporating the hum of the road into a sound piece which matches the time Conroy took to expose each image. These traces of road culture allow Conroy to explore the themes of this exhibition from an ambiguous position situated somewhere between a sci fi vision of the future and the well worn path of a road trip.

Gabrielle Van De Laak and Reggy Gunn
New paintings by two celebrated Dutch artists who have been resident in Sydney for the past year.

opening Noon to 5pm Sunday 12 November
exhibition continues until 26 november 2006

special performance by Melbourne trio 'Vardos' recently back from touring Scotland, Switzerland, Hungary and New Calendonia will be playing their traditional gypsy music with verve, drama and panache from 2-4 pm.

Addison road Gallery
142 Addison road Marrickville NSW 2204 Australia
t: 61 2 9518 3709 f: 61 2 9569 1642 m: 0412 590 779
e: terrycutcliffe@aol.com
Gallery hours, 11 - 5 wednesday to sunday

ACTION ALERT!!!

2006-10-31T10:31:00.000+11:00

Art Students are finally responding creatively to closures and mergers!

There's going to be a SNAP AGIT-ART action THIS THURSDAY at 12.30pm in the grounds of the NATIONAL ART SCHOOL where some students are organising a BED IN.

"Sleeping With the Enemy" will involve a performance piece wiht gorillas, girls and wedding veils and a provocative play on the threats and possibilities of art shcool mergers/closedowns/cutbacks etc.

They hope to take the piece on tour - to the other art shcools before they shut down.

THERE'S GONNA BE LOTS OF KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

some anonymous place between her legs

2006-10-29T15:43:00.000+11:00

I got a promo email from the MCA about the Juan Davila show that's ONLY ON UNTIL 12 NOVEMBER 2006.

Apparently punter number have been down and the scarey old garde critics like Johny Mac and Smeethers have canned it, so the MCA are trying to flog the show off CHEAP.

FREE JUAN DAVILA MERCHANDISE
Purchase a ticket to visit the Juan Davila exhibtion at the MCA, present the ticket stubb at the MCA store and receive a free, limited edition notebook or poster worth $19.95.

10% DISCOUNT ON ANY ITEM IN THE MCA STORE
For the day of your visit only you will also receive 10% off any product purchased in the MCA store.
Offer valid only between 28 October and 4 November 2006.
The MCA store and shop is open daily 10am - 5pm
Admission: $10 Adult / $7 concession / MCA members free.
For more information about Juan Davila please see the MCA website.

I went and saw the Davila show a few weeks ago and spent a whole delirious afternoon staring, drawing and writing notes, sustained only by the odd pie from circular quay.

Since then I've found it really hard to put my sheer delight into words.

You know the tacit cultural myth that art critics are meant to review work in an objective manner? Well it’s shit. Davila is big and well known – and he’s one of the reasons why I decided to study painting. (Wendy Sharpe's Archibald winning piece was another). For some reason I came across the Fable of Australian Painting” and decided that if people could be that savage and delightful with the drippy stuff then that’s what I wanted to do with my life.

Davila's works are about excess - a crazed prmiscuity of references - jumbling madly wildly within each other in the most deliriously libidinal wya imaginable.

If Immants Tillers is the Ozzie godfather of POMO - then no wonder people hate the stuff. I find tillers bloody dry! restrained pallets, restrained references, choice neat quotes.

Davila is much more me cup off Camp billy tea - for me the POMO condition is like the excess of internet porn pop-ups on my computer screen.... and this is what davila's work exudes. Insane, parodic libidinal excess.... you can pick it apart , pull it, run with it and be pulled by the multilayered connotations.

and Davila has that crazy condorito humour that reminds me of why I like chileans os much - and he infuses it with the limipid aussie larrikinism (TM) to push all our envelopes.

So. I laughed.

I also cried.

The Woomera pieces - were starkly, intenseley moving. but this raw middle aged panterley politess was nicely set-off by the owmmera condom vending machine print (showing a condom made form loofah fabric). do you see why I love the guy?

The catalogue is so big and comprehensive that I am reluctant to repeat most of the wonders of the show here. Davila gives me reason to live. to fight, to fuck & to enjoy life and to scream out its contradictions and my despair in crazy peals of laughter, anger and song.

He also had the scariest versions of vulvas I've seen in long time. It's enough to drive person to sodomy.

I know I’m going to sound like a wanker if I start talking about some nice course that I’m teaching at Sydney Uni, and name dropping dead French philosophers, but I’ve never denied my onanism.

I’m a wanker. In as many ways, forums and positions as possible. I do it alone and in company, and it is one of the main reasons I don’t get out to openings anymore.

One day, having left my bed of play, I attended an amazing lecture about place, territory, home and habitus, and how our bodies feel a landscape or a space.

Pierre Bourdieu’s word “habitus” gets bandied about a lot. And it sounds like habitat, and evokes some sociological version of a nature documentary here we see the subject negotiating their positionality in a complex world of shifting signs…” etc. – but PB (being a legend) and Ghassan Hage (also being a legend) takes the notion of habitus further.

Evoking habitus as the accumulation of bodily knowledges (how to walk through your house after dark, how to know when to cross a familiar road against the traffic lights, how to walk through a shop or a street), PB evokes habitus as a much richer, much deeper set of sensations and experiences. And it gives a damn pithy explanation for why tourists always look like such dorks.

“Memory is bodily sedimentation of tasks accomplished”

My copy of Gaston Bachelard’s “the poetics of space” is on a friend’s bookshelf so I can’t give you the page reference for some nice quote he had about the phenomenology of the encounter between our bodies and territory: not only are our bodies shaped by our surroundings – but our capacity to experience apprehend and render meaningful our surroundings as itself in relation to our bodies, and the way our bodies have been shaped by them…… space is a product of the body which is a product f space. Or place.

As we walk through a place “the contours of landscape enter our muscular consciousness” and “its as if the street itself has muscles”. We FEEL our encounter with space around us as an encounter with another body. The ground touches us as we touch it. Objects are shaped and invested with our own fleshy affect…….

Such high falutin ponderings flooded my mind when I checked out Willurei Kirkbright-Burney’s video installation at Mori Gallery last week.

(its on until 4th November and you have to walk past the scary WA brothel photos by Karron Bridges – to get to a tiny little back room with kiddie chairs. )
both artists have used images of their own body – a common thing – and both works are nominally about body, place and culture. But I felt that “Peel” was a lot bigger, and more evocative of how a link between place, flesh and memory actually FEELS.

“Peel” consists of a lingering crawl over Willerei’s body, onto which transparencies of topographic maps had been projected. So the colour and space is already a bit weird, and adds to the dreamlike sequences of other splices in the DVD.

There’s a funny voyeuristic tease – but it’s more dreamlike and weird. Bits of rain like viola’s ascension series, a disconnected floating hand, and the close audio thrums bring us deeply into a space where our own body feels in contact with the projected flesh in front of us.

The projection presents a profoundly bodily encounter with flesh, space and territory. With kinaesthetic geographies, how place is embedded on bodies. Willurei's scarred, wrinkled pulled lines of flesh, her pores, and hairs are mingled with the raised ridged contours of the topographic charts. These are based on mapping of magnetic deposits around western NSW, with magnetic lines echoing the striated scars along the flesh beneath.

This use of video projection as installation, something we step inside, transforms the cyclopean disembodiment of the camera into a deeply visceral kinaesthetic eye. The piece is not about representation or decoding –but creating an experience, an affinity and an empathy. Seeing, sensing flesh, the mapping of meaning and place and territory onto flesh. Feeling our own bodies sway and echo projected vibrations within, sensing our own unfamiliarity with space, with place, and our vulnerability, is REALLY RATHER NICE.

I’d recommend people go and have a seat, have a stare, feel your body and have a ponder. Those who prefer disembodied thoughts to wordless ambiguities of visceral affect can think of nice confining categories and explanations; that part of Willurei's family are Wiradjuri, that her flesh is encoded with connotations of territory and colonial mapping in western NSW, that she’s creating a nice resistive rereading of the terms by which kooris get contained, confined, removed, categorise by place, time, memory and history. But because cultural resistance to genocide and political defeat always seems like such nice remote comfort, I prefer to imagine the trajectory taken by feeling, by association. Even honky white mongrels feel bodily attachment to places. Settler cultures mask our own strange connections to invaded lands beneath the nasty politics of guilt and denial, but maybe, just maybe, allowing some bodily affinities between indigenous and non-indigenous, (and I don’t mean a rootfest) – but a space where connections between land, place, memories and bodies meet….. well, hell, I dunno actually, but I liked the video.

O liked it more that the “Wik” video which was more of a straightforward documentary of a place I’ve never been in a language I don't speak. OK it was subtitled, and the food looked great and the lands are beautiful, but exoticism makes me feel ICKY. Looking at somewhere remote and beautiful, I feel cast in the role of tourist, and I imagine the heat, the mozzies, my own scratchy pale skin as pink and lumpy and sweaty, and purse my lips and think self righteous condemnations of honkies playing heroics in wild brown lands. But the WIK video is important – coz actually it’s all about to go pear shaped. Another two bauxite mines have been approved for the area, and environmental campaigners haven’t been allowed in to the remote areas to discuss the implications with the indigenous custodians. I kid you not. Bringing the video and the video makers to Sydney created a series of contact zones, between environmentalists and remote communities. Relational Aesthetics eat your bloody heart out!

Aside form Day street – I went and checked out Giacometti and the Dobell at AGNES and then had a longer stay at the MCA. (Giacometti is a famous artist and his work is great. Most of the works in the Dobell were a bit derivative of Kentridge, of Auerbach, and the new cool drawing school – but it’s free so worth having a gander)

On the way up to Davila which closes in 2 weeks – and which has a half price special on to drag in more punters, I checked out Primavera coz lots of people have said that primavera this year is shit.

I hate to go against the grain of popular opinion – but I liked most of it. (Maybe I just need to get out more). I thought opportunities were missed in terms of the arrangement. I reckon pieces could have been brought together a bit more sensitively and explained more – coz some of the stuff was quite clunky and it needed to be inviting. Dragging work from artists run initiatives and site specific street scapes into a white walled clean floored cultural container

There was nothing really mind-blowingly brilliant – but I thought the show overall was a nice prelude to Davila. The most obvious connection was with David Griggs whose bright crude graffiti style paintings looked great embedded on a ‘site specific 2D work’. (In English this means that some bits were done on the wall and there was a red mesh curtain).

In the same room Peter Mackay had what looked like bland photographic stellarscapes – until you could see a shoe edge. Intriguing. Here I reckon a bit of actual agitprop site specific installation would heave helped. McKay works outdoors – placing glitter onto oil spills – trying to aestheticise the banal. This made a bit more sense with the photographs of glittered sprouting potatoes, emblazoned with banal mantras as “No Regrets”, “Save yourself”, “Keep Breathing” and the shrivelled bread roll with “Believe”.

Tres noice liminality award goes to Christian de Villiers – with recreations of the circular quay buskers and the morphing museum barrier-boat tie along the red carpet. I reckon a CD of the Jamaican guy would not have gone astray – but the whole ensemble was a nice site specific segue between touristmania outside and the sombre spectacling gallery public. (also tourist mania but a bit quieter).

Actually I reckon they should have stuck the galleries donations request bucket in front of the sculptures. Or had slots in them – made them interactive. But that’s just me.

Round the corner – there was, what I found was the least engaging piece (for me). The Wilkins hill duo – “plague of inheritance”. (Hell, and isn’t it just! ) seemed to reference the worst stereotypes of bad emerging art without enough other stuff to ground as effective irony or sheer sensuous enjoyment. A brief catalogue of offending aspects were: ‘deep’ title, referencing some essential Grande scheme of the human condition. 2. Gratuitous and incongruous reference to pop culture (the multiple screens of morphed Bart Simpson characters). The gratuitous but cold deployment of slick consumer objects as sculpture (the aluminium screens upon which the installation was mounted. Incongruous and banal video projections (of a running tap and a spa), and some scary references to subconscious in the floor sheets. Hill was quoted in the floor sheet as seeing the piece as a ‘platform for a decayed but muted expression”, but I reckon it was just pomo-pastiche lite, and way too ‘90’s for my liking. I hate to bag out work, but playing with a complex set of codes, smack bang in the middle of a thoroughfare, presenting a stylised self conscious spectacle of the alienation of everyday life, is, well, alienating. People do just go ‘err, that’s shit’ (I know coz I saw them do it) and walk away. I had flashbacks to the Palais de Tokyo before it got all relational and did the same.

Fortunately the wall nearby had charm, quirkiness, affect, humour all wound up in words and pictures. Chaynni Henri's series of cartoons were GREAT and reminded me of how much I miss TextaQueen. It’s interesting how the dumb drawing approach seems to be so appealing. Henri’s flattened distorted figures, outlined in black and with bold simplified planes of acrylic colour actually belie a strong and skilled pictorial ability. The cutesy kiddie style comments, and the pencil lines ruled beneath each line of texta written text reminded me of school project books. This sort of pop cultural reminder – actually worked to fulfil a lot of the claims of the Wilkins-Hill piece, but there was so much wit and warmth in the text. My favourite line of the week is “she grabbed his aviator sunnies and squelched them in some anonymous place between her legs and stuck them back on his head”. Maybe I’m just a sucker for redemption. Coz the Retablo piece, dedicated to the virgin of “Tiwi and Arafura”, thanking her for removing Henri's family from Palmerston, reminded me of the delightful capacity of imagination and play to transform banality and hell into something fun and surprising.

The quiet room on the right had a series of scary candle glass lady objects by Benjamin Armstrong. They reminded me of Hans Bellmer’s ‘poupees', but I had to admire the craft. I got down on my knees, onto the lino floor and prayed to Ricky swallow. I then saw what some sort of statement about installation, assemblage and the everyday – but Katherine Huang. I reckon her piece would have gone better next to Simon Yates in the next room. Just for fine reruns of the fun-plays of arte-povera (and not the kleenwipe version presented at the MCA 4 years ago) – but mad clunky clutter. Odd juxtapositions of alienated objects that are still contemplatably beautiful. Yates stuff tho – his balloon robot and mad little scruffy machines have far more grounding in Psycho-geography and Paraphysis. Hands up who knows what that means? Probably not many visitors to the MCA –and there was no mention on the floor sheets. This is a damn shame and I wish Rheuban Keenan was still at the MCA to engineer some gallery educational bit so the punters could see the connection. I took Yates’s transparent map – rewriting a derive of Sydney harbour as central Paris – and decided to go on a wanter and pretend I was in the 9eme.

This is one of the dilemmas of curation: coz art historians and theory nuts and aged art punters like ‘moi’ – know the work know the plays and see the possibilities of what the works are trying to evoke – but if the pieces are just objects or photos stuck in a white walled space – then most viewers will see them as ‘art’. A strange isolated enigmatic but probably pretty meaningless bit of ephemera. Damn shame really.

Fortunately the room was saved by a series of Rod McAffies’ Mr. potato head fine quirky paintings. I guess painting is officially back innit? Exquisite quirky eat your heart out.

Heading up the stairs – there were more random object stuff – Fergus Binns had an abandoned bag (Yeah… but I would have been more impressed if it was installed in a train station….. the gallery is such a safe space for arty agitprop pranks), matched by as series of vegemite paintings and assorted Aussie icons. I wonder if Binns wants to join CACA?

Koji Rui had a room like a coke fiends dream land. The guy has moved on from crystalline straw sculptures in to the pure snow magic of exquisite polystyrene. I loved this room –and then enjoyed the video of his tactile drawing experience. First I didn’t know it was his – (coz it shows the artist with a box on head). And to be honest I found the whole installation set –up a little pretentious and I wish I could have seen the drawings. Maybe they were shit? It was a nice idea tho.

The last room – a funny little site – had a STRANGE juxtaposition of the exquisite corpses (tiny mounted dead animals) by Julia Deville. These reminded me a LOT of the object designs by E. Armonious at Gaffa – so I dunno who is imitating who. Thing Del Catherine Barton as object design Small cute and quite creepy.

The rest of the room got taken up by a massive bong-nation installation by Mathew Griffin – that would have matched Griggs’ work far more than the quiet little creepiness of De Ville. I liked the raver stick figure and admired the skinny scoob-leg jeans. But its cheap and nasty, like the pollywaffle masquerading as a turd floating in a bucket of water. Bongs, puking, chocolate, greed, smoke, webs, raves. With a shallow smirk I headed up the stairs.

And on the third level I found redemption and life. “quell joie!” sang my soul as I peeked at the Arkley/Davila duo next to the stairs, and then it continued.

It's another BLLOODY BIG WEEK!

2006-10-18T13:14:00.000+10:00

MONDAY 4-6PM

ART AND MAYHEM will have the worlds first RADIO STRIPATHON!
Over 2 hours Daz and Mayhem will remove one item of clothing in exchange for each subscription or donation from callers during the show!

It's all in aid of 2SER and keeping it on air.

tune in from 4-6pm either from the streaming link or 107.3 on ye olde FM radio dial.
you can subscribe by calling 9514 9514 but also online.

TUESDAY
support the last vestiges of art education in sydney at: SELF RAISING -
COFA SA ANNUAL EMERGING ARTIST AND DESIGNER AWARD,
at Kudos Gallery, 6 Napier St. Paddington

UNSW College of Fine Arts is regarded as one of Australia’s premier
university art and design schools, COFA excels in nurturing exceptional
talent in artists and designers who go forward to mould and shape the
image and ideas of our nation.

COFA SA's fourth annual emerging artist and designer award, SELF RAISING,
promotes the work of the next generation, direct from the studios of
the university, our future Art and Design stars.

COFA Students' Association invited student artists and designers to
submit work for competition, well over 200 entries were received, and the 40
finalists will be shown at Kudos Gallery for judging and exhibition
next week. Contemporary artists THE KINGPINS lead the judging panel with
Dinosaur Designs’ director, designer LOUISE OLSEN, and artist / curator
AARON SEETO. The judges will choose one over-all winner and seven
commendations. The works will be judged in regard to excellence and
innovation in design, concept, use of materials and technique.

The exhibition covers a cross section of art and design forms from
painting to performance, to jewellery and textiles. SELF RAISING gives
us a glimpse into the creative talents of the nation's most talented young
artists and designers. The exhibition will be opened by Dean of COFA,
Professor Ian Howard at 6.30pm on Tuesday 24 October, followed by the
awards presentation by student representatives of the Kudos Gallery
Management Committee.

WEDNESDAY

"MEETING POINTS" by Jasmine Avril

AT DON'T LOOK Experimental New Media Gallery
419 New Canterbury Rd (Near Marrickville Rd), Dulwich Hill

WHO: Jasmine Avril

CONTACT: Greg Shapley - Ph: 0401 152 434, Email:
dontlookgallery@gmail.com

The exhibition 'Meeting Points' plays with notions of travel, longing,
miscommunication, and unintended consequences. Using fleets of paper
planes (symbols capable of inferring everything from childhood
innocence to terrorism), Avril conveys a desire to escape; escape from
the drudgery of everyday life, as well as our current dire world
politic. Tied to helium balloons, however, this way out may lie
cruelly just beyond our reach.

In another room a number of television sets will conduct a kind of
awkward conversation in mispronounced languages. This 'league of
stations' will use typical lines from language phrase books, spoken by
an anglo-centric computer voice. The outcome is a series of incessant,
systematic soliloquies.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT GREG SHAPLEY ON 0401 152 434 OR
EMAIL dontlookgallery@gmail.com

THURSDAY

THE BICYCLE FILM FESTIVAL IS IN SYDNEY OCTOBER 26-28!!!

Opening Night Party is on at Sydney Uni with screenings over 3 days.

Two-wheeled transportation will take over Sydney, Australia as the Sixth Annual Bicycle Film Festival rolls into town. The Bicycle Film Festival (BFF) kicks off on October 26, 2006 with the opening night Bikes Rock Pary and screenings October 27 and 28 at the University of Sydney, Bosch Theatre 2, Western Ave, Camperdown (close to Carillon Ave). Valet bicycle parking provided by MASSBUG.

Admission $10 + booking fee per session.
$37 + booking fee for a festival pass - limited number only!
TICKETS AVAILABLE AT UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY UNION ACCESS CENTRE IN PERSON OR BY CALLING 1800 013 201!!!

FRIDAY

Walking the street ended on sunday ad despite my whinges about dogy token ocmmunity art projects it had some really nice stuff innit.

Personal faves were ticket bags in bike shop, plus weird dolly head bottles, and the glittery horsey further down.

WTS organisers have a public poll - so punters can vote for favourite work!

This year the public get a chance to vote on their favourite artwork! In order to vote please provide name of artist, title of artwork and shopfront site. You can vote by email info@innerwestcs.org.au or by phone 02 9519 0815 or text message 0422 107 074. The Peoples' Choice Award is $400 Cash Award, $200 voucher for Covered in Paint, $50 gift voucher at Leo Monks and a $35 gift voucher at Fish records so vote now and make an artist smile!

Stripping Back

2006-10-16T18:49:00.000+10:00

I had a WONDERFUL DAY
IN THE MCA
it was today

but no, I didn't mention it on radio - coz I was too het up about this UWS affair

University of Western Sydney arts students have set up a petition to protest the decision on the part of the University's College of Arts/School of Communication Arts to suspend its Fine Arts and Electronic Arts programs and abandon its Performance program. The Fine Arts and Electronic Arts programs as they currently exist are being taught out, and the plan is for a Bachelor of Contemporary Arts to replace them. Intake for this program has been indefinitely suspended.

with the NAS likely to merge with COFA and now the UWS 'suspension", basically it looks like Sydney's art schools are gonna be HALVED in 2008.Unless poeple seriosuly start kicking up a stink.

Can't we introduce art into the winter olympics? - Koji roji's polystyrene sculptures would go down a treat in the opening ceremony, Owen Leong and the wildboys would look great on the skating rink, Ron Swan could make some great forms for the snowboarders, and we could slop some paint down on the curling rink! there's gotta be an ARC /AIS research grant in there somewhere, surely!

while plugging the audio presence of the art and mayhem blog (whihc I was too blonde to record - so sorry no podcasting) allow me to give a sneak preview of next weeks show:

In which I will not only review the wonders of Primavera and Davila

(stay tuned for lingering reviews of "effluvial mass of celebrated wrongness and self assured rudeness" coming to this site soon).

but next week (monday 23rd October from 4-6pm) I'll be blabbing in the background of the entire Monday Overdrive show - for 2 hours! (wow!)

and removing my clothes for cash!

Next week is radiothon and so Daz & I thought we'd sex up the show - by conducting an on air stripathon: listeners phone in and pledge cash to the station and we remove articles of clothing.

Nude radio may seem like a bit of a pointless exercise - but we promise to make it stimulating and worthwhile.

Besides, since UTs & Macquarie Uni's pulled the plug on funding 2SER, and FBi stol the cool music cred - 2SEr is pretty much solely reliant on the loving cash of listeners and the volunteer efforts of its presenters......

In the meantime, there are some great openings this week with two on Regent street in Redfern.
Alan Jones has "the Human Show" Opening on Tuesday Night at Legge.

Its the same night as Craig Waddell's opening - but I'm all for diversity. Some poeple hate blue and have serious allergies to Glenmore Road. Al Jones has chunky impasto heads and bodies in incongruous housing scapes. the catalogue essay is a bit frightening but the paintings are cute.

ON Wednesday evening - there's a Guan Wei show opening at Sherman 16-20 Goodhope Street, Paddington

guan Wei is AMAZING - with the political bite of davila - but he has a slick subtlety that can even slide down the throats of the grande bourgeouis art art circuit. apaprently the Powerhouse also have a show of his works on paper.

I've got no idea what the latest show "ECHO" will be ilke but for more details about this exhibition, check the
sherman website.

Exhibition dates: 19 October - 4 November 2006

On thursday - across the road at no 70 Regent Street Medium Rare Gallery has an opening called "Vespertine".

I imagined that this involved sexy looking lolitas on scooters but apparently that has nothing to do with it.

Apparently:

vespertine /ves-per-tine / is an adjective meaning:

1. of, pertaining to, or occurring in the evening: vespertine stillness.
2. Botany. opening or expanding in the evening, as certain flowers.
3. Zoology. appearing or flying in the early evening; crepuscular.

the invite sez:

The Vespertine Project brings together 3 emerging artists working within the field of Contemporary Sculpture and Installation.

The works showcased in the exhibition involve the body as well as challenge the mind, combining to produce a completely visceral experience.

Perran's "In Memory of." series recreates the sublime qualities and light of the natural world via artificial means in an exploration of memory, space and the senses.

Edward Horne's installation investigates the relationship between architectural space and the viewer by immersing the participant in a contradictory world which at first seems fun but has a darker side of surveillance and imprisonment.

Robyn Buchanan's symmetrical sculptures seep into the viewers subconscious and gently hypnotize the mind and body, while her photographic installation investigates our internal world.

I'm not sure if any of that is true, at all. (btw)

On Saturday there's an opening at Cross Arts (33 Roslyn Street, Kings Cross, Sydney - opposite St Lukes Hospital gates)of:
CONVERSATION: CLINTON GAROFANO & CAROLE ROBERTS

Craig Judd is doing the honours from 4-6pm

Exhibition Ends: Saturday 4 November 2006 at 6pm
Information: Jo Holder 9357 2058 or 0406 537933

CONVERSATION: CLINTON GAROFANO & CAROLE ROBERTS

Absolute truths are not the concern of the works in this exhibition. Clinton Garofano and Carole Roberts come together through their paintings to create a dialogue between Garofano's interest in Buddhist teachings on impermanence and Roberts's interest in changing energy within nature.

In this exhibition their works appear to sit in completely different registers: dark and foreboding from Garofano, light and animated from Roberts. However, what we are shown is not simple dualism but different aspects from the same focus of contemplation.

The installation by Garafano consists of 10 darkly painted antique frames, modest in scale. Inside each is text in a comic-strip typeface, painted with a black background on glass. Each frame contains a colloquial statement, dead obvious and dead serious are examples, which prescribe a meaning of absoluteness to the word death. But death may also be seen as just a transition point in this life, not absolute or finite.

Carole Roberts's interest in spatial concerns has manifested in both her public design projects and art works, incorporating ancient architectural motifs and using primary materials such as tree branches and metals such as lead. The alchemists' dream of transmuting base metal into gold was a process they often symbolised as the purification of the soul. These new Energy Paintings mobilize the metaphysical properties of her earlier works into intense pigments of gold, blue and pink suspended within leaf motifs that rest upon a white ground.

Garafano and Roberts have been colleagues since the mid 1980s. As well as their solo exhibition career, they have participated in several group exhibitions together.

The artlife has a nice list of fun events this week, as does fluffy town.

The wild boys and girls at artspace are always happy for visitors, real or virtual - so check out "it's a new day".

Weedy Bits, make a difference make a mole

2006-10-14T13:06:00.000+10:00

If you just wanna look at fun organic drippy stuff then head to Mary PLace on tuesday for free piss, paint fumes and glorious space inducing drips by craig waddell.

It's all about loving the land, adoring nature, ain't it?

Nobody just set up a great plant based relational culture project at:

http://www.weedyconnection.com/

and there's a call out for a great fun save the forest project by sewing pink fluffy moles!

(this is right up mayhem alley)

ARTISTS: Make a difference, Make a mole

As part of the fight to save Yellabinna Environment association on Kokatha Mula land, we are calling out to artists to recreate the Kokatha mole as a plush stuffed creature to be exhibited and auctioned as a fundraiser for the ‘mole hunt’ and fight to save the land.

Kokatha country covers large stretches of harsh arid land in the far west of South Australia, stretching from Ceduna to the edge of the Nullabor, It is home to Kokatha Mula people. Yellabinna is culturally significant to the Kokatha Mula Seven Sisters dreaming is connected throughout the Yellabinna sand dune system by rockholes. Yellabinna is home to 4 million hectares of pristine mallee woodlands, and to critically endangered blind marsupial mole amongst other threatened species.

This precious country is now under threat from extensive mineral exploration and undergoing feasibility studies to begin large open cut sand mining project.

As a tool to protect this special county, there is currently a search on for the endangered blind marsupial mole known as the ‘Notoryctes Caurinus’. There have been few sightings of the mole in recent years, however the documentation of this endangered species could be a crucial element in saving the largest mallee woodland in the world.

So we are calling upon artists to recreate this beautiful little creature. We are planning to tour the exhibition to Mori Gallery,
Sydney CBD, TINA in Newcastle, Alice Springs, and hopefully many other destinations in Australia. EXHIBITIONS WILL BEGIN IN LATE SEPTEMBER, SO WE NEED ARTISTS TO CONTACT US AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

If you are interested in participating, we will send you out an artist kit with more detailed information, images, and an official patch for your mole. Also if you know of a gallery which may be interested in housing this unique exhibition, please let us know.

Please contact Renata on 0422854184 or renatafield@yahoo.com.au
For more information on Googatha land see http://googatha.tripod.com/

Mole specs
: 15-20cm long
: 7-12cm high
: Pink fluffy exterior
: 2 fleshy coloured flippers 5-10cm long
: Stunted fleshy coloured tail 2-3cm long
: Hidden facial features
A google image search of "Notoryctes Caurinus" will give image results

www.stopg20.org

MORE ART SCHOOLS UNDER THREAT

2006-10-12T12:02:00.000+10:00

chirst the world is getting depressing sometimes.

My thesis on art education is rapidly beomcing redundant - not only NAS lookes likely to die - the REALLY innovative and interesting Nepean Cmapus of UWS is constantly treatened wiht closure.

Depsite massive state and federal words and the odd grant promising to promote the devleopment of 'the arts in western sydney' ..... well, the reality looks like they seem to think it can be done by untrained artists or social workery community based projects....?

AAAARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!

so click on title of this blog to see the link about UWS - and come to the thing bleow on saturday.....

I'll rant more on monday

In the meantime, check out the following links:

http://saveuwsarts.blogspot.com/

and for pretty pcis of the SAVE NAS protest:

http://www.mediavr.com/blog/2006/09/20.html

or if you can stand the heat - rock up to the cross

The Cross Art Projects invitation to particpate

CROSS CONVERSATIONS
What are art schools for? Saturday 14 October 2006, 4 to 5pm

Where: The Cross Art Projects
33 Roslyn Street, Kings Cross, Sydney (opposite St Lukes Hospital gates)
Exhibition Ends: Saturday 14 October 2006 at 6pm
Information: Jo Holder 9357 2058 or 0406 537933

In association with the exhibition
WHAT ARE ART SCHOOLS FOR? BY JUSTIN TRENDALL

WHAT ARE ART SCHOOLS FOR? is an exhibition about the relationship between artists and institutions. The theme for this Saturdays conversation is the challenge faced by art schools in Australias current social and economic climate.

Although many challenges are not new, what is new is the 10-year reign of a party whose political philosophy is hostile to the arts.

The conversation will focus on the common experience of art schools facing cuts and downgrading. We aim to make a small contribution to the ongoing debate about the value and position of art in our society by considering the problems from the perspective of teaching art. The conversation might be able to cover ground not easily covered by the more abstract mission statements of major organisations.

You are invited to participate in a talk about your firsthand view of art and education and the current state of the affairs of art institutions in Sydney this Saturday at 4pm until 5pm. Followed by closing drinks.

Cross Conversation participants include artists: Justin Trendall, Andrew Hurle, Christopher Dean, Maria Cruz, Sue Pedley, Save UWS Art School

---------

Past students of UWS Fine Arts and Western Sydney artists are concerned about the future of art teaching and effectively the resilience of art in Sydneys west. See the blog for details of upcoming events or protests to promote the necessity of preserving Arts in the West.
http://saveuwsarts.blogspot.com/

----------

The Cross Art Projects
A space for independent art & curatorial studies
Director: Jo Holder
33 Roslyn Street Kings Cross Sydney 2011
T: + 61 (02) 9357-2058
E: joholder@aic.net.au
W: www.crossart.com.au

Spat n Loogie's NEW! Shop

2006-10-09T16:44:00.000+10:00

Today on Art and Mayhem Lucazoid interviewed Spat n Loogie, creators of NEW! Shop which was presented in Newcastle last week as part of This is Not Art.

You can listen to the segment online, or download the interview here.

(Behind the scenes, Spat n Loogie actually chatted with Lucazoid for a bit longer - so if you're a fan, you can download the bonus segment here.)

Everyone who sees this work will wonder why they didn't just tell me to bugger off and give me a bloody nose.

2006-10-09T12:11:00.000+10:00

Mayhem has been confined to the BARRIO - due to impneidng thesis committments.

(I'm giving myself a big fat davila flavoured treat before next week - so stay tuned....)

Forntunately at such times - art comes to the doorstep of even the most recalcitrant hermit.

WALKING THE STREET opened on Saturday Afternoon. Satterdy Arvo was a bit of a sinney art fest - with the wildboys having a mad draggers tea party at arspace and the scraggy art auction action in paddo.....

Anyway, the southern end of Newtown is currently festooned with orange plastic banners suspended from shop awnings - and the odd piece of lackluster incongruity brightening occasional shop window displays (but not enough to challenge the vapid consumerist imperative...... or the veneerable smatterings of tourist bohemia(TM) smeered over ye Olde trueblue boho thai takeaway hairdressing paradise.........)

the whole effect reminds me of this thing they used to have in Glen Innes when I was a kid during the annual 'bush-week" festivities (that's before bush week became celtic week). The local chamber of commerce ran this thing called "spot the window", and each participating show would have a small red sticker and sign saying "spot the window" - and you'd have to look for the tiny incongruous object placed in the window display.

I think they were trying to teach us bored hicks how to do window shopping, and we had to find each object and write them down on some list and then we'd go in a raffle to win a meat tray.

"walking the street" has very much a similar effect, and affect. Only there's no meat tray. Some of the artworks are OK, some are cool, some are pretty shit - but as they are 'slotted in' to a banal retail facade as a non disruptive, non intrusive, bland recuperated little frisson of simulated culture - they ...well, they make me quite depressed really.

fortunately there's still quite a bit of life left in the inner west.

DON'T LOOK is a fine example of affordeable, accessible detournement of a retail precinct into a STIMULATING ZONE OF CULTURAL EXCHANGE. Renting an old cake shop, Shapley has converted the space on Canterbury road into a veritable haven of multisensorial delight.

Plus he's got the quote of the week in the plug for the current show: "But what is the question?"
Which runs until – Sun Oct 15 (Thur-Sat 11-5)

"I was handsome I was strong,
I knew the words of every song.
Did my singing please you?
No, the words you sang were wrong."
(from 'Teachers' by Leonard Cohen)

In this video work, I ask a question. The public answer -- try to answer -- fail to answer.

But what is the question?

We see people thinking, talking, being silent staring at the camera, dumbfounded like deer in headlights. Why do they stand there? Why don't they just walk away. What has entrapped them? They look awkward -- we can't help but feel sorry for them and empathise with their stage fright (we've all been there, surely).

But what is the question? They may be able to answer the question, but their answers do not answer the question, 'what is the question?'

So, what is the question?...

This is an exercise in media manipulation, in human frailty, and perhaps even in cruelty. Everyone who sees this work will wonder why they didn't just tell me to bugger off and give me a bloody nose.
Perhaps someone will see fit to oblige during opening night…

WHERE: DON'T LOOK Experimental New Media Gallery
419 New Canterbury Rd (Near Marrickville Rd), Dulwich Hill
CONTACT: Greg Shapley - Ph: 0401 152 434,
Email: dontlookgallery@gmail.com

In Marrickville itself there's new paintings by Pam Aitken at Factory 49, Shepherd Street in Marrickville.
The exhibition can also be viewed from Thursday to Saturday 1-6pm until October 27. Milan to Marrickville is the name of the show and no, I haven't been there yet.
For more information contact - factory49@optusnet.com.au

Closer to the anti culture shopping strip that was once less beige - a GREAT little space has opened up at 30-34 Wilson Street Newtown .

In the words of the organisers LOOM is an extraordinary exhibition of rich woven texture and extravagant sculptural objects - and hell - I agree with them.

Artists are Sarah Jane Moore and Craig Russell and the show goes till the 15th October.
Open Wednesday to Sunday, 11am to 5pm until 15 October. You can find Wilson Street Gallery at .
Phone: 9516 3144 or email janet@wilsonstreetgallery.com.au

THIS WEEKS OPNEING NIGHT PLUG IS RESTRICTED TO........

Profile Week
Edition III

Opening @ Gaffa Thursday 12th October 6-8pm (runs until Oct 17)

Artist line up includes-
Luke Barrie, Jonas Wong, Joy Lai, Mirna Harri N, Aesha Henderson,
Anna Belhalfaoui and Vanessa Kyle doing photography, drawing, jewellery, object and more.

Gaffa
330 Crown Street
Surry Hills
Sydney
NSW 2010
www.gaffa.com.au
ph (61) 02 93806266
gallery hours mon-fri 12-6 sat 11-6 sun 12-5

THIS WEEKS ART OPPORTUNITY:

International Artist Exchange Applications Open

Applications for Council's International Artist Exchange Program, which allows for a 2 month residency of a Marrickville artist are now open with the city of Larnaca in Cyprus . The program aims to contribute to the on-going development of Marrickville’s sister city relationships with regions around the world by providing professional development opportunities for artists and promoting cultural understanding.

The exchange includes studio space, accommodation, and the costs of return airfares, living expenses and art materials for the duration of the artist's residency.

Applications for the program will be accepted by mail only. Applications are to be received no later than Thursday 26 October, 2006 at the COB. Late applications will not be accepted.

Application forms can be downloaded from Council's web site as follows:
http://www.marrickville.nsw.gov.au/livinginarea/culture/arts.htm

For more information on the Program contact Council's Arts and Cultural Development Coordinator on 9335 2233 or email: acdc@marrickville.nsw.gov.au.

ARTQUAKE THIS SATURDAY!!!

2006-10-05T15:44:00.000+10:00

This is a worthy cause, with a lot of interesting
artists, and yours truly (or my alter ego) as
Auctioneer. -hope to see you this Saturday at

ARTQUAKE
Stone Gallery at Eastside Arts (Paddington markets)
7 October 2006, view from 10am, auction at 3pm.

Presented by Indonesian Solidarity and Union Aid
Abroad-APHEDA

Earlier this year over 6 000 people lost their lives
in a high magnitude earthquake which struck the city
of Yogyakarta, Central Java on May 27. With around 46
000 injured, and over 600 000 left homeless, many are
now living in makeshift tents, or shelters on the side
of the road.

On June 17 another major earthquake occurred, this
time under the seabed off the coast of West Java,
causing a tsunami that struck the south coast of West
Java. At least 660 people were killed and
approximately 51 500 lost their homes.

With the monsoon or rainy season fast approaching it
is vital that the Australian community provide
assistance to those affected. WALHI - The Indonesian
Forum for Environment has been working in each of
these areas helping survivors to rebuild their lives.
WALHI take a community-based approach to recovery
work, with a focus on revitalising local community
organisations for the rapid recovery of civil society
in affected areas.

The art exhibition/auction will raise money and enable
WALHI to continue their much needed work in each of
these disaster-affected areas. There will also be a
door prize on the day sponsored by Australia Artworks.

"Artquake is about people connecting with people,
across national boundaries in order to help the people
rebuild their homes and livelihoods following the
disasters in Indonesia, "says Jumaadi, an Indonesian
artist residing in Australia.

Artists who have donated work include: Dadang
Christanto, Susan Norrie, Arlene Textaqueen, Sally
Smart, Liz Cuming, Mikala Dwyer, Rudy Ardianto, Rully
Zakaria, Aris Prabawa, Taring Padi (Yogyakarta),
Claire Conroy, James Hancock, Mark Hanham, Justin
Feuerring, Melody Willis, Mark Gerada, Nathan
Pyewacket, John Bell, Jacqueline Olivetti, Caroline
Kha, Neil Hicks, Lucas Ihlein, Rudy Kistler, Anna
Wheeler, Jim Croke, Mickie Quick, Refi Mascot,
Caroline Zilinsky, David Griggs, Alex Davies, Locust
Jones, Koji Ryui, Jumaadi, Simon Cavanough, Ian
Milliss, Mia Oatley, Paul Ryan, Roslisham AKA Ise,
Simon Yates, Josh Roelink, Sarah Nguyen, Yosi Messiah,
Malcolm Smith, Lynn Smith, Hana Schimada, Vicky Brown,
Lisa Kelly, Chayni Henry, Deborah Beck, Sia Cox, Keg
DeSouza, Anna Kristensen, Deborah Kelly, Diego
Bonetto, Stephen Oatley, Richard Tipping, Anna Young,
Jennifer Ogilvie, Kathryn Fries, Lisa Andrew,
Josephine Roberte and more to be announced...

MEDIA ENQUIRIES: Please contact Amity Lynch on 0413
114 758 (miss.malapetaka@gmail.com)

ARTQUAKE is proudly sponsored by Art Business,
Eastside Arts, Global Gallery, Global Colours, Art
Spectrum, Bruyeres Gray Fine Art, Eastside Radio
89.7FM, Paddington Inn.

With Friends Like These

2006-10-03T18:35:00.000+10:00

Things are bad.

Today mayhem went out and bought 3 CD's - by The Smiths, Leonard Cohen and Johnny Cash.

Getting the following in my email inbox did not improve my mood.

"

FRIENDS e-BULLETIN

Friends of the National Art School 3 October 2006

Just when we had become used to the utter distain with which FONAS is treated by the NSW State Government (all the emails from FONAS to Ms Tebbutt’s, Minister for Education and Training, office being blocked is just one example) when yesterday’s article in The Australian newspaper proved that we can still be shocked by their tactics. What followed was 24 hours of non-stop phone calls from concerned supporters until we were able to get verbal confirmation from the minister’s spokesperson who claimed that they had been ‘misquoted’.
The article concerned, written by Imre Salusinszky, quotes Ms Tebbutts spokesperson confirming that the merger between NAS and COFA will proceed and that the minister would ‘try and preserve the school’s artistic philosophy’. Follow the link Schools of art in unlikely merger
The FONAS committee immediately ratified that such a hostile take-over of the National Art School through dubious and questionable processes will not deter us from continuing our campaign to save the school.
Even though there appears to me no substance to the quote, legitimate questions demand to be answered regarding this merger. For example, the proposal that COFA originally submitted never fulfilled the criteria set out in the original tender applications procedure. If the criteria has changed then surely other universities should be given another opportunity to apply, otherwise it is COFA rather than Department of Education and Training (DET) who is setting the agenda, with DET adopting the role of mere facilitator.
We would also like to know how Ian Howard (COFA Dean) felt able to inform the staff only last week (at the COFA Art Teachers Drawing Conference) that whilst remaining ‘circumspect’, an announcement regarding the expansion of COFA to include the National Art School in the creation of a very “exciting new art school” was imminent? He also stated that the negotiations with DET were ‘going very well indeed’.
So where to from here? Certainly we are full-steam ahead in our support for Angus Wood (see attached article, Printmaker to run against NSW Minister) who will stand as an Independent candidate against Carmel Tebbutt in the State election in March 2007.
We will continue using every means available to ensure that the correct decision is made – and we need your help to do this.
We would ask each and every one of you to do what you can to save the National Art School . Please write to newspapers, phone radio stations, talk to anybody and everybody who might be able to influence the decision. Forward this email onto all your contacts. Every little bit helps.
The unexpected support that the Liberal Party has extended reflects poorly on the Iemma Labour Government and the way it views art and art education in this State. Echoing the voices of over 400 supporters outside Parliament House on 20 September 06, ‘Shame Iemma shame’.
We will keep you updated on news as it happens and would ask you all to do the same. Let us know what you are doing. Let us know what you would like us to do.
In the meantime, hold firm and do not be dissuaded from our chartered course. It is the duty of governments, as the elected servants of its people, to listen to its electorate. Democracy must prevail.

Kind regards,
Bernadette Mansfield
FONAS President

Mayhem has posted previously about my links to NAS - I'm an alumni with many many fond memories and loyalties - but I also DON"T HATE COFA. I really admire COFA's curent drawing research program and loved the last chinese whispers show.so I got really depressed at the in the SMH
Johnny Mac article/review

- which was facile and partisan and was more appropriate to an NAS funclub chatsite than a prominent broadshet newspaper.

Ideally I'd like to see Sydney retain the 7 government funded tertiary art schools it has (SCA, COFA, UWS, NAS, Meadowbank TAFE, Hornsby TAFE ,st. George TAFE)without any more cutbacks. but that's just me.

I'm concerned how drawing and blanket terms like 'traditional skills' are getting used by defenders of the NAS. I guess I'll save that concern for the PhD chapter I should be finishing this month - but politically I think it makes the NAS look like colonial outpost of the British Royal Academy of Art - which it isn't and never has been - and it underlines a rather seamier connection that makes me shudder.

Naturally NAS defenders are tyring to garner support from whatever pollies they can given the imminence of a state election in 2007, but the letters of support from Peter Debnam make my stomach churn. A comment in a story from 'The Australian'
also got me feeling icky. I think it was the bit about "an unlikely alliance between the elements of the fine arts community in NSW and the Liberal Party".

and mayhem wants to scream 'get fucking real'.

any punter can wonder just how many blond-helmet haired suburban matriarchs are there splashing away in the old gaol - but you can make an easy estimate from the population of four wheel drives parked around Forbes & Burton Streets. Despite being the cheapest art school in sydney (another reason why the State government should preserve it) - the NAS student population is the whitest, straightest and most affluent of any of them. Mayhem does NOT believe in the inherent attraction of certain materials or techniques to the beige, chattering or transgressive classes.

mayhem holds firm to the perversly polymorphous possibilities of paint, light, plaster, clay, metal, ink, charcoal, lenses, fabric, paper, mice and whatever oozing masses one can get ones bits on - and to the imagination itself.

also - the proximity of NAS and COFA to those shaded lanes of the woollahra horror vales of wall based investment displays - should put paid to any notions of art being separate or an anathema to money and its pursuit. it ain't.

anwya - I'll end this gloomy post - now - and will soon put up more fun exciting news about

ALL THE GREAT ART STUFF THIS WEEK!!!!

stay tuned