September, Jesus, disasters, Art

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

Well I could write something long and preachy today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tongiht UTS galery has an opening (see above)

then:

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

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


this month...


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

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

ongoing in the BLACK BOX: Ryszard Dabek

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

THURSDAY 14th SEPTEMBER

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


6-9PM @ 168 day Street, Sydney CBD

for info ring Alissar on 9649 5559 / 0405 206 617

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

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

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

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


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

(exhibition runs 15-26th September)

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


FRIDAY 15th December

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

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

show runs until October 14.

the same night is the opening of a QUEER ART SHOW

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

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

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

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

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

Fine Lines

For those who just want to see what I'm plugging on the way of free goon - skip this bit and head straight for the "bad wine" post below.

While hibernating with the TOME - mayhem did manage a few fleeting forays into THE ART WORLD - to glimpse space, light, inspiration, creativity, life - and all those things I've left behind in my bid to become some sort of international expert on the subject of art, art education, art practice, and ethnographic art research.

Deleuzian immersion sounds all well and good as a radical epistemology - but the exigencies of PhD production have meant that I've had to fall back on good old enlightenment models of "Me: expert". "You:subject" I will stand apart and above you and I will tell you what you are, and make money doing so.

It's a shite state of affairs really.

But one relieved by the odd delightful foray into an immersive encounter with the stuff - objects, on walls, on floors, in mostly white spaces. all placed there deliberately as some deeply conscious encounter with meaning making structuredom.

coz mayhem is mayhem - I like to check out high roads and low roads, coz both go to scotland or to rome, or to dead end metaphors. I make mention of the friends shows I see - not only coz of my onw sticky imbeddedness in the artworld - but as a cultural capital capacity builder myself - I lke to be clear about just how random, small, minute and arbitrary (and often nepotistic) my selection of exhibitions is actually is.

The luck of the artstar draw - is often about luck, as much as sheer bumcrawling slog of meeting the right connections or making the right shade of shit work, that meets the requirements of frisson generating newness without being too 'outre' for whatever box that we like all newness to come packaged in.

So last week - I rocked up to GLOBAL gallery - to check out a show that 2 art school mates were in Global is one of those many artists/hire spaces, wehre groups of artists band together whatever funds they've got to hire a space in paddington and stick their works on the wall, in the hope of catching the eye of some ACGA dealer on Glenmore road - or evne mkaing a random sale from some random rich person straying past dress shops and looking for a little somehting to go above their latest throw cushions or marble bench top super sinking fund.

The nasty old facts tho - are that most self funded/artists hire shows - also involve the artist bringing their own buyers as well. so the artists do the artwork, do an extra 3 jobs to hire the venue, do the PR, do the mailout, fork out cash for refreshments, maybe mind the space, and do the sales - usualy consisting of coereced firneds/aquaintainces, unable to stand the sinking faces of the artists as the night wears on wiht the only red dots consisting of flecks of red goon consumed and sprayed round the walls.......

anywya- a few of the artist from the current show "figure 8", have studios at lennox street and have been working for a few years in the above manner. Red dots are few and far between. I know Pete Yates and Megan O'brien - which is why I went. I loved aleena Smith's durer-stle hands and feets (intense emotive portraits) drawn onto rubbed back gessoed ply. Some were a bit twee, but you gotta love the lines.

Megan's paintings -almost wooed me from my visceral hatred of shubert's Wintereisse. she had lovely spikey caverns and endless pools (OK so mayhem is a sucker for rocks nd water) all conveyed in carefully worked back aqua monochromes.

My eyes danced inwardly, happily -and it was a nice way to start my segue over to COFA for the DRAWING CONNECTIONS event flagship: the chinese whispers show.

Once again - what dragged me - was familiarity with 2 of the artists - socially - through networks of friends, fellow students, dealers.

I've exhibited with Amanda Robins in 2003(she had paintings of folded fabric and I had fabric and human hair replica vulvas) and the ABC arts program - even mixed up our names. I have a bit of a soft spot for the enfolded qualities of her works -so much so that I even read the entire copy of Gilles Deleuzes "Le Pli" in French. HOWZAT!!! Folds rock. They ain't just about vulvas - I mean, vulvas are like folds...and folds are like mandelbrot sets, and - they go on FOREVER.

Mike Esson who is very much a figurehead of the australian post-post-conceptual 'new drawing movement - curated this show - featuring the drawing STARS of COFA staff and graduates. The right hand space of the gallery is dominated by 3 of Amanda's large drawing, that foorm a wierdly religious trinity and give the gallery an almost religious aura.


Now according to the book of MAYHEM - good art is WAYYY more than a representation - and in fact, good art is uses a representation to take us into a space where meaning is dissolved. I know Robins has a bit of a soft spot for Cixous and Kristeva - so I could use the symbolic/semiotic dichotmoy (Thus representation is part of the symbolic order, and art is the threshold where we enter into the semiotic order - the neonatal/prenatal, sub-linguistic non-phallic 'feminine') and so this is why it would make sense that her work evokes vulvas.....

but I actually think Kristeva is a but sucky, and I get a bit itchy when I think of an art being masculine or feminine, and I get really bitchy about Kristeva - coz she rekconed only men could represent the semiotic - or it's thresheold coz women were just too immersed in that anyway - and that's a damn hard thing to swallow if you happpen to be sitting on a vulva tyring to sew a replica one, or writing a PhD or, doing anything really.

Please bear wih me on this trip to theory land - it will wash out in the end.

Mayhem does not believe in the singular unified subject and reckons ALL OF GENDER belongs in the realm of the semiotic. Even phalluses have their fleeting temporalities and canot be relied apon as a ordering critera of subjectivity. Mayhem thinks the realy bodily remnant of the phallus is not the penis, not even the dildo but THE TURD. Phallocracy is abject.

Mayhem likes Irigaray - because she defies a singular reliable subjectivity. she's more flippo than Germaine Greer - writing is a mad intervention, a swirling that takes us well beyond a nice tight order of things, and becomes an imperative, a destabilising intervention, that cracks open shit. Mayhem also likes D&G (not Dolce & Gabbana and not Dolce & Gelato either - but Deleuze & Guattari) - because they call for an end to the subject - and an opening of multiple subjectivities, breaking down shit and letting it flow.......

so back to Ivan Dougherty - an imposing brick building with some nice stucco bits and nice white walls iside and very clean toilets.

Amanda's drawings are ostensibly representations of an old coat, some diaphanous dress, and some quilted dressing gown hung upsidedown. They have rather prosaic titles reflecting this like "oxfam dress", "ice blue dressing gown". (Drawn in grey so who cares?) that provide a coy nod to the instant naming thing - the nice anchoring thing that we look for in the title of a work. "Oh, that's what it is". that's why "untitled' seems such a posey post-object smark - doesn't it? I look at titles - hopeng to get an 'answer', and t read "untitled" feels like a smack on the wrist. "serve you right for not embracing the enigmatic!"

So. ahem. the works are big graphite drawings on big rolls of expensive paper. so they are physically imposing - and physically impressive - and deeply redolent of our own bodies. Graphite marks become like the lines on our skin, and provide a deeply uncanny visceral reminder - of..... that weird connection of flesh, fabric, marks and hands. the visceral bits are probably scoring points in the Mike Esson school of freaky dead flesh -but if we look byond the haunting beauty thing, there's somehting else quite special - that holds the ambiguity, and the weird affective mix into a tres noice suspension.

a deleuzian could describe the encoutner wiht the works as a machinic assemblage. so mayhem looking at "oxfam dress" is not just art receiver lookig at work but more like:

eye(mediated by thick specs mind you)-grey lines, diaphanous form - diaphanours fabric -retina-glint off graphite-galery light-move head-small marks, eyball meets small marks, looks at own hand, small wrinkles on flesh, hand lifts wine glass, wine enters mouth- eye meets marks, aware of my hand, her hand. eye-mind, hand-hand-body. steb back, soft folds, elephant tusks, ears, imagination, sheer shimmery glaphite, sheer shmmery fabric, must be pink. drawing is grey. I see it as pink, as pearl, s soft fabric, brushing on skin.......

next to this complex assemblage of sensation is the sart of a series of works by Toshiko Oiyama, whihc cover the next wall. Toshiko actively cites Deleuze in her artists staement - and so I say hear hear. these works look like classic exquisite Paul Klee line for a walk pieces - intense soft charcoal madness.

Because the pieces are 'non representational' (ABSTRACK) - the Paul Klee line got cited again and again by the tlaking heads at the opening. "take a line for a walk" coz it's an oldey but a goodey - that works like a signifier itself for 'modern thguhtful whimsical lines" while establishing the considered modernist lineage of the artist.

I'd prefer to say - take a line for a dance, take some charcoal for a spin, take it out for a burn, whack it around, scream it over the page - stop, start, run in the other direction and run back, stop and sing a line in a crzy falsetto, and whacck in some grunts and a bass line too. there's some lovely stuff there that's like the Zen Masters on damn fine phsychoactive chemistry - and provides a jolly eyball fest all round. Exqusite and elegant.

the thing that IRKED me though -and it irked me beacuse of the reference to deleuze - was the stop/start breaks in the works. Apparetly hti ws menat to be a japanses screen reference ( I nice easy orinetalist handle on the artists idenitit innit?) as welll as a conceptual device - a way of breaking up the narrative of each work - the line - into spaces/possibilities where the viewer makes a connection - agai disrupting the signifiying smotthness of the line - creating a jarring sense of our mahcinic assemblage: eye-line-continuation-imagination - and getting us to connect wiht something else.

but oh but - i reckon it just STRIATED the space of the drawings. the stop start, alternance - hindered the flow of meanings - jumping around and generating somehing else. and this is not deleuzain at all. Maybe I'm wrong, its just a thought.

the other delightful surprise of the night was in Nicola Browns work - nealty segued into a little alcove. Her stuff in SLIT and online - loks like careful pencil drawings of buch-ish masculine figures.

but this stuff you actually gotta see live and not on mp3/jpeg. Her drawings are MINUTE - and WIERD - and they feature these freaky chinese style military guards - tat are all self portraits - and its so ezquisitely delicously weird that - it's fantastic - a must see - bloody excellently odd.

Bad Wine

As bloody usual there's way too much happening in Sydney. Especially on Wednesday.

On TUESDAY 5th September

Jamaadi has an opening of works on paper at Legge Gallery, 183 Regent Street, Redfern

Now the wine at Legge Openings is so insanely bad - that the only pretext for attending openings is for the ART, and the nice courtyard out the back, and the firendliness of the crowd, and the fact that its only a block away from that really cheap fruit shop on regent street.

Fortunately Jumaadi's art does surpasse even the appalling wine, and can even help the punters wash down a VB. Jumaadi does what look at first glance like quaint symbolist colourist paintings - but - well - you don't even have to scratch the surface - he has bright coloured bits of text on the works - which even if your dylsexia is worse than mine - aesthetically blend in as nice marky bits of colour.

which of course completely misses the point. Jumaadi migrated to bondi from Jakarta - but has lived extensively and done art projects in and with various villages and indigenous commnities right through the archipelago to our north. He's had shows of everyhting form straw men, to pictures, to installations - to all sort of things - and is fascinated by text, the roles of words, the nonsense of words, and the meaning making practices that both creat and disrupt social cultures.

You can check out his older work on the website and see if I'm full of shit




- but I recckon anyone who can link Ned Kelly and Bin Laden together has got to be pretty cool, even if they aren't deep. Adi is deep. Mayhem approves.

show runs to September 23 and Gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday
11am - 6pm.


WEDNESDAY 6TH SEPTEMBER

everything is happening and it's all good.

Distressed by the ending of PELT - sound artist Greg shapley has taken matters into his own hands and set up a NEW ARTISTS RUN INITIATIVE IN MARRICKKVILLE.

DON'T LOOK Experimental New Media Gallery joins SYDNEY NON OBJECTIVE (SNO) in making marrickville the home of post picture art experiences.

someone needs to rename the 426 as the fluxus bus or something.
both galleries are on the 426 bus route - btw - so no one has any excuses for not cheking 'em out.

So, DON'T LOOK - the perfect gallery for a radio art show - launches THIS WED at 6pm with the inaugural exhibition "THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE TEE VEE"

Featuring: Pete McCarron, Andrew Newman, Greg Shapley, Kurt Sorensen who declare:


TV takes the best and worst bits of 'life' and distils them into a

nonsensical, overstimulating bombardment; a glutinous feast for the

senses that eventually dulls the senses with indifference. TV forgets

history but dwells on sentiment. The artists in this exhibition use the aesthetic of this medium to question its very substance."

Show runs from September 7-17 (Thur-Sat 11am-5pm)


IT'S AT: 419 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill (near Marrickville Rd)


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


ONE THE SAME BLOODY NIGHT THERE IS ANOTHER TRULY AWE INSPIRING EXHIBITION OPENING


T'FOUH... raw responses from arab artists

Is a multimedia exhibition expressing anger & ultimate disgust resistance & steadfastness spitting on wars, occupation & racism.

It opens at

Mori Gallery, 168 Day Street, Sydney
If you miss the opening - then don't miss the FILM FUNDRAISER - Thursday, 14 September, 2006, 6-9pm

T’FOUH alay’houm (trans: “spit on them”) is considered to be a rude thing to say in the Arabic language. Tfouh alay’koum (“spit on you”) is highly personally offensive. These words are said with disgust – and while a few artists have discomfort with such an exhibition title, most feel that the wars on their homelands are disgusting beyond words.

T’FOUH is a multimedia exhibition that brings together 40 Arab artists who are responding to the urgency of ongoing wars and occupation in the Arab World. The exhibition is being staged at Mori Gallery, a city-based art gallery with a long history at the cutting edge of Sydney’s contemporary arts.

T’FOUH has emerged from the cultural and arts development programs of Information and Cultural Exchange and Auburn Community Development Network. Both organisations have ongoing projects with Arab communities and artists in Western Sydney. The exhibition is reflective of the outpouring of creative and expressive responses to recent events in the Middle East – including exhibitions, concerts, screenings around the world.

T’FOUH will fill Mori Gallery with works from Arab artists from Western Sydney as well as from other parts of the city and beyond including the Central Coast, Melbourne, Canberra, Canada and even in Korea. The works reflect the spectrum of contemporary artforms including painting, photography, installations, sculpture, DVDs and sound. Some of the exhibiting artists were born in Australia, others have migrated here. Their heritage represents a diversity of Arabic-speaking countries, including Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt and Sudan.


OPENING - Wednesday, 6 September, 6pm - 8pm
EXHIBITION - 6 - 30 September, 2006
FILM FUNDRAISER - Thursday, 14 September, 2006, 6-9pm

Gallery Opening Hours Wed - Sat, 11am - 6pm or by appointment

More info contact Alissar on 9649 5559 / 0405 206 617nor Mouna on 02 9897 5744 ext 2 or email artfiles@ice.org.au

If you seriosuly don't give a shit about art and politics and new innovations on struggle street, then go and sink some piss with the lucky evante gardian winners at the 2006 Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship

Piss up ad party with the brave new art world uberstars: Zanny Begg, Lauren Brincat, Mitch Cairns, John A Douglas, Chris Fox, Astra Howard, Sari TM Kivinen, Brennan King, Owen Leong, Fiona Lowry, Jess MacNeil, Todd McMillan, Jaki Middleton & David Lawrey, Pep Prodromou, Giles Ryder, Sam Smith, Soda_Jerk, Rolande Souliere, Mimi Tong, Pete Volich and toast the lcuky winner of $40,000 and bitch about them behind their back at artspace at 6pm.

(btw - this is not meant to be a nasturtium casting onto any of the finalists -all interesting and some even worthy candidates for the mega bucks - just a stick poke into the ribs of emerging artDOM)

After drinking more wine than you can handle you can cross the road, scoff a pie and spew the whole lot into the woollomooollo waters....

All week, there's heaps of other great stuff including a Sydney uni version of SQUATSPACE TOUR Of BEAUTY, running on Saturday 9th SEPTEMBER.




there's also some amazing talkfest at ARTSPACE on the same day


symposium
Re-Framing Art: The Conditions of Theory

2 - 5pm Saturday 9 September
$8/$5 concession

Speakers include: Nicole Anderson, David Brooks, Gordon Bull, Blair French, Alex Gawronski, Adam Geczy, Elspeth Probyn, Cameron Tonkinwise, Ruth Watson

In 2003 the editorial board of the Chicago-based journal Critical Inquiry in 2003 asked invited participants a series of questions as part of their symposium "Critical Inquiry in the 21st Century". Question 1: It has been suggested that the great era of theory is now behind us and that we have entered a period of timidity, backfilling, and (at best) empirical accumulation. True?

Pronouncements of the irrelevance and consequential demise of critical and cultural theory are now commonplace. Re-Framing Art: The Conditions of Theory brings together a group of artists, writers and theorists to address the question of whether we really are now living 'after theory'? What is it we are talking about when we cite 'theory'? Is it now simply shorthand for irrelevant intellectual pursuit displaced by the hegemony of market and cultural individualism salved by new claims to humanism? How did theory become the pejorative of thought? Why the divides between theory and practice, theory and direct action, theory and life? Can it be true that the new urgencies of the 'age of terror' preclude critical reflection? What are the implications of the shift in modus operandi of art writing in Australia from critical exegesis to PR copy? Or of the emphasis upon 'professional practice' modules rather than critical theory within art colleges?

The Leichhardt Council vs The Shelf Life of Iraq

This week on Art and Mayhem I interviewed Toby Leon, the arts project officer for the Wall 2 Wall Mural project.
For all the details about how to enter (due 22 Sept) check out
http://www.lmc.nsw.gov.au/about/08/

Fascinating to note, too, is this amazing study on art vs graffiti by the nsw government:
http://www.graffiti.nsw.gov.au/cpd/graffiti.nsf/pages/graffiti_art
not to mention this debate raging in the newspaper last week:
http://radar.smh.com.au/archives/2006/08/cutting_edge.html

---

And we did a shout out to the Shelf Life exhibition at Mop Projects, opening on Thursday 31 August 6-8pm, 617 Elizabeth Street Redfern

Shelf Life
Ron Adams, Lionel Bawden, Drew Bickford, Cash Brown,
Adam Cullen, Samantha Edwards, Sarah Goffman, Prudence Murphy, Elvis Richardson, Kate Rohde, Kurt Schranzer
Curated by
Daniel Mudie Cunningham

The ‘shelf life’ of a product refers to the amount of time it can be stored before it spoils or becomes obsolete. Generally the ‘shelf’ in question is a retail space allotted for the display of consumer goods. Shelves, then, are temporal zones that see items coming and going according to highs and lows in consumer demand: when we want the product it gets restocked, when we don’t, it goes to waste. These ideas provide a rich source of meaning for artists when the conventions of use and display, as it relates to art practice, are considered.

Simply speaking: shelves speak to the things we collect, promote display and status, thereby elevating the very ‘thingness’ of our things. When, conversely, the whims of fashion, taste and novelty wear thin, that same shelved stuff lies dormant and abandoned, left to collect dust. As mnemonic devices, objects shelved are meaningful only because they’re attached to memories that risk being eventually forgotten. And forgotten is what often happens to objects filed away, shelved out of sight. As an exhibition featuring new work by eleven contemporary artists, Shelf Life engages with the lives of shelves, the shelves of life, life on the shelf, shelf life.
http://www.mop.org.au

---

And finally, we plugged the film 500 Miles to Babylon which is on at Sydney tonight, 302 Cleveland St Surry Hills, 730pm... A rare chance to see this daring documentary about Iraq by American filmmaker David Martinez. For more info go to http://officialsydney.com/

Over and out... Lucazoid

Underground Mayhem

Just coz mayhem is unable to tlak on air - don't mean I've lost touch wiht the art scene.

It's just that I'm not allowed to tell anyone if I've bene placed under house arrest as a teroorist suspect or not (Hell it sounds a lot more glam than being chained to a PhD).

this week opens with Bad NEWS: the biennale of sydney is over, and if you didn't go, well YOU MISSED OUT!

today's papers had some coverage of a BIG FAT ART PROTEST against the current bombing in lebanon.

Yesterday, some artist laid out a stack make-shift body bags in Martin Place.

The bags were in various sizes representing different age groups of people who have recently died in conflict in the middle east and indeed all over the world). Each body bag had masking tape across the chest area with words such as "your mother", "your son", etc written on it to personalise the bags and the death itself.

There were also olive branches taped to the chest above the masking tape. Toys will laid next to the child-size bodies. etc.
There were NO identifiers of national identity on any of the bags or banner and
NO speeches. The council and police were very particular about this one. "

Nevertheless - it attracted controversy because one body bag was labelled "Your Prime minister" (not any one in particular - th it did have rather rat like dimensions)

the right wing hordes alos wet themselves because the body bags were placed NEAR THE CENOTAPH IN MARTIN PLACE.

Under the new yewbeaut gallipoli doo dah ozzie ozzie ozzie naitonal ideaology - its some kind of crim against the nation to like , associate WAR WITH DEATH.

apparently just like 'our schapelle', the glorious war dead known as 'our boys' are actually reincarations of the Jesus myth - and were like inhunmanly crucified by the evil untamed forced of islam, terorroism and left wing pinkochattering classes.

(mind you, that Kozic guy is probing a bit of a challenge: how many iraquis lives did he fuck over before he shot himself?)

HELLLLOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

the glorious war dead, as far as I can tell (from all those wilfred owen poems) were acutally trying to kill poeple at the time that they met their maker. Its sad, it's fucked, but it's true. they weren't innocent civilians, they were gun toting maniacs, many of whom were killing innocent civilians.

so its kind of nice really that someone has a little reminder of the unnamed, unstatued INNOCENT causalities of war whose only uniform is a bloody body bag

This controversy is a nice little segue into the SAMAG forum tonight!

Censorship: A Forum

FEATURING: David Marr, Liz Ann Macgregor and Stephen Sewell
6pm-8pm, Monday 28 August 2006
Australia Council: 372 Elizabeth Street, SURRY HILLS

This forum will be a lively discussion reflecting on censorship in its different forms as it relates to arts in the Australian context. Looking at the current working environment of artists, trends and opinions, our speakers will debate the impact censorship has on the Arts - and the impact the Arts has on censorship.

Cost: Free Entry for SAMAG members (see website for details)
$10 for non-members / $5 for students (please pay at the door - cash or cheque only)
For full details, visit www.samag.org or email: info@samag.org
To visit our website, please go to www.samag.org

On TUESDAY @ Kudos Gallery: 6 Napier St. Paddington NSW 2021

A traveling exhibition by the Swiss artist Alfonso Hüppi is finally opening in Sydney. It is the first time that the works by this famous artist are being shown in Australia. (OK I don’t know him either but that’s what their email said and who am I to judge?)

Sentimental Journey reveals the diversity of this artist, with a range of materials and mediums and treatments. The works draw from everyday life and attempt to depict the human condition in all its possible forms. Despite being in his 70s the artist’s work continues to be experimental, surprising and confronting.

This exhibition is presented in partnership with the Embassy of Switzerland, The Consulate General of Switzerland and Pro-Helvetia: the Arts Council of Switzerland. Supported by UNSW College of Fine Arts, Kudos Gallery and the COFA Students' Association.

Wednesday @ global (in paddington)

My mate Pete and a bunch of others have a group show opening

There's also another opening with Lea McPherson innit at first draft. (near central)

excuse vagueness but I've jsut beached my hair.


Thursday @Gaffa

Has opening night drinks this Thurs 31st Aug 6-8pm
For :::Birds of a Feather::: By Marcelle Robbins

In the exhibition Birds of a Feather Marcelle Robbins is exploring memory through the notion of collecting and collections. She uses objects and imagery of birds and feathers to evoke the feeling of nostalgia. She believes we collect to make sense of our world, which is made up of some ones present and their past. They hoard and store souvenirs of past moments, mentally and physically.

Birds obviously have great significance for the artist; they represent her suburban upbringing, being blessed with a highly decorated living room and a backyard full of native flora and fauna. The bird objects are replicas of flying ceramic birds cast from the originals, once owned by Marcelle’s grandmother, that were a popular domestic interior motif of the 1950s/60s. However they are now represented in white plaster, as if the distant memory of growing up in the suburbs flocks around her. As for the bird feather photogram images, they originate from a collection the
artist has assembled over recent years. These representations play on the space of domestic life,
both interior and exterior, and through repetition emphasise the practice of collection and assemblage to make peace in the world.

Up the ROAD another Robbins has an opening the same night at IVAN DOUGHERTY Don’t think they are related tho, and don’t think Amanda is into birds either.

“Chinese Whispers” features Muamer Cajic, Li Wenmin, Toshiko Oiyama, Deborah Wilkinson, Nicola Brown, Maria Kontis and Amanda Robins

And “is a visual exploration of the drawing process, its evolution through experience and knowledge, interpretation and misconception through educational transfer that invariably creates diverse and exciting variations”.

I’m not sure if I understand it either and I’m going coz I know 2 of the artists and like their work.

Even if you’ve missed the biennale, you can still catch a great show at the mori cave. Highlights are the invisible chair, and the pink pussycat porno playing cards, and the flip books, and the new femo king on the wall. Get there before Saturday.

Lucazoid Fan Club

this week Lucazoid will be sitting in the radio hot seat.

for those of you who can't get enough of his dulcet tones on air, then you can hear (and see) him again on tuesdya night at artspace.

Artspace is developing 'a series of informal events in order to provide a point of contact between the Gunnery studios and the local art community, and to facilitate discussion on issues important to artists operating today.'

that's the excuse for chinwag plus nibbly/drinkies thingo tomorrow night.they got three artists talking from 6pm on Tuesday 22nd August:

Yuken Teruya (Japan)
Roslisham Ismail a.k.a. Ise (Malaysia)
Lucas Ihlein (Sydney)

None of them have much to do wiht woolllomoolloo but we won't hold that against them.

Yuken Teruya introduces his practice in the context of the forthcoming program of exhibitions, residencies and public events Rapt! 20 Contemporary Artists from Japan. Ise discusses his participation in artist networks and collaborations across South-East Asia, while Lucas Ihlein presents a narrative of his recent two-month
residency in his home suburb of Petersham. Admission is free and refreshments will be served.

ARTSPACE @ The Gunnery @ 43-51 Cowper Wharf Road, Woolloomooloo

ON WEDNESDAY 23RD AUGUST
you can catc another opening at LOOSE (level 2, 168 Day St, Sydney CBD)

"in the dark and alone, artmagic"
Lisa Andrew, Debra Phillips, Elvis Richardson, Kevin Sheehan

Opens at 6-8pm and continues to saturday 9th september

This is a way of saying that you've missed Jenny Browns work in the big box and Shane Hasemanns work in the little box.

the little box willl have : Ryszard Dabek - in a NOICE sherman touch.

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

ON THURSDAY NIGHT (AUGUST 24TH)

GAFFA has a special group show thing opening that they've schwankily titled:

:::Profile Week: Edition II:::

Names are:
Katrina Freene, Kevina-Jo Smith, Karin Jakobsson, Ivan Buljan, David
Finch, Amelia King, Kate Carr, Christopher Newton, Gillian Bencke, W.
Watkinson, Adrianne Tasker, Aesha Henderson, Ellie May Aroney

Objects are: mix of jewelry, sculpture, photos and toys.
GAFFA is at 330 Crown street, Surry hills

Weird words and great art

Now it may seem a bit trite to focus on artist’s press releases, but hell, is it any more trite than the official focus of Art and Mayhem on the quality of refreshments at exhibition openings?

I think not.

Lately mayhem has been swooning in a sea of arty words.

I could go off on a Derridean tangent about words being the framing structure in which art operates – and as essential to the operations of the free exchanges within the free flowing field of art as anything else – but deep down you and I both want to believe that’s bullshit – so I’ll cut straight to the bitching.

At the opening for Anna Wheeler’s paintings on Saturday, I think I heard THE WORST exhibition opening speech in the history of the universe. It was something like a cross between a best man’s speech at a drunken wedding and something from a Lion’s club annual dinner. Not that I’ve been to either for a while.

Fortunately there were plenty of excruciatingly delicious bright paintings to provide a visual balm for the audio pain.

But I digress.

I received A REALLY WEIRD PRESS RELEASE for the group show of July Fragar and Fiona Lowry at MOP which opened last week. I didn’t look at it before the show – which was kind of fortunate.
I went for the names – Lowry was in last years primavera with some great spooky airbrushed photographicky things and mayhem wet herself after a preview of Fragar's solo show last year.


Deep in the belly of the Tokyo Metro Mr. Lu gives her an early early morning lesson in Japanese. It’s too much. She aches. Bye Bye he said. Sayonara Mr. Lu.

Never had a lesson I ever learned
I know I could never learn not to love you
Come in now closer
Come in closer closer closer ahhhh
Cease to resist, come on say you love me
Give up your world, come on and be with me
I'm your kind, I'm your kind, and I see

She was living, in short, on the edge of a landscape of vast shame.
A vegetable patch on a railway line: insistent.

Between two thousand houses, in the time it took the express to pass, she saw a black van with national flags and loud speakers.

I'm your night prowler, break down your door
I'm your night prowler, crawling 'cross your floor
I'm your night prowler, make a mess of you, yes I will
Night prowler, and I am telling this to you
There ain’t nothing you can do
Where are all the entrepreneurs in China?

She saw him behind sunglasses. He was wearing the sneakers she wanted her boyfriend to buy. But the goatee undid all the hard work. The toil of his presentation made crappy by the self-consciousness of a patch of hair on the underside of his chin. Idiot.

Come on come on, ooo I love you pretty girl
My life is yours, and you can have my world
I'm your kind, I'm your kind, and I see

These are evil minded people, and like dogs with rabies there is only one way -
they have to be put down and destroyed.

When she said the last thing she wanted was contact with the art world she understood what she meant. But you can’t just go around killing everybody.

So ahhh yeah, eh?

Do you know what that means?

Julie Fragar is great with photorealism, intense woven textured paint and cool text. So I guess the text is important. The highlight of the works at MOP consisted of
IFTHERE I
S ANAUST
RALIANSO
NGWHENC
AN ISINGIT.
Which was in elegant faecal colours and reminded me of my waylaid vigilante project of CACA.

Fiona had a great mauve spooky spatial thing and Julie had lots of ink sketches of weird Sino-imperial jade court scene things… but THE WEIRDEST THING IN THE WHOLE SHOW were a bunch of works by some guy called Brian.

Think of Ron Swan meeting – well, err… some really sweet intense surrealist spooky painter – and err… maybe this was the bastard love child of Defiance gallery and Brenda May?

OK I’ll cut out cultural references.

40 x 60cm paintings on a wall – and kind of dark colours and weird spooky little heads and DEEP titles that have serious social comment you know. Some looked like a bunch of Neil Armstrong/Jetsons style space cadets. And then there were these WEIRD curved painted bits of metal over the top – with these impeccable cut out holes.

So I don’t have the analytical language to describe this. Errs… pastiche? Errr.. Discombobulated? Errr. What?

There was another foray into ART MEETS SCULPTURE earlier I the week at Virginia Wilson Art. Andrew Frost was the star curator of IRONIC EXPRESSIONISM.

I received the blurb, read it and ate it, which is why I can’t give you pithy excerpts of it here. A pity coz it was witty but deep.

Oh well. I think the show was mean to be based ‘ironically’ on some of the big boy stars of the new male expressionism in sinney art scene. So there was a big painting (with some scarey tones of beige) by Ben Quilty of a car moose/confabulation that took up one wall of the gallery with another big painting of a rooster named George by Craig Waddell. Waddell’s cock was delightfully playfully elegantly coloured – a nice counterfeed to the brash moose-car of Quilty.
On the back wall there was some vagueish autumnal sensuous toned abstracted thing by Todd Hunter, and then the side wall had an intriguing combination of Nigel Milsom's white on black sketchy painty things of churchy looking structures and Ash Hempsall's WEIRD trippy little brightly coloured painty freaks. Mayhem loved the latter unconditionally. Miro eat you heart out. Which reminds me of Craig Waddell’s 23rd birthday but that’s another story.

None of this is visible from the outside of the gallery. Which is small. Amazingly small and amazingly capable of holding all these big boy masterworks. Was that part of the irony?

What were visible were some small canvases of Todd’s, and then lots of WEIRD GLOOPY BEIGE things in frames by Craig Waddell. Extreme sports drippy stuff and not a jot of those lovely blue greens, chocolate smears or ecstatic pinks.

Heavens! Had he been conquered by the Sydney school of beige gestural painting? Fortunately not –this was just a funny segue into the divine power of liquid nails. I liked the cerebral forms the best.

All of the above is just a mild little warm up for the serious rapturous art moment of the year. It’s hard to write about ART when it is linked to horrible tragedy, so I’ll warm you up with some nasty narky bitchiness.

I usually avoid THE OX, and especially OX opening nights. Partly coz they are right down the arse end of paddo – and all I get flashbacks to all those scary history books I read in High school mentioning the razor gangs and plague outbreaks.

And the street surfaces down that end of town – not unlike Woollahra are made only to be negotiated in a 4WD. The street surfaces are lethal for legs, bicycles or small cars and there is no street lighting. At all.

Lucky the ox has big pink and blue neon sign.

Anyway the opening night soiree was a bit of a fright. The crowd were all in ‘NOIR’, sweetie –that serious art crowd in morning thing – including one woman in a delightful velvet and tulle party frock. And lots of the men were in suits. And they were casting nasturtium laden glances at mayhem (who was wearing a GREEN dress – that didn’t come from Prada, or even Kmart)

I’m not used to my sartorial presentation being aspertioned by snooty visual glances (and I hang out in PARIS) so this was a bit odd. I was so disconcerted that I buried my nose in, err, the art on the wall, and on the ground.

This was no mean feat – given the win swilling throngs in mourning. All with backs to the work – except for occasional cursory glances followed by a fleeting ‘oh, god, how tragic’ (unsure if referring to me or the tragic death of the artist) and ‘yes, if only they were for sale, well which one would we buy sweetie?’

Because the works weren’t for sale, the show was a memorial tribute to Oliver, who was an amazing mid-career artist in her mid-forties, and who killed herself last month. So this show – at a commercial gallery, which doesn't feature works for sale, and there’s no buzz and flurry of red dot spotting or price speculation. All people could do was look at each other, or, you know, like, the work.

So I started looking at the work, and got sucked in big time.

Bronwyn Oliver is best known for those large seedpod – metallic basket weaving type things that you see every now and then. There was a great one at the botanic gardens, and LOTS of artists have sort of copied her since. So it’s become a bit of a style…

But don’t be fooled. Oliver composes her pieces with an intrinsic sense of the organic method of construction, assembling pieces according to the rules of placement, structure emerging, gradually, perfectly.

My god its’ a good show. Close up – not just the overall forms of the pieces, but the minutiae – their impeccable structural integrity that really sucked me in. this extended to the tracery of oxidized patinas of the brazing where she melted and joined metal elements together. Metal was metal, but opened itself up to something else.

This is absolute alchemy of material, form, suggestion, imagination…. And so immensely, intensely moving….. So mayhems eyes lingered, following each segment, meditating on the divine structure of each piece –highlights included cascades of tumescent budding breasty forms, exquisitely balanced stone like structures, a mighty pentacled anus, and some delightfully laced woven threading forms composed into long stem like structures. Oliver composes new structural laws for each piece, and the time, the time just to look, to comprehend, well it’s more ZEN than ZEN ART. It’s amazing.

So now, after this I have a definition of GREAT ART. And it is timeless. (A classic line).

But really amazing work, draw you into its own logic and its own time. You don’t just look at it and go ‘oh, its about that’, you get invited to explore further what it could be, has been, might become.

It takes a very special, intimate and knowing love of the material, of the medium in order to convey that. So heart, hand, eye, imagination. Time space, medium.

This is one of the best things I’ve seen all year (I mean ANYWHERE – including Europe).

The Ox ain’t easy to find – but until September 2, you can be guaranteed snarky suit free epiphanic eyeball delight. Those school-aged minions at the ox have outdone themselves in the installation and lighting department. Each piece is well placed, well lit and there’s the right ratio of space to art.

Roslyn Oxley is a 20-minute walk from 5 ways in Paddo or a 10-minute stroll across the oval near Edgecliff station. Shanks pony can get you there easily in daylight. Soudan Lane runs off Hampden Street, which runs off Glenmore. I don’t usually promote the big end of town galleries – but Oliver’s work is so wonderful and it’s doubtful if she’ll get a retrospective at AGNES WALES in the next 30 years so this may be your last chance to enjoy her work.

Knives, Snow, Architecture

On Art and Mayhem this week, Lucazoid brought artist Hilik Mirankar
into the studio. Hilik is best known as the knife sharpening motorcycle
guy, but he's also an accomplished sculptor in wood. Almost everything
that Hilik carves is salvaged and refashioned, recombined, with scraps
found on the street. And in the last few years, Hilik has begun to
refashion neighbourhood relationships in his own street - Queen Street,
Glebe. He has been negotiating with his neighbours to place his wooden
sculptures in the front yards of nearly every house on Queen Street. We
talked about Hilik's processes and motivations. Hilik's website is

http://queenstgallery.ath.cx/queenstreet/

Lucazoid also plugged two events this Wednesday night:

the first is the final PELT show by snow (see LOTS happening post below)

the second is the

http://mca.com.au/default.asp?page_id=13&content_id=2098
International
Architecture Lecture: Teddy Cruz
The 2006 Lloyd Rees Memorial Lecture

Wednesday 9 August, 6.30 pm

Guatemalan-born architect Teddy Cruz has a San Diego-based practice
informed by its location at the border of San Diego, California, and
Tijuana, Mexico, where two radically different cultures, societies and
economies occupy the same geography. Outspoken in his condemnation of
borders, Cruz addresses how borders discriminate against cultures and
restrict entrepreneurial activity within mainstream activities. His firm,
Estudio Teddy Cruz, has won numerous awards from the American Institute of
Architects and is gaining an international reputation for recycling
overlooked space into liveable, workable environments. In 2004-05 Cruz was
the recipient of the Stirling Lecture Prize, a collaboration between
the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the London School of Economics
and Political Science Cities Program.

Admission: $15/$10 MCA & RAIA Members and Concessions

Bookings essential (Mon – Fri): 9245 2484 or education@mca.com.au

Presented with assistance from the NSW Ministry for the Arts in
association with Sydney Design 06 and the Royal Australian Institution of
Architects

LOTS happening!!!

After my spectacularly content free broadcast last week – I’ve decided to take a break and go see some art so I can review it.

Lucazoid will do the Monday 7th segment and mayhem will go and investigate the following shows for the broadcast on the 14th august.


FRIDAY AUGUST 4th (6-8pm) at Chrissie Cotter Gallery, Pidcock Street Camperdown

Scenario House by Gianni Wise http://gianniwise.blogspot.com/

An installation by artist Gianni Wise that places gun culture within the context of everyday living, literally, Gianni has built the interior of a home in a gallery space. Scenario House 's timing is particularly relevant given the events currently unfolding in the Middle East .

Exhibition Runs until August 20. Gallery hours are Wednesday - Friday 11 - 4pm. Saturday & Sunday 11 - 5pm

ALSO on friday at S.N.O.: Sydney Non Objective, First Floor 175 Marrickville Road, Marrickville
19: Ian Milliss And Christopher Dean, Quentin Sprague, Salvatore Panatteri

Exhibition runs to August 27, : hours are Thursday to Sunday 12:00-5:00PM or by Appointment
http://www.sno.org.au


MONDAY AUGUST 7th (5.30pm) at Artspace, Cowper wharf road, Wooloomoolloo

Mimi Tong, Lori Kirk, James Hancock, Astra Howard and Jade Boyd announced as official winners of the NAVA/Freedman Travel Scholarship. Thanks to nice Freedman family and NAVA they each get $5,000 to travel the world and make some GR8 ART.

NAVA: National Assocation of Visual Artists. It's cheap to join and does lotsa nice stuff. Just don't say the"U" word.


TUESDAY AUGUST 8th (6-8pm) at Virginia Wilson Art, cnr Darley & Burton Streets, Darlinghurst
'Ironic Expressionism' group show curated by Andrew Frost.

My computer hates adobe so I couldn't read the artists list - but Craig Waddell is in it.


WEDNESDAY AUGUST 9th (6-8pm) THE LASt EVER SHOW AT PELT!!!!

One day soon, when sydney art is reduced to beige derivative meanderings of Glenmore Road boosted by Stockroom sales of Lindsay, Whitely and Billich people will yearn for the days of old, interactive plyhanous multimedia multisensorial experimental art experiences.

So come live out the last sunset of OZCO new media funding initiative at a great little white box behind the old Brewery in chippo. Balfour street is tucked behind abercrombie street near Broadway - just off meagher street.

The Show is Mr Snow (don't think its a coke dealer tho)
Camera Notes: impermanent.audio 2000/06

Exhibition Runs: Thursday 10 August - Sunday 20 August. Opening hours: Thu - Sun, 12am-6pm

PELT IS AT Unit 2, 46 Balfour Street, Chippendale or http://impermanent.info/pelt

Also on Wednesday at Mori Gallery, 168 day street, sydney CBD

David Capra, Leah McPherson, Stephen Barton, chelsea Lehman, Jacqueine Olivettie, Belle Charter, Ben Terakes, Melodya Williams, Shelley Atkinson, Kotton Patterson

Exhibition Runs until September 3. Gallery hours are Wednesday - Saturday 11 - 6pm

THURSDAY AUGUST 10th (6-8pm) at MOP Projects Room 16 Level 2 617 Elizabeth Street Redfern
CHARGE TO SLOW Julie Fragar and Fiona Lowry

Fragar is one of mayhem's favourite painters, taking photorealism, text and texture to extrme sports heights of crikey god knows what. this should be a big eyeball fest of contained intense drippy stuff, and August is one of the few months in the ear when MOP doesn't feel like a sauna.

Opening hours: Thursday - Saturday 1 - 6, Sunday 1 - 5 pm (02) 9699 3955 mop@mop.org.au

Same night at GAFFA gallery, 330 crown Street Surry Hills
The Debut, by the Makers Manifold

Rosary Coloma, Loren Keir, rhonda Lin, Mirna Novosel, Susie Rugg, Brooke Wilson, Chloe Waddell
One of them looks like she's wearing a lawn bowls outfit, so mayhem may be eviscerating her on the night for plagiarsism.

Opening Hours: mon-fri, 12-6pm, Sat: 11-6pm, sun: 2-5pm


SATURDAY AUGUST 12th (5-7pm) at Addison Road Gallery Marrickville
Riding in Wonder by Anna Wheeler

An exhibition of new paintings playing on the fauvist influences on her flamboyant colourist style. Wheeler has explored symbolist themes more deeply, applying them to her lyrical depictions of animals and still life elements. In english this means that Anna's paintings are big, bright, and a welcome smack in the face to the horrors of ACGA school of Beige. Think of trumpets screaming out a mambo improv over 'little brown jug' and you get the picture.

Exhibition Runs until August 27. Gallery hours are Wednesday - Sunday 11 - 5pm

What Next

I think this week is going to be one of those qquiet weeks in the art world.

THE ARTLIFE

aka ‘the ORACLE” in the circuits of mayhems mind – did a general speculative whimsical feature of contribution based on WHAT NEXT.

It’s not that great reading – but it indicates that this soft weathered midwinter week – is a good one for toenail picking

Mori has an art auction for some bunch of shacks in royal national park and ELIZABETH GROSZ is giving a free excerpt of her MCA costly conference paper from earlier in the year, and kookey is being relaunched on Friday, and some boys in newtown have got a squat party on saturday night……

But in a week where even the legendary SQUATFEST film and culture jam spectacular has taken itself off to Adelaide – its probably a sign that not much is happening in the art world.

Well there’s the biennale. Still going on. Think the tin sheds has somefink opening up soon. And maybe artspace have got that mechanical machine room working again.

And you can check out the extreme sports dim-lit anorexia perv factor of Bill Henson at the OX

Mayhem outdid herself in managing to miss a whole heap of stuff happening last week.

Ghihglihgt was being completely UNABLE to locate the Knot gallery ‘café on the side’ which is apparently on the corner of Albion Avenue and Selwyn street in paddo – but post beer mayhem decided to wander up and down Albion Street in surry for a few hours before piking and drowning sorrows and brain cells at the hollywood.

However – I did managed to see some art. Which included a fetching long spikey vury object at GAFFA.

Vices and Devices was just the sort of girly gothfest spectacular that ain’t really mayhems cup of expresso – but you gotta admire fine workpersonship – and Armonious had it in spades.

Artbargain of the week – is the exquisitely welded bird claw/metal spike which for a hundred bucks has gotta be the best nose picking object d’art in the history of the universe.

Mayhem got dragged up the road past that bargain arthire space called BLANK for one of the best free noshups since the archies opening – and some rather brightly coloured landscape photos…….. which weren’t very interesting at all so I should stop writing aobut them

Apologies for lite content of pitch this week.

Next week – EVERY THING is happening, opening or closing. (again).

DULCET TONES ALERT

If you haven't been down to the MCA for the biennale, then this Saturday at 3pm - I reccomend you go.

that honeyed voice man ruark will be giving an ORAL performance of Banalities Piece - presumably while negotiating the many frames of his Biennale installation.

think of the Number 3.


Its at 3pm
Piece is on level 3 - in that weird nookey bit near the lifts and on the harbour side.

If you want something less operatic and endurancy then you could go up to Cross Arts (33 Roslyn street Kings x) for artists talks by Fiona MacDonald, Sue Pedley, Phaptawan Suwannakudt, Deborah Vaughan.

the show is really interesting and so are the artists and it's on the same time as Ruarks peice wihch is also the same time as some talk/thing on Mindfulness and Creativity at AGNES wales as part of the ZEN BUSH MASTERS exhibition.

and they are all freee - and it's furhter proof that sydney is not a boring overpriced banal hell hole really......

I think I mentined the Olaf talk fest at Paddo town hall tonight?

Also I just got a last minute note that ON FRIDAY (yeah -that's today) - squatspace kiddos Kernow and Amitie are giving a slide talkfest at SYDNEY, 302 Cleveland Street, Surry Hills.

Infotainment!
Amsterdam <--> Yogja <--> Sydney.

Kernow has been in Amsterdam since 2003, living in squats and doing graphic design with Green Pepper Magazine, and DIY printing collective kNUST.
http://www.greenpeppermagazine.org/
http://www.extrapool.nl/knust.html

Amity spent 2005 studying in Indonesia. After the recent earthquake, she helped organise the wildly successful 'Rock against Rubble' fundraising party at Lanfranchi's. She has just returned from a short trip to Yogyakarta to deliver the proceeds to the Taring Padi collective whose building was destroyed.

Kernow and Amity will be accompanied by Sydney's famous Krazy Kool drinks (indo style), Indonesian Dangdut music, and really strange Dutch music.

Barakat Crackerjack

While it's part of the radio spin for me to promote art according to a criteria of free piss, I've been finding it a tad hard to attend free openings and still make some sense of the ART.

Mayhem will do her best to attend the opening night of

"Like Talking to a Brick Wall" by Josie Cavallaro

At Loose Projects: Level 2, 168 Day street, Sydney

(opening wednesday 26th july 6-8pm & continues to saturday 12th august)


As well as some scary spikey thing at Gaffa on thursday night (see cut and paste job on press release below)

::Vices & Devices: Machinations of Flesh::
Tales from the Great Subconscious by E. Armanious

at Gaffa: 330 Crown street Surry hills

the latter makes me thing of the show I straggled over on a sodden friday night at chrissie cotter gallery.

I'd already been sinking guinness all afternoon at the FLODGE (god academia is a tough life ain't it?)- and bedraggled my umbrellad frame up the road and round the conrer to the nice room at the back of Camperdown Bowling club.

After the SHAM project, mayhem has become fully convinced of the acute compatibiity of art and bowling greens and reckons more art audiences should be required to wear pristine white uniforms - just so the wine stains stand out more, but that's another story.

OK the pretext was not just the free goon in 3 flavours and 2 colours and some damn nice hoummous and probably my only source of fresh veggies last week, but for the art.

nicole Barakat is a damn fine seamstress. she teaches textiles at COFa and is known in some of the seamier circle sof the lady loving set as WIFE. Not because she is one - but coz of her whacky perfomative pisstake/well dressed fifty something exqusite stitching hysterical mimetic pisstake of the whole domestic fmeininity caper.
My favourite was her promenading around the performance space with a Ghetto Blaster screaming out that crayz turkish pop singer - it almost topped Texta's sister 'cheese single' doing Vinyl disc spinning - and inspiring a NO NET extrmeen sports karaoke collaboration... argh! those halcyon days of the early noughties.......

If you've been down to AGNES to admire the postmodern pastiche of Ghada Amer’s sexy stiched ladies on canvas… well you’ll wet yerslef over the barakat/collet combo at the cotter.

(Sorry for excessive alliteration)

Clarie Collett and Nicole Barakat both present rally involved fun pictorial works and objects – evoking the sensuality of stitch, weird mnemonic residues of text….textile and nice colour furry felty form……

I loved Collett’s tryptich “My heart is a Great Black Bird” and adored Barakat’s fine work over canvas book linings…… (It reminded me of this nice chapter in Ulrich Lehman’s tiggesprung/tigerspring about Prousts palimpsests as textiles……)

Mayhem loves two things deeply in this world: the infinite coloured ooze of divine drippy stuff and intense piercing intensity of good textile work. So sewing, pulling, felting…touching finding remaking, made birds, fierce flights of dragging imagination, sense, and the way woven things hold memory, touch, connection… well they get my juices going

I found some of Ghada’s canvases at AGNSW worked well, and the threads meshed madly into something not sewing and not paintings – other’s were just too crude/clunky & ostentatious.

By contrast the Collett/barakat show was all amazingly exquisite and the work is cheap and I’d put the show as hot tip for the mayhem budding art investors guide to starting small. Cheaper than a haircut. The show goes to 30th July. Chrissie Cotter is on Pidcock street Campo. Very close to parramatta road

meanwhile back to social calender:


Australian Centre for Photography and Institute of Modern Art present

An evening with Olaf Breuning
Artist talk with the star of Home, Brian Kerstetter

Paddington/Woollahra RSL
Oxford Street
Wednesday 26 July 2006
6.30pm - 8.30pm

Cost: $5
Bookings: Purchase Tickets Online
Please book early as numbers are limited

New-York-based Swiss artist Olaf Breuning will visit Sydney to present this artist talk for Australian Centre for Photography as part of a joint production with Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane. Supported by Pro Helvetia/Swiss Arts Council.

Drinks available from the bar

In his videos, photos and installations, Olaf dishes up a fantasy world of glam-trash quotations, an archive of alternative realities. Equally enamoured with heavy metal and counter-culture, historical romance and serial killer splatter, the courtly and the bogan, he constructs bizarre intersections of reality and simulation in which pop culture's interlocking clichés are amplified and exploded. His eclectic work provokes contrasting feelings of discomfort and fascination, repulsion and seduction, embarrassment and intrigue.

ALSO at Sherman

DETOURS AND VARIATIONS

an exhibition of work by: JOHN YOUNG

The Director, Olga Harrison, and the Curatorial Director, Ricardo Silveira, invite you to attend the opening night of Col Jordan and Chris Langton's exhibitions.

Opening - Wednesday 26 July 2006, 6pm
Exhibition Dates - 26 July - 12 August 2006

Exhibition to be opened by Ken Reinhard and Anne Loxley

Harrison Galleries
294 Glenmore Road
Paddington, NSW 2021
t: 612 9380 7100
email: info@harrisongalleries.com.au
www.harrisongalleries.com.au

opening this thurs 27th July 6-8pm (runs 28july - 8th August)

::Vices & Devices: Machinations of Flesh::
Tales from the Great Subconscious by E. Armanious


Vices & Devices is an exploration into the nature and subjects of secrecy and the subconscious through the imagery of medical and cultural oddities and the literature and language of the hidden desires. The significance of these pieces rests in their function as tools for measuring the immeasurable interiors of the mind.

Vices & Devices take the form of hand held, physical and metaphysical tools, solid pieces of my fantasies and dreams that reside somewhere between the subconscious and reality, the grotesque and the seductive. They reference medical oddities such as Dermography (practiced on hysterical women in nineteenth century France) Phrenology as well less unusual historical and current medical trends, ideas, and design aspects, ritualistic tools of the past that mark rites of passage and states of emotion, such as tools for tattooing and scarification, and ideas of murder and prolonged suicide.

Utilizing a broad range of techniques and materials, this series resides in a unique position in regards to genre. My background in jewellery has allowed me to construct these metaphysical tools in a small scale with obsessive precision, but although their interplay with the body is of supreme importance, they are not by any means ‘Jewellery’. I have also been studying with a master swordsmith with whom I have been experimenting with Tamahagane Steel (also known as Damascus Steel), a exceptional metal, practically unknown in Australia, that originated centuries ago in
Japan for Samurai swords and blades. Other materials used in this series
include surgical steel, stainless steel, dental gold, sterling silver, graphite, glass, bone, mercury, gazelle antler and a single queen European wasp.


Gaffa
330 Crown Street, Surry Hills
www.gaffa.com.au
ph (61) 02 93806266
gallery hours mon-fri 12-6 sat 11-6 sun 12-5

Actuallly the same night and kind of up the road, there's a KNOT event thing:

they say "Knot on the other side" say the addie is the coner of Selwyn & Albion streets in Paddo, and apparently it sosme exhibition of some french dude called ARTEFAKT.

nvite looks kinda cute - so it moytt be orroytt

Back in black

Black Brassier, Undies, socks, boots, leggings, skirt, top, zip-up cardie. Lucky for bleachey regrowth or I could have looked like a widow. I’m too old to pass as a goth.

None of this was visible from inside the weird burqua like structure that sheathed my form. My eyes peeped out and met other coy glimpses from other ned-kelly players. Ned Kelly? Or some anonymous stereotype of the suburban subaltern….. the veiled Islamic female. Unsure. Mayhem liked this particular confluence of codes. A cone of zontac between international contemporary artwork and a noice Nolan reference for the locals. It was up there with last biennale’s take your pick selection of sorry/no worries.

Back to the box. A light frame on wheels, in which I felt safe, secure and warm. I was nursing a hangover and happy to see without being seen. Well my bum could be seen through the slit in the back but who was I to care? My phone rang and my friend told me she was in my hometown. I told her to visit my mum and where she could see the farms of school-friends from the highway. She said it was freezing. She was just passing through. I told her about the box. It felt like a phone booth.

She hung up and my hands went to the frame within which I glided around the room. I thought of various assiduous texts on the gallery as a training space for public comportment. How is one to look, to stand, to behave in public, self consciously, with decorum and distinction? As I glided within my black carapace, on the inside I picked my nose and scratched my bum. Considered masturbating. I could have spent the whole day in there but the signs said ‘do not leave the viewing area’. Bugger. I saw a couple entering one together. Lucky sods.

Was this the work? I’d entered the space in last night’s clothes, trawling along the left hand wall, peering into the scintillating stills mounted on monitors. Half naked women and men, sitting on chairs in an ugly room. Posed like anthropological specimens from some ghastly photographic cabinet of the nineteenth century. these figures were white – but I couldn’t help thinking of their black Australian shadows. I rankled at the annoyance of my own shadow passing in front of one of the screens, darkening it to the point of invisibility. I moved back and to the side, tried to peer obliquely. How annoying. Signs around said ‘do not touch.’

At the end of the line of monitors, there were a series of black glass squares. Squares of impenetrable dark gloss mirrored my shadow across 3 walls of the space. Then I noticed that the black oblongs were for entering. Realised, that they were viewing booths. So I stepped inside and wheeled up to the square. The black matt pall cast a shadow over the square. Up close, the square almost filled my own narrow viewing slit entirely. Then the image became visible. A repeat of the topless staring others. A creepy, quiet little voyeuristic frisson, that diminished my desire to masturbate.

I loved this piece not only because it looks elegant – but provides such a clear experience of a the ‘scopic’ regime of cinematic voyeurism. I’m not a fan of the Mulvey/Pollock school of getyerhandsorffit antiperve feminazi aesthetics – but do feel obliged to acknowledge that the cinematic imperative (sitting in a dark room looking at something BIG that can’t see you staring at it) governs lots of the spectacular codes of err, you know, the NOW time, late/post/high/hyperreal modernity or whatever you want to call it.

And part of this err…. Ahem… ‘scopic regime of late modernity’ (yep that IS the title of some great 80’s essay) is based on the implied cultural relations of the voyeur. Sneaking a peek when you don’t have permission. Looking at something that can’t see you. A voyeur likes to touch themselves in the dark, apparently, but in a room full of people, the voyeur transfers the manual touch into a lingering langourous GAZE. Hungry eyes see the body of the viewed as a substitute genitalia – and here I should be nice girl and stop trying to be so non gender specific – because the genitalia involved is meant to be the PHALLUS. Readers may remember the Berger line about ‘men as viewing subjects, women as viewed subjects’, and the baudrillard line of the spectacular incarnation of the castrated phallus that is incarnated by the stripper…… and they are probably all apt and correct. However, it’s a pretty hard line to swallow when you’re a lone lady-loving lady in a dark box with an ex-dildo and ex-girlfriend both 17,000 kilometres away let me tell you.

So, let me try to conceive of the sopic regimes of late modernity, where the ladies get to be more than a cock in drag or some harbinger of Lacanian LACK.

I’m not sure that all peoples bodies are absolutely sure of their gender all of the time. I think gender is something negotiated, tested, tried, reinforced, challenged and confused. I think the experience of gendering is negotiated within the morass of fleshy stuff which comprises the mortal coil of you, and I, both probably sitting with numb buttocks reading a computer screen. Hands on a mouse. Are you 100% man in every pore, or 100% woman? and that turd yo did this morning, was it a boy turd or a girl turn? How did you know? Mayhem is beholden to the creed that bodies are ambiguous disruptive things, and that a fixity of gendered cultural relations can only be maintained by processes of disembodiment. English please? If you can’t feel your body, can’t feel the ambiguity of that turd, the crease behind your knee, your stomach, your snot, your ear wax, the crook in your finger, the flaccid folds of flesh in your underwear, that hair curling on the nape of your neck. (like who has the time to code all of these as masculine or feminine) then it’s easier to feel assured of your gender as some unified, seamless subject.

Unified seamless subjects, like the phallus act in coherent one-eyed unison in relation to the world around them. They see one thing at one time. Their bodies are reduced to a set of codes. Voyeur, viewed, subject, object. No time for ambiguity. No fluids. The key to reducing the body to a set of codes is of course – to evacuate any disruptive experience of it. control, contain, remove bodies from the visual experience. Cinemas do it by having comfy chairs, where crowds of people get to play quadriplegic for 90minutes. Glue arse to comfy chair. Don’t move feet, have strawed drinks and hands free nibblies on hand. Have no hands. Furniture that fixes our heads into a single position, a set viewing range for a set time. Mayhem hates choosing a cinema seat for this reason.

I dunno what the cinemas are like in Latvia but in “Breathing Prohibited”, Eveline Deicmane has created something perfectly brilliant for a comment on ALL OF THE ABOVE. The black burqua boxes create a gliding fusion between the cinematic viewing regime and that of the gallery experience that is delightfully deliciously almost perfect. Entering a black box inside a white box – our bodies dissolve into mere armatures for our eyeballs. Well, almost. I fidgeted in the dark, but felt too disquieted to wank, phallic longings aside.

I wish I hadn’t been too trashy the previous week, when I’d visited the AGNES with my finnish friend Kaisa. We were mean tot be doing the biennale together as part o our great plans for an art theory panel on Deleuzian Aesthetics and feminist epistemology at the end of the year. It’s going to be about all of the above – and strategies for researching and describing art practice beyond notions of representation or disembodiedness. But last week I was so trashy that all I could do was go ‘hey, look, that’s me! There’s Zanny!’ in the Fiona Tan photo constellation at the bottom of the escalators. The book has a picky of my lounge-room too. Mayhem is everywhere. So much for curing my mirror stage.

Anyway – the above is meant to be a long winded plug for the Deicmane piece. GO TO AGNSW FIRST AND GO INSIDE A BOX AND PEER AND PONDER. And then wander inside a great big black room with TABAIMO’s animation on a big screen, and enjoy yourself for a minute. Spread out across the lounge. If you wanna do serious contemplative video art installation – then stroll down to Harry’s pie cart, and cross the road into Artspace. Tacita Deans video installation for BOOTS is one of the most successful things I’ve seen in the gunnery cave for a long time. 3 video rooms that can almost be viewed simultaneously if you don’t mind mashing your head into one of the vintage industrial uprights of the old warehouse squat that was.

There’s so much good stuff in the biennale that I could have written long winded rants in the previous two fortnights – and could still write more. Mayhem holds to the belief that what makes video art, video ART as opposed to Video – is the condition where the spectator’s body can be engaged with. You don’t have to sit through a whole video piece to have seen it. you don’t have to sit anywhere in particular. You don’t have to sit. You can wander around, crouch, lie, walk up to it so the screen becomes a mass of pixels. Peer from the sides or not even look at it. you might just hear some noise and hate it like I did at walsh bay with the bad screaming sax of Almagul Manlibeyava’s video. I don’t care if Punk has reached Kazakhstan, it sounded like shit and I thought Paci’s chandelier was pretentious and the whole downstairs area looked not enough unlike expo ’88 to make me feel happy. But there’s still some great work there.

I keep returning to the video works –because I’m interested in ho this cinematic medium can be made non-cinematic. I’ll get over it so bear with me. There’s lots of nice installationy-sculptural stuff too.

Beyond the biennale I wandered into the moricave and saw Khaled Sabsabi’s incredible video installation; it think it’s called refuge. Sabsabi has done electronic and audio work for donkey’s years – and this has extended to the finely crafted audio scape – a sonic cone of sub bass thrums that hums beneath the traffic noise outside, and provides a lovely audio ‘ground’ for the visuals. 3 big screens, a cycling tryptic not unlike Tacita Dean. On comprises bass relief over exposed black and white moving images of a faceless head, and industrial bleached out landscapes that…. Yeah, must be Beirut or something. And the other two are immense red slides fading in and out, gashing, wounded cedar flesh. Ana Mendieta eat your heart out. This is Lebanese nostalgia, as raw aching visceral sensation, spiced with faded vague memories. It is incredibly moving. If you have a teleporter handy you can goo directly from that into Joyce Salloums installation at the MCA. There you can move edgily between seats and headphones, witnessing testimonies, and weeping. There needs to be more weeping in galleries. Some work is worth it.

Too Blonde for words

mayhem is sitll lost in space (actually I've been in a PhD hole) and it has tuned me white
- so lucas is doing the segment this week
I'll be back in black next week.

scragging around

Art and mayhem has been damn slack this week and hasn't seen any art.
(I went to one opening but the room was full of people and I couldn't see a thing)

there are limits to bullshit even I can make up aobut stuff I haven't seen so I'll fess up and close my mouth for a week and open my eyeballs.

but in case all my fans wanna feast yer eyeballs on mayhem action there's some nudy paintings of mayhem at Michale nagy, and Tim hilton has a collection of happy snaps of schappylle scrag

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikofanclub/sets/72157594171802851/

why review art WHEN YOU ARE ART????

hey btw - that creepy bone woman wiht the weird religious scultpures - linde eivermeyer is my second cousin

Advance Aust-ARTY Fair

There's something happening in sydney this weekend and I've got a horrible feeling that 2SER may be a sponsor.

I'm always attune to the possibilities of nepotism and the media - so I'm not sure how much to bag it on air.

but hell - this is my own space so i'll hoe in here!

actually I just checked the site. no 2SER logo... so i'm Free!

The thing that shall not be named - is a funny cross between a 19th century Paris Salon and Expo '88.

Sydney ART culture - is imbued with enormous connotations of elitism and snobbery (it's an australian wide thing, and permeates anglo saxon culture - but it's very strong in sydney).

"ART" - is seen as somehting deluxe, expensive, intellecutally and financially elite.

A bit like chateau cardboard in the '70's, a new marketting trajectory is pitching ART to the ordinary aussie consumer.

Mobiliing some aspects of aspirationalism, the notion of a quick punt (you never know if it could be a winner) and tying them to the idea of challenging the bourgieness of art - the pretension, the snootiness, the academic postmodern conspiracy et. al, this show promises to bring ART to the broader public. - and where else but in that icon to popular use of public space - Rupert's shed?

so - think of the archies, paddies and the nostalgia of the Royal Easter show. Its the authentic side of the art market - you can see all the buggers flogging their wares under one big roof. See it side by side. Decide for yourself. take a punt.

I've heard the radio ads. they promote the afffordeable side and have voiceovers that sound like the same people in the ALDI ads (I got all this stuff for only $200!!!) - only its more like "I got all this free wine for only $40! - I got this great little print for only $2,000! - maybe it'll be the next whitely!".

Times like these, i realise why i'm in cultural studies and not in art history and theory.

Because I WANT to embrace the popular apppeal of the banal version of ART. I'm genuinely interested in why people are attracted to a shopping mall version of the ART experience. and I'm genuinely sympathetic to people who want something cheap, and fun and who want to access "ART" without aquiring all the cultural capital of one of those inner city pursed lips underground art snobs of someone such as myself.

And, dear readers, I must confess my own monstrosity. I speak fluent french and I drop in references to dead and living french theoreticians in the course of casual conversations. I know the floorplan of the louvre, an anumber of other international art musuems intimiately. I feel comfortable in internaitonal art symposiums and I own a couple of black skivies (bought in Paris). Even worse, I wear thick rimmed spectacles, sport an avant-garde haircut, I live in Newtown, and I'm doing a PhD. I embody the postmodern conspiracy and I'm not afraid to admit it!

But I have been broke most of my life, and I like a free drink wherever I can find it. I've gnawed on the dust of struggle town for many a year - as an artist - and I know a trojan turd when I see one.

Listening to 2SER - or reading ARTBLOGS online - youse, dear audience already possess considerable cultural capital. Allow me to take you by the hand and alllow you to embrace your affinities with certain social distinctions. You don't have to be an intellectual snob, or a canny investor, or an art historian. You can have the affordeable ART experience. You can rub shoulders wiht the funky squad, knock back a few drinks, and bring home a few choice aquisitions. All this for less than a haircut.

Alternatively - you can spend this weekend at a sydney pub, drinking shit beer which costs more than a pint of guinness in LONDON (I kid you not) - or swilling chateau choker across the counter, while screeching inanely over the roar of incredibly shit music or live broadcast of whatever male dominated sport spectator sport is being played any where in the world. a tthe end of the night, count how much you have spent. $30? $50? $100? How many times do you do this each week? a month? Next month - JULY. Decide that your pub money will remain outside of the hallowed halls of spot lighting and mdf and try the following:


step 1. Avoid the royal hall of industries this week and this weekend.


Step 2. Decide you won't go to any pubs anywhere for the next month.


Step 3. Go to art openings. you can attend at least 3 or four per week. Bring a friend or two so you've got someone to talk to. and yes you'll be able to TALK to them and hear them - because you won't be screeching over loud music or satelllite TV. Stand around a nice well lit space and chat and drink for free. If your conversation is interesting neough - and after a few dirnks, other people will join in. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO LOOK AT THE WALLS - in fact you could spend the entire time, standing on the street, glass in hand pretending to be a smoker.

NB: - art galleries usually don't have anywhere to sit - but you could always rock up in a wheelchair - as many are groudfloor. Otherwise think of the calories you burn, and the leg and foot strengthening you can get while standing up. besides after a few drinks - you won't feel your feet anyway..

Sep 4. while aesthetophobes are advised to attempt to spend an entire week at art openings and NOT SEE ANY ART, after doing this, you may venture a few cursory glances sideways away from the hottie you are tyrng to chat up with your wine breath.Often looking athe ART can be quite a pleasant or interesting experience. OK no, not always, but sometimes. If you don't want to look like a berk - don't try and engage in earnest conversation about the ART at an opening. Equally don't have too loud mobile phone conversations. (texting is OK. Textings is tres cool if you're standing in fornt of a piece iwht no red dots near it. Gallery dealers will think, if you have a catalogue in one hand and a phone in the other that you are making reccomendations to your investor friends - and offer you more wine) As I said, bring friends, talk about weather or haircuts or your sex life. Eventually work up to perusing catalogues/price lists. you'll be amazed how cheap a lot of the art is.


Step 4. Having been pissed, had nice chats and had a good time in a nice well lit and warm envronment for FREE. see how much money you have saved. don't spend it on pokies, a new haircut or E-bay speculation. Instead: BUY SOME ART. If you go to 20 openings in a month (or even 10) you will see something you don't hate. If you REALLY like something - you can lay-buy it. If you're not sure - spend what you would on a haircut or new shoes. If after 6 week sor 6 months you htinkit's hideous - then PUT IT ASIDE AS USE IT AS A WEDDING PRESENT. your friends/relatives etc. will laugh about it for the rest of their lives.

Step 5: Buy buying art you not only support galleries (and artists) who pay for the free goon on pitiful incomes, but you contribute to the culturla ecosystem that keeps the art world a lot more interesting that ART ON THe ROCKS. each month, try to buy the cheapest art you can possibly find in a gallery. (I mean $10, -$15 by the way). YOU DON'T HAVE TO LIKE IT. Pretend you're shopping. you can even throw it out afterwards.

Step 6: Read ART ANd MAYHEM or THE ART LIFE - to find out what interesting 'quirky' (TM) or emerging art shows are happening - and who is interesting/boring/relevant. This may or maay not help you decide what to look at or buy.

Step 7: PLEASE, KEEP BUYING ART. GET YOUR FRIENDS TO DO IT. YOU CAN SPEND LESS THAN $500 A YEAR AND STILL SUPPORT A LOT OF ARTISTS AND SPACES.

Step 8. If you work in the ARTS industry: Like you're an 'artsworker', community cultural development oficer, curator, writer, educator, preparator, event coorindator, arts advocate, publicist etc. REALISE THAT YOUR LIVELIHOOD DEPENDS ON THE UNPAID WORK OF ARTISTS AND LEARN TO PAY YOUR WAY. spend 10% of your income on art each year or accept that you will carry my undying contempt for you and all your work buddies to the grave. If you don't want to do this, go and earn your money off the sufferings of an indigenous community who'll call you an (opportunistic) WHITE CUNT to your face.

i'm not trying to put hairdressers out of business but mayhem - wuld like to propose an audience challenge: If you can NOT go to the hairdressers for 12 months - and spend the money on ART. I will cut your hair for free. (or find some other textile artists/soft sculptor to do it).

So that's my rant. I don't want to whine and preach at you about how poor artists are. but in order to support my practice over the past 10 years - I renounced spending money on shampoo, underwear, haircuts, deodorant, CD's and cinema (i'm only just resumed some of the above - thanks to 3 years on a PhD scholarship) . I know very few artists - even sucessful ones - who earn the HECS repayment threshold (a damn fine reason to be an artist by the way) . Poor ones are just glad to know how to break into locked dumpsters. Supporting a practice usualy costs about $5,000 per year - just on basic materials - plus there's studio rental of $3,000 per year - if you're lucky. Exhibitions usually costs someone - about $1,000 per week. Aritsts do it and so do gallery dealers - because IT'S DAMN FUN!!!! so buy buying some little object - you can share some of that fun.

So! this is a very long way to lead you into this weeks hot drinking/viewing/buying tips.

GAFFA (330 Crown Street, surry hills) has an opening on thursday 29th june 6-8pm and running from 30-5th july


featuring: verity-kate mead, mike turner, ben frost, vanessa kyle, joy
lai, kate carr, ross atkins, kelly robson,aidan li, shannon johnson and
william w. - who are all interesting, suvccessful emerging artists.
(checkk the artlife's list of artists or do a google search on some names - or just rock up and have a look)

PLUS you can spend $200 on jewellery, object, sculpture, painting, photography and more!!!

This saturdya 1st uly ther'es be a closing thing at Peloton - for hte medicins sans frontieres art auction.
LAST TME I LOOKED THEY HAD A BEN QUILTY HEAD ON PAPER FOR LESS THAN $200!!!!

and you could get a work for les than $20 - and send it to your Nanna and scare the pants off her!

Rock on up too 19 Meagher Street Chippendale between 4-6pm.

Morii also haas some $20 works going on the Kurnell show.

Shannon Johnston has some great collage things at MAD: 52 enmore Road enmore,

and..... you'll have to listen to the broadcast to hear about the other openings this week

cheers

mayhem

After Party

Mayhem is a tad fatigued of the endless search for free goon at sunset, and imagines most readers are too. Mayhem suggests a quality stroll through all the art thats around at the moment - but if you MUST joing the madding crowd - then you can try the following:


On tuesday:

KUDOS gallery has an exhibition opening for GROUND FLOOR, which presents the finished works and works in progress of COFA's 2nd and 3rd year Sculpture, Performance and Installation students.

GROUND FLOOR opens 6-8pm Tuesday 20 June
Kudos Gallery
6 Napier St. Paddington NSW 2021
exhibition continues to 1 July 2006
open Wednesday to Friday 11am - 6pm, Saturday 11am - 4pm

this is round the corner from the Ivan Dougherty Gallery - where they've got some GREAT stuff as part of the Biennale Of Sydney.

Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Maria Isabel Gaudinezz Aquilizan have filled a room with perfect cubes - made from folded clothes, shoes, bags and mementos. If you've ever moved house - you'll totally love this piece... and in fact it is a public performance of migration. Each cube is a collection of immaculately ordered items from a group of CUBANs - asked by the artists to imagine what items they would pack if they were to leave cuba forever and emigrate.


Before this wonderful nest of post-cubist brilliance - there's a big fat video installation (extremely spooky 3 screen split still life shuttling thing that gave me a headache) and a great little cubby house constructed by Muruvvet Turkyilmaz - which consists of all sorts of little objects, images and a small video screen - all connected with nice wiggly lines and some writing which is probably in turkish.

but yes, go sip goon at KUDOS and support the baby artists.....

My favourite bit of the biennale so far has been Olga Chernysheva's video pieces at the ACP (australian centre for photography) - which is up the fashion strip end of PAddo. (257 Ocker Street). Nice weird, quirky details- like little boys grimacing in front of gyrating cheerleeders, and some old woman polishing her medals and preparing a picture of Stalin at the end of some march - meld nicely with a longer moving peice gogn through a train..... the room has a nice couch and thick black curtains too.

Actually maybe my favourite biennale bit is the foyer of 4A in Haymarket. Its all Pink! FLOURO PINK - with HELLO KITTY curtains!!!! (mayhem reccommends that you buy a pie or some chocolate nearby and then just go and stand in the pink space and you'll feel ocmpletelly happy even if you don't understand the art)

After wetting myself with sheer joy I wandered upstairs and enjoyed the highlight videos of Cao Fei - sshowing grey side of chinese techno industries. Extremely cinematic.

a few people have been baggin the amount of VIDEO ART in the biennale - but to be honest - I rekcon it's adamn cheap alternative to the Sydney Film festival. you can wnader into a nice dark space, out of the rain and cold and sit there for as long as you like (so you can walk out in 5 mins, or 5 seconds or 5 hours)- AND IT'S FREE!!!

I was going to suggest an artists stroll approach - for you flanning fans out there - which is to foregt straggling pas tthe roadworks to walsh bay and instead write a stern and cross note to the Sydney City COuncil for the disgraceful state of Cowper wharf road.

ahem.

Before the disaster area there are 4 musuems that should not be missed. the MCA - known and loved and loathed. There are some OK paintings in there by Milenko Prvacki that reminded me just a bit too mucc of Rosalie Gasgoine - but that's not his fault. There's a very big err painting by Imants Tillers which ruins a whole room. Contrast this laboured construction with the neat, squared multilevelled funhouse approach of Ruark Lewises 'Banilities' room and you'll see what I mean.

anyway - you could spend a whole day in the MCA, or two - so maybe you should wander up the road first - and check out Ken Done. Ignore the fact that you are in Ken Done - and try to look at what you are looking at as colours and shapes on fabric. what do you think? really?

across the road - there are 2 buildings devoted to my favourite artist: charles billich. ONe houses 2 floors of monumental nipples and writing flesh coupled wiht some bad graphic design. the other houses the current ARt ON THe ROCKS exhibition. ART ON THE ROCKS Is a staple of sydney painters doing their stuff, and quite sadly, most of it is extemrely grey. My friend steve has asked me to ask people to go and vote for him. he spent the whole weekend playing with a footpump powered airbush and couple of drills with some carmine and liquin - so i rekcon he's worthy of peoples choice award. Plus he's broke and needs the money. so please go in, avert your gaze form the doom and gloom (unless you want to think that the most exciting contemporary painting in australia is Imants Tillers) and vote 1 Steve Kirby.

I've just attempted to insert a jpeg version of a text based invite into this posting. Detials below. SUBTEXT: Free goon in marrickville this wednesday night

Lucazoid out of the Sham

Mayhem took the monday off to write long and considered manifestos (see entry below) and so Lucazoid stepped in to provide an enticing review of the Biennale and especially the works donw at walsh bay.

Lucazoid also metined the folowing events this week.


MATERIAL COMFORT opens 6-8pm Tuesday 13 June runs till sat the 17th.
at Kudos Gallery, 6 Napier St. Paddington NSW 2021
the Artist is Sarah Jameison, and she's exploring the concept of comfort. Her work aims to identify and articulate where she finds comfort in the material world; in spaces, objects, textures and organisational structures. Each work can be read as a case study aiming to identify, measure and question the validity of material comfort. In short, Jamieson describes MATERIAL COMFORT as an “exhibition about taking off my tracksuit”.

MORI GALLERY - for one night only on the same night has a screening of films by Anna Belhalfaoui. From the search for weapons of mass destruction, to protests against detention centres in baxter and villawood, to saving the tassie forests, exploring kurnell and fights over photocopiers......

Some of the videos feature the scheming gallic saphhic scrags that wrecked my marriage, and actually the artist is a gallic sapphic scrag that was my marriage, so i'm not sure if I'll be there, but it shouldn't stop the rest of you.

On WEDNESDAY Night Tracey Clement has an opening at Groundfloor gallery in Balmain with - bloody amazing see through fabric bodies if anyone can be bothered getting to Balmain - or you can check out her jagged little schrapnel anti jewellry at Pelt.

Luca didn't mention the following:

Shannon Johnson has great found bits pictorial works at MAD - Make A Difference Gallery on 52 enmore Road, enmore.

Or the Curator led SafARI tour of Artists run initiatives Starting this saturday 18th June at 12pm at Pelt Gallery, 46 Balfour Street Chippo. the low calorie, high intellect mobile art experience known as SNACK ART should be putting in an appearance so I highly reccommend you rock on over.