Up on the wall at Utopian Slumps and in a stacky on the floor at Sutton

rectangular, no triangular

posting off a copy of 'Heavan and Earth' to the farm. will make for some interesting discussion when I go home I bet. I like Lisa and Sam's show at Hell, I like that they went little, less gawdy, Greatist Hits video of some shearer install dude putting up there work is hell swell. Install dudes, gangs of shearers. Jock is in QLD managing a portfolio of Cattle properties. Beff is going 'ganbusters' he says. Agri-business hey? I wanna go up and get stoned with beef giants sons. I am pretty stuck into my ideas of the old money high life, polo and drugs please. Art does seem to ignore sex. I have stolen this idea, because I think it's a good one. Fiction is up in it, but not exhibitions. Dirty shows would be nice. I heart the white-cube, turns things into art, don't like sight-specific, it's a bit daggy, whiter than white thanks. didn't like Cockatoo Island, nothing in that show really dealt with that space, just borrowed its cred, forget history, forget local and forget community that feeds into whitey patriotic, get Liberal, don't join a team, not even the anarchists, the world will obnly fix up perhaps if we are allowd to not join teams, that we don't have to homogonise to sought out the environment, but that environmental decisions be a system infastructure underneath to just get the hell on with he we be over the top. Perhaps 'Heavan and Earth' has something, of course we will be wiped out one day, and so we should, hey why not, perhaps 'saving the earth' doesn't have to be about saving our own arses but more about not being jerks hey, there is something so consumer about how we are going about it. Just remember, I'm not the phoney your the phoney, jerk xx

I should write cause you look and ther is nothing new, I'm a bit drunk, have been out with mum and dad, am listening to Gugg think they have secret track, really want to  send dad to listen to matt griffin at ACCA, i think i just latched onto the bits that are about me. everytime he says my dad, dads farm i LISTEN, food hey, my vegan friends say Singer is a fuck. 

dan's grandma from a nursing home at byron bay said, dan be a peacenick, war sux

Hi Kato,
That looks familiar!!!
Can you act like old money???
Reminds me of Grandma somehow!!
Are you excited about your exhib!! Hope the installing goes well - looking forward to seeing it & you - think it will be that week of 4th May - more later.
Just got to help Dad move out the back paddock.
Love you, Mum

Hey Bill! 

!Come see some shit paintings!

can't you act like old money

by kate smith

Opens Wed 22 Apr 6-8pm

22 Apr - 9 May 2009

its a play off between creating and not making. The counterweight is more important. are artifacts to ideas o k. there in lies the rub. 

ugg lee old thingg

dudes in training

hey there is a studio space free at Kerr Street if anyone needs an awsome one. xx

po mo bo ho

I have been reading a bio on Francis Bacon. Not sure why. Cause it was on the studio floor and I was busting to read. It's called Anatomy of An Enigma. I can't even laugh, jesus christo! But he's growing on me, I love his dirty fagness, his 1930's ness, sado-boho queen......"Bacon certainly made a lasting habit of 1930's Bohemianism. Even as an old man, he would lather his face for shaving with an old sock if he had no brush to hand". I must be Bohemian after all. Trying to locate the next show around a certain time frame, I want all the times, today its can be the 30's, I think all of bo-ho modernism is up for grabs....I grabs... 

In between Anais Nin, found this

we keeps talking about irony...maybe I have had enough of that? But is the peak of it (the prick of it) or the everyday of it, the sunday newspaper magazine article on it ( i stole that idea) where it ends up something like this...

::::: The apartment is full of furnishings I find individually ugly - silver candelabra, tables with nooks for trailing flowers, enormous mulberry satin poufs, rococo objects, things full of chic, collected with snobbish playfulness, as if to say, 'We can make fun of everything created by fashion, we are above it all.'

everything is touched with aristocratic impudence::::: 

this is not enough, but a start. 

little tip dump stuff

Doing a twelve day working week. I think it's making me a bit gushy... It's good too. I feel efficent like I'm saving for something. And I am saving to cover rents and pay for my show. Which is now today starting to scare the bejesssus outta me. Not scare, well yes scare. I went to texticles (good) the other night and realised that space aint as little as I thought, perhaps I am not just going to be able to sneeze it out over a weekend!! and feel a bit flaky, at openings an stuff I'm the same saying """ Yeah I have a show comming up in april at TCB"" blargggggggggg cause cause I feel like I talk talk but don't do do. I keep thinking "privacy!". I know I feel like a liar cause I have been away from the studio for all these days, and The show so far is a few things I like on the floor. This show is going to be vaguer and kinda more 'beyond me' to exlain than usual perhaps.

Last year was very easy. I just need time at the studio coal face and it will solve.

I want to thank SHANKS! the peps who do blog, It can feel indulgent, it is, but reading honest stuff makes me feel closer to being in the studio. I just felt a bit 'believed in' last year and now I could trippppp/disappoint.*cry cry*

I wrang my brother and asked him to take a photo of the farm tip and send it too me. I was walking out to see it while home for xmas and collecting scraps like a little one, bring them back to my room that has been repainted, bieged out, by my mum and all my old trinkets, rocks and posters are gone. I am allowed to decorate again. But thats weird like pretending I am fourteen again. It was pre boarding school shrine.

The tip, has the faux brick cladding from my gran's house in it, like here house has been exploded into it. I would walk out and go 'hey life is a destructive thing and that's ok n' difficult'. I am always trying to come up with the summary of freaking everything! like the life is a uni lecture to summarise. But you can't, and that's good. Means there is lots to be done. The tip is a crack/ gutter in the creek with cheeky stuff poked into it.

Bro wouldn't take the photo, he said 'it shouldn't exist'.

SYDNEYtown

snakeoil
obsessssed with Alex Vivians Farking-beautiful smoodgy hangover at Neon Parc.

going through old diaries.
old MANIFESTO
...The farm is sawn outta optimism. All the inherited paintings are shit n muddy. Except for the the Parriultcha. Mum keeps asking me to get it valued.I can't get myself to follow that up. Mum is good at farm art rustica, poly pipe, wreaths, rust, rocks, she paints everthing black. This is typical, but everything is so brute macho and oversized its good.
Ripped up old lino that was over 50's womens weekleys.
There were articles about when plastic was invented. Plastic was awesome future. Snake oil to a po-mo hangover.

commune

being back at the farm for christmas was brat. I was petulant. I was 14. but kinda St Francis of a c c. getting up walking and listening to Nirvana, thinking about the grunge's take at Nature! driving through Wagga, noticing all the Co-operative, things supermarkets, farm supply business, being close to the farms but far from the city hippies, hippies does that word even count anymore, reading southern gothic, Carson McCullers the 'heart is a lonely hunter' thinking bout rural socialism. The National party, a weird mix of socialism and free-trade, romanticism and patriotism. We wanna make all the money, we like rich, but we wanna trades as Co-Ops, and but when we are poors support us cause we are the guts, balls and soul of the nation. Towns being put to sleep, having the fake water stopped, land wont sell. The grapes of wroth. It always feels like its coming to a head, coming to the break out there, that things can't move beyond this part and its gonna bust or revolt. But it don't. 

To tunes, being angst and away from Melbourne makes what I can do when I get back so freaking possible! I spent the first bit of 2009 riding in the back of a car, I pulled up my hood and promised and promised, good ones not melancholy ones to come back and make better art about all I am confused about. I am surprised that I am thinking about these things, but I like thinking about human solutions to stuff and ourselves, But then the determination causes trying. Trying to hard. Banging up a manafesto! this trying is poetry and not like making. If i just gets the freak on with it, it will all be there. Those things are only base. But i thinks it will be ok, cause I've noticed. Over earnestness, failure.

some one thinks bill donovan is me. its not true ! he is real and not me. living in the US and teaching. we got to be friends cause I wanted to quote his friend dan attoe in whoops kibbutz. x

so the profile picture isnt really me. its chad morgan. my dad always goes on about him. buck teeth. ha ha. i looked up his lyrics sooo racist. but good for me me cause i like the sticky spots. I am looking at a pearl jam cover. I am drunk and thinking the discuss in art in australia was good and  surprising. my friend sweetly sends me all the mags for free. maybe she thinks i need to get smart. x bless her. anyway i left art in aust last. but it had the best interview. and I heart alex baker for saying authenticity is racist. freaking banging and what i am thinink about. heart thazt. xx

chuckles 2008

your dead meat new space x

x dear pedro almodovar thankyou for reminding me we a are all useless cool idiots x

Rauschenberg  *if you are dealing with multiplicity, variation and inclusion as your content, then any feeling of complete consistency or sameness is a violation of that attitude. I had to try consciously to do a work that would imply the kind of richness and complexity I saw around me*

commune

'Comedy is crazy V's conservative' from Informal Rituals at TCB this year

Fairweather didn't need us

keith was perhaps an arsehole

Balla: frame

bit worried about my lack of scepticism at the moment. Perhaps its a plateau on to something new. New sincere? I keep thinking about that article in the last Un mag about new sincerity, it kinda endeared me to what Melbourne art is like and what I wasn't liking about mine. Pretty scared of irony or my own Po-Mo-ness at the moment. But not totally willing to back expression n sharing. Maybe the lack of wit is about making new friends. About not impressing new acquaintances. Maybe its failing a few things. And it could also be total disbelief instead. Total go away tooouuufffoussand and eight, I want two o o nine cause I am bored. I'm gonna do 200009 paintings till this ssucker is over.  

*when sitting on the floor cutttting up plastics*for their colours*issss still the best*this art thing wont be over soon*and is still angst at core

look at neon parc projects "i dig your voo doo"

!artist statement!
Yeah ! it's really mean with no stuff sometimes, just words, I heart words, or *My Art* is messy, making things grotty like they have gone through time. time. making "your rooms a brothel! ". The last bastiogggne of freedom n anarcky, The World is so square. Square. I like having lots of different mediums and not being very good at any of them. and groups of materials too, wood with plastic is important, it like the crux (crotch) of the problem n world n human beings. I really like painting becasue I am awful at it ! I make art about art becasue I heart art and have hung out with it so long its become my personal life too ! I make art about comming from a farm *cry cry* and going to university and going overseas and once was a hippie and being a white kid , a white daughter *cry cry*!

Hi Kato,
How are you, just wondering if you have been successful with a seat home on Xmas eve - certainly hope so.
Nothing very much happening here - Dad busy spraying grasshoppers - havn't taken to the wing yet but lots coming out of the Bethungra Hills apparently where they laid in the hard ground in Autumn.
Did you back the winner yesterday???
Love u Mum

drawing and priiiint gift show at NG massbbbive V.
Peter Robinson book 1999
oil and oilstick on cardboard

words include

'out getting fags

Boy am I scared hey

our place (over a schwazztisssticckerrr )

missionary position I'd rather fuck you

100%pure

fish + chips '


I heart that missionary position one, if you got off the frames of Margaret P's kookaburras or Ian fairweather drawing and mount boards this show would float now, heaps contemporary.

are these some things wanted. To be included. To be included so much that your left out a bit and famous. Solo.

Maybe boys are included more often and end up being loners and famous more. What about the boys who feel left out, they are famous for feeling left out. But what do ladies do when they feel left out. They do all girl group shows. They work at community and not loners. this the elephant in the room sometimes become curatorial, the joiner, the habit of the show. In the community, is it ok to crit the work, or is the nobleness of the action to right to point out the crap. Does it all become shit because its being filtered through the elephant in the room. It seems to hurt some boys feelings. hetro. Hamish and Andy were outside my house yesterday. Hamish and Andy are attractive, not hotties, but attractive cause I like a couple of dudes cracking jokes, not that Hamish and Andy have the best jokes, but they fit that mould, the high school mould, I reckon the mould that helps girls get left out, but I am still attracted to it. I kinda want to be included in it, if we were at a party I'd probably try and hang some shit on them. I've been training for this since year seven maths. The jokers get cool and are included so much that they are left out and a bit famous, they are dude soloists and not a community. Serious ones can do it to, but I think the jokers are winning. Rebel Wilson is a girl joker. I wish her heaps well cause i schhoooolllleeed with her and she did some magic tricks for my mum and dad one time. But girls seem to have to crack jokes different. maybe.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>I wrote the stuff above before girls girls girls opened. I sat the show Friday and it just became a show with work. I didn't really see the elephant in the room anymore. But did answer a couple of questions about it. on opening night some one said to me 'I should have been in that show' even all girls leaves out.

brown Id holiday.

may anarchy remain, this is how I think about Joint Hassles. this photo looks like angry freedom.

It was good, I want to shake Lane's hand, man to man.

Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay and Denise Smith
request the honor of your presence
at the marriage of their daughter
Kate Smith
To most of, but not all of
Mr. Rodney Graham
Wednesday, the ninth of September
Two thousand and eight
at six o'clock in the evening
Anglican Church
Bethungra

went to see Dan Boyd's 'Lets stay together' at Uplands. I wanna name droppppp that I went to art school with the good guy - just to say that I wish him all the best cause I am about to say maybe mean stuff, or just make some awkward notes, I got reminded lately that maybe I need say that my 'tude comes from sometimes knowing someones work over a long time. Perhaps this isn't fair game, but I think its important. It's always a hard thing in making work between repeating yourself v's losing the 'thing'. But perhaps seeing similar imagery and allegorys form Dan here isn't even important, this is his introduction to Melbs, so guess there is room to summarise.

Dan's here to stick some Aboriginal history. I recall that Dan finds his white-no beard-pirates pretty funny. But maybe I find it not too funny, or just one funny, not enough funnys, too much of a one liner for a messy mess, but maybe I want to hideout in the multiples in the mess cause I am white as hell. But I don't think my problem with these works is guilt or accusation. I made a work once that said 'I'm white but I'm alright' perhaps not so funny either, but maybe. I wonder if thoughful criticism of 'indigeneous' work is always curbed by doubt or fear.

But I think the saving grace of the show is the exhibition title work, lets stay together. A lion goes to kill a gizelle, spring bok maybe, South African rugby, South Africa, Africa, Lions. It's dark as, with a lttle grin. I think it manages to house an update in race relations. Perhaps 'lets stay together' is what Rudd proposes with his Sorry speech to the stolen generation (I found Rudds speech surprisingly moving, but the stolen generation is just just a little bit of it). Perhaps Dan rekons its a sinister idea, along the lines of 'you want to build a relationship outta this house of cards?!' like a creepy crap boyfriend trying to get you back. I like this work a lot. No more pirates.

'Ikebana holiday'

'Can't you act like old money'

Whoops Kibbutz :

http://www.utopianslumps.org/previous_exhibitions.php?viewShow=18

I'm not denying you Katy Perry - I just think your 'spirit' is wrong.

we were little, but we were doing close. She is so pretty and awkwardly smashing blue stuff onto a fowl mop head in a pus bucket. Isn't that window and not floor cleaner? 'Same shit different bottle', this phrase is now really imporatant to me. She was so pretty, I hadn't noticed how much I had seen it, but I was glad she bought the VB's to seduce me, I was glad we were to young to get into pubs, it was good to stay in the kitchen and drink the cooking vino from the cask and pash. Though weird to drive back to her mums, and sleep in the bunck above her and her boyfriend.

sook sook.
It's surprising that we are friends now, we havn't talked about it then.
I teased your best friend. she had a horrid forrid and I used a fist to mine to show her I'd noticed. Voted school captain, but only aloud to be vice. Or so they said, they said they didn't vote for the other one, mum jumped that it was becasue I wasn't catholic, well she used the word Tike. I thought that word meant Roman Catholic until a few days ago.

I didn't mind, it was more to me to be too bad arse for captain, I only wanted to be Head Girl, cause he got Boy.

When they told us we were chosen I asked 'which one' I meant am I captain or vice? He told me vice. he said it in that way when someone hands you something but hangs onto it for a bit, pulls you in a bit by using your grip on the thing, giving it to you like you kinda don't deserve it, usually there's a lovely "scamp", grin and wink to let you know : by the skin of your teeth and its ok, don't change anyway. but that wasn't here, just the pull in. He was so angry that his schooling had produced kids that loved a brat more than a smart and thoughtful girl who deserved this, I had kinda beat him in his territory. I don't know why I listend to his gesture, but I got the message, I shut up, and have been bored.

Its not always so great if a blog turns into an add for yourself. Yawn. But I like what Helen is up to in this, the invite is too dumb not tho share, and she has kindly included me.

UGLY HERITAGE

> Trevalyan Clay
> Oliver Hextall
> Claudine Kraan
> Kate Smith
> Andy Vervoorst

> OPENS THIS FRIDAY THE 22ND OF AUGUST 6-8PM

> Curated by Helen Johnson
> JOINT HASSLES
> 2A MITCHELL STREET
> NORTHCOTE 3070
> jointhassles.com
> jointhassles@gmail
> 0407891334

broken things work

always a hand painted car parked out side art schools
Whoops Kibbutz is on until june 14

my dumb show 'Whoops Kibbutz' opens friday the 23rd of may at Utopian Slumps.
http://www.utopianslumps.org/

David Noonan. Markus 2008 at Roslyn Oxley 9


'yeah, the surface is quite rough and over the duration of the show I have recently noticed a few edges on the different layers beginning to peel back... i really like this. The other thing is that the show has quite an intense smell about it... not a bad one but obviously the hessian has a particular odour and so it reminds me of something industrial yet rustic or parochial. its very cool. and there is a large carpet rug in the space to sort of give you the idea that the space is enveloped in this theatre of material and prints and performance. quite cool.'
Peta Bryant.

A friend emailed these images to me of Loose Cannon by Dan Moynihan
at Victoria Park Gallery.
Its over now, but it was good.

outsider that old chelsnut

Monash Clayton today for oustsider thing. Good work of cause. Peter Fay and Glen Barkley know their you know. Glen and MCA whooooooo! G and P spoke and that was good, its been done in a historical way and this seems to introduce the oustsider thing well and established, because it is. I was weirded out that this was Melbournes first time to this sought of work, I am not sure I a right in feling this, probably just ill informed, but it was a bit 'that old chestnut' to me. I sought of thought MUMA didn't see it as a history thing as much as the curaters did, it was new territory for them. This kind of work was a big part of the Canberra art school experience, we got Home Sweet Home from Peter Fay's collection at NGA pretty early on. Some of us were like new oustsider artists Peter found in a way. Glen did say that now this outsider show has been completed he feels like moving on and bringing that stuff into galleries on equal footing. Good lets get freaking egalitatrian. Its just a shame that its might take the peps longer to get there, they may have just heard the word Oustsider.

But this doesn't take nothing from some awsome works in the show. Especially John Patrick Mckenzie's poetry.

group show, informal rituals at TCB

Harriet

Elvis

will try to get to Nat Thomas at Until Never Gallery (above misty's). Nat has re-done the fake Rover Thomas' amongst other things. It feels freaking important! and smart cause I think it just might be.      

peter russell clarke

don't worry I keep my diary in myyyyy soullllll

Grace Crowley 1890-1979

'Ena and the Turkeys' 1924
'Absract Painting' 1947

future diet

yellow kibbutz

chrome

I found a chromers plastic bag on the way to the studio today,well I imagined it was, but now I think about it some one had built or fixed it to carry a bit of paint, to chrome from? - plastic bag, the ones you buy, not the ones they give you at the supermarket. I picked it up. It's red down in one corner, kinder smashing up to the exit. they had tied a couple of tiny tidy knots to repair holes.

I think I decided it that was a chrome bag cause a boy got on the tram the other day - smashed out - chromer. paint was comming up and out of the corners of his mouth across his skin, the colour was silver, well chrome. It was beautiful.

Meredith Turnbull has a video in the world end show on at the carlton at the moment - she hangs upside down, her face changed by the gravity, she rocks back and forth revealing a full moon, like a sc fi bat in preparation. I am not sure if she is preparing to save or end the world. I like the thought of Meredith bothering to go out into night to get that moon and risk hanging upside down in the park alone.

Van Newton played at the Un magazine relaunch, I was there with a friend from boarding school and she asked me "so are they a covers band, and why is he wearing sunglasses?" I don't think their bad questions, but how do I answer, how do I start from scratch, cause it's dumb to wear sunglasses? I guess that's what galleries do to explain work, they have to start from scratch, and its usually uncomfortable.

reasons to be hetrosexual:
there is a pack of boys who go to the supermarket on swan street after school, they leave their bags at the door, one is a worn out, used to be green country road bag - they've scribbled over the brand, the zipper is broken and open, and some stuff falls out, it's a cheeky stand out in amongst the other private school crest, latin and maron bags.

cardbord

http://flickr.com/groups/carton/

'From the utterly uncool peaks of some mountain somewhere'

I went to see Sam George's 'From the utterly uncool peaks of some mountain somewhere' at TCB a little while ago and introduced my half asleep dumb arse self again. The just about, penultimate ( i didn't want to use that word but oh well) and disappointed stuff in the title was in the work. Lots of scrunches of paper on the floor/corner that looked denim wash because of some blue bits. Sam said she'd made the work everywhere and not in one place, but all the pieces were the same even sizes, broken down from A4's. Some random sheets and some old essays. This is Sam's first show since art school. I liked that she was using some old essays, it's like a nice let down. burning your books. We talked about about grad show and after art school disappointment - it can feel a bit like a school formal you take years to get ready for and on the night you end up not feeling like yourself and pash none of them. The proposed exhibition was a waist height paper extravaganza, but it didn't happen....... Sam told me that at the TCB opening someone left her a note in the work, something about it being trite.............. yikes, but you know what I agree, cause they are on the right track and its not a negative thing, it suits what I think Sam has been up to. And I guess you have to try and remember that a show is a shrug in a whole practice and it don't have to have it all. http://www.flickr.com/photos/thelanguage

hell opening up.

Helen has made a good desription of Televisiuals at Utopian Slumps by Elvis on her bloggy Triangualr Sun.

assorted contemporary artists' photos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thelanguage

Elvis Richardson at Utopian Slumps

TELEVISUALS/SALUTEELVIS
Opens Friday 1 Feb at Utopian Slumps. Whoop!

also Michael Ciavarella, Ross Coulter, Deven Marriner and Laith McGregor are in a show called Fuck Your Heroes, opening at West Space the night before, sounds tuff.

looking at art on the internet.

My favourite comment from the Matt Griffin 'hoo haa' on Speech was by Tao, esp the bouncing Joey bit. the Larikin bit. It's so dumb but kinda hits on an australia-australiana bit maybe.
"Perhaps Anon. is instinctively and inarticulately responding to what I found to be a nihilistic aspect to Griffin's humor. Though I don't think this is the right word, in the face of work that provides no answers or solutions, no easy outs, the happy go lucky Joey will bounce him self silly and really get quite upset with all the hoo haa" Tao, Speech Review, Nov 5 2007.

Just re-read an Art Life comment on Fergus Binns at Chalkhorse, Feb 2007. I', kinda likng this cringe stuff, the cringe of something really local. When your tummy flips when Binns uses green and gold. Nadine Christensen's works Prospector and Crops on Mars, both 2007, get Aussie too. Prospector with its mirror Rozellas and farm art rustica sculpture and Crops on Mars, swings + Blue Heeler. Bringing home, but not quite, what I always saw as an Grand Canyon kinda place, a generic movie space, even that knocked out pastel pallete seemed kinda international school of painting maybe (term being used about, not even ure how to apply it?) . Well in these ones with the Australia the colour just sems high noon instead.

So if you stop and think Australia + picture = you get this swanston street souviner stuff. I saw a Countdown rerun on Rage the other night from 1982. It had The Gonna Band do Solid Rock in from of a Uluru backdrop, which I guess was Ayers Rock at then. They sung it ominous and warning. Then Kate Bush did Aborigine (?) Is how she sings it a rip off of an Australian accent? She dances at dawn with idigenious dancers, not so typical moves, there is lasers an outta space in the 80's too. So I guess Austrliana was big in the 80's. We have just had that whole fowl 80's things, so I guess it roles up naturally that kidz now tote bags from those Swanston St shops, hell I want one, and Ken Done, despite that listing in the top 3 worst on the art life - is gaining shaking ground - they didn't really want to slam him. Ken's been a bit of a Canberra favourite for a while. Unlike the artlife I would like to wear Done toggs and bed under Ken Doonas, that what its good at, I even had a calander at that was good at other stuff.

So anyway the cringe is good and not just ironic I hope. Trevs doing that uncomfortable aboriginal thing a bit. We have a recent RMIT graduate just moved into the studio and she is going hammer and tongs at the swanston street rip off of 'the dot', who owns the dot? ouch! Tim Price did some works last year calling the crass paintaings, pronounced like grass, Tim does this buyiny the newspaper each day, painting a pic from it, last year he was intervening, a noose might tether Howard on that fucking morning walk etc. So anyway the cringe is good and not just ironic I hope.

http://www.autoblog.com/2006/04/21/tgif-video-oh-deere-its-combine-racing/

today whatever, painty painty

pipes

preparation 500, the vortex and mums garden

Modern Britain and the NGV is a good show. The grot and even the gesture is pretty refreshing, kinda links into my pet topic at the moment, the post war time, when platis was inventended and an exciting prospect from a great new future maybe. Unlike it is now, the default bad guy ruining our precious future. The house at mums n dads was built in the Modern Britain times, when they ripped up some out lino they found some Womens Weekleys that had been used as lining, there was a great article in one talking about this amazing invention called plastic. Now we are banning the bag.
Replay Marclay finishes up on the third of Feb. Its been nice to have it around as a reminder to make art about what you love and stuff it. Marclay loves music/sound and thats enough. Its funny how dated the tricks seem, but tat kinda cool, its becomming history.

Jess welcome back and thanks for the gifts

shreddy christmas

So the galleries are closed and only the big ones open, its been an olden days / family time latley. Modern Britain at the NGV is really good. But I might write about that another time.

Our christmas tree from the last couple of years has been this thing made out of barbed wire, good bit of farm art rustica from mum, the star though, is a star of David, made out of barbed wire, do you see what I mean, that's not quite right. Mum doesn't know what she's done. My brother kinda gaps at it, cracks a few jew jokes, mum reminds us that our great grandad was called hezakia, ( spelling) we look at dads nose, oh dear, its all pretty bad really. But that's what happens there, stuff just gets jammed up wrong and all together despite the best intentions.

I do like christmas at home though, I like that there are only 5 people and not lots of presents. My brother and I speed wrapped, we usually try and do something dumb with the wrapping, making it really hard to get into, elctrical tape is pretty good! this year it was doing it and getting them to the tree as fast as possible, its silly and sought of undermines the whole thing and It's a bit of luxury to wrap nice stuff like crap.

So a garden shredder was a big hit this year, Dad got a saw too, so he and Jock went a bit nuts sawing bits off trees just to put them through the shreddy, even the shredder packaging got a go, shredded cardboard looks pretty good might try and use it sometime.

Ian Fairweather will you marry me?

hacked by swan

http://www.mca.com.au/

mighty

Agatha Snow exhibtion poster Peres Projects Berlin

1931

North Rigg Hill (Cumberland), 1931 (first abstract painting, Chelsea) circa 1923-1924

wool collage

http://www.artmoment.com.au/

old masters (shut up po mo jerk)

peps ask me if I am going to do masters, that's ok, I should just get a better answer, like when people ask about comming from a farm and making art I should answer better, well I have one but it's really long, and if someone doesn't get that they are perfect for each other, dad spinning around on his heals in his workshop trying to find a solution asap is pretty familar, and that second generation intellectuals suck, creativity is a bit lame and adaption better and everyones parents are something else, well it would just take to long to help them get it maybe.

But Masters, I would like to do it if I could get a scholarship. I guess a double degree feels like a lot to have done so I havn't thought about masters, but miss art school a lot. I was not very good at research at art school, in that I would not go to the library with a topic and found the catalogue unsatisfying, the library as a whole was kinda more my topic, I would look at what people had looked at and left on the trolleys, I didn't really like looking at artists who my teachers directed me to casue they were making similar stuff, they suggested artists based on materials not ideas, Its disappointing if your not making in a realtionship to materials way, I kinda needed more advice on artist's as writers and text in work.

Masters seems lonely maybe? And too much navel gazing maybe? Though perhaps I wont be taken seriously unless I do it. Any advice would be welcome, I think their is a secret mannual someplace. I think I have convinced myself I should.

wednesday night

http://www.victoriaparkgallery.com/main.html
Victoria Park invites you to the opening of
'ART$MASH' VPG's 2nd annual fund raising show.
Opening Wednesday 19th December 2007 5.30 - 8.30pm. Exhibition runs 20th - 22nd December 2007.
250 Johnston St, Abbotsford
Wed - Sat, 12-5

http://www.danielmcunningham.com/artist.html#funeral_songs

the catalgoue of songs that people chose is neat-o.

old railway times

SAM GEORGE

a kind soul has let me know that Sam George made the -up the stairs to a fan piece at the VCA grad show, I wasn't sure who had. I wish I could have this one, I'd walk up the steps each morning and get my eyes dried out and be reminded not to be an idiot today.

bells and whistles

'bells and whistles' is something a friend says and I try to keep in mind. I hope she doesn't mind. This is what I think she means. Bells and Whistles talks about being florid. Florid in that from the push-pull between information and decoration, technique and device outdoes. Or in the other way an idea knows all about itself with certainty. She uses it about her time in New York, that art there was full of these bells and whistles. It could mean scaling up and down or hyper real . Jeff Koons puppy ......maybe. Or more like "Katie Moore creates ‘wooden’ objects using various materials, none of them actual wood" (from MCA Primavera notes). So bells and whistles can act a quip/tag to explain a practice, perhaps making a galleriests job easier. Though I think I might like Moore's stuff as the notes go on to say "The imitation woodenness of Moore’s sculptures is not sufficiently convincing to reduce the art work to a mere confidence trick". And b&w includes paintings trying hard not to be paintings, or like Tim Doolan's chrome ceramics not looking like ceramics, a kind of po-mo avantgardism. A system that seems to dislocates the object from having been made, in the usual maky way and what its made from.

I wanted to have no name for the blog, but it wont let you. 'White Child' was loaded and I kinda need to be on hand to explain it, I was getting hits from Texas, you know what I mean, and 'Daughter' is so Freud and Pearl Jam. So Bells and Whistles will do it for now.

http://www.mca.com.au/default.asp?page_id=10&content_id=3068

Ed Ruscha
Jaggy Daggers, 1977Pastel on paper23-1/8 x 29-1/8 inches (58.7 x 74 cm)


I am not sure who made a work I liked at the VCA graduate exhibition. It was a piece where you climbed to look in a slot and your eyes got dried up by fan burrring back and forth, sought of caught me before I could close them and get out of what was happening. Dry your eyes mate maybe .... I am guessing that it belonged to either Julian Medor's car bonnets or Tully Moore's paintings from photographs of graffiti on brick walls installed on a painted brick wall. David Griggs. I liked it cause it was light and dumb in amongst a whole lotta weight. I kinda expected to turn back into the gallery and the work that was there to have turned into a surprise party.

I also enjoyed Gennet Makonnen's oil on canvas, in a way again cause of their refreshing ability in that context, and that's cause of their painty-Matisseness. They almost seemed brave in a po-mo world. But I am a bit pro paint at the moment.

There were some tankstand/shed farm photo's that got me sentimental and were actually quite straight and crisp in amongst the angstorammma, sorry I can't match what I remember with the catalogue, so no name. I didn't see the drawing department, but apparently its pretty strong. Printmedia is it's own infinity in a grain of sand, I only say this as a drawing and printmedia graduate.

Ross Coulter's Waiting for Ted is so funny. This piece seems to have gently developed as a reaction to Ross' honours year, Ted is Ross' honours supervisor who seems unable to keep an appointment, leaving Ross stranded in the studio, straddling staying or going and what will I do in the mean time.

I am going to get a copy of Tim Hiller's DVD At Sea. When I got to this work I near walked straight away. fashion youf jacket paints need pulling up all the time. But then my friend started telling me about this particular jacket's cost and texture and by default I ended up watching the piece. It saved itself with an old little boy boat. When the boat gets tangled in reeds and he wades out to get it, its pretty endearing. It just tied in for me with a kinda boyhood thing that I read into Matthew Bradley's stuff and others, I mean he is meant to be THE bad guy right, affluent little fuck, he will grow into a white-male-fat-cat right.

There is a forum at Gertrude St. on Monday night called Feminisim never happened, or something like that. Amita did a good raunch culture show at CCAS called Oomph . I hear there was talk of a boy protest (he he) what, yups it did?

it's hard to explain. And not as oversimple as this camparison.

Anna Schwartz Gallery, the work is by Jan Nelson, (it's not about Jan Nelson)


Studio floor

dumb dumbs

http://www.anu.edu.au/ITA/CSA/publications/publications.html

Under

I made a comment on Speech2012 asking why the new posts, some good ones, about what's going on in Melbourne keep getting posted under the 'one word responses for the biennallleee de Lyon'. It's not so much that the new posts are about Melbourne in particular, it's nice thta there is stuff from all over, but just that they are new posts, new stuff is sought of how blogs seem to work maybe, and one could be forgiven for looking at Speech and think nothing is moving, but there is, it's just being moved underneath. My comment has been removed.

Drawing Show

	Trouble An exhibition of Drawing by Alumni from the ANU School of Art Printmedia and Drawing Workshop
		1 - 26 October Contemporary drawing practice has come to inhabit an expanded territory beyond the page and the frame, a territory that can encompass a vast range of materials and outcomes. The focus of ‘Trouble’ is the potential for drawing to activate the space of a gallery in unexpected ways through site-specific installation. This approach to drawing can be troublesome for curators and writers, hard to pigeon hole and exciting for audiences as they are asked to engage with the gallery space in a way that has been affected by materials, placement or form of the drawings.

Looking at Frames.

The Guggenheim Collection: 1940's till now is over at the NGV on Sunday. The first room is the best for me, the first room as you turn right especially. There as you turn right is a bit of a cluster of yellowing oil, palette knifed and ochered stuff. Its all a bit pottery and twine. These post war abstractions plus the silly op and the kinetic works (except the Fontana upstairs is better) add up to something optimistic and playful and none too fearful. Post war I guess. Its like the 'funk' of the materials is enough. I think my liking the chunked oils is just the shock of seeing texture. Shit painted like it was painted, not mediated by an interface, T-shirt or sticky tape.

As we chatted through the exhibition my friend and I kept talking about materials, but had started describing frames and mounts instead. We liked this, but not that, couldn't see the work cause of this etc. I don't mean the old stuff is better than the new stuff, but as works are forced into the similar longevity of oils, the frames , the compromises, the little hats and boots they have to wear so they don't hurt themselves don't escape comment.

Description of materials and matter and a common sensation with pals towards them can be sweet (SWEEEEET) communication.

But It's when you are going to shows and complimenting the hang and poo pooing the frames and not much else, nothing is fogging your glasses or making you want to make work, you sought of know perhaps that its all a bit polite and its all a bit mutual admiration society. Maybe this is a nice thing to do - you want to like someones work but sometimes you can be left clasping at straws and frames and hangs.

Elvis Richardson on TV

An interview with Elvis Richardson ( a favourite) finalist in the Ian Potter Art and Sport prize will be on ABC arts this Sunday afternoon.

Helen Johnson at Sutton

Hi Helen,
your current show at Sutton is on my way between the art supply shop and the studio, so have ducked in a few times - and its really growing on me-
Is it all about relational aesthetics?
someone suggested that, in the end, your work is hopeful, is it?
I feel the content of your show is almost undiscussable - that its still private conversation stuff- and there is no vocabulary for it in the art world yet, if you know what I mean - the 'alternative', communal etc has only just been accepted as the noble path in Australia- let alone a crit of that existing- have you found a stronger way to talk about these things in Europe?

Hi Kate,
The show at Sutton - to me it's not much to do with relational aesthetics. Though I am not generally one to be dictatorial about my ideas. Relational aesthetics seems to me something like a lava lamp in a gallery context, trying to transcend something but always as it approaches, it falls. (Walead Beshty is better at explaining this than me: http://backissues.textezurkunst.de/NR59/NEO-AVANTGARDE-AND-SERVICE-INDUSTRY_2.html)
To me the Sutton work is to do with trying to get your head around how individual actions become a part of, or exist within 'culture'. Especially now, when consumer culture is accepted as 'the way things are', sitting alongside ideas of environmentalism and sustainability which can never really be integrated into 'me' culture.
So the work is talking about broader cultural ideas which we are expected to accept, like 'man on the moon as progress' or 'western medicine is superior', and presenting moments when those ideas begin to fail for somebody.
It is difficult for me to talk about that show as a collective body of work because, though aesthetically in line with one another, each 'mis en scene' raises a different idea or presents a different circumstance, they are like film stills almost to me.
I think of it as being hopeful, hope through a cynical lense perhaps. But attempting to get people to think about their own position within society, their own everyday actions, though not in a pushy way.
These works are in some ways quite oblique, partly because they are embedded with references across the whole spectrum; socio-political, historical, art-historical, personal, mass-cultural.
I suppose there is vocabulary for everything in the art world, potentially. It is maybe more a matter of who is accessing or choosing to embrace those vocabularies, and why.
I did not find a stronger way to talk about these things in Europe. There is of course present in Germany the lineage of painting as socio-political commentary a'la Jorg Immendorf, Neo Rauch, Martin Kippenberger et al, but that school of approach sits these days more as a mainstay of the commercial market, it having evolved up to and during the demolition of the Berlin Wall, and in that way gained its historical relevance which has since been well and truly commodified. Not that that means it is bad or irrelevant now, but that it is within a sort of holding pattern of meaning, as other approaches branch off and spiral away.
The art world in Australia, though it may at times be catty and neurotic, is an interesting place to me, because it is dislocated from the 'global' art world, and so there is the continuing habit of gleaning some idea of an international standard to meet up to, and which more often than not is overshot, and so work in Australia is at times slicker in its presentation, more exhaustive in its ideas, than its global counterparts, it's something you notice in Europe, that often people are more comfortable with shabbiness or sloppiness in presentation than they are here. These points where Australian artists are looking in overseas magazines for what is current and then mixing it with something local and using the local vernacular to articulate its meaning, these points I think are very important for cultural production in Australia, latent identity-formation which will become more apparent in retrospect.
Sorry, what a rant!
Speak soon,
Helen x