must-ny-see

this post is for my dear friend john dodds. he gets these ridiculous junkets and schleps across the atlantic every now and again for some ghastly reason, like helping somebody edit some business strategy, or something.

anyway, when i was in london last year i would occasionally drag doddsy around some of the galleries, checking out the best and the worst of contemporary brit art. one of our favs was easily the damien hirst at white cube (both mason's yard and hoxton, darlink). since then i've continued to email him with directives to see various shows, both near and far, in the interest of cultural education [and not out of some selfish reason of living vicariously through him, of course.]

well, mr dodds is off to NYC next week and although i don't know the ny-scene as much as i do the london one, i promised him a list of arty type things to check out.

so here it is lovely:

top ten arty bollocks to visit in NYC

1. deitch projects. cute site, great artists, including a current installation by (gasp!) Barry McGee/

2. PS1/MOMA. I've not been, but i think that, like the Tate and the National Gallery, no matter how many times you've been, you should always go when you're in town. Plus, Australian artist Julian Dashper is going to be in a group show there, curated by Phong Buiof.

3. dia beacon. two words: donald judd. ok, so perhaps he's overrated by the oh-so-cynicals, but his work is still worth seeing. and the rest of the collection is, well, you know, ok i guess:
The Bechers, Beuys, Bourgeois, De Maria, Flavin, LeWitt, Nauman, Sandback, Serra, Smithson, Warhol and Weiner.

4. olafur eliasson's waterfalls. amazing, impressive and only on until the 13th october. go check out these works, supported by the NY public art fun - a fund that i'm a teensy bit in awe of.

5. gladstone gallery. with an impressive list of artists under their wing, i'd be checkin' this gallery out, especially if the Mario Merz exhibition is still up (Arte Povera Maestro).

6. 40 bond st, by herzog & de meuron. a spectacular-looking façade by the archi-stars du jour..

7. the banksy vs wooster mural. i know, banksy's overrated. but it's huge. and on wooster. and in NYC. for a while, at least.

8. dumbo arts centre. there have been a few cool shows pop up here and seems to be kind of a cool venue - almost artist-run-space-ish. ironically, the artist there for a while is a UK artist, but hey, you don't get around to see enough UK artists, right?

9. mcsweeny's 826. i don't know if you can just drop in there, but check out 826 - one of the cool things run by mcsweeney's - brainchild of author dave eggers (whose brilliant short stories How We Are Hungry i'm reading at the moment) and general awesome literature project. [doddsy swears he's not an author, but i beg to differ].

10. artslog art walk spaces. there are a swag of cool spaces in soho (the NYC one, not the WC1 one) and there was a recent night walk organised by artslog. i'm not sure if it's a regular thing, but you could do worse things than check out some of the places on the map.

have fun!

occupied

this should probably wait until i've presented it to the peeps on site next week, but as i was uploading it to the pages which will eventurally make up my new site, i thought that it might be worthwhile putting up here.


Occupied
Performance


As part of a project on public space, and a continuation of the toilet project, Lauren staged a small performance on a day in September within a public toilet at Knox Shopping Centre - a large private mall in the outer suburbs of Melbourne (and part of the new public spaces of consumption).

The only documentation was a short section of video, writing and stickers left on the site:


An artist sat here for an hour and a half
She did not buy a thing
She did not worry about what to buy
She read, wrote, thought and daydreamed


210
The real values of culture can be maintained only by negating culture.
But this negation can no longer be a cultural negation. It may in a sense take place within a culture, but it points beyond it. (Debord)*

*Taken from the chapter: Negation and Consumption within Culture
Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord
Published by Rebel Press, UK.





The aim of the action was about privacy, public space, private space and acting politically through inaction. a kind of extension of gandhi's nonviolent resistance - a resistance to the sprawling mass of consumption that places like Knox [see also Chadston e and Southland] are - suburbs as shopping malls, with a hold over public facility and jurisdiction, without the accountability or regard for the politic.

This work also sought to challenge the idea of what a private space is in public. Interestingly, before the action/performance there was talk of the police being called, of centre management reacting badly, of the women who were using the other toilets taking offence at someone sitting in the toilet, not using the toilet, but just being there.

Interestingly, these were just the anxieties of artists who have been told, time after time that the public cannot cope. I had no problems. Not one person asked what i was doing, not even when i had to retrieve a pen that had dropped and rolled into the next cubicle. No one from centre management came and knocked on my door - and my toilet was in the block next to their offices. No policewoman asked me to leave the centre.

Sucked in.

I got to have my own space for a while. Just to sit and chill out, read, think, hum a little, dream and write. Public space without the pressure of buying something. It was lovely.

candystripers news

wallpaper 08 at trocadero closed today. tomorrow, we're back there, with our rollers and acrylic paint (not enamel, despite what the lovely boy in the hardware store suggested) to reinstate our bits of the gallery walls back to unstriped-ness. it was a cool little project and it's always a bit sad when it comes to the end of another exhibition.

we love the troc space and are loving their new flickr site. i know i'll be keeping a keen eye on what's happening there from now on.

'but what of the candystripers next?' i hear you asking? never fear lovelies, yesterday we received our clear, ernest and official paperwork for the next stage of the unnamed public art commission. while miss jones is as cool as a cucumber about the whole thing, it was my job to have a bit of a 'eep!' moment. thank goodness there are two of us!





and in unrelated candystripers news, we've decided that each week we're going to have a candystripers meeting, in a different cafe/restaurant/back-alley boudoir each time. and in the interest of maintaining courtesy and good bedside manner, we'll be posting about all the cool places we meet in! yay!

last week we went to the absolutely delightful, old school pizzeria osteria house, run by joe. the gnocchi arrabiata looked so good that we both ordered it, and shared a garlic pizza. it was all absolutely mouthwatering. in fact, we were so stuffed afterwards that we had to walk the length of rathdowne st, just to do up the top button again.


* cross-posted on the candystripers' blog

in the galleries

i've been rather busy lately with my own stuff - making work, being part of exhibitions, writing [successful-ish] proposals and doing uni presentations. with all that, i haven't had too much of a chance to really absorb other shows, other than any that i might be involved in somehow. the right segue would be 'and so, in the interest of being non-biased, i went out and saw a bunch of shows not connected to me, my uni, or my friends'. unfortunately, it would be an out-and-out lie, so you'll just have to put up with it.


urban interior
occupation 1
craft victoria


for the last 2 weeks to saturday, various members of the RMIT design research cluster have been occupying craft victoria, using it as an art/design lab of sorts and researching what the true parameters are of an interior space within this ever-growing urban environment. so far, i've been to:

opening occupation, tuesday 9th september. the gallery, usually full of objects, was completely devoid of them, making room for people to define the space. there were just people in there, talking, drinking, discussing stuff and finding out about the range of ways that the occupationists are going to be working with the space until the 27th.

nomadic archive, wednesday 10th september. moving some of the archives from the frances burke textile library, the works including textile swatches,

visualising air phase, thursday 11th september.
if i'm really honest, i thought this was going to be lame, but went because, well, i'm an open-minded kinda gal sometimes. turns out it was fucking amazing! it was a cross between a rave cave, tron and a 3D digital visualisation exercise. it was quite amazing to see 'air' in the form of CO2 being highlighted with lasers, shaped through various perfomance-based movements and the creation of space with the horizontal lines from the beams. it was hella trippy, but in a good way.

stockhausen: nachtmusik für zwei and the ephemeral urban room, thursday 18th september
the huge projections by rochus hinkel and ian de gruchy completely transformed the space from the relatively sparse place it was last week. the exterior of craft victoria was projected within the gallery - producing the inside outside, outside inside. it also took up the whole space and as a result gave you an experience of a building, up close. the added projection of the view up flinders lane added a moving image element to the room, which was great - especially the times when huge delivery vans would drive across the back wall and fuck with your sense of perspective and space.

the stockhausen performance by michael fowler and collaborators was amazing and ended in me having a cut eye: schmerzen für stockhausen! in an attempt to contribute to the performance, my friend and i ran to the mic situated outside the building, on the fire escape. in carrying my bike up the stairs, in order to 'play' the turning spokes, i bashed it against a down-pipe i didn't see, which in turn bashed itself against my head. result: blood and bruising. mission: only half accomplished - the outside mic had been turned down during the performance and we weren't as part of it as much as we thought! ha!

colloquium and closing occupation dinner, saturday 20th september
this was a bit of an extended wrap - each of the occupationists spoke about their particular occupation, amongst a group of invited guests, their peers (and 1 gate-crasher, ahem). ross gibson was a guest presenter and he spoke about his 'occupation' as part of the biennale of sydney, in terms of a series of 'co-' words: complexity, conversation, complacency, cosmopolitanism and conviviality. i found it quite interesting to hear everyone speak, although i was a bit confused as to the purpose of the presentations - whether they were academic, or intended as a more audience-based artist talk. they seemed to be a little in both camps, and thus a little alienating.
after the presentations and some interesting discussion about everything that came up, we had a lovely dinner, made by the same peeps as the ride-on dinner crew and a chance to chat with everyone. it was such a nice way to finish a pretty intense 'residency' and something a little different to anything i had seen previously at craft vic.


belle bessin/natalie ryan/rob mcleish/
west space


i mostly served people drinks at the opening for this show, but i did get a chance to have a quick peek, thankfully. natalie ryan is my new favourite thing this year - i think i've now seen her in 3 shows this year: Kings and in 2 at West Space. her show here was the flipside to the black works at Kings - a white light room, with a strange museological installation of 3 animalesque stuffed figures, covered in flock. strange, distorted and slightly frightening creatures, they reminded me of something in between a matthew barney prop and something that michael zavros might paint. it was eery and beautiful at the same time - which i think is surely the definition of grotesque, right? in fact, it's work like natalie's that completely supports the theory going round that we're now in a phase of the neo-baroque. perhaps i will write on that another time.

i liked rob mcleish's works, his boy humour still holds its weight with great works, and i love a good chunk of melted plastic in a work, but unfortunatly it suffered from the swarm of i-read-three-thousand-and-i-wear-oversized-shirts-and glasses-with-undercut-hair-hipsters. i'm getting too old to have a high tolerance of the 80s again.

belle bessin's work was OK, although it didn't really engage me personally. the drawings were exquisite, but, well, meh. sorry.


niels oeltjen
makingdoo
lamington drive


i think lamington drive is going to be a regular haunt for me. it's not far from work and the shows they've had there so far have been pretty tight. i think the thing i love most about the place is the display case in the middle of the show, which has 'support material' related to the show, but not objects for sale. it's the artistic version of 'showing your workings'. the paintings by niels are beautiful - nothing too complex, but not simplistic or naive either. niels is part of the letterbox crew, so it was nice to see another side of his creative work.


within earshot
first site gallery,RMIT


this was just a small show, based around the idea of sound. and, actually, i wasn't there long - but it was a good show and sometimes a quick game's a good game. having said that, a large reason that i wasn't there for long is that i was starving. the other reason i didn't stay long is because there was a work there that fucked with my head. literally. a series of fibreglass pregnant ladies emitting a high frequency and my ears and brain just couldn't stand it any longer. Not that i didn't appreciate the artistic merit, it was an involuntary reaction. The other works there were pretty cool too - a great mixture between sound and ceramics: tapes playing out of mini amps made from broken pots and sound equipment mushed into towers of fired clay. then in the little room a cute little installation about architecture/place - a bit of a leaning homage to the bits and pieces that make place, especially in terms of memory. formally, it looked a little like a rem koolhaas pisstake, which i'd give extra props for.


that's it for the moment - but fringe started last night, so expect a rash of reviews about cool shit i'm seeing over the next couple of weeks!

this is going to sound like an ad for google...

i'm doing some research at the moment relating to cities, imagination, mapping and technology. of course, google maps features heavily and in the interest of getting a grip on it, i did some scouting around their corporate site. the company milestones are as hilarious as they are astounding (like google maps only went live 3 years ago!) and i stumbled upon some of these cool thangs:

swedish chef as a language, since 2001




google transit




all the april fools jokes, including virgle




and the royal channel!




i know everyone goes on about them being the new death star, but i think this level of humour and computer-science-at-stanford geekery helps to keep them relatively humble. well, it certainly made corporate history research a whole lot more interesting anyway.

Der Lattenzaum

White picket fence/window shopping, originally uploaded by mar52laine.

Es war einmal ein Lattenzaum
mit Zwischenraum, hindurchzuschaun

Ein Architekt, der dieses sah,
stand eines Abends plötzlich da -

und nahm den Zwischenraum heraus
und baute draus ein großes Haus

-Christian Morgenstern
Gesammelte Werke (München: Piper, 1965)




[the slightly naff english translation]
The space in-between

One time there was a picket fence
With space to gaze from hence to thence

An architect who saw this sight
approached it suddendly one night

removed the spaces from the fence
and built of them a residence.

separate and ever deadly

life is crazy, innit? last week i spent rather a lot of it catching up. catching up on work, sleep, with friends. it's been a little nutty and as a result i've felt really wistful, staring out windows and listening to the last shadow puppets, tom waits and nick cave. maybe it's depression. maybe it's nothing. but when i'm like this, i don't feel like writing much. i'll post stuff soon.


When we walked the streets together
All the faces seemed to smile back
And now the pavements have nothing to offer
And all the faces seem to need a slap.
There’s an unfamiliar grip
On an unfamiliar handkerchief
Attending to the tears on cheeks I wouldn’t notice with you
No matter how vicious the grief
Her expression was damp and crooked
Grabbed onto my throat and won’t let go

Save me from the secateurs
I’ll pretend I didn’t hear
Can’t you see I’m a ghost in the wrong coat
Biting butter and crumbs
There’s a handsome maverick
You don’t talk about to keep me calm
And I can’t help it if I create a version
That pulls you back onto his arm
Please don’t tell me
You don’t have to darling, I can sense
That he painted you a gushing sunset
And slayed angry panthers in your defence.

And he stands separate and ever deadly
Clings onto my throat and won’t let go.

reprinted without permission.

abortion in victoria

i read in the age last week about the lower house parliamentary debate for the conscious vote to take abortion of the crimes act. in short, to decriminalize abortion. i was surprised by who voted aye and who noe, especially the relatively high number of labour ministers against the bill. interestingly, the strangest reason for not wanting to pass the vote, by the usually-progressive-but-possibly-suffering-from-a-brain-explosion mr robert hulls, was that 'there would be more abortions in victoria' as a result of the change in status.

call me crazy, but is this just wonky reasoning? when you really think about it.
i'd really like to ask mr hulls if knowing that abortions might be not-illegal (as opposed to legal), whether he thought about getting one? it's not like decriminalising smack or porn, or whatever else they've done for the big boys of parliament, you know. i don't know if some of our parliamentarians know this, but you only consider getting an abortion if you're pregnant. and it's never a question of whether it's available or not. maybe in the 1940s (even then...). the main influence over whether women get an abortion or not, is hardly legal. in fact, i reckon if you asked most women who were pregnant and considering having an abortion, the legality of the act probably comes after ethics/moral, emotional stability, relationship stability, financial stability, whether the sex was consensual, whether they feel fit to be a parent.... do you see what i'm getting at? a moral issue, not a legal one.

btw, the best quote was actually from a nationals member, jacqui, who said "when people say 'who will speak for the baby', i usually say, well, the mother really. and we have to let the mother make the choices she needs to'". or something close to that [age.com.au made it very hard to find the original article].

it's being debated in the upper house over the next little while, so if you're particularly passionate about the subject (which most women should be, on either side of the fence), don't forget to keep an eye out for news, or let your local senator know. mr fielding from the family first party is one of my local senators. i can't imagine him and i agreeing on the subject, so my emails to him will be interesting indeed.

important links:
abortion services in victoria: better health channel victoria
association for legal rights to abortion in victoria
women's health victoria abortion information package
lifeline
family planning victoria
rachelmckay - pro-choice motherfucking proud

wallpaper 08

For those who won't get a chance to check out the show at Trocadero, here are a few quick peeps. It finishes next saturday, so pop along if you're nearby.

Paper Architecture:




Candystripers:

shortlisted!

ok, so sometimes being on a short list is not such a great thing. well, actually i can only think of one time - being on a psychopath's list would be pretty bad. and part of a short shit list would kind of suck too. but most times, being on a short list is a fucking fantastic thing - you get somehow 'placed' amongst peers. on monday, my striper-in-crime, miss jones and i found out that we're on a short list for a pretty well-known public art commission in melbourne, which is very damned exciting.

there's a bit of work to do between now and then, but we get paid for the work we do from now on. and just to get to the stage, where a panel of amazing people are interested in a project that isn't a drop-sculpture hanging off the side of a laneway is pretty exciting!

i don't even know if we're allowed to tell anyone yet, so i'm being especially, well, loose in my joy here, but some of you'll probably figure it out anyway. and the rest of you will just have to keep coming back to read the official news later. heh. i think this blog just went viral.

edit: the candystripers now have their own blog. just.

blatant self-promotion #228

I have some work in Wallpaper '08 this year. At Trocadero Artspace in Footascray. Opening's on Saturday at 4pm. Come along - amongst the young hipster crowd, i'll be the odd one out.

knowing space

this is just a bit of stream-of-consciousness thinking about space at the moment, that has been cropping up lately. it mostly relates to a couple of projects i have lined up [especially in november], but you know, things crop up in the strangest of times.

as many of you will be aware, i'm interested in psychogeography, which is primarily the action of knowing ones place. slowing it all down, becoming aware and having an experience of a place which dictates its geography, as opposed to the maps, the signs, the images of it (thanks mr. debord for fucking up my mind on the images bit.)

well, as an adjunct to that, i'm doing a couple of projects that look at ways to know architectural space in the same way - cities can be walked or cycled through. but how do we have a humanist-psychological experience about the places we're in? one of the ways which we can measure space and know it in this way is through touch - through a more craft-based, hands-on approach. once you have traversed a corner, or the north-east wall with your hands, in some way, you know the space intimately. you see it as it really is, blemishes, scuffs, bits of plaster coming off where the blu-tack holding up that placemakers exhibition poster was.

i'm interested in this process for a couple of reasons. firstly, as an artist working primarily with space, site-specificity and installation, knowing a space is crucial to my understanding of it. and my understanding of the space is crucial to being able to create work that fits. i think most artists instinctively need to know the space their working on in this way. whether it's through painting the wall, measuring up to nail paintings to it, marking out a work on the floor, spending some time in the space, it's part of the process of coming to terms with the place.

for instance, i recently helped out with installation for the urban interior and as part of that work, we stencilled out the words URBAN INTERIOR across the length of the wall. we did this through projection and masking tape, which we 'drew' out the words - it was typography with masking tape and quite an odd feeling to kern a 2m high font from 2 cms away. anyway, in being so close to the wall, we got to know it - where part of it needed patching, you could see the history of the place in the coats of paint, and experience the ecosystem of dust mites and fluff balls that resided in the 9mm between the sheetrock and floorboards. interestingly, as we spent more time with the space, the easier the process of lettering got. i'd like to think it's because we started to really tune in with the nature of the place, our gestures became aligned with what was needed there. maybe we just 'got the hang of it'. either way, that process of feeling our way, hands on walls, up-close-and-personal was an important element of the installation process.

a couple of the projects i'm working on involve measuring and making a pattern for the space, in the same way that we measure and make a pattern for clothing. and when we measure and pattern a person in this way, we come to know them reasonably intimately. ever put a tape measure around someone's stomach and not felt how close together you're really standing? same rules apply.

and then, perhaps, once you know a place in this way - it becomes a particular kind of place. a place that perhaps you know and remember in a way that you can't make assumptions about. it becomes a private place, of sorts. and it becomes a different space. a space in which that knowledge dictates the true form of the place. the word inherent comes to mind.

as it becomes easier and easier to make assumptions about spaces, through technological advancement, how important is it to know a place? no, really know a place. like the back of your hand. is it as important as it is to really know people? i mean, i've never met some of my dearest friends. is it the same to have never been to my favourite places?

andy warhol meets mr c.

thanks to the art life for the tip.

NYC proxy required: scale of intervention

fuck i hate being so far away sometimes. there's an amazing panel discussion that wooster are chairing in about 8 hours' time featuring Cut-Up from London, Leon Reid IV (of Darius + Downey) from New York, Betsey Biggs from New York, and Roadsworth from Canada. It's at the new museum in on the bowery in NYC and, according to the blurb on their site, it's:

"Co-organized by Conflux, an annual festival dedicated to pyschogeography, and moderated by the founders of the celebrated street-art Web site Wooster Collective, this panel will look at possibilities for artistic disruption within urban environments. Taking its name from a film by the London-based Cutup Collective, which plays with the viewer's perception of a street scene, the panel will feature artists whose work ranges across a variety of mediums and materials. From reformulation of billboard advertisements into powerful, politically oriented collages to the subversive reformulation of street signs, such as pedestrian crossings and bike lanes, the featured artists will demonstrate how they dislodge the customary navigation and perception of urban space."

fuck it. it looks so great and i can't make it. but if there's someone in NYC who is going, could you also go for me? thanks a brazillian.

here's hoping there's a pod/vodcast of the event afterwards.

emo for obama

i'm quite over the us election race now. i can't wait for them to just vote and get it over and done with. i found this today and love it:



i think forlorn gaze might like it too.


via via

where winston smith and i part ways

i've been reading interviews from punk planet recently and came across one with winston smith. i'm ashamed to say i had no idea who the man was. i mean, i knew what he did, loved his artworks, but i didn't know that was his name. my friend even had his IM name as winston smith and i never thought to ask him. turns out, he's the guy responsible for the DK Dead Kennedy's logo. And the album artwork for In God We Trust, Frankenchrist, Give Me Convenience, etc, etc, and a tonne of politically motivated collage works, used by american punk bands of the 80s and 90s.

anyway, in the interview, smith talks about the importance of art in political messages, the collaborative process between him and jello biafra and his process of collage and straight-up narrative. i was totally inspired by him, until he and the interviewer josh hooten started talking about 'high art':

WS: ".. every now and again I'll open one of those magazines like Art In Ameria or some other big-time gallery magazine and I'll see photographs of rooms with little piles of sand in them with a string running from one end to the other or a pile of twigs. I don't know, call me old-fashioned, but I can't scope that at all! It's so obscure. But some people pee their pants over this stuff and I wonder what I'm doing wrong. Maybe I should do some bullshit installation like that and people will just start offering me money. Sometimes I just scratch my head and wonder why, if they're really trying to say something, don't they just come right out and say it?"

JH: When I was in art school, I produced... work that didn't require a reading list for you to figure our what the meaning was. But there were so many people who were wrapped up in being vague for the sake of being vague that my friends and I, when we would see this kind of work, would just attribute it jokingly to the artist "working out their inner struggle".

God how i wish doing bullshit installations would guarantee people throwing money at you..

And while I wholeheartedly applaud not taking oneself too seriously, and hate the art wankers as much as anyone else, I think a prescription for art only being explicit, or self-explanatory, or just political is as dangerous a proposition as art only reflecting the party line, or other such socialist realist maxims.

And I agree that art can be intimidating and exclusive through its written communication (right doddsy?), but ultimately i think not understanding art is actually vital. if you translate the idea into literature, hooten and smith are basically suggesting that all art has to be either political propaganda, detective novels, or Hello! magazine. surely finnegans wake in its deconstructed madness is as vital to the written word as catcher in the rye. Surely haiku poetry is as important as the 4/4 anthemic singalong?

installation art, conceptual art, etc is the difficult poetry to the airport novel: yes, it's a pain in the arse to try and understand. you have to take time. you may have to have a reading list. and actually, i think the valid criticism of high art from an underground perspective is the commodification of it and the slimy, manipulative aspects of the industry. but if being punk, underground or political means taking away the mystery or the poetry out of everything, then fuck that.

short black map

a while back i went to the effort to draw a map of melbourne (and inner city suburbs) to map out my fav. places to get a short black. well, since then, i've discovered more places to partake in my particular black gold obsession. particular is probably a nicer way to put it, but i called myself a coffee fascist the other day - i'm not sure if it's accurate, but it's getting close. the only difference between how i feel about espressos and what could be constituted as fascism, is that i'm not trying to convert others into my brand of coffee-ness. i think.

anyway, here are the new kids on the block (this is not to discount the OGs:

CBD


6. nashi
i know, i swore i would never drink coffee from a place that was set up to be kind of like a fast food place. but you know what, the lovely barista there is a coffee snob like me, makes me the best short black to have while i'm waiting and even lets me their sugar and metal spoons to stir in (and not have to use a plastic spoon with packet sugar). that's love, that is.

7. switchboard
run by a couple of kiwi lads who are just lovely. great lunchtime foodies: the switchboard special toasted sandwich is my favourite. the only gripe - $3.30 for a short black. i don't know but there's a psychological $3 upper limit for me.

8. cumulus inc
everyone's raving about cumulus now, but i was there first. in fact, the gorgeous baristas know our names and they know exactly what to make us. i don't get down there as often as i'd like now (and i'm selfishly hoping the ridiculous crowds will diminish a little soon). but their coffee is divine. [and they use Single Origin coffee from my second-favourite cafe in sydney. You guessed it, Single Origin.]

9. mr tulk [otherwise known as the proxy meeting room for all RMIT staff and students.]
my first experience of the tulk was an arrogant shit of a hipster giving me and my friend attitude when i asked for a double espresso. we left, vowing never to return.
well, i go there pretty much every day now and they know what i want when i walk in and are just the bomb. i sit and have my little short black, read the business day section of the age (the only section left, and it's actually quite interesting, believe it or not), before heading back to uni.

north-side




5. bistro flor:
555 nicholson st
down the road from my studio and open until 10pm at night. perfect for the late nights.

3. kent st [again]
i know kent st was in the first short black map, but i just have to give it extra props. it is my all-time favourite cafe. almost my favourite place in the whole wide world and worth a second mention.

i've still got a few more places to discover (like brother baba budan and st. ali), but the map is getting good now, don't you think. maybe next i'll generate an open source-ish google map, like dan did for the modernism map. until then, photoshop it is.

the stripe in art deco

hi. i'm back. things are looking up again. and last week i went to the art deco exhibition with my nanna. we had a lovely time, listening to the cairo jazz band, watching the balancing act (people, balancing on each other, not my work/life schedule) and having yummy food. the show itself was kind of disappointing - lacked a certain rigour that would have produced a fantastic survey. unfortunately, the NGV is starting to make this slap-dash blockbuster approach a bit of a habit, really.

anyway, going through the exhibition, i started to notice how much the stripe featured in the decorative arts from the 20s/30s. especially out of germany/austria, but lots of other works as well.

of course, not being able to take sketching materials and/or cameras, my visual evidence of the supposition is a little, well, light-on. but trust me, once you start to see it - it's there. a lot of the collection from the NGV itself (as opposed to the V&A, which the rest of the show is from) has furniture designed in vienna, all featuring detailed striped inlay edges and stripes across handles. other stripe to be seen:








ok, so i may have a stripe obsession at the moment, thanks to the candystripers stuff i've been working in with miss jones, but it's still interesting to think about. especially in terms of what the stripe has meant in fashion/civic life.

the stripe is a particular mark because of its balance between space and non-space; colour and non-colour. i think derrida would like the stripe (it might reflect his hauntology). which is even more interesting in terms of political times of art deco - post/pre-war, depending on what country you're in and a time of economic flux. the relationship of the stripe to prisoners of war is also looking a bit sinister, in relation to the art deco period.

i'm not sure how purposeful or considered the stripe was as a motif in decorative arts of the early 20th century, but now that i'm starting to see them everywhere, i have a feeling i'm about to find out.