me and mark

rothko. i finally got to see the amazing retrospective at the tate. it seems you either love his work or hate it. i'm firmly in the love camp and i spent several hours in the show.


rather than join the queue of critics, analysing and prosetylising (as i usually do), i've decided to just transcribe my garbled notes from the show. it's a really personal account, a public peek into a private relationship between me and one of my all time favourite artists.

the track listings are from a playlist my friend jeremy made me, which turns out was perfect for the exhibition.

[and inspired me to make playlists for myself for other shows. i reckon the tate should include these on itunes too, so you can download them before you go to the show.]

Room 8
Nick Cave, This Wonderful Life

" across these purple fields"

Permission to Meditate
Atmosphere & Sound
Rothko & Rhythm
Painting & Depth

Room 7
Animals, We've Got to Get Out of This Place

Study for Seagram Murals
Just let the colour flood..
"He's been working so hard, every day and night"

Room 5
PJ Harvey, Horses in My Dreams

No. 5, 1964
Dark purple/brown, with black window
Dreams & Darkness. A faint place to find

Untitled, 1964
Red ground
Indian Red Window
The harmonious and joyous contrast
The line between the colours fills my hear with joy
I want to dive in and make it home

A double horizon line
Above, I am reminded of the wide, brown land
As the sky burns
I need to visit the hinterland

The edges are final, resolute. Firm.
They are tender in their boundaries
Yet strict in their line
A place in which one rubs up against the other.


Study for side-wall triptychs
-good to see a spot of rogue red pigment in his work too.

Room 6
Nick Cave, The Mercy Seat, Live (with Warren Ellis)

'I began to warm and chill to objects and their fields'
'A blackened tooth, a scarlet fog. The walls are bad. Black. Bottom kind.'

I just want to close my eyes and have these paintings burned into my eyeballs.
Works that at once activate and ask to sit. Move in order to find the form; sit in order to find its content.

It is about paint in as much as it is not about paint.

Reminds me of Glenn Ligon's analysis of black pigment @ rivington place at the moment.

Room 3: Seagram Murals
Tom Waits: 2:19
Nick Cave, Rye Whiskey

Large room, lowly lit
The whole series, around
It's enormous and not quite as beautiful as the 'rothko room', but it's still impressive.

My favourite Rothko:Red on Maroon
Leonard Cohen, Avalanche

A mist rises from the ground and a red rectangle
sits boldly over the top. Resolutely.
Everything shimmers in the dimness.

Room 9
Nick Cave, Hammer Song
Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Hammer Song

Black and grey fields. Delicious

They have a cleannes about them. A starkness and cuttingly accurate punctuation.
The whiteness on the edges, like a cold splash on my face.
In fact the whole work is about the edge
Liminality is such a common term
Yet here it is.
The eye roves the plane, searching for the edge.
Detail, lost in space.
And as we search for it, it enlarges itself.
The black becomes omnipresent
Grey, its elusive younger brother, enveloping our vision with lack.
We search and search, despite it.

I want to encircle the room, 100 times
To traverse this space,
To measure it, taste it, know it.
To circumvent the stillness with an action of searching
And to feel the expanse of brushstrokes beneath my feet
Feel the Lamp Black freezing my cheeks
And to chisel the surface of grey wash with steps.
One in front of the other.

I want to walk right into the picture
And keep going
Until I get to the end.
Walkabout Untitled, 1969.

Room 4
Bottleneck.
Bad exhibition design/traffic mgmt.

Room 2
Roland. S. Howard, The Passenger (Iggy Pop cover)

'Bright and hollow sky'

Four Darks in Red, 1958
Foreground, middle ground, background and 'the bit at the top'
Actually, the lower band reminds me of the Isenheim Altarpiece where jesus' tomb is below the main action
-Underground, foreground, mid, back.
It burns, it burns.

Mystery without confusion
The edge of the background quite active with the end of the brush.

Room 1
The Stranglers,On Golden Brown
Tom Waits, Where I lay my Head

A lightness & carefree touch
Studies that have a pop-ness about them.
Rhythm & regularity. Dancing.

On red construction paper (what is that? I want)

Cut marks & folds.
Process & fingerprints

von brown an breitenbach und brown

life in a northern town.

this fantastic song by the dream academy was on the very first vinyl i ever owned: just hits '86. even at 9 years old i knew it was the story of an amazing and dramatic place. and i remember the film clip being so foreign.



well, for the last couple of days i've pretty much been living on the set of the dream academy film clip and it's been so ace - the perfect restorative.

after catching up with some of the northern boys and girls last night, i woke up this morning to the most amazing view of hills, hills and more hills. all green. in fact, i enjoy just hangin' about on the hills so much that, instead of checking out all the galleries in manchester, i stuck around.



i spent rather a lot of time staring out the window. it's still here. like properly still - with no perceptible movement and i feel like i'm watching the passing of time. it's almost like being in a photograph. except a photograph can't replicate the absolutely stillness - the complete absence of noise that i felt today.



the moors are like big slabs of paint, or marble cake icing, or licorice - greeny browny licorice. it's quite tactile here and i feel like touching it all the time, or putting in my mouth like a 2-year old does to get a feel for things - to really taste it. sadly i think my palette has matured past the hills of west yorkshire to prefer builders tea and a salad sandwich with rocket, hommus and avocado.



i feel like i can think in whole sentences here. that i don't have to speed read through my thoughts and get to the final conclusion - they can brew. and i crave painting when i'm here. i just want to get the oils and the canvas out and work on stuff. my friend has a richard diebenkorn book on her desk and i can't think of a better match than pecket well and richard diebenkorn.



and even as i say that nothing changes, that the stillness is final, the mist has snuck in and all of a sudden it's mostly white out there and the green is all damp.





walking back from town was fantastic. the cold was so sharp that my eyeballs felt like they'd been tattooed on. and, while it wasn't raining, everything was wet. the greens and the greys, the browns and occasional splash of red berry were all so luscious. and whilst coming down the lane, i realised exactly why the phrase 'middle of the road' just oozes safe, comfortable thinking. the track, all slippery and slidy from the car tracks, was quite textured and nobbly and actually traversable on foot, so i kept to the middle of the road. it was absolutely safe so i didn't look like a twat, on my arse, covered in mud.



i also realised how strong heritage can be, even when you try to ignore or deny it. my great grandparents were raised in west yorkshire and there's something that just runs through my blood when i get onto the ground here - like i'm planting myself in the unknown genes of my family.

london and colour

london is pretty grey at the moment. grey skies, lots of wet grey concrete, frosty windows, dark brown wet bricks and saturated black asphalt roads. you'd be forgiven for a frown every now and again.

and it's in this monotonous colour field that london seems to have a history of wacky colourful architectural customisation.



the first i noticed about it was the doors. islington, chelsea and kensington all have rows and rows of the same kinds of houses, separated only by their brightly coloured doors. apparently it was an early way to separate each house (unsubstantiated, but wikipedia gives me no love on the doors), and i guess a way to bring an individuality to the edifice, whilst still be 'tasteful'.



then, there's notting hill's love of painting each house in a row a different colour, seemingly as a way to give the street a bit of razzamatazz, in amongst the drab monotony of upper-middle-class life. or maybe just for the sake of a postcard shot - i don't even know.



but seeing them again the other day, i started wondering why london loves its colour spectrum - from the doors and the garish houses, to the infamous tube map and its organisation/identification based on colour. is it as an antidote to the ever-pervading greyscale, or is it something greater than that? or am i reading too much into things..

some amazing shows

i've been to see more shows in the last 3 days than i have in the last 3 months. it's like mainlining nicotine after being a social smoker - full-fuckin-on. but ace. totally ace.

there are a few stand-out shows for me so far and i just need to rave about them for a bit.


andreas golder, white cube.



more specifically, the sculptural work that is splattered on the carpet on the top floor of hoxton square gallery. it is pretty impressive and quite revolting, in a delicious way. i think if it wasn't installed in a grey room, with lower lighting - after a pretty innocuous show downstairs, it might not be so memorable for me. but it was and it was. the detail and the gore is great - never has a partly flagellated skeletal form looked quite so luscious.

conceptual models, tate modern.


i've been holding off on seeing the rothko, thanks to dear friends giving me free tickets, etc, etc. so when i went the other day, it was really to check out some of the other free shows. conceptual models is one of the most awesome shows i've seen in ages. i know that sounds like quite a big call, but for me it really nailed it. it was large enough to get a bit of a scope of the theme (artists working with/within architectural frameworks and ideas), was a theme that i totally dig, because i'm a self-centered gal and love seeing shows about work i make; and was still tight enough to not feel completely swamped by filler and/or overkill.

some of the great works i loved included some white langlands & bell (my new favourite artists) models of ivrea, also known as olivetti-city damian ortega's skin works: cow-hide modernist housing plans, strung up like carcasses; ephemeral modelling work, cedric, by koo-jeong, a and thomas demand's tavern - sets and photos of the site of (i ♥ thomas demand). they were just the absolute highlights, but there wasn't really a work in there that i didn't love.

unfortunately, there was nothing but the suggestion of looking it up on the internet to take home with me. not even a room list/publication thing like there usually is. i was a bit disappointed about that, but thankfully the list of works is on the tate site.


hussein chalayan, design museum.


i had been looking forward to seeing this exhibition for a while - i bought advanced tickets from oz, that's how excited i've been about it. and i didn't even really know that much about the designer before then, but i just knew it would be a good show.

and how.

the works are fantastic - chalayan is into multi-disciplinary design and story-telling is a major aspect of his collection. and that collaborative/wholistic approach has been taken into the exhibition design too - done by an architectural firm, the whole experience is amazing and a little blade-runner-esque (do all good architects like blade-runner). each room is a difference 'illustration' - fig. A-R of the fashion work, but is an installation in itself. chalayan also does fantastic films, several of which are showing at the museum, including one featuring the amazing tilda swinton. born in cyprus, working in london, chalayan's work, and especially this show, has the feel of exactly those two places - absolute high-density innovation and sparse romanticism. in fact, there was something about the show that reminded me of australian artist hussein valamanesh.

if you're in london between now and may, and have even a passing interest or understanding of fashion/design, go see this show. it's brilliant.


UPDATE: great essay on ortega's skins here

image credits:
andres golder, surgite mortui venite ad judicium, from the white cube site.
thomas demand, tavern, from the telegraph website

oh, no ho, so ho, oh.

yesterday was like a protein bar of 6 months of living in london, squished into 1 day, plus a sprinkling of life in melbourne.

it started off with a whirlwind tour of a bunch of galleries in and around soho/noho, a wonder through the streets of soho, coffee at flat white, yoghurt peanuts from berwick st market and then a soothing soak into the permanent collection of the national gallery.

the commercial gallery shows i saw were a right mixture of fantastic, challenging and downright shit. there also seemed to be an over-riding arrogance about a whole lot of the shows and, typically, almost all of them male. something which the countesses would probably have something to say about.

mummery + schnelle: merlin james - paintings.
this was first show i saw for the morning and by god was it crap. the paintings of horses and bodies were sub-foundation-year and the archive and collection of drawings out the back, by charchoune were kind of interesting, but given absolutely no context. blunt, sorry. but it's true.

david roberts art foundation, fitzrovia - alastair mackie; not waving but drowning
this show was amazing: a few large, key sculptural works, linked with taxidermy, dead animals and the parts we use: a dolls house from wasp and hornets nest, a loom with fabric woven from mouse hair, and a pile of mice skeletons, used to make the fabric. gruesome, but valuable reminder about using animals for our purpose and blurring the lines of grotesque and functional.

this gallery also reminded me that the commercial gallery scene in london is full of snooty bitches. it's 1000 times worse than the worst day at anna schwartz. like no 'hello', 'goodbye' and just plain ignoring you when you ask a question. thankfully i remembered to not take it personally and just have some pity for the poor fuckers who believe that they're on some higher caste.

alison jacques: jon pylypchuck - just sit back and recount the violence of one year
my first impression of the show was a bit of ho-hum, thanks to the very boy-art installation in the middle of the floor. however, the paintings and drawings were awesome. not necessarily for their form, but as narratives of hilariously dark and cynical conversations between fucked up characters. my personal favourites:

"chase your dreams, baby boy"
"let's even if up, fuck faces"

and

"your name will be the last thing i say when i die"
"i hope you don't still owe me money when you die"
"watching you two douchebags climb this mounting together is really heart warming"

stuart shave: jonathan meese - casinoz babymetabolismn (put dr.no's mone in your mouth, baby)
this was an impressive exhibition. the large paintings, photocollages covering the windows, drawing on the walls, the manifestos scrawled all over the place and the bronze fucked-up sculptures were all-encompassing. jonathan is kind of a big deal in germany and i can see why. his work has a presence about it and he is certainly focused. i still can't say whether i liked the work. i have a problem with that level of arrogance and i'm always suspicious about artists spouting the ills of art in the form of art. irony or hypocrisy - either way, both are really irrelevant in terms of communication. i also found his choice of identity somewhat difficult to digest: jesus christ-charles-manson-glenn-from-deicide-albrecht-durer. all people who are deified for their preaching and, well, i wrinkle my nose at that kind of blah-blah-blah.

having said that, his sculptures were fantastic and i have some level of admiration for the sheer determination and ballsiness of his work. and the gallery seems like a really cool new venue - i'm looking forward to seeing what else they've got going there.

the approach w1: phillip allen: sloppy cuts no ice
the paintings in this show were actually really unappealing to me. in fact, they were a real turn-off. thankfully, i went downstairs and saw the drawings by the same guy and they were beautiful. i would have even bought some (if i was, you know, loaded). and i ended up having a really sweet chat with the canadian gallery assistant about i'm not here - the movie about bob dylan. conversation, see?

after seeing all those shows, i took a walk down berwick st, for old-times' sake, where i grabbed some yoghurt-covered peanuts from the berwick st markets (may favourite sweet thing ever) and a coffee from flat white. flat white was my coffee salvation when i was working in berwick st. i could get a great coffee with a twist of oz, on a daily basis. now, i don't know what's happened but the place is now so awful. no australians/kiwis, the decor is scarily bourgeoise and the coffee is treacherous. ok, so there are far more treacherous things in the world, but it tasted like fucking dishwashing detergent. i didn't even finish it (and i only have an espresso). i was so disappointed. not just in the coffee, but how quickly a place like london changes. and how quickly something that was authentic and true and good became gross and mediocre. presumably because someone tried to "capitalise" on it.

thankfully i headed then to the ever-reliable national gallery to pick up where i had left off in october 2007 (i visited a room a week for the 6 months i lived here). i went to the netherlands, 1700 rooms and checked out a slightly disappointing vermeer and a beautiful pieter der hooch painting, which highlighted the perspective of an interior/exterior plane. it was so beautiful composed and the colours of the sunlight courtyard were do divine. of course i had to draw it to do it a complete injustice.

and then i caught up with my dear friend huw, who is doing a PhD on post WWII german music and we encircled covent garden for a bit (i always get lost around there), before gratefully descending on monmouth - the best coffee place in this part of the world for not only kaffeeklatsch, but to right the previous oh-so-wrongs from my earlier flat white visit.

afterwards, we went back to the gallery, open late on wednesdays and hung about in the rubens room, cooing over the baroque master. i love rubens, so i had no problems with salivating over his pudgy knees, soles of feet, dimply bottoms and gnarly fingers. his compositions are so complex and swirly and dramatic, huw and i were completely drawn in.

i've been doing some half-arsed investigations into the idea that we're currently in a neo-baroque period, so i'll probably spend some more time researching rubens in the coming year.

after huw left, i spent some time trying to sketch out mars protecting pax, then walked to russell square, via china town, before heading back to brixton the long way home (on the 59 bus).

image credit: jonathan meese, stuart shave website

london diary: architecture, patterns of power, design and tools of behaviour.

today was the first 'real' day in london. yesterday was spent recovering from 30 hours travel-time and catching up my with dear friend nina - the schmock.


my first port of call was westminster abbey. i know, tourist trap, but i didn't do a lot of tourist-type things for that exact reason and feel like i missed out on a few key experiences.

the abbey was amazing. the gothic architecture is so spectacular and i was totally struck by the detail of the heraldry and history. i sketched a few bits and pieces, falling in love with the repetition and pattern of the chapel roof, the transept wall detail, windows and the grand organ.

it did get me thinking about the power of pattern in establishing sights of power. in fact i need to do some research on the etymology of 'order' - it's used in architectural terminology a lot and the implications of that, in terms of political and religious control intrigues me.

back to the abbey, i was suitably impressed by the place as a working church, monastery and glorified necropolis. there's some pretty impressive tombs in the place, including both queen elizabeth and queen mary, on top of each other. ha! the cloister garden surround the main cathedral were also divine - so lush and green and restorative.

the only thing that made me want to vomit was those audio guides, which i think is pretty good, considering :)

after that i went and had a quick lunch with the dynamic duo will and sam. and when i say dynamic, i mean almost cataclysmic. they're so polar that you can almost pick up BBC radio with the opposing magnetism.. ha! there wasn't enough time to get properly caught up, but it was good to spend some time, get some hugs and make plans for later in the the week.

after that, i wandered down to the V&A, which was amazing. i hardly got to see any of it last time i was here and even today, i really only checked out the 4th floor - the architecture gallery and the glass section (which exhausted me). i did pop down to check out the silver section, hoping to find a whole section on flatware, to no avail.

as i've mentioned on this blog before, i have a morbid fascination with flatware and would love to design some one day (which just might be this year sometime). i would love to see a whole exhibition about the history of cutlery and, thanks to the helpful fellow at the V&A, discovered that the Smithsonian had one - the catalogue of which i am now coveting.

i think there's something fascinating about modern tools of habit - glassware, flatware, crockery. all that stuff that shows the trends and fashions of how humans operate in social situations and where that intersects with innovation/design.


i've also loved slotting back into london life - i'm already charging up the escalators, walking faster on the street, almost getting run over by black cabs and mostly know where i'm going. the weather is not as formidable as i thought it would be. yet. which i'm eternally grateful for and i'm looking forward to catching up with as many people as i possibly can.

plans over the next few days include hoxton/shoreditch, soho, some ice skating and a stint at the design museum. good times :)

a space is not so big as when you lose something in it.

a space is not so big as when you lose something in it.

i decided that this was the case a few months ago, when my favourite jacket fell off the back of my bike in the city somewhere and i trawled the streets of melbourne, looking for it. this idea was confirmed for me the other day when, whilst flicking a cobweb off my hand, my ring flew off my finger into the large expanse that was my parents' country front yard. in searching for it, i tracked the space, searching for this cheap-arse, but meaningful piece of jewellery.

whilst doing so, i realised that a lot of the ideas i've had about knowing a space through measurement and occupation came up again in the search for the lost object.

whilst i didn't take quantitative measurements, i did make calculations of the space in which the object would probably be. which means i determined the space .

then i tracked through the space - measuring it through movement. i tried two types of ways to traverse the space - in a random way, hoping that i would stumble upon my ring. then in a methodical way.

neither worked to find my ring, by the way, but both ways gave me a whole new knowledge of that space. my eyes, scanned back and forth under and across patched of dirt, weeds, sticks, scrub. reducing it down to a smaller and smaller surface area, seeking out the rogue piece of gleaming silver. the level of detail within which i was 'in' was greater and greater. needing to 'zoom in' to the place in order to look carefully

and it is this looking 'carefully' that one only really does when we've lost something. when we're searching for something specific. both physically and phitosophically speaking, i guess.

places change their appearance, and our memory of those spaces becomes infinitely more vivid once we've combed the area, almost hunted for what we've lost. it becomes larger, deeper, more complex. and we take notice of those complexities, out of necessity - as each one could reveal that mising piece. that item of clothing, that person, animal, cheap piece of crap jewellery.
and this is going to sound remarkably patronising and preposterous, but while i was out there, on my folks lawn, keenly straining my eyes and aquainting myself with the bull-ants, i started to understand how indigenous australians (and those to other countries) KNOW their country. they spend/spent is hunting, gathering, searching for food, shelter, water, etc with the same level of analysis that i did looking for my shitty ring. they knew each part of their space, their property' in the same way - feeling it.

i wish i could have felt that land in quite the same way the other day. it would have been much cooler to just flesh out my lost item. instead i had to ask a friend to bring over his dingky metal detector.. how shit is that.

however, the experience gave me a new insidght into that listtle spot underneath the tree in the front, but also solidified this idea about this great relationship to space and loss.



edit: this was written in a haze of jetlag, so apologies for the rambling.

tally ho!

right kids, after 6 months of waiting not-very-patiently, my trip to london is finally here. i head off on saturday and will be gone for 4 weeks, including a couple of days in manchester, hamburg and 5 days in paris for my birthday. eep!

needless to say, i'm looking forward to catching up with peeps who i haven't seen for yonks! i'm also looking forward to seeing the rothko exhibition and the rest of the tate, some theatre at the national, ice skating at tower of london (and the tower itself), westminster abbey. i'm also keen to check out the serpentine and the new saatchi gallery (which i didn't get to see in my gallery per day jaunts in 07) and also more of the V&A.

and while that's loads to squish into 3 weeks, if you have any suggestions for absolutely-must-see/do, let me know in the comments section. especially if they're things you can do on a hella tight budget. i like cheap and/or free.

also, if you're in london/england/germany and want to buy any of the drawings i've been selling, ya better get in quick 'cos i'm packing my bags now and leaving the rest at home :) [by the way, you australians will have to wait til i get back, sorry]

i'm hoping to keep posting while i'm there, but forgive me if they're few and far between. i'm sure you understand (although, in the spirit of rob campbell, i'll probably be blogging more frequently, having promised otherwise! ha!)

see you on the (freezing cold) flip-side!

more words

following on from yesterday's post about words i'm loving, here's some more:

structure
architecture
body systems
political systems
social systems
architectonic
rhythm
pattern
syncopation
order
disorder
repetition
multiplicity
urban
public
spatial
experience
empirical
mathematics
formala
anarchy
politics
public
city
metropolis
planning
design
grid
entropy
bias
deconstruction
destruction
social
anthropology
group dynamics (get yourself a future)
sustainable
inertia
momentum
music
form
formula
felt
indicator

it's educational!

i've recently developed a greater love affair with words. i've always loved them. while my sister would be playing with dolls and making up dances, i would be reading the 51st enid blyton book of the series, or playing scrabble or lego. [some things never change i guess.]

but over the last month or so, i've been reading some amazing things - books, mostly, that have really enlightened my understanding of history and the state of the world, in a way that i've not had before.

although i had heard a little of the spanish civil war and the republican fight against franco fascism, through the lives and works of frida kahlo, pablo picasso and george owell, i never really had any kind of knowledge or comprehension of what the hell was going on. so i started reading For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway as a way to enjoy his writing and gain some perspective on the experience of that time. Not only was it an enjoyable book, but i now have a much more vivid and empirical understanding of the conditions, the motives and the details of guerilla/rebel warfare in Spain in the 1930s.

after i had finished that, i picked up a book which my mother had lent me and hounding me to read. i thought it was going to be fluffy oprah-bookclub material and thankfully i was wrong. The Book Thief is an amazing book about a bright young girl, fostered out during the reign of the Third Reich, to a family near Münich - Hitler Heartland. In the way it is written, narrated by death (or 'the taker of souls') with a combination of depth and humour, i felt like i learned more about Nazi Germany than I had from the thousands of books, films and art I had seen up until now. Similarly - it's the conditions, the motives and the details of the characters and the plot which provide a clarity. the emotional involvement i had with the story gave me a clarity which i'll never be able to remove. (i cried when liesel kissed rudy near the river)

and just when i thought i had enough of heart-wrenching stories, i decided to read the copy of dave eggers' what is the what, which i had bought months ago, second hand. it's the transliteration of an oral story about a south-sudanese (dinka) refugee and his walk across sudan, into ethiopia and kenya - and 10 years of camp-life. while the facts have been provided by valentino achak deng, the story is written by eggers, who is an amazing writer. again with the motives, the detail, the conditions, i learned a whole lot about sudan and east africa, of which i am ashamed to say i knew nothing and have a greater understanding of the complexity of human interaction.

as well as being enjoyable and educational books, the importance of these words has been what happened after i read them.

i went to wikipedia. i know, it's to be taken with a pinch of salt, but as a post-dead-tree-novel knowledge chaser, it was perfect. i was able to see the smaller picture through the eyes of a character, then zoom out on the wider historical and cultural context. general and specific. detail and vista. a big picture. and this is the power of wikipedia - as an encyclopedia, minus the heaviness and drudgery of dead-tree funk'n'wagnel tomes.

i know that i'm about 2 years behind everyone in gushing about this, but the combination of [single-voice narrative] books and [open-source info] technology excites me greatly right now. for the first time i feel like i'm getting the hang of education, in its broadest definition and i'm enjoying learning about things that matter. not just to extend my mind (although that's equally important), but to extend my civic and political heart. so that i can be a member of The Public in terms of knowledge.

drawing and fundraising

ok peeps, i've been doing some drawing work to compliment my more conceptual (and mostly uncollectable) work , as mentioned in my previous post. and as a way to raise funds for my upcoming reconnaissance mission to london/europe, i've decided to put them up for sale. here. now.

so, if you've ever wanted to buy a small work to support an emerging contemporary artist, or if you're a friend of mine and want to see me in london next week, please buy a work.

there's a paypal button for each work, so you can just pay with paypal/credit and if you're in melbourne, london, manchester, hamburg or paris, delivery is free and in person. if you live elsewhere, we'll sort something out.

all works are approx 200 x 150mm (7.5" x 6"), on acid-free watercolour paper, signed and are £25 each. that, my friends is a bargain.

[and for those without a conversion widget on their dashboard, converts to approx AUD$50, US$36, €27 and CNY250]


1. 25 x 25
ink, progresso on paper


ON HOLD



2. the laneway
ink on paper



SOLD

3 - 6. Felt Landscapes I - VI
dye and pigment on paper

SOLD

7. Patterning a corner [aka 'That's Me in the Corner']
pencil and charcoal on paper


SOLD


8. Millenium Bridge
Ink on paper


SOLD

9. Pop
Pastel, charcoal and pencil on paper


SOLD

10 - 12. Nine Funerary Urns (edition of 3)
Ink and gouache on paper


1/3 - ON HOLD

2/3 and 3/3 still available

13 - 18. Black Felt Landscapes, I - VI
Gouache on paper.

ON HOLD.

SOLD

19. Abracadaver Schematic
Ink on paper

20. Swarm
Ink on paper



SOLD

nu-year. kinda like nu-metal, but way cooler.

god i love a new year. i especially love that 2008 is over and done with. it was a difficult year - incredibly uplifting and challenging and exciting and devastating and somewhat resembling a dog's breakfast.

so, lessons learned and with new resolve gained from a few days of doing sweet fuck all, i'm ready for a year that is going to be solid - new challenges faced with a sense of happy calm strength, as opposed to maniacal laughter.

and while i've made a list of things i'd like to focus on this year, it's kinda personal, so i won't be sharing the whole lot. but here are a couple of things that you may notice will change around the she sees red camp:

top 5 for oh-nein.

new website. finally! i got iweb to talk to my server and my dns hosting to figure out its redirection and voilà - new site! thankfully it's easy to keep updating, so there will be regular changes, updates and documentation of projects, hopefully in a timely fashion.

drawing as a way to support an experimental arts practice. inspired by a workshop at allan's walk, a discussion with nathan gray about it and after the schamozzle of trying to figure out how the hell to make money whilst spending time on an arts practice, i've decided to push myself to find a drawing-based element to my work. i've always done schematics or sketches and this year i'll be working towards something more prolific and sustainable.

swimming. i swim 3 times a week and while it's probably of no consequence to you guys, i've decided to continue swimming this year. when i'm ploughing those laps (ahem, 10 laps of backstroke is hardly ploughing - ed) i often find solutions to all kinds of problems and unexpected inspiration. and when i'm sitting in the sauna afterwards, i always read my art magazines - it's so great (although my artworld subscription ends up in a state of disrepair).

overseas action. i've got a quick reconnaissance trip to london/paris/hamburg planned soon- for both pleasure and lovely catch-ups, as well as a bit of a scoping trip. and this year i'd like to have another exhibition over there and/or start some study in germany. i know that it's a cliche to always be looking elsewhere for cultural validity, but hey, in the words of ms poly styrene, i'm a cliché, i'm a cliché, i'm a cliché

back to reading the newspaper. last year, i got most of my news updates via twitter. sad, i know, but as i mentioned in the comments of this amazing post about the nature of reading the news, it prompted me to seek more info via the bbc, or the age site, in a way that scanning the story in the paper never did. the only problem with that is that i only found out the big stuff, the international stuff. not the general day-to-day workings of my state and country. i feel a bit out of the loop, and so i'm going to cultivate my daily read again.

so, welcome back to this navel-gazing blog again and i hope this year has good things in store for you all.