mea culpa

mea culpa

after all those galleries, after all those exhibitions i saw last year, the last 6 weeks in melbourne has been a drought! turns out that when your life is precarious, you don't have the luxury of seeing art with a capital A.

in the times i would normally be going to art openings, or checking out exhibitions, i've been asking friends to stay on their couch, travelling to various parts of the city or travelling to the country to stay at my folks', or working my various casual jobs and projects, or waiting for peeps to finish their work so i can stay with them.

that's not intended to be an outright whinge (see previous post), but it did remind me that when i make art in a gallery, i'm only going to be talking to people who have a pretty nice, even steady life.

an important lesson too methinks.

image credit: mikala dywer at docklands by ajf clark from flickr 

Viva la stupidité

ReadMe: http://theartlife.com.au/?p=4745

Ok, so I think this is the third article by carrie miller that I’ve chucked into my delicious account. Which officially makes me an adoring fan.

This article is exactly what I needed to hear.
Along with bret easton ellis’ damning of empire sensibility and some more heidegger on the clearing.

I don’t actually entirely agree with baudrillard’s idea of compulsory inclusion within the capitalist state. I think there are degrees of inclusion and I have recently embraced my inner outsider, given that time, tax, superannuation, utilities, media and property are not inclusive of arts practice or inter/multi-discplinary language. But, this is not to say that I shouldn’t change my attitude about the commerce of my art.

Let’s see where this leads to next.

Image credit: the art life.

age actual

sorry to all my hard-edge art readers and cold-hearted subscribers, the first part of this post is a bit nostalgic and emotional. It's about age.

i first 'met' age on the blog for advertising agency see life differently. i was hangin' with one of their peeps and he told me about his regular features on the blog. i started reading and from the first post, i was hooked. i think i was one of the only readers outside the agency who would comment. i probably drove age nuts, because i was constantly putting a spanner in his 'nike are the greatest company in the world' works. some things never change.

the blog and organisation dwindled, and at the same time, we became friends on myspace, where i found a link to his personal blog, in my atmosphere (a john mayer reference, for the uninitiated - how i envy you).

i started following the beautiful writing on his blog and age started reading mine - we struck up friendship, following links to other blogs and i found myself part of another ad-type blog full of opinionated and heartwarming reprobates, where age was also regular contributor and fellow aus representin'.

age and i finally met in person before i went to london back in 2007 and we have maintained an ongoing catch-up coffee-based bromance since then. we recruited another friend of his into the fold and we've had our own awesome gang for years. in busy times, maybe it's only age's twitter feed i see, or read his beautiful posts about himself, love and life (which he's going to start doing again, right age?), but there's always ongoing 'check this out' emails, twitter messages, random text messages from italy and big hugs when there's time for catch up.

i've always met up with people who i find interesting from the net. it's not 'social networking' as someone recently tried to categorise it. it's friendship. deep, meaningful, long-lasting. apart from being a really important part of my life (which i will really fuckin' miss, ahem!), age's friendship also reminds me how much the world has changed, and sometimes how much it doesn't.

i don't ever consider that age may be a different kind of friend than others. or that it's weird that we met on the internet (although it sounds soooo nerdy), but there are still loads of people that do. they don't quite get it. which, if i'm honest, is totally cool. it's like age and i (and all my other nerdy, bloggy, twitter-based friends who i have become dear, dear friends with) still get to have this secret awesome gang headquarters that will eventually catch on, but right now, we've discovered the hiding place.

and the reason why i'm going on about this is because age is heading back overseas to take up a super-rad position in an organisation he has been going on about for YEARS. he's following a dream, taking his girl and moving to london. right on.

i'm super, super proud of him and i hope he never comes back. which i say, of course, with love. i know that he's going to have a super challenging, but ultimately wildly fulfilling time there. and i'll be watching like some soccer mum from the sidelines, having been part of all the torturous waiting and training and planning up until this point.

i promised age that i would write him a list for london. the places that i know he'll love. or hate, but should see anyway. for all you londoners reading this blog, age is amazing. please, treat him as though he really were my brother and take him under your wing.

age, melbourne loves you and will always be here. but, from someone who came back, i never want to see you here again, y'hear? forza!

image credits: ben dux and his hipstamatic. 

lauren's random london things for age

coffee

monmouth; kaffeine (central london); present and allpress (shoreditch); the last cafe on broadway market which is full of hipsters, but the coffee is good; lantana (run by australians - go there. you'll need it sometimes, plus i think it's where will's cawfee thing is); london particular (same mob as lantana); bar italia and ecco are some good quasi-italian places to get a mini fix (although fundi is about 1.5 hours away. heh)

art

tate modern. i think your peeps have a membership thing going on - use it. not just for the art, but for the members' room view - it's amazing.

wallace collection - sneaky amazing baroque/rococco collection that is both amazing and cheap (if not free)

wellcome collection - amazing medicine/sciene-based gallery, library and research facilities

vyner st galleries - fred, vine, kate mcgaraghty and some kind of impressive private gallery/collection -  about half way down, look up.

ibid projects and white cube - both in hoxton square

regent studios - there are about 3 or 4 great little galleries there.

chisenhale gallery is also a bit funny to find, but worth it - great works.

gimpel fils and lazarides greek st galleries for street art. and stolen space in truman brewery.

riflemaker - solid, in soho.

cheapish food. 

ok, not that you'll need to eat cheaply, but if you do:

korean cafe at holborn, near centrepoint -  had nori and korean street food (it's kinda near gimpel fils)

bagel joints at the top end of brick lane. so bad, but so good.

home made soup from the corner shop on bedford st (i think) off tottencourt road

il padrone pizza in finsbury park is la porchetta in north london. 

southwark is a good area for some nice food too - there was a great turkish place that will took me too last time that was pretty rad. and pubs serve proper good food there.

writing/literature

ministry of stories -  you, of all people, have to check out the ministry of stories on hoxton road. it's the london version of the superhero shop you went to in new york. but with a monster-theme. i so badly wanted to buy you a can of a vague sense of unease on the way home, but had zero money or baggage space.

ICA, RA, RCA, BA, DC and the barbican-  insitutute for contemporary art, royal academy, royal college of art, british academy, dana centre and the barbican - all have ongoing programs for talks, presentations and interesting stuff. stuff that will fill your mind with amazing things. you should go.

clubs

resident advisor is a good site for clubbing/dance nights - if erol alkan is playing anywhere, go.

bourne & hollingsworth is around the corner from lantana and lazarides' rathbone place and on friday nights is absolutely jammed, but the cocktails are fun (espresso martini, served in a teacup) and there's a reasonable DJ once a fortnight. clare selby and i bullied the dancefloor one night and it ruled.

the w+k peeps put stuff on all the time too - they know better than anyone, probably.

bands book out like stupid amounts of time in advance - get in early.

xoyo is hipster city in shoreditch, but it's on all the time and they had some cool stuff last year.

outside london is also a great place to check out properly intense club nights and good emerging bands.

food warnings

don't get sushi or dumplings in london. the cost will make you cry, the quality is not worth it and you will just crave shanghai dumplings or $2 sushi from chinatown badly. imagine ben telling you this information so you believe me. but, there is a pretty decent asian grocery in chinatown, for cheapish asian groceries.

organic fruit boxes are the go. fresh fruit/vegetables are a bit light-on (compared to oz standards), so sort it out early. street market fruit/vegies are even better. and i think there's a farmer's market in victoria park area that's worthwhile going to.

travel

manchester, oxford, brighton and cornwall are places to check out - there's cool little shit happening there all the time. national express is pretty reasonable in advance.

live it dude.

the sea, she is red

I was ill last week and finally had a chance to catch up on reading some blogs for a bit.

There seemed to be a theme running through a few of them. Namely blood and animals.

mike pickard's amazing plea against the danish ritual of dolphin killing for adolescent males, instead of lasertag or circumcision.

and on a similarly red, but philosophically different note, photographer lesley turnbull has posted strangely beautiful post about a talisman and the humane killing of a sick horse (which still makes me squeamish because i'm cowardly, not because i think it's cruel).

i don't usually find copious amounts of viscera beautiful (unless it's the final scene of american beauty), but there was something enthralling about both of these.

sorry if you're eating breakfast and checking these out.

sexy heidegger

"When a work is created, brought forth out of this or that work material... we also say that it is made [set forth] out of it. But just as the work requires a setting up in the sense of a consecrating-praising erection... so a setting forth is needed."

Origin of a Work of Art, from Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, Harper Collins 2008

influenced by Courbet's Origin of the World perhaps?

dubai life

regular readers might vaguely remember a trip i had to dubai a while ago. it was my first time in a non-english, non-western environment and it totally floated my boat.

on the way back from chilly europe last month, i stopped off again in dubai and had another wild time.

i was supposed to write list of things that i saw, absorbed or experience in dubai last month, as a tip for my friend niko, but didn't make it in time.  i think it's still current for those heading mid-east-ward anyway, and it was nice to revisit.

1. raw coffee.

this specialty roaster is in the dubai garden centre, near the fishing section. 

of course. 

where else do you find the only decent coffee place in all of dubai? my friends were unsurprised that i have managed to track such a place down in the depths of dubai. afterall, one must sustain ones addiction somehow, right?

run by kiwis (our antipodean coffee brothers-in-arms), my first double espresso was made by the #4 in the UAE barista championships, and the coffee was being roasted by #1. i didn't drink coffee from anywhere else the whole 2 weeks i was there, and while i've had slightly better coffees on my recent travels, it was far and away the best coffee in the emirate and such a welcome relief.

2. tashkeel

i found out about tashkeel early on in my trip, but couldn't get there until the last few days of being there. in fact, i took myself out there as a treat for myself on my birthday. 

and what a treat it was!

originally a purpose-built art school for zayed university, the art course was dropped after the first intake. director, lateefa bint makhtoum, herself an ex-student, didn't want the amazing building and facilities to go to waste, so she bought it and turned it into a members' art centre and gallery. i was treated to a tour of the studios  and promptly turned green with envy: screen printing, textile printing, large-format digital printing, laser cutters, jewellery studios, photo studios, IT studios, fine art area, members' kitchen/lounge and a phenomenal library. you can become a yearly member and have access to all the facilities. it's a dream, i tell you. a dream!

sadly, it's a little out of the way from downtown dubai/sheik zayed rd, and there's no artist-in-residence program yet, but it's coming. they have a second complex in the historical bastakiya section and a partnership with the delfin foundation.

i had the chance to meet the direktor and she was as generous, smart and super-talented as you would expect from that kind of initiative. and the show they had on at the time - artists who represented UAE at the shanghai expo - was also great. you can see the slow blooming of emirati artists.

3. traffic.

a design retail space has recently switched over to a private/collector gallery and it's so exciting. i saw two shows there and went to the opening of uppers and downers, which also included a powerful performance called 'be safe o  egypt' by  performance artist rania ezzat*. the feel of the shows there are exciting, challenging and have guts, unlike many other shows in similar spaces in dubai. the space itself is a warehouse conversion in the al quoz area (the area where loads of galleries have popped up in the last 3 years), and they have cats!

4. dubai metro.




this has made dubai loads more accessible than last time. it's now starting to approximate a modern urban city. and interestingly, with it, has come a lot more human-scale signage, and a better bus system. one thing i noticed last time i was in dubai was the scale of typography and signage. it was all only viewable from cars, therefore was large, lit and high-up. people are obviously walking along pathways to the metro a lot more, so i've seen far more small text, small signs with maps, actual footpaths and more accommodation for human movement (as opposed to vehicular). it is going to be fascinating to see how this ripples out in the next 5-10 years.

5. awkward silence and emptiness. there are hugs gaps in dubai buildings now - massive amounts of unfinished apartments and officeblocks. apparently an embarassment for the municipalities and the developers (who won't let artists/musicians use the spaces like in other cities). the cranes have really slowed down and the sound of flapping shadecloth and plastic covering is the loudest thing about the constructions sites.

between the lack of jackhammers, cranes and construction clutter and the reduced traffic (because everyone has left or catches the metro), the whole city is so much quieter than it was. 

don't get me wrong - with a 7-lane highway running through the guts of it, it's not a quiet city by any means, but it was noticeably less intense that at the height of the boom back in 2007.

6. the art map. a little publication put out by art in the city, it covers the art galleries in sharjah, dubai and abu dhabi. that number has grown substantially in the last few years and this little map helped me out loads. it also lead me to follow UBIK and @discobb, which lead to a stack of great art meetings with strangers.

7. al satwa.
it's the little india/pakistani/old school section of dubai - the part where you remember that people actually live in this city. and it's where ravis is -  a famous street-food style restaurant, which is not quite as awesome as the equivalent in sharjah, but it's still pretty great and relatively cheap too. i hear that satwa has changed bucketloads recently, but as a tourist, it's still a relief to go there and have a more authentic city-esque experience.

8. wafi rooftop gardens.
this was totally cheesy, and something i probably wouldn't have done in my home town, but we went to the open mic night, sat on m&m beanbags and watched people belting their little hearts out. some great, some not-so. but, it was nice and normal in amongst the designer rah-rah of wafi mall (which also has to be seen to be believed). they also have a movie night on sunday nights, which we never managed to get to, but would also be worth checking out.

9. sun and swimming.
ok, so maybe not everyone gets to do this when the go to dubai, but northern winter afford this kind of decadence.  i spent a lot of it sunning myself and swimming in a rooftop pool. it's highly recommended for curing what ails ya.

10. walking.
similarly, only really enjoyable in winter (summer is 50ºC outside), and often you will hear the echo of the muezzins call to prayer across the parts of the city. in fact, i loved that sound - just walking across stretches of sand, hearing asr, maghrib or isha prayers sung from the minarettes. if you've grown up in islamic countries, this probably won't float your boat, but i couldn't help but romanticise it over the two weeks i was in town.

ps. dear niko. i'm so sorry that i didn't send this through in time. but hopefully they'll pick up on the project and you'll have to go back again. many times.

*pps. i was there as egypt was all kicking off and i can't tell you how charged and exciting it felt to be in the neighbourhood during their revolution. al jazeera was on regularly and i had touching moment in doha airport with the tunisian sales assistant of the al jazeera stand there as the news of mubarak's resignation rang out across screens. an airport has never been so political - strangers discussing the unfolding news in front of screens and most in solidarity with egypt. i have more to write on this later, but i just thought i'd add it as a beautiful aspect of my trip.

image credits: 
satwa image nicked from dubaithoughts.blogspot.com (my images were crap).
tashkeel print studio image nicked from panopticon.blogspot.com (op cit)

no particular place to go

i'm living a strange and intriguing kind of existence at the moment. i'm back in melbourne, waiting for the go ahead on a couple of interesting projects. because i can't commit to a day job, or a home until they drop, i'm a bit of a gypsy - travelling from friend's couch to friend's couch, living out of a bag still, roaming the streets of melbourne a bit.

i could get all dramatic and paint an abject picture of precarity, but the reality is that it's not quite like that. i've decided to make it the adventure that it is, and it's giving me the opportunity to get to know my city in a way i never would have otherwise.

usually, melbourne is just a vehicle for my life. it's a springboard from which i dive headlong into juggling a gazillion projects and things to do. i have fond memories of the places i've been and done things in, but i rarely have time to see a new side of melbourne outside of my necessary paths.

being a bit homeless and without a particular place to be (ie, home), i just am, everywhere. i'm absolutely present wherever i take myself and, as a result, am sharply aware of my surroundings. i'm looking up a whole lot more and seeing amazing rooftops, niches, architectural detailing and plays of light that i've never noticed before.

i'm sitting in places for more than the time it takes for my friends to arrive. i'm also hearing melbourne too.

and my wonderment at melbourne is almost pride, but not so attached to it as MY city. being at home in both melbourne and berlin has allowed me the distance to see the beauty and its actual personality, rather than just an extension of my history in the place. if that makes sense. it feels less possessive, and as a result, far more beautiful. it's like i'm in love with the place properly.

i won't lie - i have had a few small moments of terror, wondering where the hell i'm going to sleep, and what the hell is going to happen in the future. but, probably because of the chillaxed nature i've come back sportin', i'm mostly okay with this nomadic and sporadic period of my life.

it also says a lot about melbourne as a city (and my friends, as it happens), that i can be without a home or a sense of stability, and still feel that i'm supported: i'm never scoffed at for eating breakfast on the street, or catching a nap in a car, or for just sitting and looking up at the sky. as busy as melbourne can be, i'm happy to say that it's also a city in which not every ounce of its being is taken up with absolute utility.

it's still a place you can just be.

dear patti smith

remember i wrote to patti last time she was in melbourne, apologising for my city's inane questions?

well, this post isn't about love letters to artists (per se), but about a new art space that has opened up in collingwood, called dear patti smith. it's in the patterson building on smith street (see what they did there?) and they only have 3-day shows -  for that hot steamy art fling in everyone's life.

this week they've put together a cute little group show with work that artists have made, but not exhibited to date. it's called shelved, and i've got a little work in it.

come and check out the show this weekend, and i'll be at the opening tomorrow (thursday) night.

deets

what: shelved
when: 04 march, 6-8pm
where: dear patti smith
L2 181 smith st, collingwood 3066

opening times until 05 march
12 - 6pm