2012, you're dumped.

2012 has been a year in which writing has actually held little solace for me. Which is weird, because until this point, you readers got everything I had.

Something was different this year. I just didn't have the oomph to bare my soul as much. And, for some reason, I found less consolation in art, theatre, dance or anything else than I have ever before. It has been almost too personal a year to really share with the world at large.

I'm sorry to those of you who read regularly - the main stayers that pop back every couple of days, hoping for a bit of vitriol, or sharp-witted art review and only found posts that were at least a few weeks' old and a little lacklustre.

But, having had the week I've just had, I've decided that I'm taking the rest of the year off (yeah, 9 days, big deal - Ed.) and will be back writing with a vengeance next year. I might even spruce the place up a little, make it a little more, well, somethin' somethin'.

Thanks to those of you who did stick around, who came back and read my stuff, maybe even went and saw a show or two, based on what I wrote, or even bought some of my works (thank you!) and I hope your year was amazing, spectacular, even just good - you totally deserved it.

All the best to you and your loved ones over these holidays.

If you're in the northern hemisphere, keep warm. If you're southside, enjoy the sunshine.

And 2012, we're through.
You were a nightmare. A beautiful one, but a nightmare nonetheless.

Fambai Zvakanaka

objects in mirror are closer than they appear

I think the River Entrance Project Space at the Tate Modern is one of the most undervalued spaces in London.  I still think about the delicious Nicholas Hlobo show I saw there 4 years ago and the rest of their shows are consistently great. It's a not-so-secret dream of mine to have a show there one day.

I popped in there recently, catching up with Mika Meskanen - he of the pop-up sauna at Electrofringe fame - and we checked out the show. I only got to catch a few works before we had to scoot.

I got another quick chance to see more a few days later, although i had to leave to deal with a few work emails, and i'll be going back again. I'm clearly experimenting with a piecemeal way of experiencing exhibitions at the moment. Living on the edge, yo.

Anyway, about Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear.

Curated by Contemporary Image Collective Cairo, the gallery is drenched in darkness and the exhibition has a great premise, reducing the privlege of the visual perception and reality, the catalogue opening with a quote from Jean-Luc Goddard's Le Gai Savoir, 1969.

"If you want to see the world, close your eyes"

Although mostly video works (which is quite the paradox), they're all interesting ways of dealing with the theme.

There's one work which is hilarious to watch people watching: A Middle Aged Woman by Ján Mančuška.  It's a text piece - a slowly changing script of a narrative - that is presented on a screen and people sit down on the floor to watch it, like it's a TV show. The 'action' they're reading on the screen is enthralling and the reactions from the audience are fascinating - a cross between watching moving picture and reading a book. But together, in public.

Another text vs image work,  Morrissey Foretelling the Death of Diana, is based on the daft conspiracy theory that the Miserable One predicted Diana's death through his lyrics. It's an amusing mash-up of Morissey lyrics, images and pop references connecting music-based poetry with the pastiche of the current Monarchy to create a history that isn't necessarily real..

A little about my two favourite works,  Dissonant and Double:




Dissonant is a  video installation by Manon de Boer that I came in half way through, so I didn't get the whole of the work, but I'm going to tell you about the work from my experience.

It began in darkness - you hear puffing and grunting, moving and squeaks of flesh. You get the sense that it's a woman, exerting herself and because it's in the dark and i'm a perve, it's get's pretty sexual, pretty quickly. I stick withit, wondering what it felt like to listen to someone else having sex and whether, because it's art, i'm not really prying.

I might be making this up, but I think I read that most woman are turned on by the aural sense - whispering, the sound of flesh on flesh, licking her ears, etc - much more than for men. And I reckon a radio porn site would be totally subscribed to by women.

But I digress. This huffing and puffing sound piece shifts half way through and the video comes (back) into view. It's not a couple having sex AT ALL, but a dancer rehearsing a contemporary dance work - squeaking and moving, huffing and puffing all over the studio, you perve.

But I found that 'big reveal' so thrilling! I loved that my first thoughts were sexual, that men left the room all uncomfortable, only to see miss seeing what the true picture was. And it also says something about contemporary dance: its sensuality and yet highly visual form.

Reading the catalogue afterwards, I can see that de Boer's work actually starts with the image of the dancer and her music, with the darkness being half way through. But I don't think it matters too much - the work is about the darkness, the black gaps that fix our memory of a film and perhaps the intense power of the auditory in a story.

Double is the retelling of a story about parallel universes, by Mančuška. Although in-jokes and meta narrative in art is getting tiresome, what with meme culture knotting us all sideways, I really enjoyed this work nonetheless. Probably because, above all else, I love the work of Franz Kafka and this could easily have been made by him.

On a screen, there is an image of a man standing in front of the image of a man on a screen. The second man is sitting, telling a story to someone off screen. It looks like he's in an institution somewhere, an interrogation room of sorts. The first man is standing, lit as though on stage, telling the same story to an audience off screen, although we only hear his voice narrating. The story itself is one of the first man coming home drunk one night to let himself into his appartment in Praha and faced with a stranger who attacks him. It turns out to not be his appartment, but an exact replica of it in Bratislava  - same section of the city, same looking block, same layout and same key access. A parallel.

Layer upon layer, truth over art over truth, replication and storytelling are all elements to this work that I loved. And its simple form allowed for all those themes and ideas to come through.

Yet, honestly, I'm not sure i would have stood and observed the work for as long as I did, if i wasn't trying to get 3G reception near the door. It's the first work in the entrance and a little intimidating to stand right in front of the door to view this work. I watched loads of people (friends included) walk right past it. So if you're reading this before you've seen the show, keep that in mind and make sure you stop a while.


image credits:
Double film still, by Ján Mančuška from his site.
Dissonant film still, by Manon de Boer from the Galerie Jan Mot site.

World AIDS Day

As you know I'm quite passionate about the ongoing fight against AIDS/HIV in Africa and have a little project on it sitting away in the background.

I'm grateful that my most recent HIV test  (as part of a regular sexual-health check up in time for today's World AIDS Day) came back all-clear. There are millions of women for whom that isn't the case.

I haven't forgotten them.

black coffee blues

ella fitzgerald. oh baby, you're so pretty when you're sad.

when i'm sad, i very rarely get right down into the grit of it. i usually love listening to something that scrapes me out of it - peps me. but i'm doing some more research into people's favourite songs and finding songs that are visceral, hurting and really allow people to wallow. i'm looking for the ones that really take people places.

so i'm listening to some heart-wrenching blues. and this song just, well, whoa.

go on, listen to it and tell me you don't feel something. just a little.


the two things it reminded me of were henry rollins and afro house. diametrically opposed for most people.

the henry rollins book, black coffee blues was the first book of his i read (thanks to my friend and fellow coffee lover, jem) and i subsequently inhaled all of them. the manic self-deprecation was intoxicating. i came to see how being consumed by creative passion looks in another. and i realised that i sort of wanted some of it. not all of it, mind - there's some intense self-hatred in those books that's nice to watch, but not so nice to actually feel.




black coffee is a great afro house DJ and whose video of a gig in the baltic states (people dancing on sand, goddammit!) makes me want to go to a place with sand and dance all night. it couldn't take me to a more opposite place of happiness and joy. this is the kind of music i usually listen to on a low - something deep, soulful, but rhythmic. something that supports dark skies and cold winds. i'm also a major sucker for a hot man in glasses.

but for now, it's back to a kenyan espresso, ella and her heart-wrench.

love is a seesaw.

Balancing at the same level is a great challenge and fun for a while.
But its real function it is bound up in its momentum.
The joy comes when one of you is up in the air, and the other is down low to the ground.
One goes up the other comes down and you feel the wind rushing in your ears as you see your partner fly, framed against the sky.



I don't really know anything about love, but, as I sat with two other artists, looking out over St Paul's and the Thames, from the Tate, the analogy seemed to work. We're all in a slight existential crisis and were feeling very philosophical. I still think it fits.

home

i have been living out of a suitcase since the middle of 2010. my residency in perth is the longest i've ever lived anywhere in that time and it has been an amazing, wild and exciting ride.

i've learned to not take things like 'home' for granted, i've realised how much society is based on the answer to the question 'where do you live?' and i've had some time to work out what the role of stability and consistency is in an arts practice. turns out it's kind of important.

anyway, i've finally moved into a place that i will be staying in for a good while. it's not my very own, but that's a while away. it has lovely books on the walls, a balcony with all kinds of plants, the view of canary wharf and i go to sleep at night with the sound of the limehouse lock doing it's thang.

i'm pretty bloody lucky. and it almost feels like home - even after one day.

thanks for everyone that came along for the ride. here's to more good times.

vaginabilia*

*thanks to gregory povey for that wonderful term.

a few days ago, i had another accidentally-themed art day. this time it was pretty much all about vaginas.

firstly i went to see the judy chicago show at riflemaker, featuring early works of hers. i really liked the car hoods and especially the diagrams for them, but not much of the others.

then i went and saw the sarah lucas project space, situation, which wasn't all that vagina-heavy, but there was floor-to-ceiling meat genetalia wallpaper in your face as you walked in the door, including the image of two massive decorated vulva. it was quite spectacular.

actually, that show was a welcome relief, as i had popped into the ultra-white gallery downstairs and it was overwhelmingly austere. it was nice to walk into a space that, aside from the shock of a pair of  massive cunts, was an interesting space: personal, less homogenous and almost revealed the works more, in their cluttered/more homely space.

there were works in the 'kitchen', on a sink, sitting on tables, hanging from the ceiling and projected onto the wall.



i actually sighed in relief when i walked in, because it was my kind of space. and, thankfully, collectors also respond well to works in a space like that. not every work has to be shrouded in whiteness in order to give it the right space to be.

later that evening i went to see judy chicago speak at whitechapel gallery and she was amazing. i'm not going to speak too much about the whole talk - but the fact is that she was inspiring.

really - she talked about the first 10 years of her practice being ignored, that she hates injustice, that she's a moral artist, that she just raised funds to do her work and that if you don't have the money to make the work, don't make it - she wasn't interested in selling her work - it was more important for the work to be seen. not to mention her continued desire to change art pedagogy and increase women's appearance in our museums. she's another one who has been more interested in longevity than a flash-in-the-pan fame and it was exactly the kind of thing i needed to hear.

there was a medium amount of focus on The Dinner Party, her most famous work, but nonetheless, anna somers cocks spoke beautifully about the actual plates - renditions of the vulva. which pretty much rounded off the evening of vaginabilia for me.

a match made in heaven

leigh bowery and mike parr. at the kunsthalle wien.

could it get any more tailored to my tastes? only by adding patti smith and kanye west exhibitons in there...

leigh and mike are ongoing influences here at she sees red.

i'm bummed i didn't know about mike's artist talk and i am pretty sure i can't make next week's talk on extreme art and the body politic, but i'll be getting to vienna at some stage to see these shows.

you heard it here first.

mostly artefacts and artifice

between settling into a life of sorts, i've been trying to make sure i get to see some art every day. and i somehow have gotten lazy about it. preferring to do dumb shit like watch scary movies with my friend age or sit and read thick novels about young women trying to escape the inevitibility of married life.

but i have, in fact, managed to see quite a bit of artefacty-type things and i'm totally loving the historical weight of london at the moment.

the money gallery
last week i went to the british museum because i had half an hour to spare and i hung out in the money section. it is a gallery that, actually, i would love to see properly expanded. the historical coinage/artefacts of trade are really interesting, including the chinese coins that didn't change in 2000 years (!) (that's good design for you). i think the modern era hasn't really been explored that well and could really help unpack the crux of currency and value and monetary history.

even the history of accounting was briefly covered (like a monument to pretty much the first auditor), but could have expanded right out. like - how did accounting evolve? how did we, as a society, come to agree on ways of managing money, and establishing methods of checks and balances? given that money and trade and currency underpin massive chunks of house societies function, i think it would give us a real insight into how we operate.

or maybe it's just me that finds that history fascinating.


on the road
i've also spent a bit of time in the british library lately (a great place to work), and checked out the original scroll manuscript of jack kerouac's on the road - it's actually a beautiful object that just oozes that manic style of the book. i couldn't really read the words on it - low lux protecting the manuscripts integrity made it a little difficult, but there were chunks of break-out text that reminded me of how great the book is. i might have to read it again.*



the jewellery gallery
as a compliment to the history of trade and artefacts at the british museum, i love going to the jewellery gallery at the victoria and albert museum. it's about craftsmanship and social identity through the history of personal ornamentation - of course it could be waaaaay bigger, but for a mostly-private collection, it's pretty amazing. it's also a reminder of the immense wealth and power that is conveyed through bespoke jewellery. i still maintain that even 'peasant' jewellery in the past is much more impressive than the peasant jewellery we have going now.

on the street
and even when i'm not dipping into museums, i still get to experience a sense of history about london through the blue plaques scheme.**

like, i walk past places where REAL SHIT HAPPENED. yesterday we were talking a walk in our local 'hood and came across the old residence of emmeline pankhurst. until now, emmeline pankhurst has just be a name in the history books, or a link on wikipedia. not a real person who did amazing things! yesterday I had a moment where the history of her life and the reality of mine suddenly connected. lineage.



in australia, i'm pretty removed from that. which is exactly why colonisation works - I'm completely divorced from the immense history of the land I was raised on because my ancestors killed pretty much everyone who could have possibly passed down that history. and, because i'm from english stock and so far from the sites of my family history, the concept of being connected to history is a little foreign to me. which is why i'm loving the cold, dark and grey city i'm in.



* i won't be seeing the film, even if the amazing sam riley is in it - he's too white to be sal paradiso and they're all not loose enough.

**  brilliant idea, by the way, whoever came up with that.

please, sir. can we keep our moore?

Change.org|Start an Online Petition

london fashion

I've always engaged on some level with fashion design. you would have NO idea from the way i dress (or my wardrobe that fits within Ryanair luggage restrictions), but i regularly admire and covet high fashion.

You've probably seen random posts of mine about Hussein Chalayan, Ann Demeulemeester, McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, my work trying to integrate fashion and interactive art (which has been put waaaaay on the back burner) and perhaps wondered how I always end up at Dover Street Market.

The exciting thing about London is that I can properly engage with that aspect of my life (and practice) again. I don't have a fashion design background AT ALL. But I can still appreciate and learn on the fly. Actually, I plan to do that a whole lot more here, because I can

Even in the week I've been here, I've able to visit DSM (which is where I can get up close and personal with some of the designers I like), check out the Issey Miyake range, apply for work with Westwood, McQueen and Chalayan.  I'll check out St Martin's soon and keep an eye out for local designers (like the amazing Tanique Coburn stall at Portobello Market - watch this space for this girl!).

Once I'm settled and financial again, I might even do something to properly upskill in this regard, but in the mean time, i'm going to learn from the public intellect - the V&A, libraries, working studios and fashion on the street.

Yay!

reach as high as you can

i still love marc johns' blog. here's a gem from it.

justin mortimer

I really like the Haunch of Venison's Eastcastle Gallery.

Each time I've been in there, there's a really great show on, and I can just enjoy the work. I've also always felt the staff to be friendly and open (not always a given in Central London galleries).

The show on there at the moment by Justin Mortimer is quite a beautiful show. Mortimer is a painter and, although I have a dysfunctional relationship with painting, this work (and other work of his I've seen recently) reminds me why the love exists in that love-hate relationship.

I also feel like Mortimer is addressing a new aesthetic in painting that I haven't really noticed until now. That aesthetic is something that was actually brought in by photography - something that I call the Vice Mag/Richardson aesthetic. It's one that, within the context of photography and media arts, I loathe. I cannot stand it and friends know not to mention Terry Richardson in my company if they don't have 10 minutes to listen to me rant violently.

However, the translation of that harsh, party-party-fuck-me-i'm young-and-sinister look - its framing, lighting and composition - translates really well into painting. Especially in the hands of Mortimer. 

The slightly-detached position that painting affords a dark subject, using contemporary settings, naked youth, stark lighting allows these symbols and meaning of the work to filter through. The wasted youth aspect of the characters in Mortimers paintings are not People I Might Know as they are in Vice mag photo shoots (which is part of my problem with them). In these paintings, they become figures doing actions that i need to pay attention to. They aren't as directly accessible anymore, so provoke me as a viewer to pay attention.

And yet these scenarios are those that are very much occurring right now. The inbuilt-camera-flash type of lighting contrast (different to actual chiaroscuro), the RGB monitor skin-tones, the urban backgrounds and 'no pics it didn't happen' style of framing are all those I've seen online for the last 5 years. 

This is not the 20th Century I'm looking at, here.

What I also like about these works is that they're not trying to portray a life I might aspire to, but are not sanctimonious or baroque in codemnation. They're gritty - possibly depraved - without taking themselves too seriously, and light without being glib (criticisms I have of other media using similar treatment). They're symbolic, but not so overloaded that they're confusing; realistic without being self-centered or mind-numbingly autobiographical.

And the great thing is that they don't look as good in the book. They're made to be paintings. They're intended to be experienced as a discreet object, not just an image or a shorthand version of them.

I have issues with paintings that become photographs far too easily - they lose the essence of why using goopy, messy, expensive materials matter. Mortimers works, although drawing from photomedia, are not photos. They're not even potential photos. They're solid pieces of shimmering oil that have depth and movement and firmness all at once.

I'm going to go back several times for this one.

image credit: Haunch of Venison's website

'No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.'

Robert Frost is often quoted with that little gem.


I have a terrible habit of comparing myself to others. It's a nasty little tic that I would actually like to be rid of. Especially as I don't compare myself to those with whom i'm comparable. I compare myself to people who make vastly different work to me, or whose position I am apt to only see in favourable light. I have very little perspective when it comes to that.

I realised this a few days ago when I was heading off into a boring old inferiority zone and my (very smart and perceptive friend) suggested that the person I was lauding was actually fairly facile. That their work was pleasing to the eye, but had little substance.

She went on to suggest that it's like that for those who have an easy life - they want for little money, have confidence, don't really struggle, can produce accomplished and smooth works. But they also don't and can't create the depth, or the texture of those who have to bump into life, for those who have to wrestle with understanding.

That was slightly comforting.

According to this great article, Frost is also interested in the flipside of the process [of writing] too - not just just the agony, but the sheer joy and amazingness of it. That he has "a hell of a time" doing it too. Whilst it's important to embrace the gnarly depths, so too the peaks. So too the joy and fun and ease, actually, of living a life that is centred around conveying ideas and pretty pictures.

london. huzzah!

this has been a weird year. thanks for trying to keep up, if you have. you may well have lost interest in the half-arse, confused musings of an artist who seems to be floating all over the place. you'd be forgiven, becuase i have.

however, this is the beginning of the good stuff again. i'm in london again, but for the long haul. i've got a nice chunky visa, the will to live and a stack of great art to see, do and hopefully help other people make.

i'll be going to a gallery a day again, so hopefully there's loads more writing about art on here. i'm also likely to get ranting again, which is going to be fun for you all. i have some posts up my sleeve.

i haven't had coffee yet today and i'm behind schedule, so this is just a little heads up for things to come.

thanks for sticking around, there are drinks and snacks on the table at the back.

hungry city and the existential crisis

last week, on my way to the usual cafe sit-down time, i went to the hungry city exhibition at kunstraum kreuzberg/bethanien, a group show, focusing on agriculture in contemporary times.

it was a really worthwhile show. my criticism is that there wasn't a clear room sheet (which is why i have no names attached to the works i'm talking about and some of the actual displays were a little half-arsed and 'typical' execution.

mostly, it was an excellent group show with some great video about custom-tractor culture in eastern europe, fruit maps (that reminded me of nicola twilley's work) and a super-disgusting videos about pigs (which i had to walk out of immediately).

the biggest problem with seeing the show was, rather than get me all excited about art and/or changing the world's perspective about the role of capitalism on agriculture and the environment, i nosedived straight into an existential crisis.

art does the same old thing, over and over again - maps, videos, photos, words about issues that the world has.
and the issues are the same old issues over and over again - environment, capitalism, colonialism, disease, poverty, etc.

and nothing changes.

art does not change anything.

and i am an artist. i want to change things. this is a problem.

i actually spent the day very depressed.

i half-heartedly considered whether i really could be the human rights lawyer i keep threatening the world to be. or the al jazeera/economist journalist. i spewed my angst onto facebook and felt partly relieved, partly justified.

and then somehow it passed.

i've seen some beautiful work since then and have been getting distracted by films and theatre, etc. but not much. it's still a little below the surface.



but, back to the main exhibiiton. if you're in berlin over the next few days and are not an artist, you should go and see the show. it's meaty: full of interesting perspectives on the world.
and if you can't get there, subscribe to nicola twilley's blog. it will give you some of the flavour.

the cafe

i feel like i'm some kind of 19th century flaneur, writing this down, but it has to be done.

i'm writing about The Cafe.

i've been frequenting passenger espresso regularly again. they're coffee is great, it's affordable and i'm now a regular. it doesn't even matter that it's a 30 minute round trip bike ride. exercise AND caffeine = win win.

and every day that i'm there, i read a little from their magazines and hear something great their playing on the stereo. every day.

in the last week or so, i've discovered the chances with wolves blog (i know, i'm so far behind) and their excellent radio program (the one with Talib Kweli as a guest got me through an all-night application-writing session); the soundcloud mixes of maart roux and a cell of one, plus charles mingus' chazz! album (well, rediscovered). i've taken the time to chase up the links, downloaded tracks from those mixes or  tagged them on whyd.

i've followed the trails of music and incorporated new sounds into my life. it has been expansive.
just like i did when i was a teenager and i went to school and my friends shared music with me - they made me mixtapes and i read zines and ordered distro catalogues and ordered new stuff. it's exciting and i feel invigorated by continuing to expand my taste.

and the same thing with the magazines - i've read great articles in magazines that i don't have a chance to own, or would never have found otherwise: it's nice that, frieze, 032C, der greif and datacide. i discovered cabinet magazine in a similar way in london.


now, i know that for those of you who are hipsters, trying to stay on top of the Next New Thing, or my fellow Music Snob brethren from back in the day, this will be quite passe. But I don't really live that kind of all-consuming life anymore. I spend a lot of time separate from a TV or traditional radio programs. I livie quite a nomadic lifestyle and am often more consumed with my own art production, or keeping abreast of current affairs or reading fiction.

I have loads of friends, but they're all spread out over the world and I don't really have a posse close by who will say - hey, check this shit out, or lend me their latest issue of Frankie. Even the facebook like/share thing is not really so music/literature focused, but political (which i like, actually - replacing the newspaper).

so, this means that i don't get to hear as much new music as i used to. i can't afford to buy it all the time, or lug records'n'shit around for the old good stuff.

and i don't have loads of space or money to buy new magazines, or space to lug new shit around. the good stuff isn't all available on zinio or ebooks or newstand, and i don't want to read all my stuff electronically. i'm a luddite at heart.

and new music, new magazines are important for keeping me stimulated with new ideas. sentimentality and familiarity are great (biggie smalls on a daily basis is a wonderful thing), but i also want to keep my mind expanded with discovery.

and i think i'm not alone here. although loads of the middle classes in australia and england are planted in front of TVs and radios, i think most peeps my age and younger than me (although not so young that they're technically 'yoof'), have a similar deal: not necessarily in situations that facilitate the discovery of new ideas in an accidental fashion. and i could be wrong.

regardless, i feel like the cafe is a really important site for this.

it's the place where you can slowly ingest. even if you're intravenously consuming your coffee like i do, you still get to slowly ingest the literature, or the music. you get to discover, without the committment of it having to be good, or even the time committment of having to do the discovery. you avail yourself of it.

and it's still communal enough that you can chat and share with the baristas and other regulars about your taste-discoveries, which i think is an important aspect to really opening up your taste. that reinforcement thing in a meaningful way (ie: more than just a like or a single play).

the cafe is an important 'incubator' (to use a more stringent term) for culture, in the way that the library can be for books, that the agora/soap box/newscast was for politics.

i know it sounds oh-so fin de siecle modernity, but perhaps it is a similar state: the cafe then was the site where you could discuss politics. you could interact with The City, you could observe change and acquire taste - usually fashion/clothing/food, but still - taste. and in real time.

obviously the internet is a melting pot of taste, that you can find ANYTHING there. but sometimes it's too much and it's slightly abstracted and two-dimensional. it doesn't fulfill all my desires for chance.

whereas i think the cafe is making a resurgence as a site to fulfill that purpose, augment the amazness of the internet and deal with our ghastly caffeine (as opposed to absynthe) addicitons.

fluorescence.

(Or Neon in Germany).

It's not a wild insight of mine to notice the resurgence of neon/fluorescent colours at the moment. I think you'd have to be colour blind or wearing blinkers to not pick up on the bright fashion, the nails, the accessories, Doc Marten shoes, web-graphics and printed posters all in bright bright colours.

It's that 80s recycled thing again and on one hand it makes me crave the odd socks i used to wear: one neon yellow, the other neon pink, carefully rolled down to my white espadrils with short jersey shorts. On the other hand it has me pondering exactly what the significance of this resurgence might be.

If it was just an 80s redux in fashion thing, I probably wouldn't take too much notice. But the point that sent my analytical mind into a bit of a spin has been the use of neon/fluorescent colours in Art. Capital A.

There was a show in Melbourne recently that featured 5 or 6 artists who use fluorescence in their work (that didn't include  some of the others i know like Dell Stewart and Anita Cummins, for example).

So i thought maybe it was just an Australian thing, until a few weeks ago, i walk into  the Christian Nagel Galerie in Berlin, a fancy pants commercial establishment. The large abstract expressionist paintings by Stefan Müller all had significant elements of fluorescent in them. And not in a graphic 'kapow!' pop kind of way either. But in a subtle, abstract, touchy feely kind of way.

Of course, it could be just an artist riding on an aesthetic trend for commercial gain, but I kind of doubt it. Especially not at the kind of price point these paintings sell at.

I might suggest that financial crisis might be linked, if the fluoro bombs from the 80s weren't before the 1987 wall street crash.

It could be a reaction to neo-conservatism: 'hey! look! there's other, useless and fun stuff in the world, not just boring elitism and econonomic rationalism', but the US is currently floating a supposedly progressive system, as is Australia and France (although admittedly only just), Germany is, well, technically not progressive, but comparitively is.

I can't find anything formally written about the theoretical significance of fluoresence in art and a few google searches link to either art galleries that are under blacklight, or connect to the link between fluorescent spores in bacteria (careful when you include the word 'culture' in your keywords, kids).

The first wave of fluoro fashion was probably also a boast at new technological advancement: pigment developments -  ink and dye techniques that could be used in plastics and fabric so they almost glowed. But this recent wave isn't about boasting or flexing innovative muscle - they've been available for 20 years or so.

In biology, fluorescence (or bioluminescence) is used to attract mate or prey, and perhaps this is an explanation, as a result of tightening belts (prey) or declining populations in rich western countries (mate). Now i really think i'm reading too much into it.

**If anyone reading this has anything properly insightful to add, or a reference I obviously should have read, 

image: mark grubb at hermit concrete in london

appearing as process

tomorrow (saturday 29 sept) is the last day of an exhibition i'm in, curated by the amazing laura hindmarsh. if you're in the area, you should pop in and check it out.

appearing as process
Lauren Brown (VIC/GER) 
Boni Cairncross (NSW) 
Darren Cook (TAS) 
Laura Hindmarsh (TAS)
curated by Laura Hindmarsh

Sawtooth ARI, Launceston
LAST DAY 29 September 12-4pm

performances from 3pm
you must follow me carefully  Boni Cairncross
no space no time Darren Cook 


UPDATE: here's a review of the show by Andrew Harper

it could have been me a thousand times over

if you're australian, especially from melbourne, you probably know about the jill meagher case. if not, here are a few news/comment links.

body in a shallow grave
Rape & murder charges laid as police find Jill Meagher's body


"can everybody please calm down about this jill meagher case"
"if like me you thought your information was inconsequential.."
"how many meters can i walk on my own at night?"


it has been all over the social media (esp facebook) and the shit that passes for broadcast media in melbourne (there's a media rant coming - you can feel it, can't you). i probably shouldn't post too much for legal reasons (although it's unlikely i'll be called for jury duty).

but it has been a case of news that spread really quickly. probably because she lived in an area that loads of my friends live in, everyone i knew posted her missing person's FB post (i didn't, because everyone i knew already had) and it was front page almost immediately. i must admit to being a teensy bit annoyed that every woman who goes missing doesn't get this amount of attention, but nonetheless, i kept an eye on the case, even from berlin.


she is a 30-ish smart, confident woman who walked from her local bar towards her home at 2am. a distance of about 100 meters, if that. like she always probably does. in that time, a guy allegedly abducts her, rapes her, kills her and dumps her body 50kms out of town. he apparently lives in the next suburb over.



it could have been me a thousand times over.

i could still be me a thousand times more.


i am a 30-ish, smart, confident woman who walks home at night. i always have. i grew up believing in my right to my own safety and the smarts to carry that out. i have been accosted by dudes asking for handjobs, flashed at, sworn at, called slut/lesbian/whore/showusyourtits, been followed. its a fucking jungle out there.

but i will continue to walk home at night on my own, thanks very much. the only rights we have are the ones we use and if i don't enact my right to walk in my cities, on my own, without the threat of violence based on my gender, i cease to have that right.



of course, the australian broadcast media, being the minefield of misogynist offal-bags passing for journalists and 'media personalities', have naturally used this case to highlight a woman's choice to walk home after drinks at the local bar as proof that she is a drunk-whore-who-should-have-stayed-at-home-with-her-husband-and-that-she's-asking-for-it-because-of-it and that's-what-happens-when-you-don't-live-in-the-suburbs-and-all-women-should-stay-at-home-from-now-on.

and of course you know what i say to them: get fucked.



you know, if i was in town, i would propose a big fuck-off reclaim the night street party as a memorial to jill (may she rest in peace) and as a middle finger salute to the men who decided that they still need to rape women, and equally to the chauvanist pundit motherfuckers who continue to blame the victim because they have yet to accept that men rape women.

guys, it's quite simple: if you see a woman walking home on her own at night, don't rape her.




if you have been raped, here are some peeps you can talk to about it:

rape crisis centre UK
Dublin Rape Crisis Centre
Rape Crisis Center (US)
Rape Crisis  (ZA)
Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre (CA)
Toronto Rape Crisis Centre (CA)
Rape Crisis Programs (NYC)
The Turning Point (LA)
NSW Rape Crisis Centre (AU)
Centre Against Sexual Assault VIC (AU)

 And if you have any further information on the Jill Meagher case, call Crime Stoppers 1800 333 000



UPDATE: to the person coming here after searching for 'jill meagher dress like a slut', you might wanna check yourself. hard. maybe against a wall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlutWalk

stand-up comedy and craft

i've been working on some drawings lately - which is kind of funny after a month of performance-focused work on time, body, heavy social issues, etc, etc. perhaps it's my come-down.


anyway, they're pretty small, laborious little works about hip-hop and whilst i've been doing them, i've been watching/listening to stand-up comedy hours - specials from HBO by chris rock, eddie murphy, louis CK and george carlin, etc*.

of course, they're funny. and it's nice to laugh whilst you're scratch, scratch, scratching pen across board. but i've also really enjoyed learning something from them too.




my friend rob often talks about using comedians for insight. and it's their particularly warped way of looking at the world that i like, and relate to. these particular comedians are observant - they feed you back ideas about the world in a way that you never would have seen it before. but they're also master performers - they can embody ideas, convey through mere expression, impersonate others and use their voice -  not just telling stories, but to push your way of thinking in directions you don't want to go - in a way that is masterful.

i've been watching or listening to how they 'dance' across their images, and how much control they really do have over an audience, even when they don't.





i've also taken to watching interviews with some of these actors on inside the actor's studio and a great special produced by ricky gervais called talking funny.

and in these shows, i get to hear about the craft of comedy and comedic performance (which is heavy on the timing, but has halmarks of performing arts). these guys talk about getting out there and doing it. and paying attention to if it's working - being honest to the bit and their life, but not ignoring that it's covering a joke - it is artifice and experience in perfect measure (and everyone accepts the measure).

comedy is a tough gig and you suck at it for good while before you have a successful career (like art), which is about longevity and determination. these guys talk about just doing it. and continuing to aim high because they want to 'be one of those guys'.

i enjoyed the honesty in that statement, because unlike art, it's ok to want to be part of that crowd;
to have success and reach people and command something. and that obviously in the process of becoming one of those guys - honing their craft, they'll be good and have something worthwhile to say and it will become honest.


*and i have to thank my friend Bonnie Davies who totally got me back into comedy by being one of those right funny bitchez, but also for giving me George Carlin to listen to during the OK Gallery performance.

8-bit jesus piece

if that ain't a hipster run-off, i don't know what is.

biggie smalls is probably rolling in his grave.

and still i think i want one.

abc

abc. really not for me.

i left feeling sad. sad at the precarious state of affairs that contemporary art in berlin seems to be in.

i left feeling cynical. cynical that, if i couldn't find anything to stop me for more than 5 seconds, who would.

i left feeling despondent. despondent that perhaps this is the world of art and that it is exactly as precarious, insecure, listless and flaccid as all this.

i left feeling ripped off. there are some kick-arse galleries in that list. places with some great shows on at the moment. i wish i had saved my €8 and just gone to see them instead.


i did think it was amusing that i walked around the art fair with my bag of groceries - a leek in one hand and the plan in the other. i felt as though i was shopping for art lebensmittel in a supermarket at 10pm on a Sunday, before the shelves had been stacked full again.


i acknowledge that an art fair isn't really for me. i'm not an art-buying public at all. perhaps, for them, it's amazing. and a real success.

who knows.

berlin art week

I'm sure there's a well-written article about the shift from stables towards nomadic gallery lifestyles of pop-ups and art fairs. There will be great pieces written about berlin art week and the exhibitions on.

This is not going to be even close.

But I will be posting a few blogs about art that's happening in Berlin this week, because I've got time to write at the moment.

It's Berlin Art Week, which also incorporates art berlin contemporary - the art fair that still exists after the whole art forum debacle** (last time i was here there were six art fairs on in a weekend!).

On Tuesday night about a hundred galleries opened their new shows for the year and Berlin was kinda pumping. I only went to 2 complexes (which included about 10 galleries), but they were buzzing.

To my taste, most of it was kind of dull*, but here is a little bit about what I have liked so far.


Galerija Gregor Podnar - Vadim Fiškin
With a series of sculptural works that play on the role of the machine within the works, this show could easily be a series of one-liners. But the main work, Don Quixote Pact/v. Alliance was one work that really stood out - as enjoyable/entertaining visually, but a little more complex in terms of its dynamics (physically and compositionally speaking).

A windmill in a 'valley', is powered by the wind of electrical fans on a constructed 'hill', which in turn forces air back into the jetstream of these powered devices. It's a thermo feedback loop. All of these forces sit atop a fibreglass 'landscape' (that also looks like the mould of a hot tub/spa bath).

It alluded to more than just a little optical gag -  overproduction, authority, nature, surplus - are all words that come to mind with this work, and aesthetically, was a nice combination of readymade and crafted, designed and collated.

Galerie Opdahl - Chosil Kil
Amongst loads of painting-based work that I feel like I've seen tonnes of before, I found this show such a breath of fresh air. And mainly because of the work called Sausages - the first work you see when you walk into the space. It's a jewellery piece, strapped around the corner of the first wall. I love a work that transgresses its form and obvious exhibition format for something a little different. I wanted to own the work straight away (Hello? Kanye? You need this piece).





The rest of the show did remind me a little of works going around Melbourne at the moment, but this little fragment of the show - re-introducing the sausage-like leather wall sculpture and a haunting sound element - tickled my fancy. I'm happy to report that not all Berlin is monochromatic and geometric canvases.

Both these shows are in galleries amongst a block of austere white cube spaces above the German heavyweight Konrad Fischer Galerie. As we all scooted up and down the stairwell, popping in and out of the galleries' all dressed up for their first day of school, it was reminiscent of a commercial art version of the Dover Street Market in London. It was almost fun and cute. But for the Very Serious Art Crowd present.


MD72 - Florian Hecker
I like Florian Hecker's work, but this show, Auditory Objects has completely floated my boat in a way that others haven't. I've already warned the gallery staff that I'll be back to listen again :)

The gallery itself is stunning and holds these minimal scultpural devices so well.

In each room across the main space hang a single speaker with an attached convex/concave mirrored piece of metal***, extending, reflecting and distorting the audience assumptions across both visual and audio planes.  You find yourself listening to the sound works from the speaker, from the cone, between the two, across the space, between the rest of the gallery - in and out of each room. And because of the staccato and sycopation in the electronice sound works, you find yourself also listening to the door opening and closeing, to the ambulance, floor creaks, etc all with the same value.

This work is complimented by a work that spreads itself through the 'back end' of the space - in the office, store-room and little kitchen/ante room. It unites and divides the space in equal measure with its electronic intensity and repeated speaker objects. I'm sure it drives the staff nuts, but it's exciting to see an artist stuffing a new listening experience into the workplace.

The works are influenced by the questions of the phenomenology of sound: How is it perceived? As a discreet object, or an ongoing stream onto which we project meaning, which of course is right up my ally. And yet I'm particularly interested in the bodily and performative influence of this work, so you might hear more about it again.



Salon Dahlmann - In Action. Performance, Actionism and Concepts from the Charim Collection
Showcasing the private collection of the Charim family, this exhibition featured a whole load of VALIE EXPORT photos, documents and original artworks (yes please!), plus ephemera and drawings from the performances of Viennese Actionists and their ilk:  Günther Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch

I'm not from a performance background and the recent residency at ]performance s p a c e [ schooled me.  I was like a new student with this exhibition and the works had different meaning for me yesterday that they might have had a few months ago. What hadn't changed is the admiration of collectors continuing to collect performance work ephemera.



Of course not all of the works themselves were amazing. But as remnants of amazing things, and as a collection of a reference of historical significant, it was a great show. I enjoyed seeing the board on which Hermann Nitsch did those gross things with his body and animals and viscera. I liked seeing images of blood and goopy stuff from when blood and goopy stuff was properly new. Günther Brus' action paintings, Dieter Roth and Arnulf Rainer making Paul McCarthy look like a kid, Peter Weibel being taken for a walk on a chain by VALIE EXPORT - these are seminal images I've only ever seen in books.



It was also enlightening, in the face of history. Quite a few of those artists no longer practice performance work.  EXPORT is probably one of the most consistent and has continued longevity - which I always find inspiring. Her and Dieter Roth (what a power combination in just one sentence) are artists I still think are total guns.

I never really liked Otto Mühl works and found his drawings of the body to be crass and slightly cariacature, but then again, I'm not so good at divorcing artists from their abusive actions, so take of that what you will.



Comparitvely Brüs, who has always made beautiful imagery (more than powerful actions I believe), his drawings of skeletal figures were so touching and almost-classical in their form. They reveal a much deeper connection with the image of the body.





As part of the collection, it was also great see works by younger artists like Maja Bajevic and John Bock inspired by the work of these crazy performance pioneers. I think that's when a collection comes into its own - when you see the dedication to particular artists at a particular time/place, but also to the form through the next generation.

*so much so that even my lily white legs in short shorts caused quite the stir amongst the well-heeled art clientele. I wasn't even that racy!

** I'm going to abc today and will report back anon.

***a replication of a medical scientific device called a syncrophone - designed to alter the frequency of a listener's brain waves.

art and alienation

a couple of days ago, @ABCArts tweeted

'street art is cool, but does it alienate some people?'.

the sentiment behind this tweet made me incredibly cross, for several reasons.

arrogance about the place of art in society.

i believe art is an incredibly important part of society - it has the capacity to revolutionise the way people see and experience the world - on an individual and collective scale. it has the ability to present a world above and outside the system of capitalism, politics, media, or the systems that produce alienation in people's daily lives.

but there are much greater things that have a direct influence on people's lives (and have the power to alienate them). employment, love, political freedom, community, purpose/meaning - these are loose terms for things that have an incredible sway on people's lives. art can be part of them, but ultimately it's not above these things.

if someone feels disempowered, they will feel alienated by more of the world than a stupid tag on a wall. of course that will piss them off too, but it won't be because of the tag. it will be because they don't have a job/finances, are being beaten, feel discriminated against or don't belong, can't express themselves freely or are worried about their physical safety. or a host of other things.

actually the residency at Collingwood Housing Estate drove that home - autonomy, currency and agency were more important than art. art helps instigate a desire for those things and can reflect that potential, but ultimately it's more important to have people fed and sheltered well.


the use of alienation

alienation is more than just pissing people off, not liking something, or feeling uncomfortable. it is a condition that is deep-rooted in the anti-social - not feeling part of the community or the human race as a whole. it is the lack of purpose in ones life, a disempowerment to achieve freedom or a sense of self. it's on the scale of violence, in terms of the negative effect of a persons' wellbeing.

i'm really doubting that street art, even if it's not to people's taste, really alienates people and the use of that term in the tweet feels inflammatory; superfluous, rather than a proper understanding of what alienation is and why it's a real concern.

if ABCArts is really concerned with alienation, we should be looking at how the arts influences policy and social behaviour on a larger scale, in what ways economy and the arts are complicit, how street art influences the mental health and well-being of youth identity and community culture. etc.


i realise that i'm being slightly picky and pedantic, given the amount of shit troll tweets out there on a daily basis, but as someone who occasionally makes art in public (on the street), and who has a real interest in street art/culture, it pissed me off.

death by autotune

he's awful.

so are they.

she got pwned.

his expression is priceless.

PORTABLE PRACTICALITY, PRACTICAL PORTABILITY

i have a lot to write about my own work at the moment, but i'm a bit sick of myself, quite frankly. so it's nice to be able to write a quick little post about a punchy little show i saw last night.

it was around the corner from where i'm staying and it was good (quality within walking distance is so much sweeter, don't you think?). 

portable practicality, practial portability is a show by ethan hayes-chute and it pivots around an old epson ASCII printer.

the printer, sitting on a plinth in the middle of the room, has been programmed by ethan and is available to 'play' with - visitors getting their own little receipt for their time and joy. around the gallery are little collections of things made with or about the printer - original flavour gum, a collection of terry-pratchet-esque bottles/spices with printed labels and a noticeboard of early workings (above). perhaps because i'm a bit of a nerd (and haven't been practicing my code AT ALL), i enjoyed looking at this one - seeing his tests for each line, working out how to best create the image he wanted through instruction.




and, i have to say, i really enjoyed the small video work in the corner *.  it's a process of him unravelling the printer roll from the manufacturers roll using a drill to re-roll them onto his own spool. apparently futile actions that carry personal meaning, frustration and some kind of resistance in their persistance. the drill and rolls atop the hand-made monitor box were a nice touch (although unnecessary IMO).

the video itself also reminded me a little of campbell patterson's videos and michaela gleave's 7-hour balloon performance. what can i say, i'm a sucker for ridiculous repetition.



the gallery itself, kinderhook & caracas, was also reassuring and exact.

that sounds so fey, but what i mean is that it was exactly the right size, attitude and layout that i was looking for last night.

it's quite a typical small berlin gallery (white walls, wooden floors, fluoros, shopfont) and ideal for a show of this size and scope. it looks like they have some interesting shows and i'm intrigued by their relationship to publications (it reminds me of big fag press or half letter press).

and although there were many many intimidatingly cool peeps inside outside, it was a bit refreshing to not be in kreuzberg or neukölln, but to just see an exhibition.



*not shown. and no titles either. apologies for being so slack - i didn't see a room list. if i go back and grab one, i promise to edit