back in london

i'm back in london. kind of in a holding pattern, on my way back to australia. i head to dubai towards the end of the month and then home.


i miss berlin a lot already. i miss my friends [who are so rad they made me an awesome mixtape. rad friends are really rad]. i miss the ease of the place. and how much stuff i can just do within walking/tram distance. 


and most of all i miss how berlin makes me feel about myself.




but here are some things i'm going to see/do in london to stop my heart breaking.




Aware: Art Fashion Identity at the Royal Academy, the including a new work by Hussein Chalayan


Bridget Riley at the National Gallery


Catch up with the Sound Fjord crew

Check out the latest show at MOT

Check out this great movie/artwork on sound/hearing at the Wellcome Collection

Drink coffee at Monmouth


Drink coffee at Kaffeine


Drink coffee at Present


Drink coffee at Lantana

Finally get back to see a show at Transition Gallery


Finally get to check out imagemusictext

Go to the British Library


Possibly check it out this awesome show by Oval


Properly check out the permanent collection at the Tate Britain


Visit the Courthauld (i'm ashamed to say i've never been)


Visit the V&A. Multiple times


and if you're one of my peeps in london, get in touch - i've got time :)

london calling

can i just preface this with the caveat: i'm having a good time, really i am. i'm making lots of new work, feel good (apart from brief illness) and have excellent choices for visa situation.

oh my god, london. what are you doing to me? there are 4 major exhibitions that i need to come and see in the next 4 weeks - i'm trying to be frugal, can't you see?

christian marclay's clock at white cube (mason's yard). 

this is a fantastic a real-time clock (projection) made up of scenes from movies showing the time. pity to have missed the full version at the private view - i would love to have seen 3 - 4am in real time via marclay's film snippets. but, given that it was impossible, a daytime viewing or 5 will have to do. imagine a sleepover at white cube to watch the whole thing - that would be awesome. either way the soda jerk girls and i are already plotting ways that we can get there without spending any money. hmm.

rachel whiteread's drawings at tate britain.

i'm a massive fan of this woman's work, have paid homage to it in my own and only ever seen a few bits and pieces. i'm stinging to see this major exhibition, which features her workings and beautiful drawings - the basis behind any good spatial practice, i reckon :)

ai weiwei's sunflower seeds at the tate modern turbine hall. 

all those porcelain sunflower seeds... swoon. sadly, we can't walk on them anymore, which means that the work isn't really as awesome as it was before (sorry, but it's true). but, i would still go and see it. yes, in a heartbeat.

james turrell bindu shards (perceptual cell) at the gagosian. 

light, experience, perception, time. joy. an immersive installation that you have to book in for. i'm in heaven. here's a quote from the site (where that image is from too)


"Through light, space can be formed without physical material like concrete or steel. We can actually stop the penetration of vision with where light is and where it isn't. Like the atmosphere, we can't see through it to the stars that are there during the day. But as soon as that light is dimmed around the self, then this penetration of vision goes out. So I'm very interested in this feeling, using the eyes to penetrate the space.
--James Turrell"

see? there's 2 days in london right there. peeps - beware. i might just have to skip over the channel and back.

image credits: tate website, gagosian website and the economist websites. all deets, re artists rights are on those sites.

quick update: LDN >25

i'm currently suffering badly from a punishing hangover. except i don't drink alcohol. so it's just the result of punishing my body with an all-night raggahton/boombahton/dance-ahton, arriving home at 6:30 am. i haven't had one of those for a while and, let's face it, i'm not as young as i used to be. [although the girl i'm sharing a dorm with did the same and she's still sleeping, so bully to her]

tomorrow will be the start of my ISEA2010 experience, so my wrap up of london is going to have to be brief. [sorry lucas, you're wrong about me being thorough now].


so, pretending that i'm entering a competition on a cornflakes pack, here are most of the london galleries i saw in 25 words or less:





national gallery, 18C
discovered gainsborough's late landscapes. beautiful active figures in the environment. also drank in chardin, vigee le-brun and the french rococco titillation.

tate britain: mike nelson's coral reef
largely uninterested by banner's planes - kids posing underneath them, repulsive. getting lost in nelson's labyrinth was thrilling: FPS game + inception -styles. redeemed orwell st.

MOT: ongoing program
i like this revolving project. good selection of works - especially brian's twitter treatise on sculpture: daily tweets transcribed onto shutter door, transferred to a weekly poster.

chisenhale: 27 senses
nordic responses to kurt schwitter's hütte. excellent theme, great space, nice works underpinned by drawing - humourous merzbau, interesting video about an exile and intriguing spatial projection.

whitechapel: alice neel, chapman bros, john latham
alice's paintings were divine and the accompanying video accentuated them. chapmans' story was good, etchings 7/10. john latham, new discovery - love his knowledge processes.


not that there's a whole lot on in london right now - summer holidays has everyone shut. perhaps for the best, considering my short stay.

oh, and to add to that, i drank so much excellent coffee over those two days, that i was at once wired and embarassed for melbourne and its rapidly-declining scene. sorry.


images: major lazer from maddecent.com
s. mark gubb at concrete hermit. never laughed so hard at a gallery.

london: wednesday.

the last couple of days have been like a dream come true, really: art, coffee, art, coffee. as a result, my reporting is a bit behind.

on wednesday, with my inimitable art-pal, john dodds, i took in the V&A, the saatchi gallery and a weird place called chelsea futurespace (which i'm not going to go into, but it was kinda weird and all display-home).

V&A: 1:1 architecture spaces.

this was the exhibition highlight of the day, really.

a series of 1:1 spaces designed/built by architects as investigations into small spaces. there were 2 in a designated area for the show, with the rest dotted around the collection, perfectly responding to the various galleries and sections*.

all of them were great - you can see them here:
and here

but there was one in particular that totally floated my boat people and i'm going to devote the rest of my laptop battery to it: the bookshelf space.




the space, called Ark, by Rintala Eggertsson Architects is kind of a well-made, solid, ikea open bookshelf x 4, facing in on itself. the 'walls' are enclosed using books, the ground floor opens into the bookshop, whilst the roof meets the floor of the library upstairs. in between is a spiralling space of booky goodness! oh my lordy i almost fainted with overwhelm of all the books. i find going into book shops and libraries hard enough - i often need a chaperone in readings.

of course, john and i took the opportunity to do a quick little intervention into the space, rearranging the books to make a whole shelf of the conqueror by jan kjæstad - a massive paperback with a distinctive cover.

i loved the obvious idea of a place of literature, where knowledge is the foundation of space (something that john latham would have gone a bit goo goo about).

i also loved also the idea that this situation - a site and non-site of shifting space as the same time. and that small spaces were being created and filled in by books. and that no book was more or less important than another.

the whole colour palette of the place also had me gabbling - the exterior, with the exposed pine beams and then the out-facing pages were all the same colour, because they were all the same 'stuff'. wood and paper together again.

and then on the inside, the colour explosion was so pleasing to the eye - in a way that something more contrived would just make me wanna vomit. part of me wanted to spend hours in there, organising all the spines by colour. but then the whole bottom floor would probably be orange :)



the smell of the place was so comforting and homely. it reminded me of all my favourite bookstores and the times i've spent with friends just wandering, head tilted, perusing.

if you're in to books, in even the slightest way, go see this space at the V&A.


saatchi gallery: newspeak.

newspace too - i didn't get a chance to pop in last time i was in the hood, so i'm grateful for the opportunity to do so. for the most part, the show was frightful. i haven't had such a violent opposition to works in a while - there was some real shite there. but, there was also some excellent work, and some obvious themes being investigated, which was intriguing and enlightening. even if i didn't like the particular works investigating those themes.

new british artists (still mostly painters, according to the saatchi kids - maybe because painting is still the prime-market) are mostly looking at human disfigurement and apparition.




not part of this show, i loved two works in the two large project galleries: richard wilson's 20:50 - a beautiful, reflective space made from the gallery filled with oil. the reflection was slightly disconcerting, the smell even more so. and as atmospheric and moody as the work was, i also ended up feeling angry that it somehow vindicates the disaster of oil-space c/- British Petroleum. I felt the need to make the work political by chucking a stack of animals in there to float and then see how beautiful it looked. not that it has anything to do with mr wilson's formal concerns, i guess.





the other beautiful work was john wynne's pianola composition for 300 speakers - a stack of various speaker boxes, mostly beautiful old ones, with a pneumatic automated playing system that cardiff-miller and meireles would have been proud of.

there were a few other good works, namely the pixel rug and guillotine by rupert norfolk and the boys in the corner by littlewhitehead.

it was great to see the gallery in the flesh - i hadn't ever seen it. i expect it will be a fairly regular visit for me when i'm in london town now.





*almost funny anecdote about the studio mumbai work: you have to remove your shoes for this exhibit, and while we were putting them back on, we were accosted approached by education staff from the gallery to survey our response to the show. she kinda messed with the wrong sinatra, 'cos when she asked about how i would describe the show to a friend, little did she know that my friends are all pretty well-versed in architecture/art vernacular and i started rattling on about interstitial spaces and textured experience. ha! what wanker i am.


ark images are from the V&A site and REA.

london days

i'm in london for a few days before some exciting times at ISEA2010 and ars electronica. it's only really enough time to catch up with the lanky midlander, the german AD, the pedant and the art historians - but i have so far managed to squeeze in couple of good shows and some great coffee.

thank god for monmouth coffee
this place was a fantastic find last time - fantastic double-shot espresso for £1.30 = that's about $2.30 for you australians back home. which should have you squirming.

francis alys - a story of deception at tate modern



i found this title a strange one, considering alys ongoing concern with action, movement, borders and points of intersection. and more than 'deception', he acknowledges the 'myth' in all art.

however, the show itself was fabulous for me to see. i had seen a few of his works last time i was in this neck of the woods, but have been reading more and more about his work and its relation to site/nonsite/situation. and i had a whole new perspective on his work because of this.

if you're in london and you haven't see this work, you really should. as is an artist whose work on the concept of territory/lines of division is incredibly important -

personal highlights:
paradox of praxis i. video documentation of alÿs encircling the centre of mexico city pushing a block of ice around until it melt. it's the most common image of his work (and one that is also at the deception and procedure exhibition i mentioned earlier), but it's still a great image, pretty important in terms of his modus operandi and his ongoing idea of 'sometimes doing nothing leads to something' - the subtitle of the work.

patriotic tales with rafael ortega.
it is a fixed-frame video document of an action in a public square. around a pole (with a very sharp shadow that divides the space well), a man leads a single and increasing flock of sheep. of course i couldn't help but think about australian artist lucas ihlein's goat walks for the west brunswick sculpture triennial. so the highlight was also kind of for him too.

the green line
another seminal work of his, but it also feels like one of the most important works i've seen. ever.
based on the 1949 partition, where israeli moshe dayan took a green pencil and palestinian XXXX took a red pencil and drew out their front lines on a 1:20,000 map of jerusalem. but what did that mean, in real terms? francis alÿs walked across that armistice area, with a tin of green paint with a hole in its lid, demarcating a border that divided israeli and palestinian alike in loaded terms.
the video is still poignant and the associated documents are quite profound. his investment of poetic action into such a highly political situation is its true value and the work's subtitle: sometimes doing something poetic can become political. sometimes doing something political can become poetic, is an even more inspiring maxim that continues from sometimes doing nothing...



paintings: abukir and an unknown painting of a puddle.
alÿs' small paintings are beautiful objects, which extend his actions/investigations. these two in particular stuck with my all afternoon and both look at 'the line' from two completely different perspectives. they illustrate the difference between old ideas of site and the concept of 'situation'. abukir shows a hillside town divided by a wall. the hard, static wall defines a site with such rigity - there is no place for fluidity, greyness, ambiguity or flexibility in such a place. it is fixed.

i couldn't find the name of this painting and all the images from the tate online collection have been removed, but is my favourite work of the show. it is so unassuming, but i think it really highlights the ideas and the ethos of the artist perfectly.

it is a painting of two objects: a chest of drawers (marked A) and a bucket on its side (marked B), from which a puddle of water has spilt (marked C). the water floods between both objects and their reflections not only appear, but overlap in the water. the water blurs the line between where the edge of one object ends and another begins - it dissolves the structural edge and creates a space in which both objects are included, despite being 'separated'. separateness and territory are ideas that become murky and underrated, possibly.


--

at the end, i was slightly disappointed that, given alÿs' use of postcards, that the only postcards you could buy were a book of them for £7. not a single postcard from the show could be souvenired (sp?). but that's just me havin' a whinge.

all up, it's a great show and i'm really pleased that i have seen a good collection of his work all in the one place at the same time. it was an oppotunity to back-up my theoretical understanding of his work, having seen a few works here'n'there, with a nice juicy chunk of it.

my list of london things for simon

my friend simon is going to london, and he asked me to make him a list of things to see while he's there (although i'm sure there'll be hardly any time to squeeze most of them in).

i thought i'd share it here, as i have other lists. and that way other friends in london can go check things out - or they can also recommend things to do whilst he's there :)

have a great time simon! i'll be re-living it vicariously through you, you know...


anish kapoor at the royal academy.



for the love of god, you should see this. it will be amazing. and while you're in the area, a bit of white cube mason's yard never hurt anyone. well, not much.


monmouth coffee.


as much as i love my crew at brother/seven seeds, sometimes i do miss my double espresso for £1 at monmouth. the one at borough is ok, but covent garden (on monmouth st) is best. the girls there are so friendly.
oh, and for decent food and a place to hang in central london after 7pm, princi on wardour was the new surprise last time. packed, all the time, but so fun. and open, you know, late.


michael jackson memorabilia at the O2 bubble.



This Is It is surprisingly amazing and although i still wouldn't consider myself a 'fan', i came away from the film with a sense of sadness and awe about a man with such talent and such trouble. simon, i don't even need to tell you why you need to go, do i?



calling out of context at the ICA.



i wish i was going, but i'm hoping that it's the first of many festivals, to which i can go. from the ica site:

Calling Out Of Context is a new festival of experimental music and sound. For nine days our main gallery becomes a performance space; the upper gallery a working recording studio; and the theatre hosts gigs, workshops and discussions. The festival features more than 40 performers and groups, revealing the vitality and relevance of the sonic avant-garde"

simon, this will be your penance for not going to electrofringe. ;)



you should meet my friend charlie gower. he's crazy into music. italo disco is his #1 penchant, but he has the most eclectic taste of anyone i know. he used to do mo' wax nights in shoreditch and you guys would totally have a rad time gettin' all music geeky on each other.

st andrews studios in hackney - especially transition gallery. cathy and alex at transition always put on great shows that you should check out.

chloe early at stolen space. her work is pretty spectacular. the gallery around the corner from the new rough trade in shoreditch/truman brewery. which is not as good as the old rough trade, but you'll have to go there. you know how it is.


oh, and the tate modern. of course.

london proxy required: hussein chalayan sample sale

it is one of my life's ambitions to own a piece by hussein chalayan.
i'm so not high-end sample size and nothing would probably suit me, but by god i would love to be here.



can somebody please go on my behalf please? ta.

the fourth plinth: one and other.

personally, i was rooting for tracey's work. i wanted to see meerkats in trafalgar square.

and, to be honest, thanks to the oversaturation of gormleyness a few years back, i was feeling a little lacklustre about one and other. until i started hearing about it online and i saw the live streaming.

yes, i'm talking about the fourth plinth commission - the public art work that is situation situated on the spare plinth in trafalgar square. thomas schütte's hotel for the birds has come down and has been replaced by the controversial winner of the public competition. beating tracey emin and yinka shonibare to the post. heh.

but this, kids, is an ace use of technology and art in the public space. yes, the 'ordinary englishmen' aspect of it can be a little ho-hum, but getting to know the 'plinthers' is pretty cool, and the live streaming is almost as good as nils september and his ikea durational performance last year.




i could go on about other shit aspects to it, and pick apart the 'everyone is an artist' beuysian references, but i can't be arse at the moment. what i like most about it at the moment is the sheer car crash television aspects of it. i am addicted to it. in terms of durational/ritual/torture work, it's kickin' arse over the tour de france and master chef anyday!

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

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 :)

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!

the one ton show

here's the order: you have to go check out this show.




my fellow candystriper, miss jones has work in it. and she's brilliant, so you'll miss out if you don't go: panic on the streets of london indeed.

besides, how cool is their poster!

theonetonshow.com

some of the strange things i miss about london...

have recently arrived at my place for a while...


this


this,


and this.


but not this or this.


or this



thankfully, will and i have had a lovely time - hearty laughter, cross words and lots of galivanting. it'll get me through 'til january when i'm there next...

i'm banksy

funny how things can stick around. after my rant about street art and marc's article, the debate "is it utopia or just a bit boring" from the tate street art show turned up in my tate itunes podcast subscription. the two debater were evening standard critic ben lewis and time-out writer ossian ward and it is particularly hilarious. while i can't quite get my head around some of his reasoning, ben's dry, nihilistic humour about street art and himself is really amusing and ossian's picture of art's future is deliciously bleack and his responses to ben are so sharp. great stuff.

listen to it here

tate modern extra bits

nicholas cerota from the tate and architectural überlords herzog & du meuron have 'unveiled' the plans for the tate modern 'bit on the side'.

as much as i love previous work of theirs, as you may have guessed, i'm non-plussed about it. i'll certainly be interested to see how it pans out and what it really looks like, but the current concept maps and mock-ups leave me feeling a little bit, well, fifth element, to be honest.

i know, i'm a philistine.

i don't care who banksy is

there. i said it.

in fact, even if it is robin something-or-rather and there are supposed photos, i don't wanna know.

the man has become a sleb without having a more tangible physical identity, so can we just let it stay that way, for god's sake.

it's almost like the only way your MOR appreciators and press can deal with a big deal is if they can write, robin such-and-such from bristol, 35. box, ticked. category fit, actual person to focus on and not the message.

the fact that his 'elusive identity' and the search to unhand that has become such an issue is COMPLETELY MISSING THE POINT, people!

grumble, grumble, grouch, grounch.

London calling

Everything is quite surreal at the moment. As well as being manic at work, extremely happy where I'm living and quite excited about what I'm about to begin doing; I’m also going through a period of intensely missing the people and the places, the experience of my time in London and Europe last year. I know that, in the whole scheme of things, I wasn’t there all that long, but I miss it as though I was there for years.

The people who I miss, I only knew for a short time – the lanky midlander for 6 months, the crazy bedouin, 4 months, the german girl for 3 months, and the aussie girl and german boy for just 1 month each– not even, really. [Not to mention the loads of other ace people I met]. And for some reason it feels like I’ve left some soul mates over there. And 'over there' is such a long way away.

And in terms of place, as the weather turns cold and blustery, every corner I turn in Melbourne reminds me of Hamburg, or Paris, parts of London and sections of Vienna. It drives me batty.

Dan Hill and I were recently discussing Australians’ pride in the tyranny of distance, as such a huge part of our psyche and I’m starting to understand an element of it: that which is an almost physical craving of places elsewhere. Kind of like when you get a song stuck in your head and you just have to play it and play it until you exhaust it. Right now, I've got the geographical equivalent of the intro to Slayer's Raining Blood going around and around and around.

And then, in organising a mix cd swap, lord of the ad-pit, rob mortimer, asked me to describe some of the things I did while I was over there. Obviously, in the interest of providing him with some material (and not as some self-indulgent outpouring), here's my list:

Shit I miss from my time in London and Europe:

• dancing to the kooks, pidgeon detectives, the holloways and other brit-pop indie kids in nina's bedroom, eating dumplings, while getting ready to go out.

• megabus. several journeys up and down the M1: leeds, manchester x 2, plus a trip to cardiff to see the arctic monkeys - you can't make those kinds of journeys for so cheap here.

• €1 for an espresso.

• soho

• H&M. I didn't discover the true joy of H&M until i was on my way out, but it's something I wish we had here: clean, simple, basic.

• speaking in languages other than my own. there's something really satisfying about having to use a whole other part of your brain - to have to think completely differently. Perhaps that's why I feel like I've changed, because I had to think completely differently and according to Cartesian Philosophical Theory, it means I was completely different.

• The National Gallery (and the regular cups of tea in the Cafe) and the permanent collection at the Tate Modern.

• The number 19 bus and the Victoria line. (Which is why I packed it in my suitcase, but it's not much use here, unfortunately). And my Oyster card.

• Coffee mornings at the Breakfast Club and the Berwick St Markets.

• "Die nächste Haltestelle, Ramersdorf"

• Non-alcoholic beer in Germany and Austria and the baklava in St Germain in Paris and near Perrache Metro in Lyon

• The Lourve, The Pompidou, The Castello Di Rivoli, ArkitekturZentrumWien and the MAMOK.

• Running up Crouch Hill to the sounds of Banquet by the Bloc Party (the perfect running song).

• Reading properly famous people in the newspapers: Tracey Emin in the Independent, Antony Gormley in the Guardian, Nick Hornby in the Observer and I think even someone like Van Morrison in the paper one time. Oh, and Time Out.


It's a weird list, but hey, that's the nature of the beast sometimes - general and specific, expected and unusual.

public art, public opinion: the fourth plinth

The kids over at the We Made This blog have done a great post on the Fourth Plinth project happening in London's Trafalgar Square. It's a public sculpture project, with a shortlist chosen by experts, exhibited at the National Gallery and open to consultation with the public. Luckily, it's in London and has the involvement of the National and the Mayor of London/GLA, making it somewhat more refined and educated than something with audience participation like that would end up being here (think Australian Idol vs The Archibald).

Which i think is a bit of a shame, really. Seeing as work is created with public funds and is in the public domain, having the public take some ownership of it by having a say in its selection makes sense. In theory.

The reality here is that a larger proportion of the Australian population don't give a fuck about art, don't know anything about it, don't want to even consider paying for it out of their precious possible-loan-repayment money and don't listen when it is explained why good public art makes a difference to a city.



Which is such a pity, because there is a dearth of good public art sculpture out there (especially in Melbourne, a city brimming with good sculptural artists) and as discussed in a recent (suprisingly decent) Australian Art Review article, those responsible for commissioning the works are largely bureaucratic, unaware and narrow minded. Imagine if the process became a collaboration between curators, museums, artists and an appreciative public, like the Fourth Plinth project? This city’s reputation for public sculpture could almost match its reputation for street art, fine art, music, culture and general funky goodness.



Oh and as much as I would love to see a family of Trace’s meerkats hanging out on the plinth at Trafalgar Square, I’m going for Jeremy Deller's Spoils of War. Register your opinion over here if you like.

Asian Biennale Fantasy

so, here's my latest lust - a trip to:



Gwangju Biennale, Korea with a side trip to Seoul to hang out with my favourite ex and fab printmaker Chris McC




Shanghai Biennale, China with a side trip to see Puff Charlie F, punk planner doing amazing things in Beijing




Singapore Biennale, Singapore with a side trip to see Rob C and the rest of the nutty Singapore crew rockin' the equator.


All of which would come after a field trip in September to the Venice Architecture Biennale with my course (and a hop, skip and jump to London, München and Hamburg ['türlich] to visit my NthHem peeps).


well, a girl's gotta dream, doesn't she??!!

proxy required

Can someone in London please do me a favour and be a proxy me for a couple of hours by doing these three things in my absence? I'd do them myself, but for the slight problem of distance:

.1. go to Lisson Gallery and see the Santiago Sierra show there. He's an amazing artist who does great politically-charged installation work (including in the Korean DMZ and in the UAE). He'll also be doing a sound work on Bell St (right near Edgeware Rd tube station).

.2. buy and read this month's Creative Review. It's a cheap special with an article I'd love to read with Will Gompertz from Tate Galleries on life as a client (mmm..Fallon and Tate, with sexy results).

3. hang out at the Green Man pub on Berwick St, talking shit with Will, Seb and Nina until the owner guy loses it and chucks you out, after which you wander around the streets of Soho, large chai latte in hand, late into the night.


Thanks!