existence shall cry, sis.

the painful thing about the residency i'm doing at collingwood housing estate is that it throws into question my purpose as an artist, in a way that none of the other recent residencies have.

i reckon i've had at least three grades of existential crisis in the last two weeks, the deepest last weekend, rescued by a fellow artist who reminded me that i actually don't get a choice over the future and what it thinks of me and my art. all i can do is be as attendant to the workliness of the work as possible (paraphrasing heidegger in his origin of a work of art).

going to too many openings, or other people's shows is too much for me when i'm in this state - i get caught up in my own sense of ridiculousness, so i have to pare it back.

having said that, i was able to check out two visual art shows and two sound art shows on the weekend and enjoyed myself immensely.

stephen palmer has a wonderful sense of putting shows together and the group show at light projects at the moment is a testament to that. the show focuses primarily on 'simulacra' and artists who replicate daily objects with such alacrity that we assume it is that item, lest we look closely, plus a light-hearted 'huzzah!' work by clare rae. in fact, her work was so unlike the others, that what it did state was 'this IS real'. which i liked.

the other exhibition is at dear patti smith - a gallery after my own heart. their brand hock show, in loving memory of amnesia is amazing - sculptural and narrative and slightly unnerving choices of symbols. i would even say feminist. it's well-crafted, well-lit and just exudes 'we are here'.

after both those shows, i attended two separate sound art gigs: one curated by nic tammens at the NGV studio, as part of his interesting collaborative residency there. we stood amongst oh-so-placed objects - attempted simulacra but to my mind were a bit, well, contrived.

clearly i was sinking in my own cynicism and i was too up-to-my-eyeballs-in-my-own-garbage to really enjoy most of the music, although it was nice to see some peeps and nic's band at the end was a great intense cello/violin/guitar distortion build and expressed my own mounting tension.

on saturday, after i had mostly dealt with my own internal combustion, i was able to really enjoy the embedded gig, presented by ben byrne and avantwhatever. all similarly toned bands (deep frenetic bass/low freq chaos

and a counterpoint of super-high pitch/frequency overlay), i enjoyed the different processes and instruments on display: upright bass, sub-bass actuators+40gal drums, jim denley's water-filled sax, trombone, accordion and alice hui-sheng cheng's vocal intensity.

the whole crew there were great and i felt really welcome at art beat - exactly the kind of art space that i believe melbourne needs a whole lot more of.

images: 
brand hock #2 (sorry, i chucked away the room sheet and can't remember the title)
new music series 001

cold and icy. yes.

being back in melbourne for 10 days, it was nice to see stuff again.

like, I had to miss exhibitions* because there were clashes, too many things on at the same time. and of course quite a bit of that time was spent putting together, performing and invigilating my own show.

i feel like i haven't written about other people's shows for ages, so here are a couple of shows i saw, with a strangely icy theme:

this is before that
kiron robinson and sanja pahoki at sarah scout


it felt like the first time I have seen more than one artist per show at SS and i liked it. there was a polarity and/or synthesis that was art of the show that hasn't been before.

the simple concept of kiron's used hours/wasted hours prints were OK: coloured block prints with scratch marks - like days of labour are tantamount to prison term or gallery visitor numbers.  they're short, sharp and to the point.

however, the sentiment of the work was really not my thing -  I prefer to subscribe to the pollyanna view that 'time wasted is never wasted time'. perhaps i'm losing my cynical edge. perhaps i'm just feeling quite grateful for being able to spend all my time on my art practice at the moment.

I did really like sanja's icy photographs of frosty scando landscapes and cold, empty stares of portraits, mounted on the wall around cool, white neon text 'i have loved' 'i have been loved'

this tableau, or scene, actually, was in balance and still edgy without wanting to fall over itself. tick.

my personal tip of the iceberg would have been a sculptural ice-based work in the gallery - even just for opening night. i imagined a big block of ice melting, or even stalactites dripping down the windows. this may have been influenced by the condensation on the windows of the gallery that night, but I couldn't shake it.

kim jaeger at seventh


I may be biased because i think almost everything kim does rocks, but this little work was properly BEAUTIFUL. yes, i said beautiful.

nothing like that image above, it was a diorama created in a blacked and blanked out project space with a large-ish peep-hole at a low eye-level, to create a dramatic and mystical landscape. the landscape was filled with large, white, iceberg-like spikes, appearing to rise up out of a still, dark water. this 'grotto' was perfectly and cool-ly lit, with the scale of it just right. it was like being on a boat, making my way through the floes of scandanavia, or the dark arctic.

it was so succinct and so clear - it actually took my breath away. for real.

sadly, the show finished on sunday, so you can't go and see it anymore. but hopefully there will be images online somewhere that will come closer to doing it justice than this little blog.


*like christopher hanrahan's show at tristian koenig, the vienna show and those egon schiele's at the NGV and the shaun gladwell extravaganza at ACMI.

image credits: sanja pahoki and kiron robinson from the sarah scout site 
kim jaeger you geysir crazy from the seventh site

listening and being live

hey peeps,

here are some links to some live channels i've set up for the listening performance today (28th june).

it's the first time i've done anything like this, so please forgive tech difficulties or straight-up operator errors that may occur.

ustream:

UPDATE : I CAN'T GET USTREAM TO WORK WITH MY iOS DEVICE stay tuned..


Live streaming video by Ustream

but you can video call me

skype:lauren.listen

no particular place to go

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

it's still a place you can just be.

blatant self-promotion #240

this one's especially to all the melbourne peeps:


tomorrow (Sunday), RMIT brunswick campus will open its grounds, hallways, foyers, ceilings and overlooked spaces for Artland at RMIT. And i have a little work in it, so please pop along and have a look. Especially because wanda and jodie from RMIT union arts have done such a great job of scoping the site and installing it for me whilst i've been here in berlin. angels.

from the official blurb:


"Part of Moreland City Council’s MoreArt public art show, Artland at RMIT is a unique exhibition open to all RMIT students to enter. Through sculpture, installation, temporary or ephemeral artworks – artists are invited to use the space available to create works around the theme ‘Artists imagining your world’."

oh, and all exhibitors will be eligible for the $1,000 RMIT union arts award, judged and presented by the MoreArt judging panel. so, you know. anyone on the judging panel, i could do with $1,000. :D


deets:
10-24 October 2010
RMIT Brunswick Campus
Dawson St, Brunswick.
Victoria, Australia


opening: Sunday 10 October 
3.30 - 5.30pm, 
RMIT Brunswick Campus.



The exhibition opening will be preceded by 3 guided tours of the exhibition/festival/shindig:

12.30 pm Bicycle Tour. Meet at Gowrie Train Station
1.00 pm Train and Walking Tour. Meet at Coburg Train Station
1.20 pm Bicycle Tour. Meet at Coburg Train Station


http://launch.rmit.edu.au/artland.html 

happy 80th birthday nanna

regular readers will know how rad i think my nanna is. mainly because she is rad: super spunky, independent, hilarious, hip young thang. well, not quite as young as i'd like: today she turns 80.

80!

i can tell you that if i'm half as cool as she is when i'm 80, i'll be well-chuffed.

she still travels regularly, loves all her family, has the best laugh in the world, loves beautiful things, is interested in technology, doesn't suffer fools lightly, is generous, crazily forgiving of my terrible habit of swearing and still really enthusiastic about discovering all there is to offer

i'm super sad that i'm not in melbourne to give her the massive hug she deserves today. but perhaps it's for the best - i might have squeezed all the breath out of her! :)

happy birthday nanna. you rock.

hangin' out crafty in the back alleys of melbourne

for those of you who are in melbourne; and for those of you who perhaps walk down flinders st, perhaps you've seen a little mess hanging off the edge of a building on spark lane. a little discarded knot of cable, or thread? some kind of undealt with complexity left to swing in a dark alley?

well, if you haven't, my work is installed at craft victoria, as an extension of the work in craft cubed, so check it out if you have the chance.

also, there's a closing party for the craft-based festival next week: september 4th.

gesture and procedures

there is an amazing exhibition on at ACCA at the moment. i haven't had a lot of time to devote to checkin' out exhibitions at the moment, but this one is right up my alley.



the new macpherson commission is bianca hester's massive work Please leave these windows open overnight to enable the fans to draw in cool air during the early hours of the morning - it is a whole-gallery installation on action, movement and tension. from the school of fischli & weiss, it's an opus of balance, possible action, phenomenology and spatial composition.

(that's her above). bummed i missed out on seeing the horse!

the other show is a group exhibition of artists who work across concept/performance and action - gestures and procedures is great title for it, actually. a whole swag of my personal favs are in the show: marina abramovic, mike parr, francis alys, vito acconci, john baldassari, anastasia klose, beth arnold, tony schwensen and bruce nauman.

it was the kind of show i had seen on my european trips, so a perfect send-off for my impending departure.

i had actually seen a fair few of the works, which is reassuring and comforting sometimes. and they were all good and obvious inclusions. except, perhaps, daniel von sturmer's works - i would say that von sturmer concerns himself more with traditional, material and construction considerations, rather than process/gesture. but that's just me being a tad pedantic. and nothing to take away from how good mr von sturmer is as an artist.



i love mike parr's early body work - 100 breaths, and the ulay/abramovic aaa-aaa was great to see IRL. as was the abramovic art must be beautiful/artist must be beautiful. i'm reading her biography at the moment and these works are even more powerful within a context of an intense life story.



even though i have to store them in my best friend's garage for the next 6 months, i grabbed a couple of beth arnold's discarded object project posters, one of the objects - an old granny cart - was from carlton north, near my old haunt. i couldn't help but get a bit sentimental about that one. heh.



i actually really loved the video work by delphine reist of an empty fluoro-lit room in which the fluoro globes would 'randomly' fall down and smash on the floor - the noise was amazing and the heist of it was pretty damned delicious too. i'll be chasing up more work of hers, that's for sure.

i didn't have a lot of time to spend in the show, but still a great, great exhibition of works that are about the particular type of art i like - where art is a verb and space is an indirect object.


image credits: acca website, the age and eternalnetwork.fr

love game

game controller soaps!!






awe.some.

if i was here for christmas, i would be sprinting to third drawer down (where these pics are from) and half my friends would be receiving them as presents.

in the mean time i'll be hoping they release playstation and old school nintendo ones too.

bitchin' stitchin'

this pic doesn't really give you an idea of how awesome it is, but there's an absolutely brilliant show at seventh gallery right now, by georgina cue. two massive three-dimensional tapestries that are interior dioramas/theatre sets.

there's something a little bit agatha christie's mousetrap/cluedo about them - all mysterious, dark and broody colours and set at an angle so as you walk in, you look into the depth of another room.

bewdiful.

hot in the city

i'm sorry if you don't live in melbourne right now. there is SO much on for anyone who is mildly interested in anything other than the lost finale (which, for the record, i'm not).

firstly, the next wave festival is on and although the first week of stuff didn't really get my heart started*, there have been some excellent works on and this week i'm finally having that 'oh crap i need to see 5 things in the one night' moment. PLUS the emerging writers festival has started!

if you haven't been down to the meat market to see the structural integrity pavilions and scott mitchell's smoke machine, for god's sake brave the cold and do it. it will make it all worthwhile.




and if you're whinging about how out-of-the-way the meat market it is, i understand. really, i do. but it's worth it - just get off the 19 tram at queensberry st, it's pretty easy from there.


the other thing you need to do is come to west space and see the feminist project exhibition, the view from here. and you should buy/read the catalogue. it is the hopeful beginning of the next wave of feminist discourse (see what i did there?).




interestingly, the introduction to the female eunuch could easily be the introduction to this work, whereby we've sat on our laurels again got all caught up in raunch culture and fake tans/boob/lips, forgetting that we STILL need to loudly remind ourselves and everyone that exploitation of any kind based on gender (or race, sexual preference or creed for that matter) is not OK.


it's pretty shit, but i've already missed out on the parachutes for ladies' i thought a musical was being made and tape projects' 100 proofs the earth is not a globe. if you're going, i think i might hate you for a while. and if you're not - join the philistine fan club.

things i will not be missing out on:

great heights 2 at melbourne central tonight, featuring kay abude, sam george, michael georgetti, tegan lewis, andrew liversidge, amy + claire spiers and paul wotherspoon.




the infinity tube near the neck face piece off meyers place (now that it has finally arrived!)



and estelle tang's 15 minutes of fame book launch extravaganza, as part of the emerging writers' festival. estelle's blog 3000books is one of the best lit blogs going around, so you should read it and come to the events this week. super ace.


two other shows you should see:

glenn walls' show at john buckley, projects for total urbanism (pictured above). i think it's in the last couple of days, so you should run to richmond. (yes, lauren. ahem)

and owen leong's show, birthmark, at anna pappas. SUCH beautiful photographic works. but you know, i'm biased as he's a dear friend.



PLUS there are a few things i'll be missing out on because i'm giving a lecture at RMIT.

so, if you're not going to grace us with your presence, one of the things you should go and check out the soundkilda music vid competition on at the palace george in st.kilda - showing the hottest music vids on the big screen, which i'm totally into as an idea.

and...actually i can't remember the others - i live in a purely need-to-know timescale at the moment. ha!


if you're not in melbourne, i'm sure your week is great - you've either got waaay more interesting things to do, or you're watching re-runs of the lost finale. either way, i'm happy for you. really.



* except the taking it to the streets forum with lucas ihlein on sunday. i'll talk about that another post.

image credits:
estelle and her facebook page
next wave site
john buckley website
owen leong website
dell stewart and her flickr stream

super-official: geek in residence.

aw man, i've been holding onto this info for what seems like an eternity!

but now it's all official:

i'm one of the geeks in the australia council/arts digital era Geek-In-Residence program.

read the press release here.


what does this mean? well, i'll be doing a fair amount of tech/system-based stuff with the super-awesome peeps at west space and some of their friends.

it also means that this blog will, from tomorrow for the next three months, feature a blow-by-blow account of the tech vs art battle. there may be some bad geek jokes. sorry.

and if it's really not your thing, i understand. i'll see you when i'm in berlin :)

so, here's to good news.

sew: supporting and empowering women

i like pretty things.

i like pretty things even more when they are produced upon sound principles.

these are ace bags, made by tanzanian HIV+ women, who are paid fairly and the profits going back into the project, which destigmatises these women and their disease.

and, as a beautiful match, i also love readings book store in carlton (actually it's an evil place where i spend far too much time and money. but i digress), which is where these bags are for sale.


thanks to the design files, via angus

silent nights

more blatant self-promotion! shock!



light projects have launched their projection night-screen program, silent nights - a series of video works that reflect the medium and process of video/production and my work .... to get a bit of bloody peace... has been included.

it follows the process of a woman sealing a public stairwell in order to create a 'cone of silence' for some sonic solitude and acoustic privacy. those of you who saw my installation at first site will recognise the 'set'. and some of you may also recognise the title - pinched from the words of one miss penny modra, who wrote about Cone of Silence I in the press as "the crazy things we do to get a bit of bloody peace nowadays". she said it was ok. promise.

over the next 10 days, they're running a couple of video works that reflect a rotating theme. clare rae, kate woodcroft and I are part of the action theme. the next two themes are time and narrative, featuring plenty of ace artists.


it's all starting tomorrow night (april 3) and runs until april 12 at 176 high st, northcote. my work will run 3-5 april, so pop over and see it, if you're in town.

1% inspiration

sometimes the artworld collides right in front of me. you know those times when a bunch of seemingly unconnected people are all talking about at the same thing at the same time? well, it's one of those weeks.

this time, it's about presenting inspiration.


ISPY2



Part of the L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival (which kicked off this week, in case you weren't aware of all the extra heel around town), this little projection series has been curated by my friend Simon Winkler and his creative partner-in-crime Chimere Cissé. It's a showreel of the snapshots that inspire a range of fashion/jewellery designers, including TV the label, Dhini, Karla Way, Yeojin Bao and Kate Rogers from Dazed and Confused (pictured). With the launch at £1000 Bend on Saturday, the works are at a bunch of places around Melbourne town: Fed Square's big screen, Alice Euphemia, Georges and the City Library. more info here.



Celine Inspiration Books




I saw this on these on The Sartorialist the other day and thought that they were a pretty neato idea. It works really well as a nice anchor to the perfomative aspect of the fashion spectactle: lights, catwalk, bump'n'grind, in your face style - and this little tangible history of the collection.



Autumn Masterpieces


Opening tonight at CCP, again this is the presentation of artists' 'collections' - the images they have on their studio walls or in their hearts. These were presented in an array of styles that hark back to trad gallery/object formats (which adds a bonus little twist for the relationship between art history/the object and The Photograph). Some of the images are hilarious. Some are so adorable. The one from Hany Armanious is gorgeousness. [i'm purposefully not mentioning the Andrea Fraser video because i'm going back to see it later. i'm almost peeing with excitement]


See? All three within a week!


It seems the structure of artistic/fashion concept has become desireable simultaneously. We don't just want the finished and polished product and the final narrative anymore. We want the inside scoop, the cheat sheet and the secrets to the magic. Or at least a little clue.

From an artists' perspective I do love these shows - i get to feel part of the club. But part of me feels une petite tristesse too - like i've peeked into the dressing room after the show and the illusion has been tarnished. Am i reading too much into it?

répondez et inserez

just to interrupt our flow of reviewing others' works. i have some works in a couple of group projects. both have produced beautiful posters, so i think i'll just save the words and post them instead [click to enlarge].

come and check 'em if you're in the hood.







UPDATE: here's the page from the ICH blog on my stuff: jack

camp pell lecture

a couple of days before leaving for my lightening fast sydney/brisbane escapade, lucas (the great connector) emailed me about tony birch/tom nicholson's work at artspace, which needed some [artist-as-]participants. i can't remember lucas' description exactly, but it mentioned a lecture, tom nicholson, a building in carlton and a spare spot on the 26th february.

lock me in!

i have been really interested in tom's work for a while and his sound/performance/list collaboration 'lines toward another century' with andrew byrne with had me hopping from side to side.

thanks to a bit of a crazy schedule, i didn't have time to do any research into the project, which worked in my favour i think. i just rocked up, said hello to the gals at artspace, got instructions and launched into it. no time for over-analysing - plenty of time for that during the performance.

the darkened room featured included 5 desks, with a desk lamp and a series of projections behind the 'stations'. each participant/artist read the lecture aloud and to themselves, according to the instructions, as we were giving a paper to a room of 30 students. easy. kinda.

the inbuilt difficulties (and points of interest) included reading at the same time as everyone else, the combination of reading internally and aloud whilst maintaining the same timing and the slight physical duress of sitting in the high-contrast environment for 40 minutes at a time. i always forget how quickly my body is affected by durational work.

despite having to concentrate quite heavily, i found myself thinking A LOT about the work in a variety of ways. so much so that it has taken me about a week to work out what the hell i need to say about it.

camp pell is based in and around royal park, melbourne, and the lectures are about a series of images from the state library of victoria. the idea behind tom's research of the imagery was to not just imagine the context for the photos in question, but to catalogue and corroborate the stories and history of the time/place. unsurprisingly, the complex relationship to imagery, history and colonialisation comes up very early in the piece.

the area in question is very "local" to me - i ride across, around, through there regularly and is a permanent fixture in my psychogeography. reading about this place and its history/image-history was instantly transportive. rather than imagining the events or the landscape of the images, it was like i was remembering those places. the works, for me, were quite different to enacting an arbitrary narrative. they were infused with a sense of my own experience. which, as any good installation artist knows, is the stuff you want people to take from a work.

the sound elements to the work were also interesting to me - the syncopation of vocal relay and the differing tones was amazing. not to mention the randomness of timing. having to share the soundscape with others at times was amusing - another aspect to the territorial nature of the work - but also the sense of authority with which we all projected our voices. in a way, it homogenised the pitch and weight of our ranges. in the way that i guess memory will desaturate imagery, a lecture format desaturated our vocal contrasts. i think this is an area that my vocologist friend tim noonan would have been fascinated by.



reading aloud is physically exausting too, and i think that this shared effort required to communicate the work is another interesting point of connection with other artists and the work itself. it became a visceral task, which has become physical memory, as well as a mental one. something infinitely bound with psychogeography and a relationship with the indigenous manner of remembering ones place.

as well as remembering and listening, i learned a lot. despite the line in my lecture about 'only the most demonstrative student could have gotten away with not hearing about this history of the ill-fated [burke and wills] trip' i actually knew hardly any detail about the crazy hair-brained voyage up the guts of the place. in history lessons i only ever remember wondering why the hell they started the trip in the first place and thought it was blatantly obvious to trust the local indigenous kids to help you survive. but i guess, at 15 i hadn't really discovered the true nature of the proud white colonial male.




as an aside, the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the burke and wills trip is on the 20th august this year and no doubt, there will be commemorations of some kind. it will be interesting to see what, exactly. given that its place as a valuable point in our history has become an uncomfortable indication of our true colonial history (ie bumbling idiots with too much money kill the only help they get and are survived by the only member of their trip who is humble enough to follow guidance from local aboriginal tribe). i'm almost intrigued enough to go along. almost.

other points of goodness in the work are the obvious conceptual links between art and text, art and language, language and meaning, text and meaning. not to mention tom's regular investigation into publication/archive/library/reading-as-political-action and the contemporary nature of artist-as-participant/audience-as-participant in performative works. i can't even begin to digest all that stuff today, i'm glad that i was able to participate - it gave me a burst of food for thought and reminded me why i make the kind of work i do, and to follow the lead of artists like these guys.


image credits:
artspace.org.au
tomn.net
burke wills.net

what a week.

10 days since my last post.

captain's log...

holy crap. 10 days?! where did the time go?

actually, i do know. i was ill for a few days and then last week was a bloody mammoth week. on monday i had to see a man about a dog (read: scumbag about a bike accident), tuesday i was part of yarra city's arts and cultural advisory process*, wednesday, masters gilbert and george were in the hizouse and i went to see them at the NGV, thursday there were 2 fab art openings that i had to attend - nauru elegies at blindside and then, where the bewdiful schappylle scragg reinacted carolee s schneemann's interior scroll work, friday night saw jenny holzer in town at capitol theatre and then i spent saturday afternoon/evening in the studio. holy moly.

i want to talk specifically about gilbert george, schapylle's performance and the jenny holzer talk. i've got lots to tell about what i've been working on in the studio, but that will have to wait.

george the cunt and gilbert the shit


gilbert and george were great. they really were - they always are. but if i'm honest, i left feeling slightly crestfallen.
virginia trioli really didn't know anything about her audience (who were mostly artists/arty types well-versed in the art of G&G), so she really just skated the surface. disappointment #1.

i'm ashamed to say that i felt more inspired, joyous, enlightened and challenged by the supremely excellent video interview by hans ulrich obrist, the lives of gilbert and george. he probed their processes, left room for quips, but kept plumbing the depts of their practice. virginia just tittered.

and the second major disappointment was as a result of that lack of rigour in the interview, when she asked about the germain greer incident. gilbert's answer about her being a grumpy old woman was seriously unsatisfactory, as was the response that their work displays the kind of sex most women like. i happen to love sex with boys, but even i was offended at that.

and rather than pushing a little and discussing gender/sexual politics, she flippantly mentioned that she also sleeps with girls and faded off. sorry - that left a bad taste in my mouth.

here's my fantasy version of it, which wouldn't have left me feeling that some of my favourite artists are actually misogynist and downright mean:

"germaine greer quote", etc: oh, look we do love germaine and her quaint ways, but she's barking up the wrong tree here. when we say 'we make art for all', we don't intend that to be a singular prescription based on gender. we can only ever make work from our experience - which happens to be a white, male, middle class, homosexual one. we'd like to smash the patriarchy with her, but we prefer to take naked pictures of them instead.

schapylle scragg



and speaking of cunts, it was super, super, super awesome to see schapylle scragg (aka mayhem) perform at the margaret lawrence gallery. i've been craving some art that is 'fucked up' and seeing her in all her scraggy bogan glory, replete with blonde curly murkin was a relief! her australian flag cunts are just fuckin' fantastic and i want one for my wall.

watching her re-enact carolee schneemann's interior scroll work (pictured above), filled with refereneces to beer slogans and terrible boganisms was glorious and painful at the same time. in fact, the highlight for me was watching a room of hipsters raise their glass in toast to a 'big cold beer' automatically, before they realised what they were doing with this blonde mole and by then it was too late. the performance finished and there was a palpable sense of shame and remorse at being complicit in the act. oh god it was awesome!

i don't have the schutzpah to get up and do what she does, but i'm bloody glad she does. you should all go and see the show, if you can. and buy a cunt. they're beautiful.

jenny holzer at the capitol theatre



ok, well, i did want to talk about the jenny holzer show, but i'm tired and need to go to bed.

suffice to say it was ace. image-heavy, but an enlightening travel through 40 years of text-based practice that weaves between renegade/permission, inside/outside exhibition. jenny rocks. she has so much integrity and grace - she is so articulate, in a very humble way, that it almost made me cry.

'til next time...

what are you thinkin' bout...

so miss jones and i went to the beach this morning. kick started the public holiday with a good dose of sun, sand, deep-soon water and deep'n'meaningful conversation to dive into.

on the way back, enjoying the wind in our hair, in her super-cute car, we both fell into a silent reverie - reflecting on the joy of the day, the intimacies of friendship and the uncertainties of the future.


me: hey gem, what you thinkin' bout..

jonesy: major lazer.




it does not get any fucking cooler than that, kids.

i'm a vegetarian, read like a librarian. catch me rollin' wit my rastafarians..

summer is being good to me.

i'm spending more time eating yummy, fresh food.




reading a fair bit.

here's what's on the pile of books read from the last couple of weeks.
[click to see flickr notes]





and here's some recent additions to the library (apologies for the shakey-shakey)
[click to see flickr notes]




and time to get out for a bit.



we went for a bit of a road trip yesterday - well, just to queenscliff. i'd never been and it was an opportunity to catch a show of australian aboriginal artists at salt and say heya to the rasta-gal curator from your dreamss, sublime-ation.


there were beautiful views, a thomas the tank party for the kids, with baby animals.









and a chance to drive for a while and relaxo with the ladeez and the irish house mate.