Amelia goes to Amelia

cold blooded

2010-12-12T16:09:00.000+11:00

When I originally started drafting this post, it was debilitatingly hot in Melbourne. The kind of weather in which walking to the shop to buy an ice cream is the most activity you can manage. It reminded me of when I was in Perth at the start of the year, walking slowly and stopping often in an attempt to deal with the heat (the sunshine and blue skies were appreciated, it was just soooo hot). At the time I was listening to The XX and thinking how something about their music made me think of icy coolness. And I got to thinking about it again, feeling hot and sticky in Melbourne, listening to Fever Ray. Somehow, her songs are arctic and chilly to me. Am I insane? Probably. But I still feel refreshed after listening to them. Also, as if to punish me for whingeing, at the time I finish up this post, Melbourne is cold and showery. Go figure. Does anyone have any good warm-up song suggestions?

Oh yeah, I like to take photos...

2010-11-24T22:15:00.000+11:00

Somehow inbetween thesis writing sessions, I did actually take some photos. I took forever and a day to scan them, so some of these are from early on in the year. But that's part of the beauty of film photography, right? You forget about that roll of film, sitting undeveloped in the drawer, and the prints are a happy surprise.

These were taken on various occasions in various places, from April to June. Given that it's now November, there are clearly many more to come.

Klimt 2.0

2010-11-23T21:26:00.000+11:00

Remember how jazzed I was about Hold Your Horses' video clip for Seventy Million, which featured all the famous paintings, and was fun and silly at the same time? Well, less silly but still awesome is Spanish magazine Ae's take on Gustav Klimt, by photographer Moises Gonzales. Witness:

That third one is my favourite. So much detail! So many flowers! I think far from rolling in his grave, old Mr Klimt would love it too. Found at bumbumbum, via Unstage.

an ocean and a return

2010-11-19T00:27:00.000+11:00

still from Ocean Without a Shore Venica Biennale installation

image credit www.billviola.com

Midway thorough writing my thesis, before the self-imposed blog hiatus, I started composing a post about my trip to see the National Gallery of Victoria's installation of Bill Viola's Ocean Without a Shore. I didn't really know much about Viola beforehand, but the Age's writeup described the work as "epic, religious, devastating personal, poetic." This was something I needed to see for myself.

image credit: designboom

Ocean Without a Shore was first exhibited at the 2007 Venice Biennale, where it was installed inside the tiny fifteenth century church of San Gallo. The work explores the tentative threshold between dead and living, or as Viola himself puts it, "the presence of the dead in our lives." The installation consisted of three large video screens superimposed over the altars of San Gallo. Shadowy figures walk towards the viewer, becoming increasingly clear, until they break through a wall of water, imperceptible until the moment of contact. The violently cascading wall of water serves as a representation of the threshold between life and death: the intangible yet ever-powerful 'veil' separating the living from loved ones who have died. Once on the other side of the water wall, the figures appear in full colour, their gazes confronting and emotional. After a short time, each turns and passes back through the veil of water. The figure gradually fades to obscurity, and is replaced by another, approaching one of the other two screens.

image credit: designboom

The National Gallery of Australia's installation of Ocean Without a Shore uses a small, darkened room to evoke the intimacy of the work's initial showing. Even without the church setting, the overall effect is overwhelming and emotive. Viola reminds his viewers of the extent to which humans are obsessed with death by powerfully conveying the desire to 'see' loved ones who have died. Regardless of one's stance towards religion and the afterlife, the sense of loss as each figure disappears through the veil is palpable. All this, for video projections of strangers. Why? Because Ocean Without a Shore addresses our relationship with death as a universal experience. Death, and its implications, are something everyone must grapple with, and one person is as powerless as another to thwart it.

image source: designboom

(last image is of the Venetian church, San Gallo)

I had the idea that Viola was using the universal human experience as a means to evoke an emotional response but it didn't really crystallise until I saw another of his works, The Raft. Based on Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, The Raft is a short film, which shows a group of strangers (seemingly waiting for a bus?). They stand together, but apart, each studiously avoiding contact with the others. This continues for some time, with slow motion capture used to highlight the minutiae of the group's gestures. Then, just as excruciatingly slowly, a giant wave of water begins to appear from the left of the frame, crashing over and inundating the crowd of people. They are washed - no, battered - by a solid wall of water for what seems like an eternity. Finally, the water recedes, leaving this once nonchalant crowd completely bowled over, clinging to each other for comfort and security. Here the universal theme that Viola is dealing with is suffering. more specifically the unifying effect of collective suffering.

image credit: University of California Humanities Research Institute

Suffering also comes up in yet another Viola piece that I saw recently, this time at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. Unspoken features the faces of a man and a woman, projected onto panels of beaten metal - silver and gold, respectively. Both faces show signs of intense grief and anguish, which, as in The Raft, is further emphasised by Viola's use of slow motion. The panels glow in the darkened room in a way reminiscent of religious icons, an analogy which is borne out by their powerful emotive, almost mystical effect.

image credit: me!

miraculously managing not to shake

[Edit: after a bit of further research into The Passions, the series of works which Unspoken belongs, it transpires that Viola was studying late Medieval devotional images at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. This is also a good point to mention the wealth of information on Viola's work that can be found on both the National Gallery of Australia and the Getty Institute's websites, from a 2003 exhibition of The Passions. The Getty's site has clips from Viola's videos, and notes the connections between them and historical paintings, as well as providing excerpts from Viola's notebooks and explanations of his processes. Well worth a visit.]

With Unspoken, as with Ocean Without a Shore, I felt like I could spend hour upon hour simply staring at the work. As a general rule, I tend to dislike video art - I find most examples of the medium to be repetitive, smug, and detached to the point that they induce boredom. Viola's work is none of these things. It is immersive and direct, and above all, it is moving. This, for me, is the masterstroke. And given that this is quite possible my most text-heavy post yet, I'll leave it at that.

black and white and placeholding

2010-08-19T22:13:00.000+10:00

Dear tiny readership,

No, I haven't fallen through a crack in the universe. Nor have I forgotten about this blog, nor have I stopped looking and wondering and being inspired. I have however been in equal parts busy and distracted. This is set to continue until mid October, when I'll finally hand in my thesis on Italian Futurism. So for now, two placeholders, two little fragments of the Life of Meels at present. See you again in a little under two months, when I'll be emptying my bursting-at-the-seams Firefox bookmarks into the blogosphere, and scanning film photos like there's no tomorrow.

Amelia-AWOL

1. North Fitzroy rooftops, taken by me

2. A Futurist Serara, F. T. Marinetti

Running up that hill

2010-07-06T00:39:00.000+10:00

Fear not, dear reader, this isn't a post on Kate Bush, or Wuthering Heights for that matter. Chicago based photographer Paul Octavious took a photograph of the same hill, every day, for two years. The result is Same Hill, Different Day, a sensitive document of place, of the passing of time, and of community. In Paul's words, "Each time I have come to the hill a new story is told to me as if the hill is my stage and the locals are the actors in this daily play." Sounds like a play I would be very happy to watch.

all images from Paul's website.

Paul Octavious found via Krisatomic.

Meanwhile in Melbourne: the Autumn edition

2010-06-27T23:16:00.000+10:00

Coming at you straight from the backstreets of North Melbourne,

Amelia's afternoon manifesto, or 'On Making the Most of a Sunny Afternoon'

1. Look up

2. And of course, look down too

3. Look for shapes

4. And colours

5. And textures

6. A bit of contrast is always good too

7. And above all, remember that there is ALWAYS time to kick Autumn leaves

Art crush: Cassandra Laing

2010-06-23T00:52:00.000+10:00

Cassandra Laing, Fortune Teller (it will all end in stars), 2007

image source: BonesMagazine

As an art nerd, there are few things that frustrate me more than seeing a beautiful painting/drawing/sculpture/photograph, and not being able to find out the name of the artist responsible. The I-must-know-more itch gets worse if it's a piece of art you bump into frequently, as has been the case with a large scale drawing by Cassandra Laing which looks over the foyer of RMIT's art gallery, where I have been volunteering over the past few months. Cassandra Laing, did you say? ID-ed at last?!

My art stalkerage usually takes discovery of artist's name as its point of departure, moves to scouring gallery listings and portfolio websites, poring over bios, and finishes up with me saving sets of images to drool over at a more convenient time (wow, I managed to make that sound really creepy, huh? This is art we're talking about, people!). However googling Cassandra's name produced very few results, several of them dead ends, others references to an America's Next Top Model she shares her name with. The little information I do have comes from a rather moving article written by The Age's senior arts writer, Gabriella Coslovich, back in 2007. Laing's incredibly detailed pencil drawings draw on themes of death and fragility for a very valid reason: Laing lost her sister to cancer in 2001, and was herself diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006. Her move from painting to drawing was motivated by the effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment - yet rather than seeming like a mere neccessity, Laing's choice of medium seems completely appropriate for the delicay and poignancy of her images. The eye-popping level of detail in Laing's works is offset by their sheer scale - Fortune Teller (it will all end in stars) is over a metre in width and height.

The message of Fortune Teller becomes even more powerful when we learn of Laing's illness. She is commenting on our how we try to both know and control the future, and on the fultilty of this drive in the light of our insignificance against the backdrop of eternity, the cosmos. Whether it comes abruptly and early, or at the end of a long life, death is irrefutable, and we, like the origami forms Laing depicts, are beautiful, complex, but ultimately fragile and short lived.

Wow. That's a lot of philosophising right there. I guess it goes to show the level of emotional response great art can provoke. I acknowledge that not everyone who sees Cassandra Laing's work will feel as strongly about it as I do -- I am biased: I especially like drawing, and cancer is a longstanding fear of mine, so her story is especially moving -- but I think it would be hard to look at it an deny its brilliance, purely on a technical level. Now if only I could locate more of Laing's work, and sit and stare at it for hours on end...

Cassandra Laing, Darwin Girls, 2006

image source: The Age

gadgetry + jealousy: iPhoneography

2010-06-14T23:57:00.003+10:00

I have been for a while now flitting back and forth between an overwhelming desire to get myself an iPhone, and the more logical realisation that I. Will. Break. It. Bad. Bad. Bad. Idea. Clumsy people and combined technology just do not go well together, says I. And whilst I knew that iPhones could use the Hipstamatic ap to make digital snaps look all retro-Polaroid-delicious, I still thought that the resulting image was a bit...'off.' Well, that was all before I stumbled upon the photography....ahem, iphoneography of Michael Baranovic. Based in Melbourne, Michael uses his iPhone to document the places and people of the city. His skillful use of composition and light particularly appeal to me, because they are precisely the things I am striving for in my own photography. It sounds a bit dry, but I find the unexpected shapes and congruities formed by otherwise unremarkable aspects of day to day life really fascinating, even beautiful, and it is these brief glimpses of beauty and interest in the mundane that Michael captures so well.

Looking through the images, two questions in particular popped into my mind. Luckily for me, I was able to get answers to both questions form Michael himself:

-- Do you use any cameras other than the iPhone? What about the iPhone makes you chose it over other modes of photography?
I do own a Canon 7D but have been using the iPhone since I moved to Melbourne in February this year. It is always on me and lets me quietly explore the city. Because the iPhone allows me to be spontaneous, I now take many more photos than before.

--What are you looking for when you take a photo?
The search for new images is taking me all over Melbourne, the city centre, old suburbia, the sea. I guess I am searching for in-between places - urban decay, new gentrification. Trying to find visual interactions between people and place.

I had an extensive list of favourite images from his tumblr that I wanted to post here but the sensible side of me (the one telling me not to get an iPhone. Clearly I need to learn to ignore it a bit more often) told me to whittle it down somewhat. And of course, by somewhat, I mean not at all. Enjoy.

All images from Misho Barannovic Photography. Many thanks to Michael for his answers.
.

speaking of colour...

2010-06-09T23:49:00.001+10:00

Yes, I know it's an ad for Dulux. But COLOUR + TIMELAPSE + GREAT MUSIC ('Go Do' by Sigur Ros vocalist, Jonsi) = the Amelia trifecta. I could watch and rewatch this for hours on end.

Dulux Walls was filmed in India, London, Brazil and France, with real people painting real buildings. There is a site for the Let's Colour Project here, where you can track the individual projects around the world. Essentially, it's transforming sad and grey areas with luscious colour, and getting local communities involved.

Found via The Cool Hunter.Which might I add, I found thanks to Mum, and she always does appreciate a nod.

the heart of darkness is rather colourful indeed

2010-06-08T13:25:00.001+10:00

General Janvier, North Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2010

Back during my carefree undergrad days, I studied literature as well as art history. The most longstanding result of my dabble in lit has been my continued obsession with Haiti and the Congo, as a result of reading Edwidge Danticat's Krik-Krak and Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness. With both of the obsessions, part of the drawcard is the fact that the countries are far to dangerous for me to ever visit, and I will only ever experience them second hand through documentary photography, and yet more written accounts. They will always maintain a bit of a shroud of mystery and uncertainty, especially with the level of military conflict in the DRC.

So, from this little backstory, it is hardly surprising that Irish-born photographer Richard Mosse's Quick series instantly appealed to me. Given my love of film photography, and its promise of unusual and unexpected effects, when I fould out that the entiure Quick series was filmed on aerochrome, a type of rare, US-government-developed infrared film, I loved it even more.

I think the series is telling as to what we consider to be beautiful, the way percieved beauty alters perceived meaning, and the extent to which someone looking at an image uses aesthetics to excuse objectionable content. At the end of the day, the images are undeniably beautiful. But the juxtaposition between the glorious colour and our knowledge that this is a place of terrir and violence gives them an incredibly unsettling edge, and it is this unsettling of the viewer which makes them so powerful.

Everything merges with the night, on approach to Kinshasa, 2010

Colonel Soleil's boys, North Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2010

Battleground Bambou, Ituri, Eastern Congo, 2010

The trouble with classicists, Kinshasa to Bukavu, DRC, 2010

You made me the thief of your heart, North Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2010

Quick by Richard Mosse found via Nerdcore.

Tip-off that the series was shot in Aerochrome via we find wildness.

Russia again?

2010-06-05T19:58:00.001+10:00

I don't really know much about Ramona Falls. The essentials: they are an indie rock side project from Portland. This is their clip for the song Russia, and it is quite simply, delightful. That is all you really need to know.

Found via BOOOOM.

PS: The clip reminds me of U2's video for The Sweetest Thing, an old favourite of mine, so maybe that's why it appeals to me so much.

PPS: I just found out that Ramona Falls are touring the States with the National, who I love, so maybe that's why I like their sound so much.

PPS: Ramona Falls' video for 'I Say Fever' is also well worth a look.

RIP, LB

2010-06-02T10:00:00.001+10:00

Louise Bourgeois, photographed by Annie Liebovitz. Photo from the New York Times

One of the twentieth century's most influential sculptors, Louise Bourgeois, died on Monday aged 98. Bourgeois' work was largely unknown until the artist was in her sixties and seventies, despite the fact that over the course of her life she produced some of the most challenging and confronting sculpture of the twentieth century.

Bourgeois' sculpture is large scale, psychologically loaded, and frequently unsettling. The now eponymous giant cast iron spider is a testament ot all these qualities. The work's title, Maman (French for mother) shakes things up even further. Who would call a spider Mum? What kind of feelings does Louise Bourgeois expect us to feel for this behemoth arachnid? Yet the knowledge of its title completely changes our experience of the sculpture. Suddenly Maman is much more than just a giant spider: the work is a meditation on relationships, protection and vulnerability. Plus, by having people walk underneath the statue, Bourgeois says as much about the pregnant relationship between viewer and art object as Donald Judd did back in the sixties.

Other works reference sexual ambiguity, human frailty, and in the case of Cell (Glass spheres and hands), which can be found at Melbourne's NGV, the complexities od childhood. I've only briefly studied Bourgeois, so am certainly not the most authoratative source. If you do want to read a little more about her, there is an excellent write up at the art daily with Lydia, which I stumbled upon while googling Louise Bourgeois, and will now be keeping an eye on. There is also an intellgent and thoughtful article at the New York Times.

Image credits:

1. Maman at Milan's Musem di Capodimonte
2. Cell (glass spheres and hands) fromt he National Gallery of Victoria's permanent collection
3. Maman at the Tate, London

from Russia with love

2010-06-01T01:47:00.001+10:00

Pasteups by Canadian street artist Specter, found at my old favourite, Wooster Collective. I love the scale, the detail, and the unexpected burst of colour in the grimy urban landscape.

Meanwhile in May...

2010-05-25T21:27:00.001+10:00

...I am exploring my new suburb at sunset instead of studying like I should be (toungue twister, much?)...

...and revelling in the return of iTunes (it wasn't working on my old computer). On the playlist for May:

winning the prize for Best Line in a Music Video, "But he smells like ranch dressing!"

The Black Keys, Tighten Up

and, from an old favourite with the most amazingly gravelly wonderful voice,

The National - "Bloodbuzz Ohio" (official video) from The National on Vimeo.

The National, Bloodbuzz Ohio

small stakes

2010-05-21T01:22:00.001+10:00

With a name springing from a song by Spoon (how cool is that, just by the by?), The Small Stakes is the studio of graphic designer Jason Munn. He is most famous for his band posters, and when you take a look at these witty gems it will be easy to see why. Jason is releasing a book of his posters, and I think it might just be a coffe table essential. Awesome design + awesome bands = right.up.my.alley!

all images from The Small Stakes.

PS: If you enjoyed these, two more designers working in the same niche as Jason Munn and producing equally awesome posters are Delicious Design League and Spike Press.

why i love photography: water//eau//acqua//wasser

2010-05-21T00:28:00.002+10:00

Because three photos all on the same topic can nonetheless be:

abstract

geometric

and documentary

images from The Big Picture@Boston.com's post for World Water Day.

PS I am throwing three more in because they are just so damn beautiful and moving that I couldn't restrict myself to the initial three.

a bit of Balla

2010-05-15T12:50:00.000+10:00

Giacomo Balla, Bankruptcy, 1902

I am struggling away trying to have a draft of the first chapter of my thesis ready for Wednesday, and all I want to do is get out of the house...to the art gallery, to a cafe, more than anything else to take a walk with my camera. For now I am making do by enjoying the gentle stillness and poignancy of some pre-Futurist Giacomo Balla goodness. Isn't it exquisite? Can you belive that it was painted in 1902? It wouldn't look out of place at some trendier-than-thou Flinders Lane art gallery, methinks. Good ol' Balla.

your everafter

2010-05-06T22:37:00.002+10:00

A Love Letter For You is a project created by artist Steve Powers, entailing series of fifty sign-writing inspired murals running along a train line in Philadelphia. Ex-graffiti artist Powers began the project by putting out an open call for people's thoughts on the rewards and complexities of relationships. Now, I like to think of myself as fairly no-nonsense and unromantic, but even I can't resist the sentiment here. Plus there's all that juicy typography to boot.

Posts about the murals have been floating around the net for a while now, so apologies if you've seen this all before - frankly, given how cute the whole project is, I just couldn't resist sharing. I am feeling pretty worn out from an excessive combination of work and study at the moment, so the thought of having my morning commute pepped up by these babies is appealing to me in a very big way. Take note, Melbourne (well, I guess we do have Crateman...maybe I just need to spend more time west of the city...).

Enjoy.

between the salt and stars

2010-05-02T23:14:00.000+10:00

A few weeks ago (ie pre house-imposed-internet-silence), ABC arts covered photographer Murray Fredericks' project Salt. For a number of years, Fredericks made an annual pilgrimage to South Australia's remote, moon-like Lake Eyre. The lake is bare, and featureless, yet this very featurelessness makes it a blank canvas for the shifting colours of light throughout the course of the day and into the night. Salt is both an ongoing photographic project, and a documentary of Fredericks' time at Lake Eyre. As several reviewers point out, the resulting film becomes as much about Fredericks' emotional journey as it does about documenting the lake. Breathtaking natural beauty is juxtaposed with extreme isolation, not to mention the challenges posed by environmental conditions.

In addition to documenting the lake via still photographs, Friedricks also made several time-lapse films. Timelapse photography has always been a favourite of mine, and when you combine this with racing clouds and spiralling star streams the result is nothing short of amazing. I can't embed the snippets of time-lapse, but you can check them out via the website for the Salt documentary. Highly reccomended. At risk of sounding very lame indeed, I got that 'you-are-small-and-insignificant-punch-to-the-gut feeling from them, well and truly. And, on that note, enough of me; time to be mesmerised by Fredericks' photography. If you scroll down to the bottom I've embedded the trailer for the documentary, which is also worth investigating.

images 1-3 from Arc One gallery's website
images 4-8 from the Salt website

diversion

2010-04-28T17:32:00.000+10:00

This video from London based singer-songwriter Alessi's Ark is made up of hundreds of photographs taken on Lomography cameras. Just the nudge I needed to take my Holga out for a walk again.

Found via Meet Me at Mikes. Thanks for sharing, Pip!

Back in the world of the living

2010-04-28T15:23:00.001+10:00

Or rather, back in the world of the web. You really don't realise how much of your life is tied to the internet until circumstances take it away. Finally the net is up and running at my new house, and I can start to feel like I'm connected to the outside world again.

It's good to be back. Expect more arty/photographic goodness soon.

030910

2010-04-08T19:49:00.003+10:00

Broken Bells is a collaboration between producer Dangermaus and Shins frontman James Mercer. Given that the release date of their self-titled album also happened to be my birthday, it's really not too surprising how awesome it is. Anything that happens on the ninth of the third is clearly destined for greatness.

The High Road

Broken Bells | MySpace Music Videos

My favourite track is The Ghost Inside, but it doesn't seem to have a video released yet. You can listen to it here though. Soooo good.

The cover art Broken Bells is by the very talented Jacob Escobedo. The more ritzy, deluxe versions of with the album feature even more of his work, which is in equal parts trippy, colourful and amazing.

all images from http://jacobescobedo.com/

PS: The Broken Bells album launch? Oh, you know, just a casual rooftop laser party. I'm not jealous at all, Los Angeles.

(video found via Jacob Escobedo's website)

photographing silence: michael kenna

2010-04-08T18:50:00.001+10:00

Beautifully soft photos by American based photographer Michael Kenna. They make me want to go and shoot endless rolls of black and white film. Having a photogenic subject like New York wouldn't hurt either...

All images from Michael's website.

Meanwhile, in Melbourne...

2010-04-04T23:37:00.000+10:00

....I got to try my hand with a Canon 30D and some fuji velvia. Mmmmm, slide film. These are both from February...ooops...

Budget-girl blues

2010-04-04T23:09:00.000+10:00

Jessica Hische, Daily Drop Cap 1st Edition

image credit: Lamington Drive

flatmates and I have just signed the lease to a new house, and while I am endlessly excited about the big move, new house = new expenses = one rather battered and bruised wallet. As such I have made a few resolutions for the next few months. No more buying magazines to get me through my wait for the train. No buying clothes, unless they are ten dollars or less (ahoy, Savers!). No more going out for dinner - daytime coffee will suffice. And last but not least, no mroe buying arty things, especially seeing as I have a backlog of prints which need to be framed. It is in this spirit that I post this amazing prints by American graphic designer Jessica Hische. Jessica recently had a show at my favourite Melbourne gallery, Lamington Drive (home of my very first art-purchase). Largely based around Jessica's Daily Drop Cap project*, the show featured an entire alphabet of intrically designed letters, and additional text-based work. But my favourite things of all, the ones tempting me to break my resolution just days after it was made, were her charts of her drop-cap series, featuring the entire alphabet on one print. For now, I will post one and pretend that this is in fact the same as buying. Then in a few months, maybe, just maybe there will be a few left. Fingers crossed and i's dotted!

images from Daily Drop Cap 1st Edition from Jessica's website

*Go check it out! Jessica is offering a new drop cap a day to bloggers to use to beautify their posts.

The M & Y at the beginning of this post are, of course, from Daily Dropcap

a colourful delaying tactic

2010-04-03T16:59:00.000+11:00

I am well behind in uploading my photos. They are here, they are lovely, but do they ever take a lifetime to scan. For the meantime, obsessive compulsive me is enjoying grouping them by colour on flickr. Red, orange and blue, not to mention an excessive black and white set. Ahhhh photo-OCD....will you ever win?

speaking of leaves...

2010-04-01T20:36:00.004+11:00

Way back when I first started this blog, I posted about illustrator Christoph Neiman and his blog for the New York Times, Abstract City. His illustrations take the form of themed series, and his use of unusual materials (coffee, power cords, lego, woven paper) makes his work witty, surprising and enjoyable. This time it's with autumn leaves, in the series Biodiversity. I think the walnut is my favourite. How about you?

Art crush - Fiona Hall

2010-04-01T17:46:00.000+11:00

I first saw the work of Australian artist Fiona Hall at the NGV's Contemporary Commonwealth exhibition in 2006. Leaf Litter, from 2000 was exhibited alongside Tender, from 2003-05. Both pieces deal with the conflicted role that money plays in contemporary, multicultural society, and contrast the socialised concept of money, with natural, organic items - respectively leaves and bird nests.

Fiona Hall, Tender, 2003-2005

images from Roslyn Oxley9

Fiona Hall, Leaf Litter, 2002

images from Roslyn Oxley9

In an earlier series which I haven't seen in person, Paradisus Terestris, Hall creates intricate botanical sculptures out of sardine tins. The delicate, silvery sculptures speak of the vulnerability of plant species, and of the biodiversity present in Australia. Furthermore, the name of the series evokes themes of the garden of Eden, 'Paradise on Earth.' NB these ones are somewhat NSFW. Just a heads up.

Fiona Hall, Paradisus Terestris 1989-90

images from Roslyn Oxley9

do the words lovely and hairy ever appear together?

2010-04-01T02:12:00.001+11:00

Only when they are being used to describe the work of Evaline Tarunadjaja!

Yet again this is a post-show-post. Evaline's deliciously light and airy pen and watercolour illustrations were on show at No Vacancy gallery last month. Evaline's work is full of long limbed, mermaid-like girls with hair mere mortals can only dream of. The level of detail and the intricacy of her line work, not to mention the delicacy and sensitivity with which she uses colour, are just astounding. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

All images from Evaline's website, here. She also has a blog and online store.Moreover, if you want to read a more indepth article with her, go here.

art after the fact 1: the endless garment at RMIT gallery

2010-03-29T23:24:00.003+11:00

It appears that I am somehow unable to post my thoughts on an exhibition whilst it is still open, due to a stupendous combination of busyness, procrastination, and photo-distraction. Not only am I well overdue to write about the NGV's Ricky Swallow exhibition, but I have done the same thing with RMIT gallery's The Endless Garment: The new Craft of Machine Knitting which closed last week.

The exhibition, timed to coincide with Melbourne Fashion Week, was both a celebration and exploration of the creative possibilities created by computerised industrial knitting machines. That sentence in itself sounds a little dry, but the pieces exhibited were anything by dry. Many were deliciously colourful, some were futuristic and unusual, all were technically innovative and enjoyable to look at. Ok, so not the first thing you'd think to wear whilst snuggled up by the fire, but inspiring nonetheless.

Sandra Backlund

image credit

With a mother who teaches design, who in turn had a mother who was a dressmaker, fashion has always been vaguely on my radar. I'm not so much interested in trends or specific designers, but more in the way an individual garment has been constructed, and the ideas which are expressed in the final product. In fact one of the very first times I went to an art gallery was as a nine year old, with both mother and grandmother, to see Worth to Dior at the Auckland Art Gallery. Now let me reassure you; I don't have a freakishly good memory. Google came to my aid on that one. But I do remember sitting in the gallery with a little sketchbook, drawing all the dresses. Fifteen years later, I wonder what adult-me would think of such an exhibition. I think that gallery and museum exhibitions of fashion can run the risk of removing the garments from their social and historical context to the point that they are stripped of meaning. Furthermore, the way in which a garment moves in response to the movements of its wearer are lost unless there is some form of video display.

Dior

image credit

I think the reason the Endless Garment worked for me was that the agressively contemporary nature of the garments combatted any historicising brought about by the gallery context. This was reiterated by the exhibition of experimental works created by the SHIMA SEIKI knitting machines, and of the machines themselves (they're rather funny looking beasts). The inclusion of the machines in the display creates a focus on process rather than fashion; ideas rather than trends. Far from historicising, the exhibition acts as a taste of the future and an instigator for further design innovation.

Cooperative Design

image credit

Another thing which struck me whilst at the exhibition was that the focus on computer aided design and knitting flies in the face of commonly held ideas regarding high-end fashion and the extent to which the artisan's hand should be present in the work. This triumphing of handmade, rustic, craft-based objects is big business at the moment. One only has to try to attend an exhibition opening at Craft Victoria to understand just how big the handmade-movement is in Melbourne. I am not trying to say that I don't like handmade objects. I do! I love Craft Victoria, and I was one of the fools who crammed their way into the afforementioned opening. But I think the handmade movement has a very loud voice, and in my mind, there exists alongside that loud voice, another, quieter voice, which is saying 'Actually, a deliberate pursuit of machines and their creative possibilities is just as interesting.' This is somewhat unsurprising, given that I am writing my thesis on the biggest machine-fanboys of the twentieth century, the Futurists. I could not help but think to myself, whilst watching the SHIMA SEIKI knit away, 'Clothes made purely by machines! Marinetti would have LOVED this!' Who are you calling a fangirl? Ok, maybe just a little. My point is that there are two oppositional threads running through art, fashion, design, even architecture, and I think that both are worthwhile, and the interaction between the two is perhaps the most worthwhile thing of all. And it took an exhibition of machine knitwear to remind me of that. I say good work, RMIT gallery!

Daniel Crooks

image credits 1, 2-3

PS: For an example of the machine-is-best thread in art, check out Daniel Crooks, seen above.

PPS: photography was not allowed in the gallery, so I don't have any images of the installation of the exhibition, but there are some good photos of it here.

diagonal lines and graphic design: rodchenko part 2

2010-03-25T21:22:00.001+11:00

Stairs//Young Pioneer

image credit: Artadox

“I want to take some quite incredible photographs that have never been taken before… pictures which are simple and complex at the same time, which will amaze and overwhelm people... I must achieve this so that photography can begin to be considered a form of art.”

-- Alexander Rodchenko's diary, March 14, 1934

[from Artadox]

Rodchenko's talents are not restricted to the photo-montages I posted about earlier in the month. No, that wouldn't be enough. The prodigious Russian artist was also a master photographer and graphic designer. I love his command of composition, his use of strong diagonals, almost to the point of geometric abstraction in a few of the photographs shown below. I could say more, but really, I think the work speaks for itself.

Part A: Photography

image credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,

Part B: Graphic Design

image credits: 1-3, 4

More goodness at Third Drawer Down: the green thumb edition

2010-03-23T22:11:00.002+11:00

Postcarden City, by Aimée Furnival

An equation for you: Postcard + garden = POSTCARDEN. Alterntively, a slightly simpler one: Third Drawer Down = AWESOME.

Not only do Third Drawer Down stock Melbourne's favourite limited edition, artist-designed teatowels and pillowcases, they also source arty, well designed goodness from all over the globe. Exhibit a: Vik Vidor's brilliant art print that I posted about earlier this month. Exhibit b: Postcarden, produced by Aimée Furnival of London's A Design Studio.

Postcarden is a creative combination of greeting and gift -- a pop up card that transforms into a mini garden. Each card comes with an inner growing tray, a packet of cress seeds and growing instructions. Frankly, I don't even posess a green fingernail, let alone a green thumb, but I think even I could manage to avoid killing cress. Plus I think it makes a great idea for city apartment dwellers who often have very little in the way of real, live green-ness around the house.

Third Drawer Down only stock City, but there are in fact two more Postcardens: Allotment and Botanical. Making things even cooler, the exterior of the cards feature the work of up and coming illustrators Millie Harvey (City), Krista Nyberg (Botanical) and Sophie Burdess (Allotment). Sadly, there is little to no information online about Aimée Furnival herself, but I imagine the person behind such a clever idea has many more projects in the pipeline.

1-3 Postcarden City

4-6 Postcarden Allotment

7-9 Postcarden Botanical

all images via www.postcarden.com

EDIT: I just found a cute video of the Allotment Postgarden on the rather amazing blog, That [Unreliable] Girl, AND as it turns out it was added to YouTube by none other than Postcarden designer Aimee Furnival. Enjoy.

even Holga gets the blues

2010-03-23T21:31:00.000+11:00

These are all from the final roll of Holga snaps I took in WA back in January. I wasn't particularly trying to shoot blues, but I do like how these look all lined up. Things have been a little busy of late, which is why I've been a little slow on the blog/photo front. But with my Nikon point n shoot fixed, and four rolls of film ready to print after a weekend away in Heathcote, something tells me I won't be quiet for too long.

that ol' stitchy feeling

2010-03-17T02:26:00.001+11:00

As before, these were made using free software from DIPSTYCH. Full set here.

Boccioni in a box

2010-03-12T00:19:00.001+11:00

No, really. Oh and by the way, how delicious does the narrator's pronunciation of the Italian names sound?

UMBERTO BOCCIONI - THE LIFE OF THE ARTIST EXPLAINED BY BOXES from MARGODESIGN on Vimeo.

a crash course in art history...

2010-03-10T22:43:00.000+11:00

...thanks to French-American band, Hold Your Horses! and their music video for the song 70 Million.

When I first read posts about this the cynic in me sneered a bit (and I'm sure there are a fair few arty farty purists who this clip will annoy in the extreme), but I bit the bullet and watched it, and oh boy am I ever glad I did. I am an art nerd, so to me art, though it is often to be taken seriously, can still equal fun, and not for a long time have I seen such a cute, giggle-inducing music video.

Normally I would just embed the video, but there are so many awesome and hillarious art-references in it (there is just something so SILLY about seeing Caravaggio's beheaded John the Baptist and David's dying Marat singing indie tunes) that you get screen grabs PLUS the video. Enjoy.

Found via The Debonaire and eternallycool.net

PS: Brownie points to whoever can identify each of the nine the famous paintings featured here.

One week; three cameras. Part three: PENTAX, baby

2010-03-08T22:28:00.002+11:00

Yes, that's right, three cameras. Digital, holga, and lastly, a clunky old Pentax MZ50 which I'd been loaned in the hopes that I could somehow magically diagnose and fix merely by shooting a few rolls of film with it. Well, given that I'd never used an SLR camera before, let alone this specific one, I am given little warm fuzzies every time I look at the prints from those rolls of film. Very pleased indeed. Unfortunately, proving the camera isn't in fact broken meant the original owner wanted it back, leaving me scouring ebay for MZ50s to no avail. Soon, little Pentax, soon you will be mine...

Brick by brick

2010-03-08T22:12:00.000+11:00

Ascending and Descending, Lego style, by Andrew Lipson

Oh yes, M.C. Escher, in the form of hundreds and thousands of plastic bricks. The ultimate in obsessive compulsive, nerdy goodness. Lipson provides detailed progress shots on his website, so you can figure out how the mind bending constructions actually work.

Montage via over the next and on the table.

Images, from top: Ascending & Descending, Relativity, Belvedere, Waterfall, Balcony

PWNED BY ART

2010-03-06T20:49:00.001+11:00

image from third drawer down's online store

I'd spotted this poster by Parisian-based artist Vuk Vidor online in a few places, and then, after picking up my Risographica prints from Lamington Drive gallery last weekend, I wandered into the seriously awesome Third Drawer Down only to see it in all its framed, lifesize glory, oh-so-close and yet still out of my pricerange. Maybe a completed-thesis present to self, somewhere down the track...?

NB: Someone commented on one of the design blogs that this was featured on, that the poster is "the ultimate expression of retarded name dropping"...somthing tells me they just don't get it. Vidor is making fun of the very idea of name dropping, rather than indulging in it himself. Homage, yes, but probably the most fun and light hearted homage I've seen in a long time. The only issue that I do have with it is the lack of female artists on the list. Yet the more I think about this I am left wondering whether this is an omission on Vidor's part, or just an inherent flaw in twentieth century western art history.

images via art milk

in two parts - sydney style

2010-03-04T17:08:00.004+11:00

the supporting structure, randwick, from 52 suburbs

Sydney photographer Louise Hawson is on a mission: To nose around one new suburb every week for a year, in search of the beauty in the 'burb. Beauty in this case meaning old, original, retro, rusty, repurposed, nostalgic...

Louise has spent the last seven or so months doing just that - finding beauty in unexpected places, and capturing the essence of each suburb. A weekly post on her blog 52 Suburbs documents her findings. Reoccuring themes include the diverse cultural makeup of each respective suburb, a plethora of architectural styles, and an eye popping dose of colour and patterns. Moreover, Louise makes clever use of the diptych format, pairing people and architecture, manmade and natural in a way that adds further meaning, gravity and humor to her already fantastic images.

Louise is now up to her 25th suburb, and let me tell you, the hardest thing about putting together this post was choosing a shortlist of images to include. As I rummaged through her archives, more and more beautiful photos jumped out at me. So, if like me, you find yourself captivated by the few images I've put together here, GO GO GO. Have a read of her recent posts, have a read of her archives. They are truly magnificent, and will make even the most observant of us (this means me!) feel like we have been walking around with blinkers on. Inspiration overload, and a reminder that you don't need to travel overseas to find beauty. It's right around the corner, in that suburb you speed through on the train to get to work, in the people that call it home.

PS: Louise posts on Mondays. As far as I'm concerned, poring through a set of her images is a lovely way to start the week. Also, a 52 suburbs book is in the works. Doesn't it give you a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling when you see an awesome creative project taking flight? I'll certainly be heading to the bookshop, wallet in hand. If you can't wait for the book, and simply must have some 52 suburbs goodness in your hot little hand, Louise also has an etsy shop where she sells postcards featuring images from 52 suburbs. Lastly, a more in-depth interview about 52 suburbs can be found on the blog of interior design magazine Inside Out.

1. a seagull's worst nightmare, Brighton-Le-Sands

2. similar vintage, Glebe

3. heavenly light, Ingleside

4. ballet pink, Randwick

5. wallpaper and tiles, Randwick

6. bright sparks, Wahroonga

7. are my seams straight?, Wahroonga

8. pretty flash, Wahroonga

9. rose and hankie, Randwick

10. hands on hips, Randwick

11. stairway to heaven, Brighton-Le-Sands

12. everyone's welcome, Randwick

13. i see a bridge in your shoes, Glebe

14. fly free, Clovelly

15. patterns and colours, Cabramatta

16. daily coffee, Liverpool

17. love letters, Randwick

18. light is everything, Surry Hills
(click on the suburb to explore the rest of the post)

HOLY CRAFT KNIVES, Batman!

2010-03-03T23:51:00.002+11:00

So, you know how I keep posting paper-cut art and saying things like "If only I had such patience..." or, "If only I was that skilled with the stanley knife..."? Well, I think this one takes the cake. Twenty hours of cutting transcribed into two minutes. The finished product? A papercut map based on the cultural identity of New York. Let's all heave a big "If only..." sigh, and be glad that someone out there is talended and fiddly enough to work such magic.

PS. Even more pain-inducing is the fact that the artists responsible for this papercut, Famille Summerbelle, are selling prints of their three city-map papercuts (New York, Paris and London). Meels-wants, bigtime. Yeouch.

via Black Eiffel.

ghost city: eugene atget's paris

2010-03-03T23:39:00.001+11:00

image via

As mentioned in an earlier post, the BBC series The Genius of Photography led me to the work of Eugene Atget: a French photographer, documenting a rapidly disappearing side of Paris in the late nineteenth century. Entire neighbourhoods which took their shape from the narrow, medieval roads, were reformed in the wake of Baron Haussmann's renovations of Paris. Atget was elderly when he was taking his series of images of Paris, and persisted with dated cameras and methods, despite advances that had been made in photographic technology. Stubborn, talented, and fascinating - all the right things to be. Moreover, Atget is interesting in relation to his influence on the surrealists. Like archaeologists, they credited themselves with 'discovering' the aging photographer, and they treated his photographs as 'found images' - historical images became a source of the uncanny and unexpected. Looking at Atget's photographs provides not only an education in formalism, but also a journey back in time.

image credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

The Bernini Effect

2010-03-03T02:29:00.001+11:00

Last year, whilst in Italy, I had the priviledge of seeing two of Baroque sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini's masterworks: The Rape of Proserpine, and Apollo and Daphne at the Villa Borghese in Rome. Previous to this encouner, whilst I had studied sculpture, it had never really struck me as something overwhelming or inspiring, didn't move me in the way painting and photography did. Largely because my main exposure to sculpture was via a slide projector in a lecture hall, and frankly, when this is the mode of viewing, poor old sculpture just doesn't stand a chance. In hindsight, this seems like a poor excuse -- after all, slides or no, I have plenty of opportunity to see contemporary Australian sculpture in the flesh -- but prior to standing before Bernini's marble virtuosities, completely overwhelmed, I really wouldn't have been in the right frame of mind to appreciate it.

Let's backtrack a bit. Why Bernini, why so overwhelmed? Well, for starters, over the course of my month in Rome, my fellow students and I came to learn that one Gian Lorenzo Bernini was The Man as far as Baroque sculpture is concerned. During the Renaissance, sculpture was largely concieved as something static, to be viewed from a fixed point. Flemish sculptor Giambologna began to challenge this static notion of sculpture, with works such as The Rape of the Sabine Women being characterised by intertwined figures and a sense of dynamic movement. Bernini takes Giamobologna's initial advances and perfects them, and with Apollo and Daphne and The Rape of Proserpine there is most certainly not a fixed viewing point, but rather the sense that from every angle, a new aspect of the narrative is conveyed. Moreover, at every angle, the marble seems to take on a different character. Pluto's fingers stab into Proserpine's thigh, making deep indents. Her leg looks fleshy and soft, as if it would wobble when touched. At the other side of the statue, Pluto's leg is entirely different - an epotiome of chiseled musculature. As we move around, our focus shifts from Pluto's sheer masculine power, to Proserpine's sheer terror. Her toes are curled and a tiny tear winds its way down her cheek.

So there you have the starting point for my blossoming relationship with sculpture. Fast forward to June 2009 when I was back in New Zealand. Left in my hometown on a weekday with my friends and family all either at work or school, where else did I go but to the Auckland Art Gallery. At present, the gallery is in the middle of a multi milion dollar renovation and extension, and as such only the "New Gallery" across the road from the older, main gallery is open. Disorganised as I was, I arrived not even knowing what exhibitions were showing, and was pleasantly surprised to find an entire floor dedicated to an exhibition of the gallery's recent acquisitions. Whilst all the works on display were fantastic in their own right, my clear favourite was in the very last room, and in fact had the entire room to itself. Michael Parekowhai's The Song of the Frog is massive, dominating the entire room. It is hard to capture its impact in words: essentially it is a giant fibreglass ballerina, lying prone on the gallery floor. But a closer look reveals that despite her Barbie-like pink legs, the ballerina's face and hands are brown. This, coupled with Parekowhai's use of fibreglass and automotive paint, gives a starting point for exploring the undercurrent of satire and social commentary contained in his work.

So, Bernini, then Parekowhai, and I still have yet to mention the artist who has inspired all this sculpture related verbosity: Ricky Swallow. That's right, I managed to see his show four times but somehow missed posting about it until the damn thing had finished. And given how wordy I have been about Bernini and Parekowhai, I'm not even going to tell you anything about Swallow right now - that will have to come tomorrow, as The Bernini Effect part two. You see Ricky Swallow's NGV show was so awesome that a rushed description at the bottom of a mammoth post will just not do it justice. Oh no, it deserves verbosity all to itself. Stay tuned.

Gianlorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne from here and here

Gianlorenzo Bernini, The Rape of Proserpine from here and here

Michael Parekohwai, Song of the Frog taken by me

Michael Parekohwai, Horn of Africa from here

Michael Parekohwai, Kapahaka from here

still in Eastern Europe...

2010-03-02T00:17:00.003+11:00

...this time with Russian artist Alexander Rodchenko. I studied Rodchenko many years ago at high school, but only in the context of constructivism. It wasn't until I watched an episode of BBC series, The Genius of Photography that I learnt that he is as much a photographer as he is a sculptor. And not just any photographer, either. Rodchenko worked to create photographic propaganda and collages for the Bolshevik government during the 1920s. Effectively, he wrote the book on Soviet photomontage.

Sadly, these small and somewhat grainy images were all I could find online of the work Rodchenko did for Soviet propaganda magazine USSR in Construction. Moreover, the tactile nature of the magazine and the way the pages are designed to fold out to show more photographs are both lost in a visual reproduction. My best advice would be to watch the BBC docco itself. Other gems (which may well warrant a post themselves) include Eugene Atget's chronicling of the disappearing medieval streets of Paris, and August Sander's catalogue of all the people of pre-Nazi Germany.

images via

boris mikhailov and the blue hour

2010-03-01T01:11:00.004+11:00

Yes, I am at it again with the blue photography, but these are not cyanotypes; they are tinted photographs. In the series, At Dusk, Ukranian photographer Boris Mikhailov recorded his homeland at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. To use a word that has been irrevocably altered by one teen fiction series, it is twilight photography - both literally and metaphorically, for Mikhailov is shooting a sociey in transition in what is effectively at the sundown of an entire political era.

image 1 from the Guardian, images 2-8 via the Victoria and Albert museum

Somewhere over the proverbial...

2010-03-01T00:48:00.001+11:00

Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka's Rainbow Church will be installed at the MUSEUM.beyond museum in Seoul later this year. Given that it is all in Korean, the museum's site is rather tricky to navigate, so the best source of information is Yoshioka's personal site. He describes his inspiration for the Rainbow Church thus:

"I visited the Chapelle du Rosaire, which Henri Matisse, a French painter, created in his last years. I was engrossed in the beauty of the light that the chapel created. I experienced a space filled with the light of Matisse: being bathed in the sunlight of Provence, the stained glass with Matisse's vibrant colours suffused the room. Since then, I had been dreaming of designing an architecture where people can feel the light with all senses."

The Rainbow Church will centre around an eight metre high class panel made up of 500 prisms, fragmenting the light which filters through the pane into fingers of colour. A-mazing. Now, if only I could find some concrete information on the museum!

Image credit: Tokujin Yoshioka's site, via dezeen and cubeme

NB: Design magazine DEZEEN has an entire section devoted to Yoshioka's other projects. Well worth a look.

Riding the paper-cut train...

2010-02-22T00:13:00.001+11:00

A video for the New Zealand Book Council produced by Kiwi advertising agency Colenso BBDO and animated by English design duo Andersen M Studio. At first I was sad to see that the animation work hadn't gone to someone from NZ, but in hindsight, I really like what Andersen M Studio have done, and it's enough to hear that Kiwi accent reading Maurice Gee (Halfmen of O, anyone?).

Image credit: designboom.
Video found via amalia chimera (who takes some pretty amazing polaroids, by the way).

Venitian Wanderlust

2010-02-21T00:20:00.002+11:00

From the Feet to the Brain, Jan Fabre

Christian Sinibaldi shoots the 2009 Venice Biennale for the British periodical the Guardian.

1. Threshold, Ivan Navarro; Chilean pavilion

2. Black Holes, Anatoly Shuravlev; Russian pavillion

3. Domino: The Small Knowing Down the Big, Qiu Zhijie

4. Rain Theorem, Alexei Kallima (this photo, Alberto Pizzoli)

5. Orbite Rosse, Grazia Toderi (this photo, Alberto Pizzoli)

One week; three cameras. Part Two: Holga!

2010-02-18T23:28:00.008+11:00

Continuing the theme of COLOUR! in! excessive! doses!, this is the second installment of my photos from last month's trip to Perth. These were all taken on my trusty little Holga, aka the world's chunkiest, cutest, most crowd-pleasing little lo-fi camera. Ahhh, Holga. You make everyone happy.

NB: Perth pics from the other two of the three: my digital camera and Pentax slr.

Crystals and lasers and colour, oh my!

2010-02-18T23:08:00.002+11:00

1-2.from Crystals & Lasers, Paris, Feb-March 2010
3. from Parallel Universe, Brazil, June-July 2009

MWM Graphics aka Matt W Moore, discovered via the ever-inspiring my love for you is a stampede of horses. All I can say is wow wow wow. Go look. Scroll down. Look at everything. It is all fantastic. I especially like, at the bottom of each page, the sets of inspiration-pics, taken on Matt's iphone. Interesting because it gives an insight as to how the things artists encounter in a given place set the direction of the art they produce while they are there.

4-7. from Crystals & Lasers

Meels-wants...

2010-02-18T21:47:00.001+11:00

... to 'snap up' this scarf, from Ann Moore. Oh, how puntastic am I?

Here in Melbourne, stores are bringing out their autumn winter ranger, while the temperatures are still in the mid twenties and even the low thirties. Madness. Nonetheless, if I know Melbourne, autumn will sneak up on us mighty fast. And when it does, I want to be wearing one of these cute little scarves.

Naughty me, I can't remember where I first linked to this from. Hopefully the net-fairies will forgive me.

Femme Fatale

2010-02-18T20:20:00.000+11:00

Image credit: Roadside Scholar

I first noticed Thomas Allen's book, Uncovered, about a year ago, but given that I was unemployed at the time, I had to make do with a mental note rather than an impulse buy. My mental note failed me, and I'd all but forgotten about Allen's incredible paper-cut photography until I stumbled across his work whilst hop skip jumping around the net last week. I love all things vintage, including found imagery, so it isn't surprising that his work appeals to me. Moreover, I like the idea of a photo of an illustration on a meta-imagery level -- it subverts the notion that a photograph is somehow more true than a painting or drawing, and allows the illustration to live in a 3D world. I guess at a fundamental level, the little kid inside me just likes the idea of a drawing coming to life, even if it is a drawing of a dangerous broad with murder in her eye.

I particularly like these shots from Allen's website, showing his work in progress:

If you think that's awesome, just wait til you see the finished works:

Image credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

One week; three cameras. Part One: digital

2010-02-17T23:11:00.002+11:00

Yes, that's right, I took not one, not two, but three cameras with my on my holiday to Perth. In my defense, the third - and the largest of the three - was loaned to me in the hopes that I could, through using it, diagnose why its owner had managed to shoot an entire roll of photos with a black haze over them. Ten seconds on Google and a PDF manual later, I had indeed diagnosed the problem, and the Pentax MZ-50 and I got along swimmingly. These shots however, are from my little Nikon digital camera, which at present is not getting along with me well at all. Allegedly it has been suffering from a lens error ever since I got back from Rottnest Island. I am in somewhat of a state of denial about said failure, and am hoping that little Nikon will get its groove back of its own accord. Meanwhile, I am snapping away on film cameras, and thanking my lucky stars that I had the extreme foresight to take multiple cameras on holiday. Ha!

Hat Trick

2010-02-17T02:36:00.003+11:00

Great music + stop motion animation + an abandoned house = everything I love, all at once. I think LA band Local Natives just became my new favourite.

Because art is good for you

2010-02-12T20:18:00.002+11:00

Dear reader,

Are you there, or am I talking to myself? If you are, is your 'there' Melbourne? If so, get yourself to Lamington Drive gallery, pronto. Opened last Thursday, their current exhibition, Risographica! features over thirty bright and beautful two-colour risographic prints. The artists all come from the stable of the Jacky Winter Group, a Melbourne-based agency set up to represent and promote Australian illustration. As JW states it on their website, their aim is to "...connect a diverse range of Australia's finest contemporary illustrators with a broad international and local client base." With prints running to an edition of only ten, and selling for the super cheap price of $50, to say the show is sure to sell out is the understatement of the month. I particularly like that Lamington Drive is making art assessible to a wider audience rather than just trying to profit of high end pieces. It is art, done democratically, with many a good vibe to boot -- part of the proceeds from the sales of the prints go to Medecins Sans Frontiers. As if I needed any further encouragement to buy one! The difficulties on the night were a) navigating the clinging Mebourne humidity through the heaving opening night crowd, and b) trying to whittle down the "I-want" list. I managed to finally get it down to one (though I was sorely tempted by Matt Huynh's Matador): Stolon by Dylan Martorell, as seen above. Technically, it's my first ever real-art purchase, and all I can say is its making me wicked excited for the collecting journey ahead.

My shortlist can be seen below:

1. Matt Huynh, Matador

2. Beco Orpin, Follows Night

3. Clements Habicht, Hens

4. Rik Lee, Whoop Arse

All images from Lamington Drive's Risographica! catalogue, which is available for download here.

belated//beloved

2010-02-05T21:47:00.001+11:00

This is far from a recent Holga - it dates from early November 2009 when I braved the running lane alongside the Yarra, armed with not just one but two cameras. I'm sure all the fit and sweaty types thought I was an absolute nutter, but it was worth it all for this, which I think may just be my all time favourite Holga photo:

Got the New York blues

2010-02-05T01:35:00.002+11:00

Being more than a little interested in historical photographic processes, I have to admit that I am completely enamoured with cyanotypes. I want to own one for myself very badly. So when I found a set of beautiful blue images on the New York Public Library's flickr stream, I swooned, and then swooned some more. Anna Atkins' Cyanotypes of British Algae is not only beautiful, but also represents two important steps in the history of photography: it is the first published work by a female photographer, and moreover it is the first book produced entirely by photographic means. Even the title page is a jewel-like blue. Whoever knew algae could be so photogenic?

New York Library's flickr stream found via Swiss Miss.

Cut and paste

2010-02-03T13:14:00.000+11:00

Anthony Zinonos, I love colour collections too! Actually for that matter, I love all your work. If only I could have such patience with the scisors/stanley knife. One day.

Anthony found via Black Eiffel, all images from his website/flickr.

Fragile, handle with care

2010-02-03T12:47:00.000+11:00

Vietnamese born, American based artist Diem Chau turns everyday objects like crayons and crockery into art which is in equal parts delicate, quirky and surprising. I still can't get my head around how she manages to get the thread through (on top of?) the china, but I guess not knowing is just part of the magic.

Images 1 & 2 from Diem's website; images 3-5 from all the mountains

Trash and treasure

2010-02-01T22:34:00.001+11:00

Snaps from a hot and hectic morning at the Rotary Markets, Camberwell. I think my favourite is the one of the Incredible Hulk, furious to have been left in such un-Hulk-like surroundings, yet powerless to escape.

Paul Barbera // Nicholas Jones

2010-01-29T12:08:00.003+11:00

Featured on Melbourne favourite The Design Files this week was the photography of Paul Barbera, specifically a set of images from the studios of 3 Deep Design. The images come from a series entitled 'Where they Create,' which documents the working spaces of artists and creative businesses in Australia and internationally. As is to be expected of a design firm, 3 Deep work in a truly inspirational space (complete with a custom mural on the ceilng, hello!), but what really caught my eye was a link to a set of photos Paul had taken at the studios of Melbourne based sculptor, Nicholas Jones.

Nicholas works with books, and produces the most amazing, intricate objects, both by folding the pages to create new shapes, and by cutting and contouring back entire tops and sides of books to create new shapes. I first saw his work at the This is Not a Design Market which was run as part of Melbourne's Design Festival mid last year. Still being a poor student at the time, I had quite deliberately rocked up to the market with an empty wallet, and was left quite sad that I couldn't take one of Nicholas' creations home with me. Ever since then, his name keeps popping up - on blogs, in the paper, at Craft Victoria - as if the universe is trying to remind me of my foolishness. One day, I will have to make on of his book-sculptures mine, but until then, Paul Barbera's photos of his studio will have to do.

All images, Paul Barbera

All things bright and beautiful

2010-01-29T12:08:00.000+11:00

Presently enjoying the eyepopping colour and tumultuous composition of the work from German illustrator Olaf Hajek's monograph Flowerhead.

Via my love for you

This is why I get no sleep...

2010-01-29T01:35:00.003+11:00

chair2 by ~KIM~ on flickr

...Because I discover things like the Polaroid House, on places like flickr, and find them so endlessly fascinating that I spend hours trawling through hundreds of photos, wishing I was cool enough to come up with such fantastic ideas, or, failing that, lucky enough to witness such brilliance in person. Sadly, this is not to be, as is made all too clear by the title of the Polaroid House's flickr pool, 'RIP Polaroid House'.

The Polaroid House is the brainchild of American flickr member, Kim, who found an abandoned house an hour north of California back in 2008. In an interview on www.holgablog.com, she says

"...it really struck something inside me and i knew i would be back. it was so quaint, representing a bygone era in its craftsman styling. the decay of the house and the decay of that era..."

Kim and her friends returned to the house armed with hundreds of polaroids, and covered both the walls and floors with them. A think carpet of photographs, and a polaroid wall ready to be replenished and reworked by future visitors. And they came in their droves, if the sheer number of photos in the flickr pool is anything to attest by. Unfortunately, some visitors failed to respect (or understand?) the nature of the project, and large numbers of polaroids were taken, holes were kicked in the walls. In April 2009, the owner of the house contacted Kim, stating that whilst she had understood and appreciated the installation at first, she was disappointed by the fact that the house was being trashed. The Polaroid House was dismantled, only to live on in the hundreds of photos collected on flickr. And to be endlessly oggled at by one girl on the other side of the world, long past her bedtime.

1 from leah | ohheygreat

2 from Gotfish / Marc Briggs

3, 4, 5 from ~Kim~

6 from Gotfish / Marc Briggs

7 from J-Easy

8 from iFaMusicNerdEntOgrapher

9 from boxbabe86

10 from ~Kim~

Hanging out with Susan and John

2010-01-22T19:43:00.001+11:00

Magritte, La Clef des Songes, 1930. Reproduced on the cover of Ways of Seeing.

On my reading list this summer: On Photography by Susan Sontag and Ways of Seeing by John Berger. They belong to the list of iconic art history texts that I have always felt guilty about failing to read. Well, guilty no more: I can happily move them from my 'to read' to my 'done and dusted' booklist. Some of my favourite snippets:

Through photographs, the world becomes a series of unrelated, freestanding particles; and history, past and present, a set of anecdotes and faits divers. The camera makes reality atomic, manageable, and opaque.

-- Susan Sontag, On Photography chapter one, In Plato's Cave

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug a camera.

-- Lewis Hine, On Photography, anthology of quotations

Photography is a system of visual editing...Like chess or writing, it is a matter of choosing from among given possibilties, but in the case of photography the number of possibilities is not finite but infinite.

-- John Szarkowski, On Photography, anthology of quotations

Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognises before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the world.

-- John Berger, Ways of Seeing

The way we see things is affected by what we believe... when an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions about art.

-- John Berger, Ways of Seeing

The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purposes.

-- John Berger, Ways of Seeing

A longtime crush

2010-01-22T18:44:00.001+11:00

The XX first fluttered by me in about November, and since then, I have been unable to get them out of my head, unable to stop crushing on the sweet airiness of their songs. On the one hand I am scared of killing them through overplaying, but on the other, there is almost nothing that calms me quite like Islands. Magical.

Oh Wooster Collective...

2010-01-22T14:49:00.000+11:00

...why oh why did I abandon you for so long? Fool.

1. Anonymous letterbox man

2. SUSO33 in Madrid

3. From the "Mattress" series, Brian Hunter

All images from Wooster Collective.

A belated goodbye to 2009

2010-01-20T23:14:00.001+11:00

December was a very full month indeed. Staking out street art (these two by Miso), a day trip to Daylesford to reunite with some Rome-ey faces, a work christmas party complete with dad-jokes, an encounter with Mr Bond at Armadale station, and to cap it all of, a Day of the Dead themed New Year's Eve party, with discoball, smoke machine, multiple pinatas and a late night swim. Is it any wonder it's taken me so long to get around to putting these up? Ahhh December, will you ever cease to delight and exhaust me? No, most likely not.

More from the motherland: Laurence Aberhart

2010-01-12T13:51:00.001+11:00

So, 2009 was supposed to be my 'Year of the Photo.' Over it may be, but that certainly doesn't mean the obsession with photography has come to an end. If anything, it's only growing. These works from Kiwi photographer Laurence Aberhardt make me
a) itch with the desire to learn darkroom developing
b) homesick for the quiet, sunbaked spaces of Northland (the buildings depicted are all Maori churches)
c) appreciate yet again, the skill with which photographers wield inherent geometry to create pleasing compositions.

Another key to why I like Aberhart so much can be found in his subject matter: Maori churches. Despite their quiet stillness, the churches also occupy a difficult (even fraught?) territory in that they are a strange fusion of Maori and Western culture. He who says 'look at the awful missionaries, forcing their faith on the maori' forgets that the Maori were active participants in cultural exchange at the time of settlement, and that the Ratana church arose from Maori taking elements of Western religion which they approved of and melding them with pre-existing tribal religion. To stand in a Maori church is to stand at the borderline of multiculturalism, Aberhart treads this borderline with delicay, and the result is the poignant beauty seen above. In an article by Dutch curator Marja Bloem, Aberhart is quoted as saying that he is "an eclectic collector of cultural debris, as it washes up, and before it disappears." I think the debris he collects is very breathtaking indeed.

Another like

2010-01-05T00:37:00.001+11:00

My mum tells me they are awfully uninteresting, but despite this, I have a bit of a thing for photos of people looking at art. They way everyone interacts with paintings differently, the way small details are noticed, examined, the way a large scale sculpture or installation can enter and alter a spectator's personal space. I only realised just how much I liked the people-looking-at-art shot several years after making my way around the Louvre and Museé d'Orsay, but lucky for me, the talented Jen Gotch of my polaroid blog has some dreamy, light-filled shots of the Louvre. Meanwhile, I will make do with the (somewhat gloomy) NGV. Tant pis.

1, 2, 3, 4 from Jen Gotch's flickr set, april in paris.

5. John Brack at NGV Australia

6. The Satirical Eye at NGV International

7. 'The Italian Room,' NGV International

8. Bugatti Family at NGV International

9. Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller at ACMI

I like these very much...

2010-01-04T22:58:00.001+11:00

AKA I am both slack, and epically busy with work, and I apologise for not posting for such along time. Can I make up for said slackness with beautiful underwater photos by Bahama-based photogapher Elena Kalis? I sure hope so.

More underwater gloriousness here.

In two parts

2009-12-10T01:06:00.002+11:00

I have been seeing photo diptyches around the webs for a while now and ached with jealousy, because what with no photoshop, I figured they were out of my league. Sydneysider Louise Hawson's brilliant 52 Suburbs in particular makes me bristle with inspiration/envy - and awesome as it is, it deserves a whole post to itself, so stay posted - so this evening I decided to try my luck with free software. Surely there would be something out there?

After being flumoxed by flickr, and wandering about on google, I finally found Dipstych, a free application available here. It took all ten seconds to download and is pleasingly easy to use - essentially you just open the two (or three, or more) images you want to appear together, chose which will be on the right and which on the left, and hey presto, a new file, in diptych form. At the end of the day, I will have to eventually bite the bullet and buy photoshop, but Dipstych will keep me plenty occupied in the meantime (EDIT: A set of 80-plus diptyches on flickr has confirmed this).

November light

2009-12-09T00:15:00.001+11:00

Ah Xian

2009-12-02T01:17:00.000+11:00

I first saw Ah Xian's beautiful and intricate busts at the National Gallery of Victoria for 2006's Contemporary Commonwealth exhibition. But, fool that I am, I promptly forgot all about them. Fast forward to 2009, and Ah Xian has won the Clemenger Contemporary art prize, and I feel vindicated for falling so madly in love with the busts I saw way back when, and eternally foolish for forgetting about something so striking. Usually Xian works in traditional Chinese materials such as jade, or shiny white porcelian painted with archetypal willow pattern designs. The series of sculpted busts featured in the Clemenger exhibition present a break with these traditional materials -- they are cast from concrete, which gives them a pale, matte finish. Despite the heaviness of the material, they retain an aura of delicacy, not least because each cast has been 'texturised,' so to speak, with inprints of leaves and flowers. Each bust is different, both in regards to the original head it has been cast from, and in regards to the design element, yet they are united by the ghostly beige of the concrete. As such, the installation continues a theme prevalent in Xian's earlier work -- that of cultural identity -- whilst also incorporating themes of alienation and dislocation. A worthy winner indeed.

A Man of Many Talents

2009-12-02T00:54:00.001+11:00

Image credit: Fecal Face 2008 interview with Alex Lucas. More recent interview here.

So while I was posting my photos of the oil refinery, wondering if I was alone in my love of grimy industrial suburbia, the internet Powers that be decided to make it clear to me just what a silly question that was. I was browsing my love for you is a stampede of horses, where I happened across a post on Alex Lukas. The post describes Lukas as a boy-wonder, and after checking out his portfolio site, I heartily agree. Lukas' most recent works -- he calls them "disaster drawings" -- feature cities flooded with water or swallowed up by trees, but seeing as I had western suburbs waste on my mind at the time, it was his depictions of industrial detritus that struck me the most. I like the quiet stillness and the delicacy of the colours despite the grimy subject matter, and the luminosity of the skies. I like that whilst they initially appear to be watercolours, a closer inspection (and a read of Lucas' comments regarding his working method), they are revealed to be a skillful combination of silkscreen printing, watercolous, gouache, spray paint, and sometimes collage. Wowsers. A happy and serendipitous discovery if ever there was one.

Image credit: Lucas' website.

Oh yeah, and as if he isn't talented (and busy!) enough already, did I forget to mention that Lucas also publishes numerous zines through his publishing house, Cantab Publishing? Is there anything this guy can't do?

Image credit: Fecal Face

Meanwhile take 3: way out west

2009-11-21T18:04:00.002+11:00

A month or so ago, Corinne and I went on a photo-excursion to Melbourne's western suburbs, searching for gritty, industrial goodness. The oil refinery at Altona was only too happy to oblige, not to mention the interesting bits and bobs dumped down the road from it (I'm kind of in love with the way this couch looks like it has a face). The rain rolled in and we headed to Williamstown for coffee and shelter, only to bravely (and foolishly?) venture out onto the pier, umbrella at the ready. Another friend, after looking at this set said "I love your photos, but they make want to keep the hell out of the west." I guess not everyone goes gaga when they see broken down industrial buildings and decomposing couches left out to the elements, but whenever I need a jolt of photographic inspiration, I know where I'll be heading!

Santa, are you listening?

2009-11-21T17:51:00.001+11:00

To think that I was feeling glum over missing out on a Pentax Spotmatic on eBay...the $100 or so that I didn't spend on the Spotmatic is small change next to this puppy:

That's right, Leica has collaborated with French luxury accessory house Hermes to create the most expensive, droolworthy camera around. The limited edition M7 is clad in leather, either in camel brown, or the signature Hermes orange. Only 100 of each colourway have been made, but something tells me they will be snapped up quicksmart, even with a (HEFTY) pricetag of €7000. Take a deep breath, and read that again. Yep, that's 140 Spotmatics. Doesn't make it any less fantastic or desirable. I guess we can all dream.

PS: Don't you just love the nonchalant way this guy is carrying the camera BEHIND him, completely at the mercy of ye olde pickpocket?

[Via Limited Hype.]

Meanwhile post #2: art-o-matic

2009-11-21T17:01:00.002+11:00

These photos come from serveral weekends' worth of wandering and looking; evidently my August and September were very art-filled indeed.

From the top:

1. Looking up, Hosier Lane

2 - 4. Tacita Dean at ACCA (a well-written review, plus some more photos here)

5. Mystery art at Curtin House

6. Zizi and the zig zags, off Hosier Lane

7. Colours and shapes, Smith Street

8. Spring showers on Swanston Street

9. Tai Snaith's studio at the Nicholas Building Open Studios night

10. Flatland by Tim Fleming, Nicholas Building

11. Detail of Clare Whitney's studio, Nicholas Building

12. The Nicholas Building has had some interesting former residents

13. Keith Haring mural on Johnston Street