Riding the paper-cut train...

 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

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!

 

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!

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...

... 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

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

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

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

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.