A belated goodbye to 2009

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

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

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...

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

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

Ah Xian

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.