food for thought

from our recent punk monk propaganda group art exhibition: decorating loos. 


in addition to the installation created with clare & alex, we also spent a couple of late nights in the gallery with jay getting trigger happy with stencils and text...

the ears have it

lying beside my cat in bed

i wonder

how could i ever leave?

special thanks

thanks for finally turning up to my film night. all those monday's you never bothered before, hindered by last minute excuses. i had stopped inviting you, having come to the slow realisation that i enjoy them more without your controlling presence & inevitable disappointment when you never showed. i was the eternal small child standing atop a stage peering out into a parent-free shadowed audience. you were never there.


and then you came, arriving three hours late. yeah , i still remember what it was like having a job. i stood at the back in my usual place clutching worthless drink vouchers. i gave them away but the bar had already run dry. still not drinking as flu racked my body. the alcohol supply's early demise was not because of me.


my film had not played yet. not that it mattered. it was only a silly ditty poorly crafted on the fly built on an inside joke. we made it for fun on the breath of the wind, a spare five minutes & a pile of confectionery wrappers.


after it played & the evening wrapped, i said my goodbyes while the troops went on as tradition deems, to drink next door. i quietly slipped away; my sanitorium calling from afar.


you stood outside smoking knowing how much i hate it & insisted on chasing the night further sans me [despite your declarations that i am your motivation]. you wanted to drink. your lover which you have always respected more. you'd had a hard week. as usual. 


afterwards when i admonished you for your social negligence, you said that you came because my friend, who is now yours, invited you, rather than me & my permission wasn't required. oh, and you wanted to see me despite my constantly reprimanded childish behavior. 


as the credits roll, i'd like to thank you for your continued support. i should've done it without you.


Sah Kah She Fah Rah from punk monk propaganda on vimeo.

trainspotting

in another life i could have been a trainspotter. 


i just love this train station. and it's my local. loved even more than our adjacent pub..


the station has an incredible vista to the south west following multiple curved tracks. one day i'll capture the sunset here. without being thrown off the platform.

emu-gedden

driving into the bush we came across these archaic creatures of yesteryear roaming the wild fields on the national park fringe adjacent to fossil imprinted caves which were already ancient before the first over-sized reptile roamed the earth. the aboriginal people have known of them for tens of thousands of years.

stopping the car, i walked to embrace the birds' prehistoric beauty. my phone does little justice to these magnificent creatures but our curiosity was mutual as we both approached each other in sync.

i wondered if they share the survival attributes of cockroaches. their presence is eternally timeless. an unspoken wisdom  passed between their eyes as if the stories had been passed on from the old ones, dormant until the legends live once more in the face of unilateral destruction.

 emu in the sky, copyright: barnaby norris via CSIRO

while up in the sky the matriach continues to look down upon us. the dinosaurs are not extinct yet.

loser cycle of three

last night henderson snr & i hit the opera house to indulge in some culture for the opening night of opera australia's production of puccini's B side the girl of the golden west. you just can't beat comp tix! a slightly camp [waves of dick johnson references] spaghetti western in italian. opera style. now there's a genre mix. 

highlights: giant projected roses overtaking the stage as minnie's um, innocence is lost. you should see what happens when a mass of roses hurtle through the sky frenetically like sperms on speed. hold onto your flaming zorro inspired R & lunge for the nearest badass half-breed bandit. in a gold rush world dominated by miners, men and mayhem there's plenty to choose from.

earlier en route we had almost been thrown out of the cab because my language describing the content of my current film project was deemed offensive by the taxi driver who informed us that "my mother had brought me up much better than that." apparently using words to describe male genitalia or phallus is however acceptable. after failing to justify context & in order to save our ride we clung to one another, our silence was bought. much suppressed  hilarity ensued.

these photos were taken with my [un]trusty phone after several alcohol intermissions and more wayward frolicking not long before i actually lost my phone. this is a common occurrence. we spent the end of the night chasing ivan the theatre manager & eventually locating said phone in security. hurrah!

catching a cab to the walker st abode & satisfactorily cleaning out troy of his last five dollar bill to find a bedridden claire. we regaled upon her stories of the night only to find that she had spent the evening off her sick bed chasing lost keys assuming she's left them in the front door. she had then spent the evening assuming a home invasion was imminent. once she tidied her room the keys mysteriously turned up.

then troy with pockets out-turned abruptly interjected wanting to know if i remembered the type of cab we'd hailed. seems he'd left his wallet in the car... 

winter woollies

under the cool setting sun deep in the highland bush, clare & i make a sheep wool garden from sheared offcuts amidst the interweaving mandalas. 

the lanolin rich dags form one lustrous absorbent layer in our no dig replacing the usual bottom straw/lucerne fill. 

because plants deserve insulation too.

the old [wo]man and the sea

why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? she is kind and very beautiful. but she can be cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping, hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea. -- ernest hemingway

it has been an emotionally wrenching week filled with the inadvertent murder of birds & miracles which quickly faded away.

symbolic icons of legendary proportions maybe but the immediacy of the sea calls & only her wild seductive air can provide cyclic restoration. i seek salt-encrusted white noise to soothe searing ears & an abundance of negative ions to calm a screaming mind. 

lunch at bronte beckons.

motivated by a smile

NSW government and the organisation keep australia beautiful NSW have stepped up their anti-graffiti operations of late. not only was there a unified inaugural graffiti day of action [don't the photos make you feel good?] held in may 2010 where one thousand avid residents banded together with religious fervour to clean up operations in identified key areas. education programmes are also being run to enlighten the masses on the potential hazards criminalized street art presents... like thinking. 


which got me to thinking --> wouldn't it be fun to run a counter event?


we already know about the other anti-stuff of fanatic house-value obsessed puritans which was announced by the state premier at the end of 2009: increased money directed into graffiti removal, the instant fines for carrying a spray can, markers or etching implements, on-the-spot fines for retailers, doubled penalties of up to 12 months imprisonment [check out the tagger musk case], the list goes on. one wonders if their zealotry would hypocritically swing if banksy paid a visit?


now there are two recently released reports, products of research conducted by the department of justice and the attorney general. one of these is "the motivations and modus operandi of persons who do graffiti". the sample group was fifty two graffiti kids busted between 2008 - 2009. any marketeer/statistician would cough at this unrepresentative sample. but anyway this is their summary of the four main motivators in order of frequency of the kids who got caught:


1. pursuit of fame or recognition
2. adrenaline rush
3. artistic expression
4. intentional malicious damage


all i know is when i saw this guy i photographed above outside the local mangy mechanics, i smiled. that's the power of art. filed under motivation 3. 


i went home & pulled out my stencils... and turned off youtube.

spots and dots: yayoi kusama

all my favourite artists/thinkers are insane. as a bi-polar kid, it's a terrible wonderful club that i like to think i'm part of. not a lifestyle choice per se but with the situation comes creative management decisions.

welcome to yayoi kusama's world where her transcendence into other realms is less metaphorical in one sense than some others. her kaleidescope vision is represented through her immense body of acclaimed work. her medium is a labyrinth of infinity nets interwoven through warped space invaded by converging spots of consciousness. life with 3D dot field projected glasses. 

as a multidisciplinary veteran, her site specific project for sydney's binennale is a looping video installation as succinct as it is poetic & powerful offering insight into a turbulent dimension. 

christies new york sold one of her recent works for 5.1 million USD - a record for a living female artist. 

she lives by choice in a mental institution in tokyo & has struggled to stay alive since childhood. her art, her lifeline. she is a suicide addict.

yayoi kusama

song of manhattan suicide addict

sydney biennale

cockatoo island

may 12 - august 01, 2010

[free ferry every hour from the MCA]

self-portrait of the artist

over green tea. with harbour bridge. no biscotti.

your oversized boots

a priceless flower

rare delicate bloom

to be cherished, nurtured

struck from the wilderness

errant grown tumultuous

in unsuspecting soil

wavered in the idolizing wind

could not withstand

the incessant stomping

of your oversized boots

and fell

- crushed.

i awoke in the morning

uncharacteristically clear

cured of my obsession,

the love well 

miraculously emptied

overnight

- tortured petals

vanished into the ether.

a thinly veiled wall

of disinterest built

where the blossom had

languished instead.

brutal architectural obsession

ever since i arrived in sydney i've been madly in love with this brutalist architecture, reminiscent of an austere cold war stacked pile of child's blocks. it sits adjacent to the southern approach of the harbour bridge. this is my secret palace. the stuff of dreams and giant wonderland alician doll houses.

the "one way jesus" window banner has imprinted its monotone message to the masses for nigh on a decade at least. possible even three. divine intervention sees that it does not fade.

this is the sirius block. a concrete apartment precinct developed in the 1970s to house displaced residents in the rocks. a measure instigated by the green bans [imposed by the builders labourer federation] to enforce the retention of some original aspects of both the topography & people as redevelopment bowled the area over threatening to suck out the harbour's overlooked soul. 

traditionally this had been the home to maritime workers, labourers & industrious artisans. the people who built & created the space when noone else valued the subdued shadows, domino cottages and crooked lanes.

the block was the outcome of the protest policy. the battle for the rocks in the early 1970s saw residents clashing with police over relocation "initiatives".

ultimately in response to public debate what we see today is a tangible endeavor of the department of housing to retain some original character & existing communities [the population base at one point fell to 240] as gentrification & high rise swept in and made low rents bureaucratically unjustifiable for the required historic restoration. updated environmental policy now takes into account the importance of cultural, social and historic values.

ironically today this development is once more under the interrogative eye as many bemoan the million dollar views enjoyed by the poor & cite the building as an aesthetic intrusion. i ask you, what would you rather have them see?

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we make fire

... and make mulled wine, singing pixies songs accompanied by dan's accordian & jay's guitar far from the city reaches under the winter solstice full moon lunar eclipse in conjunction with the grand cross, a significant astral alignment. june 26, 2010. a high vibrational meditation of sorts.

global map of eclipse visibility courtesy of NASA