buttons

Nothing like a bit of instant gratification. I went to the Push your buttons exhibition at ANU School of Art Gallery today and saw some interesting work, and most excitingly got to make some buttons of my very own. There was a busy little group of visitors cutting, arranging and stamping out very cool badges. I got into a bit of a frenzy and made about a dozen. The image above shows Ginger's and my bug and beetle collection - there's also a sneaky fly by Waratah Lahy in there too. I put a few more images on my flickr page - think I might go back tomorrow and make a few more.

Anyone in Canberra can go along and make buttons for free tomorrow between 12 and 4 - the exhibition continues till 5 May.

Miscellaneous Correspondence

I went to an exhibition opening tonight at the local Contemporary Art Space and thoroughly enjoyed Jane Barney's installation. The letter of invitation gave me such a giggle I'm going to quote it here almost in it's entirety:

Dear Art Enthusiast

RE: Miscellaneous Correspondence Exhibition

Enclosed please find a small fridge magnet. Though it appears to be an abstract blur, this magnet is an important component of the image Woman in dress reading near man in suit, and is part of the exhibition Miscellaneous Correspondence.

Could you please convene, with your magnet, at the opening ...

... If you are unable to attend, please send a proxy with your magnet.

Shoul you feel compelled to file this letter as a record, then the file would correctly be titled 'Miscellaneous Correspondence', and the letter would be folio # '1'. Please do not attempt to file your magnet as a record as it does not fall within Redord Management Guidelines as a fileable item. Should you feel compelled to file a resord of your magnet, please make a paper facsimile for placement on file as folio #'2'. You may also wish to consider putting your magnet on your fridge as a visual reminder of the upcoming event.

111 other art enthusiasts will receive the remaining 111 components that comprise Woman in dress reading near man in suit. 112 public servants will receive 112 components that comprise the image Man in white collar. By compiling their miscellaneous correspondence, public servants and art enthusiasts will compete for the coveted title of 'Best in Records Management'....

One of my friends was understandably miffed to fall under the category public servant, I, on the other hand was thrilled that though I derive my income from public service related activities, I was rightfully categorised as an art enthusiast. When I left, both magnet murals were unfinished so I wait with baited breath to find out who won the coveted title of Best in Records Management.

Laura's chucked a wobbly

Laura works on my floor, she is a recalcitrant photocopier who arrived wrapped in plastic, Laura has attitude. The following excerpts from our office email list will give you an idea of Laura's personality:

Laura's sleeping in...

Laura is missing a part that keeps the hole in the Ozone layer stable- The part has been ordered, ETA unknown.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news …. I’ve changed the toner … and it wont’ accept the new cartridge … can
someone come fix it?

Do not use LAURA as we have no yellow toner

Dear IT
We have an enormous problem. The magenta on Laura is gone. Please come and fix it now.

Does anyone else work with an anthropomorphic photocopier?

directional clothing

directional clothing, originally uploaded by Kate&Ted.

To catch up on the last two weeks - I spent very little time at the National Folk Festival this year as I was popping into work all weekend to finish off stuff before spending a week installing a show at Geraldton in WA (about 5 hours drive north of Perth).

I did catch Fred Smith doing a snappy rendition of a song called Tension - it has the fabulous lyrics 'just don't stuff my clobber full of flora!'

Also was mightly entertained by the Dolls - I'm biased as my fella's band was supporting them - but the rest of the audience appeared to be having a ball too. I also caught bits of Mic Conway's National Junk band - their version of the Sex Pistols God Save the Queen rocked. Also saw the Lawnmowers, Bluestone Junction and a bit of Totally Gourdgeous and Mystery Pacific (website doesn't appear to be working - will try and add a link later). All well worth catching if their in your neck of the woods.

So Easter Monday I was on a Plane to WA - the best and sometimes worst part of my job is the travel. Its fantastic going to places I would otherwise have no reason to visit and great meeting and working with a wide variety of people. It's also stressful working in unfamiliar environments with a wide variety of people.

Geralton, like many coastal Australian towns appears to do a brisk trade in the alternate, spiritual, hippy, tiedyed, dreamcatcher variety of retail outlet. I didn't get to the store above during business hours so my curiousity about the directional clothing was not satisfied. Also spotted around town were shops with the inspirational names: Inna Dreams, Fantasy Fings and Crystal Hemlock.

Street art in Adelaide

, originally uploaded by Kate&Ted.

This is a detail of a nice bit of street art I spotted in Adelaide last week while attending the fringe - I love this artist's sensibility and the way they play with transparency and form, I'm also a sucker for anything with birds in it. There are a few more on my other flickr page.

APT at GoMA

YUKEN TERUYA
Notice - Forest (detail) 2005
Collection: Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo

Two weeks ago I had a flying visit north to Brisbane, land of wooden houses and warm breezes. We got a couple of sweltering days and balmy nights to bring back in our memories as we are now being hit by the first cool winds heralding winter. After we returned we got the first of what I've always called the snow winds. Biting southerlies with an icy edge are for me the one true sign that winter is really comming (mind you it's coming nice and slow and should stay that way as long as possible...).

To hang on to the warmth in my mind a little longer I'm going to muse on my visit to the APT (Asia Pacific Triennial) and my first visit to GoMA. Brisbane's new Gallery of Modern Art.

Overall I enjoyed the exhibition - it felt consistently strong, nicely installed and resolved, maybe a bit too nice - there were some politically quite confronting works, but somehow the gallery just makes everything so clean. The GoMA has beautiful big exhibition spaces, but the entrance is not great, and some of the workmanship on the actual building looks a bit shoddy. Their installation of indigenous work was absolutely stunning.

So the entrance - you go through these sliding glass doors that act as a kind of air lock into an entrance way with very high ceilings and a feeling that you're sure exactly where to go to find the art. Once inside I discover an arctic breeze that encourages me to remain in the actual gallery looking at the art for the shortest possible time before scurrying outside to prevent the onset of hypothermia. It seriously was that cold - I had been at the Queensland Art Gallery earlier and it was noticably warmer, even then I was wearing long sleeves.

The shoddyness - we were looking at these grey panels in the doorways between the galleries and noticed the some were quite dented and were not level at the bottom - picky I know but who ever screwed in those panels either used too much force or the material is too soft for it's chosen purpose. The highlight of the APT at GoMA for me was the Anish Kapoor installation - really gorgeous, though apparently a problem for the gallery with visitors accidentally walking into a few of the works. Quite difficult to control as there are some children's activities that actively invite physical interaction and Kapoor's work does mess with perception and can be quite disorienting. The education/kids stuff was fantastic as always - QAG really knows how to do this stuff well, they create really intelligent and engaging activities that provide insight into the works and give audiences something to create and do as well.

I could go on at length about the works in the show across the two venues but I need to go to bed so my highlights were:

Yuken Teruya - images can be seen here, here and here - these paper works were delicate, witty and thoroughly engaging. It's great to see a simple concept handled so skillfully and in this day or high tech multimedia everything to be engaged by art made entirely from paper bags.

Sangeeta Sandrasegar - images here and here - these were also paper based works - cutouts of incredible detail, my favourite was a wall installtion of white hands. The paper was so fine and delicate that at first I saw only the shadows made from the silhouettes of the paper hands pinned just off the wall.

Nursa Latif Qureshi - Indian miniatures with a subversive contemporary edge - images here, here and here

There was so much wonderful work in this show I could go on all night - but I won't so all I can say is that if you can get to Brisbane before May and see it for yourself - go!

Great QBN architecture

Great QBN architecture, originally uploaded by Kate&Ted.

I will get around to talking about GoMA as mentioned in my last post, but in the meantime I thought I'd pop in an example of the exciting architectural features of my own home town Queanbeyan. I'm thinking of doing an occasional series on Hideous Architecture. Something small town Australia has many examples of, and something I see a bit of travelling 'round the countryside installing art exhibitions. This is my local leagues club, note the wave form awning at the front, a nod to postmodernism without being too risque and the funky geometric forms that create sculptural interest. i haven't decided if it really fits the category hideous, though the front view is by far the most sympathetic...

stickers and stencils

stickers and stencils, originally uploaded by Kate&Ted.

Saw some nice street art in Brisbane on the weekend, also APT at QAG and GoMA but not much at MOB and missed IMA completely (ha! see if I can get any more acronyms into a single sentence). I will write a full report on APT and GoMA later in the week. Apart from the art the highlight was visiting relatives who live in Torbreck, Brisbane's first highrise apartment block built in 1959 and watching the sunset over the city.

stickers and stencils

stickers and stencils, originally uploaded by Kate&Ted.

black things

I had a sneak preview of Mel Douglas's work in her studio in Canberra yesterday - She's a local glass artist who makes very, very beautiful objects. She's having an exhibition at Sabbia Gallery in April in Sydney. I can't upload pics at the moment, so go to the website and check 'em out.

Who knew?

Who knew?, originally uploaded by Kate&Ted.

On an evening walk, as a way of avoiding the group of dodgy men hanging out down by the river, I walked through the carpark under Riverside Plaza in QBN. I've lived here for five years now and this is the first I've heard about a fashion precinct. I must say, while I have my doubts about the existence of the so-called precinct, I'm quite taken by the word travelator.

On an entirely different note I spent a couple of very pleasant hours at the Front this afternoon and caught Randall Blair doing some solo stuff, (this guy has a fantastic voice) and a couple of fellas from Hashemoto who I am falling deeply in love with. If you have a chance to see them play - check 'em out.

Autumn morning

I woke up at 5am this morning, tried to sleep for a while then gave up and got out of bed at the unheard of time of 5.30. I productively used my time to make a dress out of some scraps of fabric, drank copious amounts of tea (current favourite Chai 2 - Glenborg tea - it has corriander seeds in it) then by 8ish discovered I was out of novel things to do around the house. Rather than clean the house - which has gone ferrel recently - I headed off to the markets.

It was a stunning Canberra Autumn morning, the kind that makes me feel all fresh and new and goodwill to mankind and way to chilled to get shitty with the speeding tailgating roadrage fuckwit in the new ute. I love it when - after being harrassed by a dork who has tried to drive over the top of me, sped round me and raced off - I end up right next to them at the lights on the other side of town. I particularly love it when I'm in that crisp Autumn morning happy frame of mind that enables me to turn to the other driver and give them a big cheesy grin and a cheery wave.

Happy day

And why is it a happy day? Well because there were many hot air balloons suspended in the still sky over Canberra, and that always makes me happy.

After the hail storm

I spent pretty much all of last week in bed with a rather boring virus and then returned to work yesterday to an enormous pile of work and millions of emails and phone messages. It was almost enough to inspire me to turn around and head straight back home again. I stuck it out knowing I'd have to face it sooner or later then headed over to the Art School to see the postgrad exhibition that was open to the public for a few hours. Due to the freak storm the other week (the damage and aftermath faithfully captured by Ampersandduck who works there and is involved in the clean up operations) the school is in a sad state of disrepair and the two poor students due to have their final exhibition only got to show it to the public for a few hours after their postponed examinations had occurred. I really enjoyed Pamela Lofts crisp images of outback/rural environments littered with rusting metal and decaying houses. The way the light played over the man-made elements in the close cropped views of interior spaces, and the contrast between this and the external spaces in the images was what I found most engaging.

I then popped upstairs - with a hard hat on - to the clocktower, where I worked for a couple of years for Art Monthly. The room has been completely cleared, the festy carpet removed and the plaster coming away from the ceiling was being held up by long beams of quite fragile looking timber. It was amazing to see what once had been a cave filled with piles, stacks, shelves and many many intrays of paper - completely empty. The editrix is optimistically planning a new minimalist look for the room which I'm looking forward to seeing.

smashed potato

arty mash, originally uploaded by Kate&Ted.

Ohh its just so pretty

arty dessert

arty dessert, originally uploaded by Kate&Ted.

Last week we had a very posh first wedding anniversary dinner at Courgette - local posh restaurant - sister to Aubergine - I love that these places have the names of vegetables. It reminds me of some performance art I saw in the nineties where the fabulous Megan Elliot sprouted random french words in an endearing aussie accented monologue whilst wearing a very sophisticated evening gown. At one point she needed both hands to gesticulate wildly so she very efficiently placed the stubbie of VB from which she had been swigging snugly into her rather voluptuous cleavage. I'd love to have a picture of that...

Anyway back to matters marital - we have two anniversaries - the living in sin one which has us turning twelve this year in May, and the legal one, celebrated for the first time last week - woohoo. For years we never thought we'd get hitched, but we've attended many ceremonies over the years and had begun to appreciate the idea of getting all our loved ones together for a celebration. It was totally worth it - bar the three million times in the last year that I've been asked 'how's married life', followed by 'so when are you having kids?

If anyone is looking for a posh meal I thoroughly recommend Courgette - it was fab and had the best (and probably most expensive) mashed potato I've ever eaten. My most excellent sculptural dessert was almost too good to eat - but my sugar addiction won out in the end.

blockhead

Ted bought New Boots and Panties on the weekend - he's been hanging out to find it on vinyl for some time and finally gave in and ordered a CD because apparently it's pretty rare.

Ian Dury has to be one of my all time favourite songwriters with gems like:


You come awake
In a horny morning mood
And have a proper wriggle
In the naughty naked nude
Roll against my body
Get me where you want me
What happens next is private
It's also very rude...


And...


Here come duck-tail Danny dragging uncanny Annie, she's the one with the flying feet
You can break the peace, daddy sickle grease, the beat is reet complete
And the jump-back honey in the dungarees, tight sweater and a pony-tail
Will you guess her age when she comes back-stage, the hoodlums bite their nails

Sesame Street Pinball Cartoon

Mr T finally discovered the time wasting wonder that is youtube and spent hours in the middle of last night enjoying a nostalgic journey throug Sesame Street and Dr Seuss animations. The pinball number count is one of my faves

bird or fish

I'm reading a book about the history of airships at the moment. It starts with a quote by Dr Hugo Eckener - the first expert airship pilot and proponent of the development and use of Zepplins for passenger transport and war machines. Zepplins were invented by Count Ferdinand von Zepplin, a somewhat mad enthusiast who spent years (and lots of money) trying to get the airship idea off the ground.

Anyway Eckener said:

The mass of the mighty airship hull, which seemed matched by its lightness and grace, and whose beauty of form was modulated by delicate shades of colour, never failed to make a strong impression on people's minds. It was not, as genarally described, a "silver bird soaring in majestic flight," but rather a fabulous silver fish, floating quietly in the ocean of air, and captivating the eye just like a fantastic, exotic fish seen in an aquarium. And this fairy-like apparation, which seemed to melt into the silvery blue background of the sky, when it appeared far away, lighted by the sun, seemed to be coming from another world and to be returning there like a dream...