Special Offer: Photorealism

The Artswipe generally makes it a policy not to post exhibition notices or other emailed art spam. Even recent petition-related emails about that "starving dog installation" could not tempt me. Maybe the dog was doing the 40 Hour Famine and was being sponsored - did anyone think of that?

Such thoughts were floating through my solar plexus when I received an inbox gem that just had to be posted. After all, it has genuine merit and, folks, as we live in a meritocracy it would be socially irresponsible for me not to post it. Moreover, in these troubled times it's important to be assured that if you wanna buy art to ensure you are "commissioning a real painting" that comes "in museum quality".


ArtToHome.com
Genuine Hand Painted Oil Paintings Leader

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Special Offer of Photorealism Oil Painting

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Hi my friend,

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This week, we are having a special offer on Photorealism as below,

Pls kindly see our our quote below,

1. Item: PHRL20701

Size: 24 x 36 Inch

Item Description: Hand Made Oil Painting on Canvas in Museum Quality

Price:US$92/PC

2. Item: PHRL20703

Size: 24 x 36 Inch

Item Description: Hand Made Oil Painting on Canvas in Museum Quality

Price: US$86/PC

3. Item: PHRL20702

Size: 24 x 36 Inch

Item Description: Hand Made Oil Painting on Canvas in Museum Quality

Price: US$92/PC

4. Item: PHRL20740

Size: 24 x 36 Inch

Item Description: Hand Made Oil Painting on Canvas in Museum Quality

Price: US$92/PC

5. Item: PHRL20705

Size: 24 x 36 Inch

Item Description: Hand Made Oil Painting on Canvas in Museum Quality

Price: US$86/PC

Note: This masterpiece is hand painted by a real artist - No digital or printing techniques are used. You are commissioning a real painting.

Stomach Liner

The Artswipe
Fluff, 2008
Endurance performance
Courtesy Coles

The Artswipe discovered a new nutritious product this week. It's called Fluff and it is available at your local Coles for approx $3.29. I've used it to line my stomach before drinking cask wine served at Firstdraft last Wednesday night. For those of you who haven't seen the Firstdraft show, don't worry about it, you'll get over it, we always do in the end.

Fluff came in handy that night (I didn't spew once!) and it's bound to come in handy this week as another circuit party of art openings are almost upon us (Roslyn Oxley9, James Dorahy, MOP, Chalkhorse and probably more). The Artswipe plans on being present at all of them, with Fluff in hand.

The one that has really piqued my interest is Oblivion Pavilion, a group show at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery featuring several emerging type artists, most of whom make art with a "naive" sensibility - something particularly in vogue at present. Oblivion Pavilion includes Marley Dawson, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Matthew Hopkins, Emily Hunt, Tim Schultz, Raquel Welch and is curated by Amanda Rowell. In case you've misplaced your dream dictionary (I left mine on a bus last week) don't fret, the exhibition statement for Oblivion Pavilion makes a handy proxy:

Gonadal inclination is on the decline in the original amusement zone. The slumbering brainchild is concussed and abandons all pre-programmed language to riddles. We are left to process life’s rich pageant with dumbed-down neuronal and emotional apparatus and tinker with schizophrenic tools in order to assemble meaning. Memorials -- flashbacks in the story department -- are witnesses to system’s upheaval. Imagination compensates across the memory gap.

Amidst the ruin, the thought factory, a mechanical and apparently risk-laden contraption processes incessantly. It conveys discrepancies between work and play, a nuts-and-bolts-type scenario constructed via the difference between effort and effortlessness, alternating between building an empire against and giving in to sometimes agreeable, sometimes disagreeable forces.

The subject is adrift in a world not firmly located. Substance and the limits and comparative scales of things are fully negotiable. Fluids emanate from the medium. Eggs, classical architecture etc. are equally fragile forms. The structure of the eye is part of the structure of the brain. In a fit of decoration, architecture gives birth to furniture.

Language is architecture. The variable product of the combinative function. Mottos are props, signposts by which to navigate personal inclinations and flag sympathies within the heart of things. A face – an edifice – answers a question. It adorns the gates of exalted memories. It rearranges things to find new meaning. Living has been only due to the kindness of others.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Car Park

Michael Atherton conducts Car Orchestra at Campbelltown Arts Centre

The Artswipe was driving around this afternoon, lamenting the self-imposed death of my Seatbelt Series and wondering what my next serious body of work would be and how it might suit a future Sydney Biennale. All of a sudden my creative reverie was interrupted by a cacophony of horn honking. I turned my attention to the car radio and realised the incessant racket was not coming from the road but from a story broadcasting on Triple J's Hack program.

I was about to slip back into my fugue state, when journalist Antoinette Chiha referred to the din of horns as "music". Shades of Bjork making pulp of paparazzi pond scum came to mind. Indeed the horns were music belonging to the "wind section" of several utes parked at the amphitheatre of Campbelltown Arts Centre at the weekend. The inhabitants of the utes were being "conducted" by classical music composer Michael Atherton along with the "fusion" of mag wheels, car engines and rap artists.

I have always been afraid of being raped in the eardrum so I was about to switch the dial before realising it was either Triple J or possibly dying a slow death to the "junk in my trunk" of some Black Eyed Pee Stain on 2 Day FM. So I sat there in traffic, having a serious "Michael Douglas in Falling Down moment", gritting my teeth while Atherton was interviewed about how his choice of cars as music generators were inspiration derived from his professional stomping ground of western Sydney. It strikes me as odd that Atherton, who is a music professor at the University of Western Sydney, would perpetuate such dull cliches about western Sydney, as if it's the only part of the world that's ever witnessed a proliferation of "car cultures". Add "cultures" to another word, stir and you have a phenomenon. (For example: when I get home I engaged with some "instant coffee culture", answered the phone for "unsolicited call centre culture", before turning on the "TV culture" and settling in for a night ending with a "sleep culture" filled with dreams where I had at least three cultural studies PhDs).

Usually I'm never so moved with what I hear on the radio to get all "Artswipe culture" about it. But it struck me that western Sydney lost a whole lot of its culture recently due to the closure of several art degrees at the University of Western Sydney (the whole saga documented at this student run blog) and here is this UWS professor reducing western Sydney culture to a shallow car cliche. It seems music is the only arts-related degree left after the fine arts, electronic arts, theatre and dance degrees all bit the proverbial bitumen. If Atherton is the jewel in that degree's crown, I'll hedge my bets that their music degree could be restructured as engineering. Perhaps western Sydney regional galleries should start boycotting any UWS related involvement in their events. Unless a car rally convention is on the cards.

Life is a Highway

The Artswipe
More from The Seatbelt Series, 2007-08
Mobile phone moments

The Artswipe was pulled over by a police officer working the beat last week. I should have expected it really - how long can I go without being pulled over for using a mobile phone while driving? This may be the end of The Seatbelt Series, kids. Let this be a public safety message: don't make art with your mobile phone while driving at the same time.

Despite the rumours, not all cops accept bribes and blow jobs.

Home Economics

Refreshed AGNSW Donation Box: 12:20pm

Already I feel a new acquisition coming on: 2:05pm

The Artswipe's last post lamented how hard it is to save up for a quality art collection (even one consisting of editioned multiples). Today I visited the Art Gallery of NSW and realised I had it all wrong. The key to saving for an artwork is in the kind of money box you use. No longer will I keep that little silver shoe pewter money box (a gift from Godmother Ella when I was still stewing in the womb) in the second drawer of my bedside table where it occasionally gets a deposit of spare change left over after buying my weekly smack supply. I am going to abandon the old shoe and install a perspex box just near the front door of my apartment. As you enter or leave - depending on whether you are coming or going in your tastes - feed that good old silver and gold to the new Artswipe Donation Box.

To nominate what you think The Artswipe's first donation funded acquisition should be, leave a comment and tell the world.