Apology to Roadkill Redux

The Artswipe

Rat series, 2009 and ongoing

mobile phone photos

I'm back from the dead dear readers, as is my new series Rat, which I shot while holidaying in Venice. Here's a taste of things to come. It's a deep work and speaks to notions of sociotemporality, as does all my work.

Head Up My Arse or Dead in the Arse... I can't decide

Folks, it's been way too long between vodka milkshakes. I heard a search party happened; then there was a funeral. The body was never found so they cremated a blow up doll from Club X. Imagine the smell of burning plastic and hot air. Well that is the smell I have been experiencing of late, having had my head up my arse. And I can tell you it's dead in there. Dead in the arse.

The Artswipe is taking a holiday from blogging for now. I'll be back when the air has cleared, I promise.

Love you all. Especially you.

xxx

The Artswipe is BITCH

Deborah Kelly in collaboration with Tina Fiveash

The Big Butch Billboard

The Artswipe has been away - as you all know because you all keep hassling me to come back to the five and dime - because she has been living large as a billboard. It's that time of year when we all get sucked into a gay vortex (yep Mardi Gras time). And The Artswipe gets sucked more than anyone. In fact I just came back from getting a full body wax in anticipation of 'Monday Milktails', an Oscars bash to celebrate the Gus Van Sant movie Milk, where Sean Penn is gay for pay. The best kind of gay actually because at least when you're paying someone to be something, you can complain when it doesn't live up to your expectations. Complaining is what I do best. If there is a comments box, you can be sure I will fill it. 

Enough about that, what's new in queer cultcha? That queer provocateur of the visual arts Deborah Kelly has, in collaboration with photographer Tina Fiveash, produced a billboard that pays homage to the Maria Kozic is BITCH billboard from 1989. Kelly replaces Kozic's fetishised powerdrill wielding Ken Doll assassin with a butch dyke called Mahalia Jones. It's as simple as that - take a hetero feminist icon of the late 80s and replace her with a stylised blow-dried butch dyke wannabe straight out of The L Word. Kelly's billboard does for queer butch culture what metrosexuality did for straight men - stylising the signifiers of gender/sexual identity into shallow advertising speak. Or maybe that is the point?

The Big Butch billboard is currently showing at Australian Centre for Photography and in regional locations. On March 7, the butch ones among us cart the billboard down Oxford Street for the Mardi Gras parade. I can hardly contain my excitement.

Greetings and Salutations

The Artswipe's plan for a new look MCA at Circular Quay

The Artswipe has not posted now for over a month, and some of you want to know why. Well I have been busy with public speaking engagements at self-esteem building seminars (the most recent called "I too can love me"), fundraising for AIDS charities (so no more people "die of gay"), and advising on the future of the Museum of Contemporary Art building redevelopment (my approach: an architecture of the jumping castle).

If that wasn't keeping me busy I've attended John and Kelly's son's funeral - simply a tragedy, and I mean that. I've never been big on Scientology - anything remotely suggestive of science makes my eyes water - but in these times of grief and vulnerability, I'm likely to cling to whatever gives me comfort, whatever keeps me close to the celebrities I love.

The moral of this story? Well there is none when you're morally bankrupt (or "reek of moral turpitude," as a preacher man once said of me). But I will say this, and I do apologise that it has come so late:

Happy new year Artswipe readers!

The Artswipe is on annual leave until early February, when I will be back with reviews, spews, and clues. I promise to keep on delivering the high level calibre content you have come to love and hate. Indeed, I have a lot to live up to after one anonymous commentator (who I probably made up) dubbed The Artswipe "the Entertainment Tonight of the Sydney artworld."

Documental as Anything

It was announced earlier in the week that Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev has been appointed curator of Documenta 13, to be held in Kassel, Germany in 2012. Most recently Christov-Bakargiev's claim to fame is curating the recent Biennale of Sydney, which according to MCA director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor (as quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald), helped the curator bag the prestigious job. In particular, Christov-Bakargiev's "bold use" of Cockatoo Island as a venue assured her the job. Macgregor was part of a nine-member international committee that selected Christov-Bakargiev.

While Documenta is probably the most esteemed contemporary art event in the world. What The Artswipe finds so flabbergasting is the self-importance placed on such extravaganzas. What's with the nine member committee? Is this the United Nations or something? One of the problems with the artworld these days is how over-determined everything has to be. Because we all know that no matter how much importance is placed on who the curator is, or which artists the curator selects, we'll whinge about the show because, well, we weren't included! The Artswipe is hedging bets that whatever Australian artists are selected, they'll be drawn from the pool of Australian artists already represented in the recent Biennale: Shaun Gladwell, TV Moore, Mike Parr, Raquel Ormella, Tracey Moffatt, Vernon Ah Kee... take your pick. Or get together a group of nine artist friends and take your collective committee styled pick. Either that or dream of the day when the artworld holds Idol style auditions or Big Brother style evictions for these spectacularised international art events, because I know Paula Abdul would be The Artswipe's pick for curator.

Baz is a Spaz

Can someone please back me up on this: Baz Luhrmann is a total spaz.

Recently in the news - which is mostly consumed with talk of the release of his overblown epic Australia - Luhrmann made claims that Barack Obama would have been "stolen" had he been born in Australia being that he is the offspring of mixed race parents. Well the fact is, Obama was not born in Australia. I think the plight of the indigenous in Australia is not at all comparable with what African Americans have endured. Perhaps the only similarity is that both the US and Australia have shamefully racist legacies when it comes to how "black" people have been treated. Does Luhrmann really care about the stolen generation? His film cost a trillion to make while a significant population of Aboriginals live in abject poverty in Australia. I mean really, his designer wife Catherine Martin flew all around the country sourcing the perfect bush tea cutlery set for the production design. I seriously doubt they were that concerned about righting Australia's wrongs in the process. Moral of the story: if you are after an attempt at quick publicity of the socially responsible kind, espouse shallow generalisations about "blackness" and race relations.

All The Artswipe has to say is this: If Luhrmann had been born in the US, surely someone would have "stolen" that closet from him and outed him by now. 

Regime Change Room

The Artswipe celebrates Obama's election win with a costume change*

What an amazing day when the real world aligns with popular culture. The idea of the black president has been long accepted as a reality in popular culture, as documented at Slate Magazine. The Artswipe has been so used to seeing depictions of black presidents in Hollywood movies that it was always a total reality check when the real president would come on TV and shake his redneck booty. But now times have changed and there's a new sheriff in town. To celebrate Obama's triumph, and in keeping with the Countess theme of the previous post, The Artswipe thought it best to slip into something a little more comfortable. I posed for this portrait earlier today at Darling Harbour.

* Apologies to Charles Browning

Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend

Ron Rophar

Countess, 2007

A new blog has surfaced in the blogosphere called CoUNTess and it's one of the most interesting ones The Artswipe has seen this century thus far. Taking its lead from The Guerrilla Girls, CoUNTess gets busy with gender statistics to highlight how women continue to be marginalised in the big bad artworld. With only two posts published to date, CoUNTess is bursting with promise. Gender inequality does still exist so we must expose it and then fucking terrorise the oppressor - STICK IT TO THE MAN, LADIES! 

For instance, The Artswipe did a Google experiment to demonstrate patriarchy in action. Male = 449,000,000 hits. In contrast, Female = 393,000,000 hits. What a cruel world, where the Female is not more ubiquitous on the interweb. 

Better yet, when typing "countess" into Google Images, The Artswipe found a great artwork of a countess surrounded by her menagerie. What an inspired solution: when men no longer work out for you, get some pets. By "world renowned master artist" Ron Rophar, this painting is adorned with over 250 carats of genuine diamonds, "a first in the history of art" according to an online press release. Indeed the press release is right by proclaiming it is a "21st century masterpiece". Damien Hurst is such a copycat with his jewel encrusted skulls and shit. 

Now who said you can't dress up feminism with a little bling.

Meeting Your Maker

Renny Kodgers meets Kenny Rodgers: A Simulacrum to Behold

The Artswipe has always wanted to meet her maker. But to do so would warrant some discussion as to who The Artswipe is modelled on. Inspired by performance artist Renny Kodgers meeting his maker, The Artswipe is asking loyal readers to guess who The Artswipe might be if there was a real world CELEBRITY counterpart - and I'm not talking art stars. I'm talking the real shit: the Brangelinas of the world, etc. How much fun: it's almost like a competition, except it would require too much effort think-tanking a potential prize. Send a comment with your nominations, and who knows, The Artswipe may do some market research with the data. 

Referential Juxtapocombinations

Soda_Jerk

Astro Black: A History of Hip Hop (Episode 1), 2007

Digital video

Courtesy the artists

After The Artswipe's regional tour of Orange Juice County (see previous post) I have been compelled to return to my urban roots and examine what’s hot in the neighbourhood. There's so much on - such great stuff I've seen - but the focus of this review will be this year's Primavera at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was curated by Hannah Matthews. Usually this little love-in of work by Australian artists under the age of 35 is a hit and miss affair. But this year it shone, if only for the inclusion of the Sydney contingent made up of two artist "entities" for want of a better term: Soda_Jerk (previously reviewed at The Artswipe here) and Ms & Mr (previously reviewed at The Artswipe here).

Soda_Jerk (AKA Dan & Dominique Angeloro) presented episodes 0-2 of their remix readymade video series – Astro Black: A History of Hip Hop. Soda_Jerk shine because they expertly and unpretentiously mine z-grade movie archives looking for samples that will form new-fangled narratives when reassembled in always inspired juxtapocombinations - I coined this word in dedication to Soda_Jerk. Using the audio language of remix, but supplanting it in both audio and visual terms, Soda_Jerk snub new media convergence rubbish for a good old fashioned VHS love-in. I just hope Soda_Jerk are on good terms with the manager at their local Blockbuster, because surely it is here where they are most at home, indeed it must be the temple at which they worship. You can hear their squabbles: "Dan! How the fuck did we wrack up $237 in late fees?" "Dom, I've told you once, I've told you a million times: REWIND!"

Unlike Soda_Jerk, who are a sister combo, Ms & Mr are a husband and wife team (Richard & Stephanie nova Milne). Soda_Jerk never reference their real selves in their work because, well they haven’t been in movies that could be sampled (unless they are hiding this from us). In contrast Ms & Mr are child actors, who performed ad-nauseum for their own family home movies. They either had a very patient family or totally controlling stage mothers who would make them perform... OR ELSE! As adults Ms & Mr decided the best way to pursue an art practice was to turn these little home movies into spooky sci-fi video installations that explore the idea that Ms & Mr have always been together, forever and always and in every time zone, including daylight savings. If not for their goosebumply - I coined this word in dedication to Ms & Mr – Primavera installation, another reason to like Ms & Mr is because unlike almost everyone I know in the artworld (and I know everyone), they are totally married. I thought no one got married into that heteropatriarchalnormative framework anymore. Wonder what will happen when they have a kid – will they become Ms & Mr & Jr?

Soda_Jerk quote movies. Ms & Mr quote themselves. Melbourne artist Danielle Freakley quotes, well everything because she's obviously greedy. True to her surname, Freakley performs "freak-like" as The Quote Generator – a woman with dark frizzy hair (it may be her own) and who only speaks in pop culture quotes. Unless you fact-check everything she says (and frankly, who has the time) you have to accept that she's not making this shit up. And really, having a conversation with her must be the equivalent of stabbing yourself in the eye. But good for her, there is a real art to annoying the hell out of people. Speaking personally, I believe Freakley has stolen my thunder because The Artswipe has always seen the world in quotation marks. I’m a very rigorous referencer. If I could fuck a footnote I would. Certainly, Freakley’s work has great potential – it is an endurance performance par excellence, excuse the French, but really it has no visuality to speak of, rendering it a limp, ill-considered and visually boring installation encountered upon entering the MCA’s main entrance.

That’s all I have to say about the 2008 Primavera because - I hate to admit it - I never made it to level 2. Recently I developed a rare allergy to stairs.

Why I Have Been Irregular

Apologies for being away from my desk. September is always a hard month for The Artswipe, being the anniversary for 9/11 and all that. But I did leave the answering machine on, and well, thanks for your messages. If I haven't returned your call by now, you can rest assured the reason is because I think you're a total spaz. Why mince words?

So what have I been up to I hear you ask? Well, the reason I have been so irregular with posting is the whirlwind tour I have embarked on recently with some of the more regional outposts of the artworld. The highpoint of this recent bus trip around regional Australia was the Citrus Sculpure project initiated by Griffith Regional Gallery. Now why didn't I think of that first? The Artswipe has always admired the impact fruit has had on art. Basically the still life genre owes its, um, life to fruit. 

The benefits to representation and art history aside, fruit is important because it can really dress up a drink. With this in mind, I brought my hip flask to Griffith at the weekend and ensured it was filled to the brim with vodka. When a gallery guide wasn't looking I grabbed an orange from the Big Orange Cabin and used it as a mixer. Delicious! Now that I've been to Griffith and eaten (read: drunk) the equivalent of a Golden Guitar's worth of juicy fruit, I promise to be more regular.

Indeed I promise to keep bringin' you the shit.

Leave a Message

Hi you have called Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. I'm away from my desk or on another call, so leave a message and I'll get back to you shortly. Thanks for calling.

Hi Carolyn. This is The Artswipe. I haven't seen the Sydney Biennale yet and was wondering if you could extend it for a week as I am free next Sunday, and would love to check it out then. Hope this is OK. I've heard you did a good job. Hope you're well. Call me.

Cock and Bull Island

Photos © The Artswipe

In these last days of the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, The Artswipe is finally running a pictorial essay about the much hyped Cockatoo Island venue. These here photos are but a few of the cockatoo islands I have encountered in recent weeks. Note how the cockatoos are either sitting on the trash heap or they are the trash heap.

There you have it - The Artswipe's review of Cockatoo Island, couched in mysterious metaphor.

High Camp Lows

The Artswipe
First Jobs Series, BBQ Chief at School Camp, 2008
Archival pigments on rice paper with gel medium
edition 20

The Artswipe always loves to know what Tracey Moffatt will come up with next, so I went to see her show, First Job Series, at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery today. I had a skip in my step on the way there, and on the way back, because it was so much fun to know that this artmegastar once parked cars, peeled pineapples, washed hair, packed meat... she even sold aluminium siding! What I love about Miss Moffatt is she probably is telling you the truth about her past, but that it is so camp. One's early years are always best played back through the spectacle of high camp. Why else would you want to re-live it?

Seeing First Job Series made me feel better about being sold into prostitution by my bitch stepmother when I was 10. Then there was the time at 13 that I babysat that Down Syndrome kid down the road who was clearly older than me. The best first job The Artwipe ever had was fundraising at school: you'd pretend to be making a buck for The 40 Hour Famine, helping African orphans but spending the booty on Big Macs and Cokes. I mowed a lawn once, even worked at a beach kiosk and later got a root in the sand dunes. Oh the good old days. The best job was being BBQ Chief at School Camp. I may not have been paid in cash, but at least I was at Camp.

Manumunah

Adam Cullen's controversial Blake Prize entry

The Artswipe presents a guest blog by Deborah Browne from Sydney:

Mr Cullen, the Enfant Terrible of the upper Blue Mountains managed to get many tongues wagging last week by inadvertently causing a stir with his Blake Prize entry, Only Women Bleed. Being such a stranger to publicity and the press, Cullen made the terrible error of exclaiming there shouldnt be a fuss about the picture as it was "It's just a Jew on the cross".

The controversy didn't seem to be so much to do with the religious iconography as much as about pannelist Dr Christopher Allen having a major chewy spit and resigning after being over-ridden by fellow panellists.

What the press didn't report on though, was the REAL reason for Allen's disgusting resignation. Apparently Allen couldn't work out why a picture of Jim Henson's 'Animal', from the Muppets, could possibly be regarded as fine art, especially given the other Henson's recent drama at Oxley's. "No more celebration of paedophilia" he cried as angry students swamped his modest NAS office.

Meanwhile, Cullen sat in his icy mountain hideaway feeling smugly warm from a vodka and press-induced euphoria, wrapped in the front page of the SMH and claiming "now that's Art, that is".

Soda Pop

Christian Marclay
Pictures at an Exhibition, 1997
Whitney Museum of Modern Art

Soda_Jerk
Pictures at an Exhibition (After Christian Marclay), 2008
Firstdraft Gallery
Courtesy the artists
Photos: Viv McGregor

In 1997 New York based installation artist and composer Christian Marclay presented Pictures at an Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Marclay selected artworks from the Whitney collection that visually represent "noise". Hung in an over-crowded salon hang, Marclay points out (as quoted in a New York Times review by Grace Glueck) that this "orchestra of images" is meant to explore the "intimate relationship between the immateriality of sound and the tangibility of sound's visual manifestations".

Eleven years later "our Soda_Jerk" (read that with the same love you make when saying "our Nicole" or "our Cate") are presenting their cover version of Marclay's Pictures at an Exhibition in Daniel Green's curated show It's all been done before at Firstdraft Gallery in Sydney. About time really; the Whitney is such a crap venue and we all know that Marclay only showed there because the directors at Firstdraft in 1997* rejected his exhibition proposal.

Soda_Jerk, whose remix oeuvre is played out in video works, photo-collage and installations and who will be showing in Primavera at the Museum of Contemporary Art this year, are very sassy and clever art ladies. They have not bothered looking to an institutional collection for inspiration. Instead they have asked artists in Sydney to loan them the artworks they made in high school art class, many of which are the outcome of their Year 12 Higher School Certificate. Where Marclay's installation of visual noise encouraged viewers to "hear sound through their eyes" Soda_Jerk have gone for a more deafening approach: being assaulted by the "noise" of youth. Marclay didn't intend to poke his viewer in the eye with a treble clef, but that's because he's probably private school educated. The Soda squad opt more for retina burn of girls who mastered their pick-pocketing trickery at the toughest bitch-slap reform school there ever was!

In short, Pictures at an Exhibition (After Christian Marclay) by Soda_Jerk is ArtExpress Artist Run Initiative style! The works collected are a veritable who's-who of groovy Sydney A-Listers, and that's capital A for Art, no less: Andrew Frost, Christopher Hanrahan, Sam Smith, Rachel Scott, Marley Dawson, Sari Kivinen, Drew Bickford, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Kate Jinx, Kate Mitchell, Ella Barclay, Vicki Papageorgopoulos, Monika Behrens, Tom Polo, Tara Marynowsky, Lauren Brincat, Will French, Emma Ramsey, Harriet Birks, Sumu Sivanesan, Stephanie Nova Milne (half of Ms & Mr) and Dominique Angeloro (half of Soda_Jerk).

What makes this install particularly amusing (in a LOL! kind of way) is that the roll call of artists assembled are all doing interesting stuff these days, but clearly have the most dubious of origins. With this installation Soda_Jerk debunk notions of artistic essentialism through recontextualising the obscure artistic detritus and pop culture minutiae of the past. In other words, a good artist is made and not born. In fact some may have been total shit once upon a time. (Speaking from experience, The Artswipe admits to the shame of a youth spent trying to be Andy Warhol when really I had as much talent as Andy McDowell).

I am doubting any of the groovers assembled by Soda_Jerk got into ArtExpress at the time - I'm sure they just got put on detention! The Artswipe adores ArtExpress: it is the annual exhibition of Higher School Certificate artworks at the Art Gallery of NSW and other venues. Who needs a Youth Advisor when you have ArtExpress? Clearly it is the only place an old girl like me can get a keen understanding on the real issues affecting the young: war (what's it good for?), eating disorders (often caused when two teens lock their braces during a pash), global warming ("Sir, Darryl farted again!"), fashion ("Did you get that from Table 8 or Supre?"), social networking (MySpace, Facebook or Date Rape?), sexual confusion (when Madison fell in love with her gym teacher and happenstanced upon a same-sex wonderland), globalisation (the Coke or Pepsi race riots), postmodernism and artistic appropriation (remaking the Cindy Sherman Foundation), and the one that encapsulates it all - IDENTITY - those artworks that depict teenage alienation, loneliness and acne scars through endless repetitions of the self; these days in "emo"style. While the artworks collected by Soda_Jerk are quite frankly some of the most putrid artworks of all time, I thank my lucky stars that there's not an emo among them.

* Firstdraft directors in 1997: Tanya Peterson, Tess Knight, Peter Fitzpatrick, Simone Douglas, Gianni Wise, Philipa Veitch, Elvis Richardson, Sarah Goffman and Alex Gawronski.

Ace of Hearts

It has come to my attention that curator Anthony (Ace) Bourke, who has carved out a long and distinguished career working with contemporary indigenous artists like the late Michael Riley, Tracey Moffatt, Gordon Bennett, Brenda Croft, HJ Wedge, among others, and who has curated exhibitions at the Museum of Sydney, State Library of NSW and Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, was a "lion tamer" of sorts in a, let's say, past life of sorts.

Ace Bourke, Christian and John Rendall

Talk shows in the US and Australia have been a-buzz with a YouTube clip featuring a young Ace with his pet lion "Christian". The clip popular with YouTube fans shows Ace and friend John reuniting with Christian in 1969 after he'd been released back to the African jungle after spending some quality time in Swinging London. The clip has been watched over 4 million times, has Whitney Houston playing over the top for total camp value, and has even on-screen subtitles summarising the beautiful tale. Read more about how the clip became a YouTube sensation here.

Why aren't all curators this cool!

Kissing to be Clever

God loves a polyphonic ringtone

Why did I come back from my holiday during the whole World Youth Day circus? Those pesky pilgrims really are getting up my nose. Is it just me, or has Sydney turned into a scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (and I mean the 1978 version with Donald Sutherland)? It really is an alien podscape out there in Sydney my friend. All those self-same backpacks and passes around their necks. Are they backstage passes to heaven? If there is an outbreak of bird flu in the next few days, don't look at me, look at those hoards of high-fiving, tambourine shaking, Mexican waving pilgrim folk. Just the word pilgrim freaks me out, like it was invented to explain how one recovers from depression: Grim? + Pill! = Pilgrim.

Today while trying to get from A to B but having to wait for the tedious ZZZZZs of time wasted at roadblocks to make way for the Pope's passage through the city, I overheard a fat American pilgrim yell at a homeless person for being in her way - she had somewhere to be: front row, centre left for Popemobile no doubt. I went over to the homeless man, let's call him Charlie. I held Charlie for what felt the longest time and he said to me, "can you spare some change?" I asked him if he could break a fifty.

This whole Youth Day spectacle has really gotten out of hand. What's youth got to do with it? Clearly we live in a land where the spectacle of youth has received short thrift amidst the hysteria levelled recently at Bill Henson and then the Art Monthly mob. I really hope a few rosy cheeked pilgrims take the wrong ferry at Circular Quay and end up at Mike Parr's headless chicken porn torture installation at Cockatoo Island. "Mummy, I thought we were going to Manly for an ice cream cone. How did we get to this smelly island of seagull poop and scary wreckage?" This is dialogue from a play I'm writing called Prayers for Percy Pilgrim. You know how it ends: 20something Percy just can't reconcile his Catholicism with his adult fetish for breast milk, no matter how much he calls it communion.

I digress. There appears to be some art related responses to the whole shebang. For instance that celestial beacon of hope, Pope Alice, will stage a "kiss in" for the queers among us at Taylor Square this Saturday 19 July. Kissing to be clever indeed! The Artswipe has been a supporter of the homosexualist cause for some time now. Without the gays there would be no musical theatre and Amyl nitrate, among other things. I even watch Ellen on YouTube sometimes. What kind of world would it be without the GLBT on turkish, hold the mayo? Look, The Artswipe would be there participating at this kissathon on Saturday, but since seeing Pretty Woman on the big screen in 1990, I have been firm about my no kissing policy; it's better that way. Emotional attachments rarely work when you're an online persona like me. When Al Pacino, in the iconic gay flick Crusing (1980), asks his rough trade, "Hips or Lips?", we don't even need to hear the answer. Ask a pilgrim, hips win hands down. And I'm not talking the child-bearin' kind.

Relational Aesthetics Again

The Artswipe
This is Performance Art, 2008
Probable Biennale Satellite Event

The Artswipe has had a lovely holiday. Thanks for asking. I spent my three week annual leave just wandering the cold streets of Sydney looking for an artworld I can call home. I've wizzed through the Biennale exhibitions but haven't absorbed enough to be quite honest. I did see these guys sleeping at Circular Quay and wondered if this was either a Biennale Satellite Event or simply a definition for Relational Aesthetics. I have overheard people at art parties saying, "The Artswipe is all about Relational Aesthetics." I'm still unsure what that is but I'll pay that. I have a theory that Relational Aesthetics is a way of helping our ugly relatives become aesthetic. I'm guessing it's when the whole family pulls together to help Aunt Sigourney pay the facelift bills.

If I get around to writing about the Biennale it is bound to be about Cockatoo Island. I've been there a few times already. In fact I was at the artist party there and am still convinced to this day that someone slipped Rohypnol in my drink. How else could I account for lost time and the strange feeling I had either been impregnated or dipped in hot Camembert (a sensation I've only experienced with Skanky Jane and it was early in our marriage). I have been to Cockatoo Island since the party and seen bits of art but way to many art people to be able to absorb it meaningfully. I'll go again soon with my Artswipe notepad and mobile phone camera.

Meanwhile, The Artswipe has been a bit quiet on seeing anything else in Sydney. Here is my review of what I am yet to see: Scott Redford at Breenspace, John Citizen (aka Gordon Bennett), Mitch Cairns at MOP, James Angus at Ros Ox (Dale Frank too, I suppose), and then some. I suppose all these shows will close soon and then I will be damned to an eternity of not knowing whether I missed out on brilliance or bile. I sense a country song coming on.

Sarah Goffman as Glue Gun Warrior Woman

Some crazy things I have experienced in art land, which have been very thrill-a-minute: Terminus Projects (a space without a place) hosted a Bazaar at the Clair Hotel on Broadway on 6 July. Artists like Joan Ross, Renny Kodgers, Sarah Goffman, Rachel Scott, Danielle Coonan, Lisa Andrew and many others had stalls where they sold their artist wares. For instance Sarah Goffman made words out of glue gun glue (see picture); Joan Ross sold lots of 'nothing', Renny Kodgers was offering his spreadable hot meat. What a manwhore he is! The twins behind Matchbox Projects were being powerhouse saleswomen of their own cause - all they needed to get the point across further was a flow chart and PowerPoint presentation. In case you haven't been accosted by them, they have a readymade portable exhibition space made of perspex and which to the untrained eye is really just a briefcase. Someone should roll them for that briefcase and throw it in the river. Enough already! Simon Barney did that years ago and with so much more panache. Aside from that being a cause for an Artswipe art tantrum, the brief 24 minutes I spent at the Clair were well spent indeed, despite the serious indigestion from Renny's man meat. Geez I hope he's clean!

The other bit of art I have seen of recent days is that ubiquitous performance artist darling Sari Kivinen do her thing in a glass aquarium-like tank last weekend at Exquisite Corpse at Oxford Art Factory. The Artswipe has written about Kivinen in past posts. A refresher course: Kivinen's live schtick is composed of three sister selves who all have major booze issues. The three girls do dysfunctional things like sucking their toes in public and reciting psychobabble poetry. It's got shades of Tori Amos weird and Patti Smith cool. Behind the bar was a kinetically edited video projection of Kivinen playing out her madness with the help of artists Liam Benson (who was recently seen in SafARI at Gaffa) and Bridie Connell (who has work showing at present at At the Vanishing Point in Newtown). After witnessing Kivinen transition between her three selves for what seemed like a schooner eclipse, I went into the dark night and felt whole again.

Sari Kivinen performing at Exquisite Corpse at Oxford Art Factory

Lets Get Out of this Country

Child with Monochrome (probably a Malevich, but I'm not sure)

Hi Folks, The Artswipe is still on annual leave. I'll be back soon I promise. Meanwhile, the culture wars persist, with the latest issue of Art Monthly Australia igniting debate about the issue of child nudity.

Magazine Puts Naked Child on Cover
Daily Telegraph, Sunday 6 July 2008

A taxpayer-funded magazine has used a picture of a naked six-year-old girl on the cover of its July edition in protest against the treatment of artist Bill Henson.

Angered by the "hysteria" over Henson's pictures of a 13-year-old girl, the magazine also has a number of highly sexualised images inside, The Sunday Telegraph newspaper says.

Art Monthly editor Maurice O'Riordan says he hopes the July edition will restore
some "dignity to the debate", the paper says.

It says an angry NSW Premier Morris Iemma on Saturday threatened to withdraw the magazine's funding.

The July edition of Art Monthly Australia also includes several provocative photos of children posing naked in adult jewellery as well as naked teenage girls.

In the editorial, Maurice O'Riordan says he chose the picture of the young girl in the "hope of restoring some dignity to the debate" and to "validate nudity and childhood as subjects for art". Mr O'Riordan, who does not have children of his own, told The Sunday Telegraph he does not care if it stirs community complaint.

"Maybe this is bold, but I don't see the need to give in to that sort of hysteria or the prospect of complaint.

"I couldn't really understand the furore."

Art Monthly Australia receives more than $50,000 in funding from the federal government's Council for the Arts and lists the NSW Ministry for the Arts under sponsors and partner. The state government has issued grants to the magazine in previous years.

Mr Iemma immediately threatened to withdraw future funding after he was contacted about the images on Saturday.

"Images of this kind are distasteful, exploitative of children - a cheap, sick stunt at the expense of a young child," he said.

"We've now reached a sad point where some people think naked kids can boost their sales and get them a headline. We will have no role in funding them while they use images that exploit children."

More than 5,000 copies of the magazine have been distributed across Australia.
The magazine also includes images by Bill Henson.

In May, police raided the Roslyn Oxley Gallery in Paddington, confiscating several images by Mr Henson, including the photographs of a naked 13-year-old girl.

The photos sparked major national debate and angered several organisations, including child welfare groups, with Mr Iemma labelling the works "offensive and disgusting".

Mr Henson was cleared of any wrongdoing following a police investigation.

A spokeswoman for the Australia Council on Saturday defended its decision to help fund the magazine. She said the council regards Mr Henson as one of the country's premier artists.