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

Maxine

From this day on The Artswipe never has to make bad collages about John Howard such as the two you can view here and here. Surely over time, Kevin Rudd will deserve a collage or two. But until then, let's pay tribute to Bennelong's new boss Maxine McKew. And what better way to do this than to dust off a bit of Sharon O'Neill.

Maxine

Creases in your white dress
Bruises on your bare skin
Looks like another fine mess
You've got yourself into

What's the matter with you?
Has the cat got your tongue?
Well if you don't like the beat
Then don't play with the drum

Maxine you're not the only one
To take the whole world on
No one's ever won
Maxine case 1352
A red and green tattoo
Eyes cold steel blue

On a rain-slicked avenue
Long shadows in the night
Take off your spike-heeled shoes
You've got to run for your life

Razor blade in your pocket
From an ex-marine
Makes you speed like a rocket
Ooh it cuts so clean

Maxine you're not the only one
To take the whole world on
No one's ever won
Maxine case 1352
A red and green tattoo
Eyes cold steel blue

How come you're payin' for borrowed time
Starin' out into space?
Bad boys and cold comfort
And a smacked-up face

Maxine you're not the only one
To take the whole world on
No one's ever won
Maxine case 1352
A red and green tattoo
Eyes cold steel blue

Who's that walking, walking behind you?
Who's that talking, talking about you?
Who's that walking, walking with you, Maxine?

© Sharon O'Neill 1982

Watch it at YouTube:

"A" Pecs

The Artswipe

Stuck in Traffic Again 2007
Digital video (still)

Inventing the Wheel

The Artswipe

Church of the Poison Mind, 2007

Mobile phone snap

So the NSW State election is over. Yes, I resisted casting a vote for the Australians Against Further Immigration party. I just can't get behind that. You see, I was handed the 'How to Vote' form and I couldn't get past the letters AAFI. Wondering if this party might not prefer starting a global rumour that Australians Are Fucking Idiots, I decided I'd rather die with shit in my mouth than vote for a party that doesn't understand how the colour wheel of life is, well, the best kind of wheel. (Wagon Wheels are good too).

After seeing this poster on a church-like building near where I voted, I started thinking more about colour - both in racial and aesthetic terms - and decided I would start my own Artswipe campaign to make immigration more important than ever before, if only to annoy the white type of Aussie Christians who take it upon themselves to create hybrid faiths that link cultural intolerance with religion and bad banner making. Then again, I haven't seen a pink church before. (Actually I'm not even sure if it is a church). Being that pink is so charged in meaning for chicks, fags and the occasional metrosexual, maybe we can give this little church - or whatever it is - the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps we should all inject cultural difference with a fresh coat of pink paint. Maybe this was not, after all, a church of the poison mind. And maybe, just maybe, it was not populated with a true blue crew of white washed rednecks adorned in green and gold.

I Heart Attack

The Artswipe

Heartfelt, 2007

Collage on paper (now on web)

Yesterday I was going through my inbox - most of it just spam or MySpace alerts - and an email with a delectably saucy subject line caught my eye. "Hot Australian News" it proclaimed. My mind raced. What could it be? Had Chrissy Amphlett made a comeback by urinating in public? Was Savage Garden reforming? Did Olivia Newton-John find her missing husband? Was an interesting artist representing Australia this year at the Venice Biennale?

No such luck. The said email came from Ronnie. Just Ronnie. No surname. Oh dear - has that boy who picked on me at school found me through School Friends Dot Com? Has he resurfaced all these years later to remind me with his petty taunts that my nipples are still high-beaming like they were that fateful day on the school's volleyball court. That fateful day, where ball sports meet water. You know the rest.

But this is no Ronnie from my barely suppressed past. Not even one of the two Ronnies. The suspense was killing me, and while I suspected Ronnie was just another thorny weed in the spam-a-lot gardens of my bulging inbox, I decided to take the risk and open his so-called hot Aussie news.

And hot it was. So much so that it inspired some really cutting edge collage.

--

SYDNEY, March 11, 2007 08:56pm (AEDT) - The Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard have survived a heart attack. Mr Howard, 67 years old, was at Kirribilli House in Sydney, his prime residence, when he was suddenly stricken. Mr Howard was taken to the Royal North Shore Hospital where the best surgeons of Australia are struggling for his life.

Click on the link below to get the latest information on the health of the Prime Minister:

The Australian - keeping the nation informed [this bit was hyperlinked]

The Hon John Winston Howard became in as Prime Minister of Australia on 11 March 1996, becoming the 25th person to occupy the office of Prime Minister since Federation. This followed the Coalition's decisive Federal election victory on 2 March 1996...

[then more boring bio... to paste it all here would contaminate this blog big time].

--

It just seemed too phony (and grammatically incorrect) to be true, so I resisted clicking on the hyperlink for fear I'd download a heart attack of my own. Good detective I am, I went straight to Google and typed in four words: John Howard heart attack. The first story to emerge details the "phishing bait" scam. (Not sure what 'phishing' is so don't ask... All I know is since 'fat' was spelled 'phat' by the once-cool hip-hop kids of yesterday, I have been intrinsically suspicious of any 'ph' combinations).

As one of the articles about the hoax email reports, "The phishing scam attempts to redirect visitors to a site which claims to be for the newspaper The Australian, but which was actually registered in Canada on February 14 this year... News-driven tactics have become increasingly common, as phishers seek to convince users that their messages are valid. Recent examples have included the US Superbowl and storms in Europe as topics. Many phishing mails direct users to sites which install trojan software which can take over their PCs and be used to form botnets for the further sending of spam."

So this all happened about a month ago. Poor John Howard's been in hospital all that time, and I get the email only yesterday. If phishy-dish spammers did their fucking job properly - and on time - I could have at least been urged into sending my heartfelt, homemade 'get well' card on time.