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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1. Item: PHRL20701

Size: 24 x 36 Inch

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

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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.

Inventing Meaning and the Wheel

Shaun Gladwell

Guide to Recent Architecture: Fountains (excerpt), 2000-07
PAL DVD, 4:3, stereo
Edition of 30 + 2 AP, loaded on USB flash drive embedded in skateboard wheel
Videography: Michael Schiavello, Gotaro Uemtasu
Sound: Kazumichi Grime
Courtesy the artist and Artspace

We live in a time where meaning is made multiple by the burden of interpretation. The more we think, talk and write about things, the more meaning is generated. One day soon, so much meaning will exist in the world that we will have to implement a kind of population control to limit meaning’s ongoing multiplicity. You certainly wouldn't want to be claustrophobic in a world overtaken by meaning. Give me the wide open spaces, I say. Call in pest control - meaning has taken over.

These were thoughts going through The Artswipe’s busy brain this morning while deciding whether to wear denim or stretch cotton – getting dressed for the day can sometimes be such a post-structural challenge. I eventually decided on a corduroy pant-suit embroidered with hearts and moons on the back right hand pocket (a semi-vintage heirloom passed down from Aunty Patsy who told me she went to Woodstock when I knew for a fact she never made it out of the housing commission where she grew up and eventually died). I picked up my baseball cap and wore it backwards just to mix things up a bit. Marveling at how much I looked like a skater dude, I picked up my mobile phone and sent a text to a friend that read, “sk8ers rock 4eva”. Later I got a reply that read, “hay artsvipe stay gold dont change keep up tha good werk lol xo”. I have since deleted that friend as they either can’t spell for shit or use predictive text – two qualities I look for in a friend.

It’s this little anecdotal gesture, communicated through costume and family memory that (probably) goes some way in illustrating how multiple meaning really is. I’m sure you could appreciate the subtle nuances and still take away something new that says less about me than you. It was either that anecdote or the one about catching the bus while wearing rollerblades and I don’t have all day to get my point across. But while we’re talking about things with wheels let’s illustrate meaning and its multiplicity by examining what’s new in art multiples. Over at Artspace you can purchase a Shaun Gladwell multiple of Guide to Recent Architecture: Fountains (excerpt) (2000-07) presented on a USB flash drive embedded in a skateboard wheel. The edition is 30 + 2 Artist Proofs and the price is $1650. According to the Artspace website:

Guide to Recent Architecture: Fountains is an ongoing experimental self-portrait project in which various urban spaces featuring water fountains provide the stage for skateboard performances. Each performance describes a relationship between the designed and proscribed functions of the civil space in which the performance takes place, and the reinterpreted function of the space as a skateboarding park. In Guide to Recent Architecture: Fountains (excerpt) the featured performance takes place at Cook and Phillip Park – one of Sydney’s most renowned skateboarding sites, and a space that has undergone constant redesign in order to displace the skateboarders who use it. Named after the colonisers, ‘Cook and Phillip’ is in turn colonised by these skaters.

That sounds convincing enough so I've been saving up to buy four of them so I can build my own multimedia skateboard with a some wood custom cut from Bunnings. Imagine how fast such a skateboard would go! Just to be powered with such meaning is all one can ever really ask for in this brief lifetime. What I admire about Gladwell is how he makes his work relatively accessible to the more working class among us art collectors but then withholds by only providing the video in excerpted form. It’s like the time I went to the cinema and said, “I only have a fraction of the admission fee” to which the ticket vendor replied, “We can let you watch the trailers but then you have to leave”.

With that in mind I checked how much I’d saved in my goal of owning four “Glad-wheels” and only had $19.95, just enough to purchase Australian Art Collector magazine and see what’s out there, more affordable and perhaps a little kinder to my class-conscious self-esteem. I stumbled on the pages of “Undiscovered” artists and the one who took my eye was a chap called Renny Kodgers (aka Sydney artist Mark Shorter who my sources confirms has a day job – coincidentally – at Artspace). One day I'll go to Artspace, introduce myself to Mark Shorter and see if he can cut me a deal on a “Glad-wheel”. Or better yet, maybe I could take a liking to what art multiples his nom-de-plume, Renny Kodgers, has on the market and invest my money where the sun don’t shine.

And shine it don’t because one of his works is called American Anus (2007), a series of four photographs of Renny in spangly red sequined suit and cowboy hat, in an edition of 5 and a mere $900 each. More alluring is a signed prosthetic penis, in an edition of 20 and the dollar dazzling price of $300. His DVDs are POA (price on application) which I take means he will learn how to burn DVDs on his computer when and if the demand sets in. Another picture reproduced in Art Collector is from The Heat is...On! performance at Chalk Horse in November 2007. At the time, it was there I first learned of this mighty generous performer, who sweated it out with art punters in a communal steam room installed in the smaller of Chalk Horse’s spaces. Having seen how impressive his manhood is - in the flesh, so to speak - I must say it is great he had it cast for art as a prosthetic member readymade for whatever interactive delights I’m only guessing are left up to how far your imagination extends. And extend it will! Knowing I'm never gonna enjoy the sweet ride of those four "Glad-wheels" I tried saving up for, what better ride than Renny's latex love.

Before I go, let me share Renny’s philosophical approach to artmaking as quoted in Art Collector:

For me [my performances] are about how the audience engages with the artwork and how the meaning changes as it progresses.

There you go: meaning and the multiple perfectly summed up by the “undiscovered” Renny Kodgers. If you can’t afford a multiple, then take that little bit of homespun wisdom home for free.

Renny Kodgers
The Heat is...On! 2007
Digital C-Type print
80 x 40 cm. Edition of 5 + 2 AP
Photo: Rowan Conroy
Courtesy the artist

Church of the Poison Mind II

The Artswipe

Spot the Difference (from the Sorry series) 2008
Mobile phone propaganda

The Artwipe made a little pilgrimage to church this morning. I rarely go in, I just check out the signage outside as I always enjoy a Christian pun first thing in the morning. My local church had a sign announcing, "It's Good to Say Sorry" followed by a bible verse. As forgiveness is a Christian past-time, it's unsurprising that Rudd's Sorry Day has been turned into a kind of churchey truism, resplendent with as much meaning as a bumper sticker that might read "Quakers Say NO to ALL WAR". Yes, such a bumper sticker exists. See image below.

So anyway. Today I thought I would actually go inside the church and say my own sorry to God, Mankind, Womankind, Indigenouskind.... Even "In-kind". Because sometimes people give me free shit! As I entered the church, the Reverend Man greeted me, we sat down and he said, "What ails you child?"

The Artswipe said:

What concerns me, Father, is how Christianity has been inextricably linked to the injustices experienced by Aboriginals in this country. Now that the Australian Government says Sorry, the Church de-politicises the Sorry gesture for its own trite and ye-olde-worlde marketing machine. Is this not a colonialist mentality of theft: to drain the real meaning of the apology to the Stolen Generation and recast it within a Judeo-Christian ideology where forgiveness is never Black as it's always whiter than White and washed in the Blood of the Lamb?

The Artswipe
From The Seatbelt Series, 2007 and ongoing
Mobile phone moment

I Am What is Most Beautiful About You, Me and Everyone We Know

Del Kathryn Barton

You are what is most beautiful about me,
a self portrait with Kell and Arella, 2008
Courtesy the Kids

The Artswipe has finally been accepted as a fully fledged member of "the media". With media pass in hand, I made my way into the Archibald Media Launch this afternoon. The adrenalin was pumping because I really was in the presence of true artistic greatness. Either that or I had finally realised my life-long dream of becoming a carnie and running away with the circus.

Wandering around the Art Gallery of NSW I made my choice for winner: Joanna Braithwaite's Chook Chook Chook. I just figure that a woman surrounded by chooks is a likely winner. It's got that certain post-feminist joie de vivre and it's often on this guiding principal that I base my aesthetics judgements.

As March does not have such a strong record for delivering psychic energy to The Artswipe, I am certainly glad I didn't bet too much dosh on an Archibald winner because in a word "chook lady" was, well, how do you say "loser" without sounding too mean? Like everything else that didn't win, Chook Chook Chook should be spit-roasted so the masses can roast marshmallows amidst the pungent aroma of burning chicken fat.

So what won? According to the top brass of the AGNSW trustees, it was narrowed down to two and he stressed that this was strictly in alphabetical order: Del Kathryn Barton for You are what is most beautiful about me, a self portrait with Kell and Arella and Vincent Fantauzzo for Heath.

Winners know all about alphabetical order, so of course Del Kathryn Barton won for her self portrait with kids. Now that I am officially sanctioned as media, I admire officially sanctioned winners. More so, I admire that Barton has made a painting that looks like all of her other paintings - how very postmodern of her. Even more postmodern are those hippy-chick dreadlocks sprouting from her head. If not for that, she deserves the award for negotiating sensible designer eyewear in relation to the trademark bug-eyes we have come to know and love. Good on Del Kathryn Barton for shirking celebrity and painting the nuclear family sans dad. I admire that she blames her kids for her beauty - my mother blames me for her stretch marks - but hey, my mum's a bitch and not a very good painter to boot.

Barton accepted her award with a modest speech, thanking the kids and letting us know that You are what is most beautiful about me, a self portrait with Kell and Arella is particularly special because apart from having a really long title, it's a painting she does not associate with the commercial side of her practice. As it only earned her a prize of $50,000 it's probably a bit "povvo". Just as well the Archibald is not an acquisitive award as I'm sure her commercial dealer, Kaliman Gallery, could secure her a little more than that! Gotta pay those school fees after all.

Vincent Fantauzzo
Heath, 2008
Courtesy Good Timing

I shed a little tear when I saw Vincent Fantauzzo's highly commended painting of Heath Ledger. I might be part of the media now, but I'm not a cunt and I do know when it is appropriate to elicit a momentary display of grief. Now that the tears have subsided, I've realised the portrait of Heath Ledger is definitely a winner - or at least Fantauzzo is a winner for depicting a celebrity in his last days without even knowing. Psychic enegery is obviously lacking for The Artswipe this month and abundant for Fantauzzo. Art is sometimes about good timing - being in the right place at the right time. Let's not forget that in the hustle and bustle of our busy urbane lives. Certainly Heath is a winner because, in addition to its impeccable sense of timing, the portrait mines the enduring cliche of the genius artist tormented by voices in his head.

Now that The Artswipe is a fully fledged media carnie, a head full of my own multi-tracked voice is an option I'd like to consider. A head full of skanky dreadlocks that nods approval at bug-eyed offspring, perhaps not. Chicken ladies, maybe.

Joanna Braithwaite
Chook, chook, chook, 2008
Courtesy Post-Feminist joie de vivre

Whatever Happened to Puppy?

Jeff Koons
Puppy, December 1995 - March 1996
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Kaldor Art Projects

The Artswipe was feeling kinda nostalgic this week. So much so I started thinking about Jeff Koons. (When I'm nostalgic I always think about artists who made a splash in the 80s and early-mid-90s. Don't we all?) Amidst the flood of fond memories, I recalled the time I helped out on the installation for Jeff Koons's Puppy when it was being planted outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in the early-mid-90s. (A quick Google search revealed it was 1995/1996 - geez sorry for the lack of specificity - if it wasn't for the web I would not remember for sniffing so much weedkiller in my day... Plus I forgot to add that week of gardening to my Art CV).

Overcome by the return of a repressed memory, I took a trip down to Circular Quay today just to reminisce. I started thinking about the old days - the gentler times - when volunteerism was in my blood and I would help out on all the big installs - Biennales, Triennials, Perspectas, Puppies - just so I could one day land a job as a museum guide or cloak room clerk. Trekking down to the Quay this afternoon, I made my way past the waterside theatre sports and began walking to the MCA just so I could lie down on the grass and think of Puppy and how much s/he meant to me. Puppy may not be there anymore in reality, but s/he lingers on like a cultural phantom limb, just aching to be scratched. Easily distracted, I had an instant craving for a cheeseburger-hold-the-gherkins. As I crossed the road in a beeline to McDonalds I walked past Customs House and my heart stopped...

There before me was a little floral roadside tribute to Puppy.

The Artswipe

Puppy (In progress), 2008
Public Access Art

Death Snub

Phew, just as well the Hollywood writer's strike is over. I was finding it really hard to write for fear of being called a "strikebreaker!" I hate upsetting my peers from the Academy, they're a delicate breed. Celebrating with a quiet flute of bubbly, I watched the Oscars last night and realised that every year I watch mainly because I love the bit where they dim the lights and fire up that good old PowerPoint presentation of dead Hollywood people. If the Oscars are all about your measure of worth in the entertainment industry, then the annual three minute Oscar clip-fest memorialising dead stars is the ultimate test for who we love best. (And if your footage gets slow motion treatment you've really tugged at our heartstrings). In November 2006 Artswipe wrote a tribute for Adrienne Shelley who achieved arthouse cinema fame for acting and directing in her brief lifetime. On Oscar night last year Shelley was not honoured in the death montage. What a crime against cinema.

With this in mind, I was looking forward to the Oscars this year to see how big Heath Ledger's applause would be and whether young actor Brad Renfro (Apt Pupil, Bully, The Client), who died of a heroin overdose a week before Ledger, would get his moment of Oscar hagiography. Much like I anticipated, Renfro was excluded. Since the Oscars were televised the global press has been buzzing with news of Renfro's "Oscar snub". Once you would have expected such a headline to be reserved for that illustrious actor who was cheated out of a much deserved nomination (say Matthew McConaughey for his performance in Fools Gold or Mandy Moore for Because I Said So).

As for Ledger, he was honoured last in the presentation and the applause was deafening. If they had cut back to the audience you would have seen a pre-ad break standing ovation that after a few heartfelt minutes would subside for the bit in the night where an animated character presents an award.

Sorry (Britney) Day

Monika Behrens

Leave Britney Alone! 2007
Oil on board
Courtesy the artist
Photo: Tom Polo

The Artswipe was stuck in traffic this morning listening to Triple J's mind-numbing morning radio program. One day I'll iPod the car, I promise. The news presenter at 7am started with the story on everyone's lips: Sorry Day, which happens finally Wednesday 13th February. If you've been living under Ayers Rock, on another planet, or down Howard's End, then you might need to be reminded that it is the day when the Australian Government finally lead the way in saying sorry for the trauma and injustices imposed on our indigenous peoples since the dawn of whiteness in this land girt by sea. Of particular emphasis in the Sorry rhetoric is making amends to the Stolen Generations.

Soda_Jerk
Nothing Compares 2 U, 2007
Photo collage
Courtesy the artists

So it's all over the news and this morning the poor Triple J newsreader kept tripping over his words and uttered a particularly tricky sentence including the words 'stolen' and 'sorry'. As alliteration must not be a strong suit, he collapsed both words so they came out as 'stoli'. How racist to bring up alcohol in this context, I thought indignantly! After a few stunned moments, I realise anyone can get a little tongue tied. And as it's very early in the morning and as reading the news is probably one of the most challenging jobs in the food chain, I forgive him, I say Sorry.

Soda_Jerk
Tabloid Trash Attack (50ft Brit vs Kevzilla) 2006
Photo collage, commissioned by Runway Magazine
Courtesy the artists

But as political correctness is not one of The Artswipe's stronger points, I started thinking about how this historic day should be the start of universal sorryness. Now craving a Stoli and Coke at 7:10am-ish and thinking about Stolen Generations, I began to realise we all have to say sorry to so many people. My indigenous brothers and sisters, I'm sorry. To everyone I've wronged, I'm sorry. One person I've wronged recently is Britney Spears. To Britney, I'm sorry. Like all child stars whose transition into adulthood is wracked with booze, pills, paparrazi, Vegas weddings, abandoned kids, mental illness, Britney is a babywoman whose childhood was stolen out from under her. "I'm not a girl, not yet a woman", as her song goes. We have all wronged Britney so join me some time soon when I lobby Parliaments of the World for a Sorry Britney Day.

Young Talent Time

Brace Yourselves

Welcome to 2008! I'm back from the dead... Apologies for the absence but sometimes when Bali comes a calling you have to drop everything, pack your bags and sun yourself in a time and place where climate change comes Batteries Not Included. I'm back now from Summer Break and ready to titillate once again.

The Artswipe plans on a big year of tease, sleaze and disease. Just hold the Quickease - there will be NO illicit drugs on this trip. When will the kids learn to say no to drugs? Speaking of kids and drugs, you can rest assured - rest in peace, so to speak - that The Artswipe shed a little tear this week for Heath Ledger: Perth's own.

When his passing was announced, The Artswipe experienced major media whip-lash. So much so, my neck is in a brace and I'm feeling "very Erin Brockovich". And that dear readers is my metaphor for the global mourning happening right now - we've all got sore necks from the media muteness that has a-come all over us. Those of us not so mute are people like John Travolta. When you have hair-plugs that loud, muteness ain't an option. Travolta's tribute to Ledger has burned in my soul ever since Today Tonight aired it: "He's touched me deeply as a talent and it's a great loss" said Travolta. I know when my loved ones die, I always acknowledge them as "talents" first and foremost. That's what they would have wanted. When The Artswipe's own obituary appears in Art Forum in, I'm guessing the year 2056, the headline will be "TALENT DEAD".

Moral of the story: When they're young, talented and gone well before their time, you can rest assured the world stops-snap-frozen in its Gucci neck brace, glued to a media outpouring more potent and frenzied than any Emerald floodwaters.

What a Steal!

Courtesy the Artswipe Collection

How is it that you can spend a year waiting for something to happen in the World News Headlines and then - BAM! - it happens right at the end of the year. No, I'm not talking about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. That kind of thing happens to world leaders all the time, so excuse me if I can't commit to that news item. The news story that caught my undivided attention in the last 24 hours and which has become a contender for most compelling true crime story of the year (if not the most nail-biting event of the post 9/11 age) is the tale of the Brisbane couple who got busted with $40,000 worth of stolen library booty in their home. Over 1000 library books, DVDs, CDs and magazines were hidden in cereal boxes in their home. "Pass the milk sweetie, these Bryce Courtenay bran flakes are a little dry and plotless."

Apparently every item had been read by the couple and because of that, I really think we should cut them some slack. Everyone knows that only in rare cases does anyone ever read books borrowed from the library. So give peace a chance a leave the couple alone. They've suffered enough for their crime against literature and civic responsibilities.

To show my support, I went to the local second hand store and stole a book. The security at my local library is way too tight so I had to resort to the local Vinnies. Libraries and thrift stores are basically the same thing aren't they? Since my crime I have been planning the best dinner parties. For instance, today I've been workshopping a New Years Eve dinner party with my stolen literary treasure: The Australian Women's Weekly: The Busy Woman's Cookbook (Food editor: Ellen Sinclair, Golden Press, 1971).

So if you were lucky enough to be invited over for dinner tonight, this is what you can expect:

Entree: Mushrooms a la Greue
Mains: Little Carpetbag Steaks with a Zucchini and Pineapple Salad
Dessert: Cold Grand Mariner Soufflé with Brandied Caramel Pears

Happy New Years and Bon Appetit.

Brief Exchange

Of course you can exchange

Boxing Day brought so much joy for The Artswipe in the shopping stakes. I don't really think my loved ones know me well at all! Otherwise they would have bought me presents I wouldn't have to exchange. Thank The Good Lord Above they kept their receipts. Actually, my mother has taken to wrapping presents in a collage of Christmas receipts. Not only is it saving on paper - and therefore good for the environment - but it saves on the rancid gift economy bullshit of Christmas. Because really, the receipt often looks a whole lot better than the crap purchased at its expense. Once the disappointment of Christmas subsided and the trainwreck of family departed after a long day of eating overcooked turkey, drinking VB shandies and watching repeats of National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, I ended the day soaking in a long hot beauty bath - it's the perfect place to ponder what the Boxing Day sales might bring.

I got up early on Boxing Day. My shopping circuit was thoroughly mapped out over a breakfast medley of leftover roasted meats. The Artswipe's Boxing Day Shopping Cartography: Myer, DJs, JB HiFi and Target with a couple of Gloria Jeans chasers thrown in for good measure. Maybe the gift-shop at the MCA would be a good place to get a new sex toy? Surely they have merchandised a whole range for the Julie Rrap show.

Start at Myer first because the teaming crowd of Dawn of the Dead extras lining up outside hours before opening is perfect material for examining the human condition. The ethnography of shopping is one of the first things on my mind before participating in consumer whoreticulture. Moreover, the crowds clamouring for their Myer mystore TM fix are always peopled with such hot snatch that you can score at least a year's supply of shower nozzle masturbation material.

The salivating throng of crowds lusting for homewares and haberdashery makes Boxing Day my favourite day of the year. But if you're going to make post-Christmas a sexy time, you need good underwear. You know, mix it up a bit at Bras and Things before checking out the stench of cheap cotton maxing out Men's underwear at Target. Maybe even take a chance on a few items left over in the change room, like a tasty little seamless microfibre low rise number or some comfortable odor controlling fabrics from Calvin Klein. Why bother trying them on beforehand as nothing makes for better souvenirs of festive cheer.

The Artswipe
Specials, 2007
Found objects

Road Safety

The Artswipe
The Seatbelt Series, 2007 and ongoing
Mobile phone moments

Life has been roadworthy. Merry Christmas Youse Guys. But before you go, heed to an Artswipe social message moment: Don't drink and drive and certainly think twice before souping up the car.

Best of Best of Best of 2007

The Artswipe
Clit Art, 2007
Courtesy the media

The Artswipe visited so many exhibitions this year, because, well basically it was the year where "drinking problem" became a well-worn phrase... and we all know the booze at art openings sometimes makes up for the art. A lot of great art was seen but basically The Artswipe is more interested in trash and tabloid. Here's a year best of list to end all lists:

1. Nikki Webster's Coming of Age
2. The ABC for a year-long dose of art, mini-golf and 'dicktation'
3. Tara Reid Rentals
4. Ricki Lake's Vagina
5. Renny Kodger's Penis
6. Dead Horses
7. Chrissie Amphlett on Idol - SMS and MS collide
8. The chick from Frente made a comeback
9. Ribena Scandal
10. Edmund Capon Fits in My Coat

The Artswipe
Who's got the Blu-Tak? 2007
Courtesy the Thievery Corporation

Human Sculptures

The Artswipe
Come on Vogue, 2007
Mobile phone moment
Courtesy the artistry

Sorry guys for being one slack asscrack blogger. But there's a reason for my absence. Aside from end of year compulsory alcoholism, I've been away at Brisbane for over a week visiting friends and relatives. While there, I checked out the razzle dazzle of the Andy Warhol show at QAG/GOMA. In fact, I just returned today and have mild jetlag. The most amazing part of my journey was happenstancing on these human sculptures on a main road in the part of Brisbane where they have shops. I think this couple were on their way to the Warhol, I couldn't really tell.

If you know what they are doing, where they are going, or who they might be, let me know via comment or email and I will send you a Christmas present. I promise.

Coming soon at the The Artswipe: what was hot and what was snot in 2007.

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:

Reading Lips

The Artswipe
Sign Language 2007
Mobile phone moment

With the looming election, I felt it time to get back to basics and explore some nationalistic themes - usually a hot topic here at The 'swipe. A favourite moment in recent times (say, the last month or so) has been the introduction of the Australian Citizenship Test, which is so important it even has its own Wikipedia entry. In case you've been living under a rock (let's say Uluru in this instance, or Ayers Rock if you prefer) applicants for Australian Citizenship have to pass an Australian citizenship test. As summarised by Wikipedia:

The objective of the test is to prove an applicant's grasp of English language and understanding of Australia’s "values", history, traditional and national symbols. Citizenship applicants will need to study a booklet produced by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. The computer based test will consist of 20 multiple choice questions drawn randomly from a pool of 200 confidential questions. The test will only be available in English. Applicants will have 45 minutes to complete the test. The material is drawn from the official guide "Becoming an Australian Citizen" published by the Australian Government department of Immigration and Citizenship. Applicants must obtain a mark of at least 60 per cent to pass but must also answer three mandatory questions correctly. Applicants will need to pass the test before they can submit their citizenship application.

OK, so that's the official line. I agree Australian values are important. But who sets the tone for what is characteristically Australian knowledge? Obviously the whole thing is designed to ensure migrants 'assimilate' into the Australian way of life. That good old fashioned 'A' word: assimilation. It's like a cross between ass and simulate and something Australians know a lot about: the simulation of assholes.

So I was wondering what questions I'd want included in the test, so that it is a true snapshot of Australian life. For instance, is there an Australian art question? Surely there should be something about Brett Whiteley as he's the only Aussie artist apart from Pro Hart that non-artsy people know about. So the question could be:

How did Brett Whiteley die?
A: face bitten off by a grizzly bear
B: auto-erotic asphyxiation
C: heroin overdose
D: thrown from rollercoaster at Luna Park

You may think of others, say some pop culture inspired ones:
What type of bird is Ossie Ostrich?
A: Ibis
B: Plucker
C: Kookaburra
D: Ostrich

Or even something about indigenous culture:
Which word are Aboriginals not likely to hear from the white fella?
A: sorry
B: pardon
C: apologies
D: all of the above, but especially A.

Or perhaps something about Kylie Minogue:
Complete the name of this Kylie Minogue song, "Confide in ___"
A: Michael Hutchence
B: Molly Meldrum
C: Mel Gibson
D: Me

If you have multiple choice questions you'd like to add to my "Getting your Aussie L Plates" database, just comment at this blog or send an email to: theartswipe at hotmail dot com.

Just one thing before I go, I'm no racialist but really there is nothing worse than being the only person in the room who can't speak the language. This happened to me recently when I found myself at a speed-dating event for the deaf. Everyone was talking in sign language. How did I find myself there? I hear you ask. I was told really hot people are sometimes deaf. NB. Marlee Matlin. The only bit of that night that I could understand was the screening they had afterwards of select Home and Away episodes, which came in both spoken and sign language. Look, I believe Home and Away is a good start, but the deaf should think a bit more carefully about the politics of effective assimilation.

Trophy Wife

Elvis Richardson
Field Study #1 2007
Archival Pegasus Print, 40 x 45cm framed
Courtesy the artist & James Dorahy Project Space

Elvis Richardson
The impossibility of losing in the mind of someone winning S.T.G.C. 2007
Found trophy, burnt and re-silver plated, 13 x 13 cm
Courtesy the artist & James Dorahy Project Space

One of my greatest childhood regrets is not being sportier. I always envied those kids who would have cabinets upon cabinets of sporting or breakdancing trophies. I always imagined being awarded a medal for fencing, even though I never fenced. I suppose the annual School Rock Eisteddfod at the Sydney Entertainment Centre was more my forte – and admittedly that was as spectator than participant. Then there’s ArtExpress? I never made it in, but I did appear acting in a friend’s video artwork in the late 90s and that made it in. But unlike Hollywood, the auteur is everything in the artworld and the actor is regarded as shit-like.

I guess I’ll have to settle for being a trophy wife.

Feelings of regret for being a total loser when it comes to trophy acquisition (or lack thereof) came rushing back to the fore when visiting Elvis Richardson’s show at James Dorahy Project Space, The Impossibility of Losing in the Mind of Someone Winning. Richardson has been working with trophies for awhile now and they’re not her own. A total op-shop whore, Richardson mines the second-hand market place for abandoned trophies and makes them her own. She’s a collector of the kind of stuff no one wants or needs. I mean who the fuck wants someone else’s token of triumph displayed on the mantelpiece, let alone a complete strangers. But artists get off on reimagining the detritus that was once a treasured icon of achievement. For instance, Nicholas Folland also uses trophies and sport memorabilia in his work, to wryly comment more on defeat than the usual elation associated with winning. I'm even reminded here of Tracey Moffatt's great series Fourth (2001), where the artist lovingly photographed from her TV screen the almost winners (ie losers) of the 2000 Sydney Olympics as if the coverage was a found object just waiting for an artist to come along and reclaim it. Found objects in art always work so well when they carry with them the burden of displaced meaning. That’s my fancy faux academic way of saying that once the object screamed to the world, “I’m a winner” while now it reeks of apathy and amnesia; what was once so revered is now a lacklustre footnote. And what’s even more pathetic is that unless these objects end up in the hands of a clever artist, they sit at the op-shop as bitter reminder that Joe Citizen once won a tennis tournament, but he’s now either downsized or dead.

Richardson plays with these tensions beautifully in her work. You may recall similar themes pervading her ongoing Slide Show Land work, where 35mm transparencies are reclaimed and reconfigured from the dustbin of history we call eBay. In this body of work, Richardson has taken a bunch of trophies and refashioned them by burning and recasting them. The resulting works are bent out of shape rendering them sad and comical at the same time, like they’ve been polished one time too many. Imagine the maid took a line of speed one morning and over-polished the trophy cabinet in one particularly manic moment of hard-core hygiene - that’s what these readymade sporting sculptures look like. In a country that privileges sport over the arts, it’s great to see an artist like Richardson forcing sculpture onto sport. A nominee in the Basil Sellers Art Prize, which asks Australian contemporary artists to reflect and engage with sport, Richardson is something of a contender because she reminds us that despite its obvious and enduring emphasis on physicality, sport is potent as one of our leading elements of cultural and social life because it is a stage for unfettered emotional melodrama. It’s safe to say that today’s triumph will inevitably be tomorrow’s defeat and Richardson’s repurposed signifiers of sporting prowess blur the edges around these supposedly extreme states of victory and loss. Therein rests sport’s greatest paradox: a trophy always needs a shelf; a winner never wants a shelf life.