The Greatest Artist in the World

There's a new ARI (artist-run-initiative) in town. Let me explain...

I was doing my 5pm power walk around Centennial Park on Thursday, when I encountered the opening night fanfare of Art Sydney at The Royal Hall of Industries, where hard-bodied suits were parading down the red carpet with their pregnant Double Bay wives. Replenishing my fluids more than necessary, then pretending to tie my Nike shoelaces, I waited awhile hoping to spy someone semi-famous. Be careful what you wish for! I didn't just see someone famous, I saw Arie Levit, the self-proclaimed "Greatest Artist in the World". Admittedly I didn't know who he was; I'm just guessing he's famous and I didn't know because I cancelled my subscription to Parkett, like, ages ago.

It was quite amusing actually because Arie (who I gather has a mental illness or something) was rejected by Art Sydney and letting everyone know with his makeshift stall showcasing his precocious talents. What does he do? He paints, not with a brush, but with a trowel. I guess it's better than action painting from your asshole. I took a few phone snaps of management fighting to have him removed while an amateur TV crew (who I suspect were booked by Arie) filmed the commotion. As I was about to leave to finish my now interrupted power walk, Arie bailed me up with a brochure. Grammar may not be a strong suit, but confidence is. For that I feel blessed to have come close to such greatness. As Ari says:

Since the invention of the camera painters have had to compromise on the only thing that turns a painter into an artist... skill. Arie is the only painter in the last 200 years to put skill back into the art where it belongs. "I can do with my towel what the great Salvador Dali did with a hundred brushes. I paint the best paintings in the world, you can touch them, you can clean them with a cloth, you could even spill red wine over them, just mind the carpet mate!!" Aries fresco paintings amazes everyone who ever touches them. "When people touch my art my art touches them".

Pity his trowel isn't being used to craft the old-fashioned art of commas and apostrophes.

Daily Dose

Stevie Nicks as an artwork courtesy of Commander Cody

Apologies to all (ie both) of my loyal readers for being AWOL. The last few weeks The Artswipe has been holed up at home sick as a dog. I contracted a case of apathy. Who'd have thought that was sexually transmitted! I went to see the family doctor and all she could do was offer some aesthetic advice and tell me to avoid coming into contact with anything white. Maybe I should stop seeing a PhD and visit an MD like the rest of the world because whiteness if just too fucking pervasive to avoid. But if you must know what The Artswipe is endorsing at the moment, here goes.

My favourite new media piece of recent times was The Worm by Channel 9 (Sunday, October 21, 2007). That was hypnotic and quietly compelling. My favourite text art was from the Good Weekend (October 13, 2007) - especially this quote from an article about Stevie Nicks:

So 1993 comes rolling around, and Stevie Nicks is finally convinced that that the protracted high dosage of Klonopin might be killing her. So she does exactly what you or I might do. She instructs her personal assistant, Glenn, to take her daily dose - just to see what effect it has. "I said, 'It won't kill you, because it hasn't killed me, but I just want to see what you think... Well, after an hour... he said, 'I can't fix the stereo and I don't think I can drive home'. And I said, 'Well good - just stay there because I'm studying you.' And he was almost hallucinating. It was bad".

So I am reading this in the doctor surgery waiting room. That's the best place to read the Good Weekend as you can be waiting a long time and the dullness of the magazine is a perfect match to the dodgy interior design characteristic of such places. As I contemplate what it must be like to be Stevie Nicks, I have a killer idea for a performance piece. I will get my doctor to prescribe me high doses of Klonopin - a hearty tranquiliser endorsed by none other than the white witch herself - and hand it out at the next art opening I attend.

I will call this piece 'Studying' the White Cube (just like the white wing dove) 2007.

Later in the article Stevie talks about why she founded "The Stevie Nicks Soldier's Angel Foundation". In case you don't know, this foundation promotes the use of music in the rehabilitation of of US servicemen and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan by providing them with iPods. And that's just what those brave soldiers need.

It had crossed my mind that the consolation prizes offered to Australian Idol contestants as they get booted off (juicy plasma screens and then some) are probably more generous. But at least the gift of music heals like nothing else. Stevie just knows that it's better to scratch your phantom limb in time to the beat of Rhiannon than to the bitter bombless silence of American life post-wartime.

Multiple Choice

The Artswipe

Born 2B Cute, 2007
Mobile phone photo

I was strolling through a suburban Westfield (my favourite of art spaces) and encountered this shiny installation. Very Kingpins, I thought. Who'd have ever thought the acid house smiley face would make a comeback precisely 20 years on. But how appropriate, how artworld are such comebacks. The remixing of pop histories is very much a present day concern, exemplified by artists like The Kingpins, Soda_Jerk, Ms & Mr, Spat + Loogie, Motel Sisters. Exhibiting with your actual name is so last decade - it's so much more zeitgeist to invent a funky moniker to match your funky artwork. I called deed poll to ask their opinion about all of this and spoke to a woman called Tap Water. She said,"ask me no questions, I tell you no lies". Hmmm cryptic, I thought. (Just as well she didn't call herself Tap Gallery - that place makes my skin crawl). One thing Tap Water did shed light on is that it's against the law to change your name to a conjunction (joining words like"and", "for" or "or"). Shame if you're a text artist.

I was so inspired by the Westfield installation - partly because everything was so cheap - that I made my way from there to The Kingpins opening at Kaliman Gallery on Thursday night (4 October). There's no point going to see their show unless you go on opening night because the whole point of their practice is the party involved. As I'm fairly shallow at the best of times I like artists who aren't afraid to make partying their medium of choice. And what a party it was. Check out the opening night photos at the new and very trendy Kaliman Gallery Blogspot. I'm standing just behind the wig sculpture in case you're wondering.

The Kingpins
Survivor, 2007
Oil on canvas, 90 x 65 cm
Courtesy the artist & Kaliman Gallery

So who are The Kingpins? All you need to know is that they're a supercrazygirlfoursome who remix history with such garish kitschy aplomb it makes your rectum bleed sequins. Known mainly for their music video like works, The Kingpins' new stuff depicts Azaria Chamberlain as if she was a 27 year old trapped in a Bollywood world. I don't know about you, but I've always wondered what Azaria would be doing now if she was alive. Last time I visited Psychic Sue, she told me Azaria is very much alive: she lives in our hearts. What an uplifting thought. In the universe of The Kingpins, Azaria is trapped on canvas. Yes, trapped in a painting. Like all good rockstars between albums, The Kingpins have given the music video production team annual leave and commissioned sign painters from India. The blurb at the Kaliman blog says:

To produce the paintings the Kingpins travelled to India to work with Bollywood cinema and sign painters, Muthu Arts and Kumar Arts of Pondicherry. This collaboration allowed the Kingpins to explore a history of cinematic advertising, famous for its hyper-real palette and incredible technical skill. The resulting pastiche is a mesmerising combination. Mothered by dingoes and fathered by popular culture, Azaria Chamberlain appears before us as a fantasy woman, legendary figure of the Australian outback in full-blown Bollywood colour.

I suppose the blog isn't going to say: The Kingpins are now making paintings because they are easier for a commercial gallery to sell. But come to think of it, video art is selling like hotcakes these days. So much so it makes me wonder if there's a bootleggy kind of black market out there trading Shaun Gladwells. Just picture it: a nervous crackwhore bootlegger in Chinatown with his pirated video art copies spreadout on a tressle table: "For you two dollar".

Pope Alice
Giza circa AD1500
from Appearances series, ongoing
Courtesy the artist and MOP Projects

What else have I seen this week? Well video art and the whole persona thing (usually) done by the likes of The Kingpins is the subject of the MOP show Multiple Personality. I've been meaning to see this show since it opened as a PDF of its catalogue was emailed to The Artswipe by curator, Daniel Mudie Cunningham. Referring to The Art Life, The Artswipe, Skanky Jane, and Art & Mayhem, he writes in the catalogue text, "Persona is evidently multiple in an online context as it relies less on the accountability of the word made flesh." Nice one DMC.

Multiple Personality is an entertaining show that positions veteran legends like the Luke Roberts/Pope Alice nexus alongside new stars like Matthew Hopkins and Sari TM Kivinen (both of whom have been the subject of older Artswipe posts. See here for Hopkins and here for Kivinen). The video work by Ms & Mr is a highlight that shows the artists remixing their childhood home videos so that present day Mr appears in video footage of a school play performance by Ms. Think Twin Peaks meets Degrassi Junior High. Their video at MOP has a similar vibe to Videodromes for the Alone: The Lovecats, 1991/2007 - showcased in Heavy Sentimental, their wonderful debut show for Kaliman Gallery in June 2007. If I get bored of partying as my medium, I'm going to take a page out of the Ms & Mr guidebook to life and make marriage my medium of choice. Why not? It's multi-tasking at its best. "Babe can you take out the trash?" "Sure sweetie, but wait, let me grab the camcorder, bin night hasn't been examined yet in our practice".

I'm sure my little Mrs - Skanky Jane - won't mind taking out the trash.

Ms & Mr
Videodromes for the Alone: The Lovecats, 1991/2007
VHS & DV transferred to DVD
Colour, sound, edition of 5 + 1AP, duration 3:02 min
Courtesy the artist & Kaliman Gallery

Horse Flu

From The Artswipe Collection

Last week I was at a party where this old friend (who I really should just dump) – let's call her Fay – asked me which animal I might have been in a past life. I thought long and hard about it before replying – such things have to be taken very seriously. So serious in fact that I'm sure some COFA Art Theory kid is already writing a PhD on the topic. Before I got a chance to answer Fay's question, she started telling me that her past life was equine. Fay was indeed a horse called Zara. So that Fay/Zara couldn't see my disapproval, I rolled my inner eyes, and thought, what is it about chicks and horses? I don't get it; isn't that girly-horsy thing, like Tab and Swatch watches, just a little bit last century? Once every girl I knew either wanted a horse or wanted to be a horse. Ride a fucking bike, for godsakes! I remember when I was at school (the posh one of my imagination) little princess cunts like Mia, Sue and Julie weren't satisfied unless daddy bought them a pony, which is exactly what daddy did. I used to wonder if their daddies would adopt me. I'd do anything for a daddy who would let me ride.

If I was a child in this day and age, I'd be lucky to score a Tamagotchi from my parents, let alone a day-pass barebacking at El Caballo Blanco. Speaking of which, I was sifting through a week's worth of junkmail yesterday (you know the drill: endless invites to every gallery in the world) and a pamphlet about El Caballo Blanco caught my eye. How amazing that it still exists. I had just assumed (whenever it crossed my mind) that it had gone the way of Old Sydney Town or Australia's Wonderland. Oh wait, it actually did; this pamphlet is advertising its return to Sydney as an All New Arena Spectacle: "A piece of history returns". Yay! The last time I was at El Caballo Blanco – c. the early years – I bought a souvenir spoon for my mother and she thought it really beautiful. As my mother was more into mink coats and costume jewellery at the time, I suspect in retrospect that she was pretending.

Getting back to my past life animal. I won't divulge what my animal might be, for fear the reincarnation gods are listening and will start planning my next life accordingly - just in case I guess the animal and get it wrong. And to be quite honest, I'd rather come back a fridge magnet than an animal. Animals are so over-rated. Who'd want to be an animal when you're never quite sure if you'll end up dinner for another species, roadkill along the Great Highway of Wherever, or shot up with cancer or "the AIDS" for the Greater Scientific Good. Imagine coming back as a pet for either the disabled or dilettante. And seeing how much I hate French cinema in this life, it would be just my luck that I'd come back as the poster pet for the Brigitte Bardot animal welfare foundation in the next life if I don't play my cards right.

Fay was getting mighty pissed with me now for being too cerebral so I bought her another Southern Comfort and Coke to shut her up before moving to the other end of the bar to talk to Wendy. The thing about Wendy is that she actually has a bit of a horse face so I couldn't handle it anymore. After having a spew outside, I hailed a cab and went home. But I couldn't sleep. I had horses on my mind. Ignoring the El Cobalo Blanco brochure sitting on the coffee table, I flicked through the art invite junk mail and saw that Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery has a show of new work by Jenny Watson called Star Material – now there's an artist who knows a thing or two about the horse. I finally fell asleep knowing Jenny Watson could indeed answer my tough equine questions if I paid a visit to the Oxley stable.

Jenny Watson
Horse around, 2007
L: Oil and acrylic on rabbit skin glue primed
Chinese organza over damask, 280x126cm
R: Acrylic on prepared oval stretcher, 36x28 cm
Courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

With a mild headache, I took myself off to the gallery hoping for answers to the enduring riddle of why girls get their rocks off to horses. Is it just the big swinging cock or is there really something special there, more akin to an emotional connection? Certainly one woman I'll grant a hobby horse concession is Patti Smith, the first lady of punk. Her Horses (1975) album still makes me come to this day. In the film of her one woman show, Without You I'm Nothing (1990), Sandra Bernhard sums up Patti in a nutshell: "She was a prophetess. She saw so far into the future she could afford to take ten years off and not say another word".

So I'm at Jenny Watson's show on a sunny Saturday afternoon and, as expected, I encountered a painting of a girl on a horse. As Watson has been dealing with the same concerns (girls, horses and then some) for some twenty years, it didn't really take me by surprise. Yep, all the familiar traits were there: naïve paintings on fabrics and scrawled diary-like texts detailing the cutesy everyday minutia inspiring the work. Watson was big for this kind of stuff in the 1980s and with prices fetching in the realm of $20K these days, it's safe to say the horsy coming of age she had in the 80s will be as commodifiable well into her coming of old age. Which is soon, I suspect.

But come on, it's not all old stuff re-hashed. Watson makes a stab at pop culture currency by painting an iPod advert depicting a silhouetted figure dancing with her is… is it a Nano? Whatever the case, I bet it doesn't have 80-gig of memory like mine does! Watson has really captured something here; the painting was so authentic of contemporary "yoof culture", I could almost hear Jamiroquai or some shit like that wafting from the "rabbit skin glue primed Chinese organza over Chinese cotton". Do I hear Sophie Ellis Bextor? Whatever it was, it definitely wasn't Patti Smith.

Jenny Watson
Self portrait as an iPod ad, 2007
L: acrylic on rabbit skin primed Chinese organza over Chinese cotton, 128x77 cm
R: acrylic on prepared square stretcher, 30x30 cm
Courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

Leaving Roslyn Oxley9 and wondering if perhaps Jenny Watson is responsible for the horse flu epidemic, I decided to nip this horse shit in the bud once and for all and jump in a Hansom cab and trek out west to Hawkesbury Regional Gallery to see Bloodlines: Art and the Horse, curated by Peter Fay. I need some context for the major equine love-in that is gripping this country. Stepping inside the space, I was confronted by such a massive lineup of artists that I was somewhat overwhelmed and there for at least three hours. All that was missing was the smell of manure (which is fine considering some of the work made up for that). If I had paid to get in, it would have been worth the admission, heck I would have even made a donation. Look, I'd even go as far as saying that it'd be worth a kidney or two. Bloodlines made me feel better that it's not just the girls who have a crush on the horse - the boys love their pony clubs just as much. Now that I've taken the plunge into "horse culture", I will de definitely betting at the next Melbourne Cup. For that major personal breakthrough I'm deeply grateful.

What's that over there near the door? How did I miss it as I walked in? Just as I'm leaving Hawkesbury Gallery, an unobtrusive and somewhat grungy little piece by Kate Smith takes me by surprise. The artist has pin-pricked a scrappy bit of cardboard to form three modest but powerful words: I Hate Horses.

Kate Smith

I Hate Horses, 2007
Cardboard, 21 x 39 cm
Courtesy the artist

What is Artswipe?

It seems The Telegraph has found me out. After all this time of artworld anonymity, it has been revealed. The Artswipe is "cyber granny", not supernanny as some have conjectured. The Telegraph "outing" is timely, seeing it came just after Simpleposie from Toronto pondered in her "question for the day" a querie that most Sydney-siders stopped asking long ago, "What is Artswipe?" (scroll down to question #2156 - I thought I had lots of questions!)

Apparently it doesn't stop there. YouTube has found me out as well. Smile, smile, smile.

Shapeshifting

Matthew Hopkins performing in his installation

The Future Pt.2: Getting used to the Future. Version 2.2

Courtesy the artist and Firstdraft Gallery

This week I managed to sneak in a bit of art between meals - so much for my diet. Among others I saw Primavera 07 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Matthew Hopkins at Firstdraft Gallery, and Jess MacNeil at Gallery Barry Keldoulis. Actually I probably saw a few other things at the Danks Street complex where GBK resides, but apart from Jess MacNeil’s work they’ve faded from memory. Actually one thing I do remember is walking past Conny Dietzschold Gallery, where a gallery assistant was up a ladder hanging a piece of art. A couple of old ladies passed by and I overheard one say: “That’s not the kind of dress you should be wearing when you hang a picture”. This was a memorable moment.

I had heard from friends that Primavera was crap. I've never really been one for Primavera bashing. It’s an easy target for criticism – sometimes the complaints are valid, but I suspect in most cases they are flavoured with Sour Grape Snapple. The show aside for a second, at least you know the opening night will be a highpoint. Unfortunately The Artswipe was at a Bingo Tournament that night, but an insider reports that it was a tepid affair, mostly populated with an aging art crowd and the usual Fashion Week wannabes. What was missing apparently was the young artist crowd that Primavera is supposed to represent. For starters, the MCA allegedly did not invite any of their preparatory staff or visitor service officers, a generally young and funky bunch who epitomise the Primavera demographic. Gee, I’m glad I was busy!

Art by Claire Fisher from Six Feet Under

So I finally made my way to the MCA with an open heart and mind. Usually I'm a cold bitch, so this was a real effort OK. But it wasn't long before my bitch radar made its return from the repressed because most of it was not so great. I generally make it a practice to talk up the good things before I go for the ugly jugular but I’ll make an exception today. For starters, let's talk about the signature marketing image for Primavera of the raised hands. Double V, 2005 by Justine Khamara are hands using two fingers to make either an "up yours" or peace symbol - depending I suppose on how you feel. In the Primavera marketing, Double V works because as a reproduction in print or web, it acts like a big enticement for everyone to get their hands in the air because Primavera is here! In reality, it is comprised of tiny cut outs that get totally lost in the space. This is probably for the best considering how underwhelming the work really is. Khamara's three-dimensional collage heads, Bugaboo, might be cool if they didn't appear so inspired by the work of a fictional artist from TV! Is it just me, or did Claire Fisher from Six Feet Under already make this artwork during her art school years? Speaking of cut-outs, a second contender for uninteresting work is Martin Smith’s series of photos with song lyrics literally cut out of them. To make work inspired by popular music is fairly commonplace, but I find the allusions to music dominate and reveal more about the artist's self-conscious affection for the music referenced than it does about any genuinely interesting original visual idea.

Jess MacNeil
Opera House Steps December, 2006

Digital video, 2 min 28 sec, infinite loop
Courtesy the artist and Gallery Barry Keldoulis

What was good? Amanda Marburg's paintings of famous movie moments but recast with cutesy claymation figures were inspired. The highlight of the show was definitely Jess MacNeil's video Opera House Steps December, 2006. Though I’d already seen it before in other shows, being projected at such a monumental scale gave it renewed resonance. McNeil makes videos that look like paintings and paintings that look like video (paused of course). With Opera House Steps December, MacNeil has filmed people walking up and down the steps but used some fancy-pants special-effects to erase the people. What remains are human shadows that move across the steps like a toy Slinky working overtime.

Nude Descending a Staircase?
Courtesy Google Images

Recalled in MacNeil's video is the graphic interplay of form that Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein mastered through his method of 'montage by conflict'. In the famous Odessa Steps sequence of Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925), the actual steps themselves were key to creating the scene's visual drama. The tiered horizontal pattern of the steps would be interrupted by the descending masses, creating a clash of horizontal and vertical form. The composition of Opera House Steps December echoes the same kind of visual drama but with meditative intent. Eisenstein was a master editor whose practice (and theory) of montage revolutionised filmmaking. While he knew where to cut the frame for dynamic impact, MacNeil keeps the camera running in one long take, editing through the digital removal of the body. Like legendary American video artist Bill Viola, MacNeil has a knack for making poetry with a medium not often used to poetic effect. And that’s certainly what MacNeil achieves in her new work on show at GBK. Again her videos The Thaw, Wake (Coniston Water) and Wake (Windermere) are utterly compelling in their quiet contemplation of scenes that in any other circumstance border on the banal.

Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

Of all the other shows I saw this week, a real highlight was Matthew Hopkins' The Future Pt.2: Getting used to the Future. Version 2.2 – A Bogus Infinity at Firstdraft Gallery. Like early Hany Armanious or Adam Cullen, Hopkins makes grunge art installations cut with quick wit. The installation is predominately an explosion of white knotted socks in creepy configurations. Some of his drawings reference Stephen King novels, which makes me wonder if the sock forms are meant to be immobile monsters just waiting to contaminate the earth with a form of tinea never before witnessed. In his artist statement, Hopkins describes the installation as based on research he did when he visited the future. The thing is, the future was just like now but objects were all jumbled around. He writes:

"The funny thing about the future is that it is not that different to now, the present. The future is really just a re-arranged version of now, the present. What I mean by re-arranged is that objects, emotions, things we do etc., are all mixed up and around with each other. Drinking a cup of coffee in the future, for example, is actually building a house. Crying in the future is actually sticky-tape."

Like a synesthete who hears taste or sees sound, Hopkins sculpts an object-based synesthesia to create a scene of a future shape-shifted beyond recognition. That's the kind of future I want to visit, and considering the future is really just around the corner, I'm looking forward to seeing more from this promising young artist.

Primavera 08 perhaps?

Starfuckingbucks

People say the Internet shrinks distances, makes you global. I used the think so too. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that life before the Internet - God forbid, life before Blogger - could be just as intimate, just as global. That is of course if you have a healthy fan base. And there's no point being coy about it, The Artswipe has many fans, so many that crowd surfing has taken its toll and my fan club president has taken to chronic fatigue. Because you all know that I like to give something back to the fans, I've decided to bite the bullet and share the love. What better way to give of yourself than as specially made merchandise, editioned in endless multiples. A commercial gallery dealer tried convincing me to limit my editions to 6 + 2 AP (read 'Artist Print') but my better judgement warned against cheating a commodity whore's own logic of global domination.

Without further adieu, The Artswipe coffee mugs are now available on special order. They feature the logo on one side and the collage Heartfelt (recently voted by the fans as one of their all-time favourite visual moments) on the other. Price on application: theartswipe at hotmail dot com

Eating Crow

The Artswipe

Humble Pie, 2007
Several ingredients outlined below

Thanks to everyone who has invited me to their APEC parties. A blanket apology for not being able to come, I was having my own APEC celebration at home. And what better way to celebrate than to make some humble pie, sit down with a cold beer and watch an Aussie flick. Before I review the film I watched, let me just give you the recipe for my APEC pie.

1 eggplant
2 zucchini
1 large sweet potato
2 cups shredded spinach
1/2 butternut pumpkin
3 cups ricotta cheese
shortcrust pastry base
puff pastry lid
lettering stencil (optional)

Pre-roast the vegetables and configure lovingly in a pasty lined dish. Smear the ricotta throughout the layers of vegetables. Create a pastry lid and cut out the letters APEC and that symbol (use a stencil if you must). Baste pastry with milk. Bake for 45 minutes at 200 C.

You'll have noticed that there is no meat in this pie. I'm not one for vegetarianism. (I tried this for a year or so at art school but only so I could hang out with some of the coolest kids.) The reason for a vegetable pie on APEC weekend is that there are other sources of meat one can indulge in. The meat of Australian screen culture for starters! I went to Video Ezy, paid off my $2.50 late fee for dropping back The Secret DVD late a few months ago and headed straight for the New Release wall. Hurrying myself through the latest titles (as the pie was baking at home and one must not overcook these things) I found a lovely Aussie romantic comedy - a perfect companion to a vegetable pie. "Where's the meat?" I hear you ask. And good question it is. I believe the genre can function like a nice piece of steak when it's a romantic comedy masquerading as a documentary. So that is why I recommend viewing Bra Boys this weekend if you're still looking for ways to spend your Sunday.

Bra Boys (Dir. Sunny Abberton, 2007) calls itself a documentary but it has my vote for best romantic comedy of the year. Assuming it might be about boys who wear either bras or Akubras, my expectations were indeed challenged when I sat down with this little think piece. I won't outline the whole plot as you can read about it at Wikipedia or check out its official website. In short Bra Boys features all these beefy surfer dudes from Maroubra who spend 90 minutes of screen time justifying their beach gang tribalism. These boys have had tough lives - drugs, parental neglect, shit like that. They find freedom in the waves. They find love through the fist. No, they're not into fistin' - that kinda shit is kept off screen! They're into using their fists as an expression of mateship. Or at least that is how I read it. When you live in a community that appears to exclude women (apart from their mothers, none appeared on-screen) I suspect there's a lot of pent up sexual frustration going on. So if you're not bashing each other up over the politics of beach entitlement, you may as well form into gangs and get demonstrative tattoos that read "My Brother's Keeper" with an icon representing a very tight handshake. There's nothing at all gay about this picture when you couch such a tight-fisted homosocial testosterone in familial terms.


So anyway, it must be said that Russell Crowe narrates this journey and can I just say, GOD BLESS HIM for that. Bra Boys begins with the Crib Notes story about white settlement in Australia and how it impacted Maroubra - or something like that. I know that when I am reflecting on my own community formations, it is important to go back in time and paint the scene with some sweeping context. For instance, I recently gave a PowerPoint presentation at the local community centre about the origins of blogging. I started my talk with the Big Bang and subsequent evolution of the species.

Bra Boys gets even more interesting when it responds to the Cronulla Riots of December 2005. It is here the boys affirm their multiculturalism. Prior to this event (acknowledged in the last 10 minutes of the 90 minute film) there'd been no reason to explore the multiculturalism of the beach. But what better opportunity to end it with a message to the world about how tribalism can have a social inclusion policy. One of the guys talks about how non-local visitors to the beach should always remember to acknowledge the culture and tradition that has shaped the beach. I couldn't agree more - it's at the beach that you find really rich culture. As a kid I engaged with beach culture through my metal detector. Finding 50c and some fishing tackle was a day well-spent. Until it was all spoiled when my parents warned us to be careful that you don't step on a syringe. Culture indeed.

After the Cronulla Riots segment, the boys of Bra reveal their racial and ethnic backgrounds just after a poignant scene of two children playing: a black dwarf chasing a white non-dwarf. It's a healing moment. Like all the APEC leaders wearing Akubras and Drizabone coats, this image of the children should go down in Australian history as a definitive moment of all types of difference united.

"A" Pecs

The Artswipe

Stuck in Traffic Again 2007
Digital video (still)

Agender: Apolitcal

I'm not one to linger on sexual politics. I have no agenda or a gender - The Artswipe is free of such constraints. Apolitical you could say. People into sexual politics need to get laid more. "Don't speak," I always say when conversation turns to third wave feminism, "Just feel." Not so long ago, the artkids used to chant, "Fuck politics, lets dance". These days, I look for a lover with a slow hand, Pointer Sisters style.

One thing I will say as a coda to Artswipe's previous post about gender in all its complex statistical banality: it remains important to this day to always know whether to leave the toilet seat up or down. And art journalists more than anyone should respect this simple etiquette by at least investigating the gender of their subjects. Sometimes you can tell because a woman artist might have two protruding mounds emanating (for want of a better term) from her chest. A male artist might have a "bulging canvas," as they say in the classics. And then there's the "third sex" - all those queers and diasporicals. That's another story for another time.

The point of this post. Unlike John McDonald, I might not be the hugest fan of the Aida Tomescu canvas. Tomescu features in McDonald's book Studio: Australian Painters on the Nature of Creativity, reviewed elsewhere at Artswipe. I suspect old McDonald owns one of her paintings and is hoping his endorsement in today's Sydney Morning Herald article might manifest their value fourfold. A case in point:

Tomescu has grown in confidence, becoming much more certain of her artistic certainty. It is the kind of self-revelation that some people seek in psychoanalysis, or a radical change of lifestyle, but for Tomescu the entire drama has enfolded within the confines of the studio. It is not a process that allows for detailed descriptions, just as paintings resists verbalisation.

OK. McDonald mentions her "studio" again. Get over it. All artists have studios - not just the artists he cites in that banal book. As for the reference to psychoanalysis and "radical change of lifestyle" - thank you for pointing out the tenets of bourgeois boredom once more. Finding psychoanalytic solace in art went out with Art & Text. As for radical change of lifestyle? See Andrew Frost's brilliant article elsewhere in the Herald called "If the artists are young the reception is cool". It is here you will find artists who have a lust for life, a zesty yet critical take on "change" and "lifestyle" without being concerned with something regarded as so "radical" as to be perceived as a bit Mick Jagger in reality.

Apart from being chuffed big time that Mr Frost cites The Artswipe as one of the blogs that tries to "pick up the slack" due to the lack of artist-driven publications produced in Australia, I'm also aware that there is a subtle jibe in placement here (being that Frost's article appears some eight pages after McDonald's). You see, Frost laments that emerging art culture in Australia is as ephemeral as the young careers that loom large but sometimes peter out, due perhaps to intensified mental strain - which is all well if you can afford psychoanalysis! But alas, on Centrelink payments, not many of us can afford the Herald, let along a Freudian couchtrip. As Frost points out referring to a hypothetical pup of the artworld, "our esteemed art critics probably wouldn't have liked their work."

So who are these "esteemed critics" Frost speaks of?

Not knowing how to answer that slippery question (ie you do the math) I think it best to turn the question back to my original concern: gender, the arts and journalism. (Can you tell from my subtle yet meandering logic that I was high school debating champion?) That aside, for all my criticism of John McDonald, bless his soul, at least he recognises Aida Tomescu is a woman. Herald journalist Tracey Clement - champion of young artists everywhere, unlike some - for some inexplicable reason, has taken Tomescu's "bulging canvas" literally. As you can see below in Clement's Metro Picks (SMH Metro 31 August 07), Tomescu has man-morphed. But that's OK. Clement was too busy checking out everything in the artworld - not just some "mini-goats-cheese-pizza-East-Sydney-art-studio-crawl" - that she assumed for a moment that whatever might be McDonald fodder could actually be anything but male.

Pissing Contests

When it comes to bathrooms that look this good, gender is irrelevant.
Above: the female (top) and male (bottom) bathrooms at Carriageworks.

Recently at The Art Life, a debate raged about gender representation after Carrie Lumby reviewed a fairly banal Herald article. Adam Cullen and Ben Quilty were called up (among others) for quotable quotes in this article about art audiences getting bored of testosterone-fuelled art and it's hard to resist taking the bait. Not quite sure I saw the point of the Herald article or the Lumby write-up, but I've never been so entertained as I was when reading the 70something comments it sparked at The Art Life. And I just love how so many who commented clamour for the last word, returning again and again to strengthen their stance on whatever it was they were trying to make a point about. The Artswipe doesn't care for the last word. I'm too sophisticated for soft cock pissing contests. Rather I decided to put on a Guerrilla Girl mask and contribute to all this 'research' about gender representation in the arts by undertaking the following gallery crawl during the week:

Gallery Barry Keldoulis: Chris Fox, Hitesh Natalwala
MOP Projects: Alex Lawler, Marita Frazer, Emma White
Firstdraft Gallery: Clip Art: Kate Smith, Soda_Jerk (Dan & Dominique Angeloro) & Sam Smith, Ben Frost, Grant Stevens, Elvis Richardson, Deborah Kelly, The Motel Sisters (Liam Benson & Naomi Oliver)
Performance Space @ Carriageworks: Ruark Lewis & Jonathan Jones, Ross Gibson & Kate Richards
Tin Sheds: Petra Gemeinboeck
Sherman Galleries: Marion Borgelt
Stills: Magnum New Blood: Antoine D'Agata, Jonas Bendiksen, Alec Soth, Trent Parke, Mark Power
AGNSW: Sean Cordeiro & Claire Healy

Total Male Artists: 16
Total Female Artists: 12

If I had not gone to Stills, which was showing five male Magnum photographers, my gallery crawl would have been almost 50/50 in terms of gender representation. Not that that really says anything because generally I'm more interested in whether the art is any good. And overall it was a fun trip around Sydney, but my favourite works for the day were all the more interesting because they were about art and sex. So thanks to Carriageworks for introducing me to your male and female toilets. I've never seen a better or more expensive installation in my whole life!

The Death of Affect

TV Moore, installation view, courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

So Art Life did a (celebrity?) blogroll and profiled The Artswipe's Crown Jewels post. Thanks Art Life! But now I am experiencing incredible self-inflicted pressure to post something new, just in case new traffic comes my way. So I have been thinking, what can I write? What have I done, where have I gone, what have I seen that I could review? What does Artswipe usually do apart from watching trash TV, taking mobile phone camera pics and shooting the breeze about art school daze? Artswipe does art. So here's a new review of what I've seen in the pre-Primavera and Lempriere Sydney art-circuit. And yes, stay tuned... Arty will probably feel compelled to make some kind of mention of the Primavera and Lempriere - or at least eavesdrop on some opening night banter. What else do you do when the circus comes to town?

So Artswipe saw TV Moore's show Fantasists in the Age of Decadence at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery and it was pretty cool. There was this PVC-clad Humpty Dumpty which took my fancy. It had that gimp vibe about it. Strange for a white cube, the space was mood-lit and admittedly the atmosphere made me a bit horny. There's nothing worse than stumbling into bad lighting, so thanks to Oxley9 for turning down the dimmer switch. Especially on opening night when everyone looked kinda edible. In the next room were screen works displayed on Macs by Michael Bell-Smith. They kind of looked like screen savers for the Facebook crowd.

David Rosetszky
Nothing like this, 2007 (video still)
16mm film transferred to DVD 16:9
colour, sound, edition of 6+2AP, dur. 24:36 min
Courtesy Kaliman Gallery

I also saw David Rosetzsky's show Nothing Like This at Kaliman Gallery. The glacial cool of Rosetzsky's work has always confounded me somewhat. I always feel compelled to read the work with my existential goggles on. But this time I just let go of all those academic urges and felt its message. Young kids - probably straight off a Larry Clark set but shampooed - wade in the water. They've probably just had unsafe sex standing up in a change room stall at The Gap without moving a facial muscle. Now they're washing off in the river. These 'children of the corn' couldn't be expected to do any less. 'Affect' is a big little word these days, overused at every turn. In my humble opinion Rosetzsky celebrates the death of affect and for that reason alone I commend him.

Joan Fontcuberta
Abu Ghraib, 2005
Courtesy Australian Centre for Photography

Australian Centre for Photography is going for the G-spot - Google and Gays. Joan Fontcuberta is a Spanish artist who makes art from Google images. Like, who doesn't? Obviously she's not familiar with The Artswipe, who has bought fucken shares in Google images! According to the press blurb, Fontcuberta "has used the popular internet search engine Google to create large, colourful photo-mosaics that construct an elegant metaphor for the internet-era's liaisons between mass media and ideas of collective consciousness." I found this work exploring the "liaisons" between cliche and crap. Sorry, I'm not buying it. Download a famous Abu-Ghraib image, re-jig it with Mac software and, PRESTO!, you have pictures within pictures. Gee I've never heard of that before, well, at least not as an "elegant metaphor".

Kenneth Anger
Invocation of My Demon Brother 1969
ultrachrome archival photograph (film still)
Courtesy Stuart Shave Modern Art

Then there was the gay show called The Brotherhood. Organised by Neon Parc, I was hoping with this show for at least a whiff of some crusty foreskin. That's what you usually get with "gay photography". It's always the shot in the arm you need at the end of a long day. A tie-in with a magazine called They Shoot Homosexuals Don't They? I was hoping for something as special as such a subversive magazine title might suggest. And yes, there was something special. A Kenneth Anger film, Invocation of my Demon Brother 1969, made it all worth while. Anger was a legend of queer culture then as much as now. Enough said. The rest of the show was not so well hung. Rather, it limply hung from the walls as if the gallery was a noticeboard. Flicking through They Shoot Homosexuals Don't They? I noticed that all the same pictures hanging at the ACP were reproduced there, but the format does it more justice than this strangely vapid exhibition, which next to Googlegrams looks like bits of the web that only materialise when you type "Stroking a Big Cock" into Google Images... And, as you can see below, that is exactly what I decided to do.

The Artswipe

Stroking a Big Cock, 2007
Courtesy Google Images

Buffy, not a Heather

The Artswipe
SwanSong, 2007
Mobile phone snaps

The Artswipe watched Law and Order: Criminal Intent last week just because the plot rip-offed the Anna Nicole Smith story. Kristy Swanson was the actress playing the facsimile of Anna Nicole (who in Criminal Intent was a fat white whale named Lorelai Mailer). Kristy was my idol when I was about seventeen-years-old and was the original Buffy, before Sarah Michelle Jessica Parker Posey took over the tiara. Or whoever it was.

It's always pissed me off that the Buffy TV show was so popular. I remember talking to an academic once who wrote a paper on Buffy as a metaphor for pre-Oedipal nipple envy. I'm not sure if I got that right, but it sounds good. But really, Buffy on TV was a bunch of turds, whereas Buffy the movie was a basket of kisses. And it was all because of Kristy. She wasn't quite as talentless as Heather Graham; not quite as "Amanda" as Heather Locklear; but Kristy Swanson was like a "Heather" - the kind of chick who embodied the blow-waved rich-bitch archetype who we all wanted as a "friend or a fuck", to quote from the legendary Heathers (1989).

Anyway, Kristy Swanson is a method actress to be reckoned with! She put on all this weight and channeled Anna-Nicole in a way that gave me goose-flesh, as the Americans say. I've never been quite the same since. The lingering question since watching Criminal Intent is: Why wasn't Kristy Swanson a bigger star?

Well, as they say in the classics (and on suburban church marquees): Answers to Life's Big Questions Can't Be Googled.

Crown Jewels

The Artswipe
Crown Jewels, 2007
Collage

After reading the following news report at the Internet Movie Database, titled "Queen Storms Out of Photo Shoot", The Artswipe made the artwork you see before you.

Queen Elizabeth II stormed out of a recent photo shoot when acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz asked the British monarch to take off her crown. The royal was posing for a series of official photos at her Buckingham Palace home - to mark her state visit to the U.S. earlier this year - when Rolling Stone snapper Leibovitz went too far. The Queen was less than amused when she was told she looked too dressed up for the occasion. The photographer asked the Queen to wear Order of the Garter robes and a Diamond tiara, but had a change of heart on the day, asking, "I think it will look better without the crown. Less dressy. The garment robe is so ... extraordinary." The Queen them fumed, "Less dressy? What do you think this is?" She then left the room, reportedly muttering, "I'm not changing anything. I've had enough of dressing like this, thank you very much." The extraordinary scenes were caught by a camera crew filming a documentary, entitled A Year With the Queen. Leibovitz, who did eventually manage to complete the portrait pictures, recalls, "She doesn't really want to get dressed up anymore. She just couldn't be bothered and I admire her for that." The documentary will be aired on the BBC later this year.