other bits of work

The Other Show

This is the other show.

Go on, wish me luck!

But if you're in Fremantle, try this one instead. The bottom one with the great picture of Sam's work.

SMTD, SLT

I've acronymed the post title as it's faster.

Well, in the last two weeks I've installed two exhibitions, started a new job, and moved an entire house to a new house. It was heavy, too.

Good things are coming out of my show ... I've got group shows coming out of my ears now, studio visits. Fame and fortune to follow, fer shere. Any minute now.

*crickets*

Etc etc.

AAaaanyway.

I'm starting a book on who will win the 40,000-big-ones travelling scholarship I'm a finalist for. There are 24 of us and my money is on a top four that I've carefully assessed to be the most likely to win. It's abstract money, of course. I don't know how to run gambling so that it's risk-avoidant. Or whatever it's called. That would be something it'd be good to learn about.

My new house is also my old house. I lived here a year and a half ago, for a year. I must be growing up - now I only move house every 18 months instead of every year.

Who and why

So I'm trying to work out which internationally acclaimed artist I would most want to study with if I had the choice. It's for an application. You know what? I think no-one. Maybe Bruce Nauman. As if. Anyway, I just read an [old] interview with him where he explains why he doesn't have an assistant. He says something like that would mean he would have to have so much of the work thought out in advance already, in order to hand the work over to someone else to do, that he wouldn't be able to do the thinking out and working out of the problems that to him is the work. Of course I'm hyper-mega-paraphrasing. So I'd like to work with him. That is, the only club I want to be a member of isn't taking applications, which is why I'd like to join.

Art and travel plans can be very inhibiting, and explaining things can be a feeling-of-discovery-killer. Sometimes you just need to make/go. Or is this just an excuse for procrastinating on that stupid application. What do I want to do with all that money in the unlikely event that someone gives it to me? Whatever sounds good that comes up that I can get into, alright?

*sigh*

Another 'post not posted' post

I was going to post the most ugly invite in the world but I've decided that it would be churlish.

You'll just have to be content with a mental image of me shaking my head sadly.

Also: note to electoral commissioner - next time make voters mark their ballots in red pen. This will save electoral officers a significant amount of back pain/eye strain. Also, any voter who picks the ballot up and says 'is this the liberal paper?' as though we hand out one ballot for libs and one for labs, should have the ballot snatched back off them and not be allowed to vote.

I wish I spoke Greek. And some other languages. let's say ... Japanese, Arabic, French, Spanish, Hungarian.

People. I just don't understand 'em. (Maybe once I get on top of all those languages ...)

Dream 31/12/2006

I went to see the Blake Prize for Religious Art exhibition. There were about 150 works on show. Adrian Hobbs had made a kind of karaoke video with Chris Hanrahan and other artists lipsynching to a Christmas song. The production values were unbelievably high but all the singing was out of synch. I realised that most artworks could be seen as having spiritual or religious content and began planning my own entry for next year; a large-scale cartoony Breughel-esque (Paul Noble-y in scale) drawing of bricks dressed as people undertaking their everyday activities in a series of fenced, conjoined circular areas about the size of above-ground swimming pools. The brick-people would have faces, arms and legs, and would be doing things that happen in the lives of ordinary suburban people. Two would be getting married; a teenage one would be cutting herself; stuff like that.

I've got a new apartment, baby

OK, you can tell me if this is just normal, but I feel it to be a somewhat tragically abnormal series of coincidences and ... dunno, paths crossing type occurrences. It's very late and I've had a big weekend so it won't be written well.

My magazine features an a guy in the upcoming issue who makes pictures out of liquid nails. He wanted to get into the Archibald Prize so he made some liquid nails portraits of his favourite band, the Go-Betweens. He wrote this frank and amusing piece about meeting them, about his working process and his snubbing by the Art Establishment, man. It's my favourite piece in the magazine. It's insightful and accessible and self-deprecating. We liked the works themselves so much we decided to put them on the cover. So.

I've got a new job at a gallery. We have casual preparators who come and help us hang the shows every month. The first day i met our regular guy (who is an excellent person and a good preparator to boot) I asked him if he was an artist (many of the preps are). He said he used to be, but now he was a musician. I didn't ask him who he played with because I (stupidly) assumed I wouldn't know them and that that might be embarassing. Then I spend the next few days taking sideways glances at him to try and work out why he looks so familiar ("could he be ... no ... MAYbe ... should I ask him? nah ..."). So my boss tells me at lunch later that he's a drummer. For the Go-Betweens. Huh. Funny coincidence. I go home and look said preparator up and find out I've actually seen him play a number of gigs in one of my old favourite bands. (Custard! He was in Custard! hence the unplaceable familiarity). Then of course I am too star-struck to say anything about it, and lo, the working week is done and we see our casual preparator no more. Flukily, I had been listening to Custard and the Titanics that week in my car, after having not listened to them for years.

Today i've been designing the fliers for the launch party for our new issue, featuring the Go-Betweens images (they're so great!). I'm looking at the boggle-eyed head of Grant McLennan as rendered in bright orange paint and liquid nails all evening. My flatmate comes home, goes to the Herald online and announces Grant McLennan died in his sleep last night.

And we're about to put out a magazine with his portrait on the cover.

Poor preparator. I'm not sure if I know him well enough for a condolences email (or maybe that's the best way to offer condolences to someone you don't know). And do we, as publishers, become exploiters of the sentimental response to this poor man's premature death? Is it wrong to feel happy that we have this great work about him, that's somehow made weighty now, and sort of more important? Or that a death can make you feel, even superficially, more connected?

The net seems to expand all the time. I think if you were immortal, you could eventually have a connection to each person on this earth. Assuming you had good social skills. I do feel uncomfortable though. It's pretty pathetic to feel connected to famous people. That's how stalkers get started.

Anyway. My condolences, world. I'm exhausted and must sleep.