"I'm not just trying to shit stir..."

I've posted before about my mind blowing experience visiting MONA just days after it opened, here and here. Now thanks to the abc iView player and Artscape, you can have your own visit from your desk/armchair....as well as an up close and candid (kind of) view of David Walsh, the owner of the collection. 

I kind of get the feeling he didn't really like the interviewer, but, you get the feeling he doesn't like the press in general either! I love his mix of eccentricity and contemporary-art appreciation, contrasted with his no-nonsense-Aussie-intolerance for bullshit. With all of the hyperbole surrounding the museum, he claims he's not just trying to shit stir, but I think secretly he realises the value in it!

Simone Douglas talk at Artereal

As posted here - Simone Douglas gave a talk as part of Art Month to accompany her solo show at Artereal Gallery this month. Here's a recording of the talk - she's just fascinating to listen to, and I've just started reading a Geoffrey Batchen book "Each Wild Idea", after first hearing about his writings from Simone during this talk.

Latest work

Oblique #6 - Yvette Hamilton, Digital Print 2011

It's been a bit quiet around here of late - but I've been juggling a couple of projects alongside some pregnancy fatigue! First up was my entry in the Kodak Salon (above), which will be opening at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne on the 14th April.

Secondly, I've been taking part in the Cinecity Workshops as part of the annual Australian Institute of Architect’s National Conference. The brief is to create a 60 second film exploring the brief of 'Natural Artiface' and communicating /questioning /exploring – an architectural idea about space and how we experience it. It's getting close to deadline, and I'm fighting fatigue to get it done. Will post images when it's done!

Simone Douglas at Artereal and AGNSW

Simone Douglas - Ever series

Simone was one of my tutors during my Fine Arts degree at COFA. She was massively influential on encouraging and developing my work at an early stage, and I still feel such affinity and resonance with her work.  Her work investigates "...the photographic in relation to the sublime, to excess and immateriality and the perceptual uncertainty of the photographic". ("Ever" catalogue quote from Artereal Gallery)

Simone Douglas - Ever series

 She's currently showing at both Artereal Gallery in a solo show called "Ever", and also in "Photography and Place" at the Art Gallery of NSW. They are both fantastic shows - "Ever", to me was like stepping into some sort of elemental crucible - fire and ice shifted, bubbled and cracked. The images draw the viewer in by virtue of their small scale, and their stunning beauty, and then challenge the viewer with the almost harsh and monumental view. A true meditation on the sublime if there ever was one.

Simone Douglas - Ever series

Simone Douglas - Ever series

Simone Douglas - Blind Series

 "Photography and Place" is a sort of retrospective of Australian Landscape Photography from 1970 to the present day. The show is curated in such a way as to guide the viewer from a formalist, mainly black and white suite of images, very "Australian" in their subject matter - gum trees, vast outback plains etc - to a more abstract meditation on the landcsape. Favourites were Simone Douglas' "Blind" series and Anne Ferran's "Lost to World's" series.

Anne Ferran - from Lost to Worlds series. Image via here.

Harvest

 A bumper crop of green beans...to be followed by...

...some very cute and beautifully purple eggplants.

Japan

Shinjuku 6:43 - by Joseph O. Holmes.

 Imperial Palace Gardens with Wall, Tokyo  - Emily Shur

Both prints available on 20x200 with all proceeds going to The Japan Society Earthquake Relief Fund

Also Hello Sandwich's Gift Wrapping Zine as a PDF available for $5.00 with all proceeds going to the Red Cross

I can't seem to stop thinking about the 50 workers who are trying to bring the situation at Fukushima under control. From a normal pool of over 800 workers, 50 people are risking their lives to try and bring this situation under control.

 

EQUALS - International Women's Day

A really interesting film made by Sam Taylor Wood for International Womens Day 2011. Subverting the iconic womaniser James Bond into a figure for women's rights. What do you think?

Berrylicious

A combination of raspberries and my new iphone app CameraBag...

Ye olde lovely

After posting my rave about the Museum of Old and New Art the other day - here and here, I thought I'd share the uber-cool place we stayed in Hobart. The Count organised the whole trip (as a birthday surprise for me - awww) and he debated for a little bit whether we should actually stay at MONA in their accommodation. Phwoar - totally gorgeous, but maybe we save it for when we're gazillionaires. Instead we stayed here at the step-back-in-time Astor Private Hotel.

The current manager, Tildy, is such a character, so warm and welcoming and hilarious! She told us that the building has always been a private hotel and has always been run by women, from the very first co-managers who were "companions"! It's a basic European style guest house, with just cereal and toast for brekky, but it was just great to explore all of its nooks, crannies, parlours and rich original furnishings. Definitely a place to stay if you like a simple, but super clean and tidy place, with a bit of character!