Hidden – at Arts Project Australia

Hidden. A significant group exhibition of artwork that will challenge and engage the viewer on many levels, with hidden layers and messages, at Arts Project Australia Gallery until – 24 April 2010.

Hidden has its own logic, its own language of coded form and idiosyncracy hidden within the artist’s mind and located somewhere between the viewer and the artwork. Just as a puzzle or riddle evades us, these works challenge the viewer to decipher or see beyond their initial reading.

“Hidden showcases the symbolic and abstract work of established artists side by side with that of  emerging artists – a striking combination of pathos and humour.” Sue Roff, Director Arts Project Australia.

The artists use symbols, codes and metaphor as vehicles in many of these works. Familiar objects are cloaked, re-fashioned and abstracted into new forms and compositions that are evocative, surprising and mysterious.

Sometimes the subject can be found closer to the surface, others are more subtle, they need a commitment of time to unravel their magic, which might also lie somewhere between meaning and (un)reason.

With work by Boris Cipusev, Ruth Howard, Julian Martin, Rebecca Scibilia, Leo Cussen, Terry Williams, Andrew Barbour, Guiseppe Calcagno, Brendan Slee and Antonella Calvano, Kieren Carroll, Fulli Andrinopoulos and Tim Williams amongst others. Curated by Camille Hannah and Bernadette Trench-Thiedeman.

Gallery talk
Sat 10 April, from 12.30-1pm

Camille Hannah and Bernadette Trench-Thiedeman in discussion with various artists

Location

Arts Project Australia,
24 High Street  Northcote Vic  3070

Gallery hours
Monday to Friday 9am-5pm, Saturday 10am-1pm

Wilkins Hill – Windows impersonating other windows #Artspace

EXHIBITION: 5 March — 10 April 2010

Wilkins Hill
Windows impersonating
other windows

Wilkins Hill’s new multimedia installation Windows impersonating other windows addresses the structures of communication through abstracting relationships between words, objects and meanings.  The installation can be understood as extending the artists’ interest in the underlying processes involved in the communication of meaning between an artwork and an audience, building upon earlier works such as The Plague of Inheritance (2006), Sunny (2005) and the True meaning of Christmas (2004).

Throughout 2008 and 2009 Wilkins Hill participated in residency projects in Berlin, Paris and Hamburg during which time they began experimenting with language translation, utilising the inherent gaps and misunderstandings between languages as departure points for creativity. Produced when in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts, their video work Lemurs, roswell, wheat, pyramids, mosquitoes, yellow skin, humans that lay eggs, bestiality, nazi aryanism (2009) incorporated speech recognition software and automated translation websites as a way to generate poetic texts and narratives that were then edited into a corresponding visual structure. Windows impersonating other windows incorporates translation devices in a similar fashion, creating a space for deeper consideration of how meaning is extracted from our physical environment.

ARTIST DISCUSSION
Saturday 6 March, 2010, 3.00pm
Wilkins Hill, Sam Smith and Simon Denny will be joined by Reuben Keehan.

Artspace
43–51 Cowper Wharf Road
Woolloomooloo NSW 2011
Sydney Australia
www.artspace.org.au

Diturbing pics of snowman, wow this is shockin’!

If you’re building a snowman, you’re going to need the essentials: a carrot, a scarf, a bucket of blood. While the last one may seem unusual to most, it’s a key component to the sculptors of these disturbing snowmen. Well, that and a twisted mind.

From the (sic) minds of Huffington Post (more pics).

Blog: throw another tofu-burger on the barbie will ya mate. #Geekgirl on behalf of #tcktcktck

Tcktcktck invited me to write a blog on climate change. I knew immediately what I wanted to pen about – animals!

Have you ever tried to get your head around what it actually takes to feed the planet!? It’s something I find difficult to come to terms with.

Even my little shopping village of Northcote, Melbourne, Australia opened a new butcher the other day. Another one! You’d think 4 existing butchers plus all the restaurants in the area would provide enough meat.

I’ve become more educated lately on the nature of food production, and films like Food Inc are a good start to understand the process from pasture to plate.  Although, I still don’t quite understand who is feeding, farming & processing the 60 billion animals we kill each year.

It’s horrific that most of this is inhumane and, to be quite frank, not producing animals that even taste good. I’m not a vegetarian (yet) but I have massively reduced my consumption of meat and although I try and stick to the MOOS principle (Meat Only on Sunday). I have a lot of reverence for what I eat, and I am conscious of what it takes to get my food on the table.

I know most people eat meat for the flavour and texture. And my smart vegie friends know a lot of tricks developed by Asian food producers who provide some meat-tasting alternatives. Unfortunately, most of this is soaked or prepared in soy sauce and as a Coeliac I can’t go there. But, there must be a huge potential in coming up with an alternative to meat, which tastes like meat, but ain’t. As much as the electric or hybrid cars are being driven (excuse the pun) by an industry that has to, perhaps rather than wants to. There’s a huge market in developing electric sheep, too.

As Copenhagen (COP15) rapidly approaches I would think that food production especially animal production would have to be high on the agenda. But, if ordinary folks like me can’t persuade the masses to re-think what they eat, what about politician turned good guy Al Gore, musician Moby or even PETA pet Pamela Anderson?

Australia needs to take part on a moral and uber-logistical stand on this issue. We can no longer farm or export meat in an inhumane fashion. Even if we do get our farming processes to the point it is compassionate, we need to become sustainable: that means all of us need to reduce our consumption of animals! “Throw another tofu burger on the barbie will ya mate”, might have to become our new national saying!

So, consume less & be informed more!

My personal top ten
1) stop live animal exports (join the Humane Chain)
2) make choices that respect animals; don’t eat them – or at least buy free-range, organic etc
3) moderate your meat consumption
4) support organisations that are compassionate re: ‘farming’  like Campaign for a Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare (UDAW)
5) support organisations that also protect our marine life like Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd
6) keep having a go at growing your own food and find out what and when to plant
7) read labels when buying food and insist that labels reflect ingredients like palm oil
(de-forestation is destroying the natural habitats of Orangutans)
8)become a volunteer join local organisations that protect animals and wildlife (Wildlife Victoria)
9) keep informed of campaigns and if need be, write or tweet our Australian politicians

10) On Dec 12, 2009 join the world for a global day of Action

With much love & respect, RosieX

The Cunningham Dax Collection presents Out of the Dark the Emotional Legacy of the Holocaust

Out of the Dark: the Emotional Legacy of the Holocaust
The Cunningham Dax Collection
Presented in association with the Jewish Holocaust Centre
Opening 22 October 2009

Out of the Dark brings together a selection of artworks made by child survivors and children of survivors of the Holocaust. The exhibition explores the continuing psychological effects that the Holocaust has had throughout these generations. Out of the Dark considers the trans-generational emotional legacy of the Holocaust, viewed through the creative lens of its survivors and subsequent generations.

VISIT > Gallery hours: Wed – Fri 10am to 4pm, Saturday 1 to 5pm, Admission FREE
MAP > http://tiny.cc/FSKdV

The Cunningham Dax Collection
35 Poplar Road
Parkville, Melbourne 3052
Victoria
T 61 3 9342 2394
F 61 3 9381 2008
www.daxcollection.org.au

LAND. Ulf Langheinrich. Digital Illusion part of the Brisbane Festival

A SENSORY JOURNEY COMES TO AUSTRALIA

LAND is a triple-screen digital landscape rendered solely out of two algorithms that create pure noise. Through its sheer immensity and use of pulsing repetition it induces a changed state of consciousness, or, as the artist puts it, “an altered state of reality”.

LAND, which debuted at the 2008 Liverpool Biennial (UK), continues the German artist’s exploration into sensory immersive environments, at the core of his recent artistic research into the nature of digital illusion.

15 September – 1 October
The Block
Cnr Kelvin Grove Road and Musk Avenue, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane, Australia

For more details, see description on QUT website

The Story of Gusty and Ford

[The following is a type of latent design morality tale concerning observation: train yourself to look + you never know what might eventuate;) Oh + it should be viewed with the following warning in mind - there's a few mild "adult concepts" involved, so view at your own risk.]

“This film is about the way you see more when you walk – in this case, the way you look at road signs. I didn’t drive anywhere to shoot any of these road signs. Most of them I walked to and one of them was in Norway and turned out to be quite a long walk especially carrying a camera.”

Complimenting Strangers

A shiny happy video showing how strangers react to random compliments:
“Just having fun being friendly to strangers, hoping to brighten their day! ”

Watch the video here.

“GoodMorning!” Twitter Visualization Tool

GoodMorning! is a Twitter visualization tool showing approximately 11,000 tweets collected over a 24 hour period. The collected tweets visualize the phrase ‘good morning’ in English and various other languages.

The tweets are coded in coloured blocks:

• Green tweets are sent pre-9am
• Orange tweets are sent at 9am approximately
• Red tweets are sent between 9am and 12 noon
• Black tweets are messages sent “…at times that aren’t in the morning at that location”.

For more information, visit: blog.blprnt.com

Life summarized in 4 bottles

Sent by a friend suggesting we are already at the third!