Facebook, The Age. Facebook, The Age. When will I ever ‘Facebook’ The Age? Status imminent to ‘Facebook’ The Age … (The newspaper I mean). You see I’m at Frieze Art Fair in London. I see a Rob Pruitt he’s doing well. The huge portrait of Sasha Grey the porn star is doing well, Koons is […]
Trevelyan Clay
Sand brah
George Peeps a dude in a bazza down Bells Beach. A dog acknowledges George albeit insignificantly. Doggedly dog takes in terrain to the refrain: ‘Now it’s the last week of summer! Let’s focus, let’s take care of business! You know the rules, wake up, drink, eat, drink, work, drink etc. Let’s take care of business!’ […]
To be outside, to be inside, to be free, to be bound, to be
Walking up to Kate Newby’s ceramic wind chimes at Between being and doing, a group show at Utopian Slumps, I was aware that I wouldn’t be able to hear them clink in the wind from inside the gallery. I was talking to the curator about another piece of Newby’s in which she traced two outdoor […]
Cool car park in Freo: Australian Centre for Concrete Art
The Australian Centre for Concrete Art is mostly 2D paintings on walls and not sculpted concrete as the name may suggest—big formal paintings on the sides of houses and shops in the CBD of Fremantle, WA. The original aim of the participating artists was to create a clique and define a distinction between their painting and […]
How the rich recycle their pleasures
I was a mind-wandering art installer working at Heide in 2007 when I discovered Mike Brown. His work made me wonder if he was exhausted all the time, exhausted from the hyper nature of his art-making, from the unhinged wrist spasms of his gestural painting, and the complex assemblages. His work gave off a warm afterglow […]
Totally none of my business
I wanted to make work that looked synthetic and graphic in its depiction of space, being heavy on the ‘Modern Painting’ trip (dominantly hard-edge abstraction) and also looking as if the compositions have been constructed in real space, sculptural and landscape. A melding of paradoxical spaces. The works have a play on a light source which […]
Washing machine
Alex Vivian has been making work at home. Watching the TV, in front of the fan, making things he’s collected go through processes. He conditions things. The works in this show are four small collages on ‘snack plates’ atop $2-shop canvas stretchers and a hat on a pedestal. The collages use a lot of materials […]
Backyard shed jams
The centre-piece of Tim Price’s painting show in the back room at Utopian Slumps appears to be Backyard open city, which is the idyll, a utopian idea of a painted backyard. Happy painter, crafty as he is, all-consumed by his perspective of the scene. There, deep in middle-class contemplation, a responsibility to be cynical seems […]