How Do THEY Do It?

On Sunday 9th August (tomorrow) the ACP is hosting the event "Tea With The Artistic Directors". Andrew Frost from Artlife will be hosting a discussion with Andrew Upton from the Sydney Theatre Co, Lisa Havilah from the Campbelltown Arts Centre and Kristy Edmunds - former Director at the Melbourne International Arts Festival. Come along at 3pm for tea and concepts. Cupcakes are rumored to appear.

Tony Curran

PLAY IN PLUSHTOWN

Hogi Tsai's latest work is in the window of Sydney's Gallery 4A. Across the road from Capitol Square where computer markets and Japanese skill-testers lurk is the perfect place for Hogi's work. Hogi is a UTS student PhD student from Taiwan. He's been involved in a few shows around Sydney and this work at Gallery 4A is a fun rainbow wind-chime of human motion. We should warn you though, we received a few funny looks while exploring this work.


Tony Curran and Sonya Gee

MAKING RADIO

On Saturday last Tony Curran (myself) and Jonathon Valenzuela (16 Tacos) were a radio twitter partnership where my iDrawings of "Action-Jon" were retweeted to FBi's twittership of almost 3,000. Collaborations don't always work well but thanks to Jon's not-so-diva-like attitude to my portraits he was happy that only one of them made him look like a "guido". His special request was a unicorn.

Twitter Art Skills and a Radio Star

Since smart phones every Tom Dick and Harry has become a twit. Richard Glover tells SMH readers that twitter is a fad that will vanish in no time just like facebook and the gramophone. However Glover never got his facts straight because he can't predict the future. But I can.

This Saturday (25rd July, 2009) between 8 and 10pm I'll be in the FBi Studios drawing action portraits of Jon Valenzuela - AKA 16 Tacos and author of THE TILTED PAGE - while he plays a "leftfield" hip-hop show. I'll be sending paintings out every 20 minutes or so on the FBi twitter account. So if you aren't following them yet, get to it! If you're not in Sydney for the occasion then jump on to fbiradio.com and listen online for free.

Predicted scenes will be Jon on the computer, Jon taking a smoke break and Jon severely playing music.


Tony Curran

IN WITH THE MATCHBOX PROJECT

16th JULY 2009

While we were at the opening of Acts of Disobedience featuring The Matchbox Project at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sonya Gee expected that soon the thousands of matchboxes she had provided for her show would disappear and that she would soon have to replace them.

PRESENT DAY

Sonya Gee of the Matchbox Project takes me to check out just how many matchboxes she needs to replace. Along the way Sonya drops off a matchbox and uncharacteristically allows me to document the process.

The idea is that you take a Matchbox from the vase (see the top photograph), place it somewhere for someone else to find (see bottom photograph), then email or SMS the location of the matchbox from the details provided at the ACP.

PULSE: A behind the scenes with WATCH THIS SPACE and INFORMAL DIALOGUE

COLLABORATION!!!!!!

PULSE is a new curatorial project under development between Watch This Space and Informal Dialogue.

Q & A with WATCH THIS SPACE

We received some questions about our selection criteria on a our facebook fan page which we thought might be useful to any readers endeavouring to have an exhibition with us.

We just received the following questions and thought we'd share them and their answers in case anyone else is wondering the same things:

Q
1. if we are accepted are we just allocated to a space?
2. what's the selection process?
3. when will works chosen be exhibited?

A
1. If you are accepted it will be because we like your project. We won't always have the ideal place for your project as soon as the artist is ready to exhibit it. So what we will first try to do is place you in one of our spaces we already have. Our spaces vary in what they can offer the artist. For example we have one space which is only open at nights and on certain nights requires a cover charge to be in. Because of our unique spaces some are suited to different disciplines and media from others. Some spaces might be too big or too small for particular works so once we decide we would like to work with the artist then we will contact them and talk about what we have to offer them.

2. The selection process is simple. We work out how successful the artwork will be for the spaces we have. If we select a work that won't work in our spaces then we will endeavor to find a space that does. This means that the selection criteria comes down to a succinct and articulate proposal: what, how, why and when, who the artist is and what their experience is (CV). Many applicants will not have had a show before so their proposal and sample images will need to be particularly strong to outweigh an uninspiring CV. The panel made up of two directors will choose make painstaking decisions only accepting works which we believe to be any attractive combination of: beautiful, relevant, talented, contemporary, theoretically grounded, controversial and legal. Once we have chosen works that we are happy with we will contact the artist and notify them of out interest in their work. After that we will contact any unsuccessful applicants and notify them.

3. Works chosen will be exhibited at a time decided on together by the gallery and the artist. If you ave a preferred time to exhibit then you should include that in your proposal. We are currently hoping to decide on an exhibition program until July next year.

News and Where To Get It In the Artworld

It used to be art magazines, then blogger: The Artlife. Mags cost too much and are full of crappy ads and The Artlife started making a tv show and now only blog once a fortnight and only blog something worth reading every third fortnight.

Now the place to go for good info from artists and art institutions is artbabble.com and The Art Newspaper. Art Babble is a database of video podcasts from artists, museums and academies which is free to watch. The Art Newspaper is exactly how it sounds - a newspaper particular to the artworld and art economy. Both will do more for the aspiring Fine Arts industry profesh and if you want the latest news on what's happening when and where get twitter and start following some galleries.



Tony Curran

ADOLF HITLER

They said he'd never make it because he "wasn't talented". But Hitler finally made it.

http://player.sbs.com.au/naca/#/naca/wna/Latest/playlist/Artworks-possibly-the-work-of-Hitler/

Click on the above link to see the fruit born of a little patience with your art practice.

Knockin' At Fortunes Door

CALL FOR ARTISTIC PROPOSALS FOR …

REALITY CHEQUE
19 June - 5 July
ATVP’s Winter ’09 Show ofthe Season
(Opening launch Fri 19 June 6-9pm)

REALITY CHEQUE: Money isn’t everything, but apparently it is the force responsible for the rotating of the Earth on its Axis. This past year has seen an unprecedented collapse in the mechanisms of capitalism and suddenly the stability and integrity of financial institutions have been found wanting.

At the same time, the squandering of the earth’s natural resources including the burning of fossil fuels and destruction of rainforests, as well as the drive for a western standard of life in developing countries like India and China has us wondering whether we’ve driven the world past a tipping point that we may not be able to recover from.

As a Global Community, we face a vast array of challenges & problems. Now, more than ever, we are all being asked to consider what makes the world go round; to consider our actions, our impact on the environment, our economies, our cultures and how our actions and choices effect all. It may not be money but a different kind of currency we need to look for to facilitate the world going round!

What we need now is a Reality Cheque, and we’re asking for artists to contribute.

ATVP is looking for 15-25 artists working in any medium that addresses the theme – Reality Cheque.

An Exhibition fee* of between $80-130 will apply, depending on the number of artists selected.

Proposals due by 5pm Monday 18 May 2009
(see proposal form below)

Artists will be notified 25 May regarding the outcome of their proposals. Delivery of artworks will be due Sunday 14 June 5-9pm, and Monday 15 June 9am - 6pm

For further information or to receive a proposal form contact:
Reality Cheque @ ATVP
(02) 9519 2340 / 0430 083 364
info@atthevanishingpoint.com.au / www.atthevanishingpoint.com.au

*ATVP is an independent artist-run initiative run by a dedicated team of volunteer Directors, representing emerging artists and arts professionals from the Sydney community. Exhibition Fees go toward the running of the exhibition as outlined at www.atthevanishingpoint.com.au/admin.php?p=edit&idd=16&menu=menu

PROPOSAL FORM
REALITY CHEQUE
19 June - 5 July 2009


Artist(s) name:

Contact Address:

Phone number(s):

Email Address:

Briefly describe your artistic practice (100wd max):

Clearly describe your proposed artwork (200wd max):

Please attach further relevant information:
• Please provide a relevant brief artistic CV (no more than one page):
• Please send us no more than 3 images, or concept drawing(s) or a cd/dvd of your proposed artwork (jpg files at 300dpi around 1MB per image):
• For further information about submitting entries for Reality Cheque contact ATVP on 9519 2340 or go to www.atthevanishingpoint.com.au

Send Completed Proposal Forms to:
At The Vanishing Point - Contemporary Art
565 King Street Newtown NSW 2042
or email info@atthevanishingpoint.com.au

PROPOSAL FORMS DUE BY 5PM MONDAY 18th MAY 2009

AND

Firstdraft is currently accepting proposals for its Exhibition, Emerging Artist Studio and Emerging Curators Programs for the second half of 2009.

Emerging Curators Program:
• A three-week exhibition in the whole gallery (including promotion and opening costs)
• Access to and assistance with Firstdraft's equipment and resources
• Funding and assistance for the production of a small catalogue to accompany the
show and towards curatorial costs

Exhibition:
• Exhibition proposals are invited from individuals and groups, artists and curators

Emerging Artist Studio Program:
• A studio space on the ground floor of Firstdraft for eleven weeks
• A three-week exhibition at Firstdraft upon completion of the program

For more information please download application forms at
http://www.firstdraftgallery.com/050%20Information/004%20Forms/index.html

or email mail@firstdraftgallery.com

Applications for the new Firstdraft/Runway Emerging Writers Program will be available shortly.

Applications close: 6pm Friday 15 May 2009

AND

*FREE HELP!*

An information day for second half of 2009 applicants will be held at
Firstdraft Gallery on Saturday 25 April from 3pm. Come and get some info and
tips on how to write a killer application for Firstdraft. Hear from
Firstdraft Directors, as well as artists and curators who have recently
completed the exhibition, curators and studio residents program. We will
also be launching the Emerging Arts Writers Program.

Firstdraft is a non-profit gallery run on a voluntary basis by a group of
practising artists and curators. It is one of the longest running and most
successful artist-run spaces in Australia. Firstdraft asserts the
importance of contemporary art production, dissemination and discussion in
society, providing a stimulating exhibition space that is professional and
accessible for a diverse range of artistic practices and projects.


For more info click here!!

GAME, SET AND MATCHBOX

Tuxedo, 2009. Sonya Gee

In 2006 Sonya Gee started The Matchbox Project. Not to be confused with another of the same name, this work is part blog, part craft and if you can handle Gee's objections you could even call it "contemporary art". Sonya puts a small present in the matchbox and leaves it somewhere to be found. If you read her blog religiously you might hunt one down but more often than not they get found by an oblivious bystander.

Sonya Gee, now graduated with distinction from Sydney Uni, has since been writing for Vibewire (Editor) Lost at E-Minor, Ordinary Magazine (upcoming online magazine), SBS News, Insight, and Ryde City Council all the while maintaining a target of one matchbox a week and on average getting posted on major blogs such as Kluster , Coolhunter, twothousand.com once a month and she's just been interviewed for Readers Digest Magazine!

On Wednesday 15th of April, Sonya Gee will be unleashing ten limitted edition matchboxes to THE WALL at Sydneys The World Bar for a silent auction. Come along to 42 Bayswater Rd from 8-11 for Champagne, DJs and a close up of one of Sydney's finest emerging projects.

SOMETIMES YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO MAKE IT ABOUT YOURSELF.

TITLE AND ARTIST UNKOWN

Posted by Tony Curran

Fastidious foam: the not so exquisite corpses of Hany Armanious

Hany Armanious
Empathy Chart

The old surrealist game of exquisite corpse was once again rinsed off and hung out to dry at Roslyn Oxley9 last Thursday night. If unfamiliar with the game, its what Breton and the rest of the surrealists used to make - something from bits of nothing in the early days of the movement a century ago. This was of course, the sculptural beginnings of found object turned modern mythical edifice that filtered on through the rest of the 20^th century.

And now here again almost one hundred years out of date, Hany Armanious has given us something that can only be distinguished from a retrospective by the fact that he worked fastidiously with foam to reproduce found objects instead of simply using them: a manikin head on a sphinx on a box; cardboard tubes, under a log, under a gray thing...it was beautiful. At least that's what I overheard. The 20-something up-and-comers in attendance went out of the way to exercise their extended adjectives that night, though all their theater only fell on deaf ears while the older patrons of Oxley9 simply wandered around seeming a little more puzzled than usual.

Everyone agreed with admiring relief on one wall piece-slash-torn notice bound. Seems it was the only work that was almost similar enough to something that could safely be comment on...sounds confusing...go see the show and find out for yourself.

But seriously, Roslyn Oxley9's press writer Amanda Rowell leads us to believe that through these works we find an 'otherness' in the slippage of the real and unreal of every day objects. Hmmmm...despite the ambiguity of these works delaying our judgment, in no way do they transgress the object/observer relationship to mitigate the encompassing experience of the 'Uncanny Valley'. Juan Munoz or even Felix Gonzalez Torres have been extending further into anthropomorphic sculpture and found object than Armanious' work dreams of, and with no need for expensive fabrication techniques for validation. Really, these sculptures don't boil down to answer the 'intriguing' question “What is it”, as Rowell claims, they only incited the assumption that 'they don't mean anything'.

Art should insight us shouldn't it? It should move us deeper into our understanding of the human condition. And isn't there a much greater discussion of 'otherness' in that than in a reductive, labored critique of the uncanny?

A bitter taste came to my mouth whilst watching the next generation of art school students work their way through the free beers and giggle about finding their next sculpture in a wheelie bin. Seems the only insight from this show was a cheap hangover and a couple of contacts.

A.A. Gabriel

ARTIST PROFILE: James Jirat Patradoon

My pants got a hole in them. I went to DJs to get another pair that didn't have holes. I stumbled upon the handiwork of an old aquaintance's printed onto a Mambo t-shirt.

JAMES JIRAT PATRADOON

I first saw Patradoon's work while frantically getting a form signed in the printing building at COFA in my student daze. The image struck me as hip, now, and awesome and when I bought my first copy of "Empty" magazine it had a Patradoon on the cover. It was the Semi-Permanent issue and Patradoon was that gold nugget of graphic design bliss.

If Warhol was Tech-Noir Punk then he would have lived in the shadow of James Jirat Patradoon's pop style. Patradoon's art is the bad boy of artworks, his figures hyper-masculine, donned in lucho-libre masks munching on obscene quantities of nutri-grain or violently battering an opponent of sorts. His would send a shiver down my spine if it weren't for the sugary delight of his colour palettes. His work follows a leading crusader through a journey outside place and time. His images are linked by subject matter but not event, they speak of comic books but they aren't sequential the figures wild and the compositions considered. A show at the Firstdraft here and a few clothing label deals there Patradoon is definately one of the promising talents of today making it!

James currently has his art on display at Oxford Art Factory until the end of April.

Anthony Bennett

Anthony Bennett, self-portrait in the bathroom discussing beauty, bukowski and brett whiteley with my ex, now a stripper, who likes to dress as wonder woman, 2008

This guy is definately THE artist to watch. Making it into the Archibald, The Wynne and The Sulman prizes with three different works and being the only artist whose work I actually like in any of the prizes (except Del Kathryn Barton) this artist is one of the strongest Aussie's of today. While Jasper Knight and Ben Quilty might be leading the young artist race, Anthony Bennett can paint more than just portraits and figure-ground and he drips better than Jasper! He ought to work on his titles though.

I took a photo of his landscape of insufficient green… where mountains are crushed for speaking out, but the gallery attendent made me delete it in front of him. When he wasn't looking I managed to get this snap of the idea of a michael hutchence haiku... wasn’t it nietzsche who first said god is dead and tom cruise is a dick?