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.

A push, a shove and a whole load of sugar

Sometimes I really do need a good kick in the pants to get things going. Being given the opportunity to have a show with just under one and a half weeks notice is one such occasion. My last exhibition was produced very slowly and gently, with a few real stakeholders involved so it was fun to do something spontaneous and silly.

This was very silly. There were hundreds and thousands everywhere! On the floor, in my hair, they turned up in my tea cups and will forever be stuck in between the cracks of the floorboards. But it made for a very popular box!



The Wall hosted a Bid-A-Box night for a project I've been working at steadily for just over two years now. Normally I make them and abandon them once a week but these were particularly extravagant.



I'm a new exhibitor, mainly because my work normally appears in print and that I'm apprehensive to call it art. Nevertheless, I've discovered that for all the anxiety of showing - it's actually really fun and addictive! I most enjoy getting very immediate feedback and chatting to people who are into similar things. There was some very interesting talk about the Creative Sydney project that's coming up, something I'd never heard about until that night and am interested to find out much more about.

I've been stoked to find that people really like the matchbox project, regardless of whether they find or get a box, mainly because it's an excitement about gift-giving and an indication that basic giving is increasingly devoid in life. I never set out to prove or offset this when I started the project but realise now that the small amount of joy the project gives people is well worth the effort it takes to make it. I loved making tiny things for the boxes! And am now off to make a tiny patch of wool green grass for another box, to nestle a very precious hand-made toadstool pendant in it courtesy of Michelle Vandermeer.

Thank you to Tony Curran and Dan Chin for their help and cuddles on the night.

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

TITLE AND ARTIST UNKOWN

Posted by Tony Curran

All Good in Theory

The arts don't seem to make much economical sense these days, despite precedents such as the Whitlam government's purchasing of Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles. The National Gallery of Australia held (and still holds) the most important American cultural artifact (of its time) for ransom and strengthened Australia's international reputation and negotiable power over America. Some say this purchase cost Whitlam his place in Parliament. However the arts have persisted throughout history longer than science, industry, and economics itself. It seems that the arts are innate to culture whatever the medium and expression.

Seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and feeling are how we take in information from our environment. Some artforms utilize a variety of senses - theatre and others use only one - photography. The persistence of sense for sense's sake is invaluable in the development of children and civilizations the same. The effects of sensory stimuli (the arts) on an audience are essentially the backbone to tv, nightclubs, parties, good books, your true love, the clothes you wear, the food you eat.

So if it's so important how do you get from making it to making a living off it?

Tony Curran