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.

Posted with LifeCast

New Kids On Every Block

MAKING IT is proud to announce the new poly-venue gallery initiative which has just exploded in Sydney.

Young entrepreneurial curator duo Tony Curran and Luke Tipene have set up an artist run space where artists get exhibition space for free! An experimental artworld model, this project has been liaising with small business in Sydney for simple sponsorship arrangements and is currently hosting their debut appearence at World Bar's club room in King's Cross and future events are rumoured to be held in the elegant design studios of NMI in Chippendale. Emerging artists are strongly represented in the vision for the gallery, Mitchel Spider boasting the first so far.

However, more established practitioners in a huge range of visual and sonic media are to be involved as well. While it doesn't behave like a normal gallery with the white cube aesthetic WATCH THIS SPACE hopes to make the artworks more accessible to those who normally wouldn't have the luxury to visit galleries and project spaces.

While there are no fees to be paid for space rental WATCH THIS SPACE take a 20% commission on works sold which goes toward running costs of the organisation.

For more information about how to get involved or join the mailing list email realperspectives@gmail.com.

Posted with LifeCast

LEADING UP TO THE MCA ZINE FAIR!

It used to be that everyone lubed up ready to slide into the Sydney Writers' Festival Annual Zine Fair to grab a limited edition issue of Sammiches. Times they are a changin'. With the Sammiches crew having moved away to other more "solo" careers one former member still holds the flame - The Tilted Page.

Jonathon Valenzuela AKA 16 Tacos AKA The Tilted Page will be releasing the long awaited second issue of his copyright heisted comics. He may be shit at drawing but his clip art gags are guarenteed to make you buy one and give a copy to your parent for his/her birthday, only to have their faces glaze over because they can't understand the humour of the chosen generation. The Tilted Page will be sold next door to Making It Magazine's Issue 1 'Woah'.

Making It

Woah

This week the Making It team are buckling down in preparation for our first offline production - a zine for the upcoming MCA Zine fair this Sunday, 24th.

We're in the process of trawling through our cameras, computers, notebooks and minds to come up with some of the sweetest things we've seen in the last year or so. Books and articles we've read, websites we frequent, shows that made us stop in our tracks.

Can't wait to get it made. This glorious photo comes from FFFFOUND!, one super source of images, updated frequently. This particular pic comes from Anna Spiro's blog.

I'm still relatively new to collaboration and am learning to think aloud, which is scary but rewarding. We get more done that way and there's less self consciousness. I'm wondering whether the final product will have a very girl/boy divide in content...

Come visit us at the Zine Fair! If you can't make it, we'll be making our zine available online as soon as it's done.

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

Rest & Repeat

They say a lot of things about silence. Of awkward silences, pregnant pauses that silence is golden.. but I had never anticipated silence could be quite this elegant.




Object Gallery is currently hosting the 2009 Design Now! exhibition, showcasing the works of the best 18 design graduates across the nation in six categories, including design for home, communications and industry.

Sydney design partnership Derrick & Christina, recent graduates from Visual Communications at the University of Technology Sydney are among the 18 to be featured, with their work Rest & Repeat. A visual and tactile exploration of Erik Satie's composition 'Vexations', a short passage of chord progressions accompanied by a bassline that is repeated twice in each repetition of the piece (which is meant to be repeated 840 times), it successfully presents repetition in a way that is both calming and beautiful and at odds with usual connotations of boredom, staleness and noise.


The musical composition is stark and eerie and the two have chosen to represent it visually using a colour palette of white and grey. Derrick, now a digitial media designer at Freemantle Media, who sub majored in film and video has created a collection of motion graphics entitled 'Rest'. Venetian blinds open and shut, the viewer is transported down a rectangular tunnel, there are swirls and repeat patterns of boxes that rise and fall. Each scene transitions flawlessly into the next, an indication of how well considered the work is yet how effortlessly it is played out. The young designer has been known for his quirky and colourful animations, from peanuts walking on stilts to whirling red zebras to coloured blobs falling from see-saws and this is his most mature work to date.

His design partner Christina Perry produced a series of wallpapers and stories entitled 'Repeat', a physical exploration of repetition. From afar the wall coverings appear bright and vaguely textured, a closer inspection revealing the intracacies of the work. One appears reminiscent of a snowflake, delicate and ephemeral while another bears resemblance to pianola paper. Christina handcrafted the paper, yet the final product does not seem at all laboured. Her collection of short stories are both sweet and intriguing, her readership of Murakami and Fitzgerald subtly discernable.


The collaborative work is mesmerising and successful with the two designers retaining their individuality whilst exploring the same concept. And in a time where everything seems to be shouted and noisy, from advertising, product placement and political debate, their use of white and peace produces a work that is a simulatneously bold and gentle and worthy of exhibition.

Design Now! opend at Object gallery on 17 April and will remain until 21 June in Sydney, before travelling to Melbourne. Look out for Eric Ng's work 'Scenarios for a Sustainable Future', which is also on show.

By Sonya Gee