Karen Green's concise book of recondite yet candid and surprising poetic prose and her accompanying small, smudged art works takes me very closely into it, even though I am a stranger-reader. Maggie Nelson says it better than I can here.
28.6.13
22.6.13
3.6.13
More Art in Sydney in June
Multi-media artist Kate Richards continues her collaborative electronic project (with Ross Gibson & Aaron Seymour), Life After Wartime
as part of The Rocks Pop-Up:
The Rocks Pop-up is a Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority initiative which activates temporarily vacant buildings by providing creative workers with access to affordable space to produce and showcase original work,and host unique events. There are more electronic installations and presentations at The Rocks - see this link for information.
Plenty of Art Coming Up in Canberra & Sydney in June
Here is a Sample :
In Sydney -
At the Powerhouse Museum
Synapse is an initiative of the Australian Network for Art & Technology (ANAT) and the Australia Council for the Arts that supports collaborations between artists and scientists.
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research would it?"
Albert Einstein
Artists and scientists approach creativity, exploration and research in different ways and from different perspectives; when working together they open up new ways of seeing, experiencing and interpreting the world around us. For the past decade the Synapse initiative has provided over 30 Australian artists with the opportunity to pursue speculative creative research projects with scientists and medical researchers in Australia and beyond. This exhibition provides a snapshot of the diverse and fascinating research that participating artists and scientists have pursued over the past five years.
Exhibition includes:
KEITH ARMSTRONG + LAWRENCE ENGLISH – Night Rage
MICKY ALLAN In Canberra -
At the Australian National University
TIM BURNS in Sydney -
THIS IS VIDEO in Sydney -
At Artspace
CATCHING LIGHT in Sydney -
Campbelltown Arts Centre has brought together 5 creative innovators from the analogue and early digital eras to mentor, collaborate and exchange ideas with 5 ‘new generation’ artists from various disciplines – art, sound and performance – who have chosen these technologies as the most appropriate channel of enquiry for their current work, or have a practice reliant on engagement. The focus is on conversation, participation and interaction as a means of informing us, the audience, how we communicate, or respond to art.
Collaborators:
Linda Dement & Kelly Doley
KIRSTY BOYLE – Ningyo
PETA CLANCY + HELEN PYNOR – Study towards ‘Aftermath’
NOLA FARMAN – Animating Solar Technology (work in progress)
CHRIS HENSCHKE – Lightcurve
GEORGE POONKIN KHUT – BrightHearts
ERICA SECCOMBE - Grow 2013 (work in progress)
KEN + JULIA YONETANI – Still life: the food bowl
ANU School of Art Gallery
Full information, dates & times here
Image: Stephen Jones, Tom Ellard and Garry Bradbury,Goodbye tonsils Severed Heads, 1984 (still frame from performance)
Tom Ellard & Paul Greedy
Troy Innocent & Benjamin Kolaitis
Stephen Jones & Pia van Gelder
Wade Marynowsky & Michael Candy
30.5.13
In Melbourne this week Warwick Thornton's Mother Courage
at ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image)
was a highlight of my visit -
From the program:
Mother Courage is an immersive film installation that offers a striking and poetic perspective of Indigenous life in Australia. Based upon Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children, it explores cultural displacement and the tensions between contemporary urban and traditional Indigenous lifestyles.
On the final weekend of this much celebrated exhibition, Thornton's mischievous title character takes her art to the street, parking her van in the Federation Square Atrium. This will occur as part of 'The Light in Winter', Fed Square's month-long program of free performances, exhibitions, film screenings and forums."
Last year Warwick Thornton took this piece to Documenta in Kassel, Germany. It's exhibiting in Melbourne until Sunday June 23rd
"Acclaimed filmmaker and artist Warwick Thornton has a distinctive and powerful cinematic voice. He won the Cannes Film Festival's Camera d'Or Award for his debut feature, Samson and Delilah (2009) and exhibited Stranded (2011) at the Samstag Museum of Art during the Adelaide Film Festival.
Further information here.
25.5.13
STORIES THEN & NOW
Vietnamese storyteller Sheila Pham's mother
Last night, I heard six autobiographical stories at Carriageworks, Redfern. They were performed in the style of William Yang's well-known personal narratives with images. This show is well worth seeing.
The final performances are at 2pm and 7pm today. There will be a post-show talk with the directors Annette Shun Wah, William Yang & the cast members today at 3.20pm (Saturday 25th May)
From the program notes :
Stories Then & Now brings together six Asian Australians to tell personal stories from their past to unravel the threads that lead to their present day lives. Directed by the photographer and storyteller William Yang and writer Annette Shun Wah with music by composer Nicholas Ng, experience how war robs a father of his children, obliterates a young woman’s village and thwarts a young man’s aspirations. A heartbroken dancer buries her pain in burlesque; a young professional ‘outsources’ her quest for a husband; and a traveller finally embraces her cultural homeland. These stories of determination speak bravely of the challenges of finding your way in contemporary Australia."
Tickets and information here
"Taking the audience from the conflict zones of China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea and Sri Lanka to the fraught family squabbles of suburban Australia; these candid narratives are drawn from the rich life experiences of academic and author Ien Ang; performer and writer Jenevieve Chang; filmmaker and writer Michael C.S. Park; producer and writer Sheila Pham; social worker and food writer Paul van Reyk and civil marriage celebrant Willa Zheng. The stories are told through words and rare photographs from private collections. Music by Nicholas Ng.
10.5.13
The indefatigable Stephen Jones has curated This is Video
at Artspace from May 30th until 16th June
The result of extensive archival research and remastering of key historical material, this project revisits the 1981 exhibition Video Art from Australia presented in Venice and subsequently toured through Australia (before disappearing in transit). Works from the original exhibition have been supplemented by some key additions, creating a unique insight into early video practice in Australia.
Stephen Jones is an Australian video artist, curator and electronic engineer. He is author of Synthetics: Aspects of Art and Technology in Australia, 1956 – 1975 (Leonardo Book Series, MIT Press,2011)
Featuring work by: Pam Brown, Warren Burt, Peter Callas, David Chesworth, Malcolm Ellis, Mick Glasheen, Miles Green, Marr Grounds, Stephen Jones, Peter Kennedy, Eva Krczag, Gilly Leahy, Bob Pollock, David Perry, Paul Pholeros, Jill Scott, Bush Video, Bruce Tolley
Visit Artspace here
4.5.13
If you like Etta James or if rhythm & blues, soul and funk are your kinds of music then you should not miss this brilliant show. Vika Bull is totally stunning. She is a fantastic singer. And the seven piece band with piano, horn section, drums, bass and rhythm guitars is wonderful too - plus, the musicians sing. It comprises twenty-three songs - it's a totally generous show. It's only on for one more day in Sydney, but they're travelling to Brisbane and Perth soon.
Sydney details : here
Brisbane, Perth and more info from Room 8 : here
1.5.13
A bumper issue of Mark Young's Otoliths magazine has just been published.
Click here to read the 'many e-things' it contains.
29.4.13
Anna Gibbs at the Parkview Hotel, Alexandria, 28.04.13
Thanks to everyone who came to the launch party for Home by Dark yesterday afternoon. There are lots of photos of the event taken by Nola Farman and Anna Gibbs, plus one image by Astrid Lorange - just click here to view them.
And thanks to Anna Gibbs for delivering such a wonderful talk.
Today Anna and her co-editors, Barbara Brooks, Moya Costello and Ros Prosser have announced the publication of their selection of Australian women's experimental writing - Mud map - in a special edition of TEXT. Click here to read the work.
26.3.13
You are invited to celebrate
a new poetry collection
by PAM BROWN
to be launched by
3pm
at
everyone welcome
Home by Dark is published by Shearsman Books
ANNA GIBBS
Sunday 28th April
Parkview Hotel
corner Mitchell Road & Harley Street
Alexandria
Click here for further information
How to get to Parkview Hotel
Mitchell & Harley, Alexandria
transport & map click here
Pam Brown's work is fearless, acutely observant, witty and wry. She delights in the curiosities of the the everyday, in notational sprezzatura, in the penetrating encapsulation of layers of time, chance and meaning with her twists of lexicon, diction and line break. This is a work of quotidian consternation, breaking through from irony to sheer fondness and painful shadows. She sees askew - and Home by Dark has its own poignant look at decades, bodies, and changes. Pam Brown is a wonderful writer, one of the scintillating wizards of Oz poetry.
Rachel Blau DuPlessis
___________________________
Pam Brown's Home by Dark is plainly beautiful: a subtle, moody daybook, warding off darkness and 'counter-revolutionary' boredom. Brown's engaged intelligence and light touch draws us into the flows and eddies of 'a poetry world' where 'everything is providential,/or not'. Reserved and intimate, swift and immersive, these poems are 'right here', in the midst of precarity: 'strike another match, go start anew'.
Kate Lilley
21.3.13
Last night, Sydney-based sound poet, Amanda Stewart, and Jaap Blonk, who's visiting Australia from the Netherlands, made an exceptionally wonderful performance of theirs and others' energised and complex sound artistry (including Jaap's presentation of Kurt Schwitters''Ursonate'). The well-attended private function was held at Nick Shimmins' warehouse home a.k.a. 'The People's Republic of Camperdown'. It's difficult to find highlights to talk about when performances are so good that everything works - no stumbles, no slips, no technical mishaps. The unique part of the evening though was the finale when Amanda and Jaap presented a series of improvised pieces as a duet. They both were, in a word, fantastic.
For a photo album of no-flash grainery click here
12.3.13
8.3.13
I'm going to Apollinairesville for a week or so
My wineglass splits its sides with laughter
Le dromadaire
Avec ses quatres dromadiares
Don Pedro d'Alfaroubeira
Courut le monde et l'admira.
Il fit ce que je voudrais faire
Si j'avais quatres dromadaires.
The dromedary
With his four dromedaries
Don Pedro d'Alfarubeyra
Traveled the world and marvelled.
He did what I would do,
If I had four dromedaries.
On the seventh day I rest
I laud laziness
2.3.13
Portraits of a Mardi Gras - this pocket-size booklet was published anonymously as a response to police brutality at the first Gay Mardi Gras parade in Sydney in 1978. It's not in the current exhibition at the pop-up Mardi Gras Museum. It's a book of monochrome drawings by Frances Budden. Handwriting was of-the-times, part of a feminist lo-tech aesthetic. The drawings were included in an impromptu protest exhibition at Watters Gallery in East Sydney in 1978. You can view scans of the entire booklet here.
2.2.13
I found my old copy of Children of Albion because I wanted to read some poems by Anselm Hollo, the Finnish poet who lived most of his life in the USA. He died a few days ago on 29th January. I first read his poems in the anthology in 1969 and I liked them a lot. Around that time I bought a copy of Maya, a collection of his poems from 1959 -1969 (published by Cape Goliard Press). Although I've culled my poetry books many times in the last few decades I have kept these two books. And of course, through the years, I've continued to read Anselm Hollo's work.
WELL IT HAS BEEN A PLEASURE ENGLAND
Well it has been a great old
Party the first one said starting
On down the stairs a
Great gettogether the second
One joining in all the others
Pushing out into the stair-
Case following them
On down talking and
Singing and laughing like
Mad supporting each
Other stopping to pick up
This and that on the way
Down the stairs a great
Great long party winding on
Down a merry old dragon of
Chinamen retelling itself
What jokes writing them
Down on the walls for those
Who came after stumbling
And hopping on down so pleased
No one noticed they must've
Been going on down for at
Least a month and well
below
street-
level
(Anselm Hollo from & it is a song, Migrant Press, 1965)
Inside Children of Albion I found a bookmark - an entry ticket to a psychedelic theatre revue in Brisbane called High On A Hot Banana. As the back of the ticket indicates, I went to the performance on August 5th at 8pm. This was in 1967. For a moment, that teenage era came back to me quite vividly.
VALE ANSELM HOLLO 1934 - 2013
24.1.13
Maged Zaher's latest collection Thank You for the Window Office was recently published by Brooklyn-based Ugly Duckling Presse.
Maged is from Cairo and is currently living in Seattle. This book consolidates his distinctive poetry and furthers his three earlier titles. There is a fresh, nearly-aphoristic tone. The lines give the impression of effortless arrangement. Maged uses just the right amounts of scepticism, enquiry, humour, politics, relational aesthetic, desire and reflection. The cover image is complicated. The poems embody a cultural critique that's open and modest even when it's very smart. Here are a few sample poems (random selections, not in sequence)-
Hello roller coaster
Hello soup du jour precious feelings
Here we do sales
There they do shopping
In the resurrection's parade
I took a different name
Which was an inevitable twist to the plot
Yet someone in the organization had to ask:
"Is people management an essential skill?"
The bohemian is still alive
:::
The poet at the soccer game
Reciting from Homer's Twitter feed
Tires everywhere
Piles of used Xboxes
The bearded folks surrounding the entrance
One of us will get to be the boss
And feel the joys of the class system
Monsters have a different value system
One will die of fear
And although the guru said nothing about jerking off
I will manage to wear green
And offend no one today
:::
They stare at blue lines
And sell media to everyone
Bikes are here to stay
Some agitation is needed
Because some poems are deeply Maoist
Mistrust goes a long way
I need to list all the patents we hold
Give me value or give me death
:::
You can find more praise, another sample,
and information about the book here
Read Los Angeles Times' Book Critic, David Ulin's review here
21.1.13
26.12.12
23.12.12
21.12.12
new zealand electronic poetry centre presents -
Announcing the launch of completed SHORT TAKES ON LONG POEMS, (click the title), featuring videos of readings and presentations from nzepc symposium held at Old Government House, Auckland on 29-30 March 2012, and complete materials for American poet Rachel Blau DuPlessis' visit to the University of Auckland, February-March 2012.
17.11.12
10.11.12
November Poetry at Sappho's
Toby Fitch presents November-Poetry-Night :
Jill Jones' new book - Ash is Here, So are Stars
(launch talk by Pam Brown)
plus
Keri Glastonbury (Grit Salute)
Eddie Hopely (Rude Door)
& open mic
Tuesday 13th November
19:00 until 22:00
Sappho's Wine Bar/Cafe courtyard
51 Glebe Point Rd
Glebe
Sydney
9.11.12
Lee Salomone—altre voci / other voices—Australian Experimental Art Foundation, September 21st—October 20th; Jeffrey Smart—Master Of Stillness: painting—1940—2011—Samstag Museum, October 12th— December 14th ; Katie Barber—Perceivable (painted) Objects—Sam Howie—Apainting— jointly at Felt Space, October 3rd—October 20th; Mark Valenzuela—Entry—Nexus, September 27th—October 26th; Pat Brassington—at Greenaway Gallery, September 19th—October 21st; Jeffrey Harris—My Father’s Table—Light Square Gallery, October 10th —November 1st; Matthew Bradley—Space Chickens help me make Apple pie—Fontanelle, September 23rd—October 28th;
Ken Bolton's latest form guide is now online here.
Who is Ken Bolton? Click here to find out.
5.11.12
Ken Whisson - As if
A brilliant, extensive retrospective
at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Curated by Glenn Barkley (MCA)
and Lesley Harding (Heide Museum of Modern Art).
Read art critic John McDonald's review -
Outside of the awful mainstream
For more information visit the MCA link
Glenn Barkley, curator's floor talk
Thursday 8th November 6.30pm - info here.
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