Tuesday, January 26, 2010

insert wanky art statement here

One reason why I moved from Timaru New Zealand to Melbourne New Zealand was due to a serious lack in stimulation: eyeal, oral and earol.

While Timaru has the.. um.. err..
.
.

.

Melbourne has the bands, the occasional nice beach and art galleries - speaking of art galleries, I went to an exhibition on Monday of Ron Mueck - if I could sum it up in one word, it would be this: FUCKING AWESOME.

I am now going to pilfer words and sentences from the interthing as I know nothing about this guy....

On loan from Wikipedia:


"Ron Mueck (born 1958) is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor working in Great Britain.
Mueck's early career was as a model maker and puppeteer for children's television and films, notably the film Labyrinth. Mueck established his own company in London, making photo-realistic props for the advertising industry. Although highly detailed, these props were usually designed to be photographed from one specific angle hiding the mess of construction seen from the other side.

Mueck increasingly wanted to produce realistic sculptures which looked perfect from all angles. In 1996 Mueck transitioned to fine art, collaborating with his mother-in-law, Paula Rego, to produce small figures as part of a tableau she was showing at the Hayward Gallery. Rego introduced him to Charles Saatchi who was immediately impressed and started to collect and commission work. This led to the piece which made Mueck's name, Dead Dad, being included in the Sensation show at the Royal Academy the following year. Dead Dad is a rather haunting silicone and mixed media sculpture of the corpse of Mueck's father reduced to about two thirds of its natural scale. It is the only work of Mueck's that uses his own hair for the finished product. Mueck's sculptures faithfully reproduce the minute detail of the human body, but play with scale to produce disconcertingly jarring visual images."

END LOAN


This guy is great, as I was walking around I was just in awe of how long it would have taken to make these pieces... It was cool that we were allowed to take pics, I really enjoyed trying to capture some sort of interaction between the people and the pieces, do you dig it?

Check out this site too. I have sent in my pics to them and there will be something about it in their blog.

Now... look at these awesome pics!





























































Thursday, January 14, 2010

mittens made from a homeless dog

It's a Wednesday.
I'm on a tram.

It's 8.45pm.

The girl opposite me is eating fush and chups and wiping her fingers on the seat.
I'm drinking a V.

This can only mean one thing...


I am on my way to the Prince Bandroom, St Kilda to photograph The Handsome Family!


I used to w
ork in a little indie record store in New Zealand called Rhino Records (which changed it's name to Radiant Records after Warner Music USA brought the Rhino Label and told my boss to stop using the name) My boss, Warren loved Elvis and country music, not that gay country music like Billy Ray - cool country, like Cash and Hank Williams. He used to listen to The Handsome family abit, so when the opportunity came up to photograph, I thought I'd give it a go. After photographing a couple of 'singer songwriters' and
A) being bored shitless and
B) being bored shitless of taking photos of one person

I was hoping they had a band, but they didn't - and it wasn't bad! they really knew how to interact with the audience, cute (strange) stories between songs broke the night up and it really was a great gig. It was one of those moments that you were watching a seasoned performer compared to someone who is young in their journey
- and there is a huge difference. Ned Collette was the support, who I pretty much missed due arriving late, I got one cool pic of him though.