Sunday, September 21, 2014

Daft Punctum

Hey! Great to see you! Come on in, you're just in time!

I should kick off this blog post with a quick follow up to the last blog post as it brings me lots of happiness to announce that the ceramic sculpture of a strap keeper has officially been snapped up by a clever art collector. Thank you to the few other people who enquired about it but were just a tiny bit too late, I'll be sure to keep you posted of any future sculptures I might be forced to create if ever I break a shoelace or lose a button.

The strap keeper was sold to a person named Colleen from Western Australia and amazingly not only did Colleen send the $6.50 I needed to buy a real strap keeper but she also sent an additional $50 "to say thank you for the blog". Far out. It makes me feel a bit guilty, or unworthy, or just warm and fuzzy, so thanks Colleen, you're awesome and I'm very grateful and you've inspired this little painting I just did.
Colleen on me. Acrylic on 225gsm paper, 29 x 42cm.
(That's not my tongue, it's a strawberry in my mouth.)

Anyway so what this means of course is that first thing tomorrow morning I'll be going back to Mr. Watchworks to buy a real strap keeper and I'll be sure to keep you posted on that. Meanwhile the ceramic strap keeper has now been fired in the kiln and here it is finished, ready to be posted to Colleen where she can cherish it always and sleep comfortably at night knowing full well that her investment is guaranteed to increase in value every year by a thousand percent.*
*"Guaranteed to increase in value every year by a thousand percent" is a figure of speech and not an actual guarantee.

Strap keeper. Acrylic on ceramic. 2.3 x 1 x .8cm

Because I was so touched by Colleen's unprompted generosity as well as sending her the strap keeper I decided to also make her this little painting of her cats Bailey and Kipper, based on a photo she sent me of them wrestling in a bathtub.
Painting of Colleens cats (Bailey and Kipper). Acrylic on 225gsm paper. 21 x 29cm. 2014

The rad Melbourne artist Fergus Binns was in my studio for a second the other day and he picked up the painting and said "This is great! Is it two rats?" Rather than tell him that they were meant to be cats I just said "Thanks! Yep."

Ha, so I'm sorry Colleen if I've made your cats look like rats, I hope you like it anyway and in my defence your cats do have a very rat-like aesthetic.
And to continue showing my appreciation as well as the strap keeper and the little painting of the rodents I'm also sending Colleen the drawing of the broken strap keeper and the book I made in 2008 about sentences.
Speaking of which, the sentences book, and also my book about the Bill Henson controversy, were recently included in an exhibition at the George Paton Gallery called Artists Books (reprised).
It was a good show, I could've spent hours in it, I really should've given you some notice to see it, but yeah, you can still go there and see my books from it if you want to because once the exhibition ended I donated them to the George Paton Gallery archive. 

However if you'd rather have a book all to yourself that has a rambling personalised inscription from yours truly then just send me an email. In fact only last week somebody did that, a person named Phoebe, who like Colleen is also from Western Australia.

I told Phoebe the price for the book but in addition to that, because her name is Phoebe, I offered her a slightly higher price if she'd also like me to do her a drawing of Phoebe from Friends. 

Fortunately she took up my offer and here's what I made, titled Phoebe is my least favourite friend. (My best friend is Ross.)
Acrylic on 225gsm paper. 29 x 42cm.
(This time I had three strawberry's in my mouth.)

I may not have had a chance to mention on here the George Paton exhibition until after it had ended and so I do wanna let you know about a show that you can see, one that's on now (at this very moment!)
Expertly curated by Rosemary Forde, the show's in a gallery called Punctum, (hence the title of this blog post), which is in Castlemaine, about an hour and half drive out of Melbourne city. The show opened last Friday and is on until October 11. 

Here's the flyer.
And here's the flyer very endearingly not quite filling up the A-frame out the front of the gallery.
I took the V/Line train to Castlemaine last Tuesday for the install, and then on Friday I went there again (this time I drove up with my bud Christina) to give an artist talk at 2pm and to then attend the opening that night from 6pm.
While in Castlemaine I also made time to go to the Castlemaine Art Gallery, located directly opposite Presbyterian Church. It looked exactly like how I imagine Disneyland.

In perfect contrast to this incredible example of architecture, parked at the Presbyterian Church was a green P plater whose car had a massive sticker covering the back windscreen that read Properly Filthy.
While in the Castlemaine Art Gallery I did this quick drawing of a bronze sculpture by the late great Australian artist Robert Jacks. It's titled Goddess and was made between 195 and 1960.
I did a little research (mostly on wikipedia) and learnt that from 1958 to 1960, overlapping with the time that he made GoddessRobert Jacks was studying at the Prahran Technical College in Melbourne. 

And so yeah, I liked the piece already but I reckon it makes me love this Robert Jacks sculpture even more to know that it's a piece he made when he was 17 years old and in TAFE.
But so anyway I hit the road Jacks and the drive home to Melbourne flew by quickly as I was now being kept company by Jacks' Goddess in my passenger seat.
Goddess' aside though, probably my favourite thing I saw in Castlemaine was this SU8WAY car.
I loved it so much that at first I thought it must've been some kind of mirage, fortunately it wasn't, but I did happen to see a Mirage as well.
The Mirage was a very nice purple, the same colour as Dopey's hat from the seven dwarfs.
Another thing that's the same purple as the Mirage and Dopey's hat is the poster for the Substation Contemporary Art Prize, as seen on platform 2 of Parliament train station.
and platform 1 of Upper Ferntree Gully train station.
Ha, and showing you those posters is my very subtle way of reminding you that you can still check out the exhibition on at the The Substation until October 12. It's a really great show, and I'm not just saying that cause I'm in it!

Another thing I wanted to do on this blog post is remind you that I still collect old shopping lists, so if you've got one lying around please send it my way!

Here's a list I found on the weekend at Maxi Foods shopping centre. I like it a lot. 
And finally to wrap this up I thought I'd let you know that I've signed up to do the 14km Melbourne City2sea race. You should do it too, click here for the link

When you sign up to it you have to pick which disease you want your money to go towards researching, there's like 100 different options, it's a little overwhelming trying to prioritise what you want to help between so many awful things, I think I picked Alzheimer's, I can't remember...

The City2sea race is in exactly 55 days. Basically you run from the MCG, down past Fed Square where my studio is and you finish at St. Kilda Beach. I can just picture it now, me and fifteen thousand others stampeding together as a pack, trampling everything in our path like that tragic scene from The Lion King. I'd be lion if I said I wasn't roarly excited.

Now that I've reminded myself about the race I guess I should probably get away from this computer and go do some kind of exercise, maybe a jog down the road, or a walk around the block, or a crawl into the kitchen, but before I do that let me just say thanks so much for reading, I really appreciate it. Oh and hey definitely feel free to write something in the comment section below, it was really cool how so many people did that on the last blog post.

Anyway hope all's well and you've been having a great weekend, and if for whatever reason you ever need a friend then shoot me an email and remember you can always colleen on me.

2 comments:

  1. Hey Kenny, I liked that video :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey Anonymous, thanks so much! I liked that comment :)

      Delete