reeling and writhing

 Red Gallery's exhibition program this month includes an interesting group show, Strange Nature, of photography and painting, which opens on Wednesday evening.

This exhibition of new paintings and photography takes a trip into a world where the natural and artificial have seductively merged.

In Dena Kahan’s painting, 19th century glass models of plants and marine life are re-created as surreal objects, more like part of a fantastic landscape than scientific tools in a museum case.

In his studio, Peter Lambropoulos makes “unreal” worlds specifically for the camera. He does so by transforming banal everyday substances into the extraordinary. Micro-sculptures encrusted with crystals are presented as hallucinatory visions.

Jan Parker’s photographs offer viewpoints on nature and the alchemy of light. Through analogue and digital processes, she conjures up uninhabited and often myopic landscapes, cryptic in their placement but also referencing the actual work of the eye.

Other artists exhibiting at  Red Gallery this month include Sarah Gully and Amelia Lackman. So, plenty to see, along with my friend Dena Kahan's paintings of glass models of flowers and invertebrates from the Blaschka collections at Harvard and Cornell Universities. Last year, she exhibited paintings of scientific marine models from UK collections at Red Gallery, and further works on these beautiful subjects are in the offing. Enjoy.

body of water - Fifi's exhibition launch tonight

This will teach me to skip posts saying "I have been busy". Particularly where artists are concerned. Ow, Ow.

 

red dress floating

My blog friend and fine painter and photographer, Fiona Dobrijevich Edmonds, launches her exhibition, body of water, tonight in Darlington, Sydney.

It is at Sheffer Gallery at 38 Lander Street until the 22nd of May.

There are more samples of her work on the blog, but I strongly urge you if you are lucky enough to be in Sydney to go and see it for yourselves. I wish I was going, I have left it too late and now have other things on. Damn, damn, damn.

it's news to me 10.05.10

At the recent W3 conference, self-publishing platform Lulu was not only a Gold Sponsor, but just look where their exhibition booth was.

Jane Ciabattari of the Critical Mass blog enjoyed Patti Smith's address at the PEN World Voices conference last week. There is a link to audio of the event at the end of her post.

As they say on Dumbfoundry, the seventeenth issue of Otoliths is...fresh.

Older news, but still worthy - last year a POD publisher issued 272,930 titles. Publishers' Weekly tells you how BiblioBazaar did it.

Last week Ramona Koval interviewed Nicholas Birns, the editor of the scholarly journal on American studies of Australian writing, Antipodes, and the podcast is here. 

Two remarkable collections of poetry are available this month at a reduced price at Giramondo Publishing. For a limited time you can purchase the latest collections by Jennifer Maiden and Judith Beveridge together, for $35, at a saving of 20%.

FInally - I really enjoyed watching Hanif Kureishi talking on the Guardian website last week to mark the publication of his Collected Stories (at 688 pages, I'd be wanting that in hardback). Some great photographs, and I never tire of listening to him. It is great, too, to hear him say that while the idea of a collection 'rather horrified' him at first, feeling it was 'some kind of tombstone', he also now feels moved to write more. YESSS.

green thoughts, green shade: Understorey at Geelong Gallery

At Geelong Gallery from now until June 6 you can take in Understorey, a joint exhibition by Melbourne artists Amanda Johnson (also known as the poet and novelist A. Frances Johnson) and Michele Burder. The artists have explored botanical gardens in Victoria to bring together these works, investigating 'a range of historical, personal and metaphorical 'under stories'' as they go:

Johnson’s illusionistic ‘paper documents’ on canvas are replete with stains, watermarks and foxing mould copied from deteriorated botanical documentations. Her painterly parodies of ‘first contact’ drawings and nineteenth-century garden designs suggest the melancholy possibility of last contact, while luridly modified Victorian garden plans (after William Guilfoyle and others) are a futuristic revisiting of the botanical archive.

Burder’s paintings signify how perceptions of gardens and landscape painting can change, or be ‘seeded’ as memory. Her pictures suggest that we can never be sure of the origin of the garden; that gardens may reside in memory or myth as well as in the experience of the boundaried public garden that many people know and love.

The catalogue accompanying this exhibition features an essay by garden historian Paul Fox. There will be a floor talk by the artists at the gallery on May 19th, if you live in the area and would like to hear more about the works.

Inside the world of Curious George

An unpublished HA Rey pencil drawing of Curious George from the 1950s-60s. From The Guardian's online gallery of images from an exhibition in New York.

Curious George Saves the Day: The Art of Margret and HA Rey is running until August at the Jewish Museum in New York. The impishly inquisitive monkey is the creation of illustrator HA (Hans Augusto) Rey (1898-1977) and his wife, author and artist Margret Rey (1906-1996). Most of the illustrations and documents in the exhibition have been lent by the de Grummond children’s literature collection at the University of Southern Mississippi's McCain library and archives.

(I should add that we are inordinately fond of George's recent film, which we have seen many times here. A gentle story with very attractive animation and graphics, and the soundtrack by Jack Johnson is terrific.)

while walking one day on the lower south side...

Strolling in South Melbourne last night, digesting dinner prior to taking in the Christmas instalment of this show, in which a family member got a few shots at the mike, I came across an exhibition in the process of being put together, which I was permitted to inspect briefly: a lovely thing to be able to do on a quiet spring evening.

The exhibition is a group show opening tomorrow night - the people in the gallery were busy attaching large framed glass prints to the roof by chains, so they could hang loose and be backlighted (the production method is being patented by artist Chris Gillard.) I also saw delicate giclee prints of botanical subjects in reds and blacks, some long, narrow landscape oils which whisper of clotted Cezanne, and beautiful fabric and wire sculptures of sea creatures. I can't do justice to one set of oil paintings which were abstract in tone but captured light and water and waving textures - I think this is one of them here, but there were more. 

 

                

                            

wire viper fish sculpture by Cristina Metelli.

                                                                                         Grass by Chris Gillard, photography in 4-colour separation on glass           

Natural Selection is at the greenwood gallery, 1 Hotham Street, South Melbourne, from 3-24 December. It features work by Llewelyn Ash, Patrick Christie, Pip Davey, Chris Gillard, Josef Marzi, Cristina Metelli, Anthony Vanderzweep, Nikai van Garderen, and Dolores Malloni.

The opening is Thursday night, December 3, 6-8 pm, and greenwood gallery is open 11-5 from Wednesday to Sunday.

weekend news 3: come see the magic theatre

This beautiful exhibition (click on the image for details) is running at Craft Victoria from October 23rd to November 28th.

Taking its cue from Hesse’s surrealistic landscape (in Der Steppenwolf), A Key to Help Make Your Own World Visible presents a series of hidden interior topographies; worlds existing somewhere between the pain and beauty of things past.

Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison have worked collaboratively for the past ten years, chiefly using paper as their medium. From carefully constructed limited edition artists’ books to works on paper, they record, deconstruct and rebuild miniature worlds.

Do please check it out. Louise Jennison's fine blog is elsewhere (so to speak) and you can see more of their work there.

a pressing reason to take in some fine art

Oh My. This is going to be very beautiful indeed.

Looking at the pictures again and reading the post makes me sad, because I can't get to Duck's first solo show myself.

If you can get to Canberra between September 2 and 12, make sure you see this show. I saw some of her work here in the State Library in 2007 and it is simply wonderful, so don't miss out.

we lied about being outdoor types

A little while back Lee Bemrose of Twobluefish posted his correspondence with Les Murray over the rejection of a story of his by Quadrant.
I came across it not long after reading some of Mr Murray's comments on an early poem of Chris Wallace-Crabbe's in manuscript at the remarkable Independent Type exhibition at the State Library of Victoria.

It is well worth visiting the exhibition just to read Murray's wry comments on the CWC poem. I would have loved to snap it but hey. You should see the whole thing.

I have skated around it once, and have ample opportunity to return as it will be with us till October. It then nips around regional centres, five weeks here, five weeks there - so I am hoping they take exceptionally good care of Marcus Clarke's lovely cabbage tree hat with its delectably raffish scarf (which looks to be silk. I think it must be silk.)

 Other thrills include Henry Handel Richardson's typewriter, a very flattering portrait of same by Rupert Bunny, Sonya Hartnett's letters to publishers and her Astrid Lindgren award, an issue of Gino Nibbi's magazine Stream from the thirties, bits of the Jerilderie letter from Ned, and plenty of other ingenious lovely things. There's a raft of events organised around the exhibition for the months up till October 25, with extended opening hours and events on Thursday evenings. Enjoy.

this garden universe vibrates complete

Dena Kahan has an exhibition, Strange Garden, opening on the 17th of June at Red Gallery in North Fitzroy

Another opportunity to report on the work of someone who has gone on to more exciting things since we studied lit together, and a show to visit! - and a beautiful picture for this blog to display (photo by Ian Hall).

'Dena Kahan’s paintings of miniature glass marine specimens address the historical relationship between art and science.

These most recent works are based on photographs taken by the artist while visiting specialist glassware collections in the United Kingdom, and are an extension of her previous work with the Victoria and Albert museum in London. Strange Garden reveals the shifts in translation incurred in the movement between objects and representations, softly prying apart the paradoxes inherent to taxonomy and systems of museum display.' (www.redgallery.com.au)

Strange Garden will be at:
Red Gallery
157 St George's Rd.
North Fitzroy 3068
tel: 9482 3550
17 June – 4 July . Opening hours Wednesday – Saturday, 11 – 5.

beanie season at Artisan Books

Artisan Books, one of my favourite stops on the way into the CBD, advises that their annual Beanie Exhibition is open now.

Do click on their other exhibition invites to the right of the homepage to see what other beautiful things are able to be viewed there, apart from a constantly magnificent selection of books on art, textiles, photography, design, gardens and all manner of crafts

The lovely piece on the invitation is the work of Margaret Lanne.

wall to wall intelligentsia at the Potter this summer

Update: hear more about this exhibition at Radio National's Artworks program for the rest of March, here.

Intelligentsia, a retrospective exhibition of Louis Kahan's celebrated portrait series for Meanjin, has opened at one of my favourite art spaces, the quietly shiny Potter gallery at Melbourne University. A goodly crowd turned out in searing heat last Wednesday on February 29 to hear guest curator Vivien Gaston and writerly/academic representative and poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe speak on the singular experience of standing in a room full of 'faces with thoughts inside' as Wallace-Crabbe so succinctly put it.

One of Kahan's portraits of Patrick White is on display - another garnered the Archibald Prize in 1962 - as well as many fine ink drawings of top writers and thinkers published in Meanjin from 1955 to 1974, including a couple of people I used to know and barely recognised, as of course they were MUCH younger then. Also on display is a video of writers included in the portrait series talking about Meanjin - I did glimpse Dame Mary Gilmore, but will return to watch it in a quieter moment as I could not hear very much of what was said.

Of the process of sitting for Kahan, historian Geoffrey Blainey is quoted as saying, "When I left, I had a slight feeling that I had been x-rayed."
Poet Fay Zwicky is quoted in Gaston's notes, which can be found on the Potter site:

'it seemed an easy thing to do, to sit

and let the master work his miracle,

humming away over black pots and nibs,

the sunny room, the light, the harmless ease of it.'

There are some beautiful photographs of Kahan at work in his studio too.*

This is quite a show, and I am assuming that some of these were among portraits by Kahan collected in a volume by Melbourne University Press in 1981, Australian Writers: the Face of Literature. The mind boggles at the thought of the cost of similar commissions for such a journal today. Many thoughts, many voices, indeed, and Kahan's inimitable style, fluid and emotionally intelligent, unites them all.

My favourites at first viewing I think are the captivating, surprisingly angular Patrick White portrait, the Miles Franklin, Francis Webb, Marjorie Barnard, Alan Marshall and the series of dinner sketches capturing Clem Christesen, Stephen Murray-Smith and a bunch of others at Meanjin's 21st anniversary dinner. There's a sense of listening in over their faces, rather than their shoulders, that's quite arresting. (So nice of Ms Gaston to pop all the notes on the website like this. Made to blog, and I hope they stay there.)

Louis Kahan was born in Vienna in 1905, and had a rich and fascinating creative life in Europe, North Africa and the US before coming to Australia in 1950. He was qualified as a master tailor, like his father, but used his father's customers as his first artistic models before taking on portraiture in the Army in the Second World War, where he felt his true artistic apprenticeship was served:

From 1943-5 Kahan began his personal contribution to the war effort, drawing thousands of portraits of wounded allied soldiers, mostly Americans, signing them modestly "by a guy from Paris". Copies of these portraits on 'Victory Mail' were sent to loved ones back home and many of the original drawings are held in War Museums in Australia and the United Kingdom.

In 2005 several hundred of these were presented to the Red Cross Museum in Washington by his family. Through these portraits, Kahan honed his skills and his ability to capture the essence of his subject with economy and speed. These qualities proved useful on his return to Paris after the war, when Kahan was employed as a staff artist by Le Figaro to cover the war trials of Pétain and other collaborators and they remained the hallmarks of his work.

(http://louiskahan.com)

He designed sets and costumes for the National Ballet and Sadler's in the UK as well as for Australian theatre and opera productions, and on his 90th birthday his peers awarded him the Australian Painters and Sculptors Medal, an honour given only to a handful of artists. More about his remarkable life and work, here; I hope to borrow Lou Klepac's 1990 bio soon from a public library near me.

Kahan drew painters and musicians in Australia as well as writers, and clearly had developed the art of capturing the face of creativity, if that's not too hackneyed a way to come at it. My thanks to Dena Kahan for inviting me to the opening, a truly moving and momentous occasion in Melbourne life and letters.

The exhibition will be at the gallery on Swanston Street (near the corner of Elgin Street) until April 22nd.

letterpress music

'This year the print workshop is full of glitter and the sound of typewriters :)'

This is also very beautiful stuff. Time for an artists' books list in the sidebar down there...

 Enjoy.

digital fringes

The Digital Fringe festival is coming up again. I first heard about this in a class at RMIT, and have yet to go to the Horse Bazaar bar to check any events out. But of course, it's much bigger than one venue, and the organisers are looking for screens for the upcoming festival:

Digital Fringe is looking to find screens of every size across Melbourne and regional Victoria on which to broadcast this cutting-edge digital artwork.

No screen is too large or small to be involved in Digital Fringe - it may be in a back corner of a library on a computer monitor, part of a shop's window display, a projector in a foyer, or a huge public screen. We are simply looking to get G rated artistic content into as many nooks and crannies of public space as possible.

Screens which sign up to broadcast Digital Fringe entries can play the content whenever they like during the festival. Screening can be fitted in around normal programming, or be used if the screen has downtime where nothing is playing.

If you have been to the Fringe before you may have seen Digital Fringers doing mobile displays also - here's how it's done.
So if you are reading this and have some screen space to offer, the organisers can be contacted at people@digitalfringe.com.au.

And yes, it's part of the Fringe Festival, something I'm getting more excited about than usual this year as I get little snippets of one production in progress over Sunday night dinners.
I shall keep you posted, there will be some gratuitous parental publicity happening as soon as I can get some visuals to go with it.

Or you can search Facebook for All Aboard The Fizzy Train if you simply can't wait.

art about, go find it

At fortyfive downstairs, until June 21, the latest works of Dena Kahan.
(45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne).

Dena Kahan’s recent work uses the glass case of the museum to explore the desire for order and perfection, and its impossibility. To quote the filmmaker Pedro Almodovar: “glass is very optimistic. It holds possibilities in its beauty, a kind of hopefulness that is as fragile as the glass”.

ern is alive, well and painting up a storm

If you're going through or around or near Bendigo on or before March 18, make sure you catch this.

I had a bit of R+R up there the other weekend, and enjoyed it very much, as well as a trip to the Bendigo art gallery itself just across the street, and a good hike around the city (AND A RIDE ON A COUNTRY TRAIN for the first time in about thirty-four years. Why have I left it so long? Added to list of excellent 3/4-hour writing spots - the cafe at Southern Cross Station, overlooking the country platforms. 'I had not thought death had undone so many', AND IT'S CLEAN AND SHINY and there's bloody good coffee.)

I lifted a quotation from an installation of winebottles at the exhibition I was in town for, to give you a taste of the Heide-mentary flavour artists Kahan, Johnson and Burder infused it with. See this as a bottle label, of course:

Grunge Hermitage

Grunge Hermitage is generally regarded as Australia's
most influential red. Full bodied and spicy, it is the
ideal accompaniment to any art of a modernist
flavour. This great wine is made from selected
hermitage grapes grown on the rolling hills of
Bulleen in Victoria. Matured in small and exquisitely
crafted Murrumbeena ceramic ramekins prior to
bottling, Grunge Hermitage will appreciate with
additional historical perspective. During bottle
maturation it may show a slight crustiness -
therefore it is recommended that it be debunked
prior to serving and imbibed with due irreverence.

Worth seeing for the cheeky kitchen and modernist en plein air photos alone. And I didn't even mention the 'Chorus Line of Images of Evil Plus SpaceHopper', did I? Or the 'Stoush in the Kitchen Garden', or the Ned Kelly wallpaper? Even Max Harris' hair is not immune from the  mockumentary treatment. This is the show's second outing so far: to top it all off, it was created at Bundanon when all three were on a residency there. There were even a few penguins in view...