Speed painting with ketchup and fries
If the tear away success of video-sharing portal You Tube has a lesson to impart it is that people – in the name of diversion, in pursuit of entertainment – will watch anything. Speed Painting with Ketchup and French Fries, uploaded by user EclecticAsylum less than a week ago, has already drawn a global audience of 100,0000 unique viewers. A portrait in video of a portrait in sauce and chips, the painted subject is Morgan Spurlock, a documentarian and anti-McDonalds figurehead. Spurlock rose to prominence, and to new calorific heights, with the 2004 feature Super Size Me – a film whose premise might be neatly surmised in the image, widely circulated during the film’s promotional flurry, of a furrow-browed Spurlock, mouth crammed full of Macca’s famous french fries. It is this image to which EclecticAsylum has turned his brush – or rather his individual-serve condiment packets.
A still camera focuses on a blank page from which the contours of Spurlock’s chip-ravaged face begin to emerge. The subject is sketched in outline, the artist daubing ketchup upon the fresh surface with the aid of a solitary fry. The chin is a slender arc of sauce, the nostrils, two jabs of a chip. Spurlock’s hair, helpfully ginger, takes shape with the application of red goop direct from the sauce packet. At 2 minutes 45 seconds, Morgan Spurlock’s saucy visage seems near completion. Hairy forearm reaches to the top left of the frame, transplanting golden rods of potato to the center of his painting, and of Spurlock’s gaping mouth. The likeness is uncanny and unappetizing.
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Also by KATRINA SCHWARZ
Australian fashion brand Lover, founded by Susien Chong and Nic Briand in 2001, arouses a particular type of devotion. Like the fashionable muses that inspire Lover’s strong and feminine collections – Patty Hearst for the ‘Black Rose Army’ (Spring/Summer 06/07); Rolling Stones groupies and biker babes for ‘Altamont’ (Winter 07) – fans of Lover know all about yearning, obsession … and waiting lists. Get in the swim and place your pre-orders for Lover’s newly launched Spring/Summer line, ‘One Plus One’, which includes the label’s first foray into swimming cossies.
Hot Box, by Barcelona-based Ana Mir and Emili Padros — for Emiliana Design Studio — is a design object with a different type of consumer in mind. If most highfalutin design firms pitch their sleek wares at Prada-clad architects and inner-city aspirants, the envisaged audience for the Emiliana Hot Box is another breed entirely: the chilly sex worker. A translucent structure that emerges from the ground, the Hot Box was created with the notion of providing warmth and light for those who spend a long time waiting on the street — namely prostitutes. Read more
In the 1985 movie Weird Science, a pair of happy misfits use tip-top technology and nerdy know-how to create something truly beautiful: in the form of ‘real life’ woman and sexed up diva Kellie Le Brock. The Australian fashion label Romance Was Born have created something equally beguiling with their Spring/Summer 07/08 collection, also called Weird Science. Sending coke-bottle spectacles, high-waisted acid wash and even a DNA inspired headdress down the runway at Rosemount Fashion Week, a real highlight of the collection is the label’s collaboration with hot Sydney artist Del Kathryn Barton. Del Kathryn Barton, who has previously collaborated on the label’s Regional Australia collection, will once again provide a unique fabric print that will be reproduced across a range of garments. Romance’s own misfit duo, Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales, know nerds get their revenge in the end. [see also Del Kathryn Barton]
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Samantha Everton’s latest exhibition, Vintage Dolls, explores ‘history, race and culture through magic realism’. Of the series, Everton says: ‘I was inspired by the innocent act of children playing dress ups and the way they re-enact adult behaviour, concepts and themes, without preconceptions or judgement’. The show runs at the Dickerson Gallery, Melbourne, between March 4-22 and at the Dickerson Gallery in Sydney between April 1-19.
Swedish city Gothenburg faces a challenge comparable in size with the industrial revolution: to become a sustainable city. The Kjellgren Kaminsky architectural firm, in collaboration with a team of local volunteers, have created a vision for a sustainable Gothenburg in fifty years time. Read more
Created in 2003 as a skateboard footwear brand in Los Angeles, Cipher is now an international urban lifestyle brand offering designer products for an emerging group of global hipsters. Now based in Hong Kong, where metropolitan living manifests the dynamic fusion of East and West culture, Cipher is an expression of life in the brave new world. Cipher shoes launched with three different styles, in a range of colours, each with its own story and attitude: Seditionary, Subterranean and Libertine.
Autumn Whitehurst creates beautiful vector works. Her bold use of colour allows her often cheekily themed line drawings to really leap out, creating a sense of visual serenity despite the occassionally dark subject matter.
A Paper Tiger is a new venture that launched in January of this year selling exclusive prints by some of my favorite artists such as Jack Long [shown above]. Read more
You heard it here first. Singer-songwriter Julian Perretta might just become the most exciting new artist of 2008. Read more
Growing up on the road in the deep south of America will either maim you or make you stronger. In Ryan Bingham’s case, it was the latter. Read more
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1970s and 80s Soviet Union buildings
Cambodian born photographer Frederic Chaubin is the editor of French magazine Citizen K. His photo series on bizarre buildings built in the former Soviet Union during the 1970s and 80s is absolutely fascinating. Read more
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Charlie Immer’s pastel-pallete sometimes obfuscates the gory violence in his surreal images. At other times, it heightens the gut-wrenching and visceral effect of his work. Read more
Wheeeeee! This game is so freaking fun! You move your cursor over each dot to make them split into four smaller dots ad infinitum.
I live the upbeat, feel good tempo of the new single — A Hundred Hearts — from Philly group, The Swimmers. Off their latest album, People Are Soft, this song is a strangely fitting anthem for the blustery day outside.
Thanks to Sony Australia, four Lost At E Minor readers will win personal audio prizes, including the new 8GB Walkman S series video MP3 player and the MDRXB500 Extra Bass headphones. Read more
Cassettes Won’t Listen is the brainchild of New York-based, multi-instrumentalist and producer Jason Drake and is the latest of an abundance of musical monikers he has realised over the years. Small-Time Machine is Cassettes Wont Listen’s first-ever physical release and is available for US$23.70.
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