Joanna Mortreux’s oil painting
Melbourne artist Joanna Mortreux’s oil painting, Looking Back Undoes Everything, is peopled with otherworldly anthropomorphic creatures in various states of flight. Inspired by illustrated encyclopedias of animals, these strange life forms possess a dynamic duality that captures the tension between evolution and de-evolution.
As Mortreux sees it, there is a separational gap in knowledge between confrontation and recognition of the unfamiliar. When you’re looking at the work, it reflects who you are. You’re in a space where you can’t gauge the identity of the creature and that puts you offside. The result is an expansive awareness of our connection to the animal kingdom.
Second nature runs at Bus Gallery Melbourne between 7 April and 24 April.
Also by ANNA SUTTON
I get a lot of junk sent to me by email, but every once in a while I get a real beauty, something that makes me laugh out loud at how funny and absurd life can be. The phenomenon of creative canine grooming shows has its home in, you guessed it, the USA. Poodle owners dye, shave, clip and accessorise their pets so they resemble chickens, fairies, underwater sea themes, even American football players. As photographer Ren Netherland has discovered, the extremities of canine grooming have attained cult-like status. Read more
All you photographers out there, a word up on one of the most prodigious emerging photographers in Australia. And if you’re nursing an inadequacy complex, seeing Nirrimi Hakanson’s folio might propel you to briefly flee your aspirations and think about getting a job at the local supermarket. Hopefully, it will inspire you. The self-taught sixteen-year-old Hakanson has been taking photos on a digital SLR since the age of thirteen, after starting out on a disposable camera. Her distinctive style is ethereal and reminiscent of photo albums filled with enchanted childhood memories. Read more
Piet Parra at Milan’s Galleria Patricia Armocida
Piet Parra’s vividly coloured and voluptuous lemming-people get down to Italo Disco in the Amsterdam-based artist’s latest exhibition in Milan. Parra’s new works feature sensual and surreal figures busting raunchy poses to soundscapes from the electronic dance music movement that began in Italy and Europe in the late 1970s. Read more
YOU'RE SAYING (3)
eliane said | 23 April, 2009
I love this artistic creation. To actually be in front of it, you can feel it affect you. I have seen other pieces by this artist and love the use of oil on metal, but this most recent painting is big in scale and hovers energetically… I like it!
Birute said | 27 April, 2009
enlightening
HAVE YOUR SAY
John Lytle Wilson inserts fantastic sci-fi creatures into the foreground of random generic paintings, adding new outlandish life to otherwise sedentary environments. Read more
Mexican graphic designer, Sarahi Calderon Marquez, makes you see that not all monsters are bad with her magnificent illustrations of the lovely creatures. Read more
This awesome promo video for the Lost At E Minor site was created by our friends over at New York-based design studio, Lifelongfriendshipsociety. It’s all about looking into a black mirror and seeing the creative energy burst back out at you. We think it’s very cool and the first in what we hope will be a series of short videos exploring what it really means to be lost at e minor. Hit us up if you’d like to have a go at creating one.
One of my favourite venues in New York is Brooklyn’s Union Hall, right around the corner from Tamari, a super sushi joint. Upstairs they have two massive fireplaces burning and a bocce ball court. Yup, bocce. Downstairs you feel like you’ve walked into the museum of natural history where you can see live bands on a stage reminiscent of grandma’s living room.
This has to be one of the best design websites going around. The greatest part of the website is how you can filter design by colour. Mix and match a couple of colours and BANG! It will show you all the designs that utilize them.
Metal icon Peter Tägtgren has produced the harshest and most underground music of the European metal scene — Immortal, Dimmu Borgir, Celtic Frost, among many others. His own band, Hypocrisy, is one of the most revered melodic death metal bands in the world. Read more
Saltwater is a British clothing design label based in London and Cornwall who aim to bring a fresh approach to fashion with their use of beautiful colour, selected cloth, and close attention to detail. The store also has a great selection of carefully sourced accessories from around the world and a growing range of other clothes.
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
Michelle Blade’s psychedelic artwork
Michelle Blade’s washed out paintings are deceptively simple, her washy acrylics creating psychedelic textures and conjuring ghostly figures from the past. Read more
Communication prosthesis by Sascha Nordmeyer
This ‘communication prosthesis’ by designer Sascha Nordmeyer is hilarious and awesome. I want to wear one to a job interview.
Matthew Dear’s Black City album totem
Our friends at Ghostly International are releasing Matthew Dear’s Black City album as a limited edition ‘totem’. A what? A totem – a limited edition metal bar used to access a private music chamber. Cool! Read more
Francoise Nielly’s Yellow series
Parisian visual artist Francoise Nielly brings technicolour to the forefront in her latest series, Yellow. Featuring thick impasto palette knife strokes and trippy neon hues, Nielly captures the vulnerable expressions of her muses to a tee. Read more
Christoph Niemann illustrates a nightmare flight
New York Times illustrator Christoph Niemann has created a brilliant visual diary outlining the peril and pitfalls that beset the everyday passenger based on his recent experience flying from New York to his home town of Berlin. Read more
Inspired by the aesthetics of architecture and graphic design, FAQ Clothing has a post-modern approach to design. Each collection is based on a conceptual theme: ranging from vintage comics to lunar phases. FAQ works with no boundaries, nor rules, which makes for a compelling line. Check out more FAQ products in the Lost At E Minor store.
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Matt said | 23 April, 2009
Genius!!