
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
Italian artist Guido Daniele creates the most surreally brilliant portraits of wild animals using little more than body paint and a hyper-realistic imagination. Read more
The Kevin Ayers record Joy of a Toy from 1969 was released by Harvest Records and sits somewhere between Nick Drake and The Byrds. A record slightly ahead of its time, it was filled with enough interesting and clever arrangements and instrumentation to never bore. Girl on a Swing is my favorite tune for the tremolo guitar.
Miwa Yanagi’s Fairytale series consists of very creepy photographic interpretations of classic Western fairytales. Read more
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
You heard it here first. Singer-songwriter Julian Perretta might just become the most exciting new artist of 2008. Read more
Australian designer Mic Eaton has created an innovative line called Material Boy which specializes in over-sized shirts and funky trackpants. Read more
We got the inside word from Josh Diamond of New York experimental group, Gang Gang Dance, on the music that is moving him right now and he started off by propping the beautiful Ryuichi Sakamoto track, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence: ‘It’s just an amazing piece of music — serene, austere (in a heavy, beautiful way), emotional, a great mix of electronic sounds, patient, and a wonderful melody, with a quality of yearning for a better place. Every time I listen to this song, it puts me in a trance’. Read the rest of Gang Gang Dance’s Secret Playlist.
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST

Hong Kong-based illustrator Man-Tsun draws dark and beautiful painterly images that look like they are straight off a high-end Japanese animated film. Read more

Yum, yum, cupcakes are fun. These creations are so clever, so arty, so damn bizarre that it would almost be a shame to eat them. Almost! Read more

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

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.

Good thing Kris Kuksi channelled the trauma of growing up with an alcoholic stepfather, his disdain for ‘the typical American life and pop culture’, and his fascination with the macabre into obsessive, baroque assemblages, paintings, and drawings. Read more
Wolfmother. Rock n roll. Mystical lyrics. Heavy riffs. They have a new album out, Cosmic Egg, and we have five copies to giveaway, along with their debut album. To enter, tell us your favorite Wolfmother song and the city you live in. Yo! Two fingered salute. Read more
The Plus One t shirt by New York designer Ryan Sullivan is printed by hand, one at a time, using a dye-based print and printed on cotton/poly blend tees. Size is true to fit.
Read more
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Matt said | 23 April, 2009
Genius!!