August 8, 2007 | New Fashion | 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.
- 1
- 0
July 11, 2007 | New Events | by Katrina Schwarz |
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
- 0
- 0
May 8, 2007 | New Fashion | by Katrina Schwarz |
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]
- 0
- 2
May 8, 2007 | Cool Travel | by Katrina Schwarz |
Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour has a fascinating – if checkered – history. A former convict prison, a shipyard and a reformatory for wayward girls, the island also has a fascinating present as the site of a new installation by Swiss artist Urs Fischer. Fischer visited Sydney under the auspices of Kaldor Art Projects, whose previous projects have included Christo & Jeanne-Claude’s Wrapped Coast – One Million Square Feet (1969) and Jeff Koons’s floral Puppy (1995). Visit Cockatoo Island between now and June 3 to view Fischer’s artfully clunky and wonderfully gritty works – a skeleton climbs into/escapes from a packing case; impossibly contorted forearms are suspended from the ceiling and in the installation’s central piece, a huge knobbly structure, recalling both tree branches and disembodied limbs, spans the island’s central forecourt. A ghoulish spectacle.
- 0
- 0
March 14, 2007 | New Art | by Katrina Schwarz |
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.
- 0
- 0
February 6, 2007 | New Fashion | by Katrina Schwarz |
Sienna Miller’s appearance – sans pant – at the New York premiere of her new Warholian film project, Factory Girl, signaled the surprising return of a wardrobe staple: the scungie. Scungies will be a familiar sight/blight to schoolgirls (and ex-schoolgirls) Australia-wide. Best described as a heartily elasticated woman’s full brief underpant – or sport bloomer – scungies were requisite attire for school sport and ‘physical culture’ (physie). Worn on their own or under a short pleated skirt, the scungie acted as a kind of force-field, repelling the voyeuristic efforts of young schoolboys (those notorious up-skirt dirt merchants). In looking for the source of Sienna’s sartorial revelation, all signs point to fellow Factory Girl cast-mate, ‘Australian’ actor Guy Pearce. Before donning a silly silver wig to take on the role of Andy Warhol, Pearce was a pervy schoolboy in rural Victoria. The actor is on record as being a fan of big knickers.
- 0
- 2
January 23, 2007 | New Art | by Katrina Schwarz |
Like householders the world over, Perth sculptor Christian de Vietri has been spending time in IKEA. Loitering in the Faktum kitchen and between the Billy bookcases, slumped on the Klippan two-seater and filling his pockets with allen keys, de Vietri is assembling something of a different order. For his latest work Configuration 3: Nuclear family fusion, 2006, currently on show at new Sydney gallery space thirtyseven degrees, De Vietri has taken the components of various IKEA products – the wooden structures of a bunk bed, curtain rails, parts of a rotating cupboard, knives, chopping board sets, chairs and tables – and created from them a tool of torture: a 3 x 3 metre ‘Infrafamily Conflict Resolution Unit’. Imagine a whirligig plus prodding stick: a contemporary reinvention of the barbarous medieval pillory, into which offenders were locked by their hands and neck and forced to rotate aimlessly, incessantly. For anyone who has done battle with a DIY assembly kit, it is clear that De Vietri has not so much transformed these IKEA products as pushed them to their cruel and natural conclusion: IKEA – the cycle of production and consumption – here reads as torture, as gross spectacle. It is possible, however, that the artist’s reasons for loitering in the local IKEA are far more mundane. A multi-award winner, having bagged the Art & Australia/ ANZ Private Bank Prize for emerging artists, the QANTAS Spirit of Youth Award, a Nescafe Big Break grant and the honorific title ‘West Australian Citizen of the Year’, Christian de Vietri is a man in dire need of a trophy cabinet.
- 0
- 0
The New York Times has just run an interesting article about artist Jorge Colombo, who created this week’s cover for The New Yorker magazine exclusively using the iPhone application Brushes: ‘Absolutely nobody can tell I am drawing’. Colombo told the Times. ‘In fact, once I was doing the drawing at some place, and my wife was around, and they asked her why did I have to work so hard? I seemed to be always on my iPhone sending messages’. Read more
I just came back from teaching a week-long illustration workshop in Venice, Italy. After finish up the class each evening, the students and I often ran to our favourite gelateria in town, Nico. Read more
Now I know what you’re thinking. This Australian summer you’re going to see the wayfarer style ripped-off and ruined by flouro festival wearers all over the country. But these babies aren’t just for show. Handmade by one of Italy’s most prestigious factories, using Zeiss lenses, they’re a far cry from the flimsy market numbers you’ll catch the masses wearing. Read more
Many moons ago, when my hair was longer and my eyes were wider, I played guitar in a Sydney rock band. Over a period of several years, the four members in the group went from relative normality to the very personification of imagined rock glory. Read more
We have a bunch of new playlists up on our sister site, My Secret Playlist, a music discovery website and weekly email publication in which we invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. Over the past few weeks, acts such as The B52s, Team Genius, Pivot, Jukebox the Ghost, Moby, Katy Perry, and the Dandy Warhols, among many others, have written about the music that inspires them. To sign-up to receive the weekly My Secret Playlist publication, just enter your email address into the website’s subscription box.
Micah P. Hinson is like every rustic, broken down, and pieced back together country great that’s ever been. Only hipper and slightly less sombre. This track, Diggin’ A Grave, is a button-up hoe down with a classic pop chorus and a jangly banjo accompaniment. Yup, some folk have all the fun.
Only the French can get away with the sort of effete, gothic electropop that Position Parallele make. It’s hard to tell if the duo’s deadpan is supposed to be funny or not, but it’s pretty hard not to pull some angular, jerky dance moves when listening to their New Order-ish tunes.
WE'RE RESPECTING
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
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
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.
Our celebrity-saturated culture makes many of us irrationally hateful of the faces we see on our TV screens and magazine pages. Good thing there’s Celebrity PunchOut to let off some of that steam.
Creative advertising packaging
Despite the intentions of many, it’s not so often that advertising — as an industry — truly thinks outside the box. Yet, when executed well, clever eye-catching advertising actually works. It does. As these examples will attest to. Read more
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
Now, who couldn’t do with a watch like this? Featuring an interactive touch screen and animated LED display that plays short animation upon demand, the time display on this awesome watch switches between colors on touch. We have them for sale in the Lost At E Minor online store. Read more
FOLLOW US
DISCOVER MORE
SO...
SEARCH: Can't find what you're looking for? Do a search..
IS IT GOOD FOR YOU TOO?
We hope you're enjoying your time on Lost At E Minor, but it’s not over yet. Got something to share? Tell us about it and we'll look to publish it. If you want to have your work featured on the site, we'd love to hear from you. Pssst, we also have an online store stocking some of the goodies we feature on the site.
If you're a media agency and want to use this platform to connect with our readership, then drop us a line and tell us about it. Oh yeah, and we do digital consulting for cool brands that want to reach the sort of demographic that visits this site.
