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.
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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
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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]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Nagi Noda is one busy lady. Although a native of Tokyo, she spent five years in America and has worked up an impressive body of work. In addition to the rad hair hats an MFA would drool over, she’s directed videos for the Scissor Sisters and done work for both Laforet and Nike, amongst others. Read more
Black Eyed Dog is the project of Fabio Parrinello, a singer-songwriter from Varese, in northern Italy. His second album, Rhaianuledada (Songs To Sissy), brims with a brooding intensity, referencing the best British folk ballads of the past. Rhaianuledada (Songs To Sissy) was recorded at Vicolo Recording Studio in Sicily by Fabio Genco and was mastered by Luca Martegani in Varese. Listen to the track Honeysuckle Gal.
This is at last the artist the 1960s was desperately trying to produce. Mark Dean Veca’s installations electrify galleries and museums with an ethereal pop ecstasy the previous generation only dreamed of. This is the drug we have all been waiting for. Read more
For some reason it’s rare that you see London in this light. Nightscapes of big cities are usually reserved for New York and Tokyo, for example. Perhaps the comparatively scarce skyscrapers makes the city less photogenic in that respect. So photographer Jason Hawkes’ work is long overdue — he has really brought the city to life, and given it that lick of golden light that a long-exposure is good for.
Having originally sprung from the Shaky Isles (otherwise known as New Zealand), I can appreciate the humour in the New Zealand cartoon series, Bro Town, the first homegrown animated series to screen during local prime time. It’s simply brilliant, a real play on the ‘thuck’ accent and small town ways of our Kiwi brethren.
Cast from actual Keys, these unisex rings by young New York-based designer Kiel Mead are a fun way to celebrate an old car or an apartment. They come in Sterling Silver and we have them for sale through the Lost At E Minor online shop.
My friend and fine artist Sara Wolfe sent me this link of Chicago based artist Diego Leclery. He created this flash animation Panda, to celebrate the recent Beijing Olympics. He initially said he would take it down after the closing ceremony, but it is still up, so watch this cool one before it’s gone!
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Alex Passapera’s dizzying pen and ink drawings are cascades of images melting into one another, often looking like contorting, mutating creatures spewing blood-like ink splatters. 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
Wheeeeee! This game is so freaking fun! You move your cursor over each dot to make them split into four smaller dots ad infinitum.
Richmond-based graffiti artist Chip7 has a style that is at once urban and also vaguely tribal with their crude lines and rich patterns. Read more
T-post: the world’s first wearable magazine
So here’s the scoop. Every six weeks, T-post subscribers get a new t shirt issue in the mail, with a news story on the inside and an artist interpretation of that story on the front. Yes, we agree. It’s clever, clever. 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
From afar, Jesus stares serenely at those surrounding you. But up close, Islamic crescents cluster together in abstract patterns. Created by fashion label, the-affair, this tee is printed on beautifully soft American Apparel in a limited edition of 200. Purchase now. Read more
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