Vivid Festival is Vivid

We've had weeks of cool, rainy weather in Sydney so when yesterday turned out to be a fairly mild and sunny day it was quite the pleasant surprise. Not exactly Spring-like, but more like a mild Autumn day that Sydney normally does so well. (I figure we're owed one, given that we bypassed much of Autumn and went straight to Winter this year.)

One of the benefits of my new job is a 7 hour working day, so I finished work at 4 o'clock and the sun was still out and shining merrily. Blue sky. I decided to make the most of it and walk home from work, and burn a few calories in the process. It has rained almost every night for the past however many weeks, and given the total absence of clouds it looked like we could count on a clear night.

So while I was walking I decided it might be a nice night to grab the camera and go and check out the Vivid Festival later in the evening. I rang a friend who was sadly busy, but figured I'd go home and make some dinner and see if I felt like it afterwards. Almost a very big mistake. Friday tiredness + the lure of sofa = inertia. However, I gave myself a kick up the jacksie about 7.30pm and headed out into a pretty cool, but clear, night.


Wow. I'm so glad I did. These pics don't really do it justice, but it was amazing. The centrepieces of the Festival are the stunning 3D projection mapped animations by The Electric Canvas on Customs House, and the sails of the Opera House by SUPERBIEN.


The walk all around the foreshore of Circular Quay was also littered with light sculptures, performers and interactive artworks using light, colour and sound as their common themes.


Some of these pieces were static (like these jellyfish) but many of the pieces used movement and interactivity. Hard to capture in photos unfortunately, but in the flesh they gave everything a carnival like atmosphere.


People, especially families, were everywhere and all along the foreshore people were lined up with their cameras taking pics of the changing animations on the Opera House.


There was a bit of the usual push and shove that seems to be a feature of Sydney crowds, but it was generally a pretty fun crowd. And boy it was a crowd. It seemed like everyone decided to take advantage of the clear night also.


I shot soooo many pics. These are just a small sampling, and I've already put some more up over in this Flickr set. I'll probably add some more as I sort through them.


After a few hours I was starting to tire of the crowds, so I started to head back to the train station. I'd almost bypassed seeing the amazing Customs House light show, but I'm so glad I didn't because the projection mapped animations were stunning.


Here's a film clip of the Customs House light show, which really is the only way to do it any justice.



Such a fun night, and even home in time to see the room reveals on "60 Minute Makeover". Now that's what I call a good night.

The Golden Age of Travel Design

While web surfing recently I discovered David Levine's amazing collection of 1920s and 30s travel ephemera (luggage labels, advertising, timetables etc). Interested in graphic design and the romance of the travel of the era, Levine has amassed a huge collection of travel ephemera on paper. These pics are largely scans of his collection, rather than ones Levine found on the internet. The design of the website itself is quite simplistic but whoa, it's quiet some collection.

Travel brochure Ook Uverwacht men in...Sportpark en Natuurbad Biltsche Duinen, 1933.

Crociera-Aerea Transatlantica Italia - Brasile, 1930.

Sabena Airlines, 1938.

Timetable Adriatic Service, 1938. Yugoslavia.

Rainy Day Beauty

It's been a dull and rainy day today in Sydney, fluctuating between drizzle and downpour it essentially hasn't relented all day. As a consequence I've been relentlessly sedentary all day. It was the least I could do. The most active thing I did was get started on knitting a new scarf for myself, while I watched Season 4 episodes of Mad Men or surfed the web.

While I was surfing the web I came across a fantastic UK website choc full of visual arts and design collections, VADS: an online visual arts resource. Wow. Designed as an educational resource it is a compendium of collections owned by various educational institutions. I'm still trawling through the thousands and thousands of images, but some of my early favourite collections are:

The British Library's Russian Visual Arts, 1814 - 1909 collection.

Zhar-ptitsa’ by Polenova, Elena Dmitrievna, (1850-1898)

I'm also loving two of the London College of Fashion's collections, firstly the Woolmark collection.

Hardie Amies, 1956.

Chloe, 1966.

Secondly, the awesome Paper Patterns collection.

McCalls, 1936.

Vogue, 1957.

Next I plan on staring open mouthed at the loveliness in the Central St Martins Museum & Study collection, the The Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (Medieval Stained Glass in Great Britain) collection and the Charles Rennie Macintosh's Northern Italian Sketchbook collection. To name just a few...

Archie

I had a really broken night's sleep last night, finally culminating in me losing my patience with tossing and turning and getting up not long after 5am. Sadly (sometimes) I'm one of those people that wakes up easily and is fully awake in a finger snap, so the only thing for it is to get up, or maybe read, but do anything other than lie in bed and wait for tiredness to return. My regular working week is Tuesday to Saturday these days, so I wasn't stressed about having to get up early for work this morning.

So I pottered around a bit, then came back to bed and watched youtube clips of the earlier seasons (not shown in Australia) of my beloved tv show QI. [Official website and QI on youtube.] I could not love Stephen Fry more! It's true. About 7am I started to get drowsy, so I rolled over and went back to sleep until just before 9am.

I hadn't been up long when my friend Judy rang about 9.30 and suggested we head on in to the Art Gallery of NSW to see the portrait competition The Archibald Prize. Judy doesn't work any more and so she and I often use my Mondays off to catch up and do fun stuff. Today also dawned a glorious mild day, so it was lovely to get out and about in it.

It also saved me from my one big 'plan' for the day. Housework.

One thing I love about urban Australians is just how much we appreciate and use our galleries. The Archibald has been going strong since 1921 and is so heavily patronised that they have to have crowd control. Winners, and the inevitable controversies, make the prime time news. There's a people's choice selection, and a 'packers prize' for the favourite of the storeroom packers. Even on a Monday morning the line for the exhibition snaked around into another gallery space.

These days a ticket into the Archibald also gets you into its 2 sister competitions, the Wynne Prize (landscape paining or figurative sculpture) and the Sulman Prize (subject, genre or mural painting). For only the third time since 1921, this year the Wynne and Archibald were won by the same artist, Sam Leach. I had a shortlist of favourite's in both exhibitions, but was completely entranced by Leach's 2 small jewel like paintings (especially his landscape), so I had no quibble with the outcome.

The first thing I spotted when we walked into the Archibald was a huge portrait of a musical favourite of mine CW Stoneking.

"CW Stoneking" by Cara Fletcher

I only discovered Stoneking recently but I'm swept away by his unique pre-war jazz and blues style. To quote his website his work swings from "lonesome field holler blues, to hokum blues duets, to full blown jungle epics". His songs make me think of prohibition gin, mixed race bayou bars and rolled down stocking tops. Amazingly for someone so steeped in blues traditions, although he was born to American parents Stoneking is an Aussie and lives in Melbourne.

"Jungle Blues" by CW Stoneking

After a truly fab ramble through the gallery, some lunch, and a walk through the park, we ended up where else but at Tiffany's. (I don't ever think I've stood as straight.) We strolled further, fondled some cashmere at House of Cashmere, bought comestibles at the David Jones foodhall, browsed for books, and had tea in The Strand Arcade before heading for home late in the afternoon.

Housework be damned.

Shopping For Inspiration

Andy Warhol, 1965.

Guerrillas In The Midst

"Guerrilla knitting" (aka "knit tagging" or "urban knitting") and crochet has been around for a while now, but locally seems to have been back in the public eye again just recently. A guerrilla knitter was 'tagging' the columns in the ABC foyer during the ABC702 Knit-In that I wrote about recently, and on a very local level bits of guerrilla knitting have been cropping up around my 'hood of Newtown.

A new example in Camperdown Rest Park, Newtown.

The other day when I was at work in the yarn store, I sold some Australian made 'self-striping' sock wool to a woman who was heading off to the US to meet some other knitters and get her guerrilla knit on.

Tagging with a spray can or paint marker I can't support, but this kind of non damaging tagging I love. Like many things that spring up in the alt craft community, the origins are shady and various claim have been made about who had the idea first. It seems likely though that the best candidate for inventing the idea is the Knitta crew, who have been knit tagging since 2005.

Whomever it was, the idea certainly took root fast and knitted 'tags' started cropping up all over. Some international examples are the Swedes Masquerade, Knit Sea and Niclas & Jonny of KnittUps, and Chicago's The Micro-fiber Militia. Another website, The Knitted Landscape, has many great examples contributed from all over the world.

My favourites are examples where a specific and unlikely object has been wrapped, transforming it into something different. For style, colour and the sheer joy it gives me, my all time favourite piece of guerilla knitting is this maritime piece from Sweden by Masquerade. So gorgeous and unexpected.

Another tagged tree in Camperdown Rest Park, Newtown.

I find guerrilla knitting as being somewhere between graffiti style tagging, street art, murals and even performance art. The act of wrapping an object in something soft, handmade and colourful makes us look at the object differently. It's part joke, part leaving a mark to say "I was here", part civil disobedience, part advertisement for just how cool craft can be, and partly a gift of fun to the community. It's certainly non harming, and quite charming in my eyes. There is a great post on Deputy Dog which calls it the "world's most inoffensive graffiti".

Similarly, some artists have used ephemeral and community based knitting projects to great effect. Josie Schimke created the beautiful A Tree Undone at Burning Man in 2007. A 9 foot tall artificial tree was clad in hundreds of knitted leaves contributed by individual knitters, with the specific instructions that the knitting not be properly bound off. The wind, and Burning Man attendees, where then invited to unravel the leaves throughout the course of the festival. Josie has posted albums of in progress photos and one of the tree in situ. Fabulous!

If any of my local Sydney peeps see anymore guerrilla knitting about I'd love to know. Just email me the location to andrewmr(at)ihug(dot)com(dot)au!

Imitiation, The Sincerest Form Of Flattery Or Not?

I would say, not.

I had my own little experience with plagiarism when a Belgian craft company ripped off one of my knitting photos from Flickr to use in their product catalogue. Something I never would have spotted if an eagle eyed Flickr viewer hadn't spotted the picture, thought it looked familiar, tracked it down to my profile, and even scanned a copy of the brochure and then sent it to me as proof. I've got to tell you, I didn't feel flattered, I felt really pissed off.

When I used to be involved in historical re-enactment I wrote a series of articles for our local group's 'zine about hat making and garment construction, only to find out through a reader that another group was photocopying them right out of the 'zine, cutting and then pasting them into their own 'zine, without ever having had the courtesy to ask. I would have sent them originals to use if they had only asked, instead I got bent out of shape and told them to stop.

There must be many, many instances where creative people have their images and ideas ripped off. However, ripping them off for advertising or products just increases the likelihood that someone, somewhere along the line is going to spot it. So I find the blatant plagiarism documented on this blog post and this website astounding. Thankfully there are plenty of someones out there doing the spotting.

Lane Walking: Weekes Lane, Newtown

Looking at the bright clear light in these pictures it seems almost impossible that I only took these last month. I heard someone on the tv say that we've had 8 days of rain in the past 10 days. Really? Only 8? Blech, Winter I am over you already. Thankfully the Winter Solstice was a few days back and now it means we are on the gentle climb towards Spring.

Anyhoo, Weekes Lane. I love Weekes Lane! One of my friend's has a back garden courtyard and back gate that opens onto Weekes Lane, and the first time I visited I realised that Weekes Lane was something special. A bit of an art gallery of street art that is frequently changed and renewed. I have even seen guided tours of the lane during Sydney festival events. Some of the works I shot have gone already, been defaced or painted over.

But that is entirely the nature of the art. And one of the reasons I find it so exciting!

For me photographing these is a way of ensuring that when they are painted over or defaced, they can live on in my archives. With my memories of a bright sunny afternoon wandering with my camera.

[Click to see them full sized on Flickr.]

Absolute Brilliance

I just spotted this picture of actress Dorothy Flood on Vintage Photographs and in truth, it took my breath away. The person who posted it is Russian, and didn't caption it with the photographer as far as I can tell.



I tell you one thing, if I could meet the photographer I would shake their hand and buy him/her a drink. Maybe you just see a nice picture, but the artistry in this blows me away. Look how gorgeously that photo is conceived and shot! The tones, the complimentary colours, the feather in the hat picking up the arrows detail, the swirls in the scarf complimenting the curves of the bullseye backdrop, the perfect focus and depth of field that has her foreground hand and face in focus (and starts to drop away at about the depth of the tip of the feather in her hat), the classical Mannerist posing of the fingers...

Sigh.

No matter how crappy I feel, truly beautiful and accomplished art always lifts my spirits!

Pamela Dale's "Twofold World"

I'm still catching up with all the emails and blog comments that arrived while I had gone bush over Easter, and so it wasn't until tonight that I noticed a blog comment Pamela Dale very kindly left on an entry I wrote about her and her stunning ink on paper and collage artworks. Sadly I won't be able to get to Melbourne while it is on, but Pamela informs me she is having an exhibition Twofold World at the Jenny Port Gallery in Melbourne until 2nd May.

Rue Charlot Champagne Shoe by Pamela Dale

If any of you are in Melbourne please drop by and check it out, so I can live vicariously!

Ludwig Hohlwein

New obsession! I love really strong, graphic poster design and I have always been especially drawn to those with an Art Nouveau or Art Deco flavour. Whether they are vintage Aussie travel posters, modern retro styled posters like the work of David Lance Goines, or vintage Russian posters, I love 'em all. I just discovered the work of German illustrator/designer Ludwig Hohlwein, 1874-1949. Hohlwein did all sorts of work in a variety of styles, including lots of propaganda posters for both world wars.



I'm not so drawn to his works of the little house painter, the evil creature that would bring his twisted ideology to the world. I do love his other works though, especially those like the ones above that use interlocking flat planes of colour and negative space to great effect.




His character driven advertising images were very popular, and personally I like it best when he used the looser style of flat watercolour washes.


I really like his graphic use of light and shade, and composition, and I think this beer ad is especially effective. Kind of brutal, but effective. (Pink, naked muscles and beer. Happy Mardi Gras everyone!)




Pretty birds! See, not all propaganda and big lugs with a beer attitude.

Try searching Google images for "Hans Hohlwein" and marvel at the variety and sheer volume of the man's output.

Joy Of Toile

This week so far has been a rough one, lot's of angst, pressure and overtime on the work front and tired, listless evenings filled with take-away food and desultory web surfing on the home front. Meh. Oh yeah, punctuated with cussing as my internet connection keeps dropping out. My phone line that was playing up a few months ago seems to be crackly and erratic again.

Anyhoo, the high point of this half arsed websurfing though is discovering a few fantastic new design oriented blogs. With a new sewing machine in my custodianship, and ideas bubbling in my head about remaking, reusing and recycling some of the things in my wardrobe, I stumbled across a cool community of wardrobe re-fashionistas. Like the amazing Finnish 'trashionista' OutsaPop Trashion, and Queen Michelle of Kingdom of Style.

On the yang side of design and fashion Mr Peacock is my new fave. Not a re-fashion blog this time around, but a wonderful curated mix of food, interior design, fashion and interviews with stylish 'peacocks' about town. One recent post that really put a smile on my face was about the tattooed vintage peacocks of doll maker Mimi Kirchner. Mimi has a wonderful blog Doll: The Art & Craft of Mimi Kirchner and an Etsy shop full of goodies.




Kirchner had the genius idea to use Toile de Jouy fabric for the tattooed bodies of the dolls. Genius! The scale and fine line art style of the drawings are ideal and have a great vintage look.



She compliments the fabric with vintage strong-man style togs, and super cute illustration style facial features. Cute non?



I've never been tempted to be a doll collector, but I'd love a couple of these guys. Of course, as handmade dolls the prices (while being reasonable for the work involved) are a little out of my budget for something so non-essential. Although, if I re-classified them as essentials...



She also does a line of other female dolls, like these super cute mermaids, and magical little 'tiny world' pincushions in a tea cup. So clever and inspiring! Aside from having a go at re-fashioning, maybe it's time to get the sewing machine to work on some other fun stuff.

[All photos and doll designs by Mimi Kirchner.]

Venus On The Half Shell

A while ago I scored myself a lovely Mac laptop on long term loan from a friend, and she kindly left lots of fantastic software installed on it. Over the past few nights I've been fooling around with the Macromedia Fireworks graphics package, trying to teach myself how to use it. Fun!

Bows to present, my version of Venus On The Half Shell.


Not bad for a first try, even if I do say so myself. And a hottie in a posing pouch lifts any artwork above the mundane, don't you think?

[Click it lovingly to enbiggen.]

Delights

Escape Artist ~ Stunning, stunning drawings. Beautiful knitting. Lovely writing. Thoughtful thoughts.

Lynn & Horst ~ Fashion, style, beautiful young people, photography, Sweden & Germany.

Benoit Prevot ~ Gay beefcake meets Art Deco illustration, all en Francais. Tom of Finland meets Leyendecker's Arrow Collar Man. Gorgeous and fun.

American Athlete ~ Pat Les Stache (aka TJ Gorton). Producer, DJ and disco enthusiast. How does one so young know so much about the underground music movement that became known as disco?

2008: A Celebration of Some Amazing Lives

As the year draws to a close, I think it's time to celebrate a few of the lives that ended in 2008. Not in a maudlin way, but in a spirit of celebration and joy. This is not an exhaustive list by any stretch, 2008 seemed to be a year when we said goodbye to many icons and famous names, but a more idiosyncratic art fag(ish) list of my own, stacked heavy with entertainers, artists and those who have somehow contributed to the cultural zeitgeist.

If you believe in reincarnation as I do, it's comforting to think that they are probably out there preparing to be fabulous all over again!

Miss Eartha Kitt, with kittehs (Chanteuse).


Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (actress, intergalactic nurse, spouse of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and the voice of the computer in numerous Star Trek incarnations).


Ted Lapidus (fashion designer, former dresser of the Beatles & Bardot, largely credited with democratising fashion by concentrating on affordable ready to wear, including unisex styles, flares and military style jackets).


Van Johnson (matinee idol, closeted gay actor).


Paul Newman (actor, humanitarian, devoted husband, good sort).


Bettie Page (pin-up).


Jorn Utzon (architect, great Dane).


Christie Allen (Singer, she gave us 'goosebumps, heart thumps, she made our motor run' for a brief while in Oz in the 1980s).


Pauline Baynes (illustrator, most famous for her illustrations for the C.S. Lewis "Narnia" novels and various Tolkein works).


Dorian Leigh (model, fashion icon).


Cyd Charisse (dancer, actress, leggy brunette).


David Brierly (actor, voice actor who was the voice of K9 in Dr Who).


Yves Saint Laurent (couturier).


John Phillip Law (actor, sexy angel Pygar from "Barbarella" amongst other roles).



Gary Gygax (Dungeons & Dragons game inventor, Supreme OverNerd, childhood hero).