Something's rotten in...

Shaun of the Dead. A romantic comedy, with Zombies.

I just saw it at the ANU Film Group -- which, if you live in Canberra, is the cheapest and most comfortable way to movie overdose, if you don't mind seeing all the latest movies 6 months after their release. Dolby sound, full-size screen, friendly crowd, only $50 a year for about 3 screenings a week.

Geez, I feel in love with that film. I need to see it again, but only on the big screen. It has so much I want to look at, from a different angle. All my favorite contemporary British comedians, plus a few more. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Defeats me...

You gotta love the Korean love-affair with English. Take this little number I captured when I was in Seoul last year:

S-OIL is the name of a very popular petrol station in Seoul. They don't call them petrol stations -- they call them 'oil banks'. After seeing my first S-OIL bank from a taxi I spent all my commuting time looking for another one with my camera in hand...
And there's plenty more where that came from, believe me!

Anyway, I just got an email today about the 2005 Seoul International Book Arts Competition. Very good, and I heartily recommend entering if you're a book artist, because the display facilities at the book fair are great, and they get at least 6000 people passing through the fair every day.

But! Be warned. They need the work sent to them by the end of March so that they can 'Defeat [the] Work' in the first two weeks of May. I don't know what the hell they are talking about. The 'Selected Work' is then displayed between June 9 and 23. Presumably the selected works are those that have made it through the tournament to see who is the champion gladiator or something!

Their selection criteria is that "the contents of the work should be unprecedented and an idea attractive to a Book Arts work", so obviously my work needs to look and fight like Xena to survive. It goes on to say "The work should have function and format which you can open and close regular book than object installation." So obviously it will need stealthy weapons rather than huge spiky maces in order to defeat the others and win.

What if my book is a pacifist?

This is what it says about "Carrying out" (which I guess is what happens to those who are defeated): "Carrying out: visits directly( An identification card or receipt require ) and send to local and aborad. (free postal charge)" [sic all punctuation and spelling].

It sounds too rough for my poor little productions. Maybe I will make an armour-plated work especially for the occasion.

Another film moment

Walking out of the ANU Film Group screening of Wimbledon the other night, I overheard the following, between two bushy uni-bar type dudes:

-- Hey, that was alright for a chick-flick.
-- Yeah, I didn't mind it at all.

-- It really only had one thing wrong with it, eh?
-- What's that?

-- No Wombles. I thought they'd get at least one in there somewhere.

Which 'C' word? Closer?

Oh, bugger talking about the food. Been there, digested that.
This next anecdote has a NAUGHTY LANGUAGE ALERT. Just in case you decide to walk out on me in disgust, don't say I didn't warn you.

My first night in Mackay happened to be a Tuesday night. By a stroke of last-minute luck, I got to travel by myself, and had a whole two days before my boss arrived in her usual flurry. I decided to catch some air-conditioning, and where better than Cheap Tuesday at the movies?

I got to the cinema, and had two choices for that particular moment in time: Sideways, and Closer. I'd seen all the shorts for Sideways, knew that everyone thought it was great, etc., etc. But I didn't know much about Closer apart from the poster in front of me, which showed Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen. It could have been anything from a romantic comedy to a thriller. So I did the obvious thing. I asked the prepubescent girl working behind the ticket desk what she knew of it. Now this is the same girl I asked if there was a supermarket nearby, to which she said, 'ohhh, dunno, there could be one at Canelands' (a huge mall on the other side of town, obviously the only place a girl that age would go), and the next day I found out there was a Coles straight across the road, slightly hidden by a sign.

Anyway, Miss Mackay looked at me and said, leaning in confidentially, 'well, it's an adult sort of movie. They do use the 'C' word a fair bit...', raised her eyebrow and leaned back again. This lack of anything substantial intrigued me into buying a ticket, and since it was only $5, who cared if it was a crap movie?

The short story is that I really liked Closer. It is a great tale of lies, deception, facades, willpower and trust. I'm not really sure which 'C' word Miss Mackay was referring to; 'cunt' and 'cum' were used constantly within the first half hour.

Now, being Cheap Tuesday, the cinema had a fairly mixed audience, none of whom I think had a clue what they were in for. There were middle-aged women in pairs, who tittered throughout; there were a few quite young women, also in pairs and gasping with every rude word, and there were two clumps of elderly pensioners, obviously seduced into the whole 'Julia Roberts does nice movies' thing. And there was me, a habitually-solo movie viewer who sits up the back to watch the audience as much as the movie. The pensioners coped quite well until about halfway, when Julia is discussing the taste of her lover's cum with her husband ('it's sweeter'). One clump of oldies stood up and walked out. Noice, I thought. That's rocked their universe. Then a bit later, Natalie Portman does a pretty ok strip for Clive Owen, who says 'you have the face of an angel -- what does your cunt taste like?' 'Heaven', she replies.

Well, that was it. All the remaining oldies got up and left, no doubt to accost the girl behind the counter who obviously didn't warn them about the 'adult' content.

And that was when I knew I was really in Mackay, bless their hollywood-lovin' little souls.
I really do recommend Closer. I get a bit freaked out by deception and how easily it can become part of a normal life. I think that's why I married a man who couldn't tell a fib to save his life (well, so far...). I walked away from the movie, through the dark hot streets of Mackay with a load of thoughts to think between air-conditioners. Definitely not a feel-good movie, but highly entertaining, especially with added audience participation.

Eating my way through Mackay

a satisfying pile of husks, originally uploaded by Ampersand Duck.

Oh the food I ate in Mackay! I expected it to be a city of sugar cane and cane toads. I didn't see a single toad, although I saw a cabbie who came pretty damn close. Instead I found a pretty laid-back town (with the slowest traffic lights in the universe) which is famous for coal (excellent port facilities, although they're starting to make their coast access a bit like the Gold Coast, lots of very new high-rises), sugar cane, but also for beef and seafood.

This lovely picture is the remains of a fabulous meal at a restaurant next to the river that runs through the town. I ordered the Bug Platter, and my neighbour ordered a dish which in restrospect I wish I'd had, because it was a fantastic symbol of Mackay's beef and reef attributes. She had an enormous slab of steak, cooked to perfection, topped with half a bug and a whopping prawn, lazily slipped onto a mound of mashed potato. Mind you, the bugs were spectacular, and kept me busy for the time that it took for the tide to properly rise.

This restaurant is famous for having a balcony that hangs over the water, and the tides rise and fall very dramatically in this area. When you start your meal, there are mud-flats under your chair. By the time you've finished (and the very slow chef tends to aid this process), the river has filled and there are many fish and bugs splashing underneath for your viewing pleasure. A bit like a very life-affirming version of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Damn, I was going to write more, but an urgent email has beeped onto my screen asking me to do a very time-consuming task by yesterday. Back soon.

Books in the making

not a drop of glue in sight, originally uploaded by Ampersand Duck.

The best time I had in Mackay was a workshop run by Adele Outteridge called 'Books as Sculpture'.

I spend so much time thinking about what to put in books that I devote very little time to the structure. And that attitude stems from the fact that very little was taught about structure during my visual arts degree. I went through a workshop which specialised in Artist Books, but most of the stress was on content, not form. Our teacher was European, and did not like bound books. In France in the early 20th century, artist books were unbound, and if the collector wanted a binding, they did so after purchasing the book, which made for terrific personal libraries. My teacher produces work of this vein. So we were encouraged to use binding techniques and experiment with them, but were only really taught a quick and basic stitch to hold book sections together. Anything else had to be self-researched.

A bit like art schools today. This year at the school I work at, the students have less staff, less hours, less resources, but they do get a library and a studio space. And they are paying more! It's basically a correspondence course on site. The attitude seems to be 'we'll show you a few pictures, show you how not to hurt yourself on the equipment, give you a space for a few hours a day, and you can spend three years working out a few things and at the end we'll tell you where you went wrong.' Whatever happened to skills-based training? No wonder more people are turning to the TAFE system.

Oh, there's my rant for the day. Back to books.

Adele showed us how to do a concertina binding, how to 'rust' paper, and how to do a coptic stitch binding. I had a ball. I'd brought up some of my old typeset offcuts, and made a fun piece that looks at first glance like a normal little book, but can shuck off its cover and turn into a sculptural piece.

This is one way of looking at a book...



and this is another way of looking at a book




but wait! there's more...





The best thing was learning how to bind using hard covers without a drop of glue. I made a great little sketchbook, and started a few more during the rest of the trip. I'm making books for all presents this year. I figure even my old great-aunt can use a little notebook, even if only for shopping lists.

Coptic stitching rocks. I haven't taken a photo of my stitched book, but I'll put one up soon. It produces a hard-backed book without a hard spine; instead there are four plaited bands across the spine which allow the book to open flat, something I love a book to do. I'm going to making a lot of stuff this year. I'd forgotten how much I like this sort of thing!

Adele is one of those people who is constantly busy with her hands. She makes endless variations on a theme, pushing the book shapes and the binding techniques all over the place. She has an exhibition of her more substantial productions on at Artspace Mackay at the moment, in conjunction with our exhibition, and it's very impressive.

Up on show

I've just returned from a week in sunny Mackay after attending the 2nd Australian Artists Books Forum at Artspace Mackay. All that work on exhibition labels and room brochures etc. paid off, as you can see from a small sliver of the exhibition in the accompanying photo. The table on the right has a lot of my work on it, which includes the dark image on the wall on the right above the table. How proud am I!

The only disappointment on opening night was that despite all of my work, my name wasn't mentioned once. I was optimistically titled 'the team', as in 'DF and her team'. Yeah, all one of me, split into various incarnations and working seamlessly towards the ultimate goal of fame and fortune. Hah! But I got over that with a champagne or four. I had a fabulous time in Mackay. The Artspace staff are wonderful, especially Nick and Leon who are the Batman and Robin of exhibition installation.

Stay tuned, in the next day or so I shall blog my way through a few Mackay moments. Unfortunately I can't do them all at once because I have an in-tray from hell staring me in the face. Suffice to say that I'm now due for a bit of liver cleansing, and the lack of moisture in the autumn Canberra air is wonderful.