Hmmm.

Oh, great idea. [slow clap]

I think I'll drug all my son's classmates just for the sheer pleasure of seeing him come first at the weekly spelling test.

People are strange.

Social Capital

Went to a terrific opening at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space tonight, for an exhibition called Social Capital. The theme was an exploration of Canberra's public housing history.

This image is by Bernie Slater, who is currently hanging out at the BookStud and whom I featured in my second or third post ever back in the golden days of '04. It's possibly the weakest of all his images; I have no idea why CCAS decided to place that one on their website. The show is terrific. Ellis Hutch has made small replicas of old fibro houses out of wax, lit from within across the floor, looking like little haunted houses. Martyn Jolly has large-format photos that remind us of the days when the 8-storey flats ringing Civic were considered cutting-edge architecture. eX de medici portrays the seamier side of public housing, and Cathy Lauderbach delves into the Canberra Public Housing community with great affection and insight. There are other artists and works, but the place was crammed with the Canberra art scene and I was doing my best to introduce my American guest to as many people as possible so that I could go home and eat Zefferelli pizza and he could carry on into the evening with new friends (hopefully that worked! I'll find out tomorrow).

So I didn't get to look closely at everything. But I will. I'll go back and have a really good look. And you should go too. There's a lot of good art to see in Canberra at the moment. My favorite du jour is the Otto Dix war etchings at the National Gallery. I'm hanging out to see Crescent Moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia, but I won't be able to do so until after my visitors have flown out. Constable will also be lush, but I'll see that when the crowds die down.

I'm not gettng a weekend because of the bookarts masterclass I'm hosting. I'll be busy baking and making for the next few days, probably with no time to post. But I'm looking forward to next week because it's balloon festival time! Hooray! I'll find a camera, by hook or by crook. It's the only time of year I like to wake early. Crisp mornings with skies full of hot air balloons. Mmmmm.

Art-Seoul (say it out loud)

The Studio I work in (I'm going to start calling it the BookStud, heh) is hosting two visiting international artists at the moment. Both of them were invited to Australia for the Mackay Artist Book Forum and had these residencies arranged for them as part of the Mackay festivities. I didn't get to go to Mackay this year, and I'm very sorry about that. It sounded terrific. If anyone reading this went, let me know all about it.

I had met both of these artists when I was in Korea for the International Bookarts Fair in 2004, and since I have no camera I'm going to punctuate this post with images from that trip. It was a great experience, and I'm sorry I saw no more than the city itself. If I ever go back I want to travel around the countryside.


This is a paper shop at one of Seoul's fantastic markets. We went at night because our days were so full of other commitments. Picking out paper like fabric is a wonderful experience. Unfortunately I had very little money, so my colleague in the picture had all the fun.

Anyhoo, the first visiting artist is a bookarts artist from Korea, whom I met when we went to the Bookarts Fair -- in fact, she organised the whole thing. She is very sweet, keen to promote book arts wherever she goes. She is teaching a masterclass this weekend with some Canberra bookbinders: I'm going to be technical helper, which means I get to learn by watching but not do, mostly because I'll be preparing food and running around cutting up paper etc.


A Seoul brush shop in Insadong (sp?), the arts quarter of Seoul. Such a great area, full of galleries, restaurants and art supplies. These brushes are made from all sorts of bristles and furs (sorry, vegans) and they will advise you on the best kind of brush for particular purposes. My colleague had a great lecture from them on the difference between Korean weasel fur and Vietnamese weasel fur.

I introduced her to the concept of polymer plate printing this week, and she's trying desperately to complete a huge book printing project based on the Chinese zodiac, combining wood engraving, letterpress and polymer plate... I'm trying to help her finish it, but as her schedule fills up the likelihood of completion gets smaller. She's leaving on Friday week, and people keep doing horrendous things to her like taking her to markets, down the coast, and out to dinner. I guess she's going to have to finish some of it at home.


Koreans love trees. Ages ago I blogged a photo showing a very ancient Korean tree with only one living branch, which was lovingly propped up with an amazing scaffold. (No time to find it now, you can trawl through my archives at your leisure.) This tree was at a Buddhist temple, and as you can see, it's getting some extreme TLC. Yes, that is an intravenous drip going into its limb on the left!

The other artist visiting is a New Yorker who was also a guest artist at the Seoul Book Fair. He is part of the Booklyn Artists Alliance, who try to flog their art as a collective, cutting out the middle dealer types. MW is a ball of energy, and he describes himself as an activist artist. A lot of his work (and of course he's a mult-i media artist) revolves around ish-ews of linguistics, human rights, the environment, and peace. His pet subject is the rights of indigenous peoples around the world. He has been raising some hackles in the art school because, while he says some very interesting things, he does so in such a didactic and superior way that he sort of undoes all the political goodness in his words.


This was a great restaurant that had traditional Korean dancers, and while you were admiring their fabulous costumes and graceful moves you were brought fabulous little courses with graceful compositions. This, of course, is a mushroom. It was superb.

I found that aspect of him very interesting today. He gave a short introduction to himself to the printing students and then a couple of hours later gave a more formal lecture to the school and the public. He was talking a lot about his present project, which is doing frottage, or rubbings, of war memorials and commemorative plaques in both small country towns and major Australian cities, and rearranging the wording to invert the messages and make clear liberal political statements. For example, he prefaces a lot of the works with the statement WE FORGET (dropping the LEST) and then mixes the usual messages. So a work might read like this:

WE FORGET
the sacrifice
to the war effort
made by the Aboriginal people
for an ungrateful nation
and a fearful Empire

Something like that, anyway. All rubbed in red and black wax crayon on Mylar or handmade paper.


Huge quantities of ginseng in jars at a market shop in Seoul. The shop was called Seoul Food. Noice.

All good and well. I like this work. But then he got up and started talking to us about the Civil War in Australia and how we've ignored the role that the Aboriginal military resistance has played in our history. And that's when I noticed all the arms and legs in the room begin to cross. And the air chilled a bit. I don't think that it was a resistance to the idea that the Aboriginal people have been suppressed and this needs to be redressed -- it was innate Australian umbrage that an American was standing up in front of us telling us something that he obviously didn't really know a lot about. He was treating it like another card in his Oppressed Indigenous Peoples of the World Pack, and he was proud that he'd collected the whole set. He was taking a moral high ground, and everyone in the room didn't accept that from an American. Even someone who professes to be as leftie and anti-establishment as he did.


This is something hard to swallow. It's kim chi chocolate. For those who don't know what kim chi is: extremely salty pickled vegetables. Not tangy like saurkraut, just salty. They also have kim chi icecream. I suspect both items exist to tease tourists.

Anyway, I feel a bit sorry for these two artists, because they came to the BookStud expecting it to be like last year, when we played with people who didn't have printmaking skills and helped them produce something new in their artistic practice. But the person who enforceddeveloped that program has now retired, and we are in a new era of providing a facility, not a service. So they only get 2 full days of me a week, and the rest of the time they have to work on their own.


Umbrellas on a street stall, Seoul

Actually, it hasn't worked like that precisely because I do feel sorry for them. Even on my days off I try to pop in and make sure they're ok, which usually spins out alarmingly and I end up running around for them for hours. But I don't like the idea of them going home disappointed. Doesn't help the stress levels, but it's only for two weeks. After that the BookStud gets much groovier, and I'm looking forward to reporting some of the funky stuff we've got planned. I'm hoping we'll publish a zine sometime this year, using letterpress. Can't wait.


Breaking a personal rule here, but I love this photo. I'm kicking myself for not posing with the accompanying devil's bits (you can see them on the left). Yes, this is Ducky Angel (still in Seoul!). Doing my best to keep everyone happy...

PS Just went on a lovely picnic by the Lake to celebrate International Women's Day. 6 women of varying ages, sitting on the little island which holds the Carillion. The carillion played (we joked about asking the keyboard player to give us a rousing rendition of 'I am Woman', but we chickened out), someone did an art performance which we videoed for her PhD, and we ate scrummy things while the sun set. Canberra is lovely this time of year.

TAGS: memorials, bookarts, Seoul, International Women's Day

Crash landing

My lovelies, we tried to watch the Oscars last night. BB and I were quite intrigued by the whole Crash/Capote/Brokeback Mtn tussle, and decided to watch the outcome on tv. So every time the radio tried to tell us who won, we literally plugged our ears and went LALALALALALLALALALALAALLAAAAAA until that bit was over.

All started well. I enjoyed the Cowboy montage, managed to smile through Nicole, then we turned over to South Park for a bit of sanity. When we switched back things just got sillier and sillier, until they had Someone introducing Someone Else who introduced Someone Else who introduced yet another Someone Else who announced the winner for that category. I wandered off in sheer frustration, and after a while so did BB. I didn't find out who won until today when I checked the internet. I haven't experienced something so boringly frustrating since Kerrie Ann Kennerley massacred the Charles & Camilla wedding broadcast. Is it any wonder we avoid commercial television?!

Much more fun to experience the Oscars this way.

Pin the verpa on the privatus*

Amongst the amazingly many things I've managed to do this weekend was take another look at some of the fun posters I was sent by Lucy Tartan. Last time I looked, I pulled out all the obviously fun ones and put the others aside for a rainy day. It didn't rain today, but I was cleaning up, and I managed to stop cleaning up on the pretext of needing to look at the images again.

I'd overlooked a beaut little number, which I will display here in the spirit of the impending Commonwealth Games. It is an educational portrayal of athletes preparing for the Olympic Games, circa some time before clothes were invented. Printed by Macmillan & Co Ltd, there is no date, only verification that it belongs to Macmillan's History Pictures: Introductory Set. This is obviously an introduction to either sport ("right, outside kids, and get your gear off") or 1950s sex education.


The Glory of the Olympics, as seen by MacMillan & Co.

I've cleaned this one up, to allow you to appreciate the unsullied beauty of an image that manages to avoid the ish-ew of genetalia completely. Now look at what years on the wall of a classroom can do:


The Glory of the Olympics, as seen by school students

I didn't want to make the images too big, knowing that many of you are still stuck in dial-up hell, so I'm not sure how much you can see. I've stuck the picture up on the window and let the sun shine help you out: every "rudie" point has a pinhole.

I love it. I've spent all the boring parts of today (riding the bike into the studio, moving prints around, riding home, doing the washing up, sweeping etc etc) wondering whether the pins were used to provide subtle little orifices for classmates to snigger at, or whether they left the pins hanging out to make little metal substitutes, or whether the pinholes are the remainder of a wonderful orgy of additional cut-out extras for the characters...


Genital piercing in ancient civilizations

Can't you just see something stuck on the front of this fellow? Something to show how much he's enjoying the thought of grasping his playmate to the accompaniment of his latest ipod selection? And the game of chasies in the background is just crying out for a phallus! The togate fellow on the left has a pierced nipple -- I think he'd like to join in the grappling before too long.


Flippin' out in front of the fan dance

School kids like bums. They obviously loved poking holes in these bums. The poor fellow in front has three bumholes! The only thing stopping the flipper from having a hole like his unfortunate flippee is that Macmillan left no possible space for one. I have no idea which Olympic sport involved naked starjumps with fans, but it obviously didn't survive to modern times, more's the pity.


Engrossed in debating whether Gary Glitter should have got 3 years

Here's nipple man again, standing behind a fellow scraping the olive oil off a young man who doesn't look very comfortable. I think the scraper has reached that part of his leg where he's not sure if the man is being friendly or friendly. Discus Man wants Javelin Man to throw it straight at whoever is holding the pins.

Because the pin holes are fairly clean and not ragged with overuse, I can only assume that of my three guesses, the first two are probably most likely. Doesn't stop me having a play with some pin-ons though; I've got a nice book of graphic Pompeian murals that might provide some additional imagery...


*Yes, I know this is Latin and the picture is Greek. I don't know any Greek. And the Romans liked posing nude scraping the oil off each other too.


TAGS: Olympic games, educational art, verpa

Warning: messy women's stuff and product placement

I'm not a friend of the tampon. I hate wearing (and reading trivia on) pads. I used to like using my diaphragm (the rubber type, not my torso) to catch blood, but since we've been trying to make babies I've let the rubber perish. Sponges just seem a bit too messy. So when I'm told about a feasible alternative, I'm intrigued.

Regardez the menstrual cup. It's not a new concept; menstrual cups have been around for ages, and that's the way I used my diaphragm for years. This one is very pretty, and looks like a solid challenge to conventional period management. It's called a Mooncup. Not fussed on the name, but it's nicer than something like Bloodcup or Wimmincup. You can read about it here.

The Mooncup people give you handy tips about how to use it in public (and pubic) places. They seem to want to stay with the time-honoured tradition of talking about women's bleeding ish-ews in gentle terms and colouring everything on their website a nice sanitary white and blue (brownie points for the daring touches of red). I guess they're competing with big guns like Libra and Tampax, and I'm constantly surprised (after reading the FAQs and the testimonials) how squeamish some women can be about their own blood. One woman fretted about seeing her blood through the transparent plastic. The response from the company was, in very gentle terms, 'get over it'. So maybe there's a few women out there who would feel ill looking at promotional material that didn't hint of minty freshness.

The downside of the Mooncup is that it's made in England and you have to order it on-line if you live anywhere else, so it isn't cheap, but considering that you only need one every few years it probably compares very favourably to the money we fork out to probably male-dominated sanitary product companies.

I wonder whether I can get a discount for giving them a free plug? (sorry.)

Remember to breathe

ashes to porcelain 2, originally uploaded by Ampersand Duck.

I went to the opening of the third in a series of four graduation exhibitions tonight. The series is called Omniscience, and it is the Graduate Season of the ANU ART School. It's been a great season so far, and this exhibition is no less wonderful.

I'm really missing my camera! I know I can borrow other cameras, but it never seems to be when I see what I want to photograph. I would have loved to show you the final incarnation of this piece in the photo.

I took the photo at the end of October. I thought I'd blogged it, but I can't find the post. It's called Death of the Author, and it's by Rachel Kingston, who was studying photography and ceramics. It was on display in the School foyer for a few weeks, as a work in progress.

It looks like a pile of screwed-up sheets of paper, but it's actually sheets of bone porcelain, screwed up and fired. The porcelain is literally 'bone' because it also contains donated human cremains.* That's why it caught my eye, and imagination. It works on so many levels.

In the final piece displayed tonight, Rachel has remade the pile, but on the floor in a private corner, with a light source underneath the pile so that it glows from the centre. She has shifted the title (and to my shame my memory has lost it... and I didn't even have a drink at the opening! Capote boasted 94% recall, I have zilch.), but it still works as a poignant piece about loss, frustration, waste, life, death... and so forth.

She had another piece, also an installation, of a perspex writing desk and chair. The desk is covered with paper and envelopes. Some of the papers talk of family history, others have sketches and lists. The envelopes are extremely realistic. All, again, made from bone porcelain containing cremains. I do remember the title this time: Untitled (1917-2004).

There are other beautiful pieces in this group show, like Lucette Aubort's gorgeous column of glass jellyfish of various sizes, suspended up to the ceiling amongst strings of clear glass beads. Think Finding Nemo and then experience it in glass. There's also other ceramicists and a gold & silversmith on show. Really lovely work.

If you're in Canberra at the moment, pop into the art school gallery. This show goes until 10 March, and is followed by another on 16 March. It's well worth a look. I'm sorry I didn't mention the earlier shows, because it's been a quality year for postgraduates.

*I wasn't sure 'cremains' was a word; it's not in the OED, but when I googled it I got heaps of entries. It is, of course, a contraction of cremated remains.


TAGS: porcelain, cremains, art