Corporate Brand Street Art

It's not new that corporate brands make their way into artists palettes or even that the monoliths themselves rouse a portent of their earnings to make some noise on the streets.  The streets, thanks to street art are in, and have been for some time and will probably continue to be as far as I can tell.  Youth culture and Art Culture is constantly reinventing and emerging with new angles and new perspective; and if you can crack these markets you can hock your wares.  

Ralph Lauren has acquired a trend status among younger writers and the polo horse insignia can be a tell tale sign.  The brands are probably well aware of fluctuations because of these trends and will cash in where they can.

Whether this piece was a corporate move or simply a pasters love of the brand I don't know.  It didn't last long before it was altered by taggers and scrawled across, like anything that appears to come from the established it is quickly relegated and critiqued by the undercurrents.

What Yves Saint Laurent would gain by pursuing a street campaign on a cow I don't know and I would wonder more that an image such as this one were not a creative juxtaposition on the source of YSL's raw materials. 

Or just a love of the design.  Established brands have access to the best in design minds, and arts masters, they are successful for a reason and reclaiming these images can be empowering though most of the artists could not even afford a pair of YSL socks.
Out of interest a YSL hoodie would set you back US$990 and a simple Tshirt and cool US$350 a pop.

When I see street artists in paint splattered YSL gear lugging wheat paste rollers and buckets of slag around the lanes I think I'll take up knitting.  

Art War

With the recent cuts on the arts budget we can expect some changes in the arts in the coming years.  

Over 100 million axed in Liberals attempts to reign the spendings in, extra warplanes that are a nescessity aside this is a large amount ( the commonwealth budget being 417 billion )( 4 billion for the warplanes....)( one less and we would have a billion for the creative industry of australia..hmm).

Film industry got hit hard with 25 million axed from their budget and the other sector were also hard hit.  This doesn't surprise me with Abbott, despite not watching the news or even having a tv the small snippets I hear about him are enough to piece together the seemingly narrow agendas of this man.
I can imagine the cuts will restrict the grants schemes which seem to be the lifeblood of a lot of emerging artists and the Newstart allowance will now come with a six month unpaid standdown for new applicants: It is no secret to any of us in the industry or close to those who are the battle to maintain or even apply for the dole under any premise of being an artist.  

It hasn't surprised me and the affect Abbott would have on the arts was one of the first things I could foresee after he won the election.  I didn't think of it as a negative thing, lack of support in the arts seems to be in a state of constant flux and I think it will just change how artists will have to approach expenses such as mediums, materials and locations etc.  

With the loss to gentrification of inner city melbourne almost to what used to be zone 2-3, the emerging and struggling artist class are flowering out to the fringes and occupying the cheaper land and premises, areas like Coburg North, Preston, South Reservoir, Footscrat and anywhere with a lot of industrial zones able to be converted into studios and workspaces for the artist populace.  

Sharehousing is cheaper here beyond the easy reach of the city where bidding wars on the inner city property is the given.  Illegal warehouse living is overlooked by the realestates and the landlords in these areas ( mostly ), happy with the secure income that group shares can provide.  ( exceptions aside )

And having federal support axed will give plenty of grist to artists for protest.  I can remember some of the best street based art I saw in the mid 2000's in Fitzroy and the CBD was the protest art of the anarchists and punks against John Howard.  The loss of politically motivated art has been something of an irk to me and though I appreciate the colourful murals and street happenings of modern Fitzroy I can't help wishing it had a bit more discussion and argument, RAWNESS.

It's a mixed bag, there will be losses and many artists will be forced to take up jobs to support themselves, but the real ones will stay and with the thinning of the ranks perhaps new scope for style will emerge, a cusp time, the waning of the old and a dawning for whatever lies ahead.  

A Post A Day Keepeth the Wyrms Away

In the unintentional way that i usually go by i find myself again on this blogging thing.

As it seems to be again a trend to post i can move with the others and also throw in too sense.

community radio refunded, i'd say it would be more of a pay them to shut up, sinse the majority of the community radio listeners are ageing 60's and 70's protest generation and their offspring would probably find great joy in taking to the streats and dust off the banners and repaint them with the ignorant and consumerist slanted politics moderne.  So we got our radio back, wouldn't it be nice if it wasn't even a matter of contention that we must beg for it and complain in order to get it.  A mere drop in the ocean besides to the gross spending on the defense budget.  

Anyway, without a tv i have less to bemoan, one less happy machine to infiltrate my life and pour newsworthy garbage into my braine.  Happiness it seems is a return to simplicity. The zen of la vie moderne.

Southern Style

Floating mirrors on the sea of uncertainty.
A book full of ryhmes and a shelf full of dust.
Restrained from the halls and broken by the bin.
Call to the soldiers and soon from the sea.

Broken by the barley corn
every thing to be its own 
A laugh for none and one to say
Here is the poem and there is the day.

beat poe et ree

and in the great hollow space that divides us we would make a birthday cake and drink to what would be if we could think any different, kerouac said always use the first thing, i think he got it from the jazz guys, they might play 20 takes but they would use the first take as long as it fit the criterea.  i don't think about kerouac that much and it's a long time since i read one of his books, the subtarraeneans and pic, two in one, reminds me now in retrospect of jim jarmusch, jims early stuff anyway.  it's hard to think of things to say all the time so every now and again it's good to feel the flow, better to wait and reap the rewards maybe.  maybe so maybe no.  spring again, i sign my works to the seasons, not sure if anyone else does that but i feel it's good to remind the masses to keep in contact with the natural flow in some form of concious and not just the subconcious, the allergies to pollen and turbelent weather that interrupts texting and pixting on the iphone.  so where are we at, i've been noticing a trend towards 4th dimensional paintings, a relapse back to surrealism, digs back to the past.  i'm going back to the start of this passage, maybe to find a way out, a way to end, a knot to tie the string, the little tree's on my table distract me and i have to shower so kick out the jams.

the nihon interchange

this post isn't completely about the current exchange between japan and melbourns art scenes, but it is a thread of something i've been noticing lately.

interest in japanese culture and exchanges between japan and other cultures has been going on for a while, it was known as japonism in france and influenced many the artists including picasso, matisse and others working in paris at the time.

melbourne has aways had a healthy exchange with japan, as it has also with many other countries, allowing for artists and other travellers to come and live and exchange their ideas with ours.

looking at some of the artists currently at work in melbourne esp the fitzroy areas shows this exchange is thriving, everfresh has had a few japanese artists this year and exponents of the japanese noise and improvisational scene have also been around.  and i also see a lot of japanese people around.

this can only be advantageous for our general arts community and hopefully spark some interesting developments.

interesting like the mini zen stone garden with mini rake for your office or study desk
or has that already been invented.

tune in next week to find out

explanations

in luc bessons - the last battle, the future is bleak.
sand has covered the earth, and only part of high buildings remain, covered in a vast desert, the remaining parts of towns remain populated by adults only.
surface water is contaminated and the only water can be found flowing out of deep underground.
women are kept captive by men.  the isolated settlements are centered around water locations.
the people no longer speak, they communicate with violence towards gaining water and territorial rights and control over the women.  in group situations an alpha leader controls the supplies of water and the women, keeping hold over the communities.
food supplies are dwindling canned food goods, human flesh and fish which rain from the sky during the deluges.

this was the future for luc besson in 1983, his first forage into the world of feature films.  It is filmed entirely in black and white with virtually no dialogue, the parts of dialogue portrayed being barely comprehendable.
luc was teamed with jean reno and pierrie jolivet -  actors who would together with besson and form an enduring working relationship.  ( leon {leon the professional} , the fifth element, le grand bleu.
Eric sierra, whom besson met in early 1980's composed the music for the film, music which seems drawn from this time, - blade runner had shown a year earlier and 1984 would see the premier of terminator.  The 70's were ending and the 80's had long begun, new generations stepped forward and new sounds evolved from the swansongs of the old.  besson chose black and white as the empty palate of which the graduations deduct little from the opposing forces of positive and negative, the yin and the yang, good and bad.  "is it real? is it a dream? is it a fairytale?" besson

in the early 1980's film critic and experimental film partisan raphael bassan coined the term 'cinema du look', of which besson and a few directors of the 1980's-1990's were part.  The term described them as a movement focusing more on style with a minimalist plot.  le denier combat would epitomize this, with its lack of verbal language and raw communication of survival and desires, desires for sex and water,survival and controll in a world with seemingly little else to focus.

besson grew up taking his material from comic books and many of his popular movies were developed from sketches made when he was still in his teens.  a monchrome style would be more than a passing fad, he would revisit this device in movies such as Angela, also set in the future.  A style that draws us in with its fantastic scenery, scenery that forms the escape from the suffocating reality of the future.

the post apocalyptic haze

so here we are survivors, - the haze and spread of the world post armageddon 2012.
what was supposed to happen, another cycle in the mayan calender of birth till death of a society.  one that will reccur in the next 52 years ( if your into following that kind of thing )
i suppose we must have ripped enough hearts out of people and fed them to the hungry sun.
still here amongst the same streets and the same tree's, still lined with oil fed autos. still cold in winter and warm in summer. there was no quick escape, no easy way out.  winter begins to creak under the lengthening days, the weather shifts and rolls as the cold systems find it harder to push up the continent.
the acacias are well into bloom, fortelling the sun to come.  hungry for hearts

666 and counting

so seeing as that i now have 666 page views i should dedicate to all you special people out there ticking over the bean counter to such a lucky number.
not that there should be any reason for anyone to visit as my browser does not seem to support blogger windows and indeed i will be suprised if this doesn't crash before i am able to upload it.  Wel not much happening anyway, have been out hunting for dwarve trees to make into bonsai.  weather in the deep south getting pretty wet and cold, time to watch movies and read all those books from the warmth of a low turnover cafe.
ha

nocturnes

when i 1st got to town, it felt like fitzroy was in the throes of it's final hours, the other day i felt like it's last breath whispered by.
Like the passing of anything that was held close there is a sadness but there is also the knowledge that with the passing of the old comes the place for the new.
the melting pot culture fired by numerous international sharehouses and cheaper accomodation, large parties incorporating many of these places and it's guests is gone, and unless a huge decentralization event occurs it will not recur.  It lasted while it could.
What it has been replaced by is room enough for another post if this browser will hold out long enough.
Institutions like everfresh born in the heart of this is only one of the many that developed out of the cultural exchange and creative possibility.  With the changing everfresh has moved to street related gallery shows though many of the original artists are still working with street commisions and works out there i wonder is any of the energy still present and passed on or is it a fading light, born again only when the spirit of a new atmosphere can purvey.
i don't go to their shows much and only rarely do i keep abreast of the local influx in international artists, it is simply too hard- a full time job to keep track of.
I am reading the street, hearing the fading words of the old guard and wondering as i walk.
Like the sometimes imperceptible change in the air on the cusp of seasons working their way before the cordial dates arrive the swansong felt to me long ago has passed and now what is to be can be realised.
How and what it can be time will only tell.

How not to sell out and save your soul from anothers hell

It's not often I run into a really bad art show but it's also more rarer to see one that is a step above the chaff.
Two this year I can remember, the first was the extra-ordinary compilation of works by William Kentridge, arguably one of the best shows of my minutae existence.   And the second is some of the works on exhibition currently at the Lesley Kehoe Gallery at 101 Collins street.

I do have a weakness for some of the Japanese styles and this is the freshest works I have seen on our shores yet.
Shohei Otomo is the artist in question and I know of his fathers work in the ground breaking single cell animation masterpeice Akira.  The sheer detail of these works and the level of completeness to the peices is extraordinary.  For working with cheap pens this is a feat in itself.  The show felt reflective in its mood and covered a range of subjects from Yakuza to Shunga and cyber punk styles as well as western toon styles - glimpses of the east west exchange clearly visable.  The combination of these themes is I think what makes this exhibition interesting, the masked geishas and the reworkings of the classic Shunga as well as the commentary upon the permeating threats of nuclear catastrophe with the recent Fukushima reactor collapse.  The ability to complete works that perhaps would be special using any subject considering the workings of penmanship combined with the humourous touch of Shohei make this something you might want to see if you are in town.

It's nice just to enter the building and see the architecture too, one of the powerhouse buildings of the Australian economy.  Pretend you just walked out of Harrolds and the security shouldn't bother you.

lets see how much we can say, as fast as we can - without missing the beat : before we are invariably unable. At last; to continue.

if it is indeed god who is testing us with self resolve then it must be a sadistic motherfucker with too much time on it's hands.  
what is god to the masses anyway, like the taste of saline to the sea.
sterile and only used ornamentally, to most of us anyway, over here in heathen land anyhow.  
i am trying not to be so disinterested but i'm not having much luck.  
Realestate is too expensive, and i am broke, this is not good for being in the city, whats the use of having great skills and fortuity if you cannot earn money, your honesty translates as simplicity and every hack down the way takes a peice, you either become indeed simple or as cruel and opportunistic as them.  
And then you are ripping of people who may have been having an honest moment and then the cycle starts again and keeps going on and on.  
I was honest once but now i've learned to just be quiet.


petite a petite i am learning this modern reason that abounds the city scapes and rips the bonds of resistance to cheap thrills and moral degradation.  That enforces the will of the many and crushes the individual of their chance to fuck up and learn the cut stings and the break takes time.


it's been a while sinse i was on here this computer making words into verse,
in the time since last time, i have:


had a freestyle rap battle with a mate and as a result he doesn't talk to me anymore,
and it wasn't even personal it was but not momma jokes yet.

am being ignored by another friend because i talked my mind about a mutual friend who has dependancy issues.


done about eight quotes and not got one job yet, well maybe one this week.


have painted a lot of pictures of various things human and not so human.


joined a band,


formed a band


relyed solely just about on the goodwill of lentil as anything for my tucker, because i 'm broke,
i consider my current debt to society level as i have been tuning RAHRAHRAH radio (rrr) and it's comunity love is all up there in my braine.


silconed my fireplace because there is a dead mouse in there and the wind comes down the chimney and blasts fetid death zephyrs into my sleeping nostrils.


saw my father and talked about what to do with family land.


...


Thats about all folks and remmeber,

if the bush was too quiet there would be fear without seeing a fearful creature.

i didn't make up the last line but everything else i am guilty your honor,

the title is what happened when i listened to charlie parker,
bird.

art is living made visible

i'll shut up here's a photo

This is where i spent weekends as a child.  Mostly happy, mostly up the coconut trees or in the bat caves

DICKNOSE LIVES

If anyone is interested in reposting this please do.

This Friday, BYO, Refills Brunswick Street Fitzroy.


See the work of the man himself.

strass nulius

it seems a little too quiet on the streets of late, rain and other stuff holding people back but still quiet.  as the winter sets in everyone goes down into their cave and thinks about what's next.
plenty of shows, not that i go to them but still, plenty of them.  bastardising the rawness into quiet squares and galerie pour le amusement ou nouvue bourgeoisie .  not that it's a bad thing, but it definately isn't that good either.

the council here now has so much money from the blossomming rates, reaping in with their fat little tentacles, pouring it into yarra city council sponsored grafitti buffing crews.  they may be black that dont mean shit to me but you've got a black heart.  by laws to protect the walls please.

Lovers of the art lite you can please all go back to prahan.  Isn't there more fake tan range there.
But you never will.  you want the desert of the real.

All there is to be done is to pick up the pieces and carry on.  petite a petite.  For what it's worth i hope you enjoy what is left.  There is still plenty. Skin and bones, the flesh is gone, the blood all drunk and the smile hollow and cool.

a material love song is always sad.

happiness is the consolation for life's necessity

i often find when i am in old gold mining town and i see the incredible architechture i am thankfull to the people who lived there and invested into the town they were a part of, the sense of community, though long gone but impermeable and outstanding in the relics that remain.  I think of this only in comparison to todays mining boom where the places where this is happening still remain extremely bleak outposts with little more than corrugated iron and a few truck stops.  I took two years travelling australia and seeing all this as well as growing up in a mining boom town, Mackay no less.  And the companies that run the mines don't seem to be interested in investing in this kind of thing and the government has little plans besides some kind of block art sculptures that keep popping up around the place.  I see there was a time in australia's past when there was some pride of home and town, i can only assume this in my interpretation of the art and architechture but the feeling grows nevertheless that the Australian majority culture has lost a sense of overall community.  I don't know, i am no sociologist just a layman but it is only in rare circumstances that i have felt a strong community around.

Is it because a big portion of the mines are owned by offshore investors, so the money is filtered into the government and then rushed overseas.  All i notice of the boom is the exhorbitant price of land, unruly development, over development of agricultural areas by sprawling urbanisation, extreme rent prices. 

I can't complain, i feel responsible and part of an apathetic generation.  I sometimes dream of owning a v8 7 litre just to get rid of the fuel quicker so we can settle down again.  Burn up all the coal so we can go back to having more simply and less disposable lives, disposable like our phones, our plastic bags our cheap thin plaster houses, with weak walls and poisonous materials.   It is a inevitablility that this will happen but i feel particularly impatient, because i work in the building industry, and i drive around the city  for my work and i have to see the mess that is spreading like a rash across this southern land.  And also because i recently saw a photo of an aboriginal camp amongst the trees on the yarra huge gums and ferns and healthy people, happier than us, living within nature instead of "above".

I long for the country and it's complex simplicity, but then i would miss the complex naivety of the human animal and their maruading ignorance.  I chose art as a agent of change and only time will well if it is a plausible vision, this one of mine.