..saying "It's all about Trust"

Shane on Straya Di

G'day Petals,

here are some shots from BTA'S recent Summer School ....

Olivia and Jack

Jack and Mia

Laura and Jack

Mark Brinkley with repertoire

Bethany and Jack

Ben Davis choreographing

Position, Position, position

 Hope you enjoyed these .....



Wombat Droppings

Senator “Bestiality” Bernardi (associate of Dutch Ultra–Right winger, Geert Wilders) thinks his involvement with the American Legislative Exchange Council is not a conflict of interest and that we don’t need more gun laws and that it’s all-right to have tobacco sponsorship and apparently it’s all-right too, to dud your divorced partner by hiding money from them…and multi-culturalism..?.. that sucks, too!

It’s all about trust isn’t it?

Bernardi has been reported as having "ratted" on one of colleagues who allegedly said that he only joined the Liabril party because he lived in a Liarbral held seat. If it had have been a Labor seat he would have joined the Labor party!  
What a friend!

It’s all about trust isn’t it?

The ALEC was also involved in a High Court challenge against the Gillard’s and Roxon’s anti-smoking legislation last year and has financial ties in the U.S. with big tobacco and the NRA. It is assisting them to counter any moves President Obama might try in getting gun reform.

I wonder if Bernardi views Rush Limbaughb as the intellectual role-model for commentators and radio journalists?

Whilst Mr “Rabbott” is no-where to be seen on these issues (but seething with his own ambitions, probably understands) he and Joe “Oh what a Feeling” Hockey are calling confusingly different “motherhood” shots on whether the Liabrils can post a surplus if they get into government.

But “Rabbott” “did-a-runner” again! Rather than face media scrutiny about policy after “Big Red” pulled a “swifty” in announcing the election date for nine months hence, “Rabbott” ran away …like he tried to in Parliament!

It’s all about trust isn’t it?

Oohhh… look over there! A rabbit!

Not that any of this really matters.

What matters are the decoy tactics employed…..stir up a little “shit” here, another little bit there…continually creating a sense of crisis, bang-on about how much better you will be, how much more stable things will be (although you’ve got few policies worth mentioning)… the electorate is so stupid they’ll keep watching the football, tennis, grand prix’s and cooking comps where over-feted “chefs” actually work at paying their staff less and less ….whilst we bask in the glow of their sophistication

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/in-search-of-a-fair-days-pay-for-a-night-serving-fare-20130126-2ddin.html#ixzz2JDIWGSVe

Release your policies a week out from the actual election so that they can’t be adequately scrutinised and claiming that you haven’t the resources but constantly slip in the word “audit” so that you can tell the electorate when you’re in power that all the money’s gone and you’ll have to slash everything.

But you were warned about an audit!

It’s all about trust isn’t it?

Jeff “Bully-Boy” Kennett, (the Dorian Gray of Tardis State Politics) got all wound up this week when it was revealed (again) that Bernie Eccelstone milks the Tardis State (Where All Goes Backward) out of $30,000,000 for his fee for each Grand Prix!

“You can’t expose commercial-in-confidence” he shrieked, “We’ll lose the race”

Eccelstone didn’t agree with Jeff’s analysis ‘cause, Why-look-a-gift-horse???

That it also continues to make whacking great losses that we are contracted to pay for whilst there are no credible figures for attendance, takings or the dubious quality of its “branding value” is a testament to Mr Kennett’s business smarts in setting all this up and costing this State around $500,000,000 in lost revenues.

But we shouldn’t forget the lack of balls in subsequent Labor Premiers in not flipping this monstrous waste of resources away when they had the chance.

It’s all about trust isn’t it?

Cheers Possums,

Shane

...and publishes another.

……and publishes another.

Shane Wombat on Bookshelf

http://store.blurb.com/ebooks/371264-nude-themes-ideas

A compilation of of some 130 images taken over a number of years and also available very cheaply as and "E" book, too.

As the title indicates the book is broken into themes and ideas.

Following are some samples that are within that euphamism, "work-safe".

Australian Crawl

Songs of a Summer's Night

Happy Birthday

Slightly Da-Da

JR Portrait

 And if I sell many, many, many thousands I may be able to afford a real one of  these.....

"In-ya-dreams-Shane!"

 

ShaneWombat with his Morgan

Wombat Droppings

In another depressing example of Liarbril “values” in the Tardis State (where all goes backwards) under “Big Bird” (Genus: Silvertail Incompetens) Baillieu, MP Inga Peulich has been reported as threatening to savage her political colleagues for not supporting her son to become mayor of Kingston council. He, who reportedly accepted thousands of dollars in campaign donations from developers who wanted to concrete “Green Wedge” areas and then declared to council that his returns were “zip”! Apart from the seeming illegality of his donation non-disclosure he also dudded his benefactors and apparently offered a deal to a non-development candidate to get a mayoral vote. He lost 8-1.

All this happened in the same area that Geoff (Wanna-use-my-Govt-car) Shaw is a member and who is under another cloud for: you guessed it, fundraising irregularities…. What IS in the water down there?

Further rampant individualism was on show as Lance Armstrong “confessed” in the High Church of Chat that he was a cheat and gave the distinct impression that he had little understanding of what he had done and that now he had spoken it would all go away.

Federally depressing was “Big Red” Gillard’s kow-towing to religious bodies so that they can kick sinners, and other people they deem naughty out of work and not be said to be discriminatory.

This, in the same week as the Catholic Church paid $100,000 compensation to a disabled woman whom a priest preyed upon for 14 years.  Now the Church is allowing him to return to full pastoral duties.

Orwellian ain’t it?

Cheers,

Petals

...on Holiday at TarraWarra with Jeff and Robert

G’day Petals,

As it’s holiday time Mrs Wombat and I took a trip to the other side.

Tarrawarra panorama landscape

The Yarra Valley that is, to attend a retrospective of painter Jeffery Smart at TarraWarra.

TarraWarra Gallery

Although we would have seen this show at some stage the “critique” by Robert Nelson in “The Age” (9-1-13) “Smart Ticks Boxes with Signature Style” prompted a sooner-rather-than-later excursion whilst the critiques’ effect was still fresh in mind. 

It seemed to bear little relation to the tenor of the Smart work that I knew.

It was worth the early visit, for as the day panned-out there were many metaphors of 

contemporary society to be experienced other than in the paintings.

Amongst our favourite paintings were: “Self Portrait at Papini’s”, a work like “Morning Practice, Baia” and Clive James’ Portrait which seem to contradict Nelson’s assertion that “…….Smart is not an allegorical artist”.

Self-portrait at Papini’s 1984-85 by Jeffrey Smart, courtesy Artist and the TarraWarra Museum of Art, Victoria

The garage door in “Papini’s” looks to be a “send-up” of Dale Hickey’s “Untitled” 1967-8 and the blue door shadow of the paper, a dead fishes tail (?), leaves a deadpan Smart in between both and the possibility of his exit, “stage right” through the open door.

Dale Hickey Untitled 1967-8

A conflict engendered perhaps between figurative and non-figurative artist-practitioners by critics for the critics’ ego and existence?

“Morning Practice” seems to conjure a personal act of art in a primary sense in its shapes, activity and colours. Balance, form and colour, is a hard act to get together.

Morning Practice, Baia 1969

Clive James happily recounted being painted by Smart and delighted by the large portrait drawings he had seen was then bowled over by being finally represented as a tiny figure high up behind a big wall (fence) happily observing (chatting to) us down below. (pic on right )

TarraWarra Gallery

Asserting too, that Smart paints factories, high rise etc “….because it’s easy to paint….” Is (apart from being Brunswick St.-Barista-Bitchy) belied just by the detail of the crack and the wall texture above the “Hickey” door and in the solid reality of the figure in “On the Roof, Taylor Square” where, in this early work, the juxtaposition of the solidity of the figure and the flatness of the architectural forms behind seem to provide the “airy-ness” one can feel at heights…

On the Roof, Taylor Square 1961

…. but then  Nelson sniffily points out “…abstraction that riddles the design affords freedom from noise and chaos in the representation.” and that “… his Roof-tops 1969… look like flat pieces of graphic design” and further, “Largely sparing himself the pains of incidental light and shadows across complicated forms….” “In Italy… he couldn’t reconcile the inflected architecture with the festive spaces that it frames”. 

All of which only seem to suggest that Robert Nelson would paint Italy very differently to Jeffery Smart and that, ergo Smart should paint differently!

A criticism seemingly based upon what you would like to see, not what you have seen and understood

I’ve always liked the story of Francois Truffaut when, as a literary film critic he was challenged by the film-makers he was criticizing to “… go and make a film!”

He did. It was “The Four Hundred Blows.”

So here’s an example (I assume) of Nelson’s scenic painting style as a background to one of Polixeni Papapetrou’s (his wife) photographs, so you can see in comparison, his work for yourself.

Polixeni Papapetrou.net

Jeffery Smart painted to his own tune. He “hit” an “idea” young and developed it assiduously.

This exhibition is valuable in that you can partially track this development but also experience a wit, a somewhat sardonic view of humanity from the ordinary world culture of roads, freeways, car-parks and airports through the talent of someone who loving the works of  Piero della Francesca and Vermeer presents his subjects calmly in a similarly ordered space that allows the eye an extended looking to discover at its leisure.

Someone who obviously loved drawing, the placing of paint and the enjoyment of “working” a surface so that feeling and thought is revealed.

exterior : wine tasting and restaurant on left, gallery right

This beautiful space “….is the first privately funded, significant public visual arts museum to be set up under the Australian Government’s philanthropic measures announced in March 1999. TWMA operates as a not-for-profit institution, with a charter to display Australian art from the second half of the twentieth century to the present day.”…. and after an excellent lunch, General Manager Simon Napthine came back to our table provide more details of the history of the place as he had overheard us ask some questions of our waitress.

GM Simon Napthine and restaurant.

The corollary of the Besen’s philanthropy to the arts is that it has extended to the staff here and they made it a perfectly enjoyable day for us with their natural good service.

Wombat Droppings

Jenny Macklin (Labor)  put her foot right in it but did something unusual for a pollie. Apologised!

Incompetent Baillieu Liabrils blame Labor Feds for faltering hospital system after Feds cut $107 Million from State of Tardis (where all goes backward) Health while forgetting to mention the $616 Million they have slashed.

But they say, the plan to spend it all on a new Tennis Centre is a good thing for the Tardis State.

Jonathon Moylan has caused much embarrassment to the share trading community with his ANZ letter hoax as they splutteringly attempted to explain just how straight their operations are…. Oohh look… there’s a rabbit!!

…and Peter (Children Overboard) Reith reckons he ought to be punished …perhaps like he was when his son ran up a $20,000.00 phone bill on Pete’s Commonwealth Pollies phone card!  Howard, (He of the Profligate spending) was inclined to think “It’s not a hanging offence!”

Abbott staffer kicks own goal with a clumsy attempt to paint him as human.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4455364.html    from Anne Summers.

Chris (The Whyne) Pyne has been caught out lying again….again trying to support Abbott’s Neanderthal attitude to women

http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/printfriendly.pl?http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200504/s1354159.htm

“Slippery Pete” has been collared by the ACT rozzers and might go to jail if found guilty of defrauding the Commonwealth of about $1000.00.

Pity the Liarbrils’are so quiet about it happening when he was one of them!

Geoff Shaw, Liarbril Member for Frankston is still sitting in Parliament having been found by Parliament to have defrauded the State.

Hey, Big Bird Baillieu (Genus: Silvertail Incompetens)….. what’s the difference?

Melbourne Airport Carpark holds Tardis State  (where all goes backward) to ransom over easier access to airport.

…and a nice little movie celebrating our Public transport officers….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=tjtbmryzBGM

Cheers Possums,

Shane