Ta-ta, Tuvalu.

Shane in the Snow

G'day Possums,

It's been a bit cold here in the burrow but nought compared to the frigid shoulder our prime miniature du jour, liar-from-the-shire, happy-clapping- faux-xtian-anti-christ got from Pacific Island's leaders when he snotted on their aspirations at not wanting their nation states to drown because of the developed worlds penchant for fossil fuels.

Sporting a maliciously designed islander hat of flowers that made Scummo appear more thickly Bogan than usual  and flanked by his "bestie-of-the-moment" The Shifty-Eyed Hawke, Scummo  managed not only to alienate our Pacific neighbours but also promote the Chinese cause in the region, insult New Zealand's PM ( yes, they have a real Prime Minister), embarrass Australia internationally, and with "proof-positive" demonstrate again just how bereft of social and economic nouse, climate and energy policy this rancid IPA controlled Ruling Rabble are.

Fearing the Bogan Happy-Clapper, Anti-Christ  was getting deserved bad press by the sheer lack of enthusiasm in his Pacific debacle that was being displayed by the Ugly American's media, Sydney's Turd from 2GB, Toilet-Boy, Jones employed his famous double play where he distracts attention with a "look-over-there..." comment but which also gains the narcissist the notice he so desperately craves from his dwindling audience of geriatric racist, misogynists.

Calling for Scummo's minders to advise the Liar-from-the Shire to tell NZ's Jacinda Ardern that she should have Scummo "....give her a few back-handers..." and have a  "...sock pushed down her throat..." by having the temerity to question Australia's commitment to amelirorating climate change,

Toilet-Boy thus added to his already replete lexicon of misogyny and hate speech and basked in the notoriety of his foulness when called to task, with the insulting justification that he had meant to say "stick a sock in it"...and that he, once again victim, had been "wilfully misinterpreted".

But advertisers who must have thought otherwise began to desert 2GB and management warned Toilet Boy that if he insulted Adhern again his contract was void by applying the old 375 -strikes-and- you're-out, rule!  
So, Toilet-Boy, hero to the last, apologised to Ardern, "...like a man..." in the hope of stemming the tide of receding revenue.

But why is this damaging, toilet-trolling, race-baiting, misogynist, climate denier and love-letter writer to young school-boys employed as a public broadcaster in the first place?  This is another matter that says much about the right-wing's, values, concept of free speech....not to mention, taste  but as Fictions The Innumerate, Frydenberg said "...he's the mainstay..." of the Ruling Rabble's propaganda arm!

Not to be outdone in the "look-over-there" game Scummo,  unfortunately escaping the drowning Pacific, landed back in Oz to announce....Ta, Daaaa... that he's on the warpath against that dreadful mob "Get-Up".

(Yawn)!
But his deputy, Mc What's-is-name couldn't resist his paternalistic, provincial and undiplomatic best by telling an audience how much we cared for the Islanders ..."...cause they will survive... 'cause they come here to earn money to pick fruit"! 
This is leadership?

Down South and reprising Thomas a' Beckett's C12th stance on the primacy of canon law over the secular, Victoria's Catlic Archbishop Denise Camisole avowed that he would prefer prison rather than reporting to police, paedophilia heard expressed in the confessional.

Why then, are these types with insitiutionalised "form" and flouting the law allowed to run schools and be tax exempt?

As the world economy falls to pieces and silence permeates Oz, one can perhaps appreciate the point of Labor's opposition leader Albo's very quiet behaviour. In being seen and not heard  it becomes difficult for even the Ugly American's putrid media to blame them for what patently are the sins of the most corrupt, divisive and incompetent ruling rabble in the nations history.

It's winter Petals, but my discontent is not with the snow.

Hoo-roo,

Shane.

Appealing to the 2%

G'day Possums,

So, it's only been two months since the last election and already it feels like an eternity as The Happy-Clapper, Prosperity-Pentacostalist Anti-Christ and bogan Prime Miniature, Scummo and his Ruling Rabble struggle to find anything positive to do for the nation. 

Oh, there's prayer!

Rallying with 21,000 of the 2% he actually rules for, Scummo exhorted them and by inference, us,  for all to show more love to each other. Except of course if you are a refugee in a concentration camp, unemployed, homeless, in need of public education, health care or on a pension, as his "brand" of xtianity extols the money- lender and eschews caring for others for that is too, too socialist and besides, one's own salvation is paramount.

Oh, but we should pray about things like climate change, the drought and the great Barrier Reef's destruction ....seems that $400 million gifted to some friends, just 'aint cutting the mustard on the water matter. Yep, How Good is That, lining up with his brethren of similar fantasy ilk in the Un-united States, Scummo would like more prayer to solve things; even though they are matters better left to competent, practical and deliberate governance.

It's a joyous pity then to report that of at least ten studies into the efficacy prayer, particularly in medical situations carried out in the U-Usa, have shown that prayer is a peculiarly ineffective treatment and that "... patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.

But isn't it nice to know he's thinking of us at all?

Why, even at the Ruling Rabble cabal's group grope in The Deep North had thought bubbles bursting forth like apple blossoms in Spring. Thoughts which extended to A/: declaring the ABC an "enemy of the LNP" ( aka.. the Ruling Rabble) and, B/: establishing an "Office of Science Quality Assurance".

Resolution "A" is perfectly understandable. The ABC generally has commentators both on radio and TV who can impartially analyse and discuss matters of policy and state in depth and with this is at odds with the one track, tunnel visions the right-wing, neo-liberal propagandists are used to participating in on the majority of Oz media as a consequence, they feel highly irrelevant and intellectually bereft and unable to contribute much at all when such conversations occur.

Ergo... close down the ABC, problem solved!

Resolution "B" is not dissimilar. It would enable a genius like Senator, Mal-Addled Roberts to veto or ratify scientific reports handed to the government.

This would have some historical precedence such as Galileo having to submit to the C17th Roman Inquisition but less clear in the present age is the role the Pentecostal prosperity gospel will play in this farce proposed by Ms Frackingbum... and at least the Roman boys had some eduction behind them.

Further demonstrating the Ruling Rabble's empathy and understanding of those they rule, SS (Shutz staffel or Social Services, take your pick) Minister Annie The Ribald, Ruston was, having declared on right-wing radio that the pension was "generous", forced to duck numerous Zimmer frames, crutches and plates of aluminium encased food on leaving the studio but was agile enough on her way to her government chauffeured vehicle to slalom around the many menacing disability scooters whose irate drivers were intent on flattening her political future.

And then there was the Butcher of Fallujah, ex senator Molan the Grate auditioning for a reprise on QandA by blithely dismissing indigenous calls for constitutional recognition by opining that if you let them have recognition why not the Chinese , Turks, Greeks, Vietnamese etc, as well? His ignorance both intellectually and emotionally in repudiating indigenous cultural claims, was well served by his overtly selfish fascism.

Molan the Grate started a week which then provided the most excoriating example of Australia's racism, The Taking Down of Adam Goodes. This film was a compilation of Goode's career as an Aboriginal footballer, concentrating on his last two years as he was constantly booed and heckled at every game till this talented  "Australian of the Year" resigned and  left.

What was brought into clear focus was the intensity and volume of the racism stoked by such large and well funded media groups, mostly The Ugly American Murdoch's and such constant regressive voices as Miranda Devine, Andrew Bolt, Ray Hadley, Alan Jones, Steve Price, Eddie McGuire and Sam Newman who manipulated disgraceful crowd behaviour around to be the victims fault. These people are putrid examples of a corrupt media, aiding and abetting in corrupting a nation; The Murdoch legacy being wrought here as it has been in Britain and in America to these nation's detriment........ we are diminished because of them and our own stupidity.

No  wonder Denmark has banned such a vile organization from their shores.

Hoo-roo Petals,

who said the wheels aren't falling off?

Shane

To Swill the Trough and see the Death of Photography

Shane Wombat and Cameras

 G'day Possums...
quite a bit of stuff today so there's plenty of variety ....
We did a shoot recently intended for a calendar and here are three of the shots

Alex McDonald

 

  

 Tamra and Gus

 

Chloe P 

...and recently, quite fortuitously came back into contact with Juilee Pryor whom I had first met at BIFB 2009.

In  conversation Juilee was telling me about her most recent project which I thought would be a good one to share here.

A few thoughts on the Death of Photography …

I first come into contact with film photography nearly 30 years ago when my father took it up as a hobby when I was a teenager. He would get me to sit as a model for his local photo group and have me to come and help him on weekend trips to shoot in the hills around our home. It wasn’t however until I started at Art School a few years later though that I first experienced the magic of the darkroom. I was immediately seduced by the alchemy of watching and waiting for the print to emerge from the chemical bath and it quickly became one the main tools for my artistic expression. This generational passion has never waned and I have created and shown my photographic artworks locally, nationally and internationally with works in Museums and private collections and they have been published various publications over this time. I have always had my own darkroom as part of my studio and worked from time to time as a darkroom technical assistant in Art Schools.
Some years ago as the digital phenomenal began to take hold I began to digitize and editing a vast back collection of negatives and while I was doing this I began to think about how quickly the old ways where passing. We now live in a time where everybody is a photographer courtesy of their iPhone camera and with the advent of Instagram and other social media platforms people can simply touch a few buttons and apply a few filters and hey presto and instant artwork with little or no skill needed. The savage swiftness of this phenomenon set in place the beginning of a mild but tenacious depression. I realized that I was feeling redundant and all those years of dedicated work and accumulated skill in the art, craft and science of my photography was reduced to pretty much nothing. That may or may not have been a realistic conclusion but it was how I felt and it gnawed away at me for some time.
Eventually after a big photo media exhibition in New Zealand I returned to Sydney and knew that the next thing I need to work out of my system was this persistent irritation with the new ways of photography. As my photographic vision has never wavered I had to do this in order to be able to go on as a photographic artist being able to use what tools were available to me and if that meant digital then digital was what I needed to get my head around.
Sitting in my studio one day with a local newspaper in my hand looking at an advertisement for a Piñata workshop and reflecting on how annoying it was that newsprint also was going the way of the dinosaur and how much I was going to miss that bit my daily life. Which is when the genesis of artwork that became ‘A Few Thoughts on the Death of Photography …’ came to me. 

Camera detail Juilee Pryor

I began using a basic Papier Mache mix to create a mould around some old vintage cameras I had and then cut the mould off it and remoulded it together so get a hollow and almost realistic copy of the camera. This I allowed to dry and then gave it six coats of high gloss white enamel paint. The effect was a little like a ghost of the actual camera and while it fitted into the body memory of the item in my hand it also was very different. The camera looked almost like the real thing and yet totally unreal at the same time. Once I had begun I could not stop and over a three month period produced and entire analogue darkroom from Papier Mache. 101 items in total make this single artwork. 

Camera and gear  Juilee Pryor

So ‘A Few Thoughts on the Death of Photography …’ is a sort of Momento Mori and a way that I can look back over the chasm of change and honour what has been and then turn and step forward into the future of photography. La Roi est Mort. Via Le Roi and all that. The paper darkroom is displayed on a long table draped with black fabric like and old fashioned tableaux and all the various items that make up the darkroom are arranged upon it in various ways. 

Table Piece  Juilee Pryor

They are all the same high gloss white and I envisage it in a darkened room with strong over strength spotlight playing on it so it is reminiscent of a marble sculpture. This bold multi- part work is a sculptural interpretation of the idea of analogue photography as a form of creativity that is becoming redundant. It is both a Memento Mori and a way of honouring the art, craft and science of the wet darkroom. It is also a way to open a conversation about the idea of the death of analogue which is one that hasn’t happened yet and I believe is needed.
 

Table Piece Camera and gear  Juilee Pryor

 I don’t think I’m the only one out there who has been feeling disgruntled and strangely out of sorts when they see an Instagram photo or when they can’t buy a roll of film.
The artwork comprises one hundred and one individual pieces in total including sets of trays in various sizes, tongs, developing tanks, film canisters, jugs and beakers, boxes of paper and all sorts of other sundry items. There are nine different cameras and these are doubled up with one being black and one being white. This is to represent the shadow side of photography. As all of these have been created by moulding them around and actual darkroom item and then cut off and remoulded they are rough and fragile and obviously hand made so they look right and not right simultaneously. 

Table Piece Camera and gear  Juilee Pryor

All these items are like little ghosts or chimeras designed to satisfy the body memory of being in the darkroom while also being a representation of the idea of the darkroom. And most interesting of all is that the best way I could come up with to talk about the idea of The Death of Photography was by not using photography.  This complete simulacrum of a darkroom is my own homage to what is passing and serves as a bridge between digital and analogue photography and my own responses to different ways of creating photographic imagery.
This bold multi- part work is a sculptural interpretation of the very idea of analogue photography as a form of creativity that is becoming redundant. It is both a Memento Mori and a way of honouring the art, craft and science of the wet darkroom. As photography becomes a new digital form of language available to all via the iPhone and Social Media platforms like Instagram, we segue into a time where everybody is a photographer. The paradigm shift is so radically different to the slower skill based experience of analogue photography that something vital and magical seems to be passing from the world. This is my way of acknowledging this and moving on in to the future of photography.

http://www.juileepryor.com/

Mrs Wombat and I visited Frogmore Nursery  again... there's always something to experience there

Frogmore Nursery

 be it the peaceful order or

Frogmore Nursery, Tulips

the last riotous blooming of the Tulips

Frogmore Nursery "le vue Chateau"

 or something small and diverting

Frogmore Nursery Office  window

Frogmore Nursery

 Wombat Droppings or the Low-down on Politics in Oz



To swill the trough

A blanket ban on his minions talking to the press by Prime Miniature “Rabbott” really doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t hear them anyway for the noise of the snouts in the trough.

That the Prime Miniature, his Attorney General, his Foreign Affairs and Agriculture Ministers, the Speaker of the House (probably) and numbers of others of the Liarbrils have all been re-paying monies they have rorted from the taxpayer over a number of years is disgraceful. That they have been rorting the taxpayer whilst venomously pursuing others for doing the same, often for lesser amounts, but only as political pay-back exposes once again, their putrid, hypocritical sense of morality and the contempt this rabble have for civil society. That the “champion” defending them is Peter (Rottweiler) Reith, Union-basher extraordinaire, he of a phone rort scandal of huge proportions and he of lying about refugees throwing their children overboard from asylum seeker boats I think fully illustrates my points about hypocrisy, contempt and morality.

Funniest moment of the week was on ABC’s “Q and A”  was viewing Luo Xioapeng a “…founding member of China’s first autonomous reform think tank which contributed to major policies reform in the 1980s…”  and his looking with something like disdain at Liarbril Environment Minister, Greg (Ozone-Hole) Hunt as if " Ozone-Hole" is some ideologically redundant apparatchik; a Pickwickian character with a misunderstood PHD as Hunt was obfuscating about climate change with very rubbery figures.

Kate Ellis encapsulated Labor’s present miasma by interminably waffling before finally reaching the point of being able to make solid hits on Hunt’s Neanderthal policy’s. But full marks must go to Hunt’s make-up girl at the ABC… she had his lips painted just the right shade of “Tarty” Pink to suit his precious, mincing demeanour!

The IPPC report has been handed down and we’re going to hell in a hand-basket!

If a doctor says you should give up smoking or overeating or die, and you ignore his advice, that’s a personal decision that affects you alone.

If the majority of the worlds’ scientists declare a consensus that we are destroying our ability to live on this planet and a minority of political, business, media and economic people choose to forestall action to ameliorate this condition and further their own economic ends, what can we do?

This is an entirely new situation the world is in.

What can we do about these “Quisling” ideologues?

Their actions are not democratic. Should our response be democratic?

How do you bring Minister Hunt to “book”, when with increased heat in summer, frail susceptible people die and warmer seas are killing off the reefs and their bio-diversity?

How do we bring Gina Rinehart and her “Quisling” cheer squad at the IPA to “Book” over land degradation and extinction of species?

How do we bring Ian (Chainsaw) MacFarlane to “book” when “every last drop of gas ..” has been “fracked” , the water table is polluted and farmland useless with less food available?

How do we bring the boss of Monsanto to “book” for wiping out crop diversity or broadcasters Alan Jones and Ray Hadley for lying to their audiences on the consequences of climate change?

How do we tell these “Quislings” they are morally culpable for our fate in choosing “not-to believe-in” the scientific evidence of climate change until it is too late?

The irradiated seas are already boiling at Fukashima.

Cheers Petals,

Shane


Sitedfigures

..seeing beasts, brutality and abuse

Beasts, brutality and abuse.

Hello Petals,

It has been an odd week …and on balance, one that reflects so poorly on us Antipodeans that we might wonder about the nature of the malaise affecting us.

It’s been a week of violence: verbal, intellectual and physical.

Senator Cory Bernardi (right wing Liarbril loopy, S. Aussie, Senator) opined in a parliamentary debate on same-sex-marriage that these unions, if sanctioned, could quite possibly lead to bestiality being an accepted form of union!

This happened, by the way, after the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney thought that a study into health factors relating to homosexuality would be a good idea!

You know:  you’re sicker than we are, sort of thing!

After Liarbril front-man, Tony “the Rabbit” Abbott wiped Bernardi’s verbal tripe from his head, he sacked him as his parliamentary secretary.

The following cartoon by Michael Leunig paraphrases it all better than I can.

“Mr Rabbit” again exposed his distinct ineptness by castigating the Prime Minister for being O/S and pontificating that P.M. Gillard should have been in Jakarta talking to the Indonesian President about asylum issues.

Uuhhhmm she was Tony… at the UN with President Yudhoyono; discussing these issues.  Oh dear, and he really, really, really, wants to run the country, too.

Sectarian violence erupted in Sydney when blokes stormed around the streets with signs saying “we’ll behead you if you don’t agree with us”, mimicking more violent and deadly groups in the Middle East and Pakistan but giving local police practise in crowd control and using batons and Capsicum spray.

It seems some other ideological twit in the US produced a very bad film about a character whose history is not to be commented on in any way.

All this was happening at the same time as a British Muslim obsessive was promoting the “World Caliphate” in the same city.

Leigh Sales (ABC 7.30) in interview, scored well off the caliphate salesman who didn’t look too impressed with her. He knows that women only have half the brain that men do and in his scheme of things, she’d never be allowed to ask such questions.

Ms Sales then, later in the week went on to blot her interview style with an obnoxiously rude, schoolgirlish and vituperatively screaming rant at ex-Labor pollie Lindsay Tanner about his new book, which questions Labor’s values and future.

Manners madam, you are the interviewer not the subject!

 Alan “Bondi” Jones (loopy right radio shock jock, NSW) as chief court jester to the Liarbrils, entertained their Sydney Uni cabal with some bon-mots to the effect that Prime Minister Gillard’s improvement in the polls had only come through her tearful demeanour over her father’s death and that her father had died of "shame" because of his daughter's lies to the Australian public.

This tawdry, hate-filled little person is a member and promoter of the Liarbrils.

He is a signal and perfect public example of their values, ethics, modis-operandi and horribly, this country’s possible future.

Update, 3/10:  "Bondi" Jones has apologised, sort of.... blaming everyone else... but in the manner of most bullies, couldn't understand why anyone could be upset with him and feels he is the real victim. "Rabbit" Abbott, too, eventually got around to saying that his mentor's comments were disgraceful and a dozen of Jones' advertisers on his radio station have (for the time being) withdrawn their accounts.

Beasties, St Michels, Gaillac

Then there was Kennett, (failed, ex-premier of the Tardis State) extolling how well he’d done in managing to disable this State twenty years ago.

To my mind, the best he’s done is to be the Dorian Gray of Victorian politics!

And be President of Hawthorn Football Club…

And then came the news of the abduction and rape and murder of young ABC radio staffer less than 500 metres from her home and husband.

Missing for days and then the police are led to her body by the alleged killer because of a shops' interior video surveillance camera in assisting in identifying him talking to her.

Some weeks ago, Mrs Wombat and myself were driving back from an emotionally draining time trying to assist a female relative in a abusive relationship.

We stopped at a local pub for a meal as we didn’t have the energy to go home and cook. On going to the toilet after the meal and on washing my hands I saw a sign in front of me which said: If you see your mate assaulting his girlfriend you can call this…. hotline.

Is violence endemic in this country?

Is violence against women endemic?

Is the increasing verbal violence that has been promulgated at a public/political level over the past thirty years bearing fruit in our society?

Are the calls for “flexibility” in the workforce whilst senior executive receive multi million dollar bonuses and salary’s, fuelling resentment?

Is a political system which gives business profit more credence than the welfare and the future of the people also fuelling resentment?

Are the de-personalised and sometimes, hysterical responses in social media, training us to think everything is a bit of a game?

Does our egocentricity and selfishness make us believe that we are cocooned from the real world?

Are we, as Australians, really “social” and “responsible” beings?

Bye,

Shane