Aussie Values as a Dog-Whistle

G'day Petals,

Mrs Wombat and I had a little waddle around Melbourne t'other day through the delightful  arcades and also to see the photography shows at the NGV, particularly the William

Shane Flagging Aussie Values

Egglestone and the Bill Henson ones.

I had the feeling there was too much in the WE show which weakened its overall appeal but they certainly expressed the peculiarities of "The South" and its personality. The Henson nudes though not as in-your-face as usual, were lovely but ultimately, I felt, pointless. The landscapes on the other hand were riveting.

The NGV in contexualizing  its collections is a much more interesting place to wander around.

 

The Causeway

 I'm not so sure if it's all an Augustinian method of defining Australian values by demonstrating what they are not ....or if Truffles is suffering from early onset dementia but he has decided that "Australian Values" are just what immigrants to this country need to aspire to. Traits like, not beating your wife senseless, speaking only good English, joining the CWA or CFA, polishing the backs of your shoes  and probably, only voting for the ruling rabble; otherwise you'll get deported. Which, given the rates of domestic violence perpetrated by "Dinky-di's  who are barely literate;  we should see the place emptied in no time.

Block Arcade

Trying on the Mc Carthy-ist, "I know something you don't," line on "Insiders", Anti-Immigration Minster, Dodo Dutton obfuscated around the truth of the latest riot on the refugee concentration camp at Manus Island, conflating events in an attempt to muddy the waters and rejecting any suggestion that his version of events was the gospel one even as it was being pooh-poohed by the Manus Island police and a PNG minister.  

Later, Dodo in a Kafkaesque  performance of Australian Values demanded an apology from ABC for letting himself be exposed again, as a liar.

This ruling rabble Mk2 are the most corrupt, lying, incompetent cabal ever to set foot in a parliament having no integrity or ethics (other than a lack of them), and no credibility whatsoever. These mongrels have trashed any semblance of truth and transparency in this country and have, by their actions and Un-Australian Values lost all authority and need to be sacked en masse!

Centre Place

"From our perspective we see the scheme as punitive, as demonising the unemployed and as being an expensive failure." intoned the St Vincent de Paul Society in commenting about the Work for the Dole scheme, a favourite idea of Rabid-the-Hun  which has been, like his tenure as Prime Miniature, an expensive "demonstrable failure" that does nothing to lessen the nation's unemployment burden and which St.V.de P's also says, is at risk of creating "a class of working poor" whilst doing nothing to create sustained employment and furthering Australian Values.

Photography NGV

The Harpy and Minister for un-employment, Michaelia Cash was no-where to be seen again, no doubt off inspecting more million+ investment properties whilst the list of businesses being exposed for ripping-off their staff  by underpayment and poor work conditions grows each week.

NGV, Egglestone

Jobson Growth seems to have disappeared with Australian Values, too.

Isn't it funny seeing the RWNJ's getting their knickers in a knot when freedom of speech is  exercised?

Yassmin Abdel-Magied posted a FB opinion which suggested that as well as not forgetting the ANZAC's we might do well to remember the refugees on Manus and Christmas Islands and the tragedies being enacted in Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Yemen that brought them there. This was so against Australian Values  that it  ignited a torrent of abuse from those who are right, like Blot-on-the-Landscape, Bolt and Toilet-Boy, Jones and others who see  humanitarian expressions as a direct assault on their unalloyed patriotism and narrow-minded nationalism. A petition was started demanding her removal from any work on the ABC and so far has around 30,000 signatures.

NGV Henson

Timmy The-Twat, ex-Freedom-Man, Wilson the IPA apparatchik now part of the ruling rabble, joined in the fray conveniently forgetting that only two weeks before he was arguing that 18C be repealed  in order that we have more Australian Values like "free-speech!"

Ahhhh... "Australian Values!"  Now, here was a real display of them.

NGV Henson

It seems that the only true values to be enunciated are right-wing ones, the only way to view Anzac Day is as "The Birth of the Nation", as the defining moment of our country's adulthood and egalitarianism.  Not as a small unsuccessful event within a much bigger one, an invasion of another country that cost 60,000 young lives in attempting the perpetuate the economics of an empire that was about to disintegrate paving the way for the totalitarian regimes now so admired by "the right" and who caused so much destruction twenty years further on.

NGV 

Australian Values... bullshit, it's just blinkered jingoism and a nasty simplistic nationalism fed to dull minds.

Hoo-roo Possums,

Shane

seeing a tangled web and brewing storm

G’day, you three Petals,

it’s been an odd year of comings and goings …a lot of goings and changes of direction which will really become manifest further into 2016.

I’m not sure whether this society is becoming less independent as western culture becomes more controlled by consumerism and mass media than ever and  is why the “Selfie” has become such a popular an expression of identity or if it’s just another fad or the ultimate expression of selfishness and alienation from a sense of collective. So I decided to illustrate this “year-in-review” rant with a selection of people taking “selfies” from our mid year trip to France and England.

Shortly before we left for Europe Mrs Wombat was obliged to step into a senior role in her workplace for some months. At the end of it the staff showed their appreciation by putting together a gift package of an excellent bottle of wine and a lunch for two at one of Victoria’s best restaurants, The Lake-house in Daylesford. We duly went for a superb lunch the day before we flew out for Paris.

About the same time I received a postal note that there was a parcel to be picked up. It turned out to be a presentation pack of cheap bubbly with two glasses. Intended as a thank-you for the ten years work I had done for this particular ballet group I really didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the tawdry crassness in the Yin-Yang comparison of the two offerings.

Needless to say my feeling that this was a “Dear John” type message was realised after returning from the trip to find that without explanation or reasons I was to be elbowed aside as superfluous to this ensemble’s needs.

Having long observed this group and cognisant of their extraordinary ability to shoot themselves in the foot, this latest episode will no doubt end badly, too.

It’s fair to say that I was slowing down photographically and becoming less and less motivated by the dancers. It seems the capacity for collective effort is fast disappearing and as the “self” rules. To me that’s not interesting at all.

The revelation too, of seeing a lot of Aime’s Jules Dalou’s sculptures in both the Musee d’Orsay and in London’s Victoria and Albert has re-kindled a desire to return to sculpture.

Having long been impressed by his work as this early piece of mine indicates,  (inspired by one of his works in the NGV) I am slowly getting back into production.

There is also the influence of memories from both Wells and Exeter Cathedrals and the sculptures there, too.

And yes, my part in the bathroom renovation is complete just waiting for the splash-backs to be installed …so no pics till it’s fully finished.

Wombat Droppings

or Australia’s inexorable slide into fascism.

 Opposition leader Willy Shortstuff was recently nailed by a member of the public talking on his mobile phone whilst driving. Whack! A fine was issued for $425.
Two weeks later Ex ABC presenter but Liarbril, Sarah Henderson of the Canberra ruling rabble was filmed doing the same. Silence!

One staff member was sacked and three others suspended from Customs when they did a “random” search of  “Asbestos” Bishop arriving back from one of her overseas trips. This happened a week after this Foreign Minister (whom the Chinese think a fool) spent $30,000.00 of our taxes to fly herself and her current B/F via the RAAF from partying in Perth to return to Canberra. Again, silence. Although one of the more sane ex-pollies around, Tony Windsor got her measure when he opined that she was “…as loyal as the direction of the breeze.”

“Vichy” Abetz (Tasmanian Devil) and Greg “Addled” Sheridan, (History re-writer for “The-Ugly-American’s failing rag, The Oz) caused much hilarity when both exposed their collective wet dream of “Rabid-the-Hun” being returned to the front bench 

Presumably to eat raw onions

It turns out that pretend prime miniature, Malcon Turdball-Fop’s National Broadband Network is the dud that its critics indicated it would be. Seems that the copper wire between the two tin cans is “…not fit for purpose” and like I said at the time it will cost double and be a poorer system. Silence reigns about this agile innovation,too.

The ABC is to have a new boss….. c/o “The Ugly American”, Murdoch who apparently is happy to implement the IPA’s vision of privatising it. I think there’s a storm about to brew. Silence

“The-Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe” poster boy, Timmy “The-Twat- Freedom-Man” Wilson was recently impressing Palestinians with his intellect whilst on a junket with Chwissie "The-Whne and Perfect-Prat-of-a-Prefect,” Pyne and “Chopper/Kero Bath” Bishop. Palestinians thought them “..ill educated and rude;”  another inglorious chapter in Australia’s demise as a civilized nation under this rabble.

Cardinal, The Graceless, George "Pell-Pot"is too sick to travel from Rome to attend the Royal Commission into child abuse. Hmmm... nervous of his own crucifixion?

At a time when it has been announced that fully 1/3 of big companies pay no tax whatsoever, Fiscal Fool “The Drone” Morisson thinks that ripping Medicare up, raising the GST by 50%, slugging pensioners and cutting school funding is a good thing for the nation. The only bright part of this is that he is losing his hair faster than the economy is failing.
As actor and comedian Barry Humphries said on one of his early returns from Britain, "I want Australia to be the laughing stock of the world." Unfortunately his satire pales into insignificance compared to the reality of this Kafka-esquely incompetent ruling rabble.
There has never been in Australia's history  such a hate-filled, unimaginative, venal, mendacious, corrupt and Quisling, mongrel mob than the present parliament. 

The mongrels are going for broke; they want a fully privatised capitalist market economy in place before they ban elections, call a state of emergency and have the “Ugly American’s” sycophantic toady “Le Jongleur” Roskam installed as general manager… there are dark times ahead.

2016 will likely be the final chapter in Australia’s democracy unless the nation wakes up to what is happening.

Hoo-roo Possums,

Shane

A day with Catherine and Mozart.

Well, G’day Possums,

I’ve been a bit tardy with this blog lately …been working on the renovation which, as all building projects, is taking longer than anticipated.

 Wall panelling goes up next then there are in the final stages of tiling and the glass splash backs. Two more weeks should see it all complete.

Mrs Wombat and I took a jaunt to the “Big-Smoke” to have a look at the samples from The Hermitage in St Petersburg at the NGV that was all sort of decked out as a facsimile of the Catherine the Great’s Russian palace.

Catherine the Great, NGV

Drawings, paintings, sculpture, jewellery, topographic views, architectural drawings, Chinese object d’ art, furniture and ceramics made this sampling of masterpieces an exhibition to help whet your appetite for the real venue and the magnificent collection started by Empress Catherine in 1765.

 

NGV

Favourite of mine, Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin was there represented with the beautifully subtle “The Laundress.”  The harmonious tones enveloping all from the misted background woman hanging the laundry to the little boy pulling our eye forward with his ephemeral bubble and the central white of the freshly washed cloth all is studied and so very quiet. The composition too, is placed with care as an adjunct to the colour and tones.  As his contemporary critic Cochin said, Chardin could be “…. a dangerous neighbour.”

 

The Laundress, JBS Chardin

This painting has a version in the Stockholm Nationalmuseum. The cats eyes are open and looking at the viewer and the tonalities seem darker with more contrast…..  it would be interesting to visit it.

Then Perroneau’’s “ Boy with Book” Another delightful rococo piece of “sensibilitie.”  The muted tones in this seem to reflect Perroneau’s interest in pastel painting and his superb drawing skills.

Perroneau, Boy with Book

The immediacy present in Anthony Van Dyck’s “Family Portrait” subjects is stunning. The family could still be at the sitting their presence is so affective. Each personality, and its individual character is rendered so beautifully and drawn so articulately that the diamond lozenge composition seems less rigid in its control.

A. Van Dyck Family Portrait

Then, mentor to Van Dyck is Peter Paul Rubens’ “St Paul” looking as intense as Rasputin.

And look at that hand literally popping off the canvas, the subtle counter-swing of the head and the shoulders to enliven the subject in the composition where the light is as much a compositional element as is the palpable space behind the subject.

PP Rubens St Paul

All of these works had glorious paint handling, as did the Jacob Jordaens seen in this detail of “Saints Paul and Barbara” where textures are real; silk is silk, hair is hair and flesh is flesh.

Detail: J. Jordaens

Then there was the C18th Chinese silver-ware of Filigree Silver, gold and enamel and utterly exquisite workmanship.

But let’s not forget the millions of poor serfs who made all this possible for Catherine to collect.

A fine show that was followed by a very ordinary dinner (Italian…sort of…) at Southbank and then off  to the concert hall for the Melbourne Symphony and Choir to perform Mozart’s, Requiem….. that was brilliant!

Wombat Droppings

 The chronicle of Australia’s inexorable slide into fascism.

"AUSTRALIA will not yield to blackmail by pregnant asylum seekers," says Non-Immigration facsimile, Peter “Dodo” Dutton.

Journalist may have to pay $8,000.00 to visit our refugee concentration camps on Manus or Nauru and Gillian Triggs, Human Rights Commissioner is banned from visiting but “The Ugly American,” Murdoch’s scribe Chris Kenny (with many long standing contacts with the Liarbrils) can get in with a Border-Farce escort and photographer to harass the said woman.

 Let’s not forget the Hazara refugee Khodayar Amini who self immolated out of fear that Border Farce were looking for him and might deport him back to Afghanistan.

Sieg Heil, Dodo and Border Farce!

Joe “Eleventy-Cereal-Toyota Killer” Hockey, failed Treasurer has left the house.  His final speech was as useless and as pointless and as forgetable as his 19 years in parliament.

Good riddance!

Rabid-the-Hun, failed Prime Miniature, Health, Workplace Relations ministers, failed concrete plant manager, failed journalist and failed seminarian is putting himself forward as a public speaker. This is very odd, as Australia’s experience of his public speaking would indicate that  he had no talent for this either and as he usually only uttered three word slogans his proposed fee indicates he wants $13,333.33 per word.

Tongue Flicking will be free.

New pretend Treasurer “The Drone” Morrison, provides misleading figure to bolster his Xtian (well if you call Hillsong Xtian) act of slashing social services.

Why should today be different?

The Ruling Rabble has suggested that children 14 years of age be subject to control orders.

“The effect of a control order may range from house arrest without access to electronic communications, to a restriction on the people you can associate with. The order can remain in effect for up to 12 months. 

It can be obtained in a secret hearing about which the subject knows nothing at all, until they are arrested and served with the order. And even then they are not to be told what the evidence was that was used against them. 

So if someone made a mistake, the subject of the order won't know and they can't find out because they are not allowed to see the evidence that was used against them.” 

(From Julian Burnside’s spray on this)

So you think I’m being silly about our slide into fascism?

Three eminent Climate scientist are invited to have talk with Pollies about their subject… talks a gazumped into a slanging match “debate” when three non-entities from “The Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe” asylum (the IPA) earn their 30 pieces of silver from The Ugly American, Murdoch, The Biggest Miner, Rinehart, The Cancer Company, Phillip Morris and probably the Koch Bros.

New Prime Miniature, Malcon Turnbullfop is hereby ordered to note that this country is staying “far right.” 

Liarbril “woman,” Concetta Terrazzo-Pomidora or something or other, opined similarly echoing Vichy Abetz’s chagrin at Malcon looking dangerously centrist.

Rabid-the-Hun has offered to pay for the marble table broken at his sacking party. He still expects the taxpayer to foot the bill of $7,000.00 for the booze though.

Hoo-roo Petals,

Shane

PS: this is now being stored as Meta Data by our fascist ruling rabble.

Prado, PUPS and Puerile Government

Shane Wombat with Prado pictures

G'day Petals,

Mrs Wombat and No2 daughter and self all took a jaunt to the National Gallery of Victoria t'other day to have a look at Italian masters from the Prado, Madrid.
An exhibition which contained a variety of surprises and oddly enough, parallels for this week's "Wombat droppings".

Pavi Sculptures and Children
There were in the Federation Court, sculptures.... well very colourful and big stuffed Polar Bear toys, that children of all ages were engaged by ... which was one of those odd parallels I mentioned...

Photographer with Pavi sculpture
....whimsical, one-liners and as said, the children enjoyed them but reflecting on them after viewing the Prado works a vague relationship to Australia's present social state and the religious iconography in the Prado show became apparent 

Italian Masters from the Prado, NGV
Although there was a very small sign and graphic meaning "No Photographs" on entering as my camera was in plain sight and no-one said anything .....I assumed it was mainly to deter people using flash.. which occasioned an amusing exchange...  standing next to a woman who was pointing her mobile at a work I said quietly, "I hope you're not going to use flash." "No,"  she replied as quietly, "It's turned off." "You saw the sign on the way in then?" I added,  "Of course." she deadpanned and proceeded to take her pic.
 I took few shots in the exhibition ...who want's a "scene"?

Pieta: Crespi
This work was one of my favourites. Lively paint handling, real weight of the figure of the dead Christ allied to the sense of Mary's supporting or lifting with the very expressive faces; and like others in this show an unusual composition that in this case rests on repeated squares within a subtle pyramid. Perhaps to avoid the liveliness that Baroque diagonals would have produced rather than this almost "Nature Morte."

Prado, Titian, Phillip 2
Titian is well represented and in the earlier works the influences of Bellini and the Florentine criticisms of the Venetian predilection for colour and paint handling rather than drawing as the basis of their art is very apparent.  The armor in this is beautifully handled but the portrait is almost too truthful of this arrogant, distrustful monarch and gives the work a hint of what is to come when Goya represents the Royalty of his times.

Doubting Thomas: Stom,
Matthius Stom (Stomer) presents another wonderful composition of a diamond within a circle and an assured hand.

Prado, Tiepolo
Tiepolo's son Domenico worked closely with his father and this is apparent in the "Crowning of Thorns" where the figure in the shadow on the left probably appears twice in Giambattista's "Banquet of Cleopatra"  at the NGV. Wonderful drawing again but the little work to the right "A New World" was a gem, a slice of Venetian life that perhaps signalled that had Domenico Tiepolo been born the the C20th he may well have been a Photo-Journalist.

Hugo Shaw
Then I was watching the real deal, Hugo Shaw an artist from Adelaide drawing  the people opposite him in fine fashion and a happy, willing conversationalist, too.

The NGV for those who don't know it, has a water wall behind the arch of the main entrance and I took a few shots as we were leaving....

Water Wall, NGV
A show well worth the effort of attending particularly as the works with most gravitas were not the religious pieces but the pieces like the 

Ribera: "Touch", the small Venetian Scenes by Tiepolo, and in the details of the cloth in Titian's Salome's dress and the pure exuberance and deftness of the paint handling in the late Baroque works. In contrast, the formulaic religious pieces became rather a lesson in why Monty Python humour exists...and why the monsters in Dr Who are as they are and have such resonance.... which brings us to 

WOMBAT DROPPINGS  or low-down Oz Politics.

The Palmer United Party or PUPS have been making merry with "Rabbutt-the-Hun's" excuse for a budget by inviting them into the kennel and giving them fleas. Demonstrating what an incompetent rabble these Liarbrils really were and are. 

With Our Second Biggest Miner and PUPS Leader, Clive, hogging so much of the limelight it has caused Nick "What's-my-Next-Stunt" Xenephon (SA, Right-Leaning Independent) and the "The Human Torpedo" to come down suffering Attention Seekers Deficit Syndrome. and doing whatever they can to get their faces in front of a camera and in Thorpe's case for a $400,000 fee. 

Both Mrs Wombat and I announce that we will both "come out" for a lot less... negotiations are now open. 

After years of accusing the Gillard-Rudd regimes of dysfunctional incompetence, stupidity, economic wantonness, arrogance and other sins, it should come as no surprise that was a case of "pot-calling-kettle-black-bum! "

They have turned as I always thought they would, into the very nasty, venal  incompetents they were in opposition and pathologically accused everyone else of being.

Their abject cruelty to the asylum seekers is making Australia a pariah in world affairs.

Their climate denial stance and soon to be legislated removal of Carbon Pricing with no effective Climate policy to replace it has Australia a laughing stock in the world.

Their final destruction of Australian manufacturing must have all those who take our raw materials laughing behind our backs,  particularly the Japanese, who 30 years ago were wanting this as an outcome for Australia.  

We, in their wishes were to be nothing but a hole in the ground and a source of raw food.  Now we have this rabble of a Government handing it to them and then praising their military of WW2.  

Shades of "Pig-Iron" Bob.... this mongrel lot is an embarrassment. 

(The only thing they're consistently good at)

Matthius "The Conman-of-HorseShite" Coormann has deregulated financial services so that the financial advisors DO NOT have to have the best interests of their clients at heart.

And they waste $60,000,000,000.00 on a Royal commission or two when the Commonwealth Bank has fleeced its customers of Hundreds of Millions of Dollars but this doesn't warrant investigation... guess who gets funded by CBA?

There's a FB page titled "The Worst PM Australia's Had".... of which I thought initially, that's a bit strong... but now... it's not strong enough. What is taking place is the destruction of democracy in this country being led by "The-Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe", The Institute of Public Affairs the thought-bubble tank for this rabble....Minions of Murdoch "The Ugly American" and Gina Rinehart (our Biggest Miner) and Tobacco companies.... we are in interesting times petals...

Into the Abyss...Night Movement


Cheers, Petals,
Shane