The Art of Lifting and Leaning...

Shane between the Lifter and the Leaner

G'day Possums,

Mrs Wombat and I toddled along to the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery the other day to see the  finalists of the 2016 Archibald Prize.

This year the prize was awarded to Louise Hearman for her portrait titled "Barry." 

Unusually, being behind glass has added to the diagonal depth this finely handled depiction of satirist and artist Barry Humphries. 

Barry, Louise Hearman

A work, like many in this show, of  modest proportions and it's C17th Dutch heritage playing a Baroque space, to project the head  to the front of the picture plane where it is isolated by dual light sources as on a darkened stage. Wearing  a white coat and shirt belying his more outrageous characters you are allowed to concentrate on the slightly bemused but intense look Humphries returns to the viewer.  The bare board in the "unfinished " lower parts of the figure seem to indicate the artifice of both Humphries and the artists professions.

Annie Smithers, Daniel Butterworth

The title for this blog entry came from juxtaposition of the over life-size and adjacent portraits of Annie Smithers and Josh Frydenberg.  Smithers is the chef/owner of du Fermier restaurant just up the road from our burrow in Trentham; and in admirably succinct and honest utterance declared to artist Daniel Butterworth that "...the bottom line for her was that all her hard work ends up down the toilet." 

No such profundity from Frydenberg, though. Smugly comfortable depicted in his blue-tied banality, Camillo De Luca's portrait aims in its materials of charcoal and wood with copper frame to indicate his ministerial position of Resources and Energy with a white halo apparently symbolising his outstanding achievements. Just what these achievements are, I can't think which is perhaps why it's so small. He, Frydenberg, belongs to the ruling rabble which is systematically destroying the country's economy and degrading its social contract so effectively that we are becoming a pariah nation. This "rising star" of the Liarbril Party is painted on two sheets of plywood making a square which not only approximates his dullness but by being split down the middle is probably closer to the truth of his real aspirations than the artist intends.

Polymath, Camillo De Luca

The rawness of the ply was to signify a work in progress though I think it more indicative of the conceptual and policy vacuum that is forcing Australia into the abyss. That he considers Frydenberg a Polymath is  more cynical than I can bear. This is  a person whose public function is to support the most nasty, brutish, right-wing rabble this land has ever seen and whose ex-IPA members even advocate dismembering the arts and stopping any funding for it. A place now where any frank advice is met with being attacked, sacked or publicly denigrated and practising the near criminality of rorting entitlements is the order of the day. 

Smithers on the other hand, actually produces food. She prepares food and feeds people. She is depicted streaming with her own sweat and the steaming  rivulets of the kitchen and is seated in the exhausted quiet at the end of a very long day.... whilst mentally preparing for the next. 
Unlike the "Leaner" Frydenberg,  Smithers' is a "Lifter" whose productivity is real, not just "spin."  "du Fermier" 42 High St Trentham  Ph: (03) 5424 1634. French Garden to plate, excellent food but be prepared to book well ahead.

Wandering through the gallery later we came across Patricia Piccinini's  "Graham" but the surreality was not the film prop sculpture but the people standing around listening into head phones.

Plastic Arts

One more to finish off,  Alice by William Rhodes a lovely little quiet piece of intimacy.

Alice by William Rhodes

Hoo-Roo petals,

Shane

....are we there yet?

Shane in a Hole

G'day Petals,

It's a truism that five minutes into a long car journey children will often ask, "Are we there yet?" And there's an old metaphor saying that if you're making a situation worse you are "...digging a hole for yourself," and that the best way to minimize the problem is to stop digging.

But this is Australia, in which the ruling rabble Mk2 is digging us all into social and economic oblivion.

It has come to light that these genii who tout themselves as the best of economic managers actually fall way short of their myth-making hyperbole.

In 2021 Qatar will make royalties of around $26.6 billion from shipping some 100 million cubic metres of LNG. Australia on the other hand, shipping around the same volume, will receive $800 million. Even after the Henry Tax review of 2010 warned that The resource Rent tax "...fails to collect an appropriate and constant share of rents from... projects"  ...and that... "the uplift rates are over-compensated for..."   Now, let's hear again what fine models of economic management they are.

Trentham Falls

A new chapter in the race to the bottom has also been seen with Senators MacDonald and O'Sullivan reprising the thuggish, boorish untermenschen roles last performed when the duo attempted to pillory Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs in a past senate enquiry.

This time their victim was Solicitor General, Justin Gleeson who not only had the temerity to disagree with the Ruling Rabble's faux Attorney General, Senator Bookshelves Brandis but also point out to him that he couldn't agree to changes in the law without consultation.

 Gleeson, also objected1/, to Brandis using his earlier opinion – that a particular bill would withstand high court challenge – when the bill had been changed since that time and 2/ , that Bookshelves be the only person who, first, should be asked for permission before anyone sought advice of the Solicitor General.

This is the definitive  Brandis: an oily, slippery, mendacious and dictatorial bully-boy from the Deep North whose overweening ambition is best seen in his scant regard for the national good and his corralling all power to himself.

It's interesting that Brandis is so inept both politically and as Attorney General. He not only keeps getting caught out but in the ensuing fracas of his own making he serves only to further highlight  the unbelievable incompetence of the Ruling Rabble Mk2.

Trentham Falls

"So, we artists are not “legitimate students.”
Our profession will not “benefit Australia economically”.
You want to “encourage students to study”….by taking away opportunities for the next Hugh Jackman, Jackie Weaver or Tony Sheldon, to name a few?"

Writing in his blog,   AbStar921 – Musical Critic    takes acute aim at un-education minister Flappy-Head Birmingham's proposal that the best way to have an "innovative and agile" nation is to 1st, make Uni fees so high only the wealthy could attend and 2nd to make every course business/work related... so... 
F***k the Arts! 

Taking a leaf from Pastie Paterson's IPA inspired drivel, Flappy-Head exposed his truly Neanderthal lack of cognisance of culture as the basis of civilization because, as he sees it,  there's "no economic benefit in the arts."

I did warn years ago Petals that the Huns were at the Gates.  http://shanewombat.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/viewing-nice-things-and-huns-at-gates.html           
Well, they've well and truly arrived.

Trentham

And speaking of Holes...ex-Maj. Gen. James Molan architect of the "Turn-Back-The-Boats" policy last week exposed his... right between his ears.

With a truly disturbing Goebbels-like performance, patronisingly batting away or ignoring any dissenting or alternative opinion, Molan claimed that even though he hadn't been there, our refugee concentration camps on Nauru and Manus "....you will find the most extraordinary medical facilities that most Australian towns would give their right arm for.....”  and, "...we are so far ahead of refugee camps throughout the world that it is not funny.”

He is one who will never admit his view is not the most considered and correct one. His world view is, it seems, is the only view and one part of his rationale over the Iraq war (and ignoring the false reasoning for going there in the first place,) was that, "there were more Iraqi's alive when I left  because of what I did than there otherwise would have been."

We can only be thankful perhaps that this blinkered vision of aggression was an unsuccessful senate candidate for the ruling rabble in 2016.

It's a pity the Ruling Rabble Mk2  can't concentrate on running the country instead of attacking Conroy's replacement in the senate.. oohh, hang on, they are.... into the ground!

Hoo-roo Possums,

Shane

seeing an implosion.

G'day Petals,

The house of cards is imploding but more of that later in Wombat Droppings.







Mrs Wombat and I took a little trip t'other day to Trentham... they have a small market there on the weekend so we ambled around with the locals sampling the produce and having a gander.

" The Cosmo" burnt down quite a few years back which made a real hole in the town's economy but it has since been repaired and other places have opened and it is quite a thriving town again.

One of the appealing aspects of Trentham is that for me at least, it has a definite Australian country town feeling about it.
It would not be hard to imagine characters from a Norman Lindsay novel like "Redheap" coming down the street.

Then there were the dogs: so many in fact, that I suspect that the market is only an excuse for the dogs to catch up and socialize.

There are even facsimiles of them which confused some.

Well, it is in the Wombat State Forest, after all...

...with some essential reading....

...at the Two Fat Wombats.... casually ambling along the verandah roof...
...as you do.

There are good food places Like La Fermiere, (bookings essential) The Redbeard and the Trentham Bakeries, The Coliban, and the Plough Hotel as well as the Cosmo. Three or four good quality Galleries and a pottery; bookshops and clothing stores make it an interesting place to visit and browse through.

Although this venerable structure has seen better days the bracing suggests that someone is attempting to resuscitate it.

Trentham, worth  a visit.

And lastly my flyer for the Ballarat International Foto Biennale. August 22 till September 9.



Wombat Droppings
the chronicle of Australia's slide from egalitarianism into fascism

In his political ineptness, Rabid-the-Hun has shown us with startling clarity just how confused, biased and dishonest the Liarbril “message” is.

One the one hand we will need either a plebiscite or referendum on “marriage equality” but not on sending more troops to bomb Syria.

Royal Commissions can be ordered into past Prime Ministers but not into pollies rorting the system or bankers fleecing their clients.

He maintains our elected representatives cannot make some decisions but hospital / medical, education, environmental and pension funding can be stripped at an ideological political whim.

He pretends he is “Protecting our Borders” by maintaining concentration camps for refugees but with the Pacific Trade Deal the ruling rabble are trading our real sovereignty to China.

His Catholicism will always have priority over and above the national interest and his “middle of the pack” on climate action is not that, it is just very, very mediocre.

The backers of Rabid-the-Hun and his “intellectual” wing, “The-Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe”  (aka the IPA) must be sorely disappointed that their chosen one turned out to be a false “profit”. He has not only failed to facilitate their rancid agendas but has also glaringly exposed their real motives and their immaturely selfish theoretical underpinnings.

The real pity is … from where is the real vision for this nation to come?

The body language of the ruling rabble in the corridors and on the floor of parliament seems to be one of sullen resignation. They have been chastened by the public disgust at Bronny Pompadour-Kero’s disgraceful excesses, rattled by their leaders backward thinking both on Climate Targets and marriage equality and now are faced with such embarrassing evidence of their hubris as their Cap’ns pick of Royal Commissioner, Dyson Heydon, has been shown to be biased, partial and conflicted.

They will not “name and shame” tax dodging multi-nationals saying that the ATO will sort it but then the ATO has been stripped of 1400 workers and can’t reasonably cope with the load.

There is now a real sense that people have “turned off”.

Rabid-the-Hun announces what is really for State jurisdiction, a “war on Ice” and it sounds hollow and meaningless, “Eleventy” Hockey brays in parliament about jobs and growth but is only going through the motions as he nervously counts down the days to when General Motors, Ford and Toyota close up shop (something he is responsible for) and suddenly there are 500,000 more unemployed swelling the dole queues and there is precious little manufacturing left to soak up the rising tide of despair.

Kelly Shaddupp-a-ya-face O' Dwyer.... on QandA prattles on and on and on and on …and finally comes back to the original point having spent 5 minutes boringly embellishing a slogan!

This ruling rabble is so full of piss and wind it’s no wonder that they’re so dehydrated and breathless.

Hoo-roo Possums,

Shane.

..remembering when...

...we used to think of ourselves as fair and tolerant and civil … you may now laugh…..or cry. That’s at least one common choice we have left to us…. unprivatised.

G’day Possums.

Well what a year…eh?

Some favourites from shoots and outings, various….

Garden of St Erth

Frogmore,  Trentham.  Prairie Garden

Once when young

Erin, BTA

"Discus Thower" Bendigo Fine Art Gallery

BTA

                          Wombat Droppings

or The Chronicle of a Country Sliding inexorably into Feudal Fascism.

 Many moon’s ago I commented on the policy paucity of this rabble now in government.

Except for the100 thought-bubbles published by  “The-Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe,” (aka the IPA) there was nothing you could actually see.

At the time I likened “Coots” wish-list to the rantings in “Mein Kampf” as being a guide to what we could expect if the Liarbrils’ won office.

Sadly this is now true.

Sadder, is the fact that having spent most of their time making up three word slogans and lying through their teeth about the failings of the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd regimes and not making any policy they also lied their way into government.

Thus, with no coherent policy idea that had been put to the public, Prime Miniature Rabid-the-Hun and his rabble immediately began implementing the “Coot’s-With Queer-Ideas…” fascist, free-market agenda.

Unhappy Campers in Melbourne

This has had unintended (for them) consequences.

Having spent three years coaching the public in the incompetence of government with their three word catch phrases and saying how the “…Adult’s Were Back in Charge…” they were mangled in the Senate, attempting to allow everyone “the right to be a bigot,”  excoriated widely when telling us “.. the Age of Entitlement is Over” whilst rorting the perks system to a huge degree and bringing down a budget that whacked the poorer ends of society to the benefit of the wealthy and were then reported throughout the world as the Village-Idiots at Davos in Switzerland.

They have had one achievement though: they’re the first government in Australian political history not to have had a “honey-moon” period. Immediately they gained power they began to go ”On-the-nose” with the public and have continued that downward slide ever since.

When you hear dyed-the-wool conservatives bemoaning the stupidity of the leader, Rabid-the-Hun and the corruption that seems endemic ( bye-bye, Arfur “Da Spiv” Sinodinas) throughout the party ;  when people are beginning to talk of bringing out the tumbrels and finance commentators (hardly ever raging “lefities”) are not only querying the veracity of the figures put up but also the economic consequences of this rabbles’ actions you know things are getting very interesting.

When the lies keep coming and the statements are more stupid and the rorting keeps being uncovered and when the manufacturing sector is being demolished and unemployment is rising and education is being bowdlerised with “Happy-Clappy-Born-Again’s” preaching myth not fact in primary schools and University is only for the wealthy and climate policy has gone the way of the Dodo you know the country is in very deep trouble.

With our Medi-Care system under siege and the one decent public broad-caster and news service eviscerated even the die-hard supporters of this lot are beginning to wonder if it was really meant to be like this and what will Australia end up looking like?

One horrible thing is certain: these Opus Dei and IPA led mongrels will not let up until they have destroyed every social service and reduced the place to a feudal system.
They will not allow discussion.
They will certainly not entertain dissent. They have no use for a civil society.

This is a government solely for big business.
It is not a government for the nation and as it has lied its way into power has no legitimacy.

Opposition to these ideological mongrels has to be as brutal as what they are meting out to what used to be a great nation.  Democracy in Australia is in a real crisis.

Hoo-Roo, petals,

It’s going to be an interesting year

Shane

It’s Xmas after all.

G'day Possums... well it's not really...

Shane, Xmas 2014

Man Haron Monis murders two in tragic finale to a 16 hour siege in a Sydney café and sparks more race-hate from Xtians.

Press and TV turn it into a 24 hour "reality" entertainment stimulating faux emotion to be piled on faux emotion for bogan empathy justification. 

It reminded me of scenes from Ray Bradbury's Sci-Fi novel, "Fahrenheit 451"as it was letting loose the media Right-Wing trolls spouting about too restrictive gun laws, Towel-Heads and Muzzies and Death cults and those peculiar "Tea-Party" values.

"Little Johnny" Howard had certainly prised open the can of worms with "Tampa," Reith's "Children Overboard" and his refusal to deal with the nascent racism of Pauline Hanson. We are a morally diminished nation with these Liarbril fools.  Now we have the present incompetent incumbent, Rabid-the-Hun getting  facts about the Sydney Cafe  killer wrong in an interview... which sort of begs the questions: who was this nutter being protected by and why? And who in the NSW judiciary was being "leant-on" by ASIO? 

Proving it really is the “Silly Season,” ”The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) has just released it's new fiction,  "Climate Change: The Facts 2014".

Edited by A Moron, oops, Moran and with contributions from highly opiniated people like Andrew” Blot-on-the-Landscape” Bolt, blogger Anthony Watts, and climate denialists Ian Plimer, Richard Lindzen and Robert Carter and others in lieu of scientific experts in climate, it is sure to be an eye-watering, side splitting frolic through the Parallel Universes they inhabit.

Daylesford

The "Coot's-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe" always do write a very interesting range of Sci-Fi.

I assume this $25.00 pamphlet is to book-end their other near best-seller "Voodoo Economic Principles of The Free-for-All Market?"

It does cap off a very successful year for the “Coots” though, as the chief Office Boy, Rabid-the-Hun and his money box holder Joe “Cereal/Toyota-Killer” Hockey bludgeon Oz from a relatively egalitarian state to nastily free-market oligarchy.

It’s a pity the OECD don’t agree, questioning just where Oz is headed and seems doubtful of its success. http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/oecd-slams-australian-budget-measures-close-monitoring-required-20141216-1285ip.html#ixzz3M7LAukXS

Daylesford

Hell-bent on destroying his nation on the myths of his mis-apprehended Catholicism, Rabid-the-Hun’s destruction of  our cultural diversity well suits his limited imagination.

He then goes on a rant when his CoS is attacked by his own ministers calling it a gender attack of unprecedented proportions…

Daylesford

Ohhhh …Dear Rabid-the-Hun, do you think we should call Ms Credlin "Barren" as your lot did Ms Gillard?

Do you think, Rabid-the-Hun, we should call Ms Credlin a "Witch" as your lot did to Ms Gillard and be burnt at the stake for her influence?

Rabid -the-Hun, should your party be lining up to slit Ms Credlin's throat as your Senator Ciobo said of Ms Gillard on national TV?

And one other thing, Rabid-the-Hun, do you think you might apologise to Ms Gillard for your relentless hypocritical attacks on her as a liar over ONE issue when have broken so many more?

Trentham

Poor Peta "Bloody Idiot" Credlin. Commissar to a lying nincompoop. Wrangler to a hideously inept Environment minister; who cant get her own make-over shots in Vogue like "Asbestos-Death Stare" Julie and who has to deal with the mangled English of “Horse-Shite" Coormann. With the others in cabinet (unmentioned due to space requirements) as dismally untalented to deal with, she must feel like she's running a kinder full of ADHD / Asperger toddlers... I mean have some pity..... or perhaps we should just revel in the schadenfreude as a little bit of yuletide joy.

Trentham

The world lives within us, we live within the world. By damaging the living planet we have diminished our existence. (George Monbiot)

Hoo-Roo Petals,

Shane