A Rococo Miasma of Whimsy

G'day Possums,

Art imitates life and what better at imitating the flatness of current Oz life than photography; so Mrs Wombat and I toddled off up the road t'other day to the eighth Ballarat International Foto Biennale.

Art also reflects the mores and practices that manifest societally as culture and the contemporary parallels exhibited are ominous in the extreme.

We parked opposite the Mining Exchange and given that that venue usually displays a cornucopia of imagery, headed there...oops, there was only Fiona Foley's "Who are these strangers and where are they going?"  A lack of labels made one look harder for context and deciding that we were looking at an installation utilising objects, video and photographs, proceeded.

Fiona Foley: "Who are these strangers and where are they going?"

Reality #1. Although Network Noine will not admit it paid The Red Terror from the Deep north to disrespect the indigenous custodians of Uluru by climbing their sacred site.....particularly after her insult turned to farce when, A/ she didn't have the bottle to go up much further than 40 metres , B/ couldn't walk down and had to, more aptly and toddler-like, slide down on her derriere, it still provided this repulsive woman all the publicity she craved.

 Reality#2 Defending their traditional Gomeroi country from mining, a family is suing Faux Environment Minister, Real Estate Ley after she rejected their heritage protection bid in favour of a controversial Chinese coal project. Acknowledging the project could cause "mental health impacts … a sense of dislocation, displacement and dispossession," but said by way of digital salute, the social and economic value of the project took priority.

So, invasion, dispossession, manipulation, slavery, despoliation and arrogant acceptance are the theme but installation is theatrical and apart from the ominously flattened midden "runway" of oyster shells leading to the empty tent this exhibit was too far spread in this huge space to be effective; and for my taste the staged photo's too prosaic and really, pretty ordinary and in some cases "cute," (Black KKK ???) to be much other than presenting a "very worthy" exhibit.

And then popping into the Central Highlands Waterworks historical exhibit next was a trifle surreal .....viewing all those Victorian workers and worthies digging up Wadawurrong country with such gusto.....

....and followed in turn by sublime Israeli arrogance with "Soldiers" where Adi Nes makes banal cartoonish pastiches of old master works and themes like "The Pieta" and "The Last Supper".....Haw, Haw, nudge, nudge.. wink, wink...you xtians...

but he provides at least some reality by showing four soldiers pissing on what I assume is most likely,  "occupied territory."

 

Adi Nes: Soldiers

Reality# 3. Coming into the open and phoning the Ruling Rabble's private militia Deputy Plod Gaughan, Obersturmfuhrer  Pezzi Pezzullo congratulated his AFP bovver-boys for their teamwork in raiding Annika Smethurst's undies drawer and said "Well done, tomorrow is another day." By which, he obviously meant that the successful rehearsal at A.S's meant "go-go-go" for invading the ABC the next day!

Obersturmfuhrer Pezzi thought negative commentary about his congratulatory epistle to fellow professionals was not meant to indicate "a supposed attitude to press freedom" ....whatever that is!

Reality #4 Its been a very quiet anniversary for Scummo, The Happy-Clapper, Liar from the Shire, Hypocrite and Pentacostal Prime Miniature ... as he has done nothing in 12 months worthy of  celebration.

Visiting Timor-Leste, Scummo assiduously avoided the demonstrations against the secret star chamber proceeding against the whistle blower and his lawyer who "blew" Oz's perfidy in bugging the Timor Gap oil treaty talks.

Also playing down this episode from his taxpayer funded retreat in London was Bookshelves Brandis, who knew that by proceeding when Plastic Attorney General he was dragging Little-Johnny, Fishnets-that-Batter and himself through the mire of their own corruption and obviously sees the Unxtian Porter's stupidity in not understanding even that in his slavish roll-over to Potato-Head's fascist vanity and fantasies as even poorer judgment than the event itself.

The New York times allegedly called these works "shrewd send-ups of the pervasive macho, military presence in Israeli life...".... now, who says the American's don't understand irony?

There were the Watchtowers dotted down Sturt St, the Missiles in Police Lane, Boy-o Xmas cards at The Forge and the Blind Radius series Part2, Dolls in the Trade Union and photographs of dioramas downstairs there too... Gosh, If I had have known I was making art by photographing these for a children's book I would have entered, too!

http://shanewombat.blogspot.com/2019/03/legacys-and-how-cat-got-belled.html

Portraits in The Town Hall were lacklustre in the main... and Petals, neither Mrs Wombat nor I were moved enough to even vote in the public choice. 

Consuelo Cavaniglia: I came Back, Toward Myself

The Bauhaus was interesting although it was a pity Ruff hadn't given a nod to the influence of  Kandinsky and in  the overall curation, acknowledgment at least to  Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, particularly his work "Vision in Motion."

Zoe Croggon

 In talking earlier about the nature of the works, they're ominous for the very reason that they hold no "bite", they're almost all "throw-away-lines," disinterestedly whimsical in only noting an event or action without serious passion or involvement and seemingly produced for an audience of jaded over-sophisticated tastes and of the lightest touch. "Rococo"?

The curation similarly seemed haphazard and uneven, aesthetically unsure whether it was exhibiting sculpture, installation art or photography and I'll not be seeing the "show-stopper" because I thought conceptual art's "process over form and content" died in the last century's early seventies and besides, "Where's Wally?"  holds little interest after the first time.

But for the rest ....there's always tomorrow.... to coin a phrase....

Hoo-roo Petals,

Shane.

...to the Fringe Once More and Other Journeys.

G’day Petals,

 we’ve been around the “Fringe” shows  of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale again. 

Things begin to blur into one another with so much to see but thankfully the venue at Boah Organic, (100 Bridge Mall, Bakery Hill) has refurbished its upstairs as "Vox Populi" Art and was hosting a number of people so we saw a lot in this single venue. 

(check them out on Facebook or email them for particulars of renting the gallery space, 

E: voxpopuliart@yahoo.com.au )

Mark Hoffman, Boah Organic

On the ground floor were these  fascinating amalgams titled "360x180" jewel-like representations of landscape in ultra fisheye focal length.

Michelle Winsor, Boah Organic

then on the stairs a  veritable curiosity shop of memories and their evocation through time..

Richard White, Boah Organic

to the first room with these very traditional Film and Darkroom produced landscapes

Denise Martin, Boah Organic.

followed by these large portraits and their attendant series of shots in a small booklet below

Kerry Pryor, Boah Organic

These works gave me problems. As a recording for a aid organization, fine...but placing them in an personal exhibition context... hmmm... ?

Mira Krulik, Boah Organic

Some very cool Rothko-esque minimalism ....but lacking what painting excels in, touch! Even when the Field and Minimalists sought to depersonalise their works of gesture, the human touch still made live play to the senses. 
Perhaps photography has achieved their goal instead?

Marcus Thomson, Boah Organic

Making noise in a stark space and arid plane...

Daniel Kneebone, Boah Organic

One of  photography's wonderful attributes is that is makes you see things so much better....and sometimes that is very much NOT what you need to make mystery and fantasy allure work.

So we wandered up to the Bean Barn for a Coffee and to check my works... there have been nice positive noises

Lawrence Winder, Bean Barn

 ...and then across to the George Lane way to see..

Raquel Betiz  - George Hotel laneway

Four mellifluous works ... really worth a look....
 and then further up the road to ...

Craig Wetjen,   Fairbanks Eye Gallery 


Where the primacy detail and depth of field is fully understood and  utilised in beautifully lit narratives.

Effie Vouyoukas, Such n Such

nice works cluttered to oblivion..... more next week... there are still two more weeks of the  Biennale to run...

Wombat Droppings 

or the chronicle of Australia's slide from egalitarianism to Fascism.

Remember when this ruling rabble "celebrated" their first 50 days?

They must have been aware then that all the muck they'd thrown at Labor was coming back to bite them... all those phrases like, incompetence, dysfunctional, disunity, economic vandalism, lack of infrastructure, unemployment, great big taxes. To which at their two year mark they have added shadow boxing, police state, corruption and extensive crony-ism.

What a mess they are leaving.

OK, we have the concentration camps, the only independent media source under severe attack, unions are under judicial attack, freedom of speech is being curtailed, we have a new black-shirt Para-Military with extraordinary powers to question and detain, laws are being promulgated to deprive, at the minister's whim, a person of their citizenship, lawful protest is being legislated against.

When are the infirm, aged, handicapped and mentally deficient going to be euthanized for the sake of the budget emergency?

“Abbott's decision not to have a deposits tax on banks undermines his own Treasurer, who privately agrees with the idea of pricing free public insurance and eliminating moral hazards.

This only reinforces the impression the Liberals are a divisive, clueless bunch of amateurs that struggle with rational action.”

 financialreview on Facebook

The Abbott Government is moving to replace the board of the National Disability Insurance Scheme by placing an ad for the board's jobs in The Australian Financial Review without informing the current directors.
The government has been trying for some time to persuade some NDIS board members to leave early, arguing this will allow a gradual transition of board members, rather than a complete changeover.

Another method in their arsenal of tricks to destroy anything that looks like social policy.

Why is it that every time Billy Short-stuff makes a quip/ riposte about Rabid-the-Hun’s mongrel lot, I wince?

The ruling rabble are making so many gaffes in their desperation to A/ look like there is some governance happening and B/ that they are relevant and C/ as a distraction from the growing national shambles, that it’s easy to send them up. Except, Short-stuff never seems to nail these mongrels to the wall…every time…every single time he misses the point, every-single –bloody-time!

I wonder whether: !/ it is hubris or: 2/ just a manifestation of their awful realisation that they're in such a policy vacuum hole and lack any talent to deal with what's ailing the nation that all that is left to them is to act like recalcitrant schoolchildren disrupting a class to "cover" for their abysmal stupidity, or :3/ They really are as thick as two short planks?

Just watched Leigh "Hissy-Fit" Sales allow Rabid-the-Hun to dismember what was left of his mortally wounded ruling rabble. If he had been cogent in his right-wing and fascist views one may have been hateful, but this interview showed him as a bumbling, incoherent dissembler who is, like the rest of the rabble he leads totally clueless about running this nation and where, in this interview, all you could feel watching this pathetic thug was sorrow for the nation and its future.

Prior to a presser, Dodo Dutton cracks an inappropriate “aside” about Nations having water lapping at their doorsteps at Rabid-the-Hun, who (having just returned from a Pacific Islands Meeting on Climate change) laughs! 

Oi, “The Adults are in Charge” are they… ?

As DodoDutton says:

“It’s hard to get a good story up in Fairfax at the moment.”

In an uncharacteristic show of humanity and an eye to the Canning bye-election, Rabid-the-Hun has decided that it would be a good idea to let a few thousand Syrian refugees into the country. But true to form…..with caveats!

They must be Xtian.

They must have been on boats and paid people smugglers that he doesn’t know about, ‘cause allowing the mostly Muslim refugees in the Concentration Camps on both Nauru and Manus Islands will only reward “People-Smugglers” so these souls will be left to fester as the casualties of “On-Water-Operational-Matters.” 

And Bombing Syria will not lead to more refugees fleeing the carnage?

Sadly, Labor agrees, as it is too terrified of the Bogan voter to show leadership with anything ethically different.

Loopy Leyonhjelm, Libertarian fruitcake in the Senate and IPA (coots-with-queer-ideas-from-a-parallel-universe) soul-mate wants to abolish the Nanny-State and allow children to smoke, not wear bicycle helmets, use dirty needles, wear unwashed underpants, pick their noses with rusty nails, unbuckle their seat-belts and have whatever guns they like.

I would like to add a truly Libertarian amendment to his list of “freedoms.”

When you shoot yourself in the foot, smash your skull falling off your bike, start coughing your lungs up from your cigarettes and suffer multiple injuries after being thrown from your car in an accident; you will have the “Freedom” not to expect that State to provide medical assistance to either you or your family, you will have the “Freedom” to fully fund not only your own rehabilitation and care but those others unfortunate enough to have assisted you in any way….

Do you think Loopy, that will be an ideal society?

Hoo-roo Petals,

Shane

PS

Some flower shots with a pun for Joe “Eleventy-Toyota-Killer” Hockey… whom it seems, is about to be dumped as treasurer along with some other “Walking Dead” of the ruling rabble. Hmmm… will there be any rabble left to rule?

A wreath for Joe Eleventy!

...in the frame

I've just recieved news that 2 of 3 of my submissions to the Ballarat International Foto  Biennale (http://ballaratfoto.org/) competition for performance photography "Take a Bow" have been shortlisted as finalists.
Yaaaaayyyyyy.
see link for further details  http://takeabow.ballaratfoto.org/

Giselle Act 2, Myrtah and Wilis

Giselle Act 2

(the following material from the current exhibition) ......Invitation to the Dance.

A title borrowed from a film Gene Kelly produced
and starred in which was at the time and possibly still is
one of the most innovative dance films made.

At photography’s inception capturing movement
was impossible and even a subjects’ head for a portrait was
clamped into place to limit any blur through movement.
In all art forms the attributes of  the medium modify
and inform the methods and conceptual paths the artist can take.

Photography’s 150+ year history has culminated in our present
digital cornucopia;  a veritable feast of image making equipment
and modification and manipulation methods which allied to the
quality and longevity of the final print is releasing the production
of new forms of expression in graphic art.

There are a variety of performance modes in dance and each
can be realised in photography through a variety of techniques
which hopefully give true expression to the qualities of the
choreography, the dancer and dances inherent theatricality, a
theatricality that is in part the ability to suspend belief: to make you
believe a woman is a Swan or a spirit and that weightlessness
is normal.
It’s the illusion of human aspiration achieving completeness.


And politically....very briefly....
after Alan "Bondi" Jones' shellacking from all and sundry, Tony "Rabbit" Abbott was obviously feeling distinctly without attention so enlisted his wife to give a series of "interviews" to say what a wonderfully warm, caring, and non-mysoginist bloke he is.
The ones I saw had all the naturalness, sincerity and spontaneity of Stalins' Show trials.
You really don't get it Tony. It's not just Julia Gillard you abuse, it's every-one!
cheers,
Shane.

...to the Dance ...again

G'day Petals,

I'm in that awful space of selecting works for a show in mid September at The Bean Barn.
 

It will co-incide with the Royal South Street ballet competitions and overlap with  a performance photography comp  "Take a Bow", being run in October by the Ballarat International Foto Biennale.
Selecting the images is one thing; presenting them appropriately is another.
I would like to extend the "performance " value of the works by making the images more "sculptural": an idea that worked well with some of my French images in the 2011 Foto Biennale.

Giselle movement

Kylie "Flow"

Elegant

I've still to shoot some new stuff that has this concept specifically in mind and yet to make marquettes to see how the process will develop and how the materials used can be presented and what scale is suited to each work.

Ballet, Swing

Myrtah

Politics....

I was trying to avoid this topic as the Australian press "wolf-pack" was suitably engaged elsewhere beating up on our Olympic teams' lack of Glitter in London; and with Mr Rabbit seemingly non-existent and almost mercifully silent for once.......
Alas .... there was Q and A on ABC TV... Craig Emmerson (Labor, singer also trade minister), Bob Katter, (Idiosyncratic Rural Conservative, Queensland) George Brandis (Liabril, plagiarist, Queensland), Katie Noonan (Lovely Songstress) and Debbie Kilroy (Activist for the Marginalised, Queensland)...   what came from that event was the distressing lack of Liarbril manners I have talked about in previous posts.

First question from the audience was about The Far Norths', Campbell, "Il Duce" Newman turning his back on performers at a public function within a metre or two from them  to "send them a message" and then his acceptance of a wealthy graziers' comments about Prime Minister, Julia Gillard being "....a useless cow..." or some other hubristic outburst.
Here, Brandis jumped in;  it seems he hates Paul Keating for his parliamentary invective; and thinks  criticism of the Liarbrils' publicly slagging-off at Gillard in this area is unwarranted.
What Brandis obviously misunderstands is wit! And taste!

Next question was, if the said, "Il Duce" Newman's slashing of  funding was a model to be similarly expected from a "Rabbit" regime?  (Didn't I say that recently?)
Now, as a supporter of "foot-in-mouth" Kennett (ex failed CEO of Victoria) who seems to be the advisor to Newman, Brandis understandsthe simplicity of tearing down but not that it takes an intelligent creativity to build things.
Here Katter did what he does best... local, impassioned, parochial but engaging in national issues in a fashion that other "pollies" could well be advised to accept before parroting their media advisors' spin.

Later, I saw "Mr Rabbit" performing for the other-worlders of "The Institute of Public Affairs" (perhaps they could get advice from Scientologists?)  where he was promulgating free-speech by limiting sanctions against press owners who allow and exploit the use of unethical behaviour.
Go figure?
A congruent "take" on this  was Liarbril  pollie potentially headed for Canberra, Malcolm Brough who was castigating Labor for "unleashing it's dirt unit" or some-such, in indicating that he  Brough, was the recipient of allegedly unlawfully obtained documentation in the "Slippery Pete" case: information he allegedly, had asked for!

Pot calling Kettle, "Back-Bum"?
You Bet!
A standard of poor argument with events being twisted to a reality which doesn't exist.

.............cheers Possums,
Shane

....to the Fringe

Well Petals, France has long been departed and we’re back in the Victorian Burrow.

This blogs’ a bit like the French tour much was intended and about a 1/3 actually happened.

We’ve been busy post-processing stuff shot in France for exhibition at The Ballarat International Foto Biennale

which opened on the 20^th and will be running till Sept18th

My show, “Continuum” is on at “the Bean Barn” 

A neat little venue with good light and very good coffee.

This work is part of “The Fringe”….  and I am going to be commenting on the fringe shows and their venues over the next couple of weeks.

There’s not much point talking about the “Core” shows as the protagonists are pretty well known and get plenty of coverage.  Some unnecessary.

One exhibitor, Jan Saudek was stage-centre to a small controversy when (I believe) a woman in Ballarat rang festival director Jeff Moorfoot to complain about one of Saudek’s works that she had seen advertising the biennale in Art Almanac.

She was of the opinion that the mother of the child in the image was prostituting her child and wanted the work removed.

Jan Saudek

Apparently, she has been known to “play-the-public-conscience” before and receiving no joy from Jeff, rang both Child Services and then Tourism Victoria with her complaint. A bureaucrat from Tourism Victoria suggested that if the controversy reached the State Government funding might not be forthcoming for the 2013 biennale.

Picture was pulled!

Welcome to the “Nanny-State”

The nasty woman has sexualised the child but provided good publicity via many newspapers and television who ran the image… did she complain to them? Tourism Bureaucrat “covers-arse” and is gutless in the face of a storm in a teacup.

All in all a pathetic reflection of the reality of Australia.    

The process of putting an exhibition of photographs into non gallery spaces is  interesting and  I will make comment on the works and the venues and how they “work” together.

Please take note that even if my opinion is critical of works exhibited that underlying the criticism is a respect for the photographers willing to put their work in front of the public gaze (at much expense) in a real, not in a cyber sense, where so many “fibs, porky's and outright lies” can be told.

Cheers

Shane.