Old School

Here is an old work started in Montreal in 1995 before I left, finished in 2006, lurking in the back of the wardrobe ever since. I believe the bridge is based on the Jacques Cartier.

Melbourne Graffiti

Melbourne always impresses with its Alleys and laneways and street art projects.
I look forward to being in Melbourne a couple of times this year and catching up with whats new.

In the meantime you can follow this group on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/groups/melbournegraffiti/

Biennale of Sydney - Itinerary

The full tour itinerary is here -
http://www.arttravel.co.nz/Biennale_2010_itin.pdf

Its Biennale Tour Time

The tickets are out, the flights booked and the Biennale is of course open.

17th Biennale of Sydney Tour - Introduction

by Sue Gardiner

Since its inception in 1973, the Biennale of Sydney has been hugely important to New Zealanders, bringing, close to our shores, a two yearly array of ambitious projects that have challenged, extended and occupied the thoughts of contemporary art lovers for decades. This year, the 17th Biennale, is no exception. From Paul McCarthy’s manic and theatrical Ship of fools, to Cai Guo-Qiang’s Inopportune: Stage One – the intensity of this year’s multi venue exhibition seems to be ramped up even more as curator David Elliott attempts to encapsulate his reading of art for the here and now.

Cultural, political and aesthetic clashes are evident in his selections, coupled with the playful and the tragic, the musical and the cinematic, the historical and the contemporary, folk tales and scientific exploration. The world seems to be bought together in this exhibition, from all corners of the planet, in all its horrifying and terrorising details and its sublime existence. The Carnival and the Cannibal, like characters from a metaphysical play that pop up throughout the show, dissect the antagonism between globalizing Western modernity and traditional cultures. Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s video at the MCA of
remote Thai farmers encountering masterpieces of Western art history on the banks of their rivers and fields serves to set this scene of disjunction most dramatically. Reuben Paterson’s patterning of Maori and European motifs and Alex Danko’s painted patterns and grids of Turkish weaving are just two examples of work that bridges these cultural gaps seeking some sort of collaboration. In other works, the gaps are prized apart and left revealing only terror.

Peter Hennessey’s large scale replica of the Hubble telescope, on Cockatoo Island, then launches this Biennale out of this world into the universe- a universe on untold mystery and undecipherable meaning. Skewed perspectives then explode from this ‘other-worldliness’ to highlights the extreme lengths gone to to reach a sense of utopia.

At that point, the Biennale tips over into fictional, parallel worlds- typified by masks, high heels, costuming, folktales and performance – exuberant outpourings of myths and stories that unify and simultaneously destroy as we encounter transformation and transcendence. From the Age of Enlightenment comes the end...our view of the world is changed forever.
We will see much that fascinates us, makes us laugh out loud and some that unmistakably repels us – not all contemporary art is easy to view. Take from it what you can – and be prepared to leave some things as they are – un-answerable mysteries.

I look forward to being your guide through this quite exceptional journey into art.