Arriving mysteriously in our snail mail box was a flyer for the semi-mythical unMagazine. Available in both print and PDF formats, unMagazine is a new publication that may just keep Mathieu Gallois quiet for awhile – an art magazine with a super clean layout, diverse content and articles on a list of up and comers to kill for: Cate Consadine, Guy Benfield, David Noonan, Lane Cormick, Cassandra Tytler and oldesters John Gillies and even Vito Acconci.
The cover has a great shot of Danius Kesminas and The Histrionics performing ART IS EASY & all music is the same. In terms of style alone, we’ve always liked artists doing joke covers – we have fond memories of Nice Style and Dan Graham’s bands from the 70s – and it’s great to see Darren Knight’s favourites doing so well, as they are about embark on a tour of Europe starting at Vilnius, Lithuania and all points East. Yo, wassup Stuttgart!
Using the web to distribute a magazine is a great idea – no printing or paper costs, no distribution worries – all you have to do is attach it to a web site and off you go. It’s a mystery why the publishers have even bothered with a print version – even if it is short run- but we all know something only really exists if you can hold it in your hand.
The writers for the first issue includes Ruark Lewis from Sydney, Sally Brand, Andrew Gaynor, Jeff “Wrath of…” Khan and Ashley Crawford in Melbourne. The only drawback as far as we can see is the entirely superfluous inclusion of a piece by the most boring man in Australian art, Philip Brophy, and his article Picture Perfect Political Art:
“See that woman near the left in the picture? The one with the Malvern bob hair-do? She’s using henna, but you can’t see the colour in this picture. See how she’s pinching my right nipple? That’s to make me political.”
If anyone else had written that, we probably would have found that funny, but we just don’t like Brophy – we didn’t care much for his band, we thought his magazines were try-hard, we had no time for his dead-in-the-water film career, his audio art articles for The Wire were aimed at Year 9 students and we think his art video pieces suck the big one. Bu that’s just us – we know a lot of people like him and that’s great.
Speaking of Ashley Crawford, he dropped by The Art Life to clear up a few misunderstandings and confirm a few rumours:
“Just saw your comment about my “ill chosen” words re; VCA Painting Nazis. [Robert] Nelson mis-quoted me; they were Guy Benfield’s words. Also, re poss collaboration with Morry Schwartz and Tension – looks like it’s on. But we’ll probably have Peter Craven as a contributor to prove a point. Enjoy your tirades.”
We stand corrected, although wouldn’t it have been great if Mr. Crawford had called the painting department at VCA a bunch of Nazis. It would have rather been like that episode of The Mighty Boosh where a turtle was a Nazi, swastika on its back, and it was called a “fresh water fascist”. After all, if the shell fits… We’re also super excited to see Tension being revived even if we were a bit sarcastic about it last time, after all, it might see Ken Wark come back from New York and delightus with more articles on “vectors”. We are somewhat mystified by what Mr. Crawford means when he says Peter Craven gets a job to ‘prove a point’ – must be a Melbourne thing. Finally, we don’t write tirades, we produce tightly reasoned arguments and reviews of artists shows that could be used in CVs and other official documentation. But we’re glad people enjoy them.
Someone with the mono-moniker James left a comment asking very sensible, constructive questions regarding our “tirade” regarding the “state of art criticism” :
“Perhaps a list of things to improve the state of writing could be listed here? E.g. various ways of reading works etc? I’ve read reviews that have clearly come from people who do not really have a firm grasp of what they are writing about (medium, subject matter) or even the purpose of the show. Sometimes these are artists themselves writing these misdirected pieces. Should artists write reviews? Stones & glass houses? Attention seeking?”
We are currently formulating our response to this proposal and yes, we know we said that we’d review the rest of The Biennale of Sydney and we never got around to it. But this time, honestly, we will start being constructive instead of just cynically tearing down other people’s efforts.
In our email inbox we found another email from Tara D’Cruz Noble at the UTS Gallery promoting the gallery’s latest show New Urbanism: Emerging Artists From China, curated by Zhang Zhaobui. It doesn’t open until August 31 but it looks like a good one. We had started to believe that D’Cruz Noble was a real person until we saw a photo of her in the Sun Herald, or rather, a photo of what purports to be her hand holding a pink bag shaped like a telephone designed by “Tatty Devine from London”. Could someone please explain why on Fernando Frisoni’s Diary page in S, every other photo features someone with a face? Hmmm.
Finally, Dan Obido from Sierra Leone has written to us offering us a cut of USD$7.3 million:
“
Dear Sir,It is my warmest pleasure soliciting your confidence in this transaction, which I propose to you as a person of transparency and caliber. This by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and top secret. A foreigner Late Engineer Michael Creek, an oil merchant/contractor with the federal government of Nigeria, until his death a year ago in a ghastly air crash, banked with us here at hallmark bank plc Lagos. And had a closing balance of account as at the end December, 2000 worth {US$7.3M} the bank now expect the next of kin to claim the money as the beneficiary. However, effort being made by the bank to get in touch with any of Creek’s relative or family proved abortive […] I and my colleagues now seek your permission to have you stand as a next of kin to late engr micheal creek, so that the fund [US$7.3 M] will be released and paid into your account as the beneficiary….”
