Sometimes we set out to make a joke, sometime the joke’s on us. When we referred to the ‘snippy queens’ who work at the MCA café a couple of weeks back– and let us just state for the record that that was not meant to be taken seriously, was a joke and we admit that it was perhaps in questionable taste – some didn’t find it so funny. Simeon Kronenberg wrote to air his disgust:
“Why ‘snippy queens?’ I guess because you are just as lazy as everyone else when it comes to homophobia. Shame!”
Yes, we are shamed. And lazy. In a similar spirit, an anonymous commenter decided it was time to point out our considerable shortcomings:
“Some of your comments are really dumb arsed and lack any thought. Get a life … really. Learn how to critique art work or take up home renovations.”
That is actually a very apposite comment because our original idea for this blog was to start a home renovations diary of building The Art Life office, but someone already beat us to it.
And speaking of Comments, one regular poster wrote to us to apologise for commenting so much. No apologies necessary, that’s what it’s there for. It may be a little unwise to leave lengthy multiple posts or cut and paste overseas art stories of dubious relevance to the topic, but we say, let the community decide!
It seems the Comments are starting to become a bona fide mini-art community all on its own and for that reason we are currently looking at creating an Art Life Bulletin Board for extended discussions, posting of exhibitions, reviews and regular slanging matches. We’ll keep you posted.
Last week The Art Life sailed over 1700 hits in three days because of a couple of heated discussions, one of which was over Hannah Furmage’s work in Turning Tricks at First Draft Gallery. Although she had posted the following in the Comments section, she also emailed us directly so we thought it worth reprinting:
“My work A Groundbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is not faked and was never intended as a hoax as you suggest. Due to the obvious legal ramifications involved in presenting the work and the potential consequences for the gallery and curators, a ‘no comment’ approach has been considered the safest option.
“The video is not of myself ‘interviewing’ a junky as you have said but a documentation of myself purchasing heroin off two drug dealers I meet on the street.
“The Surry Hills drug detectives who investigated the work, recognised different identities in the video (despite the pixilation of their faces). They have informed us they will not continue further investigation if the work is not shown again.”
In another fun topic – wall texts at the MCA – we referred to the fact that although we were once completely and irrevocably against them it was after seeing Callum Morton’s show at the MCA that we came around to the idea that some contextual information wasn’t such a bad thing. Somehow we ended up using the same joke we used nearly a year ago, to wit, that Mies van der Roe was a cold blooded killer. To our surprise, Callum Morton was reading:
“Second time you’ve used the wall text joke… and it still makes me laugh! Still I wouldn’t know which way to turn to the milk bar without the wall label I have next to the front door. They can work for some. Good on you.”
A very well mannered and polite Jasmin Stephens from the MCA wrote to us and mentioned a forthcoming radio event that would be of interest to all who got involved:
“Radio National’s The Deep End is running a project with Newcastle Regional Art Gallery in which their listeners are curating an exhibition of works from the collection which opens on Friday 13 May. The next discussion about the exhibition is on labels and it’s on Thursday 21 April at around 3pm. I think that NRAG Director Nick Mitzevich and I will be talking about labels with Vicki Kerrigan.”
Wasn’t Viki Kerrigan the character played by Sophie Lee in The Castle?
