There’s nothing really duller than a blog entry that starts “We’ve recently added new links…” but there’s no getting around it – we’ve added a lot of new links. Please admire the length and breadth of the Orgs links that lists major Government funded art galleries from sea to shining sea and other allied spaces. We’ve also added a significant number of new artist web sites including one by Richard Dunn that features a home page picture of a very tiny Dunn inside what looks like Ned Kelly’s helmet. Along with these links [and we’re always looking for more] we’ve started a list of international art blogs.
It was with some sadness that we opened our emails today and discovered that our friend in Melbourne known as Art Pimp is calling it a day:
I have decided to call it quits with all my freebie art gigs. This has come after a number of years supporting various groups, galleries, individual artists and curators and now I am sad to say that I have seen much of the current art scene for what it is: vampiric simulation. To protect both my blood and my ideas I am going underground for a while and will no longer be available. So…best of luck with TAL.
A damn shame, as the Pimp’s only mission was to promote his art world friends and the work he likes.
But as one blog bites the dust, another appears, and you know, at some blogs they do things differently. Take the recently launched Speech blog run by a posse of people including Callum Morton, Geoff Lowe, Jacqueline Riva and Robert McKenzie [among others]. Instead of fretting about the comments, they’ve actually built a blog that’s almost all comments. How do you like that? A group of regular writers post art related items and then the readers come along and post comments [some much, much longer than the actual posts]. It’s as if the world has been turned upside down! We were thrilled to read about a ClubsProject exhibition by Kain Picken and Pat Foster that just made our hearts just so glad:
Kain Picken and Pat Foster made a show out of partially stolen IKEA products. There is an ‘As is’ section at IKEA which has broken, marked, scratched or remaindered goods. In the ‘As is’ section, prices are written on the item with a black felt tip marker. The artists took their own markers to IKEA, they said, ‘We discovered that we could nominate our own prices’. Before the show opened though, they got caught…
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Art and theft have never been so wondefully aligned. Speech also have a mission statement that’s more like an open ended question: “Is it possible to enter a terrain beyond knowledge and power and speak? Is it possible to escape categorisation and cohesion and speak? Let’s see.” The short answer to the first question is, yes, there is a terrain beyond knowledge and power and it’s called a blog. You know nothing and you have no power. Can you escape categorisation and cohesion and speak? Cohesivenss has never been a problem for us yet somehow we struggle on. Speaking is a far more complex question. Since you are using words on a page, you are writing, not speaking, but there is a voice. Is that speaking? The voices in our heads say they are… the voices, the voices.
Some readers have written to us with advice on how to fix our image problem [our problem with uploading images, not our image problem, if you see what we mean]. Thanks for the help but it just fixed itself all of a sudden – ah, the mystery of technology. We were also asked by some readers how to search for mentions of artists [or whatever] on The Art Life now that the Search bar has been removed. It’s very simple: Using Google, type in what you want to find inside quotes such as “Ben Quilty” + “The Art Life”. Always use the quotes, the plus sign and “The Art Life”. You’ll get a page of results and it’s always advisable to click on “Omitted results” because Google is just a machine and cannot think and therefore makes poor lifestyle choices. Please enjoy.
