As Lee Scratch Perry said, you thought we were dead??? We have to admit that it may seem from the outside that we’ve been slacking. Uplands Gallery wrote to us asking if there was something wrong with our website because only three lines of text were displaying on their computers. Is it busted? they asked. Gallery Wren has struck us off their mailing list and won’t speak to us and now we have readers ganging up on us because we find it difficult to arrange a widow of opportunity to get to Scott Donovan Gallery on one of the three days of the week it’s actually open. We understand that there are certain expectations that we fulfill your needs each and every week, without fail, so we must apologise if we appear to have gone off the track lately.
In the meantime you might like to avail yourselves of some of the attractive links we provide in our ever-expanding list under Artist/Blogs on the right of the page. Artist Life (no relation) is the blog of one Chris Fitzgerald, artist, and chronicles his favourite colours, beer and corners of paintings hanging in the ANU. Christian Capurro is a Melbourne artist and friend of The Art Life who has been stirring up a bit of interest with his Another Misspent Portrait of Etienne de Silhouette project. Capurro and a band of volunteers erased the entire contents of one issue of Vogue magazine and describes the project thusly:
“This work is informed by what people do, by the exchanges we make in our lives both with our time and our labour, and, how that is valued. It’s also about the residue of those less tangible or ‘pictureable’ things in our lives brushing up against a culture obsessed with the idea of visibility.”
Philip Brophy, 80s relic and Melbourne academic/artist/lecturer/filmmaker/author/etc, should win some sort of prize for his web site. Done in the comic book graphic style he pioneered, it’s also a pretty damn fine example of what you can do with a load of cash and whole heap of content, even if some of the text runs off the side of the page (there’s just so much to fit in). Speaking of leathery survivors, Peter Callas, video artist guy, has a web site hosted by those fine people at ANU, and although basic, covers all of his projects from 1980 to now.
Donna Page wrote to us and asked us to include a link to her page and mentioned that she was waiting our judgment with “trepidation”. No need to be worried, it’s a fine effort with a simple and effective navigation (we once worked in the “web”, you know…) and should serve as a pointer to people who get all carried away with their sites. Gallery Wren’s web site is nearly finished after more than eighteen months of promises, promises, but judging by the holding page, it’ll look great when it’s finished. Jun Tagami’s Etisoppo is a survivor in artist-run publications and has a bi-lingual web site where you can catch up on the latest issue, as well as find out how to make submissions for forthcoming issues. Melbourne’s ClubsProject soldiers on and their web site offers a gateway into their upcoming art activities. Nice design too. Brendan Lee is forced to share his main page some unfortunate web hosting ads, but once you get inside, it’s all business.
And if that still isn’t enough, we recently discovered the online art/culture Retort Magazine. We could certainly do with one of those in Sydney. Finally, we should also mention that the idiosyncratic Sydney Art Seen Society have been making use of their time waiting for the Feds to respond to their petition by posting reviews and criticism of Sydney art shows and newspaper art writers. It’s written in their inimitable style and has a ton of enthusiasm. Lucas Ihlein maintains Bilatreal as a meeting point for like-minded artists, Super 8 slackers and uncollectable refuseniks. We always make a point of visiting his site – it was there before we arrived and it’ll be there after we’re in the cold cold ground.
