the art life

Nick Waterlow and daughter Chloe found dead

2009-11-10T11:13:00.002+11:00

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

"A Sydney community is in shock today after a cookbook author and her father were found dead in a Randwick home last night, and a young girl was discovered with wounds to her throat.

Police are expected to make a statement soon on the killings.

The Clovelly Road semi was purchased by cookbook author Chloe Waterlow, 37, and her husband, a digital consultant, Ben Heuston, 2½ years ago.

Ms Waterlow is the daughter of Sydney curator Nick Waterlow OAM, 68. He directed Sydney's third Biennale and is the curator of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery in Darlinghurst.

It is believed the family had been considering moving to Britain, but had recently decided against it.

The injured girl, believed to be the couple's four-year-old daughter, was in a serious condition at Sydney Children's Hospital in Randwick this morning.

Police were alerted just before 6pm yesterday when someone, believed to be a friend of the family, phoned triple-0.

They entered the premises through a side window and discovered the two bodies and the injured girl.

Another child, an eight-month-old boy, believed to be the girl's brother, was taken to hospital without injuries.

Last night, he was in the care of the Department of Community Services. Acting Superintendent Shayne Woolbank said the baby was not found inside the house.

The couple's third child is also in the temporary care of DOCS, a spokeswoman for Community Services Minister Linda Burney said.

Mr Waterlow's sister-in-law, Anne O'Brien, told the Herald Ms Waterlow was "a vivacious young mother who adored her littlies".

Police established a crime scene and questioned neighbours.

"We are still trying to piece together what happened," acting Superintendent Woolbank said."

Read more here.

From the NSW University College of Fine Art wesbite:

"It is with immense shock and distress that we heard news this morning of the death of Nick Waterlow, Director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery at COFA and a much loved and respected member of staff.

The death of Nick and his daughter are being investigated by police [...]

Nick was a leading member of Australia's arts community, having curated three Sydney Biennales. He has been Director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery since 1991 and was a senior lecturer in COFA's School of Art History and Art Education. His current projects included a book exploring the place of Australian art internationally and he was of course closely involved in the planning for COFA's new art museum."

Read more here.

New Work Friday #36

2009-11-06T15:23:00.003+11:00

The vinyl is dead. Good. Now listen to the beautiful noise of the earth. Harvest (2009) is a new art piece for the new instrument terrafon, traditional ensemble and cropland - by Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke. In this performance Alunda Church Choir, conducted by Cantor Jan Hällgren, plays the soil of northern Uppland (in Sweden) on terrafon. Harvest by Alunda Kyrkokör was exhibited at the Volt Festival in Uppsala the 6th of June 2009. Terrafon is a large agricultural version of the horn gramophone, amplifying the sounds in the track it ploughs. There is more to come. There are still many croplands still untouched by terrafon. The only thing needed is a powerful local musical ensemble that can sweat it out. This is indeed a demanding piece. Watch the performance here: on Vimeo. The artist-duo has before created the sound installation Bacterial Orchestra (www.bacterialorchestra.com) as well as an iPhone-generation of the same art piece, called Public Epidemic No 1. Olle Cornéer is also a electronic musician/producer/composer, while Martin Lübcke has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics (superstring theory)" - Olle Cornéer

Got new work you'd like to share? Send JPEGs no larger than 300k each to theartlife at hot mail dot com.

An Open Letter from Martin Davies

2009-11-02T11:05:00.002+11:00

To: Letters, The Sydney Morning Herald; Letters, The Australian; Letters, The Daily Telegraph; Philip Adams; The Art Life:

Bring back Young Talent Time some say: Well they brought back Hey Hey It's Saturday. So why not!

I just think it's a crass attempt to milk an old idea, so as to avoid trying any new ideas.

It's lame TV in my opinion.
What are the producers thinking?

Do they have any new ideas in Australia any more.

Recently they held sculpture by the sea in Sydney. I've been to it a few times. SOme interesting sculpture.
This year . . . .
I couldn't help but notice the SMH had a cover story about the Little Boy Lost which it featured prominently.

Just one small problem, the piece was an absolute rip off of a Ron Mueck.

Everything about it was a complete copy of his work.

So i ask: how on earth can a paper such as the SMH, get away with promoting a piece of art in a "supposedly" prestigious art show, that is in every respect intellectual property theft.

When an artist steals ideas like that _ without any changes or re contextualizing - there's a big problem.
This is a problem with lack of criticism in art, and in particular lack of attention to critical writing in the SMH and other Australian papers in general on the subject of art and culture.

This sloppy situation merely allows old ideas to thrive at the expense of any new ones, and it allows dishonest artists top be given publicity when they don't deserve it!!!

Any way, a big fucking ugly rock won in the end so i guess that is that for sculpture by the sea 2009.

next year to get the SMH to give an online feature, I 'll might well consider stealing a Henry Moore from the front of the NSW Art gallery . . . they won't know the difference!

Martin Davies

Justine Varga's Inside/Outside

2009-11-02T10:53:00.003+11:00

From Ian Houston Shadwell...

Justine Varga's first exhibition, 2005's Placements featured surreal photographic vignettes created from pieces of string, toy animals and other odds and ends. The resulting images were exquisite, delicate, beautiful landscapes of an inner world that referenced both abstract ideals of pure composition as well moments of whimsy and nostalgia. I was particularly fond of the quality of the prints themselves, the photographs are large format and the resulting prints have a milky opalescent quality that is reminiscent of the lustre of thinly applied oil paint. Indeed all of the work seemed to suggest that Justine has more of a painter’s sensibility than that of a photographer.

Her 2007 collection Outside continued this theme, though with an interesting development. Taking that very particular Australian obsession with the landscape, a form that has attracted both photographers and painters, she created a collection of works that were at once a playful meditation on the nature of her medium as well as being a curious cultural portrait. The central motif appears to be Australia's "empty heart" the land of Voss, the interior sea, the red heart. The Australia that obsesses Australians though most have never seen it. But rather than photograph the dry, dusty interior herself, she has recreated it, in her studio, (hence the title) with playful interventions and the remarkable tonality of her photography. This series of works are double exposures, the thin nacreous quality of each exposure, blending gently into the next, producing an effect not dissimilar to the white glare haze of an Australian summer.

Justine Varga, Empty Studio #5 , 2009.
C-print, 22.5 x 28.5cms

One of the more allusive pieces consisted of a handful of red soil thrown onto the concrete floor of the studio. The immediacy of the staging, coupled with the opalescent light of the work creates a poetic reference to "the interior" that is at once humorous, yet redolent of the haunting quality these ideas have in the national consciousness. It appears at once critical, in its humorous conceit, the whole mythic notion being reduced to a handful of dirt on a garage floor, yet there is a play of light and color that brings a poetic immediacy to the idea. Australia's spiritual heart is rendered completely with nothing but a few sheets of plastic, some dirt and an odd yellow gew gaw.

It is often suggested that it is this "fear" of the interior that makes Australian's such great travelers. That they much prefer to look outward than to an empty heart. Justine's work may well be referencing such concern's with the use of a model of a Qantas jumbo. This motif appears regularly, in playful asides, the flash of red serving to structure the compositions in figure ground relationships, as well as alluding to an Australia that is literaly "passed over" by Australians as they travel to "more exciting" locales. Perhaps the "outside" of the title. Again, the playfulness is refreshing, but anchored deeply in a more serious contemplation of identity and geography.

Justine Varga, Empty Studio #11, 2009.
C-print, 22.5 x 28.5 cms

But what I find most satisfying about this work, is their deep painterliness. This is not the coy, artful, recreation of painterly techniques within another medium, but rather a deep sensitivity to the power of composition and her relationship to the studio as an expressive device. In this regard, it is not, the camera that is the tool of expression, but rather the process of creating the vignette that is photographed. Each element is considered, their placement, "just so." The result is akin to the compositon of abstract painters looking for the ideal of the sublime. A perfectly structured beauty that is satisfying in and of itself.

This deep consideration is also given to the surface of the print. She maintains a consistency of expression in her light and palette that gives the works a continuity that resonates in the viewer with the ideals of the painterly. This is not photography that captures a "moment" or is in some sense a trick for the eye. It explores a deep vein in aesthetic experience, of the things that have structured our apprehension of the art object for centuries. That they are pursued so faithfully and with such minimal means in a photographic medium may strike us as unusual at first, but upon deeper reflection, it seems an ideal means of achieving these results.

Which brings us to her last show, Empty Studio. This series is avowedly minimal, preserving the palette that has been her signature, with photographs, (though it seems ridiculous to give them such a mundane name), of a variety of elements to create works that are deeply abstract with the occasional arrangement of figurines and props,that seem to act as commentary on the nature of the process.

A favorite of mine, is nothing more than a crumbling piece of perforated white masonary stuck against a milky wall, its ragged edges, like brushstrokes. A similar pieces conspires to create a flat surface of a wall and a floor, through the mysterious figure of a thread arranged in rectangular form. These are masterful works, filled with a sublime beauty (as unfashionable as that word may be) that seeks to do that thing which art does best, answering a question, with a question, albeit poetically phrased.

The Art Life welcomes contributions. Send them to the art life at hot mail dot com.

New Work Friday #35

2009-10-30T10:59:00.003+11:00

PMurphy, Insides.

Got new work you'd like to share? Send JPEGs no larger than 300k each to theartlife at hot mail dot com.

Expressway To Yr Skull

2009-10-30T10:53:00.001+11:00

"Over the 100-year history of modern neuroscience, the way we think about the brain has evolved with the sophistication of the techniques available to study it. Improvements in microscope design and manufacture, together with the development of cell-staining techniques, afforded neuroscientists their first glimpse at the specialized cells that make up the nervous system. Microscopes with more magnifying power enabled them to probe nerve cells in greater detail, revealing distinct compartments. Newer techniques expose the connections between nerve cells, revealing the complex organization of the brain.

"Nineteenth-century histologists created some of the first images of nerve cells by chemically stiffening tissue and then immersing it in silver nitrate, randomly staining a small number of cells to make them visible when they were viewed with powerful new light microscopes. The technique revealed the silhouette of the cell body and its network of extensions, and it enabled the great neuroanatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal to prove that the nervous system consists of cells. He produced the 1899 drawing at left: it shows finely branched Purkinje cells, large neurons in the cerebellum that play an important role in controlling movement..."

More => Time Travel Through the Brain, Technology Review

Everything is like a TV show

2009-10-30T10:28:00.001+11:00

"After just 20 minutes in a helicopter above the Manhattan skyline, autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire was ready to re-create a city that took hundreds of years to build.

Wiltshire is drawing a 20-foot panoramic view of New York - all from memory.

The 35-year-old artist's autistic disorder affects his ability to interact with other people.

It has also given him a photographic memory - and a gift for putting it on paper.

"I just looked without drawing," said Wiltshire as he explained how he is able to draw the skyline without referring back to a photograph of the city.

"Everything is like a TV show," he said. "I have never drawn from a sketchbook."

Wiltshire, a Londoner, is creating the image at the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, where the public can watch him work through Friday afternoon.

New York is the last in a series of eight panoramas of major cities across the world, including Dubai and Tokyo.

"This city is very beautiful," he said, as he drew the Big Apple from the Bronx to Staten Island.

"It has got skyscrapers ...and the American people."

Read more: NY Daily News.com

Tom Polo Tipped to Win "2009 B.E.S.T. Contemporary Art Prize"‏

2009-10-29T13:42:00.001+11:00

Ask The Art Life #2

2009-10-26T14:14:00.003+11:00

Barney Rubble asks: I’m thinking of entering an art competition, should I enter? The competition asks that I send a CV and/or an artist’s statement with my entry – is it wise to do so?

Dear Barney: If the art competition is themed – say, it is a competition for religious art, or small scale sculpture – you should only consider entering if your work engages with a religious or spiritual theme, or is a small scale sculpture. But you’re thinking – hey, my work is sculpture but it’s quite big, or, my work has nothing to do with religion or spirituality per se, but could be interpreted that way, can’t I just go ahead and enter anyway? Yes, you can still enter but don’t be surprised if the work fails to win or isn’t selected as a finalist. If your work is small in scale, is a sculpture, and is a statue of Jesus, go right ahead – in fact why not enter both competitions? It can’t hurt. If the competition is an open theme or organised around some vague category [genre art, for example] enter as often as you can. But a word of warning: if the competition says that you can send multiple images, only send images that support your entry. Very often judges will look at support images or additional entries for some clarification of an artist’s practice. If you send one work that is great and two additional works that aren’t as good [i.e. they are crappy] this will almost certainly disqualify you. As for sending a CV, art can often appear mysterious and an explanation of the artist’s intentions can be quite helpful to judges who are baffled by the use of obscure symbolism, or conversely, are baffled by the use of rainbows, dolphins and/or sulphur crested cockatoos. On the other hand, an explanation can lead to more confusion. Choose your words wisely. Consulting a curriculum vitae can help determine an artist’s experience and help work out if you really are an “emerging artist”. Most CVs list educational qualifications, prizes, awards and an exhibition history, but there’s no requirement that you are limited to these achievements. Artists might like to include press clippings on their work from local newspapers, art magazines or personality profiles from naturist magazines. If this information helps the judges make a decision on your work, intention and personality, include it! Hope this is helpful – and good luck!

Got a question about the art world you'd like answered? Just send it to the art life at hot mail dot com.

F#@#ing Unreal

2009-10-23T12:57:00.004+11:00

Sylvania Waters is one of those select few television programs that became a bona fide cultural phenomenon. It had an impact more significant than anything that can be simply conferred via hype, clever advertising or sensational content. It is well remembered, its cast of personalities, its locations and conflicts are the stuff of urban legend. Sylvania Waters remains an archaeological layer in the public memory of the Shire, of Sydney and indeed, of the whole country.

Elvis Richardson, SYLVANIA WATERS / ELVIS RANTS AWAY I, 2009
Iinkjet print on vinyl stretched on wooden frame, 300 x 450 cm
Courtesy the artist & Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide

It’s odd recalling the impact it had in the light of what followed. Sylvania Waters is sometimes retrospectively referred to as “reality television”. When you think of what “reality television” now means – those competition-based shows where the only element of the production that could loosely be called “reality” is the unscripted dialogue – Sylvania Waters was a far more traditional proposition; it was a documentary.

The show’s appeal – and its enduring legacy – was based on its unblushing portrayal of a segment of Australian society that had, until that time, never been seen on television – those upwardly mobile Aussies who were making money while living the good life with views of the water – an apparently gauche lifestyle aspiration that would become the national ideal during the coming decade.

The fragmented nature of the Donaher/Baker family – its de facto relationships, the complicated emotional expectations of would-be step fathers and new children, estranged sons and daughters, the next generation and their partners – and those always-pressing questions of middle class life like HSC results, overseas trips and what to do for Christmas day – all of this made for a startling TV program that created something exotic from the mundane.

What made it all the more remarkable was that Sylvania Waters wasn’t scripted. Yes, it was edited, and narrated, and it had a narrative arc shaped and tweaked by its producers and directors where true reality has no shape, no arc – but still, Noeline and Laurie and Paul and Dione and Michael and all the rest were real people – not the creation of writers. This was the undeniable reality of this particular TV.

Luis Martinez, Macintyre Crescent, 2009
Graphite pencil on Stonehenge paper, 45 x 76 cm
Courtesy the artist & Flinders Street Gallery, Sydney.

The shock of recognition, that identification with the real, is emblematic of the whole Sylvania Waters phenomena. As Daniel Mudie Cunningham explains in his excellent Reality Check catalogue essay, in the early 90s the TV show was the subject of ridicule by a media horrified that something so crass could be held up, not just as entertainment, but something that was representative of the entire country as the show screened in the UK as a reality-based companion piece to Neighbours and Home & Away.

It was only later, when shows like Kath & Kim or the movie The Castle became hits that we started to relax and accept that this seemingly distorted televisual mirror was a lot closer to home that we could recognise at the time. How could we have known back in 1992 that the Donaher’s were part of a class that were heirs to a glittering future, the decade of power and influence that would transform the entire country into a Sylvania Waters facsimile. How quaint and silly that media outrage seems now.

The works in Reality Check deal with the complexity of identification between the mediated experience and that thing we call real life – a complicated emotional transaction between people who are only known to us as images, apparently with agency and emotion and free will, just like us, but also provocative abstractions of ideas and ideals that are shared notions of identity, both personal and public, local and national. This back and forth is a fertile, imaginative ground for the creation of art.

An edited version of an opening talk by The Art Life for Reality Check: Watching Sylvania Waters, at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery until November 29.

Leaving the forest of signs

2009-10-23T12:45:00.001+11:00

'Pierre Huyghe and the Association of Freed Time: On Contemporary History'

Public lecture by Dr Amelia Douglas

Prince Philip Theatre, Architecture Building, University of Melbourne, Parkville VIC

Tuesday November 17, 2009 5:30pm drinks, 6:00 - 7:00 pm lecture
*This lecture will feature clips of Pierre Huyghe's works not previously screened in Australia courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris.

The University of Melbourne Art History program in conjunction with the School of Culture and Communications and the Fine Arts Network invite you to attend a free public lecture by Dr Amelia Douglas, Recipient of 2009 Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in the PhD, University of Melbourne.

What is at stake in the making and recording of history, and what does it mean for a contemporary artist to work as an historiographer? The contemporary French artist Pierre Huyghe is well-known for his multi-faceted works that operate in the gaps between history and story. In this lecture, Hugyhe’s practice is shown to facilitate a new model of contemporary history. History as a discursive concept is pliable; its meaning shifts depending on contexts. In presenting an historiographic reading of Huyghe’s practice, this lecture reflects upon how the coalescence of story and history may be a key factor in pulling together the diverse strands of Australian and international art histories.

Pierre Huyghe is one of the most significant artists of the 21st century. His work – encompassing film, architecture, situations, installations and events – has been shown at the TATE Modern, Centre Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum, the Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and recently at the Biennale of Sydney (2008), where Huyghe transformed the Opera House into a tropical rainforest. This lecture focuses on a few of Huyghe's major works, including A Journey That Wasn't (2005) and Streamside Day Follies (2003) and will include clips from several of Huyghe's works not previously exhibited in Australia, courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris.

Dr Amelia Douglas is a lecturer, editor, curator and writer with a research focus on time-based contemporary art. Her prior projects include Assistant Curator, Australian Centre for the Moving Image 2008-09; guest speaker, 'Andreas Gursky', NGV International 2009; guest lecturer, 'Perspectives in Radical Art', School of Creative Arts, 2008-09; tutor, art history and curatorship, University of Melbourne, 2005-08. She is a founding co-editor of emaj; member UNmagazine editorial committee; co-curator Found Sound: The Experimental Instrument Project; board member Bus Projects; and contributor to numerous critical forums (ACMI, Conical, GCAS), exhibition catalogues (Craft Victoria, Blindside, Experimenta Media Arts, RMIT First Site, George Paton Gallery), and arts journals including Broadsheet, UNmagazine, SPEECH and The Open Space (New York). She is currently managing red gallery contemporary art space in Melbourne.

Public lecture presented by the University of Melbourne Art History program in conjunction with the School of Culture and Communications and the Fine Arts Network.

New Work Friday #34

2009-10-23T12:34:00.003+11:00

Bernie Slater, Word Situations 2, 2009.
Colour photocopy on 1971 Mike Parr artwork

Bernie Slater, Word Situations 2, 2009.
Detail.

"This work was created for Canberra Contemporary Art Space’s annual members’ show, where this year’s theme was “Fakes, Forgeries and Appropriations”. I’ve printed on some original works from Mike Parr’s 1971 series Word Situations , which Parr states are “concerned with my investigation into the problem of meaning and language” I wanted to contrast Parr’s work with my own investigation of how language, graphic design and mass media are used to shape our behaviour and create new cultural “structures” of their own. Plus, I liked the idea of destroying a Mike Parr artwork," - Bernie Slater 2009.

Don’t ask me about my family, my childhood, my friends or my feelings. Ask me about the things I think.

2009-10-19T14:02:00.002+11:00

"Whenever Ayn Rand met someone new—an acolyte who’d traveled cross-country to study at her feet, an editor hoping to publish her next novel—she would open the conversation with a line that seems destined to go down as one of history’s all-time classic icebreakers: “Tell me your premises.” Once you’d managed to mumble something halfhearted about loving your family, say, or the Golden Rule, Rand would set about systematically exposing all of your logical contradictions, then steer you toward her own inviolable set of premises: that man is a heroic being, achievement is the aim of life, existence exists, A is A, and so forth—the whole Objectivist catechism. And once you conceded any part of that basic platform, the game was pretty much over. She’d start piecing together her rationalist Tinkertoys until the mighty Randian edifice towered over you: a rigidly logical Art Deco skyscraper, 30 or 40 feet tall, with little plastic industrialists peeking out the windows—a shining monument to the glories of individualism, the virtues of selfishness, and the deep morality of laissez-faire capitalism. Grant Ayn Rand a premise and you’d leave with a lifestyle. Stated premises, however, rarely get us all the way down to the bottom of a philosophy...."

Mrs Logic: The one argument Ayn Rand Couldn't win, New York Books.

Art Life readers say: call the cops!

2009-10-19T13:53:00.000+11:00

If an artist has their work stolen they are entitled to:

The full weight of the law to regain their rightful property 46% 69
Be cool if their work was stolen by another artist 14% 21
Act like a d@#k 13% 20
Suck it up if they're a millionaire 27% 41

151 votes total

Smac-ies

2009-10-19T13:47:00.001+11:00

"We're launching the 2009 FBi 94.5 and Time Out Sydney SMAC [Sydney Music Arts and Culture] Awards this coming WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 21 at gbk, Gallery Barry Keldoulis in Waterloo from 6-8pm. The finalists for 'Best Artist' will be on display at gbk - and the rest of the category nominations will be announced on the night. So come on down, bring your friends, have a beer and celebrate the work of some of the finest creative minds in Sydney!"

Ask The Art Life #1

2009-10-14T10:25:00.006+11:00

Writes Jesse Cohen: "The MCA is desperate to find money to redevelop their building and they have at least two prominent Jewish bankers in their sights as potential donors. How to explain, then, that they decided to name their current exhibition after a book Making it New by a famous anti-semite Ezra Pound who produced propaganda for the fascists in the Second World War and famously [claimed that] Jewish bankers were responsible for the world's problems?"

Ezra Pound, captive of the Allied Forces, Italy, May 26th, 1945

Dear Jesse - Yes, it does seem odd doesn't it? "Jewish bankers" undewriting a real estate adventure of a museum of contemporary art that gives oxygen to a Fascist sympathiser and reknowned anti-semite. But the thing is this - no one cares about Ezra Pound's politics anymore. Pound is a popular reference point if you want to give an exhibition a little bit of intellectual clout and thus you will find shows such as Making It New at the MCA or In A Station of The Metro, Shaun Gladwell's survey show at Artspace in 2007 - named after Pound's poems. The art world like its politics to be as contemporary as its art and doesn't really care for battles that were fought and won some sixty four years ago. It also helps that in Pound's case he was also a pretty decent poet. Indeed, if you were a decent artist of any political stripe it hardly matters what your actual beliefs were while you were alive, with enough time it can all be happily forgotten, ignored or reinterpreted. Just take a look at the recent Futurism exhibition in London and the Tate Modern. And the great thing about the largesse of art world benefactors is that they seem quite happy to give cash to institutions, galleries and other cultural bodies to stage events that may in some form contain content they don't personally agree with. It's called democracy. It might also be a mistake to think that "Jewish Bankers" have no sense of irony.

Got a question about the art world you'd like answered? Just send it to the art life at hot mail dot com.

Exercise in Intrigue

2009-10-12T09:40:00.002+11:00

Chinese copies of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of America’s first president were denounced by the artist, desired by collectors—and ended up in some important museums.

It’s an international exercise in intrigue,” said Douglas Hyland, director of the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut.

He was speaking about a painting that was recently donated to the museum and is now on exhibition. The label reads: “George Washington c. 1800–1805.” The work is a copy of a Gilbert Stuart painting attributed to a Chinese artist named Foeiqua—who, like other artists in China, made a number of reverse paintings on glass. (The artist paints on the back of the glass so that the image can be seen from the front.)

“The painting was donated by a Connecticut woman, Caroline N. Dealy,” Hyland said. “She said her mother had died and that members of her family wanted to give the painting in memory of their mother. Since we are the oldest museum of American art in the United States, we were really thrilled. The museum has wanted to acquire a portrait of George Washington for many years.

“As soon as it went on display, it became the subject of a great debate: Should it be at an American art museum? Is it an American work of art? The truth is that it’s a copy of a Stuart made by a Chinese artist for an American collector. It’s a compelling story. It was painted 200 years ago, and 200 years later we’re dealing with the same issues. There are still works being pirated in China today—movies, books, CDs.”

Stuart had to deal with the issues in 1802, when there was, according to Carl Crossman in his book The China Trade (1972), “a mania for Washingtoniana...”

The Many Faces of George Washington, ArtNews

Time's arrow

2009-10-12T09:28:00.002+11:00

"The Archibald-winning artist Fred Cress has made his plans for his funeral. ''I've got the grog for the wake,'' he says, knowing he has only a few weeks of life left.

The cancer that began seven years ago in his prostate has spread voraciously since autumn. It is now in his spine, his groin, his lungs.

''But the one that will kill me is the liver cancer,'' he says. ''That has spread right across here now,'' he says, drawing a line across his gut.

The 71-year-old is dealing with imminent death much better than his younger partner of 20 years, Victoria Fernandez - or his two sons, Julian and Kim, by his former wife. ''They're in denial,'' he says. ''I wish they'd get on and organise the funeral.''

After all, lots of people will want to come. When the ABC's 7.30 Report prematurely broadcast a farewell piece in July (''They jumped the gun,'' Cress says), the artist - enjoying his final summer with Victoria in their beloved second home in Burgundy - was inundated with emails from around the world.

He apologises for not replying to them all. But he was feeling remarkably good then, and thought it more important to paint his final canvases while he still had the strength. Ironically, given that Cress does not believe in any kind of after life (and certainly not heaven or hell), ''we might have to borrow a church … because quite a few people will want to speal."

No time for rage or regret, Sydney Morning Herald.

New Work Friday #33

2009-10-09T10:08:00.003+11:00

© Elodie Silberstein, Photo Kent Johnson, Model Rhiannon Bulley

Ningyo lies at the intersection of artistic and medical practice by dealing with Anorexia Nervosa. The installation will be part of Mirrors, an annual charity art exhibition addressing issues of body image within today’s society. For this site specific work, Elodie Silberstein has sought real life stories to create a tableau vivant (living picture), a screening and an intimate diary compiled from testimonies that reflect the complexity and heterogeneity of this mental illness. The model’s poses on the preparatory photographs are inspired by the ambivalent nature of dolls that are trapped in time and present many allegories with pubertal children suffering from anorexia. Elodie’s character expresses the polarity between beauty and death by starkly reminding us that the mortality rate of eating disorders is between 10-20% in Australia. This work is dedicated to Catena Di Mauro who died in February 2009 after a nine year battle against anorexia. Elodie Silberstein - More info.

Mirrors is open for artwork submission. To participate, please visit Mirrorsexhibition.wordpress.com Mirror is, supported by Yen Magazine and is the initiative of Rhiannon Bulley, a young woman in recovery from Anorexia Nervosa. All profits from the sale of nominated art works will go towards supporting The Butterfly Foundation.

Josef Beuys Says Nein Danke Reagan!

2009-10-08T22:47:00.004+11:00

"Beuys tried his luck as a pop singer as part of his political commitment. His song 'Sonne statt Reagan' attacks Ronald Reagan's arms policy. The song was issued as a record and Beuys appeared before big audiences with it during the peace movement's demonstrations and also with the group Die Desserteure in the ARD television broadcast 'Bananas' on 3.7.1982. 'Regen'', pronounced like 'Reagan', is the German for 'rain.'"

UbuWEb via Art Forum

Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun

2009-10-08T22:36:00.003+11:00

"There are over 13,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the US, or about 1 for every 23,000 Americans. But even market penetration this advanced doesn’t mean that McDonald’s is everywhere. Somewhere in South Dakota is the McFarthest Spot, the place in the US geographically most removed from the nearest McD’s. If you started out from this location, a few miles north of State Highway 20 (which runs latitudinally between Highways 73 in the west and 65 in the east), you’d have to drive 145 miles to get your Big Mac (if you could fly, however, it’d be only 107 miles).

"This map is the brainchild of Stephen Von Worley, who got to thinking about the strip malls sprawling out along I-5 in California’s ever less rural Central Valley: “Just how far can you get from generic convenience? And how would you figure that out?” His yardstick for that thought experiment would be the ubiquitous Golden Arches of McDonald’s – still the world’s largest hamburger chain, and to cite Von Worley, the “inaugural megacorporate colonizer of small towns nationwide.” That’s not the whole story: like other convenience providers aimed at the motorised consumer such as gas stations and motels, McDonald’ses have a notable tendency to occur on highways and, specifically, to cluster at their crossroads..."

Via Strange Maps.

New Work Friday #32

2009-09-25T17:58:00.006+10:00

Branislav Kropilak, Garage Series. Kropilak.com

Got new work you'd like to share? Send images and description of your work to thearlife at hot mail dot com. Images should no larger than 350k each

Too Hot for Mosman

2009-09-25T17:53:00.001+10:00

"A long-forgotten 1960s censorship scandal about nudity in art has returned to the walls of the Mosman Art Gallery, whose director, Tony Geddes, is accused of censoring the work all over again to protect the sensibilities of the suburb's ''conservative'' residents.

The gallery is in the middle of a retrospective of the work of artist and Mosman resident David Perry, 76, whose experimental film A Sketch on Abigayl's Belly was banned by the Commonwealth Film Censor in 1968.

The two-minute film of Perry's then wife's pregnancy, which features shots of her massaging oil into her breasts and other nudity, was seized by Customs officials and impounded when it returned from screening in the finals of the West German Short Film Festival in 1969.

Perry was a member of the Sydney-based film collective UBU Films. Its manager, Aggy Read, was convicted of exporting a banned film.

In 1970 Don Chipp, the minister for customs and excise, overturned the ban. The curator of the current exhibition, another UBU member, Albie Thoms, says the film has been screened without incident across Australia ever since.

Until now, according to Perry, who claimed yesterday Mr Geddes had refused to include the film in the retrospective. ''Tony Geddes said he couldn't show it in Mosman because he was concerned that some of the conservative people in Mosman would be offended,'' he said. ''It was disturbing because it is one of my best works.''

While Mr Geddes is on leave, the acting director of the Mosman Art Gallery, Katrina Cashman, said she was ''surprised'' to hear of Perry's complaint.

''From our perspective, that's not what happened,'' she said.

Mosman can't stomach '60s nude art film, Sydney Morning Herald

Boopedy Boop

2009-09-25T17:12:00.002+10:00

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Random Acts of Elevator Music want your building tips!

Random Acts of Elevator Music are preparing their itinerary and plan to bring productivity-raising muzaktronica to as many city office buildings as possible in Sydney and Melbourne. Let us know if you want to experience these soothing oscillations and melodies in your elevator! Email cityfreqs@akm.net.au or tweet to twitter.com/cityfreqs and we'll put your building on our itinerary. Leave a mobile number or email address and you’ll receive notification of when Random Acts of Elevator Music are about to come your way (and we won’t tell your supervisor that you gave us the inside tip…)

Melbourne office appearances: September 23rd to October 2nd

Sydney office appearances: October 5th to 12th

Random Acts of Elevator Music are back in 2009, performing live muzaktronica during office hours in buildings throughout the Sydney and Melbourne CBDs, helping to increase productivity in workplaces everywhere. Random Acts of Elevator Music is the latest project from City Frequencies, a collaboration between Matt Adair and Nick Wilson, who work together on sound projects within the metropolitan environment.

For further information visit: www.akm.net.au/cityfreqs & www.twitter.com/cityfreqs

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

The Good Son

2009-09-23T22:52:00.002+10:00