Friday, July 31, 2009

age of

Anna's a lawyer now and she's never been this stressed out in all of her life.
Simon designs skate parks all over the world and is shortly expanding and opening up an office in Singapore. On the weekends he surfs four wheel drives and dances around bonfires on the beach.
David wants to study photography and paint pictures with the light.
Mel wears suits and gives people security. She'll move to the south of France and have three boys. It's her destiny.
Matthew and I were going to become partners in a web design business, but didn't.
Sass is coming home from the UK in December and wants to get a place together. She wants to own a nursery and sell my work on her walls while Davey DJ's and she serves coffee through the plants. She dreams about boys all day long.
Lachlan teaches special children. I don't think he'll ever grow old.
Jason is and architect and has stainless steel bench tops on the top floor.
Ollie isn't an engineer anymore.
Pheobe makes films and looks like a little indian with a feather in her hair.
Tania cleans houses and is raising two beautiful children on her own. She got braces at 26.
Caroline lives in London and no longer works in bars. We got drunk in Paris and she walked for miles to get home whilst I entered the morning in a house with no toilet with a bunch of wonderful strangers.
Stevie owns a cafe and rolled a white dolphin in Amsterdam last night.
Rhett recently relocated to Sydney to lay concrete and for change.
Davey swims up to the bar for another drink on the coast of Australia. He cannot wipe the smile from his face.
Nick is about to become a helicopter pilot. He's an explorer and discovers rock art. He's trying to unlock the mysteries of our country. I wish he'd become a writer.
Casey arranges flowers and bares wild wooly hair like Cobain. I fell in love with him the very second I laid eyes upon him. He doesn't call as much anymore.
Lily studies design and enjoys paste ups and markers. She'll still enjoy them in Prato this October.
Henry produces music and can never get to class on time.
Georgie is a pediatrician and takes care of himself and has a collection of beautiful fragrances around the corner from my house.
Jocelyn wears hot pink Christian Louboutin heels and has a keen eye for negative space. She would like a breast reduction. She is a teapot full of cider. She'll make a wonderful mother.
James is a successful painter. He lives in a box of paints.
Martine is in London about to begin an internship at Vogue. She's never coming home.
Ish hates his job and just moved into a new place in St Kilda. He's a virgo.
Lauren works in PR and wears thick rimmed glasses and laughs so much.
Lewie is an engineer without a degree and talks about smashing chicks and anal and enjoys beer at Killing Time.
Lottie is living out of an old suitcase and will move to the Italian countryside in August with her husband.
Nicholli teaches french at an all girls school. He's not gay but he's a ranga. Same thing.
Sam is a wine maker and dresses like a golfer. Yesterday he wore round sunglasses.
Alli should have been born in the 60's. She's back from LA on Wednesday.
Robert is a mechanic with an illustrative sense of humor. The light in my eye.
Mark lost his mind and moved to Tasmania to become a priest.
Angela studied art history and is going to teach children. Before or after Europe?
Bree is an actor and lived in Japan as Wendy from Peter Pan.
Leroy plays music to crowds of googed people.
So does Joe, Alex, James, Katie, Jen, Josh, Pete, and everybody else in Melbourne.
Liam works in science and I think differently about him now after our discussion about music.
Cameron owns a bar underneath his apartment and has put designing clothes on hold for now. He has one long dread with a feather tied to the end and dresses like a sherpa.
Lawrence makes incredible films about small things that matter. He also left Australia with everybody else.
Chantelle worked in the exporting industry and fell pregnant a month ago to her boyfriend of 10 years who has a child of 2 years to another girl that she just found out about.
Lucy likes no-nickers parties and speaks mandarin through her fat plump lips.
Vick became a hairdresser and called the whole wedding off and lost her brains. I think her new boyfriend hurts her.
Clancy is in movie production and Where the Wild Things Are is in cinemas in October. Still a bad drunk in her yellow trench and as cute as a button.
Caleb left his past behind and got married last december. I hope he's happy.
Andrew has finished his degree and spends alot of time in the gym.
Nathan went back to school and is reliving his early 20's.
Leo is an aircraft engineer. We always had a crush on each other. He has epilepsy.
Dan runs an amazing bar where the best musicians play and the crowd goes wild. On occasions he runs illegal parties and wraps cars in glad wrap.
Lauren had her own magazine until she had a baby to her ex boyfriend.
Chrisanthi dates an American Crew model and lives a lavish lifestyle and dresses in designer threads. Her heart hasn't been in her job for over a year. She drives a convertible. Her father is truly handsome.
Laura works at a beauty salon and wants to buy a house with her father.
Lisa makes coffee all day and talks about murdering her boss. Her girlfriend of 5 years hasn't told her parents she is a lesbian.
Robbie spends most of his days playing hackysack and writing poetry around the world. He thinks he is Hunter S Thompson and spends more days bent and sideways than not.
Farrah is about to get married in Bali and says her biological clock is ticking.
Beppi lives in Brisbane. We thought he'd work at Big W forever. His boyfriend was unfaithful more than once.
Costas sold his business and now runs an authentic Italian restaurant in the city. His girlfriend takes photographs and is much taller than he is. Bloody greeks.
Keysha thinks green and cares for the environment. She wishes she could catch up more often.
Fee lives on the edge and should have continued designing. His eyes are never open anymore and he has taken homeless shic to a whole new level. Live fast die young.
Daniel is an art director from London and could be asian but might be italian? He says I inspire him and that takes my breath away. His girlfriend is a ballroom dancer.
Rome is a photographer for a skateboard magazine. He has a brain tumor and a lisp. His girlfriend loves him immensely. He jokes about glueing his hair to his beanie so that when his hair falls out, no body will notice.
Gillian is perverted and works in retail. Aside from her double degree in bullshit, she'll become chief editor of a high end magazine and will hardly get drunk, but still remain celestial.
Allison sings in bars and studies music for a living. Her face is so colourful she needent wear detailed fabrics or she will appear far too busy.
Andy works on graders and puts pipes together and digs. He used to write in his book and stand in front of the heater and read us his intentions of universal kindness and all becoming one. He's just returned from Canada. Single.
And me......................I just want to be free. That's all I ask for. Freedom to live and freedom to love. I don't think there's much more to life really.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

why violin?


Is it just to hear one's life from another one's perspective?

And what would they say?

Sunday, July 26, 2009

sunday

shhhhhhhhhhhhh.

did you hear that?

silence.

a fire just lit. 
the darkness of the wind.
a hungary baby, crying.
the weight of tomorrow.
a flicker of light.
a road.
a wrenching heart and an end to these weary shutters, flapping like concrete in a cool empty night.
the beginning.

a beginning of noise.
of radiant ignorance.
an informal awakening.

mass fulfillment awaits.
the long path to enlightenment.

a vastness only she can comprehend.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Courtney Brims





Courtney is a self taught artist is nestled in Brisbane, whom likes anything a little unusual being inspired by fairytales.

Mr & Mrs Drinkwater

It's wonderful life, isn't it? And what makes life so brilliant is the people you have in it. About 4 years ago I moved into my fresh new abode in St Kilda with an armful of friends. I was moving into Lottie's old room. And that's where we first became aquainted. Since this very day we have seen this beautiful flower flourish into what she is today. A success. A real gem. A beauty. And last year her and her equally beautiful hubby, became wed. James and Lottie lead a life many would kill for. An old shed/warehouse in Yarraville, filled with collectables, easels, lace table cloths, books and painting and pictures scaling every wall. Clutter and butter, stairs to the kitchen and bedroom and a big roller door that opens up onto the street. It's heaven. James has dabbled in much creation now proving to be a very successful painter and there's plenty of room to move in the warehouse. Trust me. Lottie also runs a very interesting business of her own making jewelry from recycled metals. Her work is simply stunning. Staying true to her ilk, Lottie is a walking breath of fresh air tapping into vintage/corporal polished/war like romances with artish intelligence. She makes all of her pieces by hand as well as all of her own packaging. 
Next month James and Lottie are moving to Italy to live in a beautiful old house in the country. A garage sale and barbeque a few weeks ago, saw all of the beautiful stuff from their place sold and into the possession of friends and family to live on forever. There's a poky sadness having this special space change but the excitement of the alternate is a leisure. I can't wait to see inspirations drawn from Europe in James' future work, and what Lottie has in store for her next! Here's a few pictures from Mr and Mrs Drinkwater's nest in Yarraville and a few examples of their work. 

God bless beguiling people and how they decorate your life! It's an inspiration to us all to follow what we believe in, stay true to yourself and march ahead. 






Monday, July 13, 2009

State of Design Festival

I'm very excited to announce my excitement for the annual State of Design Festival.
Held over two weeks and exhibitions continuing, people can indulge in design events, dinners, talks, workshops and exhibitions. This years topic 'Sampling the Future'. I have friends involved this year and I'm working at the festival to get an sneak peak into the wonerdul world of design and these events behind the scenes.

So stay tuned.

15 - 25 July


Saturday, July 4, 2009

anything but tame


Tame Impala is the movement in Orion's nebula and the slime from a snail journeying across a footpath. To humans however, Tame Impala is more of a 'music ensemble', but its various other forms should not be disregarded (colour that humans can see is only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, the rest is just as important to other things!)Tame Impala make psychedelic hypno-groove melodic rock music. It's intended for moving one's body to, and it's intended for keeping still and observing other forms of movement. It's bombastic but it's swirling, think of the shoulder bones of a giant striding feline creature through some kind of tunnel. If Tame Impala's music reminds you of what you'd want to put on when you next visit your mind's engine room then they're happy. If not, whatever, it's just music. Put it on when the sun next shines. Basically it's all about the feeling

Tame Impala are Kevin Parker, Dom Simper and Jay Watson. Kevin and Dom have been musical companions for a good 9 years, having met at music class in high school at age 13, sometime after Kevin had began honing his primitive self recording skills as a way of putting tune to his newly learned drum beats. They found Jay sometime last year in rural Western Australia and admired his groovebrain and corresponding wrist movement. By stroke of luck he was moving to Perth with another band and this allowed them to jam.

The Tame Impala sound is one equally informed by The Beatles as it is beat poetry, by Turkish prog as it is by Turkish delight, and by English folk as much as homeless folk, and it's a breathe of fresh air that reeks of all of these at times and none at others.Anyway, the band still enjoy recording music at home and getting up on the roof when weather permits. With the songs-vat (the apparatus used for storing songs) showing weakness and beginning to split at the seams, it's lucky they have secured a recording deal. An EP of home recordings is due out sometime soon.The EP is 5 tracks of untamed enthusiasm and unexpected delight. Beginning with Desire Be, Desire Go's endlessly looping, loose groove verses, to Slide Through My Fingers rollicking desert trip of a journey, Half Full Glass Of Wine's half-speed double-awesome riffing, 41 Mosquitoes Flying In Formation's unstoppable shake and Skeleton Tiger's marching band drums and haunting lead guitar, the Tame Impala EP is a beautiful snapshot into what lies within this beast. - (website)

Sundown Syndrome reveals a brazen tenderness from my soul and all I can think of is shorts and long grass in the scrub as a child. Give them a hoy and stay tuned for more beautiful free gigs to move to or to get moved by - (hopefully)

Kate Gibb




Kate Gibb originally studied textiles at Middlesex University in London, but after her graduation she decided to focus on the development of the silkscreen process on paper, rather than fabric.
Silkscreen printing is often used to create poster works or prints to put on t-shirts. It's a printing technique that uses woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink as a sharp-edged image into a substrate. A roller or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink past the threads of the woven mesh in the open areas. Very nice results come from this process, fragile and dreamy. Kate has worked with people such as The Chemical Brothers, The Magic Numbers, Penguin Books and Sonny J, just to name a few. Check her out!

Thursday, July 2, 2009

ACNE PAPER



I must say. It's been a while since I have picked up a magazine and read every last word on every page, but this one has me drewling.  Thomas Persson if the mild-mannered editor-in-chief of ACNE PAPER, the magazine published by the Swedish label of the same name. But as it's covers make it perfectly clear, this is no dressed up catalog flogging skinnies and tees. Rather, mostly sold in museums, ACNE is a large-scale, finely crafted art biannual with a mission all its own. Unabbreviated, the title says it all: Ambition to Create Novel Expressions. And it does just that. Every dripping page lush with elegant layouts and romantic hues. Hypnotic and artful photography with each issue having a theme. The page layouts are just beautiful. I'm so impressed. I feel slightly lustful and special. My thoughts are killer right now!
Lee Carter from Hint caught up with Thomas in October last year whilst he was launching the new winter issue, this is how it went....

LC: Would I sound like a groupie if I told you I'm a fan of the new issue even before seeing it?
TP: No. Yes. Each issue does get better. I think because we have these themes, which makes the magazine stand apart.

What's the theme of winter?
Tradition.

What's your favorite thing about it?
There's one feature that's my darling. It's about two extraordinary tapestries from the late Middle Ages that went through a major renovation. They're enormous. They're from Belgium, now hanging in Genoa. It took this atelier five years to restore them, which they've been doing for hundreds of years. They tell the story of Alexander the Great, the Macedonian king—who was gaaaay.

So the tapestries are gay porn?
No, they're quite sexy though. It's interested to see how sophisticated things were. We think about the Middle Ages as something dark and gloomy, but in fact it was quite a colorful, glorious and glamorous time. You can see that in the tapestries. The women are beautiful with high foreheads and heavy eyelids. The men are very masculine and they all have their own individual expressions. There could be hundreds of men in one fragment yet every inch is so full of detail.

Um, hundreds of men? What kind of scene is this?
A battle scene. One tapestry is about Alexander's youth and the other is how he conquers the world. Then we have a wonderful cover shoot by Daniel Jackson with Guinevere van Seenus, beautiful pictures inspired by old master paintings.

She's perfect for that. She can do Renaissance, alien, anything.
We also have an interview with Nan Goldin, which is quite brutal in its honesty. It's sort of painful to read because she talks about love, but without being cynical. She's realistic about love and sex and relationships. We also have an interview with the great Noam Chomsky about language, which is really fascinating. And we have a really funny story about wine. It's with Raoul Ruiz, a filmmaker from Chile but based in France. He talked about a certain wine having so much acid that if you spilled it on a tablecloth it would burn a hole right through it.

I must try this wine.
Yes, you should. It was fun to do something about wine that wasn't snobby.

I like how Acne Paper has complete freedom of scope and tone. It's able to touch on so many times and places, and really go beneath the surface. It's a little universe.
That's very nice of you to say. And you're absolutely right. That's what we wanted from the beginning. I like to say it's dinner conversation, as opposed to cocktail conversation. Today, with the web, you can get information in a flash. So in a way, magazines have lost their purpose. I wanted to offer something different. We're more inspired by books than magazines.

How do you come up with your stories?
It all starts with a kind of feeling, which always seems to come when we're already working on an issue. We get an appetite for something else, so each issue is a sort reaction to the previous.

What's your dream story?
An interview with Irving Penn, because he's so reluctant. I love what he writes in his books, there's no bullshit. He's about finding the essence, like in his photographs. He's a great inspiration. 

What's the mission of Acne Paper?
To be timeless, to mix the historical with the contemporary. A theme that was relevant 500 years ago can be relevant today. And it needs to have an aesthetic about it. I couldn't do a magazine about passion because what's the color palette of passion? For the color palette of tradition, I immediately think of wooden floors, rustic, old, textured. Then we just research for a while. We'll look at books, go on the Internet, talk to people and boil down the theme. And sometimes we do something just because we want to.

Are there stories you definitely don't want?
There's so much focus on celebrities and consumerism these days, which is fine. But I thought maybe we could not do that, not because we don't like it, but so many other people are doing it.

And clearly you're not funded by advertising.
No. Someone said to me once that we have to advertising. He said without advertising it's not a real magazine. But what is real?

He was saying the prestige of a magazine comes from its advertising, which makes no sense.
For me a real magazine has real content. If you look at most magazines, they're controlled by their advertisers, but we have freedom.

At the same time it's not just promotional material for Acne.
In the beginning, bookstores in Sweden would say, Oh, Acne is doing a magalog. But it's not about Acne. It's called Acne and it's part of the Acne collective, but one has to remember that it's published by all the Acne companies. People got that eventually. We're getting better distribution all the time, primarily through cultural institutions. We've been contacted by the Centre Pompidou and the Tate Modern. We're always sold out.

So in a way, it seems like Acne Paper has reached a kind of perfect form. Is there anything you still really want to try?
Of course, like anything, it can always be better. But if I wanted to try something radically different it would be to start a new magazine. Should we have another champagne?

Yeah, I'm easy.