JUGGLING MY BITS

I’m in this group show of 30 artists at Tortuga Studios that opens tomorrow night.

Yes, it’s the same piece I had in Extinction Denied a few weeks ago, I have just been really busy with the Powerhouse Museum and other stuff, and I had little notice to get organized. So I had to move some things around a bit, instead of make new work.

I haven’t been in enough group shows this year and I like to do four on average, this year I had to scrap one I agreed to be in due to too little time to make new work, and the other one which was kind of important to me, they lost my fucking application. Don’t get me started on it. I had a few choice words to say on the subject and shall leave it at that. No, I am not sick.

TRIPLESIX.NET: WHY SO OBSESSED WITH ME?

In 2005, something really shocking happened to me unexpectedly. I won’t go into the horrific details of it, but in that mere couple of minutes, it changed my perception of just about everything irrevocably.

One of those changes was, that I suddenly I stopped giving a flying fuck through a rolling donut about a lot of stuff that most people think is important, and think makes them happy when it actually doesn’t. We all know the saying “Money/success/material objects can’t buy happiness”, but unfortunately we insist on ignoring it until it literally has to be hammered into our head by something life-threateningly awful.

I spent, a long, long time after that deep in consideration about people, society and what was wrong with the world, life and the meaning of it all, and trying to reconcile a lot of things within myself against what was without, after the event.

What happened also meant that it made it very difficult not to despise humankind in general and I had to work really hard to strengthen my resolve that, it really is just a tiny sliver of people who are awful, and then a fraction again of that lot who go out of their way to do evil things purely for the pleasure it brings them and no actual reason.

I also had to work really hard to deal with the fact that there’s often no justice in the aftermath. This sort of stuff is truly sink or swim – your choice. Unfortunately there are a lot of people in this world who are not only physically, but emotionally greedy and will suck every last drop of your very being from you in order to further their own futility, and then deny responsibility for their actions. I think we have all dealt with this type of persona.

While I wouldn’t put someone I loathe through what I went through, I assure you that today I am a much happier person than I used to be, even though I didn’t realize before the event what happiness was really – because I was SO busy trying to be successful in the eyes of others, busy pleasing them by being focused on physical impression, so busy just doing stuff all the time, that I actually had no idea about what really satisfied me, let alone time to think about it.

I guess why I am talking about this idea,is to point out that we rarely stop to think about our actions and weigh up their importance in the scheme of things. Other people I know could learn a lesson from this.

I’ll never fully recover, but from this impact I was forced to find out what’s good for me and what makes me joyful. I’ve gone to great lengths to change my life after the fact and I can honestly say that although I’m somewhat bloated these days, I am in a pretty good place. Hey, you can’t have it all, but as long as what you do have is top quality that’s more important. I’ve worked hard at achieving a higher state of bliss and I believe I deserve that peace of mind.

However, as we know vile individuals do unfortunately exist and they are around us all the time, trying to get a piece of us. We spend a large amount of time and energy in the little things we do every day without even thinking about it, trying to keep them away before they arrive, and then also trying get rid of them once they have amazingly still managed to manipulate their way into our world against our better judgement - and lodge themselves there like miserable limpets.

One of those people is Jim Q. Finless, who puts on his quaint madcap for show, as the supposedly harmless and eccentric creative. I thought he was very talented, and I liked his work very much. He has great technique but as serious art his work is rather twee and self absorbed; but for the commercial world it’s perfect. I was impressed by his application of it on-line, so a number of years ago, I employed Jim to do a website for me, for which I stupidly paid him in advance the amount he requested.

Jim turned up to our meeting reeking like he’d been marinated in pure alcohol because by his own admission he had been out boozing since the day before and had no sleep. I know...at this point I should have pulled the plug – you live, you learn. Poor Jim and his drinking problem. I had more patience and more sympathy for people then.

I gave him written instructions and a plan. Because he was clearly drunk , he couldn’t really listen to or understand the brief I explained to him carefully and clearly, and the work never materialized and it pretty soon seemed clear he never intended to deliver it either.

I spent the next 12 months chasing Jim as he zig-zagged across the state in an effort to avoid me (no doubt leaving a swathe of disgruntled people in his wake). Eventually I lodged a complaint with the Department of Fair Trading, and over a year later I was delivered part of what I had asked for in a crumpled, dirty envelope with a letter of abuse describing me as an “asshole” and a “fucker”, and my work as “stupid”, “crap”, and “shit”. Well, he is the authority! What had I done to deserve this treatment? Not much except hand over my hard-earned money, but nevertheless Jim, what we often say of others as what we think of ourselves, innit?

Anyway, I thought better than to discuss it in front of mutual friends, and have had the discretion and good taste to simply greet him politely in company (more than he deserves) and just pretend the whole thing never happened. This basic concept is called "being a mature person who can tell from experience when they are wasting their energy", something it turns out he has little grasp of.

Fast forward to 2009 and Jim has established a “business venture” with an old friend of mine, whom we shall call Weed Mc Jellyspine. I’ve been friends with Weed for nearly 20 years, completely independent of knowing Jim, in fact probably longer than I have known him. So I know that although she’s insane in a sort of sweet way, she’s also extremely daft.

My first thought was “Uh-oh, does she know what she’s getting into?”, but you just can’t tell friends stuff like “Look, this is what happened to me. Your involvement in this is going to be a disaster and you should stay away as you will rue the day he entered your life.” They won’t listen anyway, and you end up sounding like you’re just bitter and merely bitching to sabotage them. So I made a call to save myself the pain and zip it. I bit my tongue to prevent possibly embarrassing myself, or destroying the relationship, and now I wonder why I bothered.

So along came what I shall call triplesix.net, a website where they work together to post images and footage of art openings they attend as if the mere act of controlling an overview makes it some kind of art world authority. It really doesn't serve any clear purpose, and the obvious real reason behind it, is that Jim and Weed think that if they spread themselves all over town like a whore giving five dollar blowies, that dealers and critics are going to actually pay attention to their non-careers. In some twisted form of logic called “quantity over quality” they think that through this gratuitous self-promotion, they will amass some clout. It's kind of condescending to think that other people cannot ascertain the transparency of the whole thing.

For doing this they don't appear any less silly than they have in general previously when they were both flying solo, except now it’s double the dumb, as well as they look like hypocrites - because they claim on their site that one of their main agendas is to not have any opinion on art or artists in their coverage - yet they are busily working on the old “divide and conquer” theory behind the scenes.

The sad reality is, that nobody is actually going to pay any more attention to either of them because they are running all over the scene like vapid twits. It cannot make you more talented at what you do, and it's NOT a good idea to antagonize and separate a community if you want to posit yourself as some kind of indispensable font of knowledge, or even an institution. Basically it won’t change the fact that Jim is mean and stupid, and that Weed is naïve and a fool.

I did the right thing and put my bias aside to at least support Weed by subscribing, thinking that bygones should stay that way. As the website launched, I simultaneously noticed that my e-mails and phonecalls were suddenly going unreturned by Weed. I didn’t think much of it – people are busy. I also noticed that she was suddenly “missing” off Facebook (she wasn’t really). I messaged her about this asking if she’d been deleted by the powers that be. I was truly concerned. No response. I thought no further, until I ran into her at a function.

Being the idiot she is, Weed decided that in front of other people at a launch was the right situation to blurt out completely unprovoked that Jim had “forced me to choose between him or you, so since I’m in business, there was an obvious decision”. I mean, this was the first thing to come rocketing out of her mouth before I said anything at all. Guilt trip much?

“Oh really”, I said sweetly as I patted her affectionately on the shoulder. “Thanks for letting me know what’s going on. You can’t possibly be responsible for someone else’s behaviour ”, I assured her, kindly ignoring the fact that she’s an independent mind, capable of making her own decisions, and had pretended that she didn’t receive any messages from me. I’m WAY too nice. “But…we can still be friends, he just doesn’t have to know...” Weed whined in a last ditch attempt to rescue her indiscretion.

“Of course we can sweetie” (trans: fuck you, bitch).

Remember, that I had chosen NOT to mention anything, so I am faintly amused to think what nonsense Jim has imparted to her. It’s irrelevant anyway. I've kept my mouth shut about what happened for years but once someone actively starts splitting up your friendships with people by discrediting you for something that was never your fault in the first place, it is ON, try me.

I do wonder, to a degree why Jim persists in such a bizarre, long-standing, unarticulated vendetta against me for something that HE did to ME. It's sort of fascinating for me, in the way that a champion athlete's endurance is captivating, but exhausts you just to watch - the effort of his hatred really must be killing him slowly. It’s fascinating in the way that watching an un-roadworthy car crash in slow motion is. You know the wheels will fall off and it will go skidding down a cliff, killing all occupants and taking out some innocent bystanders on the way.

I think it has something to do with Jim’s perception of the definition of "success." I don’t want to big-note myself, but if you put us in a line-up together, I’m…a lot of things he’s just not and he knows it. That’s all I can think that it is – because at this point in time there’s no other sane explanation for his pathetic behaviour apart from the fact that his chronic Alcoholism has made him addled and deluded.

If any of my acquaintances play favorites or judge me without even giving me the benefit of doubt or checking facts , it means they were too retarded to be my friend in the first place. I see it as Jim doing my work for me really. Therefore it’s no loss, but I do wish Jim would get over his creepy, sociopathic obsession with me and stop trying to backstab me at every turn by ruining my relationships.

Through all of this I still have this compulsion to be civilised about it, but these days I know better that it will get me nothing except more abuse heaped on me in a generous serving. So read and weep, suckers.

BLITZ AND PIECES

This is kind of old news since a few weeks have passed and I have already posted it on Twitter and such. So this is really a petty excuse to post some of my favorite album images from the 1980’s.

Anyway, I have been commissioned by the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney to create a line of merchandise for an exhibition which opens in December, called “The Eighties are Back!”

I’m an old hand at designing merchandise, and even though I’ve already done the eighties, albeit the edgy aspect, when I did the Leigh Bowery line for the MCA's retrospective… it gets a little easier, but it’s still no walk in the park. Especially when you have to sum up an entire decade into a few designs and make it commercial, yet stylish clever and attractive enough for some kind of audience to want a piece of it.

I guess I was lucky enough to have been a teen through that time (jealous much?) so you couldn’t claim I don’t have first hand experience. Yes, I carried a can of hairspray everywhere and am partly responsible for the hole in the ozone layer. Someone was stupid enough to ask me when I mentioned that fact, “why?”. Haven’t you seen any of the hairdos, retard?

So, I’ll probably be posting less on the blog, unless something makes me really angry (which is likely), more or less until mid December.

Then I’ll have to get straight back on to the exhibition and book for next year – which is already turning into a bubbling pot of local politics and passive-aggressive skullduggery. Usually created by the very same people that are the first to take all the credit, or put their hand out when there's any kind of freebie. They'll drink your Champagne, but won't hand over a fucking phone number. (Usually then followed by stealing your ideas off you and using them for something they are doing).

When you’re a creative person, the rest of the world are resentful enough to try and make your life as miserable as possible, even if you’re not making work that’s “all about yourself”, but for the public. I don't know why the eff I bother with it. Sooner or later I won't (and no-one will care anyway). Enough said.

OUT OF TOUCH

I read today that France is pushing to introduce a law in which there has to be a disclaimer with an image if it is overly manipulated.Some lunatic who thinks that this will be a great advance on the cause of feminism and body image, deems this is of utmost importance and will change the world - over and above climate, health, poverty, etc.

Well WRONG. Before anyone abuses me about this statement, I recently asked a feminist friend why the use of the word “bitch” and similar, have not been stamped out of the common vernacular after decades of use. Her reply was “because we realized it was a waste of time, and we have far more important things to achieve.”

I think the whole argument is idiotic. The body, images of it, have been manipulated since the beginning of time. It is nothing new at all. A mere re-interpreting of reality is a manipulation, by the author. I didn’t read about Cecil Beaton being chased with fire brands and pitchforks – in fact was celebrated for his particular work, and it was highly demanded.

If there was a carefully examined and finely modeled argument, I’d be less dismissive, but it is often glossed over to create a fairly superficial appearance by academics and journalists to promote their “findings”, much like the very pictures on magazine covers they attempt to denigrate.

There is a well-known Australian mainstream journalist named Mia Freedman who keeps on and on about it like a Greek housewife with a very blunt axe to grind. Even though I've told her she isn't reporting the facts correctly she has simply ignored my advice rather than explore it.

The healthy self image vs. retouching topic is currently trendy and one of her favorite issues to rant about on her dreary, mumsy blahg, which culminated in her posting on a spread in French Elle, I think, “sans fards” as the frogs call the no makeup look in their lingo. “Isn’t it wonderful to have some reality for once”, or somesuch , she spouted as another gusher of verbal diarrhea on the topic left her cavernous noise-maker.

I left a very collected comment on her blog stating that she was wrong about this, as a retoucher I could see that they had done plenty of work on the images, Granted other people may not be aware of this deception. Do you think any model is going to let images of themselves be released looking like a hag? Image is everything, our world revolves around finance. Kate Moss with eye bags from another night's partying? You'll never get to see them, and ka-ching goes the register at Top Shop, as another sale is racked up after brave, inspiring make-upless Kate appears "cosmetic free" and retouched to bits. Who is the dishonest party here?

Let's also not forget where the demands for this work are actually coming from -often the celebrity themselves; not media and advertisers. As I said earlier – the visuals rule over and above all when it comes to generating money. Magazines and advertisers often have to settle with what is handed to them and what is approved by the star, essentially.

So if anyone thought that those images were untouched, they were kidding themselves. I also pointed out quite correctly, that as someone with a long history of working in the magazine industry, Mia must have known this. It’s the outright deception of her base of readers that shits me.

Do you think that Ms. Freedman would pay attention to someone that knows more on the subject than her? Her response, like a mad scientist who has evidence mounting against their crazy claims and experiments, was to block me off her website for bringing this to her readers’ attention.

Like many maniacs who use the media as a solution in which to suspend their enormous, overblown egos, she doesn’t care whether she’s right or not actually. Just how many people she can control by pressing her manifesto upon them.

As a journo with a large audience, she has a responsibility to report factually and accurately. Although she pretends to believe in what she presents , she’s not interested in anything more than whipping people in to a practically religious fervour, while she puts on a front of simpering faux-concerned maternal sweetness.

It doesn’t wash with me for a minute. Just like her purported enemy , the nebulous evil media - destroyer of all females’ self image (clever front to decrie your own source of nourishment and hope readers don't notice this point) - when it all comes down for her it’s all about making the dollars using her public profile in any way she can. The truth doesn't enter into it.

Seriously, if people think that they need to live up to an unrealistic picture which is OBVIOUSLY not actuality, (take Britney Spears’ Candies campaign for instance…actually take ANY Britney official image that is released) - they need a clinical psychologist, not a law passed. Look at any of Mariah Carey’s images. The retouching is so over-the-top it has surpassed any semblance of reality to almost become art. I don’t think there’s an attempt to make it look genuine at all, and it seems clear she's poking fun at herself. How could someone who is sane want to to, or try to look like that?

If it has such a far reaching ramification on body image, then how come so many people are so overweight? First, they like food too much to deny. Second, they don’t pay as much attention as these harpies purport. Thirdly, people don’t mostly have time to obsess over what they look like all day unless they are mentally ill in some form.

In Europe, where this tornado of nonsense has been stirred to fever pitch, the perpetrator is French MP Valerie Boyer and is inspired by a recent report she supposedly authored on Anorexia and Bulimia. And only in flabby, white western culture could we have a disease of denying one’s self food, when around the globe, 24,000 people die every day from starvation. Remember that statistic. It seems that these days some form of mental disorder or vague phobia is almost a prerequisite for being white, middle class, first world. Literally, we just have too much time on our hands and not enough drama to fill it.I am not denying that these are very real diseases, but they are mental illnesses that manifest within a person, I believe – not caused externally by physical things. What I do deny is that any member of parliament has the public’s best interests at heart.

So instead of blaming sociopathic politicians and writers with a large public profile readily available to shove their personal agendas down our throats , blame those who execute the work instead, it's easier. As a retoucher I get sick of having the finger pointed, as if we are evil villains trying to undo gender advancement and decieving the world.

what really irritates me, apart from people’s ignorance, is that the criticism is tantamount to someone shitting on a craft that I have spent years honing (I did not use the verb "perfecting", because often us retouchers are required to unperfect – the illusion of perfection being in certain flaws).

There is an incredible amount of skill and artistry to retouching, and I think there needs to be a clarification, defined boundaries of what exactly is termed excessive manipulation. There is a gradation from "correction" (improvements, realistic) to what becomes "art" (unrealistic, creative). So who's going to draw up a chart for this and police it? It's as ignorant as saying there are only two sexes or sexualities, and no spectrum inbetween.

Blaming images in the media for this problem makes as much sense as shutting down a hammer factory, saying that the manufacture of tools causes people to kill others with a blow over the head, simply because they are readily available for purchase in a hardware store. What is actually to blame is a person’s perception of self, a poor self image to start with, not a magazine cover, an ad, a product. I guess if you're a responsible adult and still too stupid to figure out the difference, that's just bad luck.

I think there should be more focus on the unrealistic expectations on women to be wives, mothers, AND have a career. I think the trickle down effect of this has far more damaging ramifications than a supposed misrepresentation of body image.

Quite frankly, most of the women I know are so busy doing more important things, that they just don't have time to focus on how they look. Ain’t that the truth.

WISH GRANTED

Wendy Richardson on book cover design for "Coalfaces" project.

I am pleased to announce my next (definite) exhibition has been supported by Wollongong Council with a Cultural Grant. The exhibition "Coalfaces" is a project of 15 or so portraits with oral history stories of local identities with a strong connection to the Mount Kembla area. I'm also hoping to have a book out with the art and stories for the opening date, which is 29th July 2010.

Playwright Wendy Richardson is a local who has recieved an OAM for her services to literature. and has been a fantastic supporter of the project. In the 110 year old cemetery near my house there is her beautiful and sad poem "Wndy Gully" about the mining disaster, etchedon a marble monument. It was the first thing I saw when I came up here, and I thought "wow, this is the place for me"'. I've since gotten to know her a little bit and I really like her attitude and her style, as well as the fact she is a great story teller. Her story on the portrait reads as follows:

"I came to Mount Kembla by accident, we got lost on the mountain. It was real Bunyip country. We bought a large dilapidated weather board general store and dance hall. There was also a house and in a drawer of an old desk was a copy of the Royal Commission into the Mine Disaster of 1902. I opened the dusty cover. It pulled me into the story, and this was my departure point. I'm a teller of tales. I weave them out of what I hear and observe - some of them are true. I write about ordinary people who never consider themselves courageous or outstanding and who have led such extraordinary lives. As I read and talked and walked and listened I began to realize what a privilege it was to live in a close-knit mining community where we keep alive those things we must never forget".

EXTINCTION DENIED

I am part of this year's "Extinction Denied" exhibition at Arthouse Hotel in Sydney. This is an annual event put on by the Humane Society International to raise funds for their work.

It's a cause I very much believe in, considering I like animals far better than people, even if they're horrible animals. That's because even vile creatures are more useful than humans. At least animals, birds and insects serve a purpose and have a point...OK, I'll stop already!

Adam Cullen is of course usually the star of the show, this year there's also Abbey McCulloch, Mary Shackman, Simon Collins, Lucy Culliton, and of course the irrepressable Grant Whitely whose work in the last exhibition sold for the second highest price to Adam's. I have to say that I think his painting for this year of a giant closeup of a Zebra's ass is fabulous. I'm not even joking!

I Feel Like I'm Part of Something Bigger Than Myself, 2009

Go over to the HSI website to see the rest of the artist's contributions.

http://hsi.org.au/index.php?catID=583

THERE AIN'T NOTHIN' (SPOOKY) LIKE A DAME

I researched, wrote and designed this postcard on Dame Ethel Hoskins Hayton for the Wollongong Council project “Memories and Memorabilia”, using a photograph that well known photographer Reginald Warlow took at some function, and also used elements from a box of memorabilia that had belonged to Ethel - someone by chance brought it in when being interviewed about something else and asked if we wanted it. Of course we said yes, and so it was donated to the project.




It was a crimson and gold flock floral box, probably a 1930’s chocolate box, and in it were picture postcards sent to Ethel at her shop from various friends on holidays, as well as bead and button samples on cards which we were told were from her father or grandfather’s haberdashery.
You can see elements of the floral pattern, beads, and other things I have utilized in the design.




I was surprised that something material had appeared that had belonged to this elusive person, purported “friend of thousands”, but that nobody seemed to know much about. And more pointedly, materialized unasked for at a time I was really hitting a wall finding leads on this person. If anything, it just created more puzzle.







So how my curiosity was piqued was, near the beginning of the Town Hall project, I saw a performance piece that was shown at a lecture - a piece that Merringong Theatre created for the Viva La Gong festival a couple of years ago, where a tall skinny eccentric character, supposedly Ethel, danced around a piano (representing the Steinway she gifted for the local Town Hall), on stilts and then gave out Ice Cream to the public (representing how much she gave to the community).

I got interested in Ethel because although there was the walkway named for her, and I knew she had donated most of the money for the Steinway piano - there wasn't much other information, and Merringong Theatre said that although they had researched to create the performance, they actually didn't know much about who she was or why she was an important figure– and they were right – they gave me the paperwork they had which didn’t amount to much.

Who was this person who had fronted up tens of thousands of dollars for a musical instrument, as well as scholarships, and where did the money come from? Was she an heiress or something? What was the motivation? So many unanswered questions.




I was told there was a file in the archives at one of the libraries, but actually there wasn't any information available about her per se. So, if Ethel had achieved so many things, done so much for Wollongong, and been so popular, then why wasn’t there a wealth of knowledge available easily? I thought that was quite bizarre.

Thus I became intrigued, and determined to find out as much as I could. It became my “pet project” within the Town Hall Study, I think looked on with some amusement by my colleague.

Ethel, as you will read in the archive, if you care - was a bundle of contradictions.
She was a modest and almost morbidly shy person who ironically was an important social reporter of the time with a lot of clout. She had a lot of questions about religious fundamentalism, yet unbeknownst to many she cooked a hot meal for the priests of the nearby church and delivered it herself every Sunday night. As it turns out, she did a huge amount for the community, but didn't go around promoting herself or her good civic deeds, and it stayed under her hat a lot of the time. And she had a lot of hats. Big, fancy hats to hide under.





I saw my obsession as working towards a redux, by compiling information that would be available in the library for the public who were interested to find out who this mysterious person was.
I tracked down and interviewed several different people for the town hall project who knew her well. I pushed for the postcard that was published because it seems she has been more or less forgotten, and I thought there should be some kind of memorial so she would be remembered for all she had done.

In early August, a few weeks after the Council project was finished, I was walking along the road near where I live, in Windy Gully, a remote rural area adjoining the Escarpment Reserve. It’s really the middle of nowhere, but evil people often come up here and dump rubbish because they don’t want to pay to take it to the tip. So it’s not that unusual to see bits of random paper fluttering around.

Almost opposite my house, about 15 metres from the front door, I noticed a piece of old wet gray paper tucked well into the grasses at the side of an overgrown field. I pulled it out and looked at this damp black and white, 8 x 10, seemingly hand-developed photographic portrait of a rather demure yet defiant looking older lady, with her chin pointed up towards the camera. She was wearing cat eye glasses with rhinestones, and a black lace dress – but somehow still looked a little disheveled, like life had been hard.
Still, her face portrayed “ I may look soft, and maybe I am - but I’m also made of tough stuff and you better not even think about messing with me.”




There weren’t many clues, except that it had that casual feel that looked like a hobbyist may have taken it, a sense of intimacy somehow, as if the person who had snapped the shutter knew her and admired her in some way, and, obviously someone had cared enough at some time to have it enlarged.

Since I am a huge lover of vernacular photos, particularly found ones, I was happy to have discovered what I thought was quite a good one, that showed a lot of the person’s character, whom ever she was.
I immediately tacked it to my kitchen wall where her eyes continued to follow me around the house. Every once in a while I’d stop and speak to her. “So, who are you, hmmm? Are you going to tell me?”

I put the word out, to some local historians who had history in this area and word came back some time later from one.

“Have a look at one of your postcards and you will see the resemblance. The lady is the same one. Her name escapes me, Ethel or something like that. She has a walkway named after her down the bottom of Crown Street, You may remember me saying that she was a well known lady at the time.”

Actually, I never would have recognized her. In the very rare photos we dug up of her for the Town Hall project, she looks sweet, bumbling behind her enormously thick glass lenses, and somewhat goofy. Definitely no social lioness.

So to now find a portrait lying in the road near my house is just weird, like she keeps popping up in my life.

OK, Miss Hayton. I get the message. You’re welcome.