What a difference a week makes and what a week its been. South Australia decided to share its top soil with the whole of the eastern seaboard of Australia and New Zealand too. I got lucky with two of my
dust storm shots being published in a magazine in the States called
Strange Light, and last night I stepped out to the launch of
Spoke + Spool, a new range of retro inspired lycra-less cycling clothes (In the shots below these "Street Fashion" portraits taken at the opening) at Frasers Studio in Chippendale Sydney.
As I mentioned last week, if you are going to launch a commercial product in an art gallery space it is probably a good idea to get some artists involved too by way of collaboration. Now this is exactly what happened at the Spoke + Spool launch under the banner of “Where To From Here?” Though to be honest I am not sure if Spoke + Spool is really a commercial product or an Art Project designed to look like a commercial product, however the clothes do look really nice. But I digress.
As someone who gets from point A to point B by bike (and who's current fav blog is
Bike Snob NYC) I was very excited at the prospect of attending an event that fused Fashion with Bikes & Installation Art & Performance not to mention Free Beer! And speaking of free beer, as I also said last week, usually the “promotion” is for the beer and so it was this week with a beer I had never heard of before called
RAW beer.
In fact every photographer that I spoke to that evening (and there were quite a few) could not help but make the connection between RAW files and RAW beer & what with the beers being kept cold and served from a filing cabinet... No doubt with a few RAW beers under the belt “Batch” processing may never be the same again!
But as I was saying my current fav blog is
BSNYC which has helped me make sense of a whole raft of "things" I have been noticing around the city of late such as people walking their shiny track bikes or “Fixies” around Newtown & Darlinghurst/Surry Hills. I for one would never
ride a fixed wheel bike around Newtown or in traffic in general (it was bad enough doing it for one off-season on the Camperdown Velodrome RIP) so I think these dudes
walking their bikes are quite smart really. And so it seems are Spoke + Spool who are creating stylish clothes for cycling from vintage clothing and fabrics with tricky reversible bits and fashion details in reflector strips; so you don't get run-down heading home at night when you realise your flashers are tucked away in your other bag.
From Spoke + Spool, “The aim is to use as little factory-new products as humanly possible, which results in one off low-tech pieces forming a collection of unique concoctions that are unusual in style, as well as comfortable, practical and durable.”
But back to Free Beer and art openings, one of the barometers of success I use for judging if an Opening has really "gone-off" or "not" is how long the free beer lasts. As I reported last week, at the
Sneaker Freaker headphone launch the Becks never ran out. Oh happy days (or happy nights) I hear you say. No, that is not quite right although it does allow one to “enjoy beer responsibly” for-free for-longer. Sadly if the free beer does not run out, the launch/opening/promotion has not been a success! So I am pleased to say that even though RAW beer appears to be a new form of that Aussie sure-fire hangover-rendering “Classic” beer VB, in the fullness of time the RAW beer finally did run out; and after an enjoyable and informative night out so then did we.
Portrait of Malcolm Smith, curator of 'The Psychic Photobooth 2009'
'Psychic Photobooth' portraits.
Portrait punters!
Gaffa Gallery.
