Friday, November 27, 2009

The Psychic Photobooth 2009 - Mixed Dozen

Friday night Opening of Mixed Dozen, Nov 27 to Dec 8 at Gaffa Gallery. I loved Malcolm's Photobooth piece which was clearly the hit of the show. Art can be fun too! There's some great photography work by Torunn Momtazi, Emma Furno and Diego Ibanez amongst others, well worth a look.

Portrait of Malcolm Smith, curator of 'The Psychic Photobooth 2009Portrait of Malcolm Smith, curator of 'The Psychic Photobooth 2009'

The Psychic Photobooth portrait 1

The Psychic Photobooth portrait 2'Psychic Photobooth' portraits.

Portrait puntersPortrait punters!

Gaffa GalleryGaffa Gallery.

"The Psychic Photobooth 2009
A breakthrough in advanced supernatural technology...
Enter if you dare. If you can't handle the truth, don't bother".

Gaffa Gallery

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Serpent and the Swan : Label Launch

Serpent and the Swan launch at Blender Gallery in Paddington Sydney. A nice line of knit and jersey tops for boys and girls. My little PR pack had the double headed wolf brooch which; as I went with lovely company I actually got to keep! (Some friends just have to raid everyones goodie bags).

Serpent and the Swan Launch, PR Pack

Serpent and the Swan Launch, Display Rack

Serpent and the Swan Launch, two tops, button detail

Serpent and the Swan Launch

Serpent and the Swan Launch, window instillation, knitting

I loved the instillation in the window; the 'product' photography on the walls was certainly edgy enough to fit in with the current rock photography show on at Blender. Another successful art gallery fashion launch!

Serpent and the Swan

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

2 Cynics, Movember Madness

Checked out the Cynics Jewelry launch in Paddington last Thursday. Designer Amanda and Cynic helper Rhiannon do 'Chicks' into Movember! Go girls.
And... if you think it looks like they are wearing zips around their neck you are for the most part right, works rather well and reminds me of the good-old days of Punk.

Cynics, Exhibit Portrait, Amanda and Rhiannon.

Cynics, Exhibit Portrait r


Cynics Accessories Blog

Friday, November 13, 2009

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

A Big Avo Out...

It all started out with some location scouting in Kings X with Stylist, Fashion Writer and sometimes Artist's Muse Rhiannon Bulley. We had spent a couple of hours or so checking out a few spots for a four shot Web-etorial planned for Friday before meeting up with Nyk and Rachael at the Green Park Hotel.

Rhiannon Bulley at Green Park, Darlinghurst Sydney Australia.
We then rolled down the hill (in an orderly fashion) to Stills Gallery to see Trent Parke's 'Please step quietly everyone can hear you'; "This year Magnum photographer Trent Parke, one of Australia's best-known and most original photographers, was commissioned by Sydney Opera House, as an artist in residence, to shoot behind the scenes..."

Trent Parke 'Artists and Openings' Series, 'Please step quietly everyone can hear you' Exhibition, Stills Gallery, Sydney Australia.
Its a great exhibition, well worth seeing and we all got to meet Trent too. Now you don't get to meet Magnum Photographers every day so I seized the opportunity to ask Trent if he would 'pose' for one of my 'Artists and Openings' shots and kindly he said yes. But you can't get an artist set up for a portrait shot at a photography opening without one or two camera handy people getting in on the action too as Trent was letting me with a, "She's stealing your shot". Not that I mind in the least. When the lady beside me mentioned his eyes were shut in her shots I recommended 'tapping' the button faster only to find out the lady 'stealing' my shots was Trent's wife (and photographer extraordinaire) Narelle Autio! It was all fine however as apparently Trent is (not surprisingly) often on hand to offer Narelle similar advice. Hmmm...

desordre Launch 1
Well after all the excitement at Stills, Nyk took us over to a Pop-Up Shop launch on the corner of Riley & Oxford St for 'desordre'. And curiously, speaking of 'stealing' shots over peoples shoulders; it looks like I managed to do just that with Nyk's set-up of the proprietors at the launch of this store. even more curiously, it looks like we managed almost the same portrait set-up from stills. What a strange and wonderful world.

desordre Launch 2

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Rachael Contemplates



Rachael Contemplates what needs to be done before end of term at National Art School. Photographed in her backyard in Marrickville. I keep telling her not to worry, shes got the work!

Rachael's work

Relax, its all good.

You can also check out her blog on my blog roll on the right.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Waiting for the Bus, Broadway Sydney

Waiting for the Bus, Broadway Sydney

Blue eye shadow with green snake skin shirt & Yin Yang ring.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Spoke + Spool Launch & Art Collabo

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.

Portrait, Handy Cam Artist, Spoke + Spool Launch

Portrait Two Girls, Spoke + Spool Launch

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.

Portrait, Bike Kit, Spoke + Spool Launch

Portrait, Jacket VeeTee & runners, Spoke + Spool Launch

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.

Room & Clothes @ Spoke + Spool Launch

People, Room & Clothes @ Spoke + Spool Launch

Musos performing, Frasers Studio, Spoke + Spool launch

Hanging Bike & shoes.

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!

Filing cabinet full of beer

A table of empty beer bottles

Spilt Beer, AKA, Messy Camera JPEGs

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.

Bikes and Courier Bags

Red Jacket & Bike Locking

Outside view Frasers Studio

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.”

Portrait of designer Alia Parker

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.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Street Fashion and Cultural Enlightenment

Last night my posse & I headed out for a night of art, free beers, street fashion and cultural enlightenment. Yes it was Friday night in Sydney and China Heights Gallery was launching “Old Friends New Minds” a new solo show by Mark Alsweiler. This is a very quirky show & I was able to knock off a quick “Artists and Openings” portrait of Mark himself with one of his large cut out works. Mark was pretty easy to spot as the artist too since as you can see from the portrait he was wearing a curiously similar hat as his painted subject (right behind him) is depicted wearing.

Mark Alsweiler

As regular readers of this blog would know I use art openings not only to keep up-to-date with new creative work, I also like going to art openings to see what people are wearing. Recently I have been noticing the return of the extreme tight jean, well extremely tight jean leg anyway; it seems the crotch may still ride low 90s style if you like them like that. For those of you who may not be aware I am a tragically old man and I must say its nice to see the tight legged jean back in style. Back in the early 80s I became something of a dab hand at tapering the legs of my jeans on my mothers trusty Husqvana sewing machine and, short of actually asking someone I suspect these “New” tapered leg jeans are available off-the-shelf and probably in stretch denim which was yet to be invented back in my day... No doubt stretch denim makes the logistically difficult task of getting the jeans on and off a much more simple affair.


Taperd Jeans & pointy Shoes no socks.

Brown Shoes

Whilst checking out Marks charming art and art patrons jeans and shoes at China Heights we “discovered” Sneaker Freaker was having a “Cool” new product launch at another favorite gallery of ours, Palmer Projects just a little way down the hill.

Wall Portraits at Palmer Projects

Its an interesting proposition launching a product at a hip indi gallery space. Usually the art is real art and the “promotion” is just the beer. Sadly this was not the case down the hill at Palmer Projects although the good people at Becks seem to have provided quite a few cases of beer to help make the night a big success...

Palmer, Pictures & Crowd

On our arrival at the Sneaker Freaker launch we were confronted with just four large “Portraits” of “Cool” people wearing ear-bud headphones & some clear display cases with, yes you guessed it, ear-bud headphones inside.

Black Mini Boots

Now apart from the fact that I am a bit miffed that no-one asked me to shoot the portraits for a very reasonable advertising day rate; there is some pretty serious competition in the people-wearing-ear-bud-headphone world of advertising and photography. Also am not sure that presenting audio equipment “Under Glass” like it was precious artwork or some kind of jewelry is a particularly enlightened idea. Lets face it, even if like me you might just be turning up for a few free drinks and a bit of social intercourse; even the type of "Style Influencer" that this sort of launch is meant to impress is hardly going to be "influenced" by a few pack shots on the wall, no art and no Artist!

i pod therefore (i Think) am i i am

So I got to thinking about art and sound & I thought that if I wanted to have a cool launch of some headphones at an art gallery, it just might be a good idea to get some sound artists involved with the project instead of a photographer! Now as cool as sound artist Rik Rue (photographed here at SNO Gallery in Marrickville) certainly is, I suspect he is quite likely outside of Sneaker Freakers target demographic.

Rik Rue

Still, there are plenty of sound artists around and a real art collaboration would have brought a level of true credibility to an audio products launch in an art gallery. And if we could have “sampled” the product (not just the Becks) we might have gotten a much better idea of just how “Cool” these new headphone are...

Product launch re-curated!

By way of lending a helping hand I decided that I myself would “collaborate” with the Sneaker Freaker installation and “re-curate” one of the jewel cases which I have duly documented here. And funnily enough, people just love collaborating with "art"; within minutes of my “indi-collab” the Ear-Bud-Jewel-Boxes were literally bristling with empty Becks bottles!

www.chinaheights.com

www.palmerprojects.com.au

Monday, August 31, 2009

Joolz + Vintage Luggage Company + Oncology Children's Foundation

JOOLZ collection THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM at the VINTAGE LUGGAGE COMPANY + Fund Raising Auction for the Oncology Children's Foundation.

Not quite street fashions normal stomping ground but its all in support of a good cause. Vintage Luggage joined with the new Joolz Collection jewelry launch to support the Oncology Children's Foundation. There was no shortage of Teddy Bear buyers in support of the Foundation and the auction of a vintage LV trunk secured an additional $5000.

If you spot anything here that tickles your fancy you can check it all out at 18 Bay Street Double Bay darlings.


Models and Joolz Jewelry
Oncology Bears, Sydney Models and Jewels by Joolz

Auction in Action
The Auction begins!

The Vintage Louis Vuitton Trunk
The Vintage Vuitton


Auction watchers
The Auction continues...

Auction watchers
How high will it go?

Auction Watchers with a clutch of Bears.
Can we bear the excitment !~)

Red Shawl
My Fav 'street' fashion piece of the night, the Red Shawl.

Jewels by Joolz
Jewels by Joolz

Louis Vuitton trunks and poster
More Vintage Luggage


From their web site

"Oncology Children's Foundation
Make tomorrow a reality for kids with cancer

The Oncology Children's Foundation (OCF) is a not-for-profit children's charity dedicated to finding a cure for sick and critically ill children suffering from cancer, leukaemia and other serious cancer related illnesses. In Australia today more children die of oncology related conditions than any other disease."

If you would like to make a donation please contact the foundation using the link below.

http://www.ocf.com.au/

Thanks to Rosemary for the invite & everyone who made it such a great night.