It’s true I guess. Sometimes I get half way through the day and realise all the clothes I’m wearing are from Incu and half the best jokes music I’ve heard came from Chris Wu at Popfrenzy.
Designer Vince Frost, uber editor Jess Scully, Sydney Festival director Fergus Linehan front up with Chris and the brothers Wu for a blow by blow from Time Out’s Sydney Style Council.
Chris on Sydney:
Until last year, I had been to the beach maybe twice in ten years, and then I moved to Coogee. Not that I go swimming or anything, but reading the papers by the sea or just seeing it from far away is kind of nice which I would have never thought. Maybe next year I will actually touch the sand.
He gave Cyclic a plug too:
Cyclic Defrost is also a local zine that is worth consulting because the articles are well developed and the subject matters usually diverge from mainstream musical trends and are written with a lot of heart.
Time Out must be giving the rest of the city’s tired looking street rags a real fright. Decent features (mostly), interesting, frank stories. What next?!
ICE director Lena Nahlous came in to FBI this morning to talk about last weekend’s 2020 Summit. She took part in the summit’s creative strand, and was one of a small number interested in (and demonstrably capable of) talking about digital media, creativity (as distinct from The Arts), and the audience out there for art drawn from outside the big institutions; art and stories from migrants, young people and women.
A Victim – Omar S
Around the World – The Death Set
Track 6 – Fabulous Diamonds
My Life (feat. Newham Generals)- Dizzee Rascal
You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son – Wolf Parade
Water Curses – Animal Collective
Dancing On Our Graves – The Cave Singers
Footwork – Guilty Simpson
Shall We Take a Trip – Northside
Shut Up and Be Young – Parades
Magic Doors – Portishead
Goodbye Goodbye – The Lost Mariachi
I Feel It All (Escort remix – Feist
Marwurrumburr – Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
Weapons – Son Lux
Counterpoint – Cleptoclectics
Eraser – No Age
Great Escape – No Kids
Arrabida – Portable
Slow Motion World – The Longest Day
Ethiopio – Noze
Often I find these sit in a shopfront stunts contrived – like the infamous Jabba/Regurgitator band in a bubble one a few years ago – but Hiromi Tango, currently holed up in the new window space at Redfern’s Grantpirrie, matches the wonderful colour anarchy of Japan’s Harajuku girls with the reflective self-assessment that has to come with sitting in a shop front, among your thoughts, for days on end.
She was described as “very enthusiastic” in an Auckland Festival performance last year: “she would have liked to have slept in her shop and be there 24/7.” The current one, ‘Am I Here, Can You See Me?’, has progressed a long way since the pic on Grantpirrie’s website was taken.
I took this photo on my mobile this afternoon, and I think Hiromi was bustling around behind the mess of tags, thread and letters.
Visit soon, Hiromi heads to Melbourne for Next Wave in May, where the Queensland Government’s given her $10,000 to set up another public performance piece.
Brisbane sound artist/musician Tom Hall put together a series of processed field recordings in reaction to one of Hiromi’s earlier works in the Brisbane Arc Biennial. It’s available for download here.
Sydney artist-run spaces and the work shown in them (at least last Thursday’s delivery) got dissed in an opinion piece by art blogger and broadcaster Andrew Frost in the SMH on the weekend. Frost’s not happy with what he sees as as a trend “towards the low key, personal and comic, as artists retreat to the quotidian value of their lives to find a connection with their audience.” It’s true, that is what’s out there. But having seen at least a couple of the shows he’s talking about, there was no shortage of wonder (say in Tim Moore and Tara Marynowsky’s show at Chalkhorse, Surry Hills), though the pieces were on the small and observational rather than State Of The Union scale. Doesn’t David Noonan have that end of the market wrapped up in his (admittedly gorgeous) Roslyn Oxley show across town?