Hey, how fabbo is this!! It’s a sneak peek at the video/opening titles of Tom’s telly-glass-o-rama, airing on the ABC sometime in July [we think.]
Never fear, we’ll definitely remind you as showtime approaches – with a big countdown of sleeps closer to the day…!
For now just hit the ‘Google’ button on the right, and then the ‘go’ button…
What can we tell ya? This last weekend was a fast and furious family catchup fest. The Gang et al gathered at the hide-out to spend a nanosecond with the li’l bro, Phil (who lives in Colorado but is out here for a few months shooting Wolverine in Sydders.) These days we rarely manage to all get together so obviously we had to make up for lost time, and then some, during his 3-day break (courtesy of Anzac Day) from filming.
Around a day was lost in the travelling (there’s only one plane from Sydders to Merimbula, arriving/departing early arvo) but we nonetheless managed to squeeze in a beach picnic, a game of two-up at the Robbie Burns, a sausage sizzle, an 18 hole golf game (blokes only – the sheilas were chained to the stove), brunch, dinner, and every conceivable beverage known to civilised man; Hanger One kaffir lime Bloody Marys with brekky, all manner of exotic concoctions from elevenses on (Jessica was on kitchen bar duty), Grey Goose Dirty Martinis at sunset, and everyone’s druthers between. (We’ve become quite partial to Black Wattle beer – and who can go past a good Aussie red…?) Bloody marvellous.
And yes, before you ask, Anzac Day was respectfully observed – Chrissie flew up from Melbourne on the Thursday night specifically to catch the dawn service in Canberra before driving down the coast with Pa…
We’ve posted the publishable pics at…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/glasscentralcanberra/sets/72157604771384907/
It was a big weekend at the hide-out for the Anzac three day break. The security team was completely tuckered out (in both senses of the word) and we’re still sorting through the photo run…
Watch this space.
Timothy Horn’s jellyfish, Stheno, has just been hung in gallery 6 at the National Gallery of Australia, backdropped by Fiona Hall’s sardine tin Paradisus Terristris. It’s a neat, if unrelated, little flip-side to the Andy and Oz: parallel visions exhibition (a collaboration between the Warhol Museum and the NGA) held at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, USA, late last year.
(check out…http://www.nga.gov.au/AndyandOz/culture.cfm)
The Gang just received a postcard, chock-a-block with pure delight, from darling Tim Horn in New Mexico. What a treat! He’s six weeks out from his show at the de Young in San Francisco and sent across these seriously-to-die-for-work-in-progress snaps…
That fabulous carriage is about to be encrusted with sugar. Be still my beating heart.
The above piece of absolute-wall-gorgeousness is already fait accompli, and there’s a chandelier underway.
[Chandeliers again – we might have to start a file… n(Ed)]
All too divine for words. We’re looking forward to the snaps of the show, finished and installed…
Meanwhile Tim and Art have another work-in-progress; the adorable Chima (below), an abandoned puppy who turned up hungry and emaciated on their doorstep recently. Two months on and she’s now a cuddly bundle of (puppy destructo) love. [And, oh, we know only too well how that works, Timmy. Security-trainee Lola just this week chewed great chunks out of the front-hall persian runner. We’re still besotted with her, but we’re counting off the remaining danger period with gritted teeth… another year to go wethinks!!!]
Post script: One of Tim’s Jellyfush (for the benefit of our New Zealand readers) was installed at the NGA this week. We’ll try to organise a snap. But for those of you who are fortunate enough to be in the vicinity of Canberra, get along and check it out – up close and personal – while you can…(it’ll be up for around three months Pa reckons.)
…with my little eye…something beginning with…P…!
(…of the cast crystal variety. Eh, non fa niente.)
We thought we’d spread a little visual happiness and brighten your day with a symphony of Wendy Meyen’s contemporary chandeliers.
Wendos, of course, has now settled into her studio at ANCA, Dickson, and it’s always lovely to run into her around the traps (in between those hops abroad, that is – she’s not long back from Japan…)
We’ll visit her in her lair sometime soon, and take some workshop snaps…
(above) the work of Benjamin Armstrong
This post is a bit of a backtrack – but it warrants visiting, nonetheless.
Some time ago our attention was drawn to a Sebastian Smee pontification in the March 1st Weekend Australian regarding the relevance and/or vigour of the painting scene in a contemporary environment more attuned to mass multi-media ‘fusion’. He finished up with the following gush over a Benjamin Armstrong show at Tolarno…
“Finally, the most dazzling show of the new gallery season — 32-year-old Benjamin Armstrong’s show of glass and wax sculptures and linocuts at the new Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne — reminds us that painting has been only one among many options for ambitiously original artists. Armstrong’s sculptures sit on the floor like empty, inflated condoms or giant eyeballs. They are entrancing objects, eliciting physical responses that flicker between disgust and sensuousness.
Armstrong plays with degrees of transparency and opacity, etching thin lines on the blown glass or lavishly wrapping it in turbans of gorgeously textured white wax. The linocuts are almost, but not quite, as impressive. Their rhythmic, linear designs are printed in metallic pigment or black ink on hand-dyed paper.
The two sets of work — sculptures and prints — speak to each other, generating layers of intrigue. But there’s no doubt that the sculptures are among the strangest, most beguiling works of art produced in Australia in the past 10 years.”
(http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23279040-5013572,00.html )
Wethinks Sebastian needs to get out a bit more.
Not that we aren’t into Benjamin’s work – it’s kind of Patricia Piccinini-meets-Roger Rabbit, and the icky abject condom/sprog/flesh component frankly wouldn’t be out of place in the glassworkshop of every art school across the country as we speak. The difference being that such playful investigation is considered immature faffing about, and generally ‘discouraged’ by the time a student advances beyond second year. Craftsmanship – and all that that implies; tradition, technique, skill>virtuosity – takes precedence over dabblings into visceral existentialism. All the more so in this era of aspirant consumerism, where the arts are peddled as a viable and respectable(!) career option and craft is predominently a calculated marketing game.
Very few currently practicing glassies allow themselves the self-indulgence of artistic compulsion in a contemporary art sense – mainly because it’s not fostered by a glass establishment still firmly entrenched in the maw of the decorative arts. So this is a field ordinarily left to artists from other disciplines who are able to blithely trespass into glass territory and casually use the material with impunity, unencumbered by enforced craft historic regulation.
[It’s nigh time that glassies broke loose and followed suit. n(Ed)]
Which brings us to another concern – who made the glass component of Benjamin’s work, and why is there no accreditation? Surely there ought be some professional courtesy in this regard. There has, of course, long been an unfortunate trend even within glass circles for practitioners to have their work blown (or kiln-formed, or coldworked) by others, without any acknowledgement of the gaffer et al (but that’s another pandora’s box entirely…)
All good grist for the mill, me hearties.
Have a squizz at Benjamin Armstrong’s exhibition at…
http://www.tolarnogalleries.com/armstrong-benjamin/
and wait, there’s more…
http://www.gertrude.org.au/studio_artists_template.php?id=231
glass central canberra 
