Skins 'n' Sharps Exhibition

Sam Biondo presents:
Skins n Sharps exhibition 2010

Relive Melbourne’s 70s Sharpie Culture with a spectacular new exhibition of vintage fashion, artefacts, photos, art, music and footage on display.

Acclaimed Melbourne-based artists and musicians Fred Negro, Stephen Prictor, Paul Hughes, and David Mellows will capture the Sharpie era.

Melbourne band City Sharps will launch their new album CD ‘Suburban Sharp’. In a tribute to all things Sharp, legendary front man Chane Chane belts out the title track Suburban Sharp in pure Oz Rock style.

Julie Mac will launch her new book RAGE: A Sharpies Journal, Melbourne 1974 to 1980

A raw and real life story of Sharp as you’ve never read before. Follow Julie Mac and the Sharpies as they fight, punch and kick their way through their turbulent teenage years on the unsuspecting streets of Melbourne. It was a time when running from the cops, avoiding the ticket inspectors, drinking, spewing and rooting were all in a nights work, looking Sharp!

Exhibition Events

Sunday 11th July Julie Mac book signing 1pm to 3pm
Sunday 18th July City Sharps playing live 3pm to 5pm
Sunday 25th July Little Freddie and the Pops (Fred Negro) 3pm to 5pm
Gallery and exhibition info

Opening Sunday 4th July to 25th July
At Kustom Lane Gallery 8 Luton Lane, Hawthorn
Open daily from 12 noon to 6pm free admission

LINK

7 Evils in One Opening

The title 7 Evils in One! is derived from the work of American artist and comic book illustrator Robert Crumb (Fritz the Cat, Mr Natural). Crumb’s work is widely recognised for it’s distinctive style and subversive, satirical content.

In 1994 Kitchen Sink Press commissioned Robert Crumb to design the packaging of a chocolate bar using his character, “Devil Girl”. On the back of the wrapper of Devil Girl Choco Bar the ingredients were listed:

7 Evils in One! 1-Delicious Taste; 2-Quick, cheap buzz;
3-Bad for your health; 4-Leads to hard drugs;
5-Waste of money; 6-Made by sleazy businessmen;
7-Exploits women.

The above tongue-in-cheek anti-marketing statement sets the scene for what to expect from these seven artists. With a range of popular culture influences from; comic books, cartoons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Spiderman, basketball cards, heavy metal paraphernalia, toys from the 70’s and all things mystical and psychedelic, these artists revel in childhood fantasies whilst poking fun at Western culture.

THE ARTISTS

JAMES BLAGDEN
Brooklyn artist James Blagden is inspired by popular culture and it's many diverse sub-sects. His major clients include the New York Times, MTV, Vice and Nike.

KELIE BOWMAN
Kelie is the founder of Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn. She uses her time drawing, painting, making murals and killing time at Cinders gallery.

COUGAR FLASHY
Cougar Flashy was born in Illinois and now lives in Melbourne. He is forever drawing, creating comics, writing songs and collaborating with friends.

PATRICK KYLE
Canadian artist Patrick Kyle is the founder of Wowee Zonk a comic book anthology featuring contemporary comic strips by Toronto artists. His clients include Vice and Rice paper magazine.

MICHAEL FIKARIS
Melbourne artist Michael Fikaris paints and illustrates. He has self-published his own Froth comic since 1991 and is the founder of Silent Army a publicationshowcasing the work of young emerging artists.

JOANNA ANDERSON
Joanna is a Melbourne based illustrator. Her focus on characters ranges from human portraits, depictions of animals and the creation of letters. She has illustrated for the National Gallery of Victoria.

MARK SILIPO
Melbourne’s Mark Silipo is the man behind Magic Sweater. He is a freelance illustrator and maker of zines. His self-published zine is called Teen Vomit.

Curated by: Louise Klerks

No Vacancy Gallery
34–40 Jane Bell Lane, QV
Melbourne.

Opening night: Thursday 10th June: 6:00pm ‐ 9:00pm
Exhibition Runs Untill: 11th June – 24th June

Trading Hours:
Monday: Gallery Closed
Tuesday - Friday: 11:00am - 6:00pm
Saturday: 11:00am - 5:00pm
Sunday: 12:00am - 5:00pm

A Neoist Research Project

'A Neoist Research Project' is the first comprehensive anthology
and source book of Neoism, an international collective network of mostly anonymous and pseudonymous subcultural actionists and speculative experimenters.

It collects more than one hundred Neoist texts and two hundred images, documenting - among others - Neoist interventions, the Neoist Apartment Festivals, definitions and pamphlets of Neoism and affiliated currents, language and identity experiments and Neoist concepts and memes such asthe shared identity Monty Cantsin.

by neoists & anti-neoists
ISBN 9781906496463

This book & video feature a Neoist Comic I (Monty Cantsin) did back in the late 90s.

White Stripes MiniPops using LEGO

I made this White Stripes figure using LEGO based on the Mini Pops book. Now you can replicate it using my build instructions I made using the LEGO Digital Designer.

LINK to instructions.

Miroslav Tichý

I went to the Miroslav Tichy exhibit at International Center of Photography a few weeks ago, and then I went back again last Friday. Miroslav Tichy is an old Czech, born in Kyjov, Moravia, in 1926. He went to art school, and then stopped painting sometime in the late 1950s. He became very unkempt, dressed in rags, and started wandering around Kyjov with cameras he constructed out of garbage—shoe boxes, twine, lenses from broken eyeglasses. According to some of the local residents who were interviewed for a documentary on Tichy’s life, most people didn’t believe his cameras were real; those who did would call the police whenever he began “taking pictures”—mostly of women’s feet, legs, and butts. The police also hauled Tichy off to the local insane asylum whenever he showed up for the annual May Day parade, because they didn’t want the village weirdo spoiling their proper celebration.

Art The images Tichy made are pretty great, because his cameras and his enlarger were made out of trash, and also because of Tichy’s obsession with his subject matter. Last Friday I watched a couple looking at the first few photos at the ICP exhibit; the young woman turned to her date and said, “He sure liked booty, didn’t he?” Clearly he did, which is pretty obvious to anyone who just looks at the pictures. But if you read the accompanying text for the show, written by some curator, you will discover that these images are all about esthetic choice as to how best to represent the experience of village life, or some such nonsense. Instead of shooting interiors or church scenes, Tichy chose to shoot at the local swimming pool for some esthetic reason or other. The fact that there are usually not a lot of half-naked babes at the church didn’t enter into it at all, apparently. But Tichy himself, in an interview in the documentary film that’s showing in conjunction with the exhibit, just goes on and on about sexuality, atoms screwing, dinosaurs doing it—he doesn’t say a word about his “esthetic choices.” He does say, “To be famous, you have to be worse at something than anyone else in the whole world.” So he’s not stupid.

I don’t understand why we have to do the Henry Darger on these guys. Nobody goes to all the trouble of making cameras out of trash unless their passion forces them to make those images. Why can’t people just look at the photos and appreciate them for what they are? It doesn’t lessen the power of the photos to accept that the photographer was the local creepy weirdo, or that any “esthetic choices” were being made by Little Miroslav.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.

Stolen From WFMU's Beware of the Blog, post by Iowa Firecracker

The Boneyard

In Colon Cemetery in Havana, Cuba is the site of the celebrated 'boneyard'. A single grave in the cemetery cost $10 in rent for five years. At the end of the five years, if the remains were not claimed, the bones were thrown into the boneyard [sometimes known as 'bone pile] by the cemetery authorities.

In the 1890s, American soldiers often removed skulls and bones and drove through the streets of Havana displaying them. Their commander, General Brooke ordered the practice to stop and gave instructions for the pit to be covered over. Two cards, here, show American soldiers stood on the thirty foot deep pile holding up bones in the shape of the skull and crossbones. Photographs were taken and sold commercially as souvenir postcards to send home to their loved ones. How times have changed! Remember to click on the images to enlarge them.

LINK

Bolivia Childlike photo-fit leads Bolivian police to murderer

New police Photo-Fit motto "keep it simple stupid" LINK

The head is shaped like a rugby ball, the lips slide to one side, the nose is phallic, the ears are missing and the hair is having a very bad day.

And what's more - they caught the guy and he does look like that!