David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.


29 August 2014

Then now


Tonight and tomorrow :

'Kiffy Rubbo and The George Paton Gallery : Curating the 1970s'

      
A dynamic and unique force in Australian art, Kiffy Rubbo was director of the Ewing (later the George Paton) Gallery, at the University of Melbourne Student Union, 1971-1980. For the first time, her major role in Australian visual culture as well as her legacy are explored. Her curatorial strategies and the narratives she proposed about contemporary art are investigated together with the Gallery's radical agenda. With Meredith Rogers, assistant director (1974-1979), Rubbo devised an innovative and inclusive program presenting a wide range of art forms. Under Rubbo's leadership, the Gallery became a vital, nationally recognised venue, the first institutionally supported experimental art space.

Keynote Lecture: 'Kiffy Rubbo, Women Curators and Australian Art Galleries' by Frances Lindsay AM
Friday August 29, 2014
7pm - 8pm

 

Symposium: 'Kiffy Rubbo and The George Paton Gallery: Curating the 1970s'
Saturday August 30, 2014
9am - 5pm


Speakers: Micky Allan, Carolyn Barnes, Sandra Bridie, Janine Burke, Bridie Carter, Peter Cripps, Domenico de Clario, Rachel Fensham, Elizabeth Gower, Grazia Gunn, Lyndal Jones, Shaune Lakin, Anne Marsh, Jill Orr, Matthew Perkins, Meredith Rogers, Anna Rubbo, Stelarc, Peter Tyndall. 

Theatre A
Elisabeth Murdoch Building
The University of Melbourne
PARKVILLE VIC 3010


Below, Theatre of the Actors of Regard at the Ewing Gallery, 1974; at 'Events/Structures', a two week program curated by Peter Cripps. Peter is squatting at the back; beside him is Aleks Danko, with beard; standing beside Aleks is Jennifer Phipps who died last week - NGV curator through the 1970s. Vale Jennifer. Performance with theremin by Philippa Cullen. Kiffy is seated on the floor, back to the wall, on the right.

click image to enlarge                           photo : AAA_Art Archive Australia

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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ... 

LOGOS/HA HA
   

      

27 August 2014

Inspectors on The Underground


Ending this weekend at the National Gallery of Victoria is the current showing from their collection of works by William Blake. Not to be missed!

William BLAKE
Antaeus setting down Dante and Virgil in the Last Circle of Hell (1824-1827) 
illustration for The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (Inferno XXXI, 112-143)
pen and ink and watercolour over pencil and black chalk, with sponging and scratching out
52.6 x 37.4 cm (sheet)
Butlin 812.63; Butlin & Gott 27
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 1920
1012-3

Not half so famous as Blake, but much appreciated at bLOGOS/HA HA, is Albert Guillaume (1873-1942). Here, from The Debt Collection, is his vision of Dante and Virgil at Denfert Station as they update their hell realms tour.
click image to enlarge  

And, on the other side, the good wishes of the artist.
click image to enlarge 

   
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25 August 2014

Virtuous Loop


Great to see such mutual acknowledgement yesterday : Buddy applauds Theatre of the Actors of Regard applauds Buddy applauds...
        

photo: The Age 
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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ... 

LOGOS/HA HA
   

      

22 August 2014

Today at the Melbourne Writers Festival

     
Today at the Melbourne Regarders Festival

       
screen shot from the Melbourne Writers Festival website
courtesy : Theatre of the Actors of Regard

Gerald Murnane is regarded...
      
Today, it will be via A Million Windows (2014). 
In 1990, via 720 WAYS OF LOOKING AT GERALD.

John Bangsund - the instigator of the term Muphry's law, which is much appreciated at bLOGOS/HA HA and which states that "if you write anything criticizing editing or proof-reading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written" - gave that title to his grid of 720 G.E.R.A.L.D. x G.E.R.A.L.D. text block permutations. Below is a detail of that past and present regard :
        

              
720 WAYS OF LOOKING AT GERALD played a part at the MIMA 1990 gathering of The Literature Club
A page from the script :
           

click image to read the full page             

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20 August 2014

more Nonsense on Stilts


After the 'Nonsense on stilts' post last week (here) we received this WISH YOU WERE HERE cooeeeee! from the Four Interdependents. It would seem their Great Laughing Journey continues...


click image to enlarge  
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17 August 2014

Vale, vale, vale.


In the past two weeks, the deaths of two giants of the arts in Australia : the composer Peter Sculthorpe and the artist painter Richard Larter.

Now the news that Robert Jacks, already ill, succumbed to pneumonia at Harcourt, central Victoria, on Friday (15 August).

Vale all. Well done.


Gravure extraite de l'Histoire de l'Invalide A la Tete de Bois, du Squellette Homogene, etc,  par Eugene Mouton.
Illustrations de G. Clairin
from : Le Monde Illustre, 1 Jan.1887
collection : FIAPCE

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someone looks at something ... 

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16 August 2014

The Week In Review


Hell writ large and small. Suffering and stupidity. More warnings. Acts of compassion and of great kindness too. Business as usual (see: plutocracy, plutonomy).

As we write this, on the radio Robyn Williams, not Robin Williams the comedic mind-mouth genius who took his life this week, but Robyn Williams the longtime presenter of the Science Show is inter-viewing Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the History of Science at Harvard, about her novel co-written with Erik M Conway.
          
The Collapse of Western Civilization : 
A View from the Future
     
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Yet another wake-up call! 

Their previous book was Merchants of Doubt : 
How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Hence, the front page of this morning's 'Saturday Paper' (here) has the striking headline : 

Abbott's piss and wind power on renewable energy

       
Image of the Week :  "That's my boy!"
A photo posted on social media by the convicted Sydney terrorist Khaled Sharrouf, now abroad with his family and fighting as part of ISIS, shows his seven year old son holding up the severed head of a Syrian soldier. (SMH article here)

Lost for words : Responding to this, President Obama adds the word barbarian to terrorist : "these barbarian terrorists".

What's in a word? Bomber, for instance. One thing (a great reminder of 'The Two Truths') about being a supporter of the Bombers, about publicly wearing a scarf emblazoned BOMBERS, especially on the streets of Melbourne, is that most people hereabouts see such a BOMBERS scarf and think only of sport, of Australian Rules Football, of the Essendon Football Club, The Bombers. Usually, when your correspondent points out this semantic curiosity to others, that The Bombers have nothing (sic) to do with the War On Terror, they say: "Oh yeah. I never thought of that". 

Team Australia : After our Bombers Seek Justice post of 11 August, the stats showed a series of visits to this post from Canberra :
      
and 
                 
If we have nothing to fear but fear itself we have nothing to hide, right? Who is metadata, what is she, that all her swains defend her? 

Another warning : At the start, we mentioned plutocracy (think Clive Palmer, Rupert Murdoch...)
From Ancient Greek πλουτοκρατία (ploutokratía, “rule of the wealthy”),
from πλουτοκρατέω (ploutokratéō, “I rule through wealth”),
from πλοῦτος (ploûtos, “wealth”) + κρατέω (kratéō, “I rule”)
(from κράτος (krátos, “power”, “might”)
         
...and plutonomy :
Blend of plutocracy and economy,
from Ancient Greek roots πλοῦτος (ploûtos, “wealth”)
+ νόμος (nómos, “law”) (English -nomy). 

During this week, in which the Australian banks announced their latest billion dollar record profits,  SBS.TV re-screened Michael Moore's 'Capitalism, a love story' and ABC Lateline showed an interview with 'venture capitalist' Nick Hanauer in which he, too, warns (video and transcript here) of a revolution against the US plutonomy.

Still on this, the nation was shown a further glimpse of the mind-set of the Australian Federal Treasurer, cigar smokin' millionaire Joe Hockey. Even Abbott & Co backed away from this one, such was the odour. Hockey's view of the poor delivered him his own professional-political death sentence:

Quote of the Week : already paraphrased as 'Poor people don't drive cars'.


"I don’t think that a cursory look at the Budget is enough for people to understand what we’re really getting at. You have to look at the detail of what people actually receive now, and people are receiving tens of thousands of dollars in payments from other Australians. What we’re asking is for everyone to contribute, including higher income people. Now, I’ll give you one example: the change to fuel excise, the people that actually pay the most are higher income people, with an increase in fuel excise and yet, the Labor Party and the Greens are opposing it. They say you’ve got to have wealthier people or middle-income people pay more. Well, change to the fuel excise does exactly that; the poorest people either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far in many cases. But, they are opposing what is meant to be, according to the Treasury, a progressive tax."

- Full transcript here

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Out of the blue, early-1980s memories of the founder-editor of Art & Text, Paul Taylor delivering copies of that journal to Melbourne bookshops in his red MG.
     
Below, as observed by TAR
             leaving Melb Art Fair
                           a Hockey-ite with fat cigar
                                          en route to Oz Saloon car   
  click image to enlarge   
 courtesy : The Debt Collection   
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13 August 2014

Melbourne Art Fair 2014


OPENING NIGHT VERNISSAGE : 

A CELEBRATION OF LIVING ARTISTS

Tonight, Wednesday 13 August 2014
Time: 6pm - 10pm
Location: The Royal Exhibition Building, Carlton
Tickets: $150

It is advisable to book in advance although a limited amount will be available to purchase at the door this evening.
      

Plus ça change...
L'Exposition de Melbourne
The Royal Exhibition Building

June 1881

click image to enlarge                                   AAA_Art Archive Australia 

and 'Spring 1883'
When three of Australia’s most proactive and progressive contemporary art world identities put their heads together, something interesting is bound to emerge. In this instance the result is an exciting new art fair that is set to give the grand dame of Australian art fairs (Melbourne Art Fair) a run for its money.
The brainchild of Melbourne gallerists Vasili Kaliman (Station), Geoff Newton (Neon Parc), and Vikki McInnes (Sarah Scout Presents), the new fair, entitled Spring 1883, will take place at Melbourne’s historic Hotel Windsor from August 14-17, 2014.

        
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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ... 

LOGOS/HA HA