Weather exchange

As part of her residency Chay-Ya is participating in an international exchange of weather photos with artist Marcel de Buck from the Netherlands.
For more on the project and to see the photos posted have a look at the Weather blog
For participation in the project contact weatherphotos@spamex.com

Kings Cottage residency

As part of Gravity Project Melbourne artist Chay-Ya Clancy is artist in residence at the Kings Cottage at Cataract Gorge in Launceston, from the 8th until the 19th of July. Email chayya.clancy@gmail.com or sarahhowellprojects@gmail.com for updates or watch this space for special events.

Chronox

Over the weekend I went to an exhibition at Forepaw by Melbourne based artists Michael Prior & Lachlan Conn, it was really good, like the best show I have been to in a long time. I pretty much hung out in there all day, til the outside lights got dark and the rainbow animations glowed on the cardboard surfaces of the geodesic domes.
This exhibition was wonderful for many reasons
1. for creating something you could hang out in (unlike a lot of gallery shows that you shuffle around in and then leave because its made not too hold you for too long) and wanted to hang out in
2. for its beautiful design and construction
3. for the complex rythmns of sound, animation and sculpture coming together seamlessly
4. for the cubby house utopian dream
5. there were three specially made " 7" dub-plate records that contained 20 locked grooves". what this means is that instead of being cut into spirals the grooves were circles, so wherever you put the needle on the record it would loop infinately on that one sound until you changed it. And because there were 3 records (each with 10 different loops) the possibilities of sound were large and enthralling .
6. the element of chance, of parts lining up, of combinations of loops and lights and of people and animals (quite a number of dogs visited the exhibition and they definitely added another level to the proceedings.
7. the animations (moving lines and shapes) were drawn directly onto the sculptures while projector and computer were hooked up together, meaning that the animations fell only onto specific shapes on the domes and was completely site specific. this blew me away, though i guess is quite a simple idea, to draw digitally in a three dimensional space.
For more about Forepaw

hand shadow puppetry

This is a pretty amazing video of hand shadow puppetry, im not too certain on how authentic it is (in terms of hands making all the puppets and the composition), I suspect that there is some video editing and animation that has gone on, but it is still brilliant.

art is not terrorism

"We visit art galleries, listen to conferences, cover art and design events, take a lot of pictures, interview creative people, and we document these findings in order to share them with you."
We make money not art
This is a really good website for finding out about interesting projects and happenings around the globe. Theres some great articles up at the moment, but I'll let you go over there...

Agents of Proximity

Agents of Proximity is a local, artist-run travel service instigated and run by two melbourne based artists, Amy Spiers and Tori Stead. For the past few months the Agents of Proximity have been taking people from Brunswick on travels within their own neighbourhood, creating new encounters between people, and between people and places. An exhibition of photographic/textual works will be shown in a local coin laundry as part of Next Wave.


for more on the project and to see the rest of the postcards in this series go to Agents of Proximity

Paint piano

This video shows French film-maker Michel Gondry (Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind, Science of Sleep) experimenting with paint, motion and sound.
Some really interesting techniques and ideas are explored here. Unfortunately the video is not comprehensive and a little hard to understand, but it is wonderful to see the process of experimentation that has been refined in his films. It is also refreshing seeing people playing with handmade tactile mediums over the computer generated.

Next Wave festival

The biennial emerging arts festival Next Wave opened in Melbourne last night, and runs until the end of May. This years festival, involving nearly 400 artists across 61 different curated projects, is tagged with the theme Closer Together and questions the conditions under which we are encouraged or blocked from coming together.
There are lots of really interesting projects and I encourage you to have a look around on the website, here are a few of my recommendations

Polyphonic: the festivals lecture, forum and workshop series

En Plein Air, a site specific exhibition by Sydney artists Karl Logge, Tessa Rapaport, created through a month long residency in the Botanical Gardens (the images above are from this project, taken from the Makeshift website)

Agents of Proximity, a local artist run travel agency, encouraging new encounters between people and places

2020? an evolving installation lead by artist Ash Keating and a dozen collaborators, making art out of rubbish and investigating environmental issues in arts practice

Launceston by Lomo by Unknown Creator

NEW LIFE BERLIN

NEW LIFE BERLIN is a contemporary art festival dedicated to new modes of moving and existing. 01.-15. June 08 Berlin
This is a participatory arts festival that looks at ways of engaging artists with open ended ideas and with global arts communities.
In contrast to traditional art festivals and biennials, NEW LIFE BERLIN will not represent a set of cultural conclusions, but create a model for a fluid cultural landscape.
New Life Berlin webpage

One of the projects in the festival, The Sandwhich Box, involves sending a metal box to selected groups of artists throughout the world. Inside the box is a "Lysthus” a kind of tent, which artists are free to use for whatever artwork, or situation they might find relevant. The documentation of interacting with objects and interpreting into the context of an artists project becomes the work rather than a traditional outcome.
The experience of the project is considered to be an artistic process in and of itself, therefore it is the experience and hence, the documentation that becomes the artwork, rather than a singular artwork becoming manifest at the end of the project.
The Sandwhich Box

I Wish I Could Show You

I Wish I Could Show You is a database of anonymous video messages sent via mobile phone. These videos are snippets of life: confessions, catharsis, love and hate letters, documentaries, anything you want them to be. They are being collected on a website and presented in a series of interactive screening events, as part of Next Wave festival and then later in the year as part of a national touring exhibition, Come on the Scene, that will take in Tasmanian galleries.

Screenings will run from 15-30 May at Horse Bazaar in Melbourne, for more information go over to Next Wave.
To view videos from the project and for information on uploading your own please go to I Wish I Could Show You.

10 percent pending

10 percent pending is an Artist Run Initiative based in Hobart, it does not operate out of a permanent space, but rather brings art into non-conventional-living-breathing-public spaces. These images are from their "Guerilla Gallery" project.

http://www.10percentpending.blogspot.com/
and you can join the facebook group