Spirits Dancing

My daughter Anna’s new photographic work, Plastic Surgery, is on at the Canberra Contemporary Arts Space in Manuka until Sunday. The images are photographs of the human body form manipulated in different ways in graffiti art and fashion design in the urban environment. They are printed large on aluminium foil which gives them an industrial brash feel.

Anna also has a new website, Anna Madeleine, where you can catch up with some of her stop motion videos and other photography. The cool images drawn and printed on maps from her previous exhibition, Unchartered, are there too.

Tags: anna madeleine, art, artist, photograhy, photomedia, print

I snapped this beautifully decorated facade of Cine-Theatre Girondin from the tram in Bordeaux. You can see it in more detail if you click on the largest size at Flickr.

Tags: bordeaux, Cine-Theatre Girondin, decoration

Some of the things you can do on the iPhone just seem like magic to me. This image is drawn on the iPhone screen with my finger, using the Brushes app. It’s taking me a while to get some finesse, but the Brushes Gallery pool at Flickr is ample proof that it is possible.

(btw, Ocarina has been the most jaw-droppingly magic app for me so far.)

Tags: Add new tag, art, brushes, iphone

Here are some photos of the playful fountains just to the south of the Centre Pompidou, in Place Igor Stravinski. Most of them move, for instance the big lips make a slow mechanical nod, and others turn while spouting water. They were created by Niki de St-Phalle and Jean Tinguely. The graffiti snake was high up on one of the walls surrounding the square; I like that it reflects the snake in the fountain.

When I was there, aside from the coffee drinkers, lots of people were sketching, a bunch of boys were playing football, and some other kids were playing an elastics game.

I’m seeing and liking quite a lot of artwork by Jean Dubuffet here in Paris. This kind of cave of his, called Le Jardin d’hiver, took my fancy, and I spent a while in it. It’s lumpy and bumpy and the lines don’t always go where you might expect them too. The little girl in the photo was really enjoying it.

Tags: art, dubuffet, sculpture

This was the most intriguing sculpture I saw in the Centre Pompidou the other day, La mariee, by Niki de Saint Phalle.

Tags: bride, centre pompidou, niki de phalle, paris, sculpture

Two very different rhinos! The shiny red one is by Xavier Veilhan, and is presently in the Centre Pompidou. The other is outside the Musee d’Orsay.

Tags: paris, rhinocerous, sculpture

Testing the wordpress app on my iphone – this is an amazingly cool and beautiful thing!

Tags: amazing!k, iphone

In late 2002 on a train in Melbourne I caught a such a fleeting glimpse of this amazing massive eagle sculpture that I almost wondered if I had imagined it. Its air of keeping a brooding watchful eye over the docklands was arresting and exciting, and it was one of the the things that made me want to blog. There was little information and fewer images of it on the web at the time. Tim was down in Melbourne last weekend and had a similar experience, but was able to stop and take this cool photo of Bunjil the Eagle by  the sculptor Bruce Armstong.

In between then and now my desire to blog Bunjil had been assuaged by reading Lucy Tartan’s excellent post about it in 2005, in which she  writes about its appeal much better than I could. The post is one in a very enjoyable series which explores statuary in Melbourne.

Tags: Add new tag, bruce armstrong, bunjil, melbourne, sculpture

Tim Raupach’s first photography exhibition is now at The God’s Cafe at ANU. It opened last Thursday and runs until mid July. Tim is my son. He takes both urban and country scenes and landscapes, with a finely observed sense of colour and composition. Walls, bicycles, mountains, grasses and pattern are some of the recurring themes; take a look at his photoblog, Cutflat.

That’s the dispassionate report…! The truth is that it’s wonderfully exciting to see my kids stepping out into the artistic world, expressing themselves in such different ways, and I am so wildly proud of what they are doing!

Tags: Add new tag, cutflat, exhibition, photography, tim raupach