photography

Plastic Surgery

Posted by hil

mintmusk

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.

birds

Bunjil

Posted by hil

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.

Cutflat photography exhibition

Posted by hil

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!

Now playing – strange trajectories

Posted by hil

Now playing – strange trajectories, the 2007 ANU School of Art Emerging Artist Support Theme (EASS) award exhibition currently on at the Alliance Francaise in Canberra, is featuring the work of Michal Glickson (painting) and Anna Madeleine (photomedia). Anna is my daughter. She has two cool new video art pieces in this exhibition. She has also recently done the album art for Casual Projects new CD, No Rest, and is showing one of those images at PhotoAccess’s Open all areas 2008.

Previously:

Breakfast reading 5.10

Posted by hil

Murdoch turning his empire green: ‘Although some of his newspapers were once sceptical about global warming, he said that although he was no scientist, he knew how to assess a risk. “This one is clear. Climate change poses clear,
catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can’t afford the risk of inaction,” he said.’

Diggers speak about Iraq ambush: Did anyone else see this last night? Its been covered in the papers too. It seemed like something new to me, interviewing soldiers giving accounts of their activities as if they were policeman, sportsmen or celebrity. I can’t quite work out why I found it so disquieting – anyone else feel it was inappropriate or different?

The fine print in the university endowment scheme: The Howard government proposes centralised control of universities with a view to privatisation. It has wedge politics written all over it, too. Chilling.

Blogging Was Just the Beginning: Women’s Voices are Louder Online: Chris Nolan on political commentary and feminism online. (via Doc). I hope to get to other articles in S&F Online’s Blogging Feminism issue, too.

The SMH ran true to bumbling form (when it comes to its coverage of new media) the other day with this ‘lesson’ about blogging, which conflated the opening question “Isn’t blogging just for people who are stupid and lonely?” with women bloggers, gender inequity and ambivalence in Australia! “Of the 8000 women’s blogs listed at BlogHer.org, just 96 are of Australian or New Zealand origin. By comparison Canada, a country with 36 per cent more people, lists 82 per cent more women’s blogs.” I think its silly to take membership of BlogHer as a real statistic on the ratio in Australia. I’m not listed at Blogher, for instance.

Doc, who always gets a real buzz out of flying and seeing whats below, has some wonderful photos of Greenland from the air. Check out his other sets for Scotland, the Hebrides, England and others, too.

Now don’t you worry about that

Posted by hil

Now don't you worry about that

An action shot of Joh Bjelke-Peterson welcoming guests to the launch of the Campaign – Federal Elections exhibition at Old Parliament House yesterday! Here is a slightly clearer one of him with Malcolm Fraser. Old Parliament House had a collection of the photographic masks of politicians, but I was asked to make the cartoon Joh last week.

The exhibition itself consists of photos by Andrew Chapman; you can see some of them here. They are wonderful ‘fly on the wall’ glimpses of electioneering politicians and political events from the Fraser years onwards. I was most amused by the ones of Beazley, because he so often looked like a jovial dag, but others were arresting.

Cutflat: Tim Raupach’s photographs

Posted by hil

omarama

This wonderful photo of a hill somewhere near Omarama, South Island, Aotearoa/New Zealand is from Cutflat, Tim Raupach’s new photoblog site. His photos were previously here.

Tim takes some breathtakingly beautiful shots, as well as looking at things from unusual angles and with a humorous eye. He is also a rockclimber, and – a disclaimer! – my son.

Uopdated links 2015

So much depends upon a red dovecot…

Posted by hil

A bunch of local tertiary students had an installation of dovecots at Floriade this year. I was really happy with this photo of one of the dovecots.

Dovecot

It reminds me of that lovely William Carlos Williams poem, ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Or even Dylan’s ‘Buckets of Rain’:


Little red wagon
Little red bike
I ain’t no monkey but I know what I like.
I like the way you love me strong and slow,
I’m takin’ you with me, honey baby,
When I go.

I also liked seeing these ones as different faces. It would be fun to animate them!

Making the most of Floriade’s Rock & Roll theme were The Extremes:

And this captured some of my feeling about Floriade: