Doing the flan on King Street

I walk down King Street and it is changing. Has changed, will change. The shoe shops have changed. Funky running shoes and doc martens have been replaced by kitten heels and courts. The endless stretch of infinite overnight cafes – in a multitude of themes derived from scavenging at Tempe tip. (Zambezi, blue, chock Beenz, alley Katz, 381) have all been replaced by an endless stretch of Thai restaurants, and more café bars, juice bars, gelato bars. Lots of chrome, MDF, hard chairs and tiny tables. Infinite hues of beige. The Ocki no longer has an ecosystem of urban feraldom as a flooring. It has gone upmarket and orientalesque, and turned away my girlfriend the other day – she didn’t conform to the aperitif and Tapas target market. People reckon getting rid of Makkas was a victory – but I have my doubts. Balmain and Woollahra don’t have Makkas either and they are hardly hotbeds of urban life.

There are still a few old and familiar faces, the beggars outside Newtown station, the punks congregating outside the NA meetings at Newtown neighbourhood Centre, the chance encounter at the townie – other faces caught in crowds of commuters, shoppers, cinema goers, pub fiends, –always consumers, striding, straggling, staggering along that long stretch of tarmac which I’ve called home for 14 years.

Something different happened today. It made me nearly as cross as the closure of burland hall by south Sydney council. I was standing at the traffic lights and noticed a guy ripping down the announcements on the traffic pole. He wasn’t some random angry guy but a council employee. Somewhere some of my taxes were funding this. This caused me to look around – and notice – that the posters, stickers, graffiti have started to vanish. OK there are now bright coloured signal boxes and arty sculpted bin holders, but the bill posters have been replaced by perspex bus shelters, and the patina of A4 notices, stickers, political posters – and my favourite – weird anarchist manifestos all in unreadable 9 point font wedged in every crevice between shops, on traffic lights, near bus stops have all started to vanish.

I’ve got an intense distrust of the institutionalisation and regulation of any activity. Monocultures are boring and also lethal – as any scientist will tell you. A society is fecund when people have a multitude of ways of communicating with each other –languages, but also gestures, intimate and random spaces for interaction and exchange. A culture is fecund where there are multiple sites as well – where there is not merely the finest theatre or most successful art gallery – but where the street itself is a canvas, where people can engage with where they live, depict it add to it, deride it – and not merely pass through it as passive consumers.



What Elizabeth’s works show is how simple it is to respond and engage with our urban landscape. The art of the flaneur or stroller – is not a slick negotiation of the sophisticated urban environment – but a space for meandering confusion, for a dazed wandering – a shuffling back and forth, a stillness, a level of quiet unimpaired by coffee grinders or poker machines, or the blare of the latest tinny electronic audio product. A healthy musical scene has buskers, guitars in cafes, dodgy pub bands, electronic artists and even karaoke – ranging from the exrecable to the sublime. Just ask anyone who has been to New York. Music is in the ways that ordinary people make noise – and respond to it. Equally for art. I don’t think inner city artists need more spaces to sell our work – at the moment we need spaces just to make it. This means not only to have access to affordable studio or living space but also having time unsupervised or regulated by work or Centrelink – shopping schedules or waiting in traffic jams– where we can just drift – and let our hearts and hands form a response. Just as importantly we need exhibition spaces unregulated by the demands of bottom line exhibition sales or effective PR outcomes. (that btw is not a reason not to buy her work!).

I’m glad that places like the “Ari” are supporting artists like Elizabeth to show their work, and I’m glad that artists like Elizabeth are doing work about our spaces, about the performers in our spaces like Jackie – and who are providing a record of what it is to sit in local spaces and hear live original music, easily and often. I think it is really important that exhibitions like this are held not only by professional artists – and that people who do respond visually and creatively to our urban environment are not treated like a client class of aspiring artworld superstars – but as the sensitive, engaged and thoughtful people they are. Jackie Orzsaczky is someone who has performed an important role for musicians in Sydney. He has kept performing and recording and encouraging spaces for many other musicians to do the same. So he’s a great subject matter for work which bears witness to the importance of having vital living cultural spaces, unregulated by funding schemes or bureaucrats. Elizabeth’s work is testimony to this, and I hope her images won’t survive as a relic of a vanishing cultural milieu – but contribute to its ongoing survival.




I walk donw King street and it is changing. Has changed, will change.

The shoe shops have changed. Funky running shoes and doc martens have been replaced by kitten heels and courts. The endless stretch of infinite overnight cafes – in a multitude of fancies derived from scavenging at tempe tip. (Zambezi, blue, chock Beenz, allli Katz, 381) have alll been replaced by an endless stretch of thai restaurants, and more café bars, juice bars, gelato bars. Lots of chrome, MDF, few couches,. Infinite hues of beige. The Ocki no longer has an ecosysytme of urban feraldom as a flooring. It has gone upmarket and orientalesque, and turned away my girlfriend the other day – she didn’t conform to the aperatif and Tapas target market. People reckon getting rid of makkas was a victory – but I ahe my doubts. Balmain and wollahra don’t have makkas either and they are hardly hotbeds of urban life.

There are still a few old and familiar faces, the beggars outside Newtown station, the punks congregating outside the NA meetings at Newtown neighbourhood Centre, the chance encounter at the townie – other faces caught in crowds of commuters, shoppers, cinema goers, pub fiends, –always consumers, striding, straggling, staggering along that long stretch of tarmac which I’ve called home for 14 years.

Something different happened today. It made me nearly as cross as the closure of burland hall by south Sydney council. OK it was 7 years ago but some of us still maintain our rage…….. I was standing at the traffic lights and noticed a guy ripping down the announcements on the traffic pole. He wans’t some random angry guy but a CCOS employee. Somewhere some of my taxes were unding this. This caused me to look around – and notce – that the posters, stickers, graffittii have started to vanish. OK there are now birgh coloured signal boxes and arty sculpted bin holders, but the bll osters have been eplaced by JC decaux bus shelters, and the patina of A4 notices, stickers, political posters – and my favourite – weird anarchist manifestos all in unreadable 10 point font wedged in every crevice between shops, on traffic lights, near bus stops have all started to vanish.

The reason why this shits me are following:
I like to read stuff while waiting for traffic lights. I like to find out about local share house prices and criteria, lost and found dogs, weird weight loss schemes and other strange scams –without having to waste gold coins on Murdoch/Fairfax fuckup propaganda. I like to think that there is still a space – where one day –aided by a photocopier and lots of glue I could self publish my great Australian manifesto anonymously and madly up and down King Street. The other relates to bill posters – and the history of everyone I know who has worked bill postering – but also the amount of artists – like me who use decollage – which is the chance tearing of, texturing or subtle altering of bill posters and notices in public spaces. In Paris this quiet and free form of social protest and creative commuter play has become an art form – here it is becoming illegal. Tearing a poster, is easy –cutting open a perspex bill board is not.

I’ve got an intense distrust of the institutionalisation and regulation of any activity. Monocultures are boring and also lethal – as any scientist will tell you. A society is fecund where people have a multitude of ways of communicating with each other –languages, but also gestures, intimate and random spaces for interaction and exchange. A culture is fecund where there are multiple sites as well – where there is not merely the finest theatre or most successful art gallery – but where the street is a canvas, where people can engage with where they live, depict it add to it, deride it – and not merely pass through it as passive consumers.

The art of the flaneur or stroller – is not a slick negotiation of the sophisticated urban environment – but a space for meandering confusion, for a dazed wandering – a shuffling back and forth, a stillness, a level of quiet unimpaired by coffee grinders or poker machines, or the blare of the latest tinny electronic audio product. A healthy musical scene has buskers, guitars in cafes, dodgy pub bands, electronic artists and even karaoke – ranging from the exrecable to the sublime. Just ask anyone whose been to New York. Music is in the ways that ordinary people make noise – and respond to it. Equally for art. I don’t think inner city artists need more spaces to sell our work – at the moment we need spaces just to make it. This means having time unsupervised or regulated by work or centrelink –or shopping schedules – where we can just drift – and spaces unregulated but the demands of bottom line exhibition sales or effective PR outcomes. There are healthy moves afoot in the “50 most unsaleable artists” and in the irrepressible graffitti art movements. A lot of grafitti art is not made by ‘alienated yoof’ however – but middle class, sophisticated artists with graduate of not postgraduate qualifications.

I’m saying all the above to try to convey a sense that reality is very rarely as it seems – and most things are ambiguous. What seems slick and sophisiticated often is pretty raw and humble – whereas stylised art brut effects are often conscious references to something entirely imaginary.

Something fairly special happens when you sit down to draw in an urban space. Time slows down. It is so rare that we actually pause in public. Our urban spaces are largely spaces of transit. We pass through them –and objects and money pass through us in the process. Cruising, consuming, not a great deal of time to stop. I noticed this particularly when I went to Marrickville metro to sketch the trees. The surrounds of metro is regarded as a nicely landscaped non zone surrounding a shopping mall –and it is filled with people – but the people there don’t ever stop. It’s as if the space doesn’t exist. So an artist drawing acts as someone bearing witness to a space – not only because of the images that they create – because a camera could do that, but because OF THE time it takes. The slow consciousness of presence. Of sitting with a place, taking time with it. Drawing is like a mediation – and to draw in a space, and to draw a subject renders homage to it in a way, especially when so little of our urban spaces make this easy or comfortable. Drawing is a low consumerist activity. It is slow, anachronistic, uncontrolled, and yet it seems so simple and accessible.

Flying Palletts

“Paint records the most delicate gesture and the most tense. It tells whether the painter sat or stood or crouched in front of the canvas. Paint is a cast made of the painter’s movements, a portrait of the painter’s body and thoughts. The muddy moods of oil paint are the painter’s muddy humours, and its brilliant transformations are the painters unexpected discoveries. Painting is an unspoken and largely uncongized dialogue, where paint speaks silently in masses and colours and the artists responds in moods. All those meanings a re intact in the paitnigns that hand in museums: they preserve the memory of the tired bodies that made them, the quick jabs, the exhausted truces, the careful nourishing gestures. Painters can sense those motions in the paint even before they notice what the paintings are about. Paint is water and stone and it is also liquid thought.” (James Elkins “What Painting Is” p5)

I feel very honoured to be opening Anna Whheers’s show tonight. I met Anna at the National Art School where we studied together, but I’ve come to know her much more since we finished 5 years ago. Anna has been a great friend and colleague, holding our old studio together by helping us keep in contact, and she’s has been a great mentor, inspiring me with her painting practice. Despite this I’ve found myself being led astray into academia, with my main artistic practice being the Sunday life drawing where Anna and some of our group from art school still come. Studying art theory has given me a great outlet to explore words and ideas, but it is with some trepidation that I attempt to offer a few words that may describe Anna’s latest show.

Painting is something largely conducted in the wordless spaces of the heart and hand, and I’m afraid that words may encircle the paintings and close off the possibilities of what we may see in them. One of our teachers at art school said that painting is about secrets. What you see, or what I see in Anna paintings may be the same as what she sees in painting them, but it may not be, and I’m not entirely sure how right it is to try to name all of these things that we sense and maybe wonder at, and maybe feel deeply moved or touched by, but can’t quite state why. In these paintings, I feel that Anna has offered us a part of herself which is very intimate, and very sacred in a way, and I don’t want to take that away from her.

So I’m going to try to offer some words and ideas, to encourage people to look at the paintings, and maybe to articulate some of what happens when we look at her work, and why I believe her work is so powerful and special. For me art appreciation comes from the heart. It comes from what happens here, in my chest when I look at certain works, and the rest is trying to find words to give shape to what is an emotional process first.

When I first sat down to write this speech, I dragged some books off the shelves and pored over them, and then thought oh my God, I’m not giving a lecture, what will I write? Then I went to the beach. And it was looking out into the ocean, into the flashes of light folding over endless moving waves. Watching colour constantly changing, moving, crashing and flying, I lost track of myself, of time, of everything, and let myself be memorised by the strange union of vision, sensation and my own imagination. This state is called “reverie”. It’s like dreaming with your eyes open, no it’s better than that, because we don’t necessarily see images or stories, but see our emotions and imagination unfurl and flow in the matter of the world around us. (OK I’ll admit this idea comes from a book “L’eau et les Reves” by Gaston Bachelard). For me the same sensation is captured in oil paint and the best oil paintings, like Anna’s, have this quality.

The subjects of Anna’s works seem deceptively simple. Her last show was titled “Cows, Goats and China”. And the subject matter and titles of the works; still lives, animals and figures are hardly the stuff of cutting edge post modern conceptual wrangling. But for me, the titles, the fleeting images of cows, goats, fruit, vases, these are not the subjects of the paintings. The subject of her works is the paint itself. I believe for Anna, that subjects like the goats act as the seed of the painting. She starts with the form, or the idea of a goat, and then in the act of painting it, enters into her own reverie, and follows her hand and her imagination into where the colours, and textures of the paint lead her. I hope I haven’t said too much. And maybe what I’m saying makes no sense, I am also an oil painter and I’ve got my bias, and some of the audience may be wondering why this would interest them in a bright coloured painting of a goat, or a cow or a bowl of fruit. So I’m going to try and explain what happens when we looks at the works, when I look at the works, and you can look at the works and see if you agree.

If I discuss this horse painting here: the horse acts for me as the threshold, where our eyes enter the painting and our imagination starts. It’s bright coloured, not much like a horse, but the shape is definitely like a horse and makes me think of a horse, and that horses remind me of speed, energy, wildness, but a kind of fragility and gentleness as well. If she’d done a perfect George Stubbs style horse painting, we’d see a perfect George Stubbs style horse and admire the glossy coat and well rendered anatomy and not have any emotional reaction at all. In Anna’s painting, she hasn’t’ reproduced a horse, but suggested a horse, and so we thinking of a horse while we look at the other shapes, marks or gestures in the painting. It is the semi abstract nature of the work that gives it it’s power. So I see in the marks, a force, and a fragility, a youthful energy and yet a nervous shying, and for me this painting is really powerful. If it was purely abstract, I’d get lost, unless I could find figure like images in the paint. If it was purely representational I’d get bored too, because there wouldn’t be anything left to imagine. Bt there is something else in her works, more deeply related to the unique talent Anna has.

When we, or when I, look at the marks made to produce Anna’s paintings, what we see are body prints of the movements that Anna made in painting them. We have a direct impression of Anna’s own gestures, and so looking at her paintings, is not so much like looking at a photograph or a film, but like looking at a dance or a ballet. I believe this is why paintings are so much more moving as images than photography or film, because they are a record of movement and the movement of a person’s body, and they affect our own emotional states in the same way that watching dancing in or hearing music does. There are so many paintings where this voice, the movement, is held so tight it’s like a whisper. I can imagine the person holding their breath, holding their arm stiffly, not wanting to let any uncontrolled mark or movement escape their strict intellectual idea of what the painting should be. Other paintings are kind of like a boorish roar, loud monotonous holler in the name of someone’s ego or bank balance. Anna's paintings are neither of these. They are like a song, and I can sense her voice when I see them. This is one of those songs that goes up and down, and is not always in perfect tune, and sometimes it is loud and throaty, and other times soft and playful, and sometimes, like Annie de Franco and bluesy and angry and wild, but all the time, this lovely melodious quality. There’s a playfulness in the work. Not like a flippant “I’m so clever” kind of play, but a genuine, “oh, I wonder what will happen if” kind of play, a continual testing and trying and learning. And Anna does learn, her paintings have evolved, and gained in richness as she has continued. And at their best her paintings are like metaphor for life itself. Don’t be afraid to live. Don’t be afraid to breathe, and don’t be afraid of colour. We are living in increasingly beige times, of conformity, fear, materialism and selfishness, and such open, generous alive works as Anna’s are a wonderful reminder that it is absolutely possible, and necessary even, to imagine and to live more fully.

copyright: minoumayhem 2004.