INVURT

For those of you who don’t affiliate the Sunshine State with all much creativity, you’ve probably been eating your words in this past year.

This October the 21st, Ananlogue/Digital Gold Coast will be calling upon six of the finest creative minds in this great land to expose their inner most secrets and help YOU crack it in the big league.  So, if hearing the industry know-hows of creative directors, DJs and celebrated fashion photographers is your caper, we suggest you get your tickets to this event asap.

As of 6pm on the 21st, you ‘ll be heading  to the Retrospect X A/D Exhibition which will host works from key speakers from the event, you can also chat to them yourselves over a beer, maybe getting yourself a foot in the proverbial door.  How does that sound?

… and did we mention the well stocked after party at Elsewhere Bar, once you’ve soaked up all the creative inspiration you need? A/D speaker Angus Gruzman AKA Gus Da Hood Rat will be in full force, dishing out his buzz starting breed of ear dazzling mash ups. Aaaaw Yeah.

We’re a bit miffed we’re stuck in Melbourne for this, but hey, we can’t have all the fun.

Who:  Analogue Digital Creative Conference, Gold Coast
What: Conference/Exhibition/Afterparty
Where: BC & C Cinemas, Robina Town Centre, Arbour Lane Robina
When: 21st October, 2011, Conference 9am-6pm, Afterparty/Exhibition 6pm

Mark Whelan, aka “Kill Pixie” will descend upon Gallery As this Thursday, for the opening of his show "One Moment Please", an exhibition of signature works from a man who commands artistic kudos on a seismic scale. The night will also kick off the Sydney launch of Whelan’s book of works, ‘Human Development’.

Los Angeles based Whelan will offer you an insight into his unique style, and as always, he will blur any distinction you once had between street and gallery art, quietly providing you with his brand of intriguing entertainment along the way.

Who: Mark Whalen
What: Kill Pixie - A new exhibition of small paintings
Where: Gallery A.S, 80 commonwealth St, Surry Hills (Sydney).
When: Opens 6th October

Check out the Kill Pixie and Gallery A.S websites for more info.

Technology and nature are not often seen as mutually exclusive, but not so for Michael Candy and Kitty Horton.  Each have have delved deep into their inner artiste to give us Terrarium, a uniquely themed show that blends ideas of botany, nature and modern science through a range of different media.

The show will open October 1st (THIS SATURDAY) at the notoriously chic LoveLove Studio in Brisbane, and will run right up until the 23rd.

Get in touch with nature…and a bit of technology.  Go on – do it.

Who: Kitty Horton & MIchael Candy
What: Terrarium
Where: Love Love Studio, 27 Florence Street, Newstead
When: 1st October 6pm, show runs to the 23rd of October

Check out Kitty Horton & MIchael Candys websites for more info.

Kara Gillett probably wouldn’t say that she’s a tough cookie, but even putting her alter ego, ‘Space Girl’ aside, we think she is.  Deciding somewhere amidst studying fashion design that all she really wanted to do was adorn canvases with colour and pop art inspired caricatures, Kara has been thrashing it out art in the big kid’s art world ever since, and with some good results.

Her feminine subjects often depict a sense of super hero strength (not to mention bangin’ bodies that would put wonder woman to shame), but they also ellude to deeper sense of human resilience, and the idea of the ‘alter ego’. Kara describes her characters as “an outlet for the extraordinary” – from which she adds a kind of visual moniker of who she’s always wanted to be. 

Invurt had a quick chat to Kara about her recent collaboration with Nish Cash, in the aptly named exhibition AlterEgo – a show in which she sol d out the majority of her work (theres one left, see the image down the bottom!) – and, she also explained to us how she came about creating her work in the first place …

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Even if you aren’t privy to an artistic imagination, Ryan McGennisken works will gladly share their dreamy realities with you. 
 
The product of an innate preoccupation with adventure and untainted childlike sensibilities, Ryan’s work has a surreal, wistful quality that packs a whole lot of WOW … and these days, there aint nothin’ elementary about this guy’s illustrative skills. 
 
With a touch of the pastoral, and a profound disconnect with the nine-to-five world, Ryan’s works navigate you to a darker yet strangely comforting place.   Earthly hues, watercolour and ink create a space for his characters, some human, others not so, that conjoin in an amazingly beautiful dreamscape.
 
When Invurt chatted to Ryan about his work, and his highly anticipated upcoming shows, he made it sound like all it takes to produce brilliant illustrations is a lifetime of adventure, countless hours drawing on every surface imaginable, as well as the knack of being an effortlessly cool kinda guy. Not hard, really…

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We love the sound of this one! Love Street Bandits is pitched as a "Collective effort of a years worth of partying, painting and piracy" – which we assume is probably quite relevant to a lot of you.

Bringing together some of Brisbane’s and Sydney’s finest, the show will be a celebration of range of different graffiti styles, with some exceptionally rad results. Sofles, Fintan Magee & Scott Marsh will descend upon the studio walls of Lo-Fi this June, 2nd at 6pm.

Be sure to check it out.

 
Who: Sofles, Fintan Magee & Scott Marsh
What: Love Street Bandits
Where: Lo-Fi Collective, Floor 3, 383 Bourke St, Surry Hills, NSW
When: Show opens Thursday 2nd June, at 6pm.

Check out the Lo-Fi Gallery website as well as the facebook event page for more info.

For all of you out there who think Suki (pronounced Su-key) is take off of a vampire loving; southern belle from the HBO series, True Blood, you’re all wrong; Melbourne’s Suki is a lot less two-dimensional, and a whole lot more interesting.

Representative of the trend towards minimally coloured past-ups, Suki’s work is, noticeably, the product of both artistic skill and a dreamy imagination. Like many of her street artist contemporaries, Suki’s pieces garner attention not just because they are striking, but because they are so recognisably hers. Feminine contours, floating clouds and the mysterious pig-tailed woman with the fan … if you haven’t seen her work yet, open your god damn eyes!

Soon to strut her creative stuff with the all female street artist collaborative, Fibre Femmes, in Prahran’s new Surface Pop Gallery, Suki recently lent us some of her precious studio time for this second part of our week long special feature …

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You know what I like about Bennett? He tells tells it like it is.  There’s no pretext,  no artistic pretension, just a guy who can create art and wants you to visualise it on your own terms. 

His latest show "ORANGES & LEMONS" named in reference to a nursery rhyme whose central theme is that "the most subtle and smallest difference can create or result in a much bigger outcome" opens on Thursday May 19th from 6pm at Oh Really Gallery in Newtown, Sydney.

Bennett has a talent for re-contextualising everyday objects you or I may struggle to even notice – and, using textured layering and a liberal attitude towards colour, his work is able to make even the most discerning visual connoisseur stand up and take notice.

Get it? No? Then think deeper, because, really, that’s what Bennett’s all about …

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Joshua Smith is a busy man; between coordinating exhibitions, teaching creative classes, fundraising through art auctions and opening hugely anticipated gallery spaces, he somehow also manages to create artworks with a larger-than-life visual effect.

Drawing inspiration from varying cultural aspects of classic film, Japanese culture and well, anything that proves awesome to look at, Joshua showcases his works on both local and international stages. Just as importantly, he is also the proud owner of the newly founded Espionage Gallery in Adelaide. With two successful shows down already, Espionage will also play host this week to an amazing group show, a fundraiser to provide donations to the Japanese Red Cross -  Uchiwa Fan.

Invurt were quite stoked when this creative busy-bee agreed to an interview – and here it is, enjoy!

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MEGA is, amongst many things: an esteemed artist, writer, master of languages, seasoned art director, and an enigmatic sucker-punch of creative POW. This artistic virtuoso will hit our shores this April, touring Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Newcastle – as well as a bunch of international locations – spreading his colourful brand of illustrative-esque awesomeness with his upcoming exhibition Longing to Be Knotted Together. If all that doesn’t blow your creative envelope enough, the man himself will feature at this year’s Carbon Festival, hosted by Acclaim Magazine and New Balance, to be held at Federation Square from April 29th to May 1st.

We thought we’d hit him up for a quick chat before things got a little hectic, and as well as showing us a bunch of exclusive preview images for his forthcoming shows, Mega also talked to Invurt about his art, girls, design, girls again, and what it’s like being, well … MEGA …

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Jak Rapmund is a creative epicentre of sorts, fueled by comics, horror, zombies and well … the murky insides of his own brilliant mind. Often sighted around the streets of Melbourne, his work is a foray into a dark unknown – and it’s currently hitting the Australian art scene with seismic force. Rapmund’s art is often distinguishable for its unnerving in-your-face effect – so much so, that it’s recently been selected as the face of the local beer label, Doss Blokos.

We speak to Jak, or, rather, ‘Irk’, about what it’s like to be pushing pieces one minute and a seriously sought after artist the next …

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Meet Ed Bechervaise: contemporary artist, social commentator, and visual exploiter of the mundane and ordinary.  

Since 2007, Berchervaise’s work has been pushing creative envelopes from the walls of galleries Australia wide; no longer confined to the backdrop of city streets.

Having run for several years under the intriguing moniker “UnwellBunny”, Bechervaise’s latest show “Fast Forward” successfully meshes brilliant artistic skill with a healthy dose of post-modern satire.  Showcasing vibrant representations of day- to-day objects, Ed re-contextualises the toothbrush, the taxi cab, the bottle of cider, and the dumpster, all the while taking the proverbial piss out of consumer culture.

“Fast Forward” makes the entrails of modern life look artistically rad, and this unwell Bunny paints an interesting picture …

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Meet Jumbo and Zap – two super powered artists from the urban realm of inner Sydney. Both have spent years gratifying our streetscapes with colour and mystery, witnessing first hand the progressive explosion of urban art and its mainstream cultural by-product.

Their upcoming collaborative project at Lo-FI, Planetarium, offers a sneak peek into two very distinct creative minds, and, as their namesakes suggest, Jumbo and Zap conjure up comic like imagery laced with futuristic overtones and otherworldly awesomeness.

Invurt had a chance to speak to Jumbo this week about his collaborative work with Zap, Sydney street art, and their craft …

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