INVURT

Here at Invurt we like art of all shapes, forms and styles – as long as its meandering through new and uncharted territory, and pushing the boundaries of what we perceive as art, it’ll be on our radar.

Tiffany Singh is one such artist. Although not what you would traditionally call a "street artist", she does, however, create work that is often to be found there. With vibrant colour, and elements that directly invite the viewer to not only witness, but to interact with it, this New Zealand artists work has complimentary aspects of both beauty and function.

Our sometime NZ correspondant Cleo Barnett is currently here in Melbourne checking out a bunch of stuff for the Next Wave Festival. She spoke to Tiffany about her motives, explorations and got this great little interview for us. Read on, and be engaged …

Name, age, creative medium?

Tiffany Singh – 33 – Participatory Installation Based Artist.

Where are you based from? How has this impacted your art form?

I live in NZ but have spent years living in India. I am Samoan, Maori and Indian, and my ethnicity informs my work in relation to the sacred, ceremony and ritual. These conceptual elements are the basis of what my work is based on. My aesthetic is largely influenced by Eastern notions of offering and daily practice. The works materiality is often based around objects that are found at sacred sites or the everyday healing object such as spices, flowers, and holi powder. It engages audience participation and invites co-authorship by opening up the work for the viewer to realise.

In the case of Drums Between The Bells, the audience is asked to come and deconstruct my installation by removing a bell string from the ribbons and reinstalling the string of bells in their favourite sacred place in Melbourne. The audience is then requested to upload a picture or a video, and document the bells location onto Google maps so the bells can be traced and refound. If a bell is located it can be moved, in the hope of creating a living work of art. 

Its a conversation about what sites are considered special, or sacred, in a contemporary society, and it also generates a dialogue around whether a work can actually live through audience participation, and be able to develop a life span and movement of its own – outside of the initial artists install and concept.

How would you describe your art to a stranger?

Colourful, natural and open for engagement – with the hope of becoming a live entity.

What are you doing over in Melbourne?

I am apart of Next Wave Festival,and very much looking forward to realising a work that depends so much on audience participation, this is my first opened ended work, so the life expectancy of the work is very experiential for me, and its exciting to not know how the work will be resolved. Generating this work in such a vibrant and savvy city will hopefully facilitate the work and promote the enjoyment of being involved.

I’m also here to experience a new place – and, of course, meet new people.

How can we get involved?

By getting involved with the bells … moving them around and giving them a life. They will live at the Elm Tree, cnr Swanson and Collins St – you can choose your bell , take it to your sacred place and reinstall it in its new location, you can then photograph or film the bell and email the image / video of its current location to drumsbetweenthebells@gmail.com

Then, if you come across the bells at in other places, you can remove the bell and start again. Whats really interesting is that other works may happen as result, people could decide to move the bells to one site, or various selected sites, or it could be very personal – its the unknown outcomes that I am really interested in.

So, what’s next?

Up next is the 2012 Sydney Biennial, which again is a participatory install involving 3000 bamboo wind chimes.

Once again, the work invites the audience to engage and activate the work. The pilgrimage this time takes a chime from Pier 2/3 at the wharves, then take it home to decorate it, then reinstall it at building 61 on Cockatoo Island. After Sydney I have an artist residency in Bangalore, India where I’ll be learning cottage industrial and local handicraft practice, as well as engaging in public installs with local materials.

Where can we see your work?

You can see the work installed on the Elm Tree in City Square for the Next Wave Festival and at Pier 2/3 and Cockatoo Island in Sydney alternatively you can see the work online at www.tiffanysingh.com, and look out for all the bells that will, hopefully, be all over Melbourne!

Welcome to our weekly roundup of Australian and New Zealand street art, urban and underground videos! We’re fairly light on this week, but what there is is pretty damn cool …

No idea how we missed this one a few weeks back, but head to this link to check out Blender studios Doyle talking about street art and the Blender laneway – on Saturday Disney! Grand and hilarious.

Also, before we get stuck into it, don’t forget to check out Heescos newly released video, a tribute to the monks of Tibet.

Next up, is this great five minute mini-documentary on Anthony Lister from Arrested Motion. This video looks at his multiple visits to New York over the past year.

Anthony Lister – Los Angeles from Arrested Motion on Vimeo.

It’s great to keep seeing Outpost project videos popping up still, we love it – it’s a nice bit of nostalgia and gets us pumped for this years! A great little recap.

Outpost street art festival from Sam Hilton on Vimeo.

Here’s a good little bit of background and a production video on the Steal Banksy promotion that Art Series did not long ago. Nice.

Yet another great video from the BMD crew, this time alongside Blake Dunlop and Young Gifted and Broke.

BMD – The Multi-dollar Feature from Emulsion Burns on Vimeo.

Lastly, Sam Octigan got together with the guys from Acclaim for a small feature piece.

That’s it for this week – send us through any videos if you have them for inclusion!

WOW! Always love seeing art which is created from a totally new perspective. Bite Collective are hosting a Group show next week for NZ Music Month, and each of the artworks is actually inspired by NZ music. Lovely and interesting! Some familiar and some faces new to us will be showing their work, and there will be live music performances at the opening by Whitireia.

Artists included in the show are:

• Marty Vreede –  printmaker, paper pioneer, inspirational teacher
• Sheyne Tuffery – visual artist, gallery owner, fine art tutor
• Elliot ‘Askew1′ O’Donnell – graffiti artist, graphic design, illustration, photography
• Matthew McIntyre-Wilson –  jeweler and sculptor
• Basia Smolnicki - printmaker, art tutor
• Nestor Opetaia – painter and musician
• Christine Imlay-McLean – jeweler and creator of ‘Black Agnes’
• Spring Rees – jeweler
• Reweti Arapere – mixed media
• The Bite Collective – Fleur Ruth, Chloe Reweti and Rachael Gannaway –printmaking and 3D

Who: Askew One, Basia Smolnicki, Fleur Ruth, Chloe Rewati, Christine Imlay-Mclean, Marty Vreede, Matthew McIntyre Wilson, Nestor Opetaia, Rachael Gannaway, Reweti Arapere, Sheyne Tuffery and Spring Rees
What: Hear it, See it Group Exhibition
Where: Bottle Creek Gallery, Pataka, Wellington, NZ
When: Show opens Thursday April 19th from 6pm

Check out the Bite Collective website for more info!

A sunny day in Wellington seems to be a rarity, so they always call for a painting day when one comes along.

The Dowse Art Museum in Wellington had its first annual party last weekend, and celebration of Lower Hutt’s new civic square last weekend, and invited the Pie-Rats crew (Jon Drypnz, PNTR and Cast) to do some live-painting.

Enjoy the pics!

Photos by Claudia Danby-Scott.

We’re a little late getting this one off the rank (we’re running behind a bit after There’s More!) but if you haven’t seen it yet thencheck out issue #2 of the fantastic Knock Knock Magazine  below – oh, and check out Issue #1 if you haven’t seen it yet!

“Knock knock magazine profiles street level emerging and established Australian and international creatives doing their thing, and doing it well.”

This is the kind of shit we love.

We haven’t seen a show from the phenomenal New Zealand artist Askew for a while, but this one coming up looks like it’d be worth the wait (and a flight over if we could spare the time!).

Askew has to count as one of the most prominent, and in our eyes, influential modern graffiti artists practicing in New Zealand today. Multitalented and seemingly always on the go, Askew is highly prolific and always has his hand in one project or another – we read his blog on a regular basis, and so should you.

"Askew One is a multi-disciplinary artist mostly renowned for his graffiti art paintings. Widely regarded as one of the New Zealand graffiti scene’s driving forces he has managed to remain at the forefront of the movement whilst working tirelessly behind the scenes in a diverse array of projects.

Although working primarily in aerosol paint, Askew is versed in graphic design, illustration, photography, publishing, music and moving image. He also collated and co-authored a book about New Zealand graffiti, ‘In-Form’ which was a Montana Book Awards finalist in 2008."

He also just released this cool video short/interview – it’s a really great insight into his work.

We can’t wait to see what comes out of this show! So feels free, if you go along, to send us some pics from the opening – pretty please? ;)

Who: Askew
What: Smoke Signals solo show
Where: The Australis Room, Australis House, 36 – 38 Customs St, Britomart, Auckland
When: Show opens Friday 16th March to the 22nd March

Check out Askews blog here for heaps more info on the artist!

Saturday .. huh? Yeah, I ran out of time this week with everything, so we weren’t able to get the Transmissions up on Thursday – but that’s cool, as a few really cool ones were put out on Friday!

Anyways, you know the drill, watch on for this weeks roundup of all the cool video that’s been released in the past week …

First up we have a video released featuring Askew – imho one of the most talented graff artists around. A rare look behind his work.

Higher Ground studios has an open day tomorrow, and this is a really, really cool glimpse into the artists working in there. Mad.

If you didn’t catch the interview we did with Nanami Cowdroy, you should check it out – this is the video with a bit behind her work on the Smirnoff project.

Ryan McGennisken had his show, If Its Between Death and Magic a couple of weeks ago, and this is an awesome little walkthrough of the show.

Project 5 is coming up soon, more details on that really soon, but here’s a short preview!

With her show with Suki coming up next weekend, Be Free did this short of one of her pieces!

This is a great little piece on some of the public art going up in Sydneys China town – nice to see councils involving artists in revitalisation efforts!

Well, that’s about it for this week – we’ll have more next week, probably on the Thursday this time .. unless Saturday feels better!

ATom1746 is a relatively new artist on our radar, but his interwoven pop-art stencilist styled pieces works for us. Perusing his gallery, we were really impressed by the range of pieces he put out last year.

"ATom1746 is an urban artist from Christchurch, New Zealand. Originally inspired by American pop art, he soon became heavily involved in the genre of urban art with his pieces quickly becoming a blend of the two styles."

Sure, you’ve seen this brand of minimalist stencilling before, but this just feels fresh. With a great blend between minimalism and high detail,  if he keeps on this path, we expect his name to get out there even further this year.

(Images via http://www.atom1746.com/)

This one hit our email yesterday and we were pretty stoked to see a new show coming up from this kiwi artist, and it looks to be something a little different from his usual work but we like what we see!

"Fresh from the completion of his second major cafe design project, Sole presents an exhibition of native New Zealand birds. Hearing the call of the land, Sole returns to the natural environment to pay
homage to our spectacular bird life, delivering a range of native birds within large scale postage stamps ready to be licked and sent around the world.

Having returned to his hometown of Westport just over a year ago, Sole has delved back into the roots of his native West Coast environment. Moving back from his second home of Wellington, he
has adjusted from the urban influences which once fuelled his work, initially Sole struggled with the disparities’ between the urban environment that had created his aerosol/spray based paintings
and his relationship with the natural environment. This resulted in a switch from spray cans to an air brush technique, making his process more environmentally friendly. Yet it wasn’t until he sat and
listened to the birds singing in the morning that he was able to connect his work with the natural environment he was now surrounded by.

Originally Sole developed a reputation for his Pacific/Urban fusionist design work and creation of intricate multi-layered stenciled posters and flyers for high-profile artists and organisations such as
Parihaka, Rippon, Upper Hutt Posse, Cornerstone Roots, Digital Mystiks, The Nomad, Sage Francis, The Black Seeds, Olmecha Supreme, Ladi6, Rex Royale (Wellington), Mandatory Clothing, Telecom and Loop Recordings. Sole is a name that has become synonymous with stencil art around New Zealand.

Birds of the Long White Cloud is Sole’s latest series of works. It reflects his move back from the urban to the native environment of the West Coast. It is a body of work that fuses his love of our unique bird life with the timeless design appeal of vintage postage stamps. Sole is joined in the main room of the gallery by Rory McDougall who is presenting his ‘Water Pill’ range of sculptures, along with Vanessa Cruse and Tim Reed with ‘Dialogue’ in the vault."

“I am excited to be presenting a body of work that reflects the beauty of our native environment and bird life. Inspired by the classic appeal of vintage stamps I hope that these birds will deliver a wee piece of Aotearoa to homes through out the world” – Sole

Looks pretty fucking awesome. I mean, we love the subject, and this show will present an intriguing collection of work from an artist who has diverged into a new direction – something that we don’t see enough of!

Who: Sole
What: Birds of the Long White Cloud: An Exhibition of Paintings
Where: Left Bank Art Gallery – 1 Tainui St, Greymouth, NZ
When: Show opens Friday 24th February at 7pm, and runs til 20th March 2012

We’ve been diligently following the Dregs crew as they try to raise funds for the completion of their documentary, and the final stretch is nearly in sight. With less than a grand and a half to go, they have almost met their target on Pledgeme. This is the final run – it ends later this week!

If you’re not aware, Dregs is a NZ street art documentary from Karl Sheridan and Cinzah Merkins, and it’ll be fanfuckingtastic!

"New Zealand has a rich and vibrant history of street art culture – a story that we believe is yet to be told. ‘Dregs’ will showcase how this underground art movement began and what it has evolved into today. It will go behind the scenes to expose this movement and the creative people driving it.

The documentary will include interviews with artists all over New Zealand in their personal studio spaces. It’ll also explore their personal lives and workplaces, to try and understand why these artists do what they do. ‘Dregs’ will aim to challenge the current prejudices against those who choose to create art with a spray can, examining the street scene with an impartial eye and portraying the art form as just that – a form of art.

There are currently over 25 of New Zealand’s most prolific, influential and forward-thinking street artists involved in the project. Redbull NZ and the Garage Project brewery are currently supporting the project.
We hope to have it completed before the end of the year; over half of the content has been shot already. In order to do this we need to be able to dedicate a significant amount of time and money to post production.

We plan to take this documentary to national and international film festivals, as well as having Auckland and Wellington premiers – inviting everyone involved. We plan to put the money received from this campaign towards an editor, post production VFX (including titles and transitions), the final grade to be done at a professional post house, DVD creation and distribution and hire costs of premiering the film on the big screen."

Tis is one of those more than worthy times to send it off into the interweb ether … it’ll come back to you on a screen. You can help to get it over the line, and help these guys capture a unique snapshot of what has been happening in the NZ scene.

This is history, and you can help to bring it to fruition.  

Hope you enjoy the work of todays Artist To Watch as much as we do, its pretty hard not to! Ghstie is one artists website that we especially love seeing updated – this New Zealand artist has the goods. The walls we’ve seen him do are second to none, yet his painting work on canvas, or illustrations on paper are impeccably grand also.

He was one of the many artists who painted up at last years Graffiato at Taupo – which we wish we’d been able to go to! He has also been featured in the premier issue of Knock Knock magazine and we’re hoping he’ll also be in the upcoming Dregs documentary.

Ghsties work is a perfect example of New Zealand street art at its finest.

(All images via Ghsties blog)

We kind of stumbled over Meghan Gelizas work via our friend Cleo Barnett, and we instantly loved what we saw. Having produced a great bunch of work last year, 2011 culminated in her and a whole slew of other artists travelling over to Cambodia for the Little Lotus project – seriously check this out if you haven’t already!

"Meghan Geliza is a self-taught Pop Surrealist painter living in Auckland. Her large-scale paintings on wood are of surreal worlds swirling in intense and explosive colour, in an environment of myths, old literature and basic human emotions, inextricably blended in its own ether. Using a cacophony of colours and congealed imagery, Meghan weaves elaborate painted tapestries that comment on dual concepts such as union-dissolution, stability-change, and constraint-transcendence.

She’s been exhibiting in group shows around New Zealand these past couple of years and has recently come out of her first solo exhibit, Adieu False Heart at Te Karanga Gallery. She recently curated and showed work in Beauty Meets the Bizarre Art Show at the Depot Artspace Main Gallery."

Meghans use of colour was the first thing that caught our eye. As we fell into the detail of her work, we found ourselves chasing a rabbit down a hole of pop sensibilities mixed with the tones of modern surrealism – looking at her work evokes the same responses in us as when we’re reading the words of Andre Breton, and for us thats a fkn grand thing.

Well definitely be watching out for more of this ladys work in the future.
 

(All images via http://www.meghangeliza.com/)

The news went out last Friday, Curvy is now open for submissions!

Sounds like they are planning an awesomely bumper issue for the next one, they’re teamed up with Semi-Permanent again and will be officially launching the next issue at this years SP in Sydney.

Curvy is a great place for emerging and established female artists to be seen by many, many people and has already featured a whole range of great artists. – so if you think your work is awesome (which we’re sure it is) then get a submission in before it closes on Friday February the 17th at 5pm.

You can find all of the information on how to submit here on the Curvy website.

 
(Courtney Brims)

Who: Open to all
What: Curvy Magazine Artwork Submissions
Where: Check the Curvy website for more details.
When: You have until February 17th, 5pm to send something through.

As we mentioned in our previous 1000th post editorial, we’ll be bringing you a small featured every day on an artist or collective o we think has been, is and we’re sure will be, doing great things in 2012. First up off the rank is an artist from NZ who has been on our radar for some time, BMD.

When we look at the work of NZ street artist BMD, we think of only one thing – go big, or go home. The bigger the better.  BMD Collective has been burning it over in NZ, and 2011 saw a shitload of large scale, amazing  work. Their stylised pieces are instantly recognisable and have a fuckload of playful motifs throughout them – really, their bio says it all.

Having his work featured on such places as Juxtapoz, Lost At E Minor and posting every once in a while on Streetarse.co.nz (one of our favourite NZ websites) amongst many other locations across the web, well, we reckon BMD is shit hot.

All images via BMDs website – go check it out, as well as his Tumblr, for many, many more.

Oh have we seen stuff this week, and oh have we loved it. One of the best things about following all this kind of art these days is the amazing documentation of it all – so many people doing videos, so many great little productions … err, and lots of amateur stuff, that we love anyways because it *is* documented.

Anyways, here’s your weekly dose of what’s been happening around in VideoLand …

(Image via Squishface Studios)

Squishface Studios opened up last Australia day, and heres a great video recap of their studio launch! So great! Neverending story bahaha.

So much greatness coming out of Melbourne Underground, here’s a little feature from Joske on SEARious Jones’s work down there.

Kyle Hughes-Odgers has a show coming up in Berlin, and here’s the preview!

Punk Milk Gallery opened up in Frankston the other week, and they have a great video of all the opening and their media event/launch day. Word.

Cool photo montage from StickUpGirlz went up a few days ago – featuring some of their work from 2011.

Days, Peque and Sykoh did a big paint up for Montana a little while ago, and they captured the day on film.

More Outpost recap video – really! Bowserland did this one for Red Bull. Really nice, actually.

Ah, always good to see something from Bados Earthling – and this montage is pretty cool.

Last night we got up to the climate change exhibition at Metro Gallery, and were, of course totally impressed. It’s still on, so get to see it if you can – here’s a bit of the story behind the show … and, err, get with the time Channel 7 and put some embed code on your videos!! Watch it here. Bastards.

To end on an awesome note, we saved this one – Askew, Phat1 and Berst all did a road trip through NZ last year, painting along the way – here is the evidence.

Well, on that note.. that’s all we have for this week, if you have any videos you want us to include here, just send them to us.

We’ve had a quiet start to the year with the Transmissions column, we skipped last week as there weren’t very many videos released. However, it feels like we’re back into it and we have a bunch of video for you this week, so without further ado …

DrewFunk, Mysterious Al and Heesco did a live painting session up at Metro Gallery over xmas – very cool

IHART Charity Sneaker/Art Exhibition was on the other week in Perth, we somehow missed it, but we didn’t miss the video from the show!

Tomahawk & Lady Bna-nas "Paint Faces" in an abando – we want to see more video from Perth!

RTIST Gallery had their Marvel Street Art event the other week, and Carl Allison has done a great job with it once again.

MARVEL: Street Art Event & Exhibition – Wrap-Up from Rtist Gallery on Vimeo.

Great video from Sydneys Max Berry giving a cool glimpse behind his work and processes.

There’s a second small clip from Channel 7 news about the Melbourne Underground carpark, nice.

Union Lane has been receiving a makeover this past month, and someone grabbed some video of it all.

New Zealands Shine has been doing some great sketch timelapses, heres one of them – there’s more here.

Just when you thought you’d seen everything from Outpost, out comes another one, so here’s another video recap!

We love everything that those expats of ours, Dabs Myla do, and here’s yet another awesome piece on their work in the states.

Dabs Myla (Christmas Mural 2011) from Carlos Gonzalez on Vimeo.

It’s not Australian, but we thought we’d end this weeks Transmissions with the preview of the documentary "Getting Up: The Tempt One Story" – we can’t wait to see this inspiring movie.

Whew. That’s all we have for this week, we’ll be back next week with more!! If you have any videos you’d like to send through to us, just hit us up with an email.

Some of the more stunning aerosol portraits we’ve seen over the years have been those done by kiwi artist Owen Dippie – there is no doubt in our mind that he is totally up there with the best of the best.

Having travelled the world painting up figures such as KRS 1, Nas, Tupac, Jean-Michel Basquiat and, of course, his famous Notorious B.I.G. portraits, he’s now putting on a show in his home town, and inviting a few of his friends along to join him in it.

This is a great chance for anyone up near Mt Maunganui in NZ to see a world class graff portrait artists work – if you can get there, it’s a must see.
 

Who: Owen Dippie & guests
What: OD & Friends Art Show
Where: 2 Ashworth Lane, Totara St, Mount Maunganui, NZ
When: Show opens Friday 13th January from 6pm til 10pm – and on the Saturday, there is a live graff display!

Check out Owen Dippies blog for more info on the show!

Well, it’s been a huge year for us here at Invurt, but its holiday, beers, sun and chill time now so we wanted to wish you all the best for Christmas and New Years on this warm Melbourne day!

We wont be completely shutting shop but our regular event updates and Transmissions will be on hold over the Xmas period – we will be continuing to do some Snapshots as well the rest of our Top 10s for the year; and one or two other special features ;)

2011 saw us accomplish a whole heap of goals that we set for ourselves at the start of the year. We got our new website up and running, we moved into the fantastic Rival Revolution studios in Prahran and continue to do a whole bunch of events and live art stuff with the artists and crew there, we got up to Outpost Project which was absolutely fantastic, we started our Revurt community painting project (check out a really cool article Broadsheet did on it here), we saw a heap of amazing shows and read about even more, met and spoke to some amazing artists, did and saw a hell of a lot of street art and just generally had a ball working on the site. It’s been hard work at times, and some really late nights but its all been totally worth it – all the amazing responses and support we’ve received from all of you have made that so.

What’s next for 2011? We’ll be working on expanding the website with a bunch of new features as well as partnering up with a bunch of cool people to bring you a whole slew of intriguing content. However the big one for us next year, is that we’ll be making our first forays into print! We’ve been planning it all for some time and we’re really excited about it – fingers crossed all goes to plan! Of course, we’ll also continuing to talk to and find out about the best underground, illustrative, graffiti and street artists that Australian and New Zealand has to offer!

So for now, enjoy the Snapshots and other short posts over the holiday period (Blender Xmas photos up tomorrow!) and we’ll be back with our regular event updates come January the 9th. Have an amazing holiday and thank you so very much for all your support through 2011 – here’s to 2012 and huge things!