INVURT

In just over a week, I’ll be heading off for more distant shores (more on this later!), but, in the meantime, I’ve decided its high time to do something down at the amazing Blender Lane Artists Market . We’ve got a new shipment of stickers through, some tests of the new shirts we’re about to release on Redbubble (again, more on that soon) and a few other cool things as well – we’ll be giving out stickers and selling sticker packs on the night to visitors to the market.

As you know I’m not usually one for self promotion here on Invurt, but I’ll be selling a bunch of my own artwork on the night - I’d love to try to get rid of as many of my drawings as I can to happy buyers before I leave Melbourne. We’ll be joined by a few friends as well, so you never know what might turn up on the table of loot! We’ll be camped out just inside the studio entrance itself down the back of the Blender laneway.

Also on the night, Silent Army will be releasing some new fanzines as a part of their ongoing mission to provide you all with grand art and comic treasures in tidy, zinely format. This latest iteration is another version of Who Is Ha-Ha – one of our favourites. Plus, the Silent Army have an entire zine workshop set up in the back of Blender studios, with a heap of zines and other cool shit, which you should really check out if you haven’t seen it yet!!

Blender Lane artists market is hands down, our favourite mid-week activity in the past few weeks it has been absolutely pumping. With more and more stalls all the time, and a huge variety of cool, creative art and other eclectica on sale, oh, and not to mention all of the live entertainment – well, it’s a grand night out. If you’re interested in having a stall at the market, just email them – market@theblenderstudios.com

Seeya all there!

Who: Melbourne artists, artisans, Craftspeople
What: Blender Lane Artists Market
Where: Blender Laneway & Studios, 110 Franklin St, Melbourne
When: Event starts at 5pm this Wednesday January 23rd – runs til 10pm – Night Market runs every Wednesday night!

Check out the Blender Lane Artists Market facebook page for more info, or head over to the Blender Studios facebook page.

Whilst we were painting away next door and downstairs (which we’ll have pics up for soon), the very cool Platform72 was also holding an event – which we only actually found out about on the day!

With a whole bunch of art, both hung and live, the place was pumping throughout the afternoon – lots of people who were attending the Art Series event were also attending Platform 72s Future Beast show, and the whole vibe between the two was amazing. Andros, Tehror, Rebecca Murphy and Rotes were all painting away to some pretty cool tunes too – oh, and lots of free beer to be had – thanks!

Discovering new spaces is something that we love, and we have no idea how we hadn’t seen Platform72 before – how did that happen? Now that we have, though, we’re definitely going to be keeping an eye on what they’re up to. We met a couple of the people behind it all whilst we were there too, and they’re a diverse, creative and enthusiastic bunch of grand peeps doing some really cool things in Sydney – love it.

Our friend Jess Howell (whose amazing photos you can check out on her flickr) grabbed some seriously good shots for us from the opening and you can check them all out below … thanks Jess!

Finale? Damn! Pop M’art is so cool, and it’s gained a lot of attention and fans over the past few months. It’s a great concept, and we’re sad to see that this will be the last one –
but what a finale it’s going to be!

"Pop M’art is a pop up art studio. We can appear anywhere and anybody can come along. It’s what we call ‘social creativity’. In just 3 months, we have popped up in 16 different locations and have painted with more than 344 people in total.

We are showcasing 200 of these artworks, which will be silent auctioned and the top 10 works, curated by renowned artist Matthew Quick, will be available in the main auction. All proceeds donated to The Starlight Children’s Foundation. All starting bid are as low as $20 and we promise you it will be an evening of drinks, film screening, art talk, auctions and live music performances and maybe even a cat-fight or two over the paintings!

There will be a mobile bar serving drinks and a booth selling hot fresh pizza, delicious soup and hot chocolate from The Convent’s Bakery!

Come along and if you like an artwork you see, then write down your bid on the sheet next to the artwork. The silent auction will conclude at 8.30pm and the winning bidder will make payment and be able to take their prize home with them. Please kindly arrive on time.

Payment on the night – Cash preferred as payment. All bidding, beer and macrons proceeds donated to The Starlight Children’s Foundation."

if you’re keen on something unique and different, and entirely social, head down to Abbotsford this Saturday to check it all out!

Who: Could be anyone, that’s the fun of it!
What: Pop M’Art – social creativity event
Where: Abbotsford Convent, Abbotsford, VIC
When: Saturday 7th July from 6pm til 9:30pm

Check out the Pop M’art facebook page, their website and and the facebook event page

Always great seeing a new show from the talented team behind the Lo-Fi Collective and The Standard, and this one is absolutely no exception!

“An Art Exhibition to raise funds for Greenpeace, helping in the fight against rainforest deforestation and wildlife extinction in Borneo and throughout the world. An eclectic collection of Art and Jewellery for sale, created by an amazing array of artists from across Australia.”

It’s all for a good cause, so you should head down there and buy some of the awesome art that’ll be up on the walls – two birds with one stone!

Who: Aaron Anderson, Adam Szudrich, Alice Amsel, Anna Mardakhaeva, Aylie McDowall, Bek Godwin, Claire Bonnor, Delight and Darkness, Elizabeth Bargwanna, Grimm, Noir, Guilherme Andrade, Helen Li, Nao Sugiura, Nori Beppu, Rohani Le Rossi-gnol, Scribla, Sean Carver, Ministry Of Clouds
What: Art For Jungle Greenpeace Fundraiser
Where: Lo Fi at The Standard, Lvl 3, 383 Bourke St, Surry Hills, Sydney
When: Tonight, Thursday 28th June, 2012 from 6pm!

Check out the Lofi Collective website for more details on the show!

Bleeding Hearts Gallery has done a lot over the past few years to help promote both established and emerging artists Brisbane artists. Having been in operation now for four years, they are holding a special exhibition and party to celebrate the fact!

"To celebrate this we are hosting a full day’s activities culminating in a retrospective exhibition of some amazing artists that have contributed to Bleeding Heart over the last 4 years.

For this exhibition Bleeding Heart has invited 10 memorable Brisbane artists from the Hearts of Gold series to return to help us celebrate our birthday."

Not only will there be a bunch of great art on display, but there will also be markets and live music at the event – so, get to it Brisbane, and show your support to a cool space.

Who: Luke Darlington, Jessica Row, Carmela Ruffino, Brad Marsellos, Tricia King, Holly Leonardson, Ken Smith, Amy Commins, Emma Godfrey, James Alley
What: Bleeding Hearts 4th Birthday with Hearts Of Gold Retrospective
Where: Bleeding Heart, 166 An St,  Brisbane, QLD
When: Friday 1st June from 5pm til 9pm

Check out the Bleeding Heart website and the facebook page for more info!

If you’ve been reading us for a while, you would know that we are, at the core of it, pretty massive geeks. So when Supanova, the years largest festival of “pop culture expo” comes around, well, there’s no doubt that we’ll be there.

Covering every base from tv and movies, to toys and comics, scifi and fantasy and everything in between, Supanova is the epitome of creative culture. Just seeing all of the cosplayers and various suited and costumed people showed to us just how much the creative realm is permeating our society, more so than it was even a few years ago. These days, geek is cool, and being creative is even cooler. Supanova is, really just that – a massive celebration of creativity.

The first thing we noticed when we arrived, were the massive lines into the expo – we attended last year, and the crowd this year was definitely larger. The traders had been moved into one of the large exhibition halls, and even that was pretty damn crowded!

So. Many. Toys. And. Cool. Shit.

Again, one of the best parts of the day was checking out everyone dressed up for the event. You just know, that as soon as Supanova is finished, that a lot of the cosplayers are going to be heading home to start work on next years outfit immediately – you can see that much effort in their work.

We went and checked out the last  bit of Edward James Olmos, and then the finals for the cosplay competiton. The Samurai Pizza cats vs the French Revolution. Strangely enough (not really, they had great costumes), the French revolution won and went through to the finals.

We finished the day off by catching Summer Glau (aka Fireflys River Tam aka Sarah Connor Chronicles Terminator) doing her talk – ahh. Fan crush to see Summer Glau in person sated. What a girl.

We met these nice ladies when we went to get supplies from the supermarket – they were pretty curious as to what was going on with all these people dressed up. We gave them some stickers and told them to keep calm and carry on!

Supanova keeps getting bigger and bigger every year. It’s an inspiring day out, and there is so much to see and do – if you want a day that is a little out of the ordinary than your usual fare, this is the place to be. For us, the best part of the day really was watching how much creativity was on display – even if your bag doesn’t run to the scifi or fantasy realms, you should at least experience something like this once in your lifetime. We’re looking forward to next years saga!

Melbourne was just the first show in the run of events, so if you’re in Sydney, Gold Coast, Brisbane, Adelaide or Perth, the Supanova events are coming up, so don’t miss out!

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!

What an absolute cracker of a day down at Blender Studios last Saturday for their inaugural artists market. Positioned along both sides of the lane-way and framed with existing murals by local and international street artists (if you haven’t been to Blender Lane before you need to check out Melbourne Street Art Tours), vendors offered a diverse array of art, craft, stationary, zines, clothing, jewellery, cakes, cactii in teapots and much more.

Kick starting the day with a superb "Little Terror" coffee from Four Rascals – a brand-spanking new local coffee crew supplying cafes around Melbourne and popping up at various events (They even roast their own beans!). We then picked up a badge from Happy Maree (website coming soon) who have just released a collection of badges designed by Regan Tamanui (A.K.A. Ha-Ha). Also got some some cards from Baby Guerilla (for my lady) and issue one of Dailies, a collaborative comic art paper put out by Silent Army – classic shit.

Good vibes, funky live tunes filling the air and sunshine pouring down from the sky – can’t think of many better ways to kick off a long weekend in Melbourne.

We’re looking forward to the next one!

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Photos: Mick Rafferty (aka Drunk Monkeys) and Lachlan Curtin-Corr.

Studio artists in photos: ADi & James  Bonnici

We got this last week, but we got a bit delayed in putting it up – it’s about time we saw a market down at Blender, though! You should all be familiar with this bastion of Melbourne street art and other underground creativity in the CBD , Blender Studios by now, and this market will be a great day out

"Introducing the ‘Blender Ln Artists Market’, a new city market located in one of Melbourne’s most iconic street-art covered lane ways. For more info on the space please visit the website.

Stall Criteria: Art and Design
Stall Dimensions: About 1 by 3 metres.

The market starts at 11am and closes 4pm. Setting up begins as early as 9.00am if you need it so please allow yourselves enough time to set up.

Parking: There is parking available across the road at Wilson Parking with a flat rate of $7 on Saturdays. Street parking is also available, if your lucky :)

Stall Price: $20 (First time special)."

If you are an artist or artisan and want to sell some of your wares, get in contact with them – it’s cheap, and, honestly, the laneway itself is an amazing work of art – what better place in the city to sell some of your stuff? Here’s hoping that this continues on as a regular event (it sounds like that’s what they have planned) – we’re even thinking of setting up a stall there in the future ourselves … we also love that its supported by the Charles St Artists Markets – those guys are rad and do a great job!

For those of you wanting to head down and check it out, there are some really cool artists putting their work on display for sale!

Who: Melbourne creative artists and artisans!
What: Blender Lane Artists Markets
Where: Blender Lane, 110 Franklin St, CBD, Melbourne
When: Saturday 10th March 2012, 11am to 4pm

Check out the Blender Studios website as well as the facebook event page for more info, and get down on Saturday to check it all out!

Mick Rafferty was a busy boy last night, and he also headed over to Footscray for the Steamscape show at Post Industrial Design!

So much alternate history and visionary goodness, absolutely and utterly grand – in the truest sense of the word! We love this shit!

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… then there are those weeks when videos are thin on the ground – it feels like everyone is squirreled away getting ready for something big; this perhaps? That said, what’s out this week is nothing but quality.

Speaking of Outpost Project, we’ll be starting our coverage of the event next week – we will be up there for a fair bit of the 5 week festival, live blogging, reporting, interviewing, videoing, snapping and possibly drinking a beer or two along the way – heres a preview of the whole shebang.

Adnate had a show "Point Of View" in Berlin recently, and heres the video from it – looks like the man pulled off something pretty damn cool.

ADNATE – ‘Point of View’ Berlin from AWOL Crew on Vimeo.

Wow – Beastman designed a watch? This is one damn funky time piece!

Tasty Street Art Festival was on in Cairns last week, and heres a really coo timelapse and feature on the wall that was done – Sofles, Phibs, Pudl … nice, FNQ!

Art Battles Semi Final #2 was on recently, this one was The Dirt vs Benjamin!

That’s all we have for this weeks Transmissions – stay tuned, listeners, big things coming over the next few weeks!

Check out the tenmoregirls Collective for more details.

How refreshing it is to have such obviously stunning folk art at such close reach. With works by twenty four Australian and Australiasian artists biding the ties between traditional folk and contemporary art, we find ourselves surrounded by their beautifully rich tapestry of aesthetics.

“Artists express and explore their relationships with the Asian folk culture, against a backdrop of the Australian cultural landscape.”

Using every sensory enveloping medium at their disposal; installation, sculpture, video, painting, and even involving jewellery and ‘“Asian folk-related fabrics”, the works on show will perfectly capture and convey the stories and ideas intended.

“When the minimalists are crying out Less is More, we are saying The More the Merrier! Lights! Colours! Actions! After all, this exhibition is dedicated to the art of the AustraliAsian people and their cultural traditions in the name of intercultural modernity!”

Some familiar names in this list – here, here, we say! Head down to this grandly diverse and inspiring show, expand your knowledge, and your art collection!

Who: Anna Glynn, Aramas Ridge, Ashlea Bechaz, Ayaka Mikata, Belinda Joynes, Ben Lopez, Sarah Hickey, Ellen Stapleton, Hilde Thomsen, Jessica Singh, Josef Peeters, Josh Roelink, Julia Chau, Juliet D Collins, Kaitlin Beckett, Levene Wong, Mal Wass, Mia Taninaka, Min Zhang, Nani Puspasari, Shannon Keane, Sue Codee, Violet Chan, Yuki Nakano
What: Asian Folk Art| Fine Art – Group Show
Where: Brunswick Street Gallery – 322 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, VIC
When: Opening night Friday, August 26th at 6:00pm. Exhibition runs til September 8th 2011

Not so long ago, we saw an event that really piqued our interest – we’re always on the look out for creative individuals doing something different and stepping into unfamiliar territory with their craft, as well as cool collaborations, and Creepy Cute had (has, the show is still on in Adelaide until the end of July!) both of those in spades.

Cohen Gum is an illustrator of the weird, wonderful, and, yes, cute. Working by day, and drawing up a virtual cornucopia of creatures  by night, he teamed up with the blissfully talented Minette Michael, an Adelaide jeweller and creative metal worker, to produce a show of subversionally cool wearable art.

With such an intriguing collaborative effort, there was no doubt in ours minds that we wanted to ask both Adelaidians all about it – and, wonderfully, they more than happy to tell us all about their ever so slightly, but mostly cute,  creations …

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It’s not traditional fare for us, but lately we’ve been reading about a whole bunch of talented jewellers doing rad things (this is a great excuse to plug our friends at Corky St Clair, who do mad cute cool stuff), and as far as we’re concerned any kind of combination of amazing low brow artists and the wondrous world of wearable art  is great in our eyes. So, when we saw this show over at Stupidkrap, we couldn’t help but want to pimp it – its a pretty innovative idea for a jewellery collection – mashups rule.

“Over the last 4 months the talented creatives at Macro Micro/Alchemical Designer jewellery have been collaborating with a number of our favourite artists, to come up with a new range of stunningly intricate pieces that will be displayed at the Art Gallery of NSW.  Using the concept of ‘macro meets micro’, each artist was asked to come up with a concept that related to their work, that could applied to the medium of jewellery.

The results express not only the dedication and ability of the designers, but the inner-most desires an expressions of each of the artists.”

The artist line up looks great, the pieces look gorgeous – if you’re in Sydney on Wednesday, go have a look.

Who: Macro Micro, Alchemical, Ben Frost, Sebastian Moody, RJ Williams, Bennett, Bridge Stehli, Chris Cuseo, Kate Elsworth, Christian Lomas, Posh the Prince + More
What: Macro Micro Jewellery Collaboration show
Where: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW
When: Show opens 6pm, runs til 9pm – check the flyer for talks and other details.

Check out the facebook event page and the Macro Micro website for more details on the show, on this Wednesday.