INVURT

Who doesn’t like free shit? and when that free shit involves a trip to NYC to take part in a kick ass art exhibition, all for just submitting a piece of your own kick ass art then all the better.

Jeremy Gaschk, the curator of Rtist Gallery and one hard working dude, sent us a few words around the comp:

"The winner of this comp will be flown to NYC to paint a mural there, paint supplied by Ironlak. The top 20 entries to the comp will be exhibited at the The Boroughs festival. Where their work can be sold. The Boroughs festival is going to be dope, it’s a NYC inspired culture festival, featuring The New York Dolls + loads more music, the best skaters, film, fashion, surfboard shaping etc…

To enter this comp you just need to buy a ticket to the festival. It’s $60 and it’s running in every major city around Oz. It’ll be a dope day out, plus you can hopefully make some money out of it by selling your painting there, or even better still get flown to NYC. For dudes in NZ I guess you could give your tick to a friend in OZ? The comp will be curated by the curator of Rtist Gallery, and the art will be judged by the crowd and a selection panel.

For more info on this check out the comps website page HERE

The works must be A3 in size, with Black & White colour palate with a choice of either blue and/or red included. Photo’s of the work must be submitted by 26th of September."

Looks pretty mad, and if you’re artistically inclined and want to make your way over to NYC to paint up, best get onto it now!

Who: You!
What: The Boroughs Art Competition
Where: Submit online, then fly OS
When: Entries close September 26th, 2011!

Go here to enter and to get more info!

A vulture stands over the scattered and degraded flotsam and jetsam of the urban world, peering out towards the distance, its symbolistic scavenger nature epitomised in spray and colour – it speaks somewhere inside, and you listen – its hard not to when it looms so massively above you.

Birds are only one of many icons that have feature in Brisbane street artist Fintan Magees work lately, and his combinations of earthly creatures and the debris of human civilization, seamlessly interpolated with his stylised photo realism, is more than enough to stop you in your tracks. With a rich family background, a well travelled and worldly perspective, Magees work radiates breaths of fresh air to the accumulated nuances encompassed by the term "urban art" – even given many of the plastic bags of refuse sometimes depicted within it.

There’s near air of near homely contentedness (for lack of better description to the feelings invoked) that often surrounds a Magee piece, and his use of location and the blending of a viewers perspective beyond the confines of his painted work, is second to none.

With his solo show "House Of Giants" fast approaching this weekend, we caught up with Fintan Magee to talk about the show, still lifes, and how important ones location, and the location of their work, is to an artist …

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Time to get back to the Press Mill Wednesdays, where we recap all of the “mainstream” press surrounding the art we all love. The column was put on the backburner for a little bit whilst we did some behind the scene restructuring, and now, given there is a little more free time on this editors hands, we’ll be able to get back into a few more special columns for you.

So, right into it …

• Deb, Amuse, Simon Clouston, Jess Cook and other street artists all raised money for the environmental group Borneo Orang-utan Survival – $11,000 worth, last week – wonderful.
• A great little article in the Age about the recent painting in Union Lane by some young creatives, under the mentorship of Paul Round. Great to see this kind of thing!
• There has been a lot of news in recent times as to the proposed re-vamp of the Keith Haring mural in Collingwood – The Age had another article on it a week or so ago.
• Theres a “Phantom Knitter” on the loose in Hobart, and the ABC tried to track them down … nice little piece on some cool yarn bombing.
• Sounds like Sydneys China Town is getting a revamp – including a bunch of “street art” – Jason Wing will be doing a big piece, which sounds pretty cool  … but, you know, it hurts my head thinking about the hypocrisy, considering the new NSW laws against street art and all …
• A really nice and heart warming, positive piece a young guy using a spray can as physical therapy – you go, Sam Ford!
• Students at Goondawindi State High got up in a big way and painted  their local PCYC – this is a fantastic example of integrating street art into the curriculum – more more more.
• Some recent news on the case against a NZ artist who is being sued in court in a civil action by the Auckland City Council – I’d like to know where they dig up their figures, apparently it costs around $100/$200 to remove one tag – really? ffs …
• Owen Dippie is making splashes both in NZ as well as over in NYC – this Herald article covers it all pretty well – he’s been going large!
• Finally, there is a really, really great article up on Voxy about all the artwork that is going up in Christchurch, celebrating all of the police who did heroic things during the quakes – a cool example of the beautiful uses of urban art …

That’s it for this week – see you back with another regular Press Mill in a fortnight.

As one of Perths continually rising stars, Daek is fascinated by many things – not least of which is his curiosity and infatuation with the women that he paints. His work, a composite mesh of graffiti and illustrative, painted complexity, are often light, with a hint of lustful attitude. They are also, at times, deeply personal – especially when his hands take on the subject of his friends, and the stories that they have to convey.

Aside from his hefty, and ever growing artistic talents, Daek is also the manager of Perths Last Chance Studios, one of the Wests most prominent and reputable creative hubs. Over the past few years, Last Chance has seen the launch of many of its members into the wider stratosphere of the art world, and is well known as a leading force amongst the Australian street art and low brow scene.

With Prahrans RTIST Gallery launching their second group show this weekend, Invurt wanted to highlight some of the talent that will be on display at the show. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, we contacted Daek, and asked him about life, art, and those three words that seem to drive him to create his compelling and sublime work – fascination, infatuation, and obsession …

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When we first saw the Carbon festival line up, we were pretty impressed – and now, having finished up the weekend, we have to say that it was a refreshing, unique and totally cool festival in terms of style, art, fashion, design, etc. What made it so successful?  The speakers? Raw data? Cool factor? Amazing and driven talent? A combination of all the above?

Well, we wont analyse it, but it was really the people that attended, organised and that spoke that made it such a good weekend. Our main thing was to test out our live blogging for the first time, and, of course,  get some insights from the best in the biz. We learnt some valuable lessons, such as to not leave a laptop in sleep mode over night thus having to spend the entire day live blogging off an iPhone, that Telstras new carrier settings for iPhone suck, and that I need a dedicated hand masseuse to alleviate my stiff fingers from so much damned typing (volunteers?) – all in all though, it was a fun experience.

 
So heres the whole live recap – we’ve tidied it up a little, but be aware that this is a live transcription – it aint perfect, and please forgive any inaccuracies. Speakers have also been paraphrased a bit, but as one kind commenter said “its the next best thing to being there!” Just click on the “replay” buttons below and you’ll get the whole transcripts that we did (on the fly from both  days … yes, I realise I’m obsessed with writing) – so enjoy!

Day One – was in ACMI. The Thursday night had a Josh Robenstone exhibition, and the opening party was in the Atrium – lots of pizza, lots of Grolsch, and an early night for the next day for us. The first panel on Saturday, Beyond The Brand, featured Bobby Hundreds (The Hundreds), Matt Thomas (Highs and Lows), Matt Noffs (Gideon) and Goldcoast & Dan Preston (Asuza) from Melbourne. The second panel, Building a T-Shirt Label, had Greg Rivera (Mishka, NYC), Jimmy Bliggs (Grand Scheme), Tristan Ceddia (Serps/Ksubi) and Carri Munden (Cassette Playa, UK).

Day Two – This was at the BMW atrium. Day two pretty much had four parts to it. When we first arrived, the Sneaker Freaker swapmeet was in full swing – and it was one of the largest we’ve seen yet. We then headed in to the first forum – Craftsmanship & Imagination, featuring Futura (NYC), Anthony Lister (Bris), Brett Chan (Syd) & Beci Orpin (syd). The final forum was The Art of Hype (my personal favourite) which had Noah Callahan-Bever (Complex. NYC), Frank Liew (Qubic, NZ), Chooee Hwang (streething.com, Sing) and Alexandra Weiland (Acclaim, Melb). Afterwards, for the final part of the day, Futura (NYC), Jasper Wong, Does, Sirum, MEGA here and there, Sofles and others.

• Pre-Carbon pics and post from Frank Liew over at Hypebeast of his visit over for the festival, also read the second and third part (which had some nice words about our liveblogging!) – heaps of good info on there and other links to run downs of the event,it sounds like he had a crazy cool weekend over here haha.
• Heres a few more pics of the live painting session on Dean Sunshines blog.
• Cool bit of blogging from Bobby Hundreds about his arrival and stay in Melbourne for the festival – andhere is a bunch of images of Futura doing some live painting.
• You can find a few more of our photos on our facebook page.
• Great blog piece and pics from the girls at Just Another Agency on Day 2 here.
• Sneaker Freaker have a cool recap of the swapmeet as well as pics of all the live painting.
• .. and I’ll keep updating this as more images come out during the week …

 
MEGA also had his opening on the Saturday night – alas, we couldn’t attend the opening on the night, but we did see “That Guys” work all over the place the next day – amazing! At the end of the day, the live painting session had kicked off – or maybe it should be the live-paint & schmooze session? The chats, photos and drinks were in full swing, and we sure as hell met our fair share of really, really great people. If only we could have kicked on to the party afterwards – alas, we were exhausted, bed called, and Monday work was haunting me with visions of being slumped over my desk…

  
We’ll be running a lot more live blogging in future – as I said, it went well, but next time we’ll work on better photos for the live stream, iPhone cameras sucked with the glare in the BMW forum!

 
Thanks to Invurts Peach (Cholo), who put up with my occasional technology-fingercramp-overdrivebraindump-stresses and who helped with the live blogging for the weekend, and Lara, who got a bunch of great snaps for us of the Sneaker Freaker swapmeet and the live painting. Thanks to all the artists, creatives, sponsors, volunteers and people we met at the festival that made it into such a great weekend for everyone -  mostly, though, thanks to all the crew at Acclaim, kudos on a massively great job at putting on the first in what we hope will be an ongoing series of festivals – we’re already looking forward to next year!!

Check out the event details (as they were) on the Carbon website.

There’s something distinctly nostalgic behind the name of Anthony Listers upcoming Sydney show at Chalk Horse Gallery, Memories Not Included -  the title itself feels as if it harkens back to the much loved movie Batteries Not Included of my youth, and, on the surface at least, the titulary play of words from the outset grabbed my attention – so, when I briefly caught up with Lister this week, and I asked him about what the show represented, he replied, simply, “I broke my foot, and this is what I made.”

Its this fundamental ease at which an artist can comment on their work, that always piques my interest – because although it my appear to be so, Listers work is anything but simple. Drawing on a wide range of experience and influences, Listers work often delves into the subconscious of our youth, and allows the viewer to actually participate in his work, rather than to be relegated to the position of a mere bystander.
 

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It has to be said, that one of my favorite parts of doing this blog is opening up an email reply from an artist, and reading the replies for the first time – and when its one of many artists who I have admired and followed for a time, its especially fun.

Sara Blake is one such artist, and, when I stumbled on the news that she was doing a solo show in Sydney the other week, I threw a whole slew of questions I’d been interested in asking since I first saw her work in Curvy and Yen Magazine – and, though busy as she was opening her show,  traversing the country and seeing all there is our continent has to offer, she had no problem squeezing in a plethora of interesting answers – which, unashamedly, has increased my love of her work just that little bit more …

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I’m squinting hard as the early dawn light is pummelling through the vans windscreen. We’re hurtling down the highway, somewhere between Rhode Island and Brooklyn – its post-party hour and some friends and I are dropping Reid Speed back home after an all-night rave in an abandoned bank vault. The gig is all done and dusted, and we’re talking shit about breaks, d’n'b and all the things in between – the details are murky, its the start of the new millennium after all, but I can still hear the passion in her voice and I’m still feeling the vibe of the set she played, and I easily recall my predominant thought at the time – “this girls really going somewhere, can’t wait to see where she ends up…”

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There would be no stretch of the imagination involved if one was to suggest that Melbourne artist Makatron has been making waves in the past year with his exhibitions, murals and street art. As part of the Everfresh crew, who have a large array of colossal murals and more subtle pieces spread across both Burn City and the world, it can also be said that he, along with the rest of the crew, are at the top of their game.

As an individual artist, however, his work conveys a thoughtful, and at times chaotic, interpretation of personal interaction with both the environment and the people contained within it. His extensive travels, coupled with his unique personal experiences and his love of the grittier underside of urban art have all combined to present a unique, emboldened style that has garnered him a solid body of fans.

Invurt recently had opportunity to conduct an in-depth, thought provoking, and generally kick-ass interview with Makatron, wherein he explains his work and ethos, and where racing a courier bike through the streets of Sao Paulo fits in to it all …

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