August 2010
Text: Joseph Allen Shea Images: Tim Roth & Kill Pixie
Mark Whalen is an artist and his world is a contradiction. An implosion if you like. As his audience gets bigger, his art just gets smaller. Beginning with large scale throw ups and pieces under the pseudonym Kill Pixie he earned his craft by working while you were awake and continued while you were asleep. With a relocation from Sydney to Los Angeles, his time is spent less on the sidewalks and tops of buildings as he envelopes himself in his narratives under his desk lamp. New themes of futuristic lost cultures and broken down societies, false gods,the illusion of money, terrorism and double-dealing Kill Pixie’s work has become more detailed as worlds open up inside worlds. The detailed ink work is so precise and intricate that it takes hours to even look at it. Continue reading…
Text: Gabriel Knowles Images: Daniel Boud
It’s a strange thing to consider, but at a ripe old median age of 26, Dappled Cities are a product of a nearly bygone era. A time when hours were spent meticulously aligning tapes to record just one track, when only the labels owned Pro Tools and you had to accept your first real gig might be supporting an entirely inappropriate band. Continue reading…
Text: Max Olijnyk Images: Christopher Day
Sunday Ganim’s work makes you feel good. Her hand woven scarves and blankets are kaleidoscopic visions of colour and unrestrained imagination, but most importantly, are soft on the skin and warm you up on a cold day. Sunday brings a fresh, unconventional energy to a medium steeped in tradition, while embracing the elements that attracted her to it in the first place. Following her recent exhibition Weavie Wonders, the Melbourne artist had a yarn with Max Olijnyk. Continue reading…
Text: Tristan Ceddia Images: Craig Redman
The digital age that we live in paired with the increasing capacity of the world wide web sees literally millions of images making their way online every day. That’s not to say all of them are amazing, but the critical mass of the image is surely undeniable. So undeniable, that these days humans have the opportunity use images in place of words to tell a story or send out a message. Craig Redman from Rinzen debuted the blog Darcel Dissapoints just over a year ago as a personal diary composed entirely of illustrations. Drinking, skateboarding, exhibitions and the general day to day are all used by Craig, via Darcel, to bring the life and times of New York City to the world. Continue reading…
Text: Kat Hartmann Images: Bill Cotter
Spent any time making the news lately? You might find an appropriation of yourself in Bill Cotter’s debut novel, Fever Chart. Cotter is fond of basing his characters on people he sees in the news. You may not recognise yourself though; he tweaks said characters just enough to make them his own.
After completing his debut novel, Fever Chart. Bill Cotter became something of an enigma to me. The online medium divulged nothing of his secrets. It housed little more than a few hundred of his written words. The sum total of this man was – unbelievably, in the cyber age where anonymity has become so very 2005 – no more than a few hundred tangible pages of impressively written words. Until, that is, opportunity arose. Continue reading…
Text: Louise McClean Images: Tristan Ceddia
Eyewear overlords COLAB are like the cool kid at school, they follow their own rules, with no particular intention of pleasing others. But, somehow they manage to do exactly that and in the process round up a legion of devoted followers.
They’ve brought forward and revolutionised concept in an almost neglected element of fashion – the selective enlistment of artistic talent who change from season to season and are given the task of applying their own uninhibited, creative ingenuity to make something truly different.
COLAB’s prolific pairings have seen sunglasses made by some of the most distinctive creative heavyweights both locally and from afar – D-mote, Perks and Mini, Marok and Kidrobot to name a few. With two strong seasons already behind them, a new team is stepping up again for the third range of collaborative eyewear. Louise McClean found out from mastermind Dave Allison just how he pulls the whole project together. Continue reading…
Text & Images: Matilda Brown
It was a long time ago when my mother sat down at her computer, blew the dust away from the worn-out keypad, took a deep breath in and began her first draft of Beautiful Kate. Originally set in the 70s in Idaho, she’s adapted it to work in contemporary outback Australia with flashbacks to the 80s. It’s a gothic love story, a redemption story, a story about a family dealing with the past and struggling with the present, it’s about growing up in isolation, awkward sexual encounters, forgiveness and grief. But don’t write it off as another depressing Australian film because it’s not. It’s handled with a deft touch and as a result it offers and delivers on a plethora of themes. Continue reading…
Text: Caroline Clements Images: Benjamin Lichtenstein
If there is one thing you can’t live without, it’s a chair. Imagine life without the chair at your desk, the seats on the bus, and the stools at the bar of your local watering hole. Life just wouldn’t be the same. And there’s one man who knows that better than most.
A trained furniture maker by trade, Nicholas Barratt, is not only the head of sales in Melbourne at European chair makers, Thonet, but is also the owner of a large cactus garden, a greyhound named Tahini, and influenced heavily by the design style of a protestant religious sect called the Shakers. Continue reading…
Text: Douglas Lance Gibson Images: Christopher Day
It’s easy to pigeonhole someone. Well, actually, it’s harder not to pigeonhole someone. As a method of organisation, it does have its place. Some order does need to be established but an accurate representation of the individual is often hard to summarise. Mikey Young’s latest project, Brain Children, stands in stark contrast to his ouput as a member of Eddy Current Suppression Ring and the Ooga Boogas. Add to that his role in synth-punk outfit, Total Control, and you’re beginning to see the difficulty in applying a tag that faithfully represents who Mikey is.
There’s more though. On top of producing his own music, Mikey’s an in demand producer, record label owner and with Flip Out Festival in its second year, he’s also a festival organiser. Doug Gibson spoke with the man himself, after he’d finished up yet another day of recording. Continue reading…
Text: Michael Kucyk Images: Dan Moynihan
Every day is ‘project day’ for Richmond based artist Daniel Moynihan. When Moynihan’s not producing art in his studio, he’s hiding behind the counter at Bunnings Warehouse, toying with new ideas; cutting, shaping, painting and finishing. En route to and from the office, he’ll keep an eye out for building sites in search for materials and when he finally gets home he’ll put on a DVD for research purposes. Moynihan is one of those artists that never relents from their craft. He finds it hard to let go and is enslaved by an eye for detail. Continue reading…
