Daddy's Little Princess

Daddy's Little Princess at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre by Linda Wilken opened a couple of weeks ago. If you remember, I first met Linda by chance at the Firstdraft Depot where she was undertaking a residency and I was working at the Big fag Press. We discovered we had some conceptual ideas in common and I interviewed her for Ivory Tower Magazine last year (page 10 in this document).

Sexualisation and objectification of young girls is a current social and political issue. This exhibition represents the way young girls in contemporary western cultures develop their identity based on popular culture and stereotyping which begins in childhood. Influenced through magazines, music videos, social media and the internet, these ‘young consumers’ are being seduced into stylising themselves on hyper-sexualised ideals.

-From the Casula Powerhouse website

Here are some photos I took of Daddy's Little Princess.

[All photos are mine of Linda Wilken's work at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre]

Life of Pi

[image from Google Images]

I had to do a post about Life of Pi. I hadn't read the book and didn't even know much about the film when I saw it - other than there was a tiger, and I'd vaguely heard that the book was amazing.

Well, I just have to commend both the author Yann Martell and the film produced for bringing me this masterpiece that had me laughing, in hysterical tears, and feeling thoroughly enlightened at the end. I'm an atheist but I loved that this little boy was so adventurous and sought knowledge of all these religions as a way of explaining his reality.

The end of the story made perfect sense to my beliefs. The two stories of his shipwreck survival was that the phatasmagorical tale which included lands he'd never seen, and a mercurial relationship with this tiger was the story he preferred, the story many preferred over the distressing version where he saw his mother die. The way I interpreted it was that god was his survival in the ocean - and he brought him this magical world to explore and this tiger that somehow kept him company, as well as alive. He prefers this story, as he prefers to believe in god because this belief is what got him through it. But he realises that perhaps reality doesn't exactly work that way.

As an atheist, this is pretty much my belief. God exists to those who believe in him, and I am glad he does, I know many people to whom god is an unrelenting power of strength. To me, god does not exist, I find my beliefs in other places like nature, science and love.

On another note, after I saw the film, I learnt from my usual googling of how well the film industry treats its animal actors, that surprisingly, many of the animal scenes were computer rendered. No endangered Bengal Tiger needed to be on set for this film - a few photographs were sufficient to computer generate the animal scenes in the entire movie. And frankly I couldn't tell, the animal scenes were so real, there wasn't a moment I thought through my tears "this poor dying tiger looks a little photoshopped". Now, I can be a master of photoshop when I need to be, but the idea of "photoshopping" for filmscreen seems like an unfathomable amount of great technology coupled with great talent.

I know The Hobbit too used some computer generated animal scenes. But I am still disappointed for those 27 animals that died due to lack of sufficient care, on a budget that could have easily guaranteed their safety and comfort.

And here is a movie all about animals with far fewer dollars to spend who managed to get it right - and still win its prizes and accolades. Very well deserved. I'm now reading the book.

Anish Kapoor

I've been wanting to do a post about Anish Kapoor's exhibition at the MCA for about a week since I went to see it. Incidentally, I did love it. From a structural point of view it is amazing, he really has an understanding of the minds of his audience, and how they interact with his work. The works I found most interesting are ones I couldn't photograph - the squares of fabric on (in?) the wall which make you doubt your own sense of 3D perception, and the solid concave structure hanging which seems to change shape as you move closer towards it and then retreat backwards. I'd love to be a gallery minder for this exhibition - it must be great watching visitors try to understand objects that trick their minds by moving their heads around in strange ways, and trying to touch physical objects that appear closer than they are.

....however, nothing beats his "Gangnam for Freedom":

[Video: Anish Kapoor]

(I confess I am a little bit obsessed with Gangnam style - especially how it's been used for advertising like this).

Anyway, although I loved the current exhibition, I always have more to say when I can think about a work conceptually rather than structurally. Last month on twitter, one of my friends retweeted a post which said, "Someone should commission Anish Kapoor to design a giant funhouse for kids". It was a little like that!

I have some of my photos from the exhibition on Instagram (louisekateanderson):

Is it there, or isn't it? #anishkapoor #mca

 I always wondered what my legs looked 

like from this angle #anishkapoor #mca 

Sky Mirror #anishkapoor #mca

[3 images are mine]

Big Fag Press Artist Residency Programme 2013

* Flier design mine

Supported by Artspace and Australia Council for the Arts, the Big Fag Press got to host an Emerging Artists' Residency for 3 weeks in January with two artists, Laura Hindmarsh and Pat Grant.

Both artists were looking at introspective notions of art work, and it was great to be able to do test printing on the Press and spend time mentoring the artists and helping them create works that really took into account the unique functioning of our machine.

Here are some images from the residency and launch.

 

 *All photos are mine

Photography from Vietnam

Hanoi

Huê

Halong Bay

Hoi An

Da Nang

Sapa and surrounds

*All photos are mine.