The Contemporary Art Blog from Canberra

When you paint an office building, you have to clean lots of rollers everyday. So you use the Dulux Envirowash System, don’t you? Gives a good impression, doesn’t it? Corporate responsibility at its best…

And then at the end of each day you empty about 100 litres of grey paint into Lake Burley Griffin, and then you hose down the evidence.

Positioning it over the stormwater drain opening should have given the game away…

Iconophilia was pleased to meet Anthony and Gilbert at Middle Beach, Tanja, on their morning round cleaning up after the tourists at Bithry, Gillards, and Middle Beach in the Mimosa Rocks National Park.

I first was attracted to Anthony’s innovative recycling of the ubiquitous milk crate, and the way in which he has extended the functionality of his ageing Corolla.

However in conversation I discovered there was a philosophy – a theory – behind Anthony’s inventions: his “deep roots technology” updates the historical precedents in “make-do” or “bush design” solutions to everyday problems. Living too far from the nearest purveyor of Octopus Straps – see The Iconophile’s previous encounter -  Anthony ties everything down with its predecessor, the elastic calamari-ring inner tube rope.

It’s pragmatic in the “make-do” sense, but also philosophical in his attitude towards an “open source” ideology: to Anthony such ideas (or materials) should be available to anybody. And so, the humble milk crate acquires a second life. And see? The broom holds it all in place…

What the? Iconophilia wonders what set of smarts idiots thought that Fascist Realism would be the right style to stir up the annual jingoism around the Australia Day holiday? Yes, multiculturalism has slipped out of political fashion, but what other-than-Ayran ethnicities (with the exception of the designer boy-girl with olive complexion and well-plucked eyebrows) might feel included in this “celebration”? Indigenous? Indian? Anyone? Who is the Government Minister responsible for the creative genius on the Australia Day Committee who thought is was a good idea? At least some lowly layout designer at The Oz got it right: Think Again… And maybe patriotic Indigenous Australians like Maria (below “XOZX”) have another apology coming?

PS. We haven’t seen it since – perhaps its been pulled? Nothing on the official site… Or does this Australia Day advertisement mean Sam Kekovich has gone mainstream? Only The Punch seems to have noticed…

PPS. Ad agency CEO Russel Howcroft (George Patterson Y&R) takes the credit for it. See the comments below…

PPPS. Yesterday the blog for ad enthusiasts The Inspiration Room posted a story claiming it’s just great, and have reproduced better images, if you’re interested, and name all those who actually did the work: executive creative director Ben Coulson, copywriter Annie Egan, art director Ryan Fitzgerald, illustrator Mark Thomas and retoucher Hung Nguyen. Makes you wonder…

The Iconophile (your ExMo) presents his first sculpture for 2010, Octopussy, a readymade altered in steel, rubber, and plastic, (dimensions variable). It’s a work which exhibits the five cardinal virtues of The Exmodern. As demonstrated here, exmodernism is characterised by site-specificity, ephemerality, (proto)invisibility, performativity (it’s phenomenological), and/or it has a digital presence. This example is currently located deep in the Spotted Gum (Eucalyptus maculata) forest at Narra Bukulla, on Marr Grounds’ property, near Tanja, New South Wales. “A masterpiece! A triumph of form over function“…

P.S. For an account of Lawrence E. Cahoone’s use of the term exmodernism in his The Ten Modernisms, see the comments below…

Iconophilia was directed to this piece of abandoned sixties vernacular sculpture by local sculptor Richard Moffatt , who lives at Tathra on the NSW South Coast. It is hidden on the headland north of Middle Beach. In the age of the GPS and the PLB trig points serve no purpose. So nobody trims the trees around it any more, and it is only visible to connoisseurs of vernacular art and redundant technology who make the trek to this un-named headland.

Sixties? Thanks to the surveyors who spent ten cents to set this date stamp in the concrete next to their official marker we can give it its place in the style of the sixties…

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, at Penders, Richard Moffatt has conceived the perfect analogue to the trig sculpture.

His friend and mentor Marr Grounds claims it is his MAGNUM OPUS (“a triumph of function over form!”). Working with the rusty steel offcuts of sixties aesthetic purity (gleaned from Sir Ron Robertson-Swann’s scrapyard), Richard has referenced a locally occurring subterranean wave form – a phenomenon known only to a select few…

We encourage the visitation of Goanna, the natural enemy of Snake. Goanna loves Egg. Spot Egg next to the bottom of Rope in the picture below…

It’s too easy to just leave Egg on the ground, says Pammy Faye. So for four days she left Egg on Bear’s floating flotsam before she relented and built a bridge.

It worked! Using the scent  glands in his tongue, Goanna found the first Egg at the base of the bridge, crossed the bridge, stole the second Egg, and then took the third Egg without the bridge!

Now Goanna makes his own bridge!

Iconophilia is pleased to introduce the work of Braidwood artist Jack Featherstone. Born in 1929, Jack is a prolific artist who for the last thirty years has painted scenes of everyday life in and around the local area and the South Coast of NSW -  as well as other personal and historical accounts of his journeys through Central Australia  and the Northern Territory.

This painting of a performance of Handel’s Messiah at Penrith is painted on Sydney sandstone.

As well as his paintings on canvas, Jack has developed his own techniques of working on strips of bark taken from (dead) Mountain Ash trees (Euc. regnans), sourced from near Central Tilba, as well as the paintings on stone. This is one panel (the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial) from a series on the subject of Australia at war.

Some of the paintings reproduce the original vertical format of a strip of bark, while others take advantage of the horizontal to depict his narratives in panoramic format. Here’s his latest work in progress in his studio.

Keep watching! We’ll be showing more of his work, and filling in the gaps, in the next month or so…

I wasn’t aware until this morning that Pammy Faye’s thongs were desirable. And I had no idea there was a thong brand hierarchy. To me they were just Pammy’s old thongs. Until, that is, our first night camping under the Sacred Thong Tree at Penders, on the NSW South Coast, when the name Havaianas first entered my consciousness.

This complex of intertwined Mahogany Gums has for some years been identified as a Sacred Thong Site by Marr Grounds, the custodian of this beautiful stretch of coastline south of Bithry Inlet. Here it is shown in its sacrilegious campsite glory.

And Havaianas? During the early hours of the morning of the 29th December some indigenous creature – no doubt attracted by the aroma of toe jam – neatly consumed most of the stem on one Havaianas, and half of the other. The result? Rodent with Havaianas Hangover 2 – Pammy Faye 0.

Who (Jan 4, 2010, p.103) lists Havaianas as one of the top trendy items of the noughties, and quotes Marc Newson as citing the flip flop thong is “one of the top four designs that cannot be improved”.

Modernity has begotten a new form of madness – or is it simply the season? Yes, dear readers, Iconophilia offers this dialogical poem on the subject on this Christmas day, 2009. It is dialogical in the sense that it is to be performed by all of you, in random order, in the traffic, to be spoken out loud, windows down, whenever your eye lights on a piece of this consumermodernist contempormodernist wordage brandage. In the spirit of the Cabaret Voltaire Australis, go on, be a sport…

1. ASPIRE RONDO STYLE, SPORT

Swift discovery polo club generation!

Eclipse charade-savvy grandeur (grande, grandis),

swing odyssey, rio titanium!

Sonata astra acclaim, avalon applause echo,

patriot commodore liberty conquest.

Lambada [or: lambadada] avantgarde avenger.

2. PREGIO [translated from the Spanish, roughly, "Dear baby Jesus, pray grant me succour in this hour of need"]

Soarer bora, vienta epica magentis avensis, dualis verso premacy.

Aurion navara solara, aristo yaris, lantra murano pulsar…

Prius terios lanos, rubicon tiguan triton -

solara metiz impreza actyon, pajero altise levin, tiida getz nubira.

3. BOXSTER [translated from the Californian, roughly, "there's a whole new generation who think like this"]

Roomster, forester, sirion pulsar.

Tiburon elantra futura musso, festiva seca paseo…

Dualis.

Fuso.

Applause.

(thanks to Bill and Amanda’s capacity to navigate between dross and gloss)