Tis the Season...

I pronounce the Silly Season... OPEN ~

Hannes Broecker - Drink Away The ArtExhibition in Dresden, Germany

"Forget about wandering through an art gallery and wondering if you’re the only one who has no idea what anything means. Hannes Broecker has brilliantly invited the cultural elite to grab a glass at an exhibition in Dresden, Germany, and drink away the art. Regardless of what we do or do not understand about art, we can all agree, it stimulates our senses. Broecker has aroused our sense of taste (not to mention eliminated the need of elbowing our way to the bar) by hanging flat, glass containers with a variety of cocktails in the exhibition space. As the night progressed, the levels of the multi-coloured infusions diminished. By the end of the event, the art, itself, ran dry, and empty drinking glasses were returned to where they were originally placed. By Andrew J Wiener."

via Coolhunter

‘under-construction sites’

"Fulton Fence is installed on the corner of Fulton Street and Broadway in Manhattan, New York and can be viewed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The project is on of the three interventions that make the pilot Re:Construction public art program organized by the Downtown Alliance and the LMCC.

Project Description

Accents of orange and yellow plastic construction meshes, industrial caution lights, safety signage and the chain-link fencing that universally signify construction-in-progress will be collaged into a vibrant op-art mural bounding the water main retrofitting on Fulton Street. These treatments will be affixed in segments following the 10-foot long section frames of chain-link fencing that currently encircle the construction site. At the time of installation the team will establish a primary linear pattern along the line of the fence that combines 30 or more of these modules. As these modules get moved around by the contractors due to on-going construction needs, these new arrangements will create unpredictable patterns conveying the very history of the construction as it progresses.

As part of the piece, the team will continually be building a web-based project, which will become the location of an online intervention that seeks to parallel the construction of the physical site with the construction of a ‘space’ within the Internet. This digital destination takes the form of a continually scrolling web page as both an organizational tool and analog of strolling down the perimeter of the project on Fulton Street. Just as the physical installation weaves elements of vernacular construction materials into the frame of the fence, the website will embed media driven ‘interventions’: process documentation, location information, online widget mash-ups, and mobile downloads among others.

These two explorations – one architectural, the other online – seek to re-define ‘under-construction sites’ as expressive spaces in a city of ongoing transformation."

Fulton Fence . net

Cracks at the Tate

Would have loved to be there for the briefing meeting for the engineer who made this happen... Maybe Gehry should use the "But, your honor, its art!!" defense for the Stata Center case.

Doris Salcedo Shibboleth

Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth is the first work to intervene directly in the fabric of the Turbine Hall. Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a steel mesh fence, creating a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another. By making the floor the principal focus of her project, Salcedo dramatically shifts our perception of the Turbine Hall’s architecture, subtly subverting its claims to monumentality and grandeur. Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built.

In particular, Salcedo is addressing a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world. A ‘shibboleth’ is a custom, phrase or use of language that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. By definition, it is used to exclude those deemed unsuitable to join this group.

‘The history of racism’, Salcedo writes, ‘runs parallel to the history of modernity, and is its untold dark side’. For hundreds of years, Western ideas of progress and prosperity have been underpinned by colonial exploitation and the withdrawal of basic rights from others. Our own time, Salcedo is keen to remind us, remains defined by the existence of a huge socially excluded underclass, in Western as well as post-colonial societies.

In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself. Her work encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths about our history and about ourselves with absolute candidness, and without self-deception.

more here...

that's very nanna of you

The Art of Botanical Illustration

A couple of christmas' ago, the hostess of the Orphan's Christmas Lunch I went to confessed that she was obsessed with sugar tongs and a particular collection of Royal Copenhagen china Given she was 27 and working at one of australia's best private contemporary art galleries, with a personal specialty in neon art, all the guest had a laugh at her very nanna-esque obsession. Well, time to confess, mine is botanical illustration. I find the illustrations much more expressive, beautiful and representative than any photograph. The Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne have curated an interesting collection here.

The Story of My Life

Two Dilbert's that sum things up...