da Scriffles

Art is a great sport to share with people you love - competitive and collaborative.
At Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) until April there's the Asia Pacific Triennial. http://qag.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/apt
So much fun: sand drawing, pattern experiments, sculptures, drawings, photography, videos... one afternoon is not enough.

Little guys love it to ... this is what gives me hope for the future of this country ... children's minds are being opened by public programs like this.
It has to improve the collective imagination of the nation.

Here's a video of kids enjoying: Liminal Air Descend, by Japanese artist Shinjo Ohmaki, another example of great tactile art that's being produced these days.

You learn more when you're having fun. You learn when you experiment. So I'm experimenting. I've used GIFs here so maybe they won't show.
And I've used a basic export to get a video file small enough to email to Posterous - hopefully it works.
Fingers crossed. I'm no genius as plenty of people will testify willingly.

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Old King Cole lives at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
From the borderlands (ankle-high scrubby garden), an urban reptile scopes the cement plains inhabited by giants. Splat.
"Watermelon!" He whips under the coffee table to suck the juicy morsel. But he blows his cover.
He snatches up his prize and scampers away - gotta be easier than catching flies.
Life's a nursery rhyme for the urban reptile.

The Asia Pacific Triennial closed on the Easter weekend at Queensland's Gallery of Modern Art = GoMA.

Yes, it's my second visit I've blogged about it here once before.

But this time I'm just using one of the artworks the PixCell-Deer by Japanese artist Kohei Nawa to illustrate a cautionary tale for you - beware Spellcheck!

For some reason Nawa's covered a real stuffed deer with plastic or glass bubbles.
Why? Why would he? Because he's an artist. Because he can. My apologies for the Photoshopped artwork - the original looks more like the one below.
I don't know. We'd need to ask him. There's beauty and then there's - Spellcheck!

Imagine you sent out thousands of emails this afternoon to your clients and instead of sending just one email per customer your new program sent out 13 emails to some 40 customers - blood boiling on both sides of the internet.

So you need to "apologize for the inconvenience" of 13 copies of the same email in your in-box.

But then someone emails back "apologize for your incontinence"? "We apologize for your incontinence".

Might as well be looking at a deer blowing bubbles.

Another Spellcheck victim. My friend may never use the word "inconvenience" in an email again.

She never uses the word "solemnize" in emails any more for the same reason. Now every time this marriage celebrant even thinks about writing "solemnize" she writes "legally married" instead to sneak past Spellcheck without disturbing the dear.
Do you know how Spellcheck spells "solemnize"?

What goes with Gommorah?
MY DEER me! Hee-hee. It's kinda beautiful in a horrific way don't you think?

This is a 10-minute edit. Was going to work on it but too exhausted so it's a whole 5 minutes long with some art works from the Unnerved show thrown in. It's worth sticking around for the end when they really rock out. Sorry but Flip Cameras obviously aren't great with audio - and the acoustics in the gallery are not good. But how long has it been since you've heard Dirty Creature or I See Red?

 

 

 

Matisse: Drawing Room - more than an afternoon gallery stroll

"Old Masters" - do people call the Impressionists-Expressionists-Surrealists old masters?

The phrase probably belongs to Rebrandts and Renaissance artists but the reason I think of Matisse as an old master is not because of his place in art history or his age or his talent.

The first time I saw photographs of Matisse I was dumbfounded by his appearance - he didn't look like a radical artist that he was. He revolutionized the use of colour and line, composition and shape. He was a man of beautiful vision. But he looked like a banker. I guess he was a banker of ideas.

This realisation gave me heart because I realized then that artists do not have to be "extraordinary" - their work is extraordinary. They may be ordinary people but they see the world differently.

What I find interesting in this exhibition is Matisse's use of charcoal - rather than pencil. Every artist is born to work in particular mediums. I find his simple line work in pencil a little wonky but when he picks up charcoal it all comes to life. Pencil is so starkly unforgiving. Of course, Matisse's pencil drawings are elegant but his charcoals showcase his talent - see the nudes.

We all walk around with a bucket over our heads to hide ourselves from the world and to keep the world out. But sometimes we peep when a writer or an artist says: "Look, look at this!" I have developed a theory that some of the people society labels as crazy-mad actually see the world as it is - they just can't close their minds.

I stood in front of Matisse's large canvas of a woman lying with a bull and thought: "What would his friends (who weren't artists) have thought of this?"

Artists throw away the bucket. It is not possible to walk around with a completely open mind. But if you never peep then there is no "innovative thinking" no real "progress" no real "appreciation" - no wonderment.

This is why Queensland's art galleries are so, so important. Children stake a claim in this place by sticking their dots in the spotty room, by building art from trash to hang in the gallery, by engineering white lego structures, drawing, designing patterns on computers... They own the gallery as a space of wonderment. Free wonderment! Wonderment should be free. Fly, fly, fly and be free... spots on the ceiling... spots on the piano... giggles... with dad... with mum... with friends.

The Gallery of Modern Art may only be five years old but it extends the Queensland Art Gallery's extraordinary efforts to lay the foundations for a Matisse to rise in Brisbane. Who knows what lights switch on in the brains of all those beautiful youngsters who place a dot in the spotty room or stroll through the Pip & Pop Show. Thank God for small wonders!

If you have an open mind, you might even stop in The Drawing Room, sit down at an easel, pick up a pencil and put yourself in the shoes of a banker of ideas.

Here are my entries in the competition to win a trip to Paris - you enter a random draw by emailing your entry on the tablets provided.