The other day I wrote about Chiodo, a menswear shop located in Melbourne. They’ve been doing the reusable shopping-bag-thing for a while. When you make a purchase, they send you out the door with a reusable shopper, handmade with suit/shirt fabric. A nice touch and a great alternative to a paper or plastic bag. I’ve kept all my chiodo-bags from past purchases. Brighter colors were from Spring/Summer season, darker were from Autumn/Winter.
Chiodo
Basement
114 Russel Steet
Melbourne VIC 3000
Australia
03 9663 0044
Obakki describes itself as “Canada’s premier fashion house”. They have a modern store interior designed by mcfarlane | green | biggar with assistance from Brent Comber on the interior wood details.
The architect created dramatic details like concrete walls with formwork impressions meeting polished concrete floors, white corian objects connected to Comber’s wooden bar and polished stainless steel clothing racks suspended from the ceiling.
A number of objects appear to hover (the corian cash register, stainless steel clothing racks). These floating elements add even more drama and give the impression of lightness and openness.
I liked the story at Comber’s site that described him needing to rent a sawmill for an entire afternoon to cut 30″ square spruce blocks. “It was a little scary but also fun.”
Images courtesy of mgb architecture + design.
I wrote about a bracelet I bought from Love & Hatred last time I was in Sydney. I wanted to follow up with another post showing two additional Love & Hatred pieces.
L&H is one of my favorite retail haunts in Sydney. I like to visit the store a few times over a week or two because there is so much to take in, it’s nice to return and see something I previously overlooked or hadn’t thought about. First visit I tried on a white gold ring with an intricate filigree; beautiful and chunky. Nice heavy weight on the finger. Next time I was in the mood for something less formal. Giovanni D’Ercole always displays a variety of silver rings with interesting construction details and unique twists on the brand name. I liked a couple designs.
One of the rings has a dark lattice that wraps nearly the entire circumference and the other has a gothic type treatment of the words ‘Love’ and ‘Hatred’.
After I saw Katharina Grosse’s work for the first time, I thought Dale Frank abstraction meets Sun7 process. All the energy of graffiti combined with a child-like obsession for massive scribbles of color.
I prefer the effect of Katharina Grosse’s work on interior spaces, especially museums. Museum Directors must hold their breath when Grosse gets an exhibition approval … which walls will she flood with color … what walls will remain blank?! What about floors? Probably part of the contract to stay away from certain materials too. And most importantly, how do we de-install this?
I love this stuff.
Official artist site here.
Number of works on canvas at Gow Langsford.
Sam Leach is exhibiting at Nellie Castan from May 8-31, 2008.
peacock and sputnik
2008
oil on linen
135 x 95cm
paradisaeidae
2008
oil & resin on copper
30 x 20cm
Official artist website here.
David Walsh is busy building his art empire, called MONA, in Moorilla. The museum is scheduled to be open in 2010.
The building is designed by architects Fender Katsalidis. The graphic design firm working exclusively on the project is H4.
Robert Polidori exhibition, Versailles, at Edwynn Houk Gallery from April 17 – June 14, 2008.
Robert Polidori, Napoleon Recoit a Finkelstein, Reza Bey, 27 Avril 1807, Ambassadeur de Perse, Peinture de Francois-Henri Mullard, Versailles, Attique du Midi 2005
Robert Polidori, Salles d’Afrique, Painting of Louis XVI by Callet, Versailles
Robert Polidori, Vue of Parterre du Midi, Versailles
I first saw one of Sacha White’s Vanilla Bicycles at the Seattle International Bicycle Expo in 2005. Zac Daab was showing the Vanilla Bike to draw attention to the start of his new business, Cascade Bicycle Studio.
Wow. Every square inch of the bike oozes hand-made, one-of-a-kind precision. Looking over Sacha’s website you’ll quickly get the idea he is a man interested in perfection. The first step to building your dream bike is making a selection from six frame types: commuter, cross, road, randonnee, touring and track. The second step is deciding which Stainless Upgrades you like: polished “V” dropouts, polished stainless lugs, hand carved lug sets, to name a few. Just make your decisions soon because as of December, 2007 Sacha has a five-year waiting list.
“The opening night of an exhibition by the photographer Bill Henson featuring images of naked children was dramatically cancelled after police visited the Paddington gallery to investigate child pornography claims.”
Read the full story at the Sydney Morning Herald website.
The Roslyn Oxley9 website was offline for a number of hours during the gallery shutdown. The site went back online last night without access to the Bill Henson artist portfolio section. Soon afterward they submitted a Media Statement which was sent out via email and available at their website.
——————————
Media Statement
Friday 23 May 2008
Statement on behalf of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery and Bill Henson
After much consideration we have decided to withdraw a number of works from the current Bill Henson exhibition that have attracted controversy. The current show, without the said works, will be re-opened for viewing in coming days.
Bill Henson is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists and is internationally respected. His works are held in every leading art institution in Australia and are included in the collections of a number of the world’s most prestigious art museums. The Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Victoria have both recently held a retrospective of 30 years of the artist’s work.
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery will remain closed while the current exhibition is re-hung.
——————————
Official artist site here.
Melbourne based photographer Simon Obarzanek’s series of portraits titled 80 Faces was shown at IMA@TCB (The Institute of Modern Art at TCB Building), April 11 – May 11, 2008.
Each black and white image features a portrait of a young persons face, neck and shoulder, similar to a passport photo. At first glance the styling seems minimal, but that changes when you see a number of the images grouped together. All the photographs resonate with an otherness which comes from a stylized process of selecting ‘interesting’ faces and shooting every model in a rigorous manner. The artist’s focus is on shape, scale and proportion of features. Attributes like freckles, lips and ears become isolated and take on a surreal emphasis. Juxtaposition of the images heightens this sublime effect.
Simon Obarzanek is represented by Karen Woodbury Gallery. You can see work from 2007 here, and the images from his 2006 exhibition here.
New Bill Henson exhibition opens at Roslyn Oxley9, May 23, 2008.
Friedrich Gray’s Winter 2008 Look Book titled, So We Dug A Tunnel.
I get a little claustrophobic in my 1958 Rambler when I look over the work of Seattle architect Eric Cobb. On the outside his residential architecture design is all about sculptural exterior massing and optimizing the particulars of a given site. On the inside, his designs feature modern space and meticulous detailing.
I hope to have an interview from Eric for I, Wanderer soon … in the meantime enjoy some images from his portfolio of work.
There’s a van driving around Seattle with this great logo on it.
I gave them a call to see what they were all about. Found out from Brian Rowe, owner of All Aboard, they are getting heaps of positive comments about the skull logo from everybody. As in, everybody that sees it on the van. So it appears I was just another lunatic raving about their cool skull & scissors identity!
Everybody knows it rains a lot here in Seattle … but did you know boating is a significant contributor to commercial and recreational activities in the region? Although they specialize in marine upholstery, Brian tells me they can upholster anything in your home too.
I forgot to add this title to my last Books from Australia post. McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art is the definitive guide to Australia’s visual artists. Touted as both a scholarly reference and an easy browse, the book is a hefty 1200 pages. This will tip the scales at the airport if you try to bring it back in your luggage.
The editors have done a great job listing 1,000s of artists, with concise biographical information for the majority of the artists and elaborated descriptions for well known artists like Boyd, Perceval, Shead, Smart, etc. Believe it or not, this isn’t 100% complete. There are still artists missing from the guide; not just new artists — mid-career too. That’s not a criticism at all. This is a great resource. The art scene is growing rapidly in Australia and it’s difficult for a book of this scale to keep up with the times. Maybe they could publish an annual soft-cover update …
$295 + shipping. Ship this behemoth by boat. Air mail cost would be frightening.
Maxalto and B&B Italia are showing their new designs from Milan.
Maxalto:
Omero, Antonio Citterio (Apta Collection)
Pathos, Antonio Citterio (Simplice Collection)
Bibla and Eikos, Antonio Citterio (Apta Collection
B&B Italia:
Frank, Antonio Citterio
Link, Jacob Wagner
Back, Patricia Urquiola
Papilio, Naoto Fukasawa
The Ryan McGinley exhibition, I know Where the Summer Goes, just ended at Team Gallery. This past weekend the exhibition opened at Ratio3 in San Francisco; they started pre-selling quite a while ago so there are only about 3 images left.
Official artist site here.
