The international magazine Women in the City just published my interview with the Taiwanese artist and busker Lin Bee Dwo. The interview is part of my research about the Melbourne art scene.
Here you are the link to the interview
Read MoreResearch
My understanding of Melbourne so far it that everything is about the lanes. The graffiti, the social life, the art exhibitions.
A week ago I was searching for this Trink Tank gallery and, guess what, I ended up in a blind alley. In a blind lane to be precise.
I asked a bunch of people in front of a bar if they know where this Trink Tank gallery was.
A guy with a chef hat smirked:”You just passed it. It’s there!” and he guided me without fail to a shrine in the wall.
Inside the small shrine, like a Neapolitan Madonna, there was Marc Standing’s artwork “The Duchess Of Avon”.
I read the press release that you could take off from a stack of papers. Apparently the shape of the statuette was from a 1970s Avon perfume bottle, which ironically contained Sweet Honesty perfume: “Her tribal painted face is a stark contrast to her Eurocentric bridal ensemble. Coloured thread emanates from her bouquet, enfolding her in an almost suffocating embrace. However, her stoic stance is one of pride and reverence.'” stated the press release.
“So… that’s it!”
“Yeeee!” said proudly the guy “This is the gallery!”
Australia. You can have huge streets, kilometers of nothing just outside the city, the broadest spaces ever and at the same time, in a shady lane in Melbourne, the Trink Tank gallery, probably the one of the world’s smallest gallery.
Read MoreApparently there’s nothing new with it.
Apparently it’s something going on since 2003 or something.
Apparently it’s just me, a country-mouse from Italy not informed about the new trends.
All right, I get that, but still it’s difficult to me to be impassible whit this bunch of people stirring awkwardly on the crowded sidewalk for no reason.
If I were back in my Campania countryside, I would mistake the whole thing for a collective exorcism. But of course, the square in front of Flinder Street Station has very little in common with the Campania countryside.
So, these people are dancing with no music but with a lot of concentration in their absurd outfits.
With a more accurate observation I notice that they all wear headphones, so what is happening is that everyone is dancing with their own playlist.
The obvious consequence is that everyone is doing his own moves charmly out of sync.
Within few months I’ve appreciated two artworks that look similar but that are very different in the concept.
The first one is at MACRO Testaccio, Rome, Italy and it’s called Big Bambù, by the American artists Mike e Doug Starn.
The second is site-specific installation covering the pavillion of ART/JOG12, Yogyakarta, Indonesia and it’s by the Indonesian artist Joko Dwi Avianto.
Enjoy the photogallery:
I was ready to go to the beach, but then I came to know about this “South Yarra Opening Day” from the mother of my boyfriend, who invited me to the event on Facebook.
Actually the mother of my boyfriend, at sixty seems to have a life much more cool than me, in my twenties. So, if my boyfriend’s mother suggested me to go to the South Yarra Opening Day, I should go.
I unpacked my beach stuff and I made up my mind for an afternoon of contemporary art.
More pulp than Tarantino, more heavy metal than Judas Priest, more camouflage than a ARH Tiger helicopter. Here you are Punkasila.
I just moved to Melbourne and, of course, before even having a place to call home, I visited the National Gallery of Victoria.
I was particularly keen to see the exhibition “Rally: Contemporary Indonesian Art”, featuring Jompet Kuswidananto and Eko Nugroho.
Actually, the choice of just two artists to represent Indonesian art is interesting.
I’ve found the show very useful for my researches, as the Australian perception of what contemporary art in Indonesia is.
In October I went to Sicily for the first time and I didn’t miss the opportunity to visit the stunning Palermo.
I had two wonderful guides to show me around, Maria Rita Mastropaolo, writer for the web magazine Prisky (link), and Ciro Cangialosi, an incredible comic books artist (link).
We visited Palazzo Riso, an ancient building turned into Contemporary Art Museum, which displayed works by the most important contemporary Sicilian artist, like Carla Accardi, Pietro Consagra, Salvo, Antonio Sanfilippo, Emilio Isgro’ and also younger Sicilian artists such as Croce Taravella, Alessandro Bazan and Laboratorio Saccardi.
There was a Boltanski’s exhibition going on that was quite impressive. It was related to memory and in some way to a profound sensation of human tragedy, like most of his work. The clothes hanging from the wall and surrounded by lights seemed to be presences that were no more into the body, but they were flowing around what was left of the body itself.
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The italian web magazine Artribune just published the interview I had in Berlin with the collector Erika Hoffmann in her home/museum.
Lucas Leo Catalano took some pictures that give you an idea of how it was there. Amazing, in one word. Supercool.
Here you are the link to the interview
Read More
What’s up with your book?
Well, I just overcome the worst step of them all: ranking all the post-its I’ve made.
In the beginning writing all the information about Indonesian contemporary art on the post it notes sounded good.
I was reading essays, catalogues, articles and stuff about the topic and I would be able to write down the information I’ve just learned and all the references directly on the post its.Then I stuck them on the wall and that was that.
Sweet. And practical too.
After a while it became a mess, sort of yellow geographic map on the white sea of my wall. To find a single information was hell.
Yeah, it was the Post-it Pandemonium.
Hot white tea and a slice of cake.
Inspired by this Simonedebeauvoirian-Sartrarian-Camussarian extra
romanticized attitude of writing in the cafes instead of quietly staying
home and working hard, my old fellow Lucas and I started hanging out in the
in the cafes on Via Giulia, Rome every so often.
I was reading a couple of books to widen my perspective on Indonesian
Contemporary Art. For an insight into the East/West dichotomy, the curator of Indonesia’s exhibition at MACRO, Dominique Lora, recommended Flavio Caroli’s “Arte d’Oriente Arte d’Occidente”.
