My interview with Melbourne-based Kiwi painter Jake Walker has just been published on Trouble Magazine. The interview is part of my reportage about artists in Melbourne.
Here the link to the interview
Here the link to the online version of the magazine
Productivity and Bohemia are concepts which are seldom associated.
You have to admit though that having grown up reading Sartre and Simone the Beauvoir – or at least having seen the pictures – you are not immune to the charms of café.
Every city has is own aesthetic when comes to cafés.
Not everyone is snob enough to live in Paris and go to the Café De Flore – whom has turned into an established place for loaded folks anyways.
What it is left to us is send to hell the Café De Flore, and create our own, well… café mythology.
If you live in Rome you certainly know the cafés Canova and Rosati in Piazza del Popolo.
During the sixties these two cafés gathered the so called “artists from Piazza del Popolo”, but now Canova and Rosati are the equivalent of the ultrachic cafés in Saint Germain, Paris.
Sure, it is always cool to pass by Piazza del Popolo and say hi to the Italian dandy artist Ontani– last time I checked he had a permanent permit to be parked at Canova – yet these cafés are too posh for us.
Same things with the cafés in Via Veneto, once Antonioni, Mastroianni and Fellini’s reign.
You have to consider as well that in Italy there is this tradition of kicking you out if you take too long to sip your coffee.
If you are in Rome and you are a writer looking for a place to read and write quietly, you will be likely accepted in some cosy and shabby-chic looking cafés in Via Giulia, Pigneto or San Lorenzo.
You can start to create your own café mythology from there.
During my researche on the contemporary art scene in Melbourne, I had the chance to visit the studio of the artist Alasdair McLuckie at Gertrude Contemporary, in Fitzroy.
The artist moved in recently, in January, and he is very happy to have plenty of space to work.
Alasdair’s first inspiration is primitive art and cultures, an interest that he had inherited from his father. Recently he has re-discovered modernism, that had itself a very close relation with tribal art.
Looking Alasdair’s beads works, you can tell that he is very concerned with the formal aspect of art, and his artworks are accurates in every detail.
There is also storyteller aspect in his work. Some of his collages, prints and drawings are infact collected in notebooks made to be browsed.
Coming into the studio, you can see the artist’s favourite palette everywhere: deep blue, orange, saffron yellow, pink, pale violet, grey, black and mustard green.
The interview is coming soon, in the meantime here you are some pictures from my studio visit.
Melbourne. I consider the afternoons devoted to see art exhibitions like a sort of cultural safari.
You need a friend to enjoy it and a location where it is likely to meet dangerous, exotic or fascinating artworks.
In Melbourne some good locations for exhibition safaris are Fitzroy, the CBD and South Yarra.
So a couple of days ago I was in South Yarra with a friend and we had the chance to see the wonderful exhibition of Louise Saxton called “Sanctuary too” at Gould galleries.
No other show could be more suitable for an art safari: the subjects were in fact animals, insects and birds after vintage illustrations from natural history books and colonial painters.
The particularity was that all these artworks were realized in needlework, which means lace and nylon tulle arranged to form the images of animals.
All the pieces of this sort of collage were ties together by needles. Only coming closer to the artworks you can notice the needles, as well as the real nature of the different tulle.
That way the animals look stabbed, and at the same time the illusion of shape formed by the colourful patches is revealed.
My friend was fascinated by this coexistence of beauty and cruelness as well.
The Italian magazine Artribune just published the interview I had in Melbourne with the artist Mark Hilton. The interview is part of my reportage about the Melbournian Art Scene.
Here you are the link to the interview
Here you are the pictures from my visit to the artist’s studio
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I recently visited the studio of the Australian artist Mark Hilton in Melbourne.
He just moved from his old studio in Fitzroy to a new one in Abbotsford, so unfortunately he did’t have many past works to show me.
Anyways the one he was currently working on was complex enough to monopolize my attention.
The project is a continuation of “Hunting Where The Ducks Are”, a series of high reliefs depicting the darkest issues of contemporary society.
Every piece was shaped like a letter. In the end they will form the sentence:”Don’t Worry”.
In this work there is a striking contrast between appearance and truth, something in which Mark has always been interested.
Some of the scenes represented on the high reliefs are inspired to current affairs, like often happen in the previous production of the artist, other ones are drawn from the artist’s personal memories. There is no narrative connection between the pieces, although we can find a train as recurrent element.
The aesthetic look of the artwork is inspired by the decoration of the doors of the Duomo in Milan, where the artists had a residency in 2007.
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Naima Morelli is an arts writer and journalist specialized in contemporary art from Asia-Pacific and the MENA region.
She has written for the Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, Internazionale and Il Manifesto, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Plural Art Mag, Middle East Monitor and Middle East Eye as well as writing curatorial texts for galleries.
She is the author of three books on Southeast Asian contemporary art.
Reach out: contact [at] naimamorelli.com
