One of the reasons I decided to become a journalist – or whatever you want to call me, art critic/curator, writer, whatever – is because of my unconditional love for magazines. Although art magazines are usually those which I write for, I’m a self-confessed reader of Marie Claire, Elle and the Italian weekly magazines Io Donna, D and Il Venerdì di Repubblica.
I love the first ones because of their carefree attitude. The way they create beauty with couple of pictures of Erin Wasson and a caption reading “I’m a female Johnny Cash! To hell with the it girls!” Fashion magazines create dreams and aesthetics. One can criticize them for a whole bunch of reasons – from the fact that they usually push the starving-model look to the fact that half of these mags is usually composed by advertising. That can true sometimes, but on the contrary what these magazines elicit in me is a sense of empowerment. Those worlds that Elle is creating may be fake, biased, too far away from reality. But still, just by browsing through a good editorial or reading a feature on Colette, I can’t shake off that feeling that I’m part of the beauty of the world. That through my writing, drawing, playing, photographing, I’m creating an personal aesthetic – in my own terms.
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.
