Kick Gallery: CRAIG MACDONALD

Award winning sculptor Craig MacDonald has a show running at Kick Gallery ‘Memento‘ This latest show follows on from his 2010 exhibition ‘Rocket Science‘. Mr MacDonald works are standout, his works live so well in three dimensions it’s hard to flatten the descriptives to words, except perhaps to say wow, they are seriously inspired. His use of bronze is cleverly hidden by an overlay of pure originality. Each piece in this show is so filled with imagination and exquisite craft that one finds several views are still not adequate. MacDonalds’ show runs until December 10.

In February this year, MacDonald was awarded the Montalto Sculpture Prize. MacDonald received the $20,000 award ahead of a strong field of other significant recognised Australian sculptors. The winning work ‘Witness’ was described by Montalto as “‘Hovering just above the surface of the ground, Witness appears as if from another time – aged and totem like, its presence and movement is a reminder that time is not static and what has been seen before can be witnessed again” Witness is on display at the ‘Memento‘ exhibition. Read the full article »»»»

Artist David Boyd Dies Aged 87

Australian artist David Boyd has died at the age of 87 after a short illness. Boyd, a celebrated painted and ceramicist, died earlier today in Sydney. One of the elder statesmen of the Australian art world, he was a member of the famously artistic Boyd family which also included his brother Arthur. David Boyd’s works, which span six decades, are held in collections around the world.

Boyd was also known for creating works as early as the 1950s which concerned the mistreatment of Aboriginal people.

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Favorite New Thought: Juxtapoz Magazine

We’ve been following Juxtapoz since their inception in 1994, we’ve watched with much glee as they’ve grown to the awesome online presence they currently publish. Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine was created by a group of artists and collectors including Robert Williams, Fausto Vitello, C.R. Stecyk III (aka: Craig Stecyk), Greg Escalante, and Eric Swenson to both help define and celebrate urban alternative and underground contemporary art. It was edited from 1996 to 2006 by Jamie O’Shea. Juxtapoz is published by High Speed Productions, the same company that publishes Thrasher Skateboard magazine in San Francisco, California. Juxtapoz launched with the mission of connecting modern genres like psychedelic and hot rod art, graffiti, street art, and illustration, to the context of broader more historically recognized genres of art like Pop, assemblage, old master painting, and conceptual art. Although based in San Francisco, Juxtapoz was founded upon the belief in the virtues of Southern California Pop Culture and the freedom from the conventions of the “established” New York art world. Ferus Gallery, run by Walter Hopps and Irving Blum in the 1950s and 1960s was the ultimate cultural touchstone for the magazine.  Juxtapoz expanded its range in the early 2000s to cover other nascent styles and sub-genres of underground art. Young artists who have received coverage in Juxtapoz include KAWS, Mark Ryden, Barry McGee, Todd Schorr, Camille Rose Garcia, Tim Biskup, and Tom Sachs. Since 2009, Juxtapoz has had the largest circulation of any art magazine in the United States – more than established counterparts like Art News, Art in America, and ArtForum. In addition to printed subscriptions which offer alternative cover images to the newsstand version, Juxtapoz is also available as an on-line digital subscription. As a window into art and culture, Juxtapoz has stood firmly relevant for almost 20 years.  Check Juxtapoz at: http://www.juxtapoz.com/

Film Review: Anonymous

In his 1998 survey - Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human - Harold Bloom provides an analysis of each of Shakespeare’s 38 plays, “twenty-four of which are masterpieces.” Written as a companion to the general reader and theatergoer. Bloom declares that bardolatry ought to be even more  of a secular religion than it already is. Bloom contends in this work that Shakespeare Invented Humanity, in that he prescribed the now common practice of Overhearing Ourselves, which he says drives our changes. I’m not suggesting that Roland Emmerich’s latest film – Anonymous – in which the filmmakers introduce an alternative history of the Bard, then promptly sets about dismantling all we think we know, and all we’ve learnt about Shakespeare, is in anyway based on any form of fact, it’s a little more ambiguous in it’s take on possibilities. If shakespeare had written a 39th play though, Anonymous could very well have been his plot. Critics have been short on praise for Emmerich – the director of Independence Day, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow – most squarking that taking on a British period drama was a huge misdemeanor for one of Hollywood’s blockbuster kings.

The far to clever Luke Buckmaster of crikey.com wrote: “Much of the running time consists of well coiffed regal authorities conversing in dark hallways. Ignore the interesting ideas the script’s premise implies: Anonymous is not about how streaks of greatness can come from unexpected places or about how geniuses can be shunned from the history books, at least not in any meaningful ways. The acting is soporific, the writing dull and Emmerich’s fish-out-of-water direction is surprisingly consistent — he provides the film a steady ebb and flow — but lacklustre. Full disclosure: despite feeling well rested and wide awake when I entered the cinema, I slept through around 20 minutes of the second act”

When more time on a page is spent espousing the wonders of the reviewer, you have to wonder what it is they were reviewing, I get the feeling only terribly clever people are capable of such inbound criticism, crikey, it’s film?

I thoroughly enjoyed Anonymous, and had no problem keeping my eyes wide open, it was a sumptuously shot, a beautifully realized piece of cinema, not at all hard to get lost in, most importantly – it was thoroughly entertaining. Shakespeare’s influence has been vast, novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens. The American novelist Herman Melville’s soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare’s works. These include two operas byGiuseppe Verdi, Otello and Falstaff, whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays. Emmerich’s latest work comfortably joins this queue of  influenced works. Read the full article »»»»