Gordon Bennett

Notes To Basquiat: Perfect Teeth 2000

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

182.5 x 182.5

The Gordon Bennett show is on in town at Goma, Gallery 3. If you're about have a look its on until 3rd August.

..'the teeth they were all around'

False teeth often have a certain odour

it hangs around unconcerned like a tart in the left/right, or both, nostril/s.

But 'Me' IS off to S.A next week for some clay surface work on Monaros and Comadores ,I'm almost swaying.

Stuff

Its a symposium.

or it could be a drinking party with conversation

i

Its got legs

The fleshy-est port ever to walk earth

holes make the world go round

I've been tagged- see Amandas blogspot for detail-so here are 7 things likely unknown?(about me)
1. Born in Tamworth
2. Brought up in Broken Hill
3. High School in Dubbo
4. Hunter St Art School in Newcastle
5. Uni Degree in Sydney
6. 'A Revolution' (viva) went skiing for 10 years- no room for artwank up on them there mountains, we had skiwank instead-a soothing change
7. Returned to Aus-vegas, studied Ceramics, Southbank Brisbane

Hamada Tells Stories

Above some pics of forms in waiting for a firing in a kiln named Shoji Hamada in Adelaide. Hamadas name is printed in black texta on the front of the door of the kiln.. so ..?..well it could be lucky?. A kind of anointed quirky finger crossing ? Sounds hopeful on my part anyway.

Shoji was a leading potter of Japan in the early to mid 20th C.He founded the Japanese folkcraft movement with a mate/mentor Soetsu Yanagi and another fellow Kawai.

Perhaps Shoji and Soetsu might prefer us to fire in another kiln to their left but as that wasn't an option I've looked out a book on the guys. In a scroll Soetsu presented to the Folkcraft Museum of Tokyo they described the people they would serve tea to and the ones whom they would not-"Yanagi Soetsu, in serving tea from the heart, would serve one cup to an ascetic priest, a pilgrim coming to the temple for meditation, a clear-hearted priest, a Buddhist layman seeking for truth, a destitute fellow traveler, a beautiful woman grown old, a naive youth, a kind-hearted girl, a man who doesn't use flattery, and a frugal man from the country". A romantic and fuzzy sentiment I know. But theres more. "Yanagi would serve no tea to a man proud of his money, a sham master, a pallid tea server, a neophyte at tea who boasts of his skill, a tea ceremony addict, a person crazy about things with no eye for them, a snobbish scholar, an extravagant wife, a greedy merchant, or a flatterer".

Sure this would rule out all my neighbours, plus more.

Still great to have a conviction and all that, gives ideas although maybe to an opposite direction or sentiment completely.

The first picture above is of the Shoji Kiln packed with Fj holdens.

Second pic is of Margaret Dodd in front of Shoji.

Third, fourth and fifth pics are forms of Holdens with scratched, coloured, and painted etc surfaces before bisque.

funk

During the 1960's & 70's the use of clay was becoming separated/split from the philosophical and aesthetic lifestyle of the lechian influence which had dominated western ceramics for 40 years (a biblical climax?). Clay was beginning to be used as a medium for social commentry conveying political, moral and personal issues.
A movement labeled 'Funk Art' emerged from Davis (University of California) in a building called TB-9 :- Temporary building 9, a metal building with insulation sprayed on the inside..sounds characteristically familiar.
Perhaps one of the better known ceramic sculptural artists to become known beyond the art and craft world from this environment is South Australian, Margaret Dodd. During the 1970's & 80's Margaret produced clay sculptures of FJ Holdens as metaphors for Australian identity. The Bridal Holden above is her vision of a virginal innocent bride with rosebuds, veil and satin underpants. 'It is the ultimate absurdity of unity displayed between a masculine Australian icon and feminine spectacle achieved fully in the ritual of marriage'.
Margaret is working towards a show at the Jam Factory in July titled 'Chosen Vessel -Australias own car' and as part of a collaboration team , the other two artists being Alison Arnold and Ian Mowbray, I'll be winging off to Adelaide for a bit of clay play. What a buzz.

toot

meanwhile..as thomas goes around and around, the kilns fire on and on

Hoy

A local collective of elderly people gather to play Hoy ( like Bingo but 'HOY' ). Here, you are where you sit, "power seating". A strategically placed table indicates to the community your prominent and important position. It's so important that major players assign a PR type nazi to make sure their seat is bagged ages before the game so as not to play second fiddle to anyone. Wrongly placed seating can ruin images. Etiquette lives on and on

hang baby then weep

Found this rant-ly titled work tucked away in the back of a doc file stacked full of nasty obscene works with dramatic dialogues of perpetual melodrama, this ones artsy safe. ( I think).

Looking at some of it has been like visiting the reverse of a gallery full of white canvases titled untitled.

A garbage dump.

Also a scanned letter , "I wont be at your show because your 'art' baffles and leaves me queasy"etc. A year 5 art show (11yrs old) and I had accused her brother of sniffing carpet glue, so there you go.

The above piece was looking at kids of families being held in Baxter detention centre for up to 5 years while their refugee status was looked into by the Federal Government of the time.

They were imprisoned behind two tall electric barbed fences 10 kilometres out of Port Augusta in South Australia which was built at a cost of 44 million dollars, but hey the sunsets were beautiful..according to the then immigration minister Kevin (fukwit) Andrews. It was closed down in August 2007 and the remaining refugees were farmed out to other centres.

A Postage stamp

Isn't she a beaut. Dressed to advantage in their best bib and tucker.

Renal Man

Reincarnation or time travel could it be possible?., ? . I met a man today in a Dr 's surgery, thought I'd seen him in a publication or newspaper , or something . I've just found him in the Thames and Hudsons 'A History Of Art'. Weird he's an Alaskan war helmet from the 1800's. Oddly contemporary, but reeal inspiring.

Style

Is your hair style like your art style?
Have a look in the mirror, it's a thought.
Think modern ironed semi bob, perm (natural counts), stump fringe, dark roots ,blond flick, pony tail, shaved, wind blown , untouched, cricketers flick ,tight wrap, long urban fringe etc.etc. Or is your art reflecting your other ( prefered ) hair style?
Or is the hair style reflecting you and therefore it all adds up to your style.
Or am I thinking more about arts workers here?
Everything overlaps.
Personally I dont think my hair says anything about my art.
I've been to Andy Warhol 3 times and a lot of his art seems visible in his hair and subsequent wig work. Its a hindsight thought which is likely irrelavant, and biased by knowledge,without
any kind of science. Still it's something to look out for.

The xmas wheel mould

Where there's a wheel there's a way. Happy holidays.

Dead pigs have no friends,

this was originally an early French saying , recorded by pom english in the mid 19th century. The context was often of political and revolutionary violence.

I thought about this today standing in woolies for the big Leg 'o ' Ham chrissy special .

I felt an urge to start an overthhrow of the capitalist consumer and cram all the pink air wrapped porkers in my trolly and make a roll for the exit, past the 8 items or less checkout la la 'lady' in a revolutionary gesture to all piggies. Possibly the violence could be in the car park with the security gentleman, ( dreaming )

The "mindful moral" here: Send a fool to the market and a fool she will return.. we have lamb

This is saying something

about...reverse osmosis technology? not sure but its unwell, if it was breathing i might give it a hug but i could also push it out of the way on a bad day if I was rushing, home or something.

pig city,

a Queensland paranoid masterpiece written by Tony Kneipp, performed by the parameters( first).
Do you reakon they'll fit in the kiln mel, thats my toe on the left

Breugs ( pronounced broygs)

I've just perved on Gerry Wedds weddwould posts of work fresh out . The cups and saucers are like scenes from a Bruegal flemish, especially the 2nd illustrating a peasant type character rowing a boat with his house on board in an act that looks like a humble folk custom. The form and image holds together with a strange kind of gravity.
In the work underneath there's a sculptural bloke cornered by wolves, but I suppose they could just be dogs, excited dogs, pets even...but say they're wolves..then this too is like a Bruegal who illustrated proverbs like 'The blind leading the blind' .
Suppose these wolves circling were a demonstration of a few proverbs ..
' The wolf may lose his teeth but never his nature ' or
' The wolf knows what the ill beast thinks'..
even ' Who keeps company with the wolf , will learn to howl' etc .

But all this is what I read which makes the work enjoyable for me viewer. I like it/them very much

Striving

Okay, so I've now come to a little ( possibly significant?) realisation.
It's important to strive for failure. By aiming so damn high so as to fail, something finally squeezes out sideways. Sounds like hurtful constipation but thousands of artists have likely been here and done that. Which only makes me a delayed developer I suppose..or maybe kind of predictable at least.
It's like being on a diving board in mid air after the second bounce ready to cut cleanly through the water ( in an effortless
manner, hmm) head first ...that or a big f-cking belly flop. Either way ..? there's movement.
I.E, take a laxative (symbolic), say no to control ..let it flow , embrace all bad smells and flatulance, it could be satisfying

scooter..

..a clay town bike

Ma and Da

This is the second post card I've received featuring john and janette.Why?
Anyway I hate it. Everything is in focus , there is no depth
in any detail and it's all surface..a bit like the subject matter I suppose. Has the painter done this on purpose with the intent of an astute phsyco-anal observation-ist?, or..voyeur.., perv?
I'm not sure but it's disturbing ..(not in an exciting way either).
It was commissioned with funds provided by L Gordon Darling AC AMC. Painted in 2000 by Josonia Palaitis and hangs in the National Portrait Gallery Canberra... how sad.

Devils on Horseback

Do you ever have indulgent moments when you think "what the hell am I doing", I do and this months diversion as a defence to this pampering thought has been to redirected the spotlight to favourite foods...vooooodoo..., anyway I've been thinking fondly about devils on horseback, which is a prune wrapped in a delicate piece of bacon and cooked in the oven. My mouth is watering even as I type this. From this point details have unfolded ...my first taste of , what was I thinking , what was I saying , how did it end or begin etc . Somehow the outcome of this flight into Hughie-world has resulted in these peep show semi functional hoof rests. They're tasters like the devil prunes...If I could work some glaze technology brilliance to make a recipe for fired clay to waft out a smell then they could pass as genteel ladylikes breaking wind.

The naked kneader

This could read Clay Kneading by foot in the Nude...A Study of Form in Semi Motion, Half man Half Lady , Tucked.
See Page 48 CH3 of a potters book, to fully soak over it.. (potters porn).

This painting

Some things about this painting :
-flat forms almost non european , could be a Japanese woodblock influence
-strongly suggestive expressive colouring
-figure treated in an economic manner
-orange monkey defined by near geometric contours and large pools of yellow and blu
-the smooth line of the chair frames a dramatic tension , could be a Delacroix influence
Etc etc
It is titled Annah The Javanese and was painted in 1894 by Paul Gauguin. He also experimented with shape and colour using clay as medium, exhibiting these pieces with his paintings.
I dont like this painting .... but I enjoy it.

Two jugs breech delivery

For a while I've been trying for a shift in the depth and layering of colour, a transmutation. Progress is slowly breaking through in a direction that has a feel to it.The orange cup above centre has orange as a base colour which was covered in black and scratched at. The square J in the top right corner started with an orange base then black and finally blue. It doesn't show up too well in this photo but it has a rough sketchy look with all three colours making a show. Anyway there's some kind of movement happening here (contractions?) now I"ll need push it out..feet first..then ouch..tears.. celebrations.

A very Comely Cup

This cup caught my eye when I was a student. To purchase it a % of $ to the communal food bill was sacrificed.
But I liked it immediately and still do.
It has a naked unadorned familiarity.
Its orange innards, misshapen yet strict lips and staunch symmetry of unbalanced dimensions all seem to relay an intimate awareness of a kind of firm beauty.
Now heres the trick.. do you recognise whose work it is?...
.. it's Mel Robsons feffakookan.
There's an article by Susan Ostling in Ceramics Art and Perception called Inspiration of The Archive ..take a look, this little cup is just a whiff on a trajectory path but still it smells good.

Portrait of a male potter

This is a crop of a jug which is part of a series of 31.

It's unfired ,think it needs a bit of turq blu in the office area to silouette the mister on computer.

The blu can layer on top of the brown terasig and then lightly chipped with a blunt hobby knife to create texture without pushing through to the white porcelain body.Could look okay eventually.

Up your bum no babies

What a luxury making art/craft, design, function/sculpture, performance,etc etc.. however you choose to label it ..it's such a bugger of fun that exploding pots, warped lips, fast firings and nurturing kilns are all part of the scafolding behind a curtain of inner workings . Have a go (mug)

I've had a thought

Sometimes it seems the work I make manages to travel to all the parties in the best places while I stay at home and do the housework barefoot with a slight headache. If I could work out some way to stow away inside the forms, like jeanie in 'her' bottle and get all of the studio gear/crap in there too so the product kept flowing, then I could do it all.. hang out on a plynth smiling and waving at people , duck inside my pot for a toasted cheese sandwich, make a bit of work, come out for opening night drinks, check out all the other work in the gallery, see the countryside..it could be great,..might try for a grant.

One hand one brain

This book was on a shelf at the back of the Lifeline shop.It was sitting next to The Day of The Triffids, so twice lucky.

The Bernard Leach tradition was often touched on in different tutorials over the years, I'd usually have a little doze around then. It was the underexposed images of brown pots and slide jams that did it (sounds like a valid excuse anyway).

However perhaps if I had found and read this book then

Benards practice and philosophy within the context of the time and environment he worked may have left more of a significant impression..but it's all about the timing..or to quote Bernard, "Cuves for Beauty, angles for Strength"...and "Overstatement is worse than understatement"...or "Let us not be hypocritical about fortuitous blemishes"....there's lots more.

My personal favourite.., "..the individual potter, together with other artist craftsmen, is bound to remain outside the normal flow of a healthy national life." , he could be on to something there.

Pin the tail on the Donkey

Meanwhile...

...back on planet

Shut Yer

Cake-hole..

Donkey John plays

blind-mans-bluff as

Wingnut Pete croons

'I aint bothered' and

Kev and Mick

go wee wee wee all the way home.

Check out Vanda's Photo Gallery Archive, it's top-drawer.

Stations

These pieces were made a while ago, there's seven more of them wandering around in someone elses life.

I think they were based on supernatural visitings and the stations of the cross..and the street outside the studio door in Fortitude Valley where I was working at the time.

They're a bit like time machines , throw backs to a space with lots of room and windows and daylight and the hoi polloi-ing mob outside on the street.

They were made with slab rolled paper clay and stoneware slip cast.

Nice Jugs

It's that time of year again...The three month Jug Spewing Season.

As 'man' hours increase the jug making habitat begins to flourish while a development program encourages the conservation of the humble jug within the outer metropolitan area.

The hunter (me) will be allowed to bag up to five jugs each day of any species not banned due to unrestrained follys of chosen ignorance in the field game of function V's form x content =$ , minus ( - ) % .

....so anyway, as this persona of a symposium for the 'jug' begins to spin spastically around and around (and the black crows fly overhead, truly they do- it's QUEENSland) the jug programme cranks into gear.

My Friends all drive Porches I must make Amends

"Oh Lord wont you buy me a Mercedes Benz", for some reason whenever we drink lager and eat fish and chips I always end up singing this Janice Joplin song.I know all the words.

At the time that seems really important.

But sometimes when I think back the next morning I truly wonder what had happened, and if I had really enjoyed it that much, and yet I had LOVED it.?

Yeh-Shen and the Travelling Showman

Yeh-Shen was the Cinderella in a 9th century AD Chinese version of the classic story. Apparently there are about 300 different versions of the Cinderella story, now I'm adding another to the list...Yeh-Shen and the Travelling Showman.

Instead of a fairy godmother Yeh-Shen has a secret friend in the Travelling Showman and instead of being brought up by her stepmother she is brought up by Cyclops who already has a lipless son named cock-horse. I wont bore you with every detail..in brief there's a spring festival ball, wishes granted, a gown of peacock feathers, a cock-horse set to marry the prince, and of course golden slippers minus one.

But a twist develops.

The Travelling Showman was a trickster by character. Tricksters are often heroes, usually smart, are sometimes magical, and often get tripped up by their own egos. He thought he could be a better prince to Yeh-Shen, and so after the ball the 'prince' announced he would marry the woman whose foot fit the slipper. Many tried including cock-horse but no ones foot fit, until of course Yeh-Shen. The slipper fit perfectly. The marriage was celebrated and as Yeh-Shen was getting ready for bed that night she heard the prince singing the tunes of Oklahoma, Carousel, and a Gilbert & Sullivan production she couldn't quite place.

Odd she thought, but proceeded to drape herself across the marital bed.

The prince danced into the room and seeing his beautiful wife began to blush furiously as emotions started to burn a chink in his magical disguise of collagen implants. Suddenly standing before Yeh-Shen was her old friend the Travelling Showman.

There was so much confusion.

Not knowing what to do the Travelling Showman began to entertain, putting on a show.

Act after Act.

Afterwards Yeh-Shen said ,

" That was great, I had no idea . You are one badass, kickass motherlover and you rock my world"...

and they lived happily ever after.

Squeel

I've been firing, Oink

Jack Sprat

Looking out the window a couple of mornings ago I saw an elderly gentleman swaying and singing by the bus stop in his undies. I was thinking of joining him ( but with a singlet on for contrast) when the caretakers from the oldies village three doors up covered him in a gown and trotted him back home while he was singing something about a fruit of the labia/al/ios tree? couldn't quite catch it all . He looked like a singing emperor seasoned by age ...well, maybe a fermented fleshpot- tree may be a more accurate discription . A real beauty though.

AEC

I've been filling out the Electoral Enrolment form and have found the need to prove my identity. Amongst the list of authorised people to vouch for me are, dentists, real estate agents, liquor licence holder (bottle-o), and a master of a merchant vessel, guess that means a sailor?

It's all too exciting for words really.

Beware geeks bearing gifts

More than 300 years ago the Greeks and the Trojans fought a long drawn out war. For about ten years the Greek army camped outside the strong wall surrounding the city of Troy.

The Greek soldiers tried to knock down the wall. They couldn't. They tried to climb over it, but the Trojans always pushed them away. Then the Greeks thought of a trick. A big hollow wooden horse.

Watching the Greeks building the horse the Trojans were puzzled. They were even more puzzled one morning when they saw the Greek army had gone leaving the strange wooden horse standing outside their gate.

The Trojans liked the beautiful wooden horse and pulled it inside the walls. They put away their spears and swords and sang and danced around the horse.

That night when the Trojans went to sleep the Greeks climbed out of the hollow wooden horse and opened the gates of Troy to the other Greek soldiers.

This is kind of like the disguised trickery used by the 'Big Fella' banks, polititians , trojan supermarket chains , bla bla bla...etc etc. They lift their skirts to reveal dirty big gold blubbering soldiers of fortune secretly whispering 'Beware the Geeks ( aka: Greeks) bearing gifts'..oink, snort., squeel...

The clay trojan horse/pig above has been worked on with terrasigilatta and scrafito-ed with a blade. It is yet to be fired.

She is not amused

ER , Elizabeth Regina (rhymes with vag-ina), this one is for the girl in Nundah with Queen Queen Queen stencilled over her Brisbane City Council garbage bin...yes you know who you are, Sante~Victorious, Happy and Glorious la la la la laa laa laa la la gawd save the Queeen.