1/4 Inch = whole lot of fun + other fun stuff that's been happening and will happen.

Ambient soundscapey music stirs in me a two-fold effect. The first is of being in a movie - my surrounds depicted somewhere in a long-shot scenery montage like that part in Friday Night Lights where sparse Texan landscapes replete with monumental oil drills unfold to Explosions in the Sky. If not a montage, then the camera moving slowly down my cherry blossom-lined street (Canvendish, Enmore) like I'm on a pushbike and the camera is my eyes. Number two is aching nostalgia, not so different because the past is now a movie and only the best bits made the final cut. Or, pains are now impassioned episodes in a grande narrative and everything was as it was supposed to be. At least I cared about things back then and loved. Oh how I loved and cared. Well, these were the sorts of things happening to me when listening to Rafael Anton Irisarri (USA) play at 1/4 Inch last week. ('1/4 Inch' are performance events of sound and moving image curated by Aaron Hull for some years now). Irisarri was a kind of one-man Explosions in the Sky, building intricate and epic walls of sound with electric guitar and laptop. I have previously wondered if sound-art is experienced best by its aficionados who can deconstruct exactly how it is created, but this time wasn’t too concerned. I was happy meditating over Irisarri’s repetitions and listening out for the next inevitable and exciting progression

The diversity between the three acts at 1/4 Inch made the night all-the-more successful. Anna Chase's set was much more song orientated, layering simple melodies with a loop pedal and multitude of instruments, and pushing the notion of the voice as an instrument. Alex White worked with generative feedback. The result was a visceral and abrasive barrage of electronic noise. I kept thinking about robots fighting each other. At one point I had a fleeting glimpse that it might be about some higher human/ philosophical concept but then the robots came back. This 1/4 Inch was held at the Headland Hotel in Coledale (pretty close to my home town Thirroul and maybe something to do with my nostalgia) and it was great to see international and Sydney-based (Chase and White) sound artists down south, nevermind that the Headies bartender told a friend of mine that he'd rather listen to the dishwasher.. Great idea dude. Mic it.

Untitled (Kate - Rubber Band Protrait) Dara Gill

Dara Gill's first ever solo exhibition 'Unwish' opened at firstdraft last Wednesday. The title of the show is a reference to an Ernest Bloch text that describes anxiety as belonging to a ‘future temporality’ along with hope, desire and fear, according to the catalogue. In exploring the abstract and irrational temporality of ‘not-yet’, Dara’s focus is on anxiety. His theme is best depicted in a series of Rubber Band Portraits in which conventional portraiture is disrupted by, the audience assumes, the threat of a rubber band to the face. The subjects are captured as the image of their anticipatory response. In the catalogue essay Georgie Meagher (as in Bake Sale Georgie) refers to the Portraits and another work, ‘Blinding Light Box’, as a “Theatre of Situations” (Sartre). Indeed the Blinding Light Box is an experiential situation – you open a cupboard, a blinding light shines in your eyes – but the link to the projected discomfort of anxiety is a bit unclear as the work is characterised by the immediacy of your discomfort. ‘Self-Help Pulping’ is a sardonic swipe at the self-help phenomenon. The covers of self-help books are displayed alongside their pulped and cubed interiors. It kind of reminded me of a work Dara had in our Monthly Friend ‘Dead or alive’, To Roll – both focusing on the process of changing an object. In Self-Help Pulping, the process of reshaping an object becomes a deferral, an act that addresses the artist’s purported anxiety, ironically allowing the books to achieve their original intention. They also look really cool. I wish I could do this to the self-help books that have packed, nay infected - like a mysterious illness, a bookcase I left at my Mum’s house a while
ago...

Untitled (Self-Help Pulping) Dara Gill.

Stuff launching! The Paper Mill, a new artist run space in Town Hall opened it's doors to punters for the first time last week with another first, the launch of Das 500 - the online sibling to everyone's favourite street press art mag Das Superpaper. Also the Next Wave text camp reader has gone live, with a couple of pieces by yours truely. I'm not so happy with the Bromance one - should have paid more attention to that editing thing. Lastly, everyone should go to Locksmith tomorrow at 6ish for the opening of 'Wigwam for a Goose's Bridle' - an evolving installation by Alex Kiers and Vincent O'Connor investigating handmade shelter and organic architecture. Woot.