Bake Sale For Art

Bye bye blogspot

2011-06-22T00:11:00.002+10:00

Bake Sale have moved. Go here instead

Remember the Beep Test?

2010-11-29T11:12:00.001+11:00

Head over to Catmeat + Candy for some updates from the Beep Test! Oh it's been a while, but isn't it time to relive some memories?

So. What are you doing next Wednesday?

2010-11-18T23:29:00.003+11:00

On an early (cheaper) flight from Brisbane, as I munched a weird lemon butter biscuit and surfed the in-flight radio, I hoped I could muster some energy for the last Liveworks show - Nightime: Spotlight; ladies and gentleman we are floating in space, not just to oblige Sarah Rodigari who had asked me to submit a response to the Live Art List Australia blog. Check it

What are you doing next Wednesday? Coming to see the Martyrdom of Emily Wilding Davison at the Red Rattler, 8pm. Event. Sweet poster Mitzi.

Bad blogger

2010-11-07T23:41:00.018+11:00

(Not sure if it was blogspot or my internet, but this was meant to go up last week..)

Thankyou Georgie for some nice tidbits on interesting ARIs in Bristol. I'd love to see some pics or something on how Kansas turned out. I was thinking about going to the UK to do some study, maybe Roehampton or Aberystwyth, but I'm alarmed at the (alleged?) 80% cut to arts funding. Will these courses even still exist!?

Wasteland, photo; Lucy Parakhina

I can blame being a bad blogger of late on making a show for the 2High emerging art festival in Brisbane which is this weekend. It's called 'The 'Martyrdom of Emily Wilding Davison' made in collaboration with Rishin Singh, Sam Pettigrew and Finn Ryan. We'll also do it in Sydney alongside Mere Women, at the Red Rattler on the 24th Nov (a Wednesday), so come. The above photo is of Hoof and Antler's Wasteland which I had meant to write about, and Lucy kindly sent me some pictures, thus I am a 'bad blogger'.

In addition to the show, and working 5 days a week in a gelato shop, I thought I had time to volunteer for the current Performance Space season, something I'm glad of because I had the chance to be involved in David Cross's Hold. It is probably the most fun artwork ever. And an audience member left the installation crying because is was so beautiful. But I'm not supposed to talk about it! It's on till Saturday at Carriageworks.

I'm pretty sure I have some lycra to sew now, over and out.

Two Bristol ARI's that I think are interesting.

2010-10-11T22:20:00.007+11:00

I have arrived back in Sydney, back to work, back to life, but before I lose the notebook all of this is written in and/or lose the inclination to make sense of it in an online forum, here I go, giving a brief outline of two artist run initiatives I came across in Bristol (there seems to be a whole lot to say about a place I was in for a grand total of 3 days).

You and Your Work

I might start with a blurb that I have taken from the YaYW website which will no doubt be able to articulate what the whole thing is about better than I can;

You and Your Work (YaYW) is a Bristol-based not-for-profit arts organisation, founded in 2008. We seek to facilitate artistic and social exchange between artists, community groups and other creative community based organisations, as well as new and existing audiences. YaYW aims to provide support and development opportunities for promising emerging performance artists, whilst striving to involve audiences from diverse backgrounds.

Since 2007 we have showcased a regular, themed performance platform event, presenting a range of contemporary performance, Live Art, interventions, site-specific work, dance, games and media-installation. Originally based at the Cube Microplex (a community cinema and venue), YaYW has since been held at Easton Community Centre and now for YaYW8, at the Arnolfini (art gallery). By continually re-locating itself, You and Your Work is able to open up new and exciting avenues for artistic production and social encounter, as well as reach new audiences beyond the central Bristol arts scene.
From http://youandyourwork.blogspot.com/

Everyone* talks about "community engagement" - so much so it has almost become synonymous with audience development. Although there are links between the two ideas, and engaging diverse communities can, of course, be part of developing audiences, the core agenda of these two concepts is fairly divergent. Taking work out of an art space, into a community centre, could easily be construed (and practised) as a kind of culturally imperial act - bringing in young hot things of the art community to the masses of the uninitiated. This, to me, is the opposite of what YaYW is about. Carefully curated as delivering accessible, high quality works that are not necessarily interactive but acutely aware of (and sometimes co-created by) their audiences.

*I use the term "Everyone" loosely.

Residence

I will follow suit and again, rip from their website, a lovely little blurb about Residence

Residence is a community of theatre makers who share space, resources, knowledge and opportunities in an old record shop in Bristol.
By moving our work out of bedrooms and placing artists together under one roof, facilitating social space, and running regular events, we have developed a mutually supportive environment. Such an environment allows us to make work independently from institutions, with courage and flexibility. We can take risks more readily and our work is nurtured with a constant source of support, criticism, encouragement, and advice. Residence promotes a spirit of generosity amongst its members with shared resources, opportunities and knowledge. In the 3 and a half years since its inception the artists involved have changed from a disparate group of marginalised artists to a strong, cohesive, powerful group showing theatre work regularly in Bristol, the UK, Europe and beyond.
From http://www.residence.org.uk/

This is one answer to the problem of (lack of) space, that is undeniably a recurring one. It has taken a committed group of artists (and a large one at that) to get this project together, however, the lovely thing that keeps popping up on their website, and through talking to Jo, James, Gemma and Sylvia is the idea of dialogue, feedback and support that comes from being part of this collective. It's not about whinging about not having any space (although that may have been where the idea came from) - it's about wanting to connect with other artists to make better work. To me, this seems like a much more interesting and convincing argument for a council to give a bunch of artists highly subsidised space, rather than hearing complaints about illegal venues being shut down (if we're going to play the game, which of course we may choose not to do).

That's Bristol. I think.

Some endnotes:
There is a lovely video on the Residence website if you're interested in finding out more.
I saw "A Western" by Action Hero (members of Residence) and it was really good. Here is their website.
Sylvia Rimat is a member of Residence, co-founder and producer of YaYW. She is also lovely and very generous - here is some more about her.

Analog-blog no more! Part one: Bristol

2010-09-26T06:43:00.005+10:00

Georgie here, writing from my travels, a research trip investigating Artist-Run-Initiatives in the UK (and other places) before heading over to ANTI Festival in Kuopio, Finland, to present a performance and mapping project, Kansas that I made with Malcolm Whittaker. More about Mal here, and ANTI, here.

Thus far, my grand plans of being a super-blogger abroad have been thwarted by activity and inconsistent internet access. I have however been thinking about blogging and writing in a notebook (not really the idea is it?). So, I am now catching up, starting from the beginning, trying to find sense and significance in my scrawlings to share with the big interwebbed world. I'll try and break things up with titles so you can skip to the bits you might be interested in.

BRISTOL.

Malcolm and I travelled to Bristol the day I arrived in the UK and were met by Sylvia Rimat - who we have been corresponding with about Malcolm's a lover's discourse project, which began as part of the ClubHouse program at Performance Space and will culminate in a live exchange with artists in Bristol, at Arnolfini, as part of You and Your Work 8, which Sylvia founded and co-curates (more on that later, but there is a link to some information if you just can't wait), and LiveWorks, at Performance Space in Sydney. Sylvia welcomed us on our first evening, and over a couple of glasses of wine our conversation traversed a broad range of topics which may or may not be relevant or interesting to you, readers, but, probably for the best, for all of us, my notes are not so comprehensive as to be able to even begin to transcribe much of it. What stuck with me about these first conversations, with Sylvia and subsequently a number of other visual and performance artists in Bristol and across the UK, is a sense of impending doom in relation to projected government arts funding cuts. Ignorant as I may be, in Australia I felt fairly unaffected by the Global Financial Crisis - for such hype, media attention and the household use of "GFC" as a term, honestly, my life did not feel that different. It seems that the reach of the GFC however, is broadening far beyond the walls of financial institutions and government treasuries, towards artists and arts organisations who wait with bated breath to find out about the scale of further funding cuts in the coming years. Read The Guardian theatre blog to find out more about the reaction to an initial round of funding cuts. Much as there is debate about arts funding in Australia (if only within the arts community itself), this ubiquitous sense of foreboding is not one that I have witnessed back home. I'm not sure if this silence about arts policy in the recent election and the subsequent risk in unpredictable governmental policy agendas is actually any better, or if, perhaps, everyone talks about it less? I am finding it difficult to write about this without acknowledging my somewhat privileged position of funded travel, and the uneven distribution of funding between artforms, "emerging" and "established" artists, and the fact that, although I have many opinions, I haven't the best sense of history as I'm new to this game. Perhaps if you have a thought you could comment?

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

2010-08-24T16:15:00.013+10:00

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.

Fish-cake

2010-07-23T22:31:00.004+10:00

Fish cake. Deliberated over tuna and chocolate but went with straight chocolate. Ocean cupcakes orange flavoured. You can eat this under-the-sea scene that took me considerable time to cook.

Bake Sale for Art giving our love to firstdraft for their studios grand opening tomorrow (see previous post).

News flash

2010-07-19T16:20:00.004+10:00

Hi Hello. We are still here. A little dispersed yes, but the dream lives on. A little bit of news to tide you by:

Natalie and Georgie have both been doing residencies and mentorships at PACT and Bundanon through the PACT Vacant Room program. Nat is working on an exciting new work Pink Piece in collaboration with Kate Blackmore, Frances Barrett, Emma Ramsay, and Brian Fuata. Georgie is working on Kansas with Malcolm Whittaker to be presented at the (holy moley!) Anti Festival in Finland later this year. They are doing showings at PACT this Friday.

Pink Piece at Bundanon

Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore will be opening firstdraft gallery's new 'Depot' artist studios this Saturday, 24th, see flyer below. There will be performances, art, BBQ and Bake Sale are doing tea and cakes. So come! Celebrate! Say hi to the elected representative of your city!

Speaking of new spaces, Plump gallery, an intitiative from past Monthly Friend artist Willurie Kirkbright, has opened on Enmore Rd, Enmore, with the group exhibition Kindling. It was less than a month ago that I bumped into Willurei she told me she was about to sign the lease on a new building. It's this no nonsense, action over hype approach I'm sure will see this space as a valubale addition to Sydney's artistic landscape. If that wasn't enough, our friends Penguin Plays Rough are getting their new warehouse ready for the new and improved version of you favourite monthly literary event. We are excited, you should be too.

Thanks for checking in.

Love BSA.

Fashion Hazard Ahead

2010-05-25T09:47:00.007+10:00

Dear the guy from film that ends in death, thank you for the ANZAC cookie. I must admit, at first I was apprehensive, I had had a bad experience with an ANZAC cookie before, but yours was delicious on the train on the way home and I could tell that people around me were jealous. So caramelly, golden delicious. Tonight being the first night I succeeded in being in the city and catching the train back to Hawthorne East, thus sparing me the $30-20 cab ride home, depending if we go via Carlton because we think it is on the way and we can share a cab. I was at the second / last Next Wave presents the Last Tuesday Society present Comfort Zone. See my comments on last week's Comfort Zone if you want, this week was the same deal, different performers.

I make this look good - Matthew Kneale and High Vis Dandy, photo - Sally Lewis.

So, High Vis Dandy is this absolutely fabulous performance/ installation work, not to mention playful and outrageous intervention in to public space (speaking of taking it to the streets). Their setup comprises of a trady’s ute, industrial sewing machine, workbench/ runway, some pretty serious traffic barriers and a variable message board (you know, big screen, ‘road works ahead’ / ‘40km speed limit’). They have set themselves the unenviable task of making orange and reflector panels look good. I have nothing against orange per se, it’s just if you overdo it you can look like a prison inmate, carrot, or Hare Krishna faithful. No such fate for the High Vis Dandy – they turn risk aversion in to a fashion statement. Tutus, tailcoats, one I thought I’d call the Sergeant Reflector Pepper vest, and turned out brocade lining! These and similar pieces I believe are the outcome of the sewing workshops the group have been holding in the lead up to the performance/install. Anyone could get involved so, ‘I can’t find one that’s nicely tailored and sexy’ is no longer an excuse for not wearing high visibility safety wear on your bike. High Vis Dandy is about more than looking good though. Aptly set up in the high fashion, aka ‘Paris’, end of Collins St, I saw the group on their fourth day of performing four daily sessions of cyclical performative actions and they had staked quite a presence alongside the likes of Rolex and Prada. It is a jibe at fashion, known to colonise any demographic towards its evil marketing ends. The Dandies take a lunch break from their hard work. A trady cliché and good opportunity for some product placement. They pout and pose and drink their Big M choccy milk like good product pinups. The work is also an elbow nudge at the dominance of ‘the masculine’ in trade-based work places. It subversively proposes an alternative identity to the Australian ideal of manliness (hard, rugged, practical) by appropriating a symbol of this manliness – the high visibility workwear – and making it over and camping it up. While High Vis Dandy was a delight to watch and certainly open to various interpretations and experience, I’m going to go with, ‘You can be safe and practical without being a macho jerk. You can dress well and be creative about how you look without being a mindless-consumerist-whore’.

High Vis Dandy, 17-21st May. Collins St Melbourne, as part of the Next Wave Festival. Artists: Jessica Daly, Matthew Kneale, Daniel Kroener, and Zoe Meagher.

You lent me your laptop and all I did with it was throw it off a bridge

2010-05-24T15:49:00.006+10:00

Well it's a cold and shitty day in Melbourne. I'm out to Deborah Kelly's lecture later on to find out why Kelly keeps on fighting the good fight.

I got to go to the closing-night of Ashley Dyer's And Then Something Fell On My Head last night. I was interested to see whether the concept was as simple as the title would have me. Pretty pencils rained erratic yet purposeful from scaffold. The audience was split, the 2 groups sitting on either side of the 'auditorium' (not really) - one group had extraneous safety wear, white suits and rubber gloves. I received an insight from the project's dramaturg Simê Knezevic that the 2 groups were named The better equipped/ The unencumbered. White shrouds dropped from different places atop the 10 metre or so scaff and became the surface for video projections, mostly of a man (Ash Dyer) crawling and falling. More things dropped poetically, all also seemingly office related; water cooler bottles, clean paper, dirty tissues (people are always sick in offices right?). Ashley appears every now and then, in the same shirt/tie/suit pants combo of the video, and looks around perplexed and in wonderment, occasionally his body reacting to the pencils, water bottles or paper that gets too close. The lighting is moody and only some times frustrating. Designer Travis Hodgson aims for the sensory (as opposed maybe to the pictorial), flashing lights towards the audience and at times leaving us in darkness. It's both spectacular and meditative, even if I can't help thinking it is about an office worker who got lost in his daydream. There was a publication that might have shed some more light on the ideas in the piece, but these were not available to all audience members.

Takin it to the streets

2010-05-23T17:18:00.009+10:00

I've let this get way out of hand. I am overwhelmed here about the prospect of writing about all the Next Wave stuff I have seen since I last reported. Yes. I should have gotten back to you sooner. But as soon as I left one thing, there was another to dash to. Now I have art fatigue, and a bit of a hangover. I'm sure you understand my dilemma(s).

This afternoon I attended the 4th and final Next Wave forum, 'Taking it to the streets'. Mostly about art in public spaces (whether existing or a public space that is created through the work). I particularly appreciated Lucas Ihlein's hand-drawn diagrams illustrating the ideal process timeline as a series of many mini-deadlines, as opposed to the less appealinng burst of high-stress, panic, waste and mindlessness, followed by the fireworks, and then fallout (debt, neglected friends etc), and then a period of recovery. This fits nicely with his larger ideals of art being a part of everyday life, existing in the real world, and yes in the art world too if you like (which is in the real world, he clarifies). But anyway, I was inspired, which is why I am here in Victoria State library at 5.30 on a Sunday Evening trying to tick off some mini-deadlines. Orchestrator of Next Wave's Chicken Stampede, George Egerton-Warburton also spoke, mostly taking us through his circuitous tangential logic (yes that works, think about it: you go on conceptual tangents only to reconnect with aspect of your original point of departure). Sorry.. circuitous tangential logic that sees the stampede of 300 chickens through a main street to Jeff Khan's backyard where they can be adopted by the public, as a necessary public action, giving visibility to livestock, commenting on the inherent loveliness of autonomous systems (not unlike meth-labs), and is a step forward in self-sufficiency and the future of Australian cultural identity. Unfortunately the RSPCA do not agree and have prevented the stampede citing that there is no guarantee that the chickens will go to good homes. These are chickens that, Egerton-Warburton says, will likely end up on cage farms otherwise. Instead there will be a 'Fucking Chicken Sound Stampede', in which participants are invited to stand in for the chickens and stamped the street making chicken noises. So come along next Sunday and have a cluck.

There. A mini deadline met gallantly. I didn't actually talk about any of the works, but the library is closing. Coming soon you will have Brown Council, Sugar Coated, the High Vis Dandies, Some Film Museums I Have Known, and more!

Mel Burn! It's hot! (actually it's pretty cold)

2010-05-20T00:20:00.006+10:00

I know all you Bake Sale faithfuls are going to be wondering where the hell I (Meg) am this Saturday at Clubhouse. (I'm hoping my Mum will go to represent anyway, and so be one of the spare parents on offer. Yeah, I'm pimping my Mum. In a nice way. What?) I can't come because I'm in Melbourne for the Next Wave festival's Text Camp program.

For those of you in Melbourne, and also for my own benefit of noting/not forgetting, I want to mention some of the Next Wave emerging art things I've caught in the few days I've been here. The Last Tuesday Society's 'Comfort Zone' was almost worth going to just for a visit to Witches in Britches. It's a theatre restaurant. You go through a spooky foam, cobwebby, uv paint/black light tunnel to get in, I tell you, the excitement is just beginning! (I want to disclose my professional interest in theatre restaurants, as someone with a Bachelor of performance and a good deal of actor training under my belt, I was sizing this place up as a promising place of employment. Do we have any theatre restaurants in Sydney? Anyone?)

Maybe once this was a serious pub.

Comfort Zone was more than a variety night in a cool venue. The premise of asking artists to present short works far outside their 'specialty' made for some exciting, fingernail-gnawing, often-awkward, always interesting stuff. Making friendly with the Next Wave curatorial theme "no risk too great!" there was indeed a feeling that these performers could at any time fail at their attempts to do something different. Burlesque troop Caravan of Love's Eva Johansen did make a very convincing mime. Poet laureate Telia Nevile made a cute and very earnest hoola-hooper. I'm not sure what the Suitcase Royale were doing, but maybe their was a clue in them being announced as the "auteurs of Melbourne performance". They let the audience make the performance, so they didn't author it themselves. They also didn't talk and usually they talk a lot. Is that right? It is always more obvious when performers draw attention to what has gone wrong, and this could well have degenerated into self reflexive, apologetic embarrassment. But the performers were really trying. They were good at being bad , moving it from amateur to strangely artful. Whole new line up when they do it again next Tuesday.

Last night we went to Short Message Service. "An experiment" in which two performers (Mish Grigor and Jackson Castiglione) in a simple black box theatre take their instructions from text messages sent by the audience. A lot of these messages manifested in dialogue spoken by the performers, a short-coming I think, as one audience member texted "words words, enough of all these words". It was fun to see the two acting out your instructions, 'I am the puppet master!', perhaps some audience members were thinking. Interesting that immediately the performers were put in to a state of tension between sexual advances and insults. A reflection of the caliber of the audience? "It could have gone somewhere higher" one of my companions commented, intellectually I think she meant. "That would have been impossible", my other companion (her daughter) retorted. Indeed, the slow response time - in audience's texting speed and in filtering through to the performers, and the very minimal structure made it hard to build upon situations and ideas. So what if it was more structured? "It should have been set in a safari" suggests my companion, "that's lame mum", says Amy. At one point I was compelled to text, "Jackson, the audience is not happy with the gender politic in this show". Mish seemed a lot more passive, Jackson often the aggressor. Again, is this the audience, or the way their instructions were responded to? It worked best when the performers were forced to engage with each other, such as Jackson commentating on Mish 'as if she were a gazelle in the savanna and he were David Attenborough' (by the way, we got a glimpse of what the actual text messages where only at the end.) Every audience will of course have a different experience and it will be good to see where they take this experiment next. It's on til Saturday (22nd).

Oh! And! Controversy at Next Wave. An Age article condemns the Dachshund U.N. as cruelty to animals. The argument cites a violation of the RSPCA policy of "freedom to express normal behaviour" as grounds for this claim. I'm not sure what to think, as I haven't seen it yet. I was looking forward to how cute all the little doggies would be as stand in delegates for the countries who established the human rights commission in 1947. Aw, look at Belgium! He/she wants to eat its own tail. The article also refers to freedom from distress, but also says that owners were encouraged to only stay as long as they thought their dog was comfortable. I tend to think that keeping dogs as pets in the way we do isn't natural, nor is breeding shit out of them so the have tiny stumpy legs and long sausage bodies. It's all animal husbandry. Don't eat a cow. Don't buy a pedigree dog etc etc. There is also a chicken stampede later in the program at the end of which people are allowed to adopt a chicken in the name of self-sufficiency, and, I would add, not supporting the treatment of chickens in farms. Anyway, THIS is degenerating into a rant. Stay tuned for more Next Wave musings.

Afternoon Tea with the Folks, you are invited.

2010-05-15T00:57:00.007+10:00

"You might be parents. You might have parents. Afternoon Tea with the Folks is a platform for those on either side of that generational dichotomy to get together and talk about where we've been and where we're headed.

Are they still waiting for you to switch from a creative work to a real profession? Do you need to apologise for that time you got ridiculously drunk on wine spritzer and ended their party early by vomiting on the dance floor? Mum? Do you? Our guest host, Malcolm’s mum Jude Whittaker is still waiting for her thank you in his Logies speech. Maybe your parent is equally anticipant about the day when you take your cat/dog/rabbit back in to your care...

This is an is an informal dialogue between young artists (not exclusively!) and parents or parent figures. If you don’t have these available we will have spares, so come anyway. Including performances from Malcolm Whittaker and July McKenzie and Cal Clatworthy (Mitzi’s Mum and Auntie), embarrassing anecdotes about you, and of course a delicious array of afternoon tea goodies. "

Facebook invite

2-4, next Saturday, free!

It's been a long time. We shouldn't have left you

2010-04-20T10:43:00.007+10:00

Without a dope beat to step to...

BEEP TEST: Thanks all for participating, especially our friends, a few randoms from the park, and one person who heard about it on FBi radio. It was great to claim a bit of park for our 'intervention' no doubt park goers were thinking, 'what are these people running for? It's obviously some sort of competition, if not against each other, then for personal achievement. But alas! I am not in the race. I miss these random opportunities to flex my competitive streak in front of lots of people, as were so abundant in my school days. I wish I was doing a beep test'.
Some pictures to see here and look out for your photo and results being sent by cat meat and candy soon.

Awards ceremony

We have our next Monthly Friend coming up.. this month. Not one, not two, but three events as part of our EDUCATION WEEK at Clubhouse! Bake Sale are organising 2 very-useful-for-emerging-artists talks from very experienced and wisened arts people to address everything you wish you knew about writing applications, budgeting and how to grow up to be a real artist with a sustainable long term practice and lot of fans. You will learn all this if you come.* Furthermore, we are working with Malcolm Whittaker to host an 'afternoon tea with the parents' on Saturday 22nd May. We are inviting young artists to attend with their parents to shed some light for their adoring folks on what it is they actually do and why they don't have any money. If you want to come and you don't have a parent/ spawn to attend with, we will have some spares so please come anyway. The afternoon will feature a ukulele performance from Mitzi's mum and of course a delicious array of afternoon tea goodies.

So yeah. Education week. Fun fun fun. HYPE HYPE. Stay tuned.

*Bake Sale for Art accepts no responsibilty for failing to fulfill these outlandish promises I am making.

MONTHLY FRIEND #6 BEEP TEST

2010-03-16T16:20:00.005+11:00

Yes, the rumours are true.

Our next Monthly Friend will be a BEEP TEST.

You come along, bring your joggers and sweatbands and RUN.

Two of our Bake Sailors also work under the psuedonym cat meat and candy, and they have a blog which explains the process, if you aren't already familiar with it.

In the meantime-

Opportunities For You!

2010-03-16T14:09:00.003+11:00

There seem to be so many call-outs at the moment I'm sure everyone is checking this blog just to avoid writing one of the five applications they already have planned.

In case you've been under a some sort of anti-cultural rock, or have unsubscribed from all your mailing lists in a fit of spamrage, or really like reading things on a pink background - here you are...

Performance Space

LiveWorks
Performance Space will conclude 2010 with LiveWorks, a fast and furious festival of live and time-based art. LiveWorks will run from 1-14 November and a ‘hot weekend’ of live activity will take place 11-14 November 2010. We are seeking proposals for works and works-in-progress across artform and media, of differing scales which consider the relationship between audience and action.

Walk
WALK will be one of three concept-led seasons presented by Performance Space in 2011. An off-site season of walks, of varying scale and ambition, WALK will take place in small clusters of across the year in Sydney. We’re interested in walking as the vehicle for artistic experience and in particular the potential of unique audience engagement which walks can offer.

To enable first stage project development and to assist with our program planning we would like to hear from artists in two categories:
- Research and Development (seven projects at $1,000 each); and
- Existing Projects

Both applications are due by 6pm Monday 29th March - check the Performance Space website for details

PACT centre for emerging artists

The Space Program
PACT will provide heavily subsidised residencies for cross discipline, emerging artists undertaking creative development of a new work. Residencies are available for up to 1 week, with a limited number of weeks available. Artists are selected through an application process.

Submissions due by 17 March 2010, 5pm (notification of decisions by April)

Download guidelines and an application form here.

Vacant Room

PACT is offering cross discipline emerging artists the opportunity to develop an idea or a project with the support and mentorship of the company. We are particularly interested in supporting projects that toy with & stretch the limits of communication and social habits or that traverse time, space, or reality. The development period will result in showings to an invited audience for feedback. Vacant Room will take place at Bundanon, NSW and then PACT, Erskineville between 26th June and 28th July 2010. Artists will share the space over the same time period and therefore have opportunities for peer support and exchange.

Submissions due by 22nd April 2010, 5pm (notification of decisions end April).

Serial Space

Call for a new director
Serial Space is looking for a hot new director to add to the crew: do you have the energy, motivation and the big ideas to be a Serial Director? What new and delicious things could you bring to the space?

Residencies
Serial Space residencies involve a 2-week onsite development. Serial Space will facilitate a funded residency or development program, open to interstate, regional, local and international artists, theorists and curators. There will be 6 residencies open for application throughout July, August, October and November. Each development will be 2 weeks in duration, and will include a stipend of $500 to contribute towards artists living costs and materials over the period. Residencies are not explicitly outcome based, however we would like that the artist/s schedule a public exhibition, artist talk, or public discussion to encourage an ongoing dialogue between participants and the public.

These applications and other opportunities at Serial Space close April 9! Check their website here for details.

ALSO - Locksmith Project Space are open for exhibition applications

And we always want to hear about your ideas - so don't forget about emailing us!

Love

Bake Sailors xxx

Nature League - 10 hours in a tent.

2010-03-10T13:45:00.004+11:00

Tiny Stadiums was host to a durational version of Nature League, "Nature League Inner West".
It was hot. It was steamy. It was totally rejuvenating.
Want proof?

Right about now

2010-02-17T20:42:00.007+11:00

Draught' at University of Sydney's Tin Sheds Gallery (148 City Rd, Camperdown) is closing this Saturday. So, you are rapidly nearing the end of your chance to see this fine exhibition of work by 9 former firstdraft directors. So, why not go this Saturday when Cy Norman* will be playing sounds collected from the gallery's air conditioning ducts and modified throughout the duration of the show? Due to gallery restrictions, the sound work was unable to be amplified in the Tin Sheds throughout the show, but Cy has uploaded his creations here. Hear it live in the gallery between 1 and 5.

'work in progress' -Cy Norman

Performance Space's Clubhouse program kicked off last week and my what fun we've all had! On Wednesday Barbara Campbell laboured for 3 hours over a steam press custom making punters News Haiku T-shirts, T-towels and tote bags. Proudly sporting my own Haiku shirt, the following evening I attended Malcolm Whittaker's 'a lover's discourse' - a lecture performance on Whittaker's awkward understanding of love. At the end we were given an address and profile of a stranger on the other side of the world and instructions to write this person a love letter. I am still contemplating; will I? won't I? More amazing stuff coming up at Clubhouse - performances, music, forums - and it's all free.

A big thanks to all who bought lammingtons. It was a big success. Apart from the rain. Still waiting on a few payments to work out total funds raised. I'll keep you posted.

rainy lammington pickups

Finally, it's time to start getting excited (and fit) for Monthly Friend 'Beep Test' . It's a beep test. 28th March. More info coming soon.

*I feel oblige to declare a conflict of interest like Kyle Sandilands never would, that I am in a relationship with Cy Norman.

Bake Sale for Haiti

2010-01-25T18:21:00.006+11:00

Flag waving might be fun, but helping other people is even better! So BSA are organising a good ol' fashioned lamington drive to raise money for the Haiti earthquake relief effort.

Here's the deal: Order your delicious home made lamingtons in multiples of 6, it is $10 for 6 or $6 concession by the 30th Jan. Then come to the markets at The Hub, King St, Newtown, on Saturday 6th Feb and find the Bake Sale for Art stall. Swap us your money for cake, stay for a chat and an iced tea maybe. Then we give all the money to the Red Cross. Email Meg: megan.garrett.jones@gmail.com for an order form.

You know, The Hub. Oh, sorry, not really for those outside Sydney inner west.

In other news, the Tiger Two Times faction of Bake Sale are geeing up for the Tiny Stadiums Festival in Erskineville. We will be remounting Nature League as a durational performance set within a number of greenhouse structures to be built in an alcove just back from the main street. Keep an eye on the SMH Metro, we might just get a mention.

Monthly Friend Plays Rough... With Penguin.

2010-01-05T11:17:00.003+11:00

We're hooking up with the lovely Penguin Plays Rough crew over in Newtown for the first Monthly Friend of 2010!

It might look a little bit like this...

Except we don't know who Ashley Spires is because it's just a thing from Google. Maybe Ashley will turn up. Maybe Ashley Spires will be the guest celebrity judge for the evening! Ooo-Ahh.

OK.

Back to business...

Working with a new format and a guest curator, Luke Tipene, MF#5 "Working Title" is set to knock your socks off.

No, really.

MONDAY 18TH JANUARY.

YES, IT'S A MONDAY.
AT NIGHT TIME.
AT PIP'S PENGUIN PALACE*
EXCITEMENT REIGNS, WE KNOW.

*not actual name of venue. we'll tell you the address closer to the date.

BANG

2009-11-23T14:03:00.004+11:00

Monthly Friend #4 POP went off with a bang - our biggest one yet!

Thanks to all who came along in the sweltering heat and joined us have a beer, watch a sweet gig and talk about art and the weather.

We won't be appearing again until the dawn of 2010, but in the meantime, thanks to all the artists, venues and other supporters of various descriptions who made Monthly Friend such a success!

Much love xx

p.s Thanks to Lucy Parakhina for the rad photos.

Poster

2009-11-05T14:22:00.007+11:00

Oh, did we mention, artists include:
Alex Kiers
Hoof & Antler
Mountain Woman
Cy Norman
Emmanuela Prigioni and Luke Tipene
and even more.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
NEWSFLASH NEWSFLASH

Special appearance by Hossein Ghademi and his Sufi Choir, and a film work from Sasha William Cohen.

w00t!

Haiku

2009-11-05T14:14:00.003+11:00

Follow impulses
Like little bubbles, pop
Is is summer yet?

MONTHLY FRIEND GOES POP

2009-10-26T15:53:00.002+11:00

poster not made in microsoft word coming soon!

for something more useful have a look at our facebook event

Dead or Alive comes... Alive!

2009-10-22T12:26:00.009+11:00

Oh dear. Some days I try to write and all that comes out is cheese. Gooey cheese. Like the stuff you can spread on toast, or the stuff Kraft added to vegemite to make iSnack V2.0 which I'm pretty sure they've pulled from the shelf.

Cheeseball heading aside, thanks all who came and participated in Monthly Friend#3 'Dead or Alive' at PACT. PACT has been the stomping ground for many a young performer in Sydney. Sometimes I feel like it is my mother, artistically. (I don't know why it is gendered such, something about stereotypes of femininity and nurturing.) It is the mother of lots of young Sydney artists, making them my siblings, artistically. Like the wonderful collective that run Quarterbred, who are based at PACT and with whom we worked to present MF#3. I guess what I'm trying to say is, 'Dead or Alive' was kind of like a big extended family gathering, and our friends and public were invited. (Seems cheese and convoluted metaphors go hand-in-hand.)

Enough! What actually happened? We want hard facts. Photographic evidence.

Funny things happen when all these works come together, effectively forming an impromptu dialogue. Sophie Webb (above) merged her self proclaimed 'mainstream' tendencies, with everything she could remember about performance art.

Jane Grimley is performance art.

Nick Sun, everyone's favourite comedian blends Performance with stand up comedy.

These are from my (Meg's) piece. I asked people to put messages in bottles and later set up a dialogue with them on stage.

Thanks to Sarah Versitano for the photos. Coming soon: Monthly Friend #4 POP, at Serial Space, 20th November. Don't get confused, it is a Friday.

Pretty Fly(er)

2009-10-13T13:01:00.004+11:00

I can almost taste the cupcakes as Bake Sale for Art finalise the lineup for this Saturday. Malcolm Whittaker, Jane Grimley, Nick Sun, Meg Garrett-Jones, Dara Gill, Willurei Kirkbright, Sime Knezevic + even more!

Big thanks to Mitzi McKenzie-King for the flyer.

Monthly Friend #3 Dead or Alive

2009-10-12T15:54:00.006+11:00

And Monthly Friend is upon us again - Dead or Alive, MF#3 is being presented at PACT by our lovely friends at Quarterbred.

The author is dead.
The aura is dead.
The critic is dead.
God is dead.
Theatre is dead.
Art is dead.
Bela Lugosi is dead.

But hey, let’s not get overly maudlin. The theme for this Monthly Friend, ‘Dead or Alive’, questions our conception of how ideas, forms, texts and spaces may ‘live’ or ‘die’. Are these bold proclamations of death premature? (The author is still very much alive in mainstream theatre and literature, at least.) And what is the flipside of death? When the author dies the audience becomes alive, and that ain’t so bad is it? Monthly Friend October also celebrates the merging of live and not-live forms. Contemporary arts need not these distinctions! So ah, let’s all take a leaf out of George Romero’s book and let the dead live again. And let the living dead suck the brains out of the living, so that the living die and eventually become the living dead and go out looking for more living. Hope to see you there.

FROM 5PM, RAILWAY PDE ERSKINEVILLE

xx

Rollin with the Fringe Fest

2009-09-29T12:08:00.008+10:00

Bake Sale for Art have their Tiger Two Times hats on until this Friday for the rest of the Melbourne Fringe presentation of 'Nature League in North Melbourne'. Audiences have been picking up, we finally got programs, and we have got some really great, sometimes surprising, feedback.

Here's some things people have said about Nature League: "It's like a Renoir", "It's pretty much Pink Floyd's The Wall", "Gorgeous, wacky and delightful" (Peta Murray, playwright), "I'm a pretty highly strung person and I haven't been this relaxed in years", among adjectives like "magical", "trance-like", "creepy" and "idyllic".

Feels like we are rolling along nicely after the saga of getting down here. That is, our van broke down just out of Tarcutta, which is a truck stop of a town halfway between Sydney and Melbourne that does a surprisingly good hamburger and a mean instant coffee. So budget has been blown out for the hire of another van and the sad little borrowed van is still waiting for some TLC from Tarcutta Motor Repairs.

Nature League shows 7:30 and 8:30 every night till Friday, it's $5 and, bias aside, it is really worth seeing. So if you're in Melbourne come along, and if you have friends in Melbourne tell them to come. Other Sydney peeps worth seeing are Claudia O'Doherty from Pig Island doing 'Monsters of the Deep 3D', and Pip Smith and Lexi Freeman's 'Invert'. They are all in the Artshouse complex in North Melbourne at different times, so one could see them all in one night of amazing, entertaining performance. Book at Fringe Website.

Spruiking.

I also wanted to mention that the next Monthly Friend will be upon us before we have time to say, "well here we are back in Sydney." We have decided upon the theme..
DEAD OR ALIVE
Curtorial blurb coming soon. It will be on a Saturday afternoon, 17th Oct, at PACT Theatre as part of the October Quarterbred. Contact us if you are interested in doing something. bakesaleforart(at)gmail.com.

Counting down

2009-09-21T16:17:00.002+10:00

Busy busy busy weekends we have all had! Between swilling gin and tonics, raiding our costume designer friends' wardrobes (and homes generally), we had skype interviews and warehouses to visit for some dry run greenhouse construction.

3/4 of the gang are already road trippin, and i'm sure they'll be documenting their journey in great detail. I'm not too sure they'll have much else to do...

Newest image of how I'm envisaging the performance:

but less tacky. but equally exciting.

nature league as it happens

2009-09-14T14:10:00.003+10:00

Tiger Two Times: Nature League

2009-09-03T15:14:00.009+10:00

Since we are becoming more and more enveloped by our creative project for Melbourne Fringe, we thought it might be interesting to start blogging about our process- for interested parties and for ourselves as document and space for reflection.
At the moment we are looking at our stimulus material, transferring it performatively into our bodies, and mapping our vision for the show in the form of graphs.

We like graphs.
The show is far more fun than graphs though.
Check the Melbourne Fringe link over there to get your hand on our hot little tickets.

We can't keep still!

2009-09-01T13:21:00.006+10:00

Thanks to everyone for attending Monthly Friend #2, what a lovely vibe! Big Love to Bill and George and all the artists too... It's great to see the events evolve with new artists, new audiences and changing venues. It excites me.

We are changing hats for next month - we'll be interstate performing our show Nature League in North Melbourne at Melbourne Fringe Festival. If you happen to be from Melbourne, or in Melbourne, or in the general vicinity of Melbourne around the last week of September, come see us! It's only $5 - and a retreat of sorts. We're exploring fake nature, tranquility and singing a wee bit of Mozart. We'll make you radiant.

"But when will there be Monthly Friend #3!?" you ask, "Monthly Friend #4!!".
Well, friends, they will be in October and November. If you are keen to get involved, shoot us an email and we will let you know of the themes as they are currently forming, but we'll do a call out too.

Thanks to Willow for photos...

x

Chase the White Rabbit (to Chippendale)

2009-08-17T17:18:00.005+10:00

If you find yourself hanging around Redfern before Monthly Friend #2, I would strongly recommend popping down to Balfour St, Chippendale (quite close to serial space) and checking out White Rabbit – a new gallery with four floors of contemporary Chinese art. The amount currently exhibited is impressive to say the least, and this is apparently only about 1/8 of the whole collection, held by the Neilson Foundation – a rather successful Sydney-based family. Judith Neilson attributes her interest in Chinese contemporary art to artist Wang Zhiyuan whose eye-catching work Object of Desire (2008) is placed in pride of position as one of the first works visitors see when they enter the gallery. Before one even enters the gallery however, you will most likely encounter the enormous reception desk, a number of security personnel as well as an army of knowledgeable and chatty gallery attendants and the café serving bottomless pots of all manner of delicious smelling teas.

This image is ripped from the White Rabbit facebook page - hopefully you get some sense of the scale of the work!

I have to say, the architecture distracted me. With a staircase that leads up the four floors and a slim but cavernous area housing a number of enormous sculptures (at the largest probably about 3 storeys high) by artist Chen Wenling (shown mid install above), it is impressive, and visibly a bespoke fitout. Highlights of the works shown include the photographic series Twelve Flower Months (1999-2000) by Chen Lingyang (The Seventh Month - Orchid is shown below) and the startling sculptures entitled Mental Patients (2006) by Lu Zhengyuan – make sure you get all the way to the fourth floor for those.

August Monthly Friend

2009-08-17T11:22:00.004+10:00

August Monthly Friend is coming up fast. Works from emerging artists will be presented at Bill and George in Redfern- a 'creative headquarters', and 'artist run initiative, community merging point, and inspired hub for adventurous conversation', according to their website

The theme for this round is ASKEW AMISS AWRY - Mystery, amnesia and tangential wanderings. Discovery in miscalculation. Beauty in malfunction. A world in crisis. A world in chaos. Won't someone pick up the pieces and put it all back together again?

We are really excited about the lineup:
Matt Rochford
Penny Spankie
Frank Mainoo
Emmanuela Prigioni
Steven Winnall
Annaliese Constable
Georgie Meagher & Jade Markham
Applespiel artists
Nick Sun

There is also a sick Monthly Friend zine/program in the making with other creative works, artist info, recipes, and an essay or two.

So, it is on SATURDAY night, 29th August.
Doors open at 7pm.
Entry is 10 bucks and includes a zine-gram.
Bill & George is at Level 1, 10-16 William St, Redfern. Easy to get to from Central or Redfern stations.

Love to see you there!

2009-07-17T17:50:00.001+10:00

UPDATE: Ah, contacting us would be much easier if I told you our email wouldn't it..
bakesaleforartATgmailDOTcom

Hi hello we're back

2009-07-05T13:21:00.003+10:00

Thanks to everyone for coming along the inaugural Monthly Friend. We have deemed it a great success - special mention to late addition to the bill Jade Markham who read a particularly hilarious story, but unfortunately wasn't confirmed in time to have her name splattered all over the flyers and our facebook pages.

Meg as MC

Rachel Roberts

Natalie Randall

Check it out, more photos here.

Info about the next Monthly Fried will be forthcoming very shortly... We've been a little busy with our Tiger Two Times hats on, making a new work "Nature League" at PACT with the lovely and amazing Barbara Campbell through the Vacant Room residency and mentorship program. Showing is tonight at 7, but catch the work in it's full glory at Melbourne Fringe Festival at the end of September.

We'll be back blogging incessantly very soon. Keep us in your favourites.

xx

It’s ficto-critico. It’s all star. It’s pretty good.

2009-06-10T11:46:00.003+10:00

The first Monthly Friend afternoon is all go for June 20 at the Red Rattler in Marrickville. Performances, presentations, and installations merging artistic forms with the world of theory will be presented by some incredible young and emerging artists...
Take this flyer from us, email it to all your friends, and come along.

xx

Happy Birthday Futurism! Poesia Visiva Symposium

2009-06-10T11:25:00.008+10:00

Futurism turns 100 this year. Meanwhile, an impressive collection of 60s and 70s Italian concrete and visual poetry formally stored with the University of Sydney’s Italian Department has found a new home in the University Art collection. The connection between these two becomes clearer in the accompanying ‘Poesia Visiva’ Symposium held at Sydney Uni on the 29th May. The history of the concrete/ visual poetry movement and of the University's collection was traced in a series of lectures acedemics and curators. We are told that the collection was generously given to the University by Adriano Spatola and Giulia Niccolai in a visit to Sydney in 1978. Apparently Spatola gave an outrageous performance in a pub in Sydney, I couldn’t find the video but here is another of Spatola reciting. The works in the collection are mostly in Italian, but no matter for non-Italian speakers because the idea is of a refusal of 'poetry' as narrative-based and lyrical, instead using language for its sounds and formations. In the case of Betty Danon's [a featured artist's] poems and paper sculptures an escape altogether from existing structures of language is sought, replacing words with symbols, dots and lines.

Michele Perfetti, Siamo Tutti Insieme (We are all together) 1977

Tim Fitzpatrick spoke in the symposium of the ‘Theatrical Fireworks' of the Futurists, citing their impact on consequent theatre movements and on the Futurists' Itallian descents, the concrete/visual poets. The Futurists rejected conventional structures of language and narrative in the theatre, but is the trajectory to concrete and visual poetry a straight forward one? In comparing the war-mongering, nationalistic and fascist politics of the Futurists with the liberal feminist and anti-imperialist message of the concrete/ visual poetry a rupture is seen. Fitzpatrick quotes Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto - “Glory to war – the world’s only hygiene”.

Barbara Campbell maintained a performative presence throughout as the symposium’s in-house artist, bringing the concrete poetry discussion up to date by tweeting short observations on the forum inter-spliced with segments of Italian concrete/visual poetry, and interestingly updates of a Mosque bombing in Tehran. This reminder of conflict worked to counter the Futurist mantra that war is beautiful, and perhaps problematises any celebration of Futurism. This part also links to what could be seen as Barbara’s ongoing project of vigilance towards the Middle Eastern conflict. You can "follow" her on bcperformance if your one of them (tweeters).

After the talk fest we found out that our programs were megaphones all along (with a bit of adjustment) and Barbara Campbell led a group recital of some of the poetry. The exhibition is definitely worth a look at the University of Sydney Art Gallery until the 19th July.

Audience with megaphones. Sorry. It was so dark!

Tankman Tango in Sydney

2009-06-05T18:48:00.010+10:00

It’s hard to believe that the image of tanks rolling into Tiananmen Square, and of the attack on thousands of Chinese citizens by the Chinese army, are images easily forgot. But extreme censorship in China enforces a policy of historic erasure, ensuring that for many Chinese the incident simply didn’t happen. For us in the west, I suppose it’s a matter of ‘forgetting’ past and ongoing human rights abuses as our economies have swelled from the exponential economic progress of China.

Yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, marked in locations around the world with the public art event, dancing the Tankman Tango. The work by Deborah Kelly, referred to also as forget 2 forget, takes one of the most pervasive images of the 1989 protests, a lone, anonymous man and his shopping bags standing in the way of a column of tanks, and creates a mass dance, a real “social movement” Kelly puns in a Sydney Morning Herald article here. The dance, choreographed by Jane McKernan to resemble to the original tankman’s “dance” was performed by groups in Perth, Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane, Auckland Singapore, Belgrade, Brussels, Paris and probably more, anyone could organise a group and learn the dance on youtube, (performed by Tiek Kim Pok)

Between 5pm and 7.30 last night, Georgie and I were among the masses (70 or so) doing the tango on the Sydney Opera House forecourt. During the hour and a half of repetition of the basic steps, people would occasionally join or leave the group. I popped out of for a short time for a bit of a rest, but also to witness the dance. It was quite spectacular with the moving spotlights lighting up the drizzly wet air, steely stares from dancers, and the unison flinging of plastic bags. The participants solemnly leaving between the repetitions could have been a symbolic gesture towards dissenters silenced or fallen, while others always returned to fill the ranks. I’ll upload some pictures when I hunt some down.

Sydney Opera House

While watching I also noticed how ugly those lights on the Opera House are, installed as part of Luminous as part of ‘Vivid Sydney’. It looks like a Ken Done tea towel. Call me a sour grape, just don’t remind me how much this vacuous display of technical virtuosity cost in taxpayer money.

Ken Done.

FICTO-CRITICO : CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

2009-05-08T16:50:00.007+10:00

More information and application guidelines here.

All about Monthly Friend here.

Look forward to hearing from you

x

P.S A little footnote... thanks to Dara Gill for his help with the call for subs design. Don't you like it? We like it.

Something to water your mouths...

2009-05-06T09:04:00.005+10:00

We will be requesting submissions very soon for Bake Sale For Art's first (of many) events!
Our Monthly Friend program will be running for 5 consecutive months, with 3 events in Sydney at the lovely Red Rattler, PACT and Serial Space, and in Wollongong and Newcastle as well. They'll be arvo type things, with performances, critical chatter and cupcakes of course.

xx

UPDATE: WE HAVE A FACEBOOK GROUP - JOIN MONTHLY FRIEND

Tiger Two Times halved. Tiger One Time?

2009-04-19T18:36:00.004+10:00

A few weeks ago Meg and Amy- the delectable half of our team (or so they advertise!) presented a little work at the Friend-in-Hand hotel in Glebe at a night called "The Speakeasy at the End of the World". The apparently less delectable half of TTT, Nat and I were witness to the evening all the same... It was pretty funny, especially when they got under a table covered by a sheet at the end (they were the last act of the night) with the only microphone and stayed there for far too long. The face of MC/Curator Miss Van Badham was fairly priceless.

Anyway. Here are some pictures.

Hey so Natalie did her Little Man performance there last week or so too. We'll try and track down some pictures of that and post them soon.

All of the pretty pictures up on this blog, by the way, have been taken by the lovely Sarah Versitano.

See ya'll soon.

xx

We have arrived.

2009-03-13T20:19:00.007+11:00

Welcome to our Bake Sale blog. We've been talking about this for a little while so it is nice to have something posted.

We are a group of four ladies - Megan Garrett-Jones, Georgie Meagher, Natalie Randall and Amy Wilson - who create performances under the name of Tiger Two Times and bake together.

Bake Sale For Arts was conceived as a small scale producing body - us fundraising (baking, running events etc) and then helping get more work seen from young artists in Sydney. We envisioned assisting those who may not have the resources to produce their own work - whether it be financially or in terms of all sorts of tedious things like contacts at different venues or even the ability to make sense of spreadsheets.

Our practical concerns soon became more ideological. With increasing pressure on creative arts and the humanities to present their value through commercial outcomes, we were led to the question, what is the marketplace value of community, critical dialogue, and advancing the practice of emerging Australian artists?

So far Bake Sale For Arts have popped up with cakes and iced tea at the Cricketers Arms markets, Vintage clothes markets at Hibernian House and most recently at Tiny Stadiums arts festival, presented by PACT and curated by Quarterbred - in and around Erskineville. Tiger Two Times - the all-singing, all-dancing, all-everything sister project to Bake Sale have also featured at Carriageworks as part of Performance Space's NightTime #7.

We are currently planning a monthly event of performance, critical discussion, workshops, and of course, cupcakes.

We'll keep you posted, and will be requesting expressions of interest soon!

Thanks for popping by.