Audio available - Accessible Arts Supported Studio Network Forum

The audio from Supported Studio Networks: Possibility and Potential has just been released. If you want to read a previous blog post about the project, see this previous post of mine.

Artist John Demos and I are panellists at the beginning of this one, Building Culture, but you can find the rest of the audios on the Accessible Arts site.

The BIG FAG Dance

Big Fag Dance graphics designed by Pat Armstrong

A while ago we were told by Firstdraft that unfortunately we cannot stay at their depot in Woolloomooloo (which is this strange shaped building here):

Photo by Pat Armstrong

It was really sad for us because we have so many wonderful relationships in the area with Firstdraft, Artspace, The Cross Art Projects and many others.

However, we applied for and were successful in getting a City of Sydney Accommodation Grant! This is a really fantastic opportunity for us. So, our new home is in the Glebe Viaducts in Jubilee Park:

Photo from Google Images

Unfortunately, to get our 4 tonne machine there is tricky, and expensive! So in December we launched a campaign on Pozible to raise money.

I came up with the idea for Zoe Sadokierski to produce a print which looks at the history of printing presses. She decided to focus on the FAG family of presses.

Here is her beautiful limited edition print:

Big Fag Dance, 2013, Zoe Sadokierski

She also did some other drawings for us, which we printed onto small cards at our good friends the Rizzeria.

Dance Cards by Zoe Sadokierski, printed on The Rizzeria

We also made this brilliantly embarrassing video:


Big Fag Press » Big Fag Dance from Big Fag Press on Vimeo.

..and sent out some press releases which landed us a few shout outs like Art Almanac.

We also had some fabulous Big Fag Tshirts, aprons and little badges, and after 18 days of dancing, we had doubled our goal of $3000 to raise a total of $6297!

It was then clearly time to ACTUALLY DANCE!

So we organised a great 70s themed party with local DJs and lots of great food and beer. Alex Stevenson and I even got outed by Two Thousand!

I even made a cake. Here are Lucas & I with my cake:

A close up of my cake: (Yes I have cake making problems)

Now all we have to do is actually move the press this January!

Runway Australian Experimental Art - goes LIVE

Runway is a niche artist run magazine of which I joined the management in February this year. We've been working all year on relaunching as a free, online journal rebranded as Runway Australian Experimental Art, and expanding our audience to an international readership in order to promote the work of Australian contemporary artists both at home and overseas.

I was elected secretary of the management board, was part of the website design subcommittee and have been running the social media platforms.

The website <http://runway.org.au/> goes live as I'm typing this in 27 minutes - I'm so excited!

Here is my board member profile page.

And here is a blog post I wrote for the news section regarding another project I've been working on.

And here is the launch poster if you'd like to come along. The Sydney launch is at Archive Space in Newtown at 6pm tomorrow.

John Demos' Accessible Arts Residency at the Big Fag

John Demos. Photo Louise Anderson

John Demos working at the Big Fag Press, Photo Louise Anderson

John Demos with his original work "Antitoxicus" Photo Louise Anderson

For about 3 months we've had John Demos down at Firstdraft Depot working on some prints on the Big Fag as part of his residency mentorship program thanks to his Amplify Your Art grant. John has been coming in one day a week to create his beautiful works and experience the process of making those works into prints on our offset proofing press.

I've been mostly managing this project solo, and it's been an amazing experience for me. Art is the way John experiences his life, and his works are an exploration of belonging and home, and the words and images that mean those things to him. When he's not practising, John is browsing countless Sydney galleries where the attendants all know him by name. This is a kind of passion I feel is rare in just about any field.

Whilst down at the Press, I introduced John and his liaison Kristina Tito to Jo Holder from The Cross Art Projects gallery. He's been offered the opportunity to exhibit his work at the end of our mentorship there in October/ November. This is such a great opportunity for him to make contacts, show his work and most importantly give a voice to artists like himself who benefit so much from Supported Studio Networks.

We're just in the printing phase now, and the entire project is taking shape. I organised some paper sponsorship from K.W. Doggett, which has been great for John to experiment on. He loves discovering new kinds of paper and mediums to work with, and asks endless questions about ink mixing, how the press works and what kind of things we've printed on before.

We've made up ten metal plates of John's work separated into different colours, and he'll end up with a series of about 4 works, plus a few others where he will experiment with layering different works on top of each other, and then using them as a basis for more hand- rendered work.

Josh Charles has been making a short documentary of the entire project.

Spending any time at all with John has shown me that he has a little story about everything. It's really important to give John a platform from which to tell those stories - through his art, but also his practice, which can potentially, as he says, "influence other people towards art".

Daddy's Little Princess

Daddy's Little Princess at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre by Linda Wilken opened a couple of weeks ago. If you remember, I first met Linda by chance at the Firstdraft Depot where she was undertaking a residency and I was working at the Big fag Press. We discovered we had some conceptual ideas in common and I interviewed her for Ivory Tower Magazine last year (page 10 in this document).

Sexualisation and objectification of young girls is a current social and political issue. This exhibition represents the way young girls in contemporary western cultures develop their identity based on popular culture and stereotyping which begins in childhood. Influenced through magazines, music videos, social media and the internet, these ‘young consumers’ are being seduced into stylising themselves on hyper-sexualised ideals.

-From the Casula Powerhouse website

Here are some photos I took of Daddy's Little Princess.

[All photos are mine of Linda Wilken's work at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre]