Paper Artistry

In April or May, I was setting up a small exhibition at The Paper Mill, that the Big Fag Press was part of.

While I was there, I got to look at the current exhibition which featured some amazing art which was all geometric structures made from paper.

[Photographs are mine taken at the Paper Mill exhibition]

The precision and simplistic beauty of these object really inspired me. And just a simple google search brings up many more sites dedicated to Paper Artistry that can be found online.

 [Images embedded from respective websites]

Islamic fashion

I saw a report a few weeks ago on SBS news about young Muslim women making blogs surrounding their niche fashion world inspired by Islamic Fashion Week.

Now, just from the comments, it doesn't take a genius to see there's definitely been a lot of controversy in the last 10 years or so on the topic of the headscarf and burqa - Do they repress women? Should we make them conform in our country? Is it a security issue? What is the value in one's freedom to wear what they want? Should we not push for secularism in schools in the name of equality?

Personally, I probably come down on the side of the individual's right to choose how they dress. But then again, I'm not an expert on the topic, and actually I have a few friends who are strongly against letting what they feel to be an oppression of women continue. But I've never actually got to ask a Muslim woman what they think of the matter. So I would say that my opinion isn't exactly valid once it's totally formed.

I don't like the idea of uneducated women in third world countries doing exactly what they're told because showing their hair and neck may be an excuse for being raped. But I think the idea that educated Muslim women are still choosing the modesty and cultural traditions of their people and putting a spin on it by seeking out the latest fashion trends to almost bring out the subculture and make it a valid way of dressing in the view of the fashion world, sends a strong message that these women are not feeling repressed, or forced to do these things. I had an acquaintance in France who once told me she wore the headscarf simply because she said she'd feel naked without it. And my thoughts were, well, I'm glad you didn't grow up in France because that may have meant a choice between you going to school feeling naked or having to pay a lot of money for a special school.

I also had a Moroccan friend who said that his sisters and many of the young women in Morocco now just choose not to wear the headscarf at all - they don't feel the pressure to. Perhaps some of the superficial parts of the Islamic religion have relaxed in Morocco as opposed to some other parts of the continent. In the same way that some of the "rules" of Catholicism and Christianity have relaxed just to fit into the modern world.

And similarly on the other hand, I imagine the older generations of Islamic women would feel confronted by the nature of this "commercialisation" of their religious dress.

A polemic issue, to say the least. And I can only come at it from the point of view of an atheist. But I thought it was interesting, what it says about clothes in general and how you get used to wearing something so much that you feel naked without it, regardless of the reasons you began to wear it and if you even continue to agree with those reasons. I know if I'm missing one of the rings I usually wear or I go out without a handbag or even with bare legs at the beginning of summer, I get a similar sort of sensation. Nothing of course, that can make me understand this huge issue, but maybe the next time I see a young lady in a headscarf, I'll ask.

Here are some blogs on the topic I've been following:
TrendyMelbourne
Muslim Street Fashion
Hijabi and the City
MyazFashionSpot
We Love Hijab
Hijabi Style

And lastly some images from Hijab House, a Sydney based store with desgins inspired by the online Islamic community.

 [All images sourced from the Hijab House website]

Dove vs Greenpeace

 

It's not many people who haven't seen a few of these ads around promoting the idea that beauty can come in all shapes, sizes, colours, ages, etc. I think it's a message that was well overdue and Dove did a beautiful job in pulling it off. I hope it made a difference.

[Images credited to the Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency for Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty]

Interestingly, Greenpeace took elements from Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty and used it to expose the Deforestation in Indonesia which Dove used to contribute to by using Palm Oil in its products. As far as I know, since the Greenpeace Ad, Dove has significantly changed its ingredients or methods to minimise its damage to the planet.

A Few Thoughts

A billboard by Robert Montgomery.

*Image sourced from his website.

Pretty

There is a pretty girl 

on the 

Face 

of the magazine

And 

all I can see 

are my dirty 

hands 

turning the page

-- Jewel, "a night without armor"

Printing on the Rizz' and other Printing Collectives

Last year in May, the Rizzeria (which is a fellow printing collective of the Big Fag) set up residence at the Paper Mill at Angel Place in the city. The Rizz' is smaller than the Big Fag, and it's a Stencil press, not an offset press. It has its own unique quality and works in a similar way with colour separating.

 

[Rizzeria flyer for its Open Printing Studio]

 

Lucas paid for me to do a small workshop on the Rizz' on making "zines", so I colour separated and put together a few old photographs and digital work for a makeshift 'zine.

This is what I mean by colour separation:

The right image printed in black and the left image printed in red ended up like this (I like how the minor mis-registration of the hat creates an interesting 3D effect):

I printed on two different kinds of paper, and used a 'zine making template the volunteers at the Rizz' gave me. It was a fairly standard and easy to use template, but there are many templates out there, you just have to find them or even create your own, I've seen interesting ones that even fold out into a spiral.

 My 'zine was printed like this on both sides (so it can flip inside out) using teal, black and red. It ended up looking like this:

Another printing collective called Blood and Thunder exists, use a machine similar to the Rizzeria, except I believe it can print two colours at the same time. Mickie Quick works both at Blood and Thunder and The Big Fag Press.

Here are some images of the Blood and Thunder press (as you can see compared to the Big Fag, it's tiny!!):

*Blood & Thunder images taken from theblackmail.com.au.

We printed our Green Bans Art Walk flyer on Blood and Thunder:

Craig Kernow who works at Blood and Thunder (I haven't met him I've just seen a lot of these examples), has a signature technique where he colour separates a black and white image into approximately 50% another colour and tweaks around with the overlay in Photoshop. It produces a beautiful effect:

 *Image scanned from Performance Space's Publication POINT #3 April/ May 2011.

 I tried to replicate the effect on the Rizz' here but I don't think I've quite got the technique down. If I ever meet Kernow, I'll be sure to ask him, but a magician may not reveal his secrets!

*All images are my scanned artworks or artworks in progress unless expressely mentioned.

"Recorders" by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

In the Situational City subject in 2010, Lucas gave his lecture on the topic Relational Aesthetics, which I later wrote this essay on. The basic explanation for Relational Aesthetics, is art or design that incorporates its audience into its outcome. One of the artists I used for that essay Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has a current exhibition at the MCA called "Recorders", which is audience-inclusive art in a nutshell. I really liked the exhibition so I thought I'd put up some of my photos and explain some of the artworks.

This particular artwork involves the audience pressing their finger into a slot and waiting while the machine records your heartbeat. The image of your fingerprint then comes up and pulses to the beat of your heart. Each image moves along when a new person submits their fingerprint and the room displays some several thousand fingerprints of the most recent participants. (mine's the one with the purple heart).

Interestingly everyone has a unique fingerprint, yet when lined up next to each other, how similar they all seem.

This work involves a room filled with low level lights allowing visitors to create shadows large and small. Behind the shadows actual pictures of the audience are taken and displayed behind the shadows at random.

 This work involves typing a short question onto a keyboard which then gets sent to a number of little screens displaying jumbled up sentences which are odd but sometimes slightly insightful.

This artwork is merely a room filled with self-retracting tape measures mechanised to rise into the air as you walk past. They eventually fall over and are pulled back into the coil, only to start all over again.

This work records your voice at one ends and replays what you recorded, lighting itself up along the way and jumbling your voice with those of previous participants. 

 This work is a room filled with microphones of various heights. When you speak into a microphone, your message is recorded and played back to you as well as the message of a previous participant. Some of the ones I got were children singing, someone telling me to feel beautiful today, some guy beatboxing and another advertising their website. According to the MCA worker minding this work, there have been a few upset participants who heard something offfensive or rude.

 This work was also based on the pulse of the participants. It required you to hold your hands around two bars which measured your heartbeat and then a lightbulb above you began flickering at this rhythm. The room was filled with about a hundred lightbulbs all with their own rhythm.

Finally this work is a conveyor belt requesting the audience to "Empty their Pockets". The objects placed on the belt move through a scanner, and then once picked up the images remain projected among other scanned objects from previous participants.

Overall, I really liked the interactivity of the exhibition - it was almost like something out of the Powerhouse museum, and even a person without specific art appreciation could enjoy the technology.


*All images are mine of the Recorders exhibition at the MCA.