Feature: Troy Innocent :: Field Of Play (for The Program)

Troy Innocent :: Field Of Play
By Michael Scott
VIC | 12.06.2007

Walking towards Digital Harbour in Melbourne’s Docklands is something of a journey into a barren wilderness. Yes, it is a weekday night but, even so, except for the few lone businessmen trekking towards their high-rise apartments, the buffeting winds seem to have blown everyone else away.

Tucked away down an alley, the bold green, blue and orange icons glowing from Troy Innocent’s latest urban art installation, Field of Play were commissioned to draw people into the growing technology precinct. The lights are bright, but the work’s attraction goes far beyond the reach of the cryptic symbols, seemingly stamped into the pavement by some ancient extraterrestrial lifeform, because Field of Play’s boundaries extend onto the Internet and into your mobile phone.

Continue reading at The Program...

500 Years of Coquettishness

Someone seems to have set out to trump Michael Jackson's 'Black and White' video by morphing through 500 years of women in Western art.

The result is like a university professor's wet dream. A cavalcade of beauties, all with the same flirtatious smile. It is like walking through the gauntlet at Patong Beach in Phuket, just with fewer breasts. Painters in those times must have had huge egos.

Pretty spectacular, nonetheless.

via Boing Boing

Bogus Norwegian Creates Brilliant Politi-Art

I bumped into these eloquent artworks while researching an article for MCV a couple of months back. They were attached to the end of the Y.E.A.H. HIV information page with the explanation:

Last month the Norwegian diplomat Charung Gollar was asked to present the UN with a graphic showing the main problems in the world in 2004, He presented a set of eight pictures entitled "The Power of Stars" and was applauded for the simplicity of his idea. In spite of having no pretension at all, his work was presented to participate on the Nobel Prize of Politic Marketing.

Unfortunately, this turns out to be a load of bollocks.

The actual title of the works is Meet The World and the artist, Icaro Doria had this to say via BrazilianArtists.net

The magazine Revista Grande Reportagem is a Hard Journalism magazine, on the same line as the Times. The idea was to bring across the concept that the magazine offers profound journalism about topics of real importance to the world of today.
This is how we thought of the concept Meet the World.

We started to research relevant, global, and current facts and, thus, came up with the idea to put new meanings to the colours of the flags. We used real data taken from the websites of Amnesty International and the UNO.

The campaign has been running in Portugal since January 2005. There are eight flags that portray very current topics like the division of opinions about the war in Iraq in the United States, the violence against women in Africa, the social inequality in Brazil, the drug trafficking in Columbia, Aids and malaria in Angola, etc.

With regards to the email presenting the campaign as being done by a Norwegian diplomat, this information is completely wrong. There is no Norwegian diplomat called Charung Gollar, there was no presentation in the UNO, and the campaign is not called ‘The Power of the Stars’. This was all invented and is going round the world via email.

That’s it, basically.

ICARO DORIA

Click through to see larger versions where you can read the captions.

Impressionism The Aussie Way

Let me start with the obligatory apology for posting so infrequently over the past month. The reason is three-fold, and then you get a lovely paper swan!

Now, I'll get into it, typing onehandedly.

Once upon a time, long long ago, I went to the opening of the NGV's latest mega-exhibition, Australian Impressionism. It was an affair crammed to capacity with Victoria's well-preserved elite. In between scoffing down mini pie floaters and quaffing red, we listened to countless speakers paying their respects to the Kulin Nation, despite the fact that if they'd shown up they'd have been turned away at the glass doors.

The endless speeches had one theme: we're so good, nobody refused us a lend of their paintings. (Though that begs the question - why didn't anyone ask to borrow McCubbin's triptych, 'The Pioneers'?)

At least they were telling the truth. The exhibition is impressive and exhaustively covers the careers of McCubbin, Roberts, Condor, Streeton and some token female whose worth they've "discovered".



Walking through the exhibition, the nation building nature of the happy little band of plein-air painters, who were to become known as The Australian Impressionists, is seen in every brush stroke. These images, especially the huge canvases in the final hall are burnt into our consciousness as richly as any mythology.



But it is the quieter, less obviously considered works that shine in this exhibition, the works from around Mentone and the notorious 9x5 panels, the largest collection to be shown since the notorious exhibition.



Go, see for yourself. Can't type anymore... hand tired.

No Answer

You know the drill by now. I end up staying the whole weekend away from my computer and leave you postless. Poor things!

I am still at it, doing the tourist guide thing with one of Andrew's travel buddies from FNQ.

Here is a happy snap to tired you over. It is one of the artworks commissioned by the city to grace one of Melbourne's treasured laneways. It comes installed with six speakers to beep and blip and make telephonously ringy sounds.

NO NECK MONSTERS

NO NECK MONSTERS
Originally uploaded by minkoff.

A cursory search of the Internet coughed up this little specimen.

I don't know if y'al know it but this blog is named after a line said by Elizabeth Taylor in one of my favourite films, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.

minkoff has a whole album over at flikr devoted to collages of old movies and the like. Pounce on over and take a look.

(Upside-Down) Cross Promotion

This is great!

As if in preparation for the Omen remake, Plan 59 have released these fantastic images of kids staring demonically at food.

Bon apetit! (via boingboing)