BEIGE ∆ BEIGE ∆ BEIGE

R I C K Y

2012-01-01T13:18:00.002+11:00

G R A N DC H A S M

2011-12-01T20:28:00.003+11:00

Photographs LUCY PARAKHINA

'Grand Chasm' is KENZIE LARSEN, WILLIAM MANSFIELD & EDDIE SHARP.

Showing now–11 December, Firstdraft Gallery, Surry Hills, Sydney.

S P A R EN I N EM I N U T E S

2011-05-05T21:47:00.003+10:00

T O M M A S OS A R T O R I

2010-04-23T10:20:00.004+10:00

Images from the series 'Breaking The Waves'.

TOMMASO SARTORI.

M YW O R K H O L E

2010-04-16T18:22:00.003+10:00

Thanks for visiting ZOLTAN!

S S S L O WL I I I I I F E/ M I X T A P E

2010-03-22T09:12:00.006+11:00

A new mixtape collating 50 minutes of my slow-time favourites. Featuring The Fall, Free, Anna Domino, Can, Psychic tv, Daevid Allen, Neu! & more...

Download: SSSLOW LIIIIIFE

01. Spirit — Daevid Allen & Euterpe
02. Just Drifting — Psychic TV
03. With The Day Comes Dawn — Anna Domino
04. Free Me — Free
05. Sköna Låten — Solar Plexus
06. Before The Moon Falls — The Fall
07. Adventures Close To Home — The Raincoats
08. Dänzing — Neu!
09. No Go Go — Psychic TV
10. Wattwurm — Liliental
11. Unfinished — Can
12. Armée Guinéenne — Bembeya Jazz National

B A B A KR A D B O Y

2010-03-16T17:17:00.003+11:00

From the 'FAILURE' project for BIDOUN #11

From RADBOY's website:

b. 1983, Tehran Iran
BABAK RADBOY lives in New York City where he works as the creative director of BIDOUN magazine and a freelance art-director. Meanwhile he attends to a large and eccentric archive of books and magazines, which are essential to his practice as an artist. Currently his work is focused on a myopic inventory of the signs of the 20th century as they appear in print. Initially gathered as material for collage, his collection and his output has shifted in an effort to consider images, books, and printed ephemera without regard to their rhetorical, representational, or textual content. He aims to use source documents as a raw material in a manner more associated with sculpture and painting.

BABAK RADBOY.

A N D E R SC L A U S E N

2010-03-03T12:57:00.004+11:00

From ANDERS CLAUSEN, HOTEL, London
10 Feb—27 Mar, 2010

Press Release: A FILE RATHER THAN A TEXT?

A recent unscientific survey in my head suggested that fewer and fewer people want to grow up to be art forgers or computer hackers. Why? Are we just too busy being vaguely fascinated by our so terribly nice-looking tools? Are there already new specific words for states like the numb distraction you feel when you can’t find a file on your desk top in an instant? When you are so used to an interface that you don’t think about it any more even though you look at it thousands of times a day? When you can’t even tell the difference between it and you? When you sit at a screen all day long and it really does feel like your very own super-connected personal window on the world as you want to see it, or for what happens when the interface suddenly but inevitably changes? Art generally feels more comfortable with obsolescent media and conspiracy theories. For art wanting some kind of critical distance on progress, old out-dated technologies offer solace––handwriting, the typewriter, Super 8, handmade collages, screen-prints, photographs you printed yourself. It’s easy to forget that some classic Pop art (before digital windows popped-up) once looked bitingly new––like ironic, ultra-cynical, visual feedback embracing the enemy and loving him hard. Mimicry and camp repetition thankfully remain both the cruellest and most effective strategies in social interactions involving encoded, oblique but omnipotent power relations. You are the consumer, the user and we have designed places for you to feel happy and to get things done. So what’s wrong? A few years back a Singaporean artzine designed by a group of art graduates satirically suggested to its readers that they should put away their expensive laptops during studio visits in order to seem more authentic and less spoiled. In the last years I find it hard to think of a studio visit without one. That’s not necessarily bad but maybe it’s time to own up to our tools and our deeply ambivalent relationship to them. Don’t question my production, my post-production, my continual interruptions, my worm-like digressions. We all face questions relating to formats and fitting nearly everything we care to do or imagine into one which rarely works whatever operating system or programs you happen to be using. Art history has many windows opened. I wonder what abstract artist HANS HOFFMAN would think of ANDERS CLAUSEN’s screenshot series? Some of which, by the way, are straight up replica lies or reconstructions of the eerily friendly, the overfamiliar and mega-strange, and others, which are both appropriations and confessions. Pushed and pulled this way and that by various kinds of subjective urgencies whether sexual, financial, professional, micro-social. Each formal scheme overlays others. Something else—let’s admit that most collages don’t look like collages any more they are much too sneaky, beyond doubt—that’s what we want isn’t it, not the past and not more realness but far, far less? Translucent, seamless, beckoning, rupture-less, untouchable and easy. Most images we know are pumped up. When you scroll down where are you going? When you scroll up again is everything still there?

Via HOTEL, London.

P A U LT S C H I N K E L ' SI N N E R T U B E

2010-02-11T13:34:00.009+11:00

PAUL TSCHINKEL'S INNERTUBE; Manhatten Cable Television, 1974—1984.

See also: ART/NEW YORK.

M YT E L E V I S I O NB R O K E

2010-01-19T20:44:00.004+11:00

Maybe Shambo ate something she wasn't supposed to.

AG O O DF I N D

2010-01-08T20:41:00.008+11:00

Was desperately browsing a mid-north coast newsagency for entertainment yesterday, and came across this Simpsons TREEHOUSE OF HORROR comic, bizarrely (and amazingly) guest edited by SAMMY HARKHAM of KRAMERS ERGOT fame??

What's even better, is that it features my all-time favourite comic-iser C.F., as well as heavy weights WILL SWEENEY, and BEN JONES (of PAPER RAD), just to name a couple... This thing is hilarious, very dark, and weird... Pretty ballsy of MATT GROENING to have published the thing—not sure how his younger comic fan-base has taken it?

It is well and truly worth finding & collecting though. Great job to SAMMY HARKHAM for putting it together so well. Look for it in the kids section of your local newsagent!!

Excerpt from BEN JONES' 'Boo-tleg' 10-page strip.

'THE SIMPSONS' TREEHOUSE OF HORROR 15'
Guest Edited by Sammy Harkham, 50 Pages
© 2009 Bongo Entertainment, Inc.

L I O N E LB A W D E N

2009-10-04T18:36:00.005+11:00

'Sweet Talker' 2009

'The Clouds and Rain' 2008

Australian artist, LIONEL BAWDEN.

H E A R T :M A G I CM A N

2009-08-27T00:05:00.004+10:00

A T E L I E RB O W - W O W

2009-08-14T23:22:00.009+10:00

Japanese Architects Yoshiharu Tsukamoto & Momoyo Kaijima = ATELIER BOW-WOW.

V I V I A N ES A S S E N

2009-07-31T10:19:00.005+10:00

Dutch photographer VIVIANE SASSEN.

P O W RM S T R S3

2009-05-09T15:38:00.001+10:00

The 3rd installment of C.F.'s POWR MSTRS is due to be released in November 2009, but they need your help to make it happen... Pre order from PICTURE BOX INC now to select your bonus silk screen or drawing - the power is yours.

S O N G SA R ET H EB E S TP E O P L E

2009-05-07T17:26:00.003+10:00

The first songs I knew, got into, remembered without trying were all culled from the few audio cassettes my father owned that resided between the wheelhouse of his fishing boat, The Marie Glen Valena, and the glove compartment of our Ford Falcon. The combination of a moving vehicle and the right (frequently wrong) song was like extra company, the neutral family member no one disagreed with. All those albums: Tom Waits, The Heart of Saturday Night; The Eagles Greatest Hits; AC/DC’s Back in Black and Dire Straits, Love Over Gold, are time machines for me, with individual songs containing ‘adult’ emotions and narratives that I’ve only just caught up with. My brothers and I knew from The Eagles, for example, that “city girls just seem to find out early, how to open doors with just a smile” long before we had any real reference for the words city or girls.

My grandparents only listened to opera and classical music, and generally only in the afternoons when they rested or in the car when running errands. I’d be talking with my brother, asking questions, and my grandfather would say, “Ricky, do you like music? You like good music right?” and I’d say, “Yeah, I like music,” and he’d get this stupid grin and say “Well shut up then!” This exchange happened every other day.

The morning I received the news that he’d died, I just went back to bed broken and played Simon Joyner’s Songs for the New Year over and over. It seemed like the only record I owned that was melancholy enough to keep me company, keep me as miserable as I wanted to be, and help me get out all the water before I had to face anyone. Listening now it seems more optimistic lyrically – the words just happen to be moored to music that keeps them down. It’s as if the recording itself, after failing to rise, has conceded to staying in bed for the day.

"I’d like to lie down on the ocean
And clear the city from my lungs
Sometimes it rains while I’m drifting
But then I’m dried off by the sun"

When something’s done you need a song. When I worked for my brother Lobster fishing, he would blast the music across the deck from the wheelhouse only after the last pots had been collected/baited and returned to the sea, and it was time to stream home. By that time the tapes were long gone and it was all radio. I’d hose down the deck mats and stack all the gear away neatly at breakneck speed for the reward of extracting myself out of my oilskins and boots, so I could sit up in the wheelhouse with the hum of the engine and radio hits tempered by the summer glare and the knowledge that the rest of the day was mine to burn. So I loved the radio, forgave the obnoxious morning banter between songs, allowed it to soothe the morning’s exhaustion and fill the remote silence in the cabin between Pierre and I. One morning the song Zombie by The Cranberries came on, the volume escalating, and I turned back from the deck to see my brother at the wheel banging his head back and forth out of time…the hilarious movements of a reformed metal head adrift with responsibility.

"What’s in your head, in your head?
Zombie, zombie, zombie"

I’m not even sure if it’s okay to listen to the Arcade Fire as a contemporary adult, but my wife started this tradition years back – of washing them through our speakers to mark the end of a struggle with a particular painting, or celebrate the completion of a group of work for an exhibition. Occasionally the ritual is applied to my studio accomplishments also, and yes, sometimes there is dancing. Of late The Fire has been replaced with Phoenix’s new album, in an attempt to bring summer nearer. But generally anything with an overtly triumphant tone, an uncomfortable uplifting feeling works.

"People say that your dreams
are the only things that save ya.
Come on baby in our dreams,
we can live on misbehaviour."

Back when I was reaching out, feeling out the prospect of this perfectly serviceable friendship turning into something more romantic, I reverted back to the mix tape (actually a mix cd) as messenger. In a bold move I threw everything into that pot, everything short of ‘I just called to say….’ After all I didn’t write the songs and couldn’t be held accountable for them giving the wrong impression were the message not reciprocated. Winter by the Rolling Stones from the album Goat’s Head Soup was the first track on the compilation, and it was also repeated at the end of the mix. Call it maximum glitch, or the Tonight’s the Night approach*. At the time every line seemed an appropriate reconstitution of my own desires. Enduring winter in London was killing me. There’s a real longing in Jagger’s delivery that comes from the exhaustion of being without – waiting for the seasonal obstacle to pass in anticipation of a new cycle, a new someone to occur. I could never decide if the words were ‘sometimes I wanna wrap my cord around you’ or ‘coat around you’ (I’m now pretty sure it’s coat); in any case ‘sometimes I wanna head to California, sometimes I wanna keep you warm, warm, warm’ follows, the point being you had to be right beside someone in order to provide that kind of warmth. I never owned up to purposefully repeating the song, dodging the subject until the magic of the mix had taken hold and the confession could become part of a more permanent (LA) story.

"And I hope it’s sure gonna be a long hot summer,
and a lot of love will be burning bright."

Some records arrive at the right moment both personally and collectively. At the time of writing I’ve been searching for some resolution to seemingly irreconcilable conflicts within my family, and the whole time Bill Callahan’s latest album Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle has been guiding me through. A prisoner of my car stereo, I return to my car, turn the ignition over and the album is automatically there, “you again” I think. Calm and direct, it has managed to keep me floating above the weirdness, perhaps because the album seems to be a personal evaluation/evolution of sorts, Callahan singing back to himself from a distance, leaving me thinking in the space between his well chosen words. I’ve also been reading Reveries of the Solitary Walker by Rousseau, and finding parallels with Callahan’s guarded and clever message – a message that’s always seemed so independent from the necessity of peers and the charms of conventional communication. It asks as many questions as it makes statements and in doing so activates the listener as participant, as accessory to the production. For me it holds a unique currency within the Smog archive. There’s something more inclusive in the tone this time around, a frankness to the lyrics promoting a simple wisdom without leaning too heavily on irony to remain intact. The personal played plural.

"I used to be darker, then I got lighter,
then I got dark again"

* Alternate versions of the song Tonight’s the Night, open and end Neil Young’s album of the same title released in 1975.

Ricky Swallow
Los Angeles, April 2009

— Taken from THIS LONG CENTURY

S I G NO FT H ET I M E S

2009-05-04T19:09:00.003+10:00

Thanks for the heads up IMOGENE.

L I F E

2009-04-17T01:57:00.004+10:00

S T A I R W A YT OS T A R D O M

2009-04-14T23:11:00.007+10:00

'Stairway To Stardom' was a public-access variety show hosted by Italian Brooklynite Frank Masi, aired in New York City from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.

Bleak, disturbing, amateur and hilarious...

STAIRWAY TO STARDOM (Youtube library)

Stills from performances by MIKE WEISS (1984) and PRECIOUS TAFT (1983)

2 :U N C O M M O NA C C E S S O R I E S

2009-03-31T09:17:00.004+11:00

Jewelery/accessories project by LYN & TONY. Available from The Corner Shop, Dilettante (Perth), and Colette, Paris.

C O L O U RM EB E I G E0 0 1/ M I X T A P E

2009-03-11T09:50:00.006+11:00

Just completed a mixtape, compiling an hour of some really amazing songs. It's a bit spacey, a bit proggy, a bit coastal, and a tiny bit industrial...

Download Link: 'COLOUR ME BEIGE 001'

01. Johan's Brother Told Me - Machiavel
02. Rings On Her Finger - The Servants
03. Rage & Fascination - Cristina
04. Spiral - Vangelis
05. F.I.A.T. - Laibach
06. Theme From Tron - Wendy Carlos
07. Maquillage - Andy Summers & Robert Fripp
08. Foreign Affair - Mike Oldfield
09. Don't Turn To Stone - Amon Düül II
10. Every Other Day 2 - John Fiddy
11. Hello Beach Girls - Richard Schneider Jr.
12. I'm The Fool (Part 1 & 2) - Joe Bataan
13. Low Rider - War
14. Illusion - Richard Schneider Jr.
15. Midnight, The Stars and You - Ray Noble & His Orchestra

R E E DB A R R O W

2009-02-17T15:45:00.007+11:00

New York Artist REED BARROW...

'Meteor'

'You And I Will Be Together In The End' documentation still (for video documentation, CLICK HERE)

'Mystification Apparatus'

W E N D YC A R L O S

2008-12-30T09:45:00.006+11:00

I've recently discovered the works of American composer and a pioneer of electronic music, WENDY CARLOS. Having produced some amazing soundtracks for the likes of Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange', 'The Shining', and Disney's 'Tron', Carlos also brought the Moog synthesizer to fame in 1968 with her 3 x Grammy winning album 'Switched-On Bach' - a demonstration of modern electronic technologies working as genuine instruments.

Eccentric in her nature, Carlos' work has a dark ambiance, and her prominent use of synthesizers combined with whimsical symphonic orchestra has helped to create some really memorable (and scary) music. Right up there with Howard Shore as one of my favourites.

I've posted a short but great example of Wendy's work below, featuring on the soundtrack to Steven Lisberger's 'Tron' (1982).

Wendy Carlos - 'Tron Scherzo'

C . F .P O W RM A S T R S

2008-11-27T10:04:00.010+11:00

Words cannot describe my appreciation for the underground comic artist C.F. I've become an out-of-control collector of any & all of his works, be them prints or comics... His epic fantasies have featured in (and on the cover of) KRAMER'S ERGOT, while he has published several titles with PICTUREBOX INC, including the beautifully crafted POWR MASTRS Vol. 1 & 2.

POWR MASTRS chronicles a world of science-fiction and fantasy, driven by wildly sexual & violent adventures, and a quest for power. Some characters within 'Known New China', include Mosfet the Warlock, a form-defying creator who's temperament could induce life or death, and Tetradyne Cola, a systematic dreamer with a cola habit. Amongst a world of other darkly strange and wonderful characters, they interact with a humerously mundane dialogue. Genders are blurred, psychology and physicality is tested, and POWR MASTRS is my favourite thing in the whole world!

You can get C.F. products from the PICTUREBOX INC STORE.

Scans of 'POWR MASTRS Vol. 2', C.F.
Published by Picture Box Inc. © 2008.

B L A Z I N GL A Z E R

2008-10-22T16:06:00.006+11:00

BLAZING LAZER are a Sound Design studio based in Los Angeles, California. Creating music and experimental video, Blazing Lazer employs magic, mystery, modern technology and alot of personality into their projects, being commissioned by heavyweaights like MTV, Nike, VH1, and Weiden & Kennedy Tokyo to create sound bytes and original compositions.

'Wet'
Video taken from BLAZINGLAZER.COM

D E S K T O PJ U N E

2008-08-19T01:09:00.006+10:00

But hanging around on my desktop until August...
AGATES & GEODES!

Speaking of hanging around, it's time to get rid of all those unecessary and ugly fonts that have accumulated over the years; spreading far into the depths of my computer. It's at the stage where having 7000 fonts isn't a good thing anymore - DA FONT, I blame you, (but I'll always love you).

M A R CD E N N I S

2008-07-29T00:37:00.006+10:00

MARC DENNIS is an artist out of New York, and has been exhibiting his work since the early 90's. His highly-rendered realism has an underlying irony that will escape the viewer without knowing the painting's title.

I came across Dennis' work on a blog which I refuse to reveal (it's too good to share), but I was immediately absorbed in the meticulous detail of his works. Sadly, the images below don't do his works justice.

'Seascape with Machine Gunfire' Oil on Masonite, 2002

'American Horse with Tabriz' Oil on Panel, 2003

M A X I M EB U E C H I

2008-07-24T16:20:00.006+10:00

Swiss multi-talent MAXIME BUECHI, creative & creator behind avant garde tattoo journal Sang Bleu, has a website. Such an amazing body of work! After reading SANG BLEU, I was inspired to google a possible portfolio, and low & behold - it's incredible! Really enjoy his editorial design, not to mention his tattoo art.

Is there anyone out there who'd like a random tatt? I'd be more than happy to oblige.

I once helped a girl out with one - she had gone to Jerusalem on a holiday, and wanted something to commemorate the trip... so I stupidly came back to her with her name 'Julie' somewhat resembling Ancient Hebrew. It looked terrible, but she loved it. It's now on her ankle. For life.

Anyway, Maxime's work is fantastic. Check out his work HERE.

T H I SI SS A N D. C O M

2008-07-10T19:54:00.009+10:00

THISISSAND.COM changes the pixels on your screen into sand, that can be used as building blocks for cosmic landscapes, psychedelic pyramids, and anything else you can really imagine. Just hold down the mouse button, and let it flowwwwww.

I N N E RV I S I O N S !

2008-06-30T18:14:00.011+10:00

or is this post really about shower steam...

S A M U E LH O D G E

2008-06-30T17:25:00.011+10:00

Talented Sydney photographer and all-round lovely guy, SAMUEL HODGE, has just released his book 'Sometimes I Just Need Quiet'. A collection of beautifully candid images from his life and the world around him. You can buy a copy of his book for $15 HERE...

'SOMETIMES I JUST NEED QUIET'
Samuel Hodge, loose-leaf, 32 Pages, 2008
Design: Mikie Inglis

K E N N E T HA N G E R

2008-06-30T14:43:00.014+10:00

Came across (by chance, at a bookstore) this amazing director, opening up a whole new world of cinema to me... I am so out of the loop.

'LUCIFER RISING' is the most visually stimulating thing I've seen... The soundtrack (created by Bobby BeauSoleil, a convicted member of the Manson family) just adds to the psychadelic/egypto/weird-out factor. Reading the DVD introductions alone, by Gus Van Sant and Martin Scorsese, shows how influential Kenneth Anger has been in 'contempor-arty' culture.

It's funny, after seeing Kenneth Anger's films, I've noticed quite obvious influences in many direct interests of mine, such as graphics by clothing gods (and personel heroes) PAM, and the music video to 'INTERPLANETARY MUSIC' by Mickey Moonlight (Midnight Mike).

I'm in love!

'THE FILMS OF KENNETH ANGER: VOLUME II'
Fantoma Films, 2007

- Still from Kenneth Anger's 'Lucifer Rising' 1981

E B A YF A C E S !

2008-06-17T21:57:00.002+10:00

Try making your own!
(Which I'm sure you could do alot better.)

B O O KO FT H EW E E K

2008-05-30T10:57:00.009+10:00

Definitely my most interesting purchase of the week... Was book shopping for a new project yesterday, and came across this fascinating paperback, what a cover! Never has Helvetica looked so appropriate.

GREEK HOMOSEXUALITY
K.J. Dover, paperback, 246 pages, 1989

J U NO S O N ! !

2008-05-28T10:27:00.005+10:00

Wow, so Jun Oson immediately reminds me of longtime favourite Keeichi Tanaami (everyone should own a part of his BLOW UP series).

But this is about JUN...

J A N I SP Ö N I S C H/ J A N I S L A N D

2008-04-10T17:51:00.013+10:00

"Space is a product of the people that live in it."

JANIS PÖNISCH works in three dimensional and virtual design, art and architecture. Organic movement, ergonomic lines and the most ingenius forms of technology help define his creations...

His experiments delve into the concept of interaction between people and their environment.

I love (and share) his passion for organic shapes (see 'moving matter' and 'cream')

JANISLAND.COM

J O NH E I S M A N ' SG O TI T .

2008-03-26T14:48:00.002+11:00

B A R B A P A P A SI NA F R I C A

2008-03-19T09:17:00.000+11:00

L O V E L YD E B R I S

2008-03-18T18:17:00.005+11:00

still from 'debris'

D I S A P P O I N T M E N T

2008-03-18T18:12:00.003+11:00

21st century disappointment.

J U S TT H EB L O G I N N I N G . . .

2008-02-27T00:38:00.003+11:00

Just another blog. My first post. Fantastic.

Soon to begin my tribute to Giovanni Battista Belzoni, entitled 'Bruiser Belzoni'. A light & predictably twisted (yet somewhat pointless) adventure into the history of one of Egypt's greatest discoverers. I can't wait. You will have to.

Let the garbage flow!