DANIEL THOMAS TURNS 80

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Happy Birthday Daniel!

recently...

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Internationale Universelle Generale View

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Another opening, another show. And another card to tell the tale.

The previous postcard was from the first Venice Biennale, 1895.

This time it will be Paris and the Exposition Universelle of 1900.

As always, who's in and who's out constructs the larger exposé, whether Esposizione Internationale (Venice) or Exposition Universelle (Paris). Below are the National Pavilions that made the cut for Paris 1900.

bLOGOS/HA HA regards these with a certain lost-in-space curiosity, especially at this time when project Australia has just announced there is to be a new\different|other/Australia(n) projection-space for the next Venice Biennale.

Maybe, in line with Australia's current immigration self-portrait, the next Australian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale could be "sited offshore" at either Christmas Island or Nauru (Howard Government; endorsed by present Abbott Opposition) or at Timor-Leste, New Guinea or Malaysia (Gillard Government).

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At bLOGOS/HA HA we've long appreciated the over-ma(r)king palimpsestry of Arnulf Rainer. Below is the cover of a recent book that surveys Rainer's practice, epitomised here by a handmade bloodcolour markover & signature.

With that in mind, here is the earlier mentioned 1900 postcard, a Vue Generale of the Exposition Universelle, overmarked with a shitearthcolour brushstroke & signature (R. Appert).

click image to enlarge

click image to enlarge

On the other side the same fine pen addresses all this to

Mademoiselle Betsy Castreman
76 rue des Brasseurs
à Mamur
Belgique

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exhibition announcement

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The fine art of the exhibition announcement. Something already disappearing as many galleries defer to email announcements.

Here's one from the heap, from 1895. Something on the back of which one might pen an account to another.



Something for a stamp, for an obliteration. Something to be sent, to be delivered, to be received.



Something to be kept, perhaps, to be put somewhere ...



... to show someone sometime.

Prima Esposizione
Internationale d' Arte
della Citta di Venezia • 1895

click to enlarge

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Australian artists at 2011 Venice Biennale

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From Buddhism's enlightenment project (see yesterday's blog)
we return again to the Venice Biennale.

The overall title of the 2011 Biennale di Venezia is
ILLUMInazioni – ILLUMInations

La Biennale di Venezia is one of the world’s most important forums for the dissemination and illumination of current developments in international art – Bice Curiger stated. The title of the 54th International Art Exhibition, ILLUMInations, literally draws attention to the importance of such endeavours in a globalized world. As the biggest and oldest Biennale, la Biennale di Venezia has always been buoyed by an international spirit, and even more so now in an age in which artists themselves have become multifaceted, discerning migrants and cultural tourists”.

“ILLUMInations emphasizes the intuitive insight and the illumination of thought that is fostered by an encounter with art and its ability to sharpen the tools of perception – the director underlined. While the last Biennale ‘Making Worlds’ highlighted constructive creativity, ILLUMInations will focus on the ‘light’ of the illuminating experience, on the epiphanies that come with intercommunicative, intellectual comprehension. The Age of Enlightenment also resonates in ILLUMInations, testifying to the enduring vibrancy of its legacy”.

- from La Biennale di Venezia website

Australian artists participated strongly in this year's Biennale.
As well as Hani Armanious's The Golden Thread at the official Australian Pavilion ("one of the best" - Alain Seban, President of the Centre Georges Pompidou) and the three artists presented by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art during the vernissage, there were also a number of other notable Oz contributions.

One of these was an off-site domestic-style pavilion by Theatre of the Actors of Regard. It is a direct and literal response to the Biennale's ILLUMInation theme.



Using a revolutionary new sight-sensing paint technology, the set's signage is engineered to register, amplify (feedback) and return any gaze directed onto it. This produces in the observer an unexpected mind-concentrating effect, as if blinded with one's own light/sight/projection capability.

We see in the image above the word illuminate "blissed out by the search light of the mind" (as described by T.A.R.). Similarly below, and elsewhere on the set.

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interconnected

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What a pleasure to arrive at the tram stop opposite Young & Jacksons and see there Australian Tibetan families, with parents and grand-parents in traditional clothing, on their way to the teachings of the Dalai Lama.

At 9.20 this morning we were welcomed to the Melbourne Convention Centre for the third and final day of His Holiness' presentation of Shantideva's A Bodhisattva's Way of Life, and a further welcome was extended "to the 28,000 who are with us online". Internet access to this event was only announced a couple of days ago. Open universe(ity) interconnectedness...

CAST OFF

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Larissa Kosloff's plaster cast is now off, as reported at the ACCA Venice Biennale blog.



Cast off your ...



... and be ( your wish here ) !



The ACCA blog references certain works by 20th century European and U.S. artists :

Manzoni whose signature assigned status to human forms and scatology; the history (legacy…ok sorry, we are done now) of sculpture which marries to the cast from Duchamp to Nauman and beyond

"Laresa Kosloff lives and works in Melbourne, Australia."
as described at her website.

There are local, Melbourne references that might also be invoked. It was Barry Humphries' dadaist acts in early-1950s Melbourne that first came to mind, hearing of Laresa's Venice project.

Clive James :

Still a schoolboy in Sydney, I heard about these daring adventures only later, but everybody in Australia got to hear about them eventually. Apparently there was a progressive breakfast, in which Humphries, riding towards Melbourne University on a train, was handed a new course through the carriage window at each station by an accomplice. He particularly favoured public transport because of the captive audience. Having had his right leg specially immobilised in a large white plaster cast (the immense trouble he will take to get an effect has been a trademark throughout his career), he would sit in a crowded railway carriage with the glaringly encased leg sticking out into the aisle until everyone on board was aware of nothing else. Then an accomplice would come along and jump on it.

from Approximately in the Vicinity of Barry Humphries
at CliveJames.com

Throughout his career, the Melbourne artist John Brack appears to have been deeply interested in act and action. (To be and to do). In mere movement, including stillness and the point-0f-collapse, and in grand movements. As a genre formalist, the genre varieties of still life (flowers, various objects including implements and instruments, nudes, portraits, meta-arrangements) through (running children, horse racing, The Car, dancers, gymnasts) to the great History Painting The Battle (1981-83) and beyond. From the conformist linearity of Collins St, 5p.m. (1955) to the later (1980s-90s) complex, questioning, confrontational, flows and organisations of pens and pencils.

These comments arise out a long admiration of Brack's work, and seeing it, his world view there again in yesterday's ACCA photo of Larissa Kosloff. In a cast, on crutches, in panto, inside and outside the coming and going of Art World Venice, 5.pm.




John Brack
Still life with Artificial Leg
1963

Theatre of the Actors of Regard (1998)

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\ L /

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Laresa Kosloff is another of the ACCA team at large among the Venice Biennale vernissagers. Before leaving Australia she had her right leg set in plaster.

We reckon it's a hoot of a thing to do. So loaded with (possible) allusions and such simple clever fun.

Yesterday, this image was posted on the ACCA blog.



Laresa is verbing what everyone at the Biennale is doing during these preview days, when they are not running, exchanging cards and partying. Laresa, looking at, regarding.

On the plaster can be seen a number of the inscriptions she has collected from famous artists and other Art World signatories.

Here's Hany Armanious adding his contribution. Hany is Australia's official representative in the 2011 Venice Biennale.



Another ACCA photo tells the broader story well.

Everyone on the go...

Larissa vertical

everyone else at an angle...

falling forward...
toward...
...

Looking again at the first photo, it appears that already another inscription has been added to the plaster.



Our technicians have now enhanced the heal section of this photo :
the latest inscription reads

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Your Response Here

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After yesterday's L'Homme sandwich (Bergeret, 1904), an email today from ACCA delivers this image of Anastasia Klose at the vernissage of the 2011 Venice Biennale. L'Femme sandwich.
La Future Mariée sandwich.


click here to enlarge image
click here to read the ACCA blog

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The epibLOG to the previous post was the lyrics of Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite. John Lennon wrote them as a response to a nineteenth century Pablo Fanque's Circus poster. We were reminded of this yesterday ( -1 June 2011- ) by a sandwich board list of events for a 1 June 1904 Grande Représentation.

Today, as we recall attending the 1988 Bienale di Venezia Vernissage - that Grande Représentation of the World Art tribes - as we receive latest reports from there and imagine the present spectacle, these lyrics sing anew. All together now...

Bienale di Venezia
Vernissage : 1 - 3 June 2011

for the benefit of Mr. Kite
There will be a show tonight on trampoline
The Hendersons will all be there
Late of Pablo-Fanques is there, what a scene
Over men and horses hoops and garters
Lastly through a hogshead of real fire!
In this way Mr. K. will challenge the world!
The celebrated Mr. K.
Performs his feat on Saturday at Bishopsgate
The Hendersons will dance and sing
As Mr. Kite flies through the ring don't be late
Mrs. K assures the public
Their production will be second to none
And of course Henry The Horse dances the waltz!
(Circus organ music)
The band begins at ten to six
When Mr. K. performs his tricks without a sound
And Mr. H. will demonstrate
Ten somersets he'll undertake on solid ground
Having been some days in preparation
A splendid time is guaranteed for all
And tonight Mr. Kite is topping the bill.
(Circus organ music.)

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite Lyrics
composed by John Lennon
credited to Lennon/McCartney
recorded by The Beatles, 1967

Your Message Here

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We are the sandwich men.

Give us
This day
Our daily read.

1 June 1904 - 1 June 2011


For the price of a postcard, Bergeret's L'Homme sandwich
(an incarnation of the Supreme Goddess as Void, with projection space for image) offers the public this personalised projection-space plus its carrier. See ye this! See ye this!

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What a fabulous 1 June 1904 evening of dazzlements the writer has listed.

How fortunate the invitee, Monsieur François Jaupitre.



Is it a personal enticement to Monsieur, we wonder, with belly dancing and much more, written by the Tiber Tigresse herself? Or is it one of many, so written, and sent to a soiree set?

Ah, reminiscences of

for the benefit of Mr. Kite
There will be a show tonight on trampoline
The Hendersons will all be there
Late of Pablo-Fanques is there, what a scene
Over men and horses hoops and garters
Lastly through a hogshead of real fire!
In this way Mr. K. will challenge the world!
The celebrated Mr. K.
Performs his feat on Saturday at Bishopsgate
The Hendersons will dance and sing
As Mr. Kite flies through the ring don't be late
Mrs. K assures the public
Their production will be second to none
And of course Henry The Horse dances the waltz-!
(Circus organ music)
The band begins at ten to six
When Mr. K. performs his tricks without a sound
And Mr. H. will demonstrate
Ten somersets he'll undertake on solid ground
Having been some days in preparation
A splendid time is guaranteed for all
And tonight Mr. Kite is topping the bill.
(Circus organ music.)

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite Lyrics
Composed by John Lennon; credited to Lennon/McCartney;
recorded by The Beatles, 1967