David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.


29 October 2017

This SplatTARed Regard


Activists Splatter Red Paint on Roosevelt Monument at American Museum of Natural History


The early-morning action, by a new activist group calling itself the Monument Removal Brigade, is the latest in a series of protests demanding the statue’s removal. (article here)
  

 The defaced Teddy Roosevelt statue outside the American 
 Museum of Natural History (photos courtesy Monument 
 Removal Brigade)
  

  NATURALIST : detail of the defaced base of the Teddy 
 Roosevelt statue outside the American Museum of Natural 
 History


Theatre of the Activists of Regard  
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           A Person Looks AA Work Of Art/
           someone looks at something... 
         
           LOGOS/HA HA 


   

25 October 2017

Roll Out The Red Barrel



AFP raids union offices 
Schwartz Media's morning editor, and a former 
editor of Junkee

The Australian Federal Police has raided the Melbourne and Sydney offices of the Australian Workers’ Union as part of an investigation into opposition leader Bill Shorten. Officers carried out the raids at the request of the Registered Organisations Commission, which is investigating whether donations to the federal Labor Party and left-wing activist group GetUp! breached union donations rules. 


The ROC said the raid was justified because “documents relevant to this investigation may be on the premises of the AWU … and those documents may be being interfered with”. Shorten was on GetUp!’s board of directors in 2006 when the AWU made a $100,000 donation to the organisation.


Labor, Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus and AWU national secretary Daniel Walton condemned the raids, with Walton calling them an “extraordinary abuse of police resources” and “a shameful new low for a government already scraping the bottom of the political barrel”. 

Theatre of the Actors of Regard            
The ROC was launched last year in line with recommendations by the royal commission into union corruption.

Buster Keaton            
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           A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
           someone looks at something... 
         
           LOGOS/HA HA 


   

24 October 2017

-OGO-/HA HA


                     Take the L  

                     out of Lover  
                     and it's over

                     Motels (1982)

WORKSHOP

LAUGHTER SESSIONS

Inspired by the Pipilotti Rist: Sip my Ocean exhibition which radiates joy                      and colour, take part in a laughter session at the Museum of Contemporary                  Art (Sydney) and melt your worries away!
Through simple laughter exercises suitable for all ages, learn about the                    many benefits of laughter and its contagious nature. Join these summer                  mood-booster sessions which will energize your body and mind!
Laughter really is the best medicine.
Wednesday 8 November, 6–7pm
(This program will be offered from November 2017 – February 2018,                            find more dates in this series here)
National Centre for Creative Learning, Level 3
Bookings essential
$38 General
$30 Concessions*
$22 MCA Members
Booking fees apply

courtesy MCA (Laughists of TAR)                 























                     Take the S 
                     out of Slaughter
                     and it's laughter
  

                     FIAPCE (1982)


FIAPCE / Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA 


  

19 October 2017

quinterossential viewing


The winner of the 2017 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize of $150,000 was announced yesterday.

Terms and Conditions (2017) 
1. The artist and sitter must be Australian citizens or residents for at least one year prior to 30 August, 2017. 
2. The portrait must be: 
• an original work, painted and owned by the submitting artist; 
• a recognisable likeness of the sitter; 
• painted at least partly from life with the sitter known to the artist and aware of the artist’s intention to enter the 2017 DMNPP 
• completed within 12 months before the Moran Prize’s 2017 closing date; 
• painted in oils, acrylics, watercolours, egg tempera or mixed media; 
• on a suitably prepared surface; 
• essentially two dimensional; 
• a maximum size of width 2 metres by height 2.5 metres, including frame, and a maximum weight of 50 kilograms. 
3. The Prize is acquisitive and the winning portrait immediately becomes the property of the Moran Arts Foundation and part of the Moran Arts Foundation Collection. 

1,130+ artists entered this year's competition
thirty made the semi-final cut
for judgement

.   .   .   .        

We were keen to regard the new work by the young, gifted and Samuel Quinteros.

This is his 2012 Quinteros kabuki sTAR.


 Samuel Quinteros, 働きがいの怒りで2012,
 oil on canvas, 120 x 80 cm


...then, being, off stage, in the mise-en-sne...


 Samuel Quinteros, Laughing, vanishing: A wound in the side
 2016, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 61 cm


Now, for the Moran, from the stage to the tea room, a return of persona, calmer, contemplative, colour subdued, rhetorically reflective...

"Draw all day, all night" : the stages ...

 Underdrawing for self-portrait in ink... here

 Self portrait with tea utensils (work in progress) / acrylic and 
 ink on canvas (base layers) "Song of Seven Cups" by Lú 
 Tóng: "The first cup moistens my lips and throat, the second 
 cup breaks my loneliness, the third cup searches my barren 
 entrail but to find therein some five thousand volumes of odd 
 ideographs. - The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration, all 
 the wrong of life passes away through my pores. At the fifth 
 cup I am purified; the sixth cup calls me to the realms of 
 immortals. The seventh cup ah, but I could take no more! 
 I only feel the breath of cool wind that rises in my sleeves. 
 Where is Horaisan? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and 
 waft away thither."  here


 Samuel Quinteros, Self-portrait with tea utensils, 2017
 acrylic & oil on canvas, 91.5 x 61 cm


 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA 


    

18 October 2017

The old man and the mountain


Last week we regarded this image from an unattributed Japanese scroll : an unknown old man, bare-headed and bent over, regards a distant mountain, sacred Mt Fuji. Simple and profound, with unread words grid in addition.
Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
click image to enlarge  
Scene of our ongoing existential zeitgeist. Only the details change. 

Below, here it is again, a local moment replete with references that will soon be lost in the dust of time, pictured a few days ago by Alan Moir in the Sydney Morning Herald : the patheticly ineffective Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull humiliated by the toxic conservative ('Climate change is crap') and ceaselessly bothersome former Prime Minister Tony Abbott ... and you know or can research the rest. 

This from Question Time (p.28 Hansard) in the Parliament of Australia yesterday, after the Liberal-National Party COALition rejected the Chief Scientist's recommendation for a Clean Energy Target :
Mr SHORTEN (Maribyrnong—Leader of the Opposition) (14:41): My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that so far he has supported an emissions trading scheme and opposed it, supported an emissions intensity scheme and opposed it, ridiculed direct action and endorsed it, derided so-called clean coal and embraced it, and supported a clean energy target and today abandoned it? When the member for Warringah [Tony Abbott] is calling the shots, how can any Australians believe anything this out-of-touch Prime Minister says about lowering power bills? 

Alan Moir / SMH  click to enlarge 
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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA 


   

14 October 2017

CINEMA : A MIRROR IN A CAVE / A TALK BY HYUN LEE /  KNULP - Sunday October 15, 2PM



 15 Fowler St
 Camperdown
 Sydney, Australia
 knulpknulpknulp@gmail.com
 Saturday and Sunday 12-5pm                             
 Monday to Friday by appointment 

 Theatre of the Actors of Regard will be attending ...


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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA 


  

12 October 2017

TAR ] VR ( Le Théâtre et son double


Yous can experience a reality 
of Fred Williams' 1963 translation 
of the You Yangs 
granite range with pond
into oil on composition board 
at the Geelong Gallery : 
Fred Williams in virtual reality 
until Sunday 5 November 
Immerse your senses in virtual reality and explore Fred Williams in the You Yangs: stand inside one of Fred Williams’ paintings, and experience the rugged Australian landscape using virtual reality technology. 
Free with admission to Fred Williams in the You Yangs

Fred Williams
You Yang Pond  
1963
oil on composition board
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Gift of Godfrey Phillips International Pty Ltd 1968


Fred Williams in virtual reality
You Yang Pond 
1963
Photographer : Reg Ryan
Enhancer : FIAPCE

Warning : experiences of virtual reality are unpredictable
FIAPCE / Theatre of the Actors of Regard   

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something... 
         
LOGOS/HA HA 


  

09 October 2017

Re. a bullet


Several days ago in Las Vegas (USA), a man fired bullets from his automated guns into an outdoor concert audience. Fifty-nine persons were killed and five hundred wounded.

Yesterday, SBS twice projected onto our television screens the image of a man regarding a bullet. Consequences unknown.

Genius : Season 1 Episode 1 — Colt Vs Wesson 

These are the men and women who solved the world’s problems, changing the way we live through innovation, and creating history-altering inventions. This is the story of the unseen forces behind the greatest races for innovation, the moments when the brightest minds were given the rare opportunity to change the world. In 1836, Samuel Colt changes the way that wars are fought with his patent for the revolver, and profits enormously from the invention. But when Colt fires his assistant Rollin White for suggesting an improvement on his design, White brings his innovative idea to Smith and Wesson, giving birth to the first true 'arms' race. As the Civil War breaks out, both the Union and the Confederacy are in dire need of arms, putting Colt and Smith and Wesson in a competition that only one manufacturer can survive.



HAND SPACE  
Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA 


Micmacs 

Bazil (Dany Boon) has been a victim of weapons manufacturers his entire life. His father was killed by a land mine, and Bazil lost his job after he was shot by an errant bullet -- which is still lodged in his skull. Now Bazil lives on the streets of Paris, where he encounters Slammer (Jean-Pierre Marielle). Slammer takes him under his wing, introducing him to other outcasts. With the help of his new entourage, Bazil devises a plan to exact revenge on the companies that took so much from him.



HAND SPACE  
Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA 


  

07 October 2017

Guggenheim Museum (Director's Cut)



Frank Lloyd Wright with a model of the Guggenheim Museum, 1945.
FIAPCE after Ben Schnall/LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

Otagaki Rengetsu (1791-1875), a Japanese Buddhist nun, great in many disciplines. 

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), a great United States architect. 

How interesting it could have been if the Guggenheim Building Committee had accepted Wright's initial proposal for an 'enlightenment dome' based on a work by Rengetsu.

Wright explained to journalists at the 1945 Plaza Hotel unveiling of the initial model that his design was in the form of an inverted ziggurat. He emphasised that he saw it as a spiral ascending outward.

Otagaki Rengetsu, whose chosen name means Lotus Moon, designed many of her ceramics as a lotus rising out of the darkness and mud, ascending through the clarifying water toward the moon of enlightenment that ringed the open circle lip of her cups and bowls.


Otagaki Rengetsu, saké cup
Oscar Wilde, 'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.'

Wright proposed a union of Eastern and Western wisdom-seeking forms. Education moving towards enlightenment. A transparent dome with radiating lotus pad orbs, centred with great jade frog.
  
The old pond;
A frog jumps in —
The sound of the water.

(Basho, translation R H Blyth)

The old pond!
Bashô jumps in,
The sound of the water!
(Sengai, translation by Robert Aitken)

Gallery Open :
entry by gold coin -
TAR
(Theatre of the Actors of Regard, translation by FIAPCE)



At the 1945 press conference, Wright showed the Rengetsu teapot lid inspiration and (in his hands, above) the proposed, stylised, lotus pads transparent dome upon which would sit the great jade frog.

Unfortunately, the Director's Cut was rejected. Instead, the newly self-confident USA opted for an oculus rather than a dome. Preferring to be overseen by the Eye of God and of Providence rather than commit to the self liberation of the many.



US One Dollar note with the Eye of God

The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States, the current post-1954 version, with the capitalised Nation and the added-in words under God : 

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."


photo : Sean Mathis  
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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA