Unimaginable Great South Land

            
LOGOS : The Speaking into Being of the World : 
speech, reportage, information, debate, journalism
      
LOGOS/HA HA : present imperfect

JOURNALISM IS NOT A CRIME : Last month in Egypt, the Australian journalist Peter Greste and his two Al Jazeera colleagues Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed were jailed for 7-10 years for their journalism.  

      
(Keep on) Rockin' in the Free World

We are deeply concerned that this verdict is part of a broader attempt to muzzle the press freedom that upholds democracies around the world.

Julie Bishop, Australia's Foreign Minister
SMH, 23 June 2014

LOGOS Ships Sink Lips : Meanwhile, two boats with several hundred Sri Lankan asylum seekers, mostly Tamil, are reported to have left Southern India bound for Australia. All media questions to Scott Morrison, the Australian Government's Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, are absorbed by him into the Sovereign Silence. 
        
                 
LOGOS LOUDIMUS : The response has been loud.

Michelle Grattan in The Conversation

What is offensive about this government is not that it is pursuing tough policies, but that it is trashing accountability and is so lacking in empathy.
     
The boats did need to be stopped; the budget does require fixing.
           
But an empathetic government would bring some humanity to the first and greater sensitivity to the second, while a less arrogant administration would show more respect all round.
          
The week-long refusal of Scott Morrison and Tony Abbott to give information (or confirmation) about asylum seekers reportedly being transferred at sea - with perfunctory process - and sent on their way to Sri Lanka shows extraordinary disdain for the public’s right to know.
          
It reeks of the masters-of-the-universe mentality.

- full article (here)

Malcolm Fraser on twitter

Malcolm Fraser @MalcolmFraser12 · Jul 3 Handing AS [Asylum Seekers] back to SL [Sri Lankan] navy at sea redolent off handing Jews to Nazis in 1930s

                  
"The case of the disappearing boats" (AGE)

Last night I saw upon the sea,
A little boat that wasn't there,
It wasn't there again today,
Oh, how I wish it would go away
      
-  with apologies to Hughes Mearns

All week, Scott Morrison had been wishing away the little boat from India. The Immigration Minister steadfastly refused to acknowledge its existence or that of its human cargo, 153 Tamil asylum seekers; or that of another boat carrying 50 Tamils, which had come from Sri Lanka. By week's end, it seemed Morrison's wish had come true.

In a high-stakes, high seas operation – which Morrison never confirmed, preferring to call it speculation – Australia set out to deliver these boat people back into the hands of Sri Lanka, the regime they had fled, a country the United Nations suspects of systematic abductions, torture, rape, extrajudicial killings and the "disappearing" of its citizens. Now Australia had "disappeared" their boats. It was as if their odyssey had never happened.

SMH/AGE : Rick Feneley, Jason Koutsoukis, Sarah Whyte

full article here

          
Fran Kelly to Senator Abetz

In an interview with ABC's Insiders program, host Fran Kelly put to Senator Abetz that the transfer of 200 Tamil asylum seekers into the custody of the Sri Lankan Navy was a matter of public interest, and that the government’s lack of transparency aroused concern. She then asked "since when does our government disappear people?"

“We don’t disappear people,” Mr Abetz replied. “What I think every Australian will know and understand is that our professional people in the Australian Navy, in the Australian Border Protection force, treat everybody with due care and respect and according to international obligations.”

SMH : Ben Doherty (here)

LOGOS NULLIUS : Let's muzzle the ABC

Turnbull says he was not consulted on ABC board appointees    

The appointment of conservative columnist Janet Albrechtsen and former deputy Liberal leader Neil Brown to the panel overseeing ABC and SBS board appointments this week sparked fears the government was preparing to stack the board with partisan appointments.

On Friday Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull distanced himself from the appointments of Dr Albrechtsen and Mr Brown as he acknowledge concerns of political influence, but said the nomination panel for ABC and SBS boards is appointed by Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet boss Ian Watt.

''You have to assume that Dr Watt chose Neil Brown and Janet Albrechtsen in his own discretion,'' Mr Turnbull told ABC radio.

''I was not consulted nor was it the intention of the legislation that the Minister for Communications should be consulted on the membership of the panel.'' 

SMH : James Massola, Matthew Knott  ( here )

HA HA HOORAY : Last week, as those boats were setting out for Australia, it was announced that Hieu Van Le would be the next Governor of South Australia.

South Australia's Lieutenant Governor and University of Adelaide graduate Hieu Van Le came to Australia in 1977 as a Vietnamese refugee. His remarkable journey to Australia is the stuff of legend and his achievements within Australia almost as extraordinary.

If there was a defining moment which said to the world that Hieu Van Le would be a leader, it came in a small wooden fishing boat crammed with more than 50 seasick people three days out to sea from Vietnam in 1977.

Read Robyn Mills' full account of The Remarkable Journey here

           

 

Tony Abbott says Australia 

benefited from foreign 

investment because it was

'unsettled' before the 

British

Date

SMH _ July 3, 2014

• Comments 707

Gareth Hutchens (below)

When explaining why foreign investment was so important for a country like Australia, Mr Abbott said the country would be unimaginable without it.

“As a general principle we support foreign investment. Always have and always will,” he said.

“Our country is unimaginable without foreign investment."
            
“I guess our country owes its existence to a form of foreign investment by the British government in the then unsettled or, um, scarcely settled, Great South Land,” he said.
        

       no caption available at time of going to press

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BLACK MARK

        
A big shout out to fellow blogger Mark Holsworth.
           

      
Thanks heaps Mark for your post today : here
         

         
Both blogs were started in 2008 and have much in common, including a broad view of art/Art and community, from the local to the world historical 
- Coburg, Hepburn Springs, Melbourne, Australia, The World - and a Pepse-like commitment to regard and record.

These are the subsets at BLACK MARK

• • Architecture (28)
  • Art Galleries & Exhibitions (407)
  • Art History (91)
  • Blogging (30)
  • Censorship (22)
  • Coburg (21)
  • Culture Notes (186)
  • Fashion (22)
  • Guest Posts (5)
  • Public Sculpture (91)
  • Street Art (256)
  • Travel (28)
    
  Mark's own introduction (in full here) :
  
  
  Black Mark – Melbourne Art & Culture Critic
  I started this blog in 2008 because there was a lack of critical discussion about Melbourne’s art world. There are over 200 art galleries in Melbourne and most art exhibitions go un-reviewed. There are many artists who exhibit but never get any critical review good or bad.  I want to provide a critical view of the Melbourne’s visual arts and other aspects of culture. I want to cast a critical eye on the whole for Melbourne’s visual arts from the major galleries to the ARIs and alternative spaces, from public sculptures to the street art, from art history to fashion.
  
  BLACK MARK
  
  
  
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The Silence of Scott Morrison is the Voice of the Silent Majority

       

Das Schweigen von Scott Morrison wird überbewertete  
                            

       

see also : Images of Beuys performance banned

 

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Blessed are the peace makers

   
see also : Lutiers of the Art Cult
       


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Link Meanie's Wrecked-Angle Axe

We recently referenced (here) The Meanies' great 10% weird.

Now we find this learned article at guitarnerd about Link Meanie's first guitar :

 Apart from the songs, another thing that  
 caught my eye was the guitar Link was  
 playing. It was a weird square thing... kind of  
 Bo Diddley looking but a lot less refined.  
 I loved how unique it was, how it sounded 
 and how Link had made it himself. 

Here's Bo Diddley with his ornamented Gretsch guitar, late 1950s.
       

   
There's such a vast cultural expression of acoustic and display engineering for this, O so very simple, intention and action : to tension a string between two points, to vibrate it and hear it, to enjoy the bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz yeah!

Here's one such, below, designed to delight by its exceptional contrivance. Long before Kraftwork performed We are the Robots, it is attributed to the great French maker of automata Jacques de Vaucanson (1709 - 1782); repaired, apparently, in 1859 by the master magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin (1805 - 1871) after whom the young Erik Weisz would later name himself Harry Houdini. More recently, c.1979, it was further augmented to detect and visually project ambient Slave Guitar vibrations.
            
More from guitarnerd regarding the Link Meanie axe :

 On closer inspection, this guitar is VERY 
 home-made. Link explained it was actually 
 his first ever guitar… some Japanese Strat 
 thing, that he chopped up and then 
 surrounded the body in a box.  
 So basically… there’s a guitar 
 inside a guitar.

Slave Guitars : 
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face off

                  
If we hadn't been in red + black at the docklands stadium last night for the great BOMBERS v CATS contest ...
    

          
... we'd have been at the NGV for Kirin J Callinan.

Love Delay 
       
You, you, you, you and I
I'll keep you in my mind
Standing there in your underwear
With your long, black hair
Please wait, please wait
Please wait, I've been a fool
But when the train stops calling
And the clouds sit on the floor
When hands thank you
And views look back, you
When tomorrow can't wait for you
Please wait
When silence bows for you
And the dogs feed the boy

You know me fire
You know me fire
You know me fire
You know me fire
You know me fire
You know me fire
You know me fire
You know me fire
You

Wait, please wait
When the train stops calling
And clouds sit on the floor
When hands thank you
And views look back
When the world stops talking
When truth lies broken
Will we still know?
May we still love?
We will die alone
We will die alone
We will die alone
                 

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] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ (

     
Performing Absence

Danica Chappell, Ross Coulter and Clare Rae.
Curated by Victoria Bennett

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
             
WEST SPACE · 27TH JUN 2014 – 26TH JUL 2014 ·
OPENING : THURSDAY 26 JUNE 2014, 6-8PM.
ARTIST TALK : THURSDAY 24 JULY 2014, 5.30-6.30PM.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
            

photo by Ross Coulter 

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 Spoiler Alert

 The object returns fire as the subject reloads.         
             

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Climate Change?

       
We've been wondering for some years if the culture of Art collecting and the associated connoisseurship might be more-or-less at an end? Gone the way of tulips, antiques and vinyl records? Replaced by the immediacy, constant renewal and second-degree sufficiency of the digital projection-space?
     

      
Had we become so familiar with the appearance of Lazarus moving among us still - even after The Dematerialisation of the Art Object, after Art Is Dead, after post-Modernism, postmodernism et al - that we'd accepted the paradox of the old Art culture continuing nonetheless? With ever grander  temples; record setting blockbusters; million dollar starting bids; art schools still cool and Ph.D the new black, surely all was going well?

As, behind these scenes, galleries have been emptying and their impecunious artists speculating on when this drought might break? Wondering even, is this the new climate of a culture change?

badges from The Democratic Art Show (PT 1974) 

So we read with interest Lucinda Schmidt's double-page feature in today's Age (click here).

"Galleries : going, going gone?"
As the art industry is reshaped by the internet, fairs and tighter rules for collectors, are Melbourne's commercial galleries becoming an endangered species?

quote :

In London, top-end galleries in Mayfair's Bond Street are closing at an ''alarming rate'', according to a March report in The Telegraph. Rents have tripled amid competition for space from global retail brands, forcing out dealers such as Colnaghi, which shut its West End shop recently after 250 years.

San Francisco's downtown gallery district has also been hit hard by rising rents. One displaced gallerist, moving his business to his home after 22 years, told the San Francisco Chronicle his peers in Chicago and Los Angeles were doing the same.

''Ten years from now, traditional galleries will be a thing of the past,'' he said. ''The auction houses and art fairs will have taken over - and the internet.''

quote :

Traditionally, a gallery represents and supports a stable of artists, mounting exhibitions of their work and bringing them to the attention of collectors, public institutions and corporate clients. So tough times for commercial art galleries mean tough times for contemporary artists.

This is spelt out in figures Lowenstein has compiled from a survey of about 100 of his artist clients, comparing their 2008 and 2012 incomes. The total income for Lowenstein's top group, comprising well-established and successful artists, dropped 46 per cent, while the second group of mid-career artists earned 30 per cent less. It was only the third group, comprising young emerging artists, that earned more in 2012.

Honoré Daumier, Two Print-lovers c. 1860–63

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