Remember way back to that thing how in Haiti there was an earthquake and a lot of people died? Phew am I glad they sorted that one out! It looked grim there for a while didn't it, what with all those pictures in the paper the next day? And in some papers even the day after that??? Thank god everyone's better and happy again so it's not in the paper anymore, right?!

Well guess what! WRONG! Things are actually still pretty bad! The dead people haven't come back to life yet (still!) and on top of that there's Diseases, Poor Infrastructure and Chaotic Aid Delivery, and apparently it's not even that easy at all to put a shattered nation back together! And there we were thinking all that was happening in the world was the other Important News Items like  glued penises and vengeful stingrays.

There are still some things happening around town where you can do a little bit of your bit. One of my favourites involves lamingtons, for obvious lamington-related reasons. Bake Sale for Art are putting on a Bake Sale for Haiti - you can order six homemade lammingtons for $10 if you email megan.garrett.jones[at]gmail[dot]com, and pick them up at the Saturday markets on February 6 at the Hub in Newtown. They've just done another call-out for orders so get involved quicksmart - all money raised will go to the Red Cross, and also you'll have lamingtons.

Posted by steph in Causes, Culture

Tags: Bake Sale for Art, Haiti, lamingtons, newtown, the hub

Tony Curran, who gave us some Real Perspective last time we spoke, is co-directing 2042 Art On the Street, a two day festival of Newtown's art scene. He took some time off preparations to chat to us about what we can expect from the festival and how we can get involved. Read it after the jump.

Posted by amelia in Art, Features

Tags: 2042 art on the street, newtown, Tony Curran

One of the things about musicians who commit to continual creative reinvention is that they’re never really going to be popular in the charts. In the entire hour-long conversation I had with Brian Campeau on a sunny Wednesday morning at Newtown's Varga Bar (because you asked), it never occurred to me to ask why he still hasn't 'made it' – he clearly has enough talent, knowledge, contacts and marketability to make a comfortable living. But maybe he answered the question anyway, in his constant reiteration of how important it is for him to be doing something different, something challenging, something original. Transcendental doesn’t tend to make it into the top twenty, so instead of making money he’s making music by scraping the mouthpiece of a melodica up and down its keys. “I like my music weird, I like things to be a bit challenging, a bit left of center rather than just straight up pop songs.” And it's working for him. Campeau's second album Mostly Winter, Sometimes Spring is out now, and he's got a string of dates on the East Coast to celebrate.

The full feature is, as always, after the jump.

Posted by steph in Features, Music

Tags: Brian Campeau, Cuthbert and the Night Walkers, Elana Stone, Lauren Yates, Mostly Winter Sometimes Spring, newtown, Nicola Ossher, the Green Mohair Suits, Two Faces

“Oh Really would like to thank everyone that’s made art, bought art, or looked at the art on the walls. Without you we’ll just be three guys sitting/drawing/laughing on a couch in an empty shopfront.”

This Friday, everybody’s favourite art-zine-turned-magazine-that-also-now-has-it’s-own-artspace, Oh Really on King Street, is celebrating the first birthday of its gallery and the fifth issue of its publication. Featuring work by Ben Frost, Beastman, Ape7, Claire Nakazawa, Creepy, Max Berry, Mini Graf, Phibs, Syke, Teazer, Yok and about fourteen hundred other local and international artists, the group show is an exhibition of handpainted book covers. A few are in the pictures above.

Hard Cover No Jacket is a double whammy too; it also celebrates the launch of Issue Five of Oh Really Magazine – 1000 limited edition magazines that themselves have hand-screened covers. We asked Jamie Nimmo, one third of Oh Really, about being one years old again...

Posted by steph in Art, Features

Tags: Ape7, Artist Run Initiatives, Beastman, Ben Frost, Claire Nakazawa, Creepy, Jamie Nimmo, King Street, Max Berry, Mini Graf, newtown, Oh Really, Oh Really magazine, Phibs, SYKE, Teazer, Yok

Newtown is a strange suburb. When you wake up after midday and some of the shops aren't even open yet and you accidentally stumble in to a street party and by that time it's night and you've got a few options left which are basically the Townie, the Courthouse or someone's couch and Xbox, that's a typical Newtown kind of day.

So it's pretty refreshing to see a venue in Newtown jumping on the indie bandwagon and bringing us a night where some of the well regarded bands can play a small, small but lovely venue other than the Hoey... The one thing the suburb really lacks is a good venue for bands to play at, and if Vanquish at the Vanguard kicks off nicely this Wednesday, we might see the once-relegated-to-middle-aged-people-watching-cover-bands venue up its indie cred pretty quickly.

So far the bands that they've got lined up seem to be a mix of ol' Sydney fave'rites and Newtown-newcomers, with this week featuring Halal, How Are You?, Lillies, Sleep Debt, and The (temperamental) Pocket.

Who knows, maybe this might expand the band scene a little bit? Or just extend its filthy beer-swigging, arm-crossed loitering, earplug-plugging tentacles in to the inner-west...

Vanquish hosts indie bands at the Vanguard, Newtown, from 7pm on the first Wednesday of every month.

Posted by amelia in Events, Music

Tags: Halal How Are You, lillies, newtown, sleep debt, the (temperamental) pocket, the vanguard, vanguard, vanquish

The Sydney Writers Festival website says that Penguin Plays Rough has a red velvet armchair, and that has increased my willingness to go and read a story I wrote there by about 300%. Pip Smith, who runs the night, invited me to come and read and so I will get out of my red velvet dressing gown, ignore the fact that I may have swine flu and go and sniff my way through a story to a room full of people who happen to all enjoy a disparate set of interests including short fiction, drinking, Newtown and red velvet armchairs...

Posted by amelia in Events, Words

Tags: newtown, penguin plays rough, reading, short fiction, writing

Recognise this young chap? You’ve probably walked underneath him outside the Newtown Community Centre near the junction of King and Enmore. Fashioned into shape by a group of local artistic futurists, the sculpture was erected in the 1990s in commemoration of the first ever Cyborg Dog, invented in 1988 in Sydney. Dubbed OSCAR-K9, this momentous but controversial achievement of Western science was for the most part adored throughout the world. Featuring prolifically in established scientific journals and avante garde IT conventions, he was perhaps more notable for his various cameo roles in Australian soap operas, including his much-loved portrayal of the churlish rogue “Jimbo” in the first series of Police Rescue. Oscar sadly burst into flames two years after his conception during a routine check-up in which his engineer (or “Robo-Master”) accidentally dropped into the animal’s frame what appears in the sculpture to be some sort of wooden spoon.

OKAY WHATEVER YOU GUYS, THIS ISN'T A PRECISE HISTORY OF STATUES WITH DOGS IN THEM BLOG. Leave that to the experts. This is a blog about the new hat and tail-warmer which appeared on the sculpture some time before we walked past it on Saturday morning...

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JULY 27 UPDATE: Well, we were wrong. Not Knitta Please at all, but a similarly celebrated local icon of guerrilla knits, grrl+dog. More of her work can be found right here and, from August 8, right here - as part of Design 09. The first knitted building in Australia, and it's a toilet in Taylor Square. Yay!

Posted by steph in Art, Daily

Tags: cyborgs, dog, Knitta Please, knitting, newtown, Street Art