Photos by Madeline Zara.

Posted by amelia in Art, Your Face

Tags: Art, houl, madeline zara, Oh Really, Street Art, without walls, Your Face

“There’s a opening on Thursday at this gallery in Newtown…”

“Oh Really!?”

“Yeah, there.”

Max Berry’s show, A search for ground in higher places, opens this Thursday until the 9^th of May at a gallery he helped to set up, Oh Really, which is also the HQ for a magazine he’s involved in producing. Awesome and endearing, right? But also slightly threatening. The same can be said of the exhibition, which is creepily adorable or maybe the other way round, just like the picture of a dachshund puppy in a bun that he sent through with his responses.

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+ A brief bio? What’s your background as an artist – training, big influences, past exhibitions, general approach?
> Born in Katherine NT, went to school in Noosa QLD, moved to Sydney to attend University. Bachelor of Design at COFA. Big influences: graffiti, street art, science fiction, comics, anime & folk art. There has been a bunch of past exhibitions over the last 2 years, namely WATIM 12×12, SemiPermanent “New Eyes Open” & “Mixed Business,” as well as Freshly Baked “The Winter Set”.

Only recently have I started to approach my work a little more seriously, before it may have been more of an elaborate hobby. Read more for the full interview…

Posted by Bethany Small in Art, Features

Tags: cofa, freshly, freshly baked, graffiti, Max Berry, Oh Really, oh really gallery, Oh Really magazine, paste ups, semipermanent, Street Art, watim, we are the image makers

Tortuga Studios is a big warehouse space in St Peters, where giant group shows are staged within its fascinating and creatively stimulating space. Their previous exhibitions have been giant and inspiring. We wrote about their celebration of the solstice, ‘The Longest Night’, in June last year, and photographed it too, so you can have a look at what the space is like. It’s an incredible place, and we’re lucky that warehouse spaces like Tortuga exist so that large group shows that engage with spaces, places and environments can happen right in the city.

Their latest giant group exhibition , ‘Road Trip’, opened last Friday, the 23rd of April, with performances by La Mancha Negra and Glitch Jukebox, and is conceptually based around the long hot asphalt of the good old road trip – a rite of passage that has become a widespread cultural myth. It features the works of Garth Knight, Jesse Cox, Jess Cook, Sam Ash, Johnny Bell, Elise Vaughn, Mini Graff, Will Coles, EARS, Shabnam Hameed and Madeleine Hetherton, Valentina Schulte, Perran Costi, Peter Strong, Jacq Sherry, Rachael Lafferty, Anthony Sawrey, Brian Paisley, Dillon MacEwan, Sergio Abugattás Tenaud, Pierre Cavalan, Jo Shand, Terry Archer, Alien Proof Construction, Marty Jay, Claire Conroy, Jess Pickford, Nicole Goldspink, Mark Swarz, Brent Reid, Ganbold Lundaa, Darian Zam, Azelia Maynard, Sarah Harvie, Andrea Davies, Kassandra Bossell, Justin Maynard, Alasdair Nicol, Hiske Weijers and others. That’s quite a lot of art. If you weren’t sure. It really is.

Bianca Georgiou spoke to Hellen Morgan-Harris, the curator of The Longest Night and the director of the studios, about the exhibition and how it engages with the concept of the road as well as the space of Tortuga, both literally and conceptually.

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+ So, Tortuga Studios newest exhibition is entitled “Road Trip.” Why do you think the concept of the road trip; despite its over saturation in popular culture, is still so romanticized, and so intriguing?
> Because each and everyone of us can relate to a road trip, be it through childhood memories of sweaty legs sticking sticking to hot vinyl, scorched air blowing in through a cranked window in the absence of air con and trying to suck carpet-thick minestrone soup through the top of a Star Wars thermos when all you want is to stop at the tea rooms and order a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich.

And it’s about escapism. The Road Trip removes you from the banality of everyday life; it is the exception to the rule (unless you are a trucker – that comes later); it is recalled memories that peel past your eyes like stop-time footage. It’s a tumbledown tree house in a backend town that holds your attention year after year – “has it changed? I wonder if it’s been knocked down yet?”

It’s about perspective: in an achingly empty landscape, harshly sliced by a roaring highway, it is the minutiae that intrigue. A McDonalds wrapper flirting with the breeze; a roo and her joey watching warily from the sidelines; the shadow cast by a road train as it hurtles past buffeting the innate invincibility a road trip inspires. Read more for the full interview…

Posted by Bianca Georgiou in Art, Features

Tags: Alasdair Nicol, Alien Proof Construction, Andrea Davies, Anthony Sawrey, ARIs, Azelia Maynard, Brent Reid, Brian Paisley, Claire Conroy, Darian Zam, Dillon MacEwan, EARS, Elise Vaughn, Ganbold Lundaa, Garth Knight, Hiske Weijers, Jacq Sherry, Jess Cook, Jess Pickford, Jesse Cox, Jo Shand, Johnny Bell, Justin Maynard, Kassandra Bossell, Mark Swarz, Marty Jay, Mini Graff, Nicole Goldspink, Oh Really, Perran Costi, Peter Strong, Pierre Cavalan, Rachael Lafferty, road trip, Sam Ash, Sarah Harvie, Sergio Abugattás Tenaud, Shabnam Hameed and Madeleine Hetherton, Terry Archer, the longest night, Tortuga Studios, Valentina Schulte, Will Coles

Throw Shapes have spruiked ANODE Arts Festival before, you may remember, but that ain’t going to stop us spruiking it again. ANODE is a fringe festival – which I suppose means that it’s concerned with fringe art. That’s the kind of stuff that doesn’t make it in to mainstream art culture and is often done by grassroots organisations and art collectives. It’s innovative, riskque, kind of weird and probably very entertaining.

This year, the notable addition to the crew is Going Down Swinging, a pretty great little literary journal from Melbourne. Old favourites Craig Schuftan and Token Imagination are returning, with Token Imagination doing a performance poetry walk in various cafes around Sydney. It’s called meNu.

Another newcomer is Flutter Lyon, who is billed as doing “avant-garde audio-visual performances”. There’s also some exploration in to the world of artistic roller skating, which I’m sure we can all empathise with, and exhibitions at Oh Really, At the Vanishing Point and Kudos galleries.

The other big news for ANODE is that it’s now in Melbourne too – it’s great to see a fringe arts festival expanding to another city. With over 300 artists, musicians, performers, filmmakers, designers, writers and curators, this one’s definitely worth paying attention for. ANODE will be gracing both Sydney and Melbourne for most of November, and the program is here.…

Posted by amelia in Art, News

Tags: anode 2009, at the vanishing point, Craig Schuftan, flutter lyron, going down swinging, meNu, Oh Really, token imaginatino

As we’ve alluded to already, Sydney’s third ever Bicycle Film Festival is kicking off on November 11^th and we’re kind of totally excited. The BFF idea started in New York in 2001, and has since ridden its way through 39 cities – the films have been curated by the festival founding father Brendt Barbur in New York, and the ones we’re being treated to this year look pretty much great. Add to that the best launch lineup ever, the art shows, the goldsprints, the Babes n’ Bikes Polo BBQ (bike polo!) and the online bespoke beauty pageant, and you’ve kind of got yourself an instant win.

But what we love most about this festival – the reason we’ve been so keen to buddy up with them – is not only the perfectly sexy merging of bike, film and drinking, but the amount of local creative types who’ve been asked to get involved. (That and the fact that the team of producers behind it called their company ‘Best Friends Forever Incorporated’ which is the cutest ever.) These peeps know how to do a marketing. If you pre-ordered issue two of Happenstance, you may have been somewhat surprised to have it hand-delivered by bike. That was them. They’ve also asked the folks at Oh Really to customise their very own Crumpler bags to be given away at the festival. And the one we like best is the handful of local artists they’ve picked – people like Greedy Hen, Design Is Kinky’s Nick Rudenno, Happenstance’s Daniel Dittmar, Eirlie Chislom from Freidrich Gray, Yimmy Yayo and DoubleOhTwo – to juice up a pair of Onitsuka trainers. The shoes will be exhibited throughout the fest, as will photos of the artists and their bikes. Where the commercial world meets up with the grassroots and gives them a big hug and a pair of shoes. Love.

The Sydney Bicycle Film Festival is launching at the Factory Theatre on November 11 with Bridezilla, Jonathan Boulet, Deep Sea Arcade and Lions at Your Door (tickets here.) It runs until November 15, with events at the Chauvel Cinema, Monster Children, Lucky & Wolf Gallery, small bars everywhere, and wherever it is they end up holding that BBQ.

Posted by steph in Culture, Events

Tags: bespoke bikes, Best Friends Forever, bike polo, Bridezilla, daniel dittmar, Deep Sea Arcade, design is kinky, goldsprints, Greedy Hen, happenstance, Jonathan Boulet, Oh Really, sydney bicycle film festival

Music Feeds‘ editor Mikey Carr was in New York for All Tomorrow’s Parties. We hated him for that, until he offered us a review of it. So, in addition to some abridged gig picks, here are his highlights from Day One of ATP – plus a little plug of a local duo that are making him excited in the pants…

Posted by Music Feeds in Gatecrashers, Music

Tags: All Tomorrow's Parties, atp, Danimals, Domeyko and Gonzalez, music feeds gatecrash, New York, nick cave, Oh Really, Panda Bear, the abercrombie, the dirty three, the jesus lizard

Pretty pictures by pretty lady Natalie Connolly.

Posted by amelia in Art, Your Face

Tags: hard cover no jacket, Oh Really, Your Face