Peter Tyndall’s blog, bLOGOS/HA HA is blogging as contemporary art; there is always an enjoyable conjuncture of images on it and it forms part of his greater work. In 2013 bLOGOS/HA HA was in the NGV’s Melbourne Now and Reinventing the Wheel; the Readymade Century at MUMA. I’m pleased to see it represented in exhibitions where it is displayed in physical (paper) and virtual (computer) forms. I’ve had bLOGOS/HA HA on my blogroll for years.
Adrian Featherston’s photo looks at Peter Tyndall at Monash 1975
Tyndall was my first local favourite contemporary artists when I was an undergraduate at Monash Uni. Tyndall was the first artist-in-residence at Patrick McCaughey’s brand new Dept of Visual Arts at Monash Uni. I was impressed that in the mid 1970s he had retrospectively retitled all his art the same title:
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something…
This title was often accompanied by a schematic representation of the painting, a square with wire hangers (the hanging system of the galleries at the time) and a viewer, generally a family standing in front of it.
In the 1980s Tyndall had refined his title further adding, a line space as in the chorus of a song and then, what Tyndall refers to as the “meta-Title”, LOGOS/HA HA in upper case. Tyndall played with his “meta-Title” in the title of his blog; considering the entomology of ‘logos’ and ‘web logs’ (as blogs were originally called).
There is a poetry to Tyndall’s title and repeating image. It is part of the post-modern experience, the endless quotation, the paradoxes, the hermeneutical elements building up meaning through repetition. Combining the conceptual and the visual in a sophisticated post-modern understanding of the image and communication.
Tyndall works in all media and his blog is a hyperlinked extension of this exploration of media. Blogging appears like the ideal for Tyndall’s art. Is bLOGOS/HA HA in one media or multimedia? This is the kind of links, interconnections, indeterminacy and paradoxes that Tyndall delights in.
Blogging presents another paradox to Tyndall, the private and the public. His art never expressed the private individual; all that the Melbourne Now exhibition guide notes “1951 – :born at Mercy Hospital, Melbourne, The World”. Tyndall reconciles this by posts on exhibitions, current events and protests in the art world (I learnt about the protests about no sketching at the NGV from his blog and wrote my own blog post). This is mixed with posts on Tyndall’s own exploration of repeating images of people looking at things, including art.
Communicating is at the core of Tyndall’s art and blogging. His writing is crisp and his choice of images to accompany the blog posts are inspired. His obsessions and his visual memory of interconnected images are perfect to display on the internet. As he explained in an email: “In daily practice, I observe that my present inclination is less to the slow and expensive means of the easel and more to the immediate, inexpensive and intuitive exploration via the digital projection-space. I do, each day, still make some things more-or-less in the traditional means, but usually quickly: drawings, collages, postcards, words, photos.” Tyndall thinks that more artists should blog to communicate, create, and exhibit commenting: “I’m surprised how few ‘struggling artists’ give themselves this easy opportunity.”
The size of his blog, built up by incremental additions over the years since 2008 (the same year that I started this blog), makes it Tyndall’s largest detail in his life’s work. It’s size is a matter of duration and it is as endless as Tyndall’s art mantra:
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something…
LOGOS/HA HA
Black Mark 
July 7th, 2014 at 10:05 PM
i’m glad you made this post, i was following blogos/haha because i thought it was a strange alter ego of HAHA the stencil writer, i did think it was a chalk and cheese version to be only one person so glad this has cleared it up. Blogos is very much a work of art in continuum, and that detail, a person looks at a work of art just never lets you go. Always good to read peer reviews of practitioners in our own community.
July 7th, 2014 at 11:35 PM
I’ve always wondered if someone would confuse Tyndall’s blog with HaHa the stencil artist.
Thanks, I had to review the blog on my blog, for all the links, it was the appropriate media. I hadn’t thought of it as a peer review until you mentioned it.