Blender Xmas 2021

The Blender Studios Xmas party had a food truck, a bar, and a variety of entertainment, along with an exhibition of works by resident artists. Two bands, the electro-soul band Rumpus and Jazz House combination of Jonquil Christmas Quartet, followed by a DJ set by Jonquil. Live acts, including live spaying by Blender Studio artists up on a ladder in the lane. Nakarin Jaikla’s dance performance used the air, keeping it light as the soup bubbles guns at the start and as the former warehouse’s hard concrete floor would allow. The group exhibition had recent work by the two dozen Blender artists. Included jewellery by Edie Black and Emma Rea and gallery work by street artists Akemi, Barek, Kasper and Suki.

photo by CV

It was a long way from the first Blender Studios Xmas Party that I went to in 2009. Dark Horse Experiment was called Michael Koro Gallery, and the party was more of an improvised BYO affair amongst the studio partitions.

Established in 2001, Blender existed until 2004 when it closed, opening again in 2007; so not the twenty years of operation implied. Since then, it has been in two locations around Melbourne’s northwest. The first was on Franklin Street. Now it is on Dudley Street. Geographically and culturally, Blender has always been on the edge of the city centre. Not to forget a couple of years that they were lured to the Docklands with cheap rent on the second floor of a near-empty shopping mall (see my post).

What made it a blender is that has always been a mix of street and gallery focused practices. The street practices meant that it spilled out of the studios and into the laneway beside it. The one rule different from other studio warehouses was that the artists had to show their visitors around to all the studios and with two dozen or so artists that is a lot of studios.

Blender’s only other consistent feature is Doyle, who outlasted Melbourne’s mayor with the same name. Artist, managing director, semi-reconstructed bogan and the subject of the ABC documentary Subtopia (see my review). Creating images of suburbia, this time front-on views of suburban houses.

A hot and enjoyable evening catching up with friends that I hadn’t seen in years. And just like at my first Xmas party at Blender I didn’t take any photos. Cheers!

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True Colours and Blender Studios

On Friday evening there was the opening of Casey Jenkins’s “True Colours” at Dark Horse Experiment. Described as a “mind altering, body modification, transformative, durational performance artwork” it is basically about if Jenkins develop synaesthesia through training. Jenkins is planning to train her brain for five hours a day for two weeks followed by a second MRI to see if anything has actually changed in her brain. In this respect it seems more like a comment on how boring jobs alter your brain than an examination of if colour perception is biological or cultural.

Which of the traditions of performance art was Jenkins following with this work? The self-harm of Marina Abramović and Chris Burden or the simply the boredom of Duchamp’s Monte Carlo roulette system? It was definitely not in the entertaining tradition of performance art, nor as confronting as Jenkin’s earlier pieces. It was rather like talking about your science project at a cool party.

The thing about contemporary art, that is not explained often enough, is that it is one big party: booze, finger food and gossip. Someone should write a social column about the gossip. And I have to admit that I was there more for the social scene than the art; when I really want to look at the art I don’t go to the exhibition opening. I hadn’t seen Drew Funk in years, he is back from KL and I could hardly recognise him without his dreadlock.

Except for Ha-Ha, the intellectual featherweights that I was hanging out with did not engage with the exhibition’s theme. I did learn that Ha-Ha’s perception is far more focused on numbers than mine; counting the number of cuts that he makes in a stencil, seeing numbers in shapes. I didn’t want to say much because it felt like revision of all the philosophy papers that I have read about colour perception.

I was also there to see the new location for Blender Studios and Dark Horse Experiment. The last time that I saw it, they were in the Docklands and now they are in West Melbourne. It is more like the original Blender Studios; an old factory with exposed struts supporting the roof. Entry is down an alley, its flagstones covered in aerosol paint from the children’s spray painting classes that they run. And it still has that blend between street and contemporary art.

Friday Night in Docklands

It may surprise you but I’m glad that I went to Warf Street, a shopping mall in Melbourne’s failing Docklands on a cold Friday night. The first Friday of every month is like a small art fair there with multiple galleries opening exhibitions.

My terrible photos of the Cultural Candy exhibition.

The manufactured inner city suburb of Docklands failure to create a liveable space without adequate public transport nor any good reason to even go there meant that much of the shopping mall on the pedestrian zone of Warf Street was unoccupied.

Last year a plan based on the successful Renew Newcastle project offered over a thousand square metre of rent free space to “makers, creators, artists, and local enterprises.” The result was that art galleries and others moved in and given the place a bit of attraction and life on a Friday night.

The largest of these, Blender Studios and Dark Horse Experiment had three exhibitions and an open studios that night. Downstairs at Dark Horse Experiment there was Cultural Candy – Taiwanese Artist Residency / Exhibition, a group exhibition of fine arts students from the National Taipei University of Education, Taiwan who were at a one month residency at Blender Studios. Upstairs there were gallery exhibitions by two street artists, Sunfigo and Astral Nadir. Whereas the Sunfigo exhibition managed the jump from the street to the gallery unfortunately for Astral Nadir those same patterns done on the street did not have the impact when on small canvases.

Crowther Contemporary had an exhibition of photography and video installations; One hand washes the other by Madeline Bishop. Bishop was exploring the borders of intimacy in friendship in an awkward suburban aesthetic: how close would you get? Could you carry your friend?

The Australian Cartoon Museum had its “Footy Finals Spectacular”, a topical exhibition featuring cartoons by HarvTime (Paul Harvey), Mark Knight and a dozen other cartoonists.

Resident artist Malini Maunsell had a dull solo exhibition of 15 almost identical blue monotypes At Current Gallery and Studios. There were more exhibitions because other studios were open and shops like Dodgy Paper, that sells handmade papers, had a small Dodgy Staff exhibition of work on their papers by Chehehe and Nathan CCP amongst the product displays. Loose Print, a shop selling printed fabric had an art exhibition of paintings hanging on one wall. Tree Paper Comics is an independent, publisher and printer of Australasian graphic novels and comics also had original work for sale. It seemed that only Magnet Galleries that specialises in photography didn’t have an exhibition opening that night.

Walk to Giant

Jamit was planning to buy some spray-paint at Giant in North Melbourne and I agreed to walk with him.

Setting up for Tiana Sanjaya to paint with spice in front of State Library of Victoria

We started at the front of the State Library. When I got there I found that there was an Indonesian artist, Tiana Sanjaya was setting up to paint with spices. Tumeric, candlenut, horseradish, mustard seed, nutmeg and chilli; it smelt good. It was part of the AsiaTopa 2017, the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts.

On the way we had a look at Blender Lane. Now that Blender Studios has closed I was wonder if the quality of the work in the lane will continue without Doyle being present?

Junky Projects, Melbourne

Phoenix, Blender Alley

Further to that subject, we also looked at the graffiti and street art in Lovelands, a series of lanes near Victoria Market carpark, near the corner of Queen and Franklin Street. It also has the same questions of redevelopment hanging over it. It doesn’t look like much has changed since I saw Itch painting last year during the Meeting of Styles.

We passed another lane painted during the Meeting of Styles in April 2016 but there is more to see on the streets than just graffiti and street art.

I am not just looking at graffiti and street art; I have other interests, like public sculpture. Outside School No.307 on Queensberry Street I stop to look at a Peter Corlett sculpture of Henry Barstow. Henry Barstow was the architect who designed many state schools. I hadn’t seen the sculpture before but this is not surprising given Corlett’s prolific production creating several figures each year.

Peter Corlett, Henry Barstow, 2011

Finally we reach Giant in North Melbourne. Maybe we should have taken the tram but the walk has been worthwhile. Nth Melbourne is a long thin suburb and its geography of Nth Melbourne is disorientating because the streets are not aligned to the same axis as the grid of Melbourne’s CBD.

You have to be buzzed into the shop. Then there is a room, covered in stickers and aerosol spray paint where we are to leave our backpacks. Then there the room full of spray cans of paint, maker pens, graffiti magazines and more cans of paint, the whole spectrum plus metallics, plus effects…

“Hello Mark” is the first thing that I hear.

At first I can’t see who is speaking because there is a big dude between me and the voice. It is Toby who runs Just Another Agency. Everywhere I go I run into people that I know, a bonus for writing this blog.

Jamit buys about two dozen cans and even though the cans are cheaper by the half dozen he doesn’t walk away with much change from $150.

2016: Dada, Punk, Parties

Last Friday night I was at the Blender Xmas Show; it is a longstanding tradition, a blended mix of exhibition, party and open studios. Maybe not for much longer for there is talk about Blender closing, nobody knows anything definite. Has the whole area around the Melbourne market has been rezoned? Research is required but after the Sky Vodka mixers, basically ethanol was mixed with filtered and deionised water marketed in cobalt blue bottles that might have been fashionable in the 1990s and standing around in the warehouse for a couple of hours research is the last thing on my mind.

What is on my mind is wrapping this blog up for the year and other anniversaries. It is a century after the summer of 1916 when Dada bloomed in Switzerland but who cares, it is history. To commemorate this centennial I wrote some posts about Dada this year; posts about the various historic forces that had aligned to bring the original Dadaists together in Zurich and the small celebrations for the centennial amongst poets in a bar in Clifton Hill.

I re-read my post about the success and failure of Dada after Joe Corre, the son of Malcolm McLaren and Vivian Westwood burnt his Sex Pistols memorabilia. Remember that Dada could not be properly understood until after punk. Ending up in the hands of rich collectors or in museums is not the problem, it is not an indication of success or failure, nor a cause of ossification. Thinking that the success and failure of a movement is dependent on the location of holy relics is as nostalgic as a collector’s desire. Corre was forgetting his father’s three word manifesto: “cash from chaos.”

I am also think what I will do next year with this blog? My first WordPress blog post, Faster Pussycat, was on February 16 in 2008, so early next year in February it will be the tenth anniversary since the start of this blog. This year was a time for big round number milestones for this blog: 1000th posts and 500,000th views. I celebrated my 1000th blog post with a psychogeographical walk. It was not a tour, it was like this blog, a psychogeographical walk, with no plan and no destination. People did give me a presents and bought me drinks, thank you.

I have written some diverse blog this year from a gallery crawl around Chelsea in NYC, to graffiti piecing in Burnside on the far west of Melbourne, to the VR experience of Sean Gladwell’s studio. But the most unusual experience was watching the forgery trial in the Supreme Court.

If you are reading this blog for the first time or for the thousandth time, thank you for reading in 2016.

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David Russell’s Street Photography

On Friday 13th of November at Blender Studio there was 32K, a one night only exhibition of David Russell’s photography.

Russell’s first exhibition took his photography beyond simply documenting street art and graffiti to making his own art. Adopting the attitude of graffiti writers to the urban environment; the trains, getting up high and exploring the urban environment. Only Russell is using a camera rather than a spray can and painting with light and darkness. The photographs have the same chromatic intensity of aerosol paint. Not all of photographs had graffiti in it, three photographs at Flinders Street Station did not have even a sticker or tag in them but still had that attitude.

The exhibition brought out many people notable in Melbourne’s street art scene to support Russell. One wall of Blender Studio was covered with a wallpaper print produced by GT Sewell’s new business. Dean Sunshine supplied Mexican beers for the event. For although this was Russell’s first photography exhibition he is already highly respected in the scene.

Andrew King and David Russell

Years ago when Facter first mentioned David Russell he said something like: “He looks like a cop; he isn’t, I’ve checked him out.” Graffiti writers and street artists have every reason to be suspicious of this short haired man with a big camera who was always hanging around watching them paint. Was he an undercover cop gathering evidence?

There are many photographer capturing the Melbourne’s street art and graffiti scene. I’ve done a bit of that myself and this is how it started for David Russell. However Russell was not just another photographer snapping shots of Melbourne’s walls. He was devoted to it, he was always there with his camera for as long as necessary. He was there for days in 2014 photographing Adnate paint his mural in Hosier Lane. This dedication led to Russell doing a long running series of monthly posting on Invurt blog; Through the Lens. His knowledge of the artists and scene lead to him to become more involved with various projects and doing street art tours.

Guerrilla Geography

“Where the streets have no name.” U2

You won’t fine Blender Lane, Chook Alley or Zombie Dance Lane on any official map of Melbourne but all these locations do have handmade street signs attached to a neighbouring wall.

I can give you directions: Chook Alley is off Ilham Lane in Brunswick. Ilham Lane was only named in the last decade by the Moreland City Council, after John Ilham, the founder of Crazy John’s, the mobile phone dealers.

There are practical reasons for  naming every little alleyway in the city, especially in providing accurate directions in emergencies, so I hope that someday these pieces of guerrilla geography will become official.

These acts of guerrilla geography (a term to go with ‘guerrilla gardening’) are all associated with Melbourne’s street art (‘guerrilla public art’). Blender Lane is named after the next door Blender Studios that also runs street art tours and workshops. Both Blender Lane and Zombie Dance Lane have a large amount of street art and graffiti and Chook Alley comes off Ilham Lane which has some street art, along with an art gallery and  studios.

In the 1950s the Situationalists advocated the renaming and reimagining of buildings. Can you imagine the front of the NGV as the entrance to a train station? If you can’t see the B-grade movie I, Frankenstein. Location scouts for movies are a crypto-Situationalists but other people really do reinventing buildings, turning a factory gatehouse into a coffeeshop, warehouses into apartments.

In 1955 in his “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography” Guy Ernest Debord wrote: “The production of psychogeographic maps, or even the introduction of alterations such as more or less arbitrarily transposing maps of two different regions, can contribute to clarifying certain wanderings that express not subordination to randomness but complete insubordination to habitual influences (influences generally categorised as tourism that popular drug as repugnant as sports or buying on credit). A friend recently told me that he had just wandered through the Harz region of Germany while blindly following the directions of a map of London This sort of game is obviously only a mediocre beginning in comparison to the complete construction of architecture and urbanism that will someday be within the power of everyone.”