Art

Post #119 Saturday 2 November 2019 – Banksy

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Saturday 2 November 2019

I went to the Banksy exhibition at the Entertainment Quarter. If you go, it’s better not to buy tickets online – they are a much better price at the door. Also, to avoid walking around looking for the exhibition hall, go straight to the end of the main entrance road off Lang Road (I walked all around the place before I figured it out :-)).

Even though the Banksy images are such well known street art there was nothing “old” about the look of the show – mostly original stencils and various prints. Here are some of the street images from Google:

flower violence
art for the burbs
a trusty Council contractor

The organiser of the exhibition was manager/accomplice to Banksy for many years, Steve Lazarides. Banksy himself is still unidentified.

One of the best things about the exhibition was the use of videos – streaming on loop around the hall between the exhibits. They told the story of the extraordinary rise of the guerilla grafitti artist with his witty, anti-consumerist themes. It was a very well done story and made the exhibition a really coherent experience.

There was film called “Exit Through the Gift Shop” mentioned in some of the commentary of the exhibition, a film I’d never heard of. In the evening when I was home I looked it up and found a copy on youtube to watch.

The film was an extended commentary on the consumerist art market hype that Banksy parodies (and was itself a clever hoax). It started out purporting to be a documentary on Banksy, being made by a dotty French American amateur photographer/film maker. This character had, according to the film, doggedly followed Banksy for years on his secret missions trespassing at night to plaster his distinctive stencil posters and do his grafitti on buildings and signs all round the UK and both sides of the US. When it becomes apparent about half way through the film, that the quality of the documentary is hopeless, Banksy enters stage left (appearing simply as a dark hooded figure – no face – being interviewed) and persuades the film maker to become the subject of the narrative. So he does, and somehow sets about to transform himself into a grafitti and print artist (like Banksy) with a huge output (none of it displaying any talent or skill whatsoever). The reconfigured “documentary” then follows the film maker’s hugely successful first exhibition in Los Angeles (playing to the cynical undiscriminating art market hungry for the next “thing”). It’s done with a light enough touch though, to make it excellent fun to watch.

Here is a link to the film if you’d like to watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHJBdDSTbLw

It reminded me of a documentary (but not a parody “documentary” at all), about Andy Warhol’s protegee, David Basquiat, who perished very young, apparently a victim of his own success. From the wrong side of the tracks, with no training, he suffered trying to cope with the hype of his spectacular conquest of the contemporary art market at a very young age. His tragic fate perhaps an outcome, at least in part, of the social realities that are the focus of Banksy’s work. Here are some images of Basquiat’s pictures – in a heavily worked totemic grafitti style.

And here is a link to the documentary film about Basquiat, which turned up in my internet searches when I was getting these images of his paintings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ibOFlSM6o I think the film features (the real) Andy Warhol and (the real) David Bowie.

xx MG

Post #116 Monday 19 August 2019 – A new coat

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Monday 19 August 2019

I posted this selfie on Twitter last week. This is my new coat, with that unmistakable discreet hotel lobby look. I had to concede my favourite old pale trench coat was finished. Such a lovely, quality thing I bought in Double Bay ages ago, I had finally worn it out.

All this sentiment reminded me of the improbable scene in La Boheme where the old coat gets serenaded before being pawned to buy medicines for the rapidly declining Mimi, who is flushed with TB.
Caruso’s version of the song – The Coat Song:

https://tinyurl.com/yxomvnps

It’s a little while since I went to the opera.  But it’s a much longer while since I bought student rush tickets for $5.  In those days the opera theatre was often half empty.  The audience always included elegant Hungarian women in mothball furs though.  It’s great the opera is so popular now but it’s so sad the days of student rush are over.  Those heavily discounted tickets gave impoverished students the incredible privilege of going to the opera several times a week when the season was on – what a life!
xx MG

Post #112 Tuesday 18 June 2019 – Newcastle Art Gallery

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Tuesday 18 June 2019

In the course of my recent excursions during May when I was away from work for a couple of weeks, I had the pleasure of going up to the Newcastle Art Gallery for the first time. It was a Saturday early afternoon and the occasion was the opening of a retrospective exhibition of the works of the Australian artist, Virginia Cuppaidge. Virginia was interviewed at the opening, to a very attentive audience. The paintings in the exhibition covered her work over a 40 year career spent in New York. She has recently returned to Australia to live.

Here is a photo of two of her pictures from the 1970’s:

And here is a sculpture made by the Australian Clem Meadmore, with whom she worked for a time in New York. The sculpture is entitled Virginia and lives in the Sculpture Garden at The Australian National Gallery in Canberra.

I became aware of Virginia’s paintings because I was friendly with her mother: author, botanical illustrator, japanophile and horticulturalist, Judy Cuppaidge. Judy and I became friends when Judy was in her 90’s: a more lively and remarkable person you could not hope to meet and, as she said, with her macular degeneration: “blind as welder’s dog.”

I’ve been planning to make a recording of one of Judy’s short stories, so you know what I sound like before we meet.

MG xx

Post #105 Sunday 2 December 2018 – The Finger Wharf Woolloomooloo

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Sunday 2 December 2018

One of my routine evening walks involves a circuit of the area down by the Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo.  At the moment it’s especially nice because summer has brought out the jasmine.  There is a great hedge of it running down one side of the McElhone Stairs at the end of Victoria Street and it’s a heavy summery scent which is just beautiful.

There is a always a set of sculptures on display along the boardwalk adjacent to the Finger Wharf.    According to the labels next to them they come from a commercial “art bank”.   The display changes every six months or so.  There is one new I like especially.  It reminds me of the symetry in a shell or the inside of a flower.

Then sometimes, just when you are minding your own business on your evening walk, a huge floating resort rounds the point in front of you and cruises down the harbour, towering over everything.

I am including here a couple of selfies I found in my dropbox files that haven’t made it to the website before now.

xx  MG

Post #104 Sunday 25 November 2018 – Theatrical diversion

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Sunday 25 November 2018

I recently went to an interesting piece of “immersive” theatre called A Midnight Visit.  It was held in St Peters in a huge old empty furniture warehouse.  The drama was based on the stories and poems of Edgar Allen Poe.  We had to sign a waiver before entering.  We were each given a black surgical mask to wear while we stood around in the foyer.  There was an MC called The Undertaker who then selected people from the audience to enter the performance through different doorways.  We went into different rooms and spaces which were variously got up in detailed Gothic sets reminiscent of Poe themes.  The actors moved around in the spaces performing in among the audience.  There were music and dance performances woven into some of the story fragments.  Then there were features of the warehouse set which can only be described as playful – corridors and stairwells to climb through, mysterious rooms to explore.  One room was filled with CCTV screens “secretly” relaying what audience members were doing in other rooms.  Another room had a small sunken pool filled with soft pink balls and a sign saying No Jumping, and of course people did.  At one stage there was a regal seeming actor strolling around, who would seat himself strategically and beckon a member of the audience to come over.  He would then have an extended private conversation with that person.   He beckoned me at one stage and asked me, whispering, what was I afraid of.  It took me ages to decide but finally I said “uncertainty”.  He said Oh no, you don’t need to be afraid of uncertainty, you need to be afraid of people who text and drive! Lol.

It was clever in parts, apparently developed from a similar immersive theatrical adventure which has been showing for years in an extended season in New York called Sleep No More (based on Macbeth).  A Midnight Visit was ambitious and intriguing.  I could happily have stayed on exploring for another hour.  There are some great photos included in the link here to the review in the magazine Time Out.

xx MG

https://www.timeout.com/sydney/theatre/a-midnight-visit-review

https://amidnightvisit.com/about-the-experience/

 

Post #99 Sunday 26 August 2018 – In miniature

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Sunday 26 August 2018

Following a recommendation I braved windy William Street Darlinghurst and went down to the Australian Design Centre where I saw a remarkable collection of miniature streetscapes made by Joshua Smith.  They were fine works of craftsmanship recreating the patina of urban decay in  the shopfronts of poorer neighbourhoods.  Here is a photo of one of them:

It reminded me of the dioramas that used to be in the War Memorial in Canberra, which were battlefields recreated in miniature – tiny toylike scenes made for adults.

MG xx

 

 

Post #92 Sunday 24 June 2018 – Flowering trees and the allegory of the unicorn

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Sunday 24 June 2018

I haven’t posted about any flowering trees for a little while. My flowering tree this time is a lemon tree, not from local life but from a set of French medieval tapestries that have been on exhibition at the Art Gallery.

I specially like this tree because it accurately depicts that habit which many lemon trees have of flowering and fruiting at the same time.  And the flower of a lemon tree has one of the most evocative scents.

The context of the tapestries is the age of chivalry in the late Middle Ages.  But there is no trace of darkness or punishing cloistered religious life that I for one, so often associate with the Middle Ages.  Instead it’s a sensual paradise of garden, music and luxury.  The mythical unicorn appears in all the tapestries together with the virgin maiden.  The story has it that the unicorn is only tame for the virgin lady.

Curiously I found in my investigations that the original unicorn figure – a mythical wild man from Mesopotamia – was civilised only by the temple whore.  I was interested to  learn in that social reality the temple whore was a respected figure herself, charged with the responsibility of making men into better versions of humanity (than they were when left to their own devices).

Your glamorous aunt MG xx

Post #78 Saturday 17th March 2018 – Back from Canberra

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Saturday 17 March 2018

I had the fastest drive home from Canberra than I’ve had in ages.   This notwithstanding there was a lot of road work – for which we all slowed down.  But as I regularly  let myself travel just above the speed limit, alas I am thinking this may be the reason for my fast trip even with roadwork and I am none too proud of it really.

It was a good stay and I collected visuals of another interesting piece of sculpture on an early evening walk near the hotel.  On reflection I could have done a better photo:

Here’s a better shot from the local Sculpture Walk Guide which I found on the net, together with a spiel about the scuplture’s name and significance, and its’ creator, all of which is quite appealing:

Being a bit frisky one Canberra morning I took an unsual selfie – the underboob and pyjamas shot, here to amuse 🙂 in the usual way:

I can also say in recent news, I learnt how to make Steak Diane, thanks to an enterprising visitor at home, and that was all very good indeed.

Your glamorous aunt, MG xx
reporting on some of this week’s adventures.

Post #79 Sunday 25 March 2018 – Mapplethorpe and Araki

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Sunday 25 March 2018

Earlier this month I managed to get to the NSW Art Gallery to see an exhibition of the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe.  Here I am on the stairs posing with  an enlarged self portrait of the artist himself.

 

The challenging thing in the Mapplethorpe show is the kinky erotic photography  – predominantly homoerotic BDSM style scenes – some of them very graphic.

There is a common theme in all the work – erotica, portraits and kink alike –  and that is they have a “sculptural” feel to them.  It’s a very classical form and composition and the subjects are posed and still.   These are beautiful and accomplished images.

 

 

 

Here is one of the sculptural portaits in a classical style:

Mapplethorpe makes some images of kinky “domestic” scenes which are droll.  It’s incongruent to see a tough leather clad master slave couple in a Victorian pose in a 1960s lounge room.

And on the other side of the earth right now, there is an exhibition of photography showing at the Museum of Sex in New York.  There is something of the Mapplethorpe dilemma in this work too.  The exhibition is of the work of Japanese photographer Noboyushi Araki.

Many of Araki’s kinky erotic images are brutally challenging.  It’s hard to freely enjoy the brilliant aesthetic of Araki’s work because of the troubling depiction of feminine bondage and enslavement that features in so much of it.  And it’s troubling no matter what complex quality of consenting relationship the photographic models might have had with the great man.

Unlike Mapplethorpe there is far more candid imagery, action shots, and location work all of which make for a more dynamic subject matter – there might be stillness in the work but it’s only for a moment.  The erotic world of Aaraki is Dionysian.

But like Mapplethorpe there is also great humour in some of Araki’s erotic work.  Perhaps I should be asking a less obvious question: how did comic pornographic art get itself into the gallery…

Here are some Araki images, the one on the left I have posted before and it’s of the Yakuza crouched like a dragon.  The one on the right is a the lighter relief version of “the reptile within”, the lizard having been reduced to little plastic Godzilla figures in the corner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your glamorous aunt MG xx

Post #75 Sunday 25 February 2018 – Zen and the city

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Sunday 25 February 2018

In the background of one of my selfies I must have included the part of my loungeroom wall that has a scroll of Chinese characters hanging on it.   I say this because I had the pleasure of meeting a man who had taken the time to get a translation before we met.  He had read the characters from one of my photos.  I also had the pleasure of hearing from him an interpretation of the words on the scroll which was a totally new to me and quite different from any interpretation I had thought of.

The scroll itself I had made about 4 or 5 years ago.  I had found a beautiful Zen saying entitled Subtlety.  I searched about and discovered a Chinese scholar who worked at Macquarie University who was skilled in calligraphy.  He agreed to do the calligraphy.  He also recommended a man who could mount the work in traditional Chinese paper and fabric form.  So the calligraphy was done and the work taken to the scroll maker, and in time I came to own this lovely thing:

The translation of the Zen saying is as follows (reading down first the column on the right, then down second the column on the left):

Entering the forest, he moves not the grass;

Entering the water, he makes not a ripple.

I had, and still do have, a fairly literal interpretation in mind.  But my new friend had another interpretation, thus:  when you enter the forest you are so small in such a great expansive world inevitably your presence does not create any special disturbance.  And the same with water.  When you merge with the ocean you do not disturb the huge body of water, you become part of it.  You cannot disturb it.  And following on from this my new friend drew another parallel – the difference between the city and the village.  In the city your conduct will not be noticed but in the village everything will be the subject of judgment and comment.  And we both agreed how grateful we were that we lived in the city.  In the village we would not be so free to meet.

Yours MG xx

PS On another subject altogether, I give you this week’s before shot:

and the (glamorous) after shot: