Urban landscape

Post #119 Saturday 2 November 2019 – Banksy

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Letters from America

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 #113 Sunday 23 June 2019 – Pretty Balmoral

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Sunday 23 June 2019

The lovely thing about Sydney, well there are many but this is also one of them, is that even when it is overcast it can be very pretty.  

I was at Mosman last week during the week, a bit of an event because I don’t go over the Bridge so much these days.  Afterward I dropped down from the steep ridge that Military Road follows, to the pretty harbour beach, Balmoral (surf beach for the under threes).  I had a nostalgic and quality fish and chips from the Bottom of the Harbour fish and chip shop, which I think has been there about 20 years, loyally taking cash only and reminding some of us of scandalous tax avoidance schemes from the days of when…

It was an overcast day.   A steady number of citizens walked their dogs along the foreshore.  I have always liked the somewhat art deco style of the concrete foreshore walkway, complemented by the little bridge across the isthmus which you can just see at the end of the beach here in one of my afternoon snaps.

Bottom of the Harbour – tax schemes from the past

MG xx
Both sides of the Bridge

Post #108 Sunday 3 March 2019 – Neighbourhood charm

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Sunday 3 March 2019

At the end of Victoria Street, where the road ends and becomes a paved pathway a little lane way joins up with the path. It’s a dead end that meets the last apartment blocks on St Neot’s Avenue (which you can get to only by sandstone stairway). It’s a charming part of the Potts Point neighbourhood. A local wit has added some cats to the traffic sign in the lane way.

And this is a view of the lane way with the sign in place (well it’s a bit obscured in the hedge), looking across to the City. It’s not the best photo of all time but it’s still a lovely evening outlook.

MG xx

Post #103 Sunday 18 November 2018 – Signs of Summer

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Sunday 18 November 2018

There is a gecko that lives somewhere on the south side of my balcony.  It must hibernate over winter. Come October November evenings I can hear it start to make the little series of chk chk chk chk sounds that are so reminiscent of warm happy times.  It still amazes me that the gecko comes every year twelve floors up to my highrise home.

Another favourite sign of summer is the appearance of great quantities of mangoes at the local shops –  flavour, fragrance and texture are all summer.

 

xx MG

Post #77 – Saturday 10 March 2018 – Detroit

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Saturday 10 March 2018

Recently I made a new friend who is an Australian living and working in the US.  We talked about America and he asked me where I had visited.  One of the places was Detroit where I visited for work quite a few years ago now.  My new friend immediately asked whether I knew Shinola watches (which I didn’t).  Shinola is all about the best in Detroit’s legacy of quality industrial design and processing.

I later spent time enjoying the Shinola website.   I really appreciated learning about this venture.  Here is a fine example of what they are about:

And here is a version for women that I like:

When I visited about 10 years ago Detroit it felt a city with a great past and great past wealth.  The most striking thing first up was the miles of abandoned houses in what must have once been affluent suburbs.  It was the closest thing to a culture shock I have experienced, just for a few moments, in the Anglo world.

When I first visited Detroit I had just finished reading a novel called Middlesex by Michael Eugenides which was set in part in Detroit, including Detroit during the civil unrest and race riots in  1967.

So when I arrived my conception of what had happened in Detroit was a work of my imagination based on this novel.  And as I was driven from the airport into the centre of the city through these abandoned suburbs I could not believe what I saw.  Street after street of empty boarded up overgrown and burnt out houses – a living testament to a disruptive modern historical event,  a bombed out war zone that the survivors had never rebuilt, but had just been abandoned there for 40 years.  And the houses were clearly houses that had formerly been grand.  There was an established well heeled life that went with these streets, and it was visibly wiped out.  It was just inconceivable to me that this could be part of a modern peace time consumer city culture.

I searched the internet and found photos of the once splendid houses in those abandoned suburbs. The photos I have included here show the houses all overgrown with green.  This is what it looked like to me because I visited in summer.

I recently saw  a 2017 film by director Kathryn Bigelow simply called Detroit.  It deals with a key incident that occurred during the race riots of 1967 and is quite a harrowing watch.  I had heard about this film long before I saw it, in a radio documentary about the process of depicting living history.  The documentary had remarkable interview material from people who had lived through the violence 50 years before.

Detroit already had problems by the time of the unrest in 1967 – the chief being declining manufacturing sector and car industry.

Sadly the GFC brought more disruption to the political geography of Detroit when the collapse of mortgage securities enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw more houses abandoned in outer suburbs, with owners forced to walk away (literally) from their untenably financed houses.

But there is often talk of rebuilding Detroit – with high tech, the film industry and similar ventures.  First stop Shinola watches.  Thanks to my new friend for telling me about them.

MG xx

Post #64 Wednesday 29 November 2017 – November trip to Canberra

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Wednesday 29 November 2017

It was a lovely visit to Canberra this month.  On the morning I was due to leave Canberra it was raining very softly, exactly the way it doesn’t rain in Sydney (where it shamelessly buckets from all directions).  I took a walk near where I was staying and saw many lovely things including this fine sculpture – an enormous sheet of steel unfolding up the hillside.  And this trip, when I walked in the evening, I saw more bunnies on the lush Canberra lawns than I have ever seen anywhere.  It was like walking into a Beatrix Potter story.  The Canberra bunnies were out and about, mostly in pairs, quietly feasting in the dark.  They were so fluffy and almost tame.  Back in my day I think it was a bit of a heavy myxomatosis scene and there just weren’t a lot of bunnies anywhere at all (sigh).  Such a treat to see them abundant and healthy now in a place where there is lots for them to eat.

xx MG
enjoying gentle vertical rain in Canberra from time to time

 

Post #48 Sunday 23 July 2017 – The Quadrangle

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Sunday 23 July 2017

Yesterday I went to a small event at Sydney University.  It was held to celebrate the planting of two new flowering trees in the Main Quadrangle.  These trees replace the old jacaranda which graced the Quad for years but which had expired.

It was a glorious day and the sandstone buidings looked beautiful.

The alumni organisation gave commemorative bagdes to guests (including to your glamorous aunt MG).

So this picture is a selfie – my phone camera insists on putting rays in which gives me a halo (oh dear).

Here is one of the trees, the flame tree.

And here is the badge.  It has a stylised depiction of the contrasting colours of the flame and jacaranda flowers.

 

MG xx
in an almost perfect world

 

Post #46 Wednesday 19 July 2017 – urban landscape

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Wednesday 19 July 2017

When I take my long walks in the winter evenings I often pass camellia shrubs heavy with flowers.  I brought a few home this last week.

This morning I found two of my recent prizes on the carpet.  They had dropped out of their bases and landed face up.  It’s  the same habit you see  in the garden, a sodden layer of face up camellias surrounding some shrub.  They defy the cut flower industry.  I don’t think I have ever seen a camellia in a florist’s shop.

So this post is just because the camellias are such lovely oriental beauties.  They may be domestic flowers but they  don’t co-operate entirely with the domestic program.

MG xx

 

 

Post #27 Monday 8 May 2017 – McElhone Stairs and the black and white cat

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Monday 8 May 2017

This is a 1944 painting by Sali Herman of the McElhone Stairs.

These Stairs are at the end of Victoria Street and lead up from Woolloomooloo to Potts Point.   I have often walked these stairs down to the City or to Lady Macquarie’s Chair and the Botanic Gardens and sometimes just to do a circuit alongside  HMAS Kuttabul which is at the bottom of Potts Point.  I think the Stairs date from the 1870s.

Sali Herman distorted his painted view to make the Stairs much wider and steeper looking than they are.  And he made the figures smaller to add to the effect.  The male figures in the bottom right are uniformed, perfectly suited to 1944  (though there are always uniformed service people about with the local naval base and the dock).  The house on the right is a fine house also from the 1870s, with very fine detail in  the balconies and ironwork.   I think there have been continuing battles with successive owners over the tackiness of renovations that get done from time time to the heritage listed building (the down pipes got painted a shiny gold not so long ago :-)). On the left at the top of the Stairs is an enormous ventilation pipe – which is a structure of 1930s engineering, quite impressive!

Sali Herman’s painting of the McElhone Stairs

Here is a really interesting image of the Stairs taken in 1927 in a silent film that was miraculously discovered in the 1950s and reprinted. I think it also captures that sense of the Stairs having a great size, which is exactly what Sali Herman’s painting was after.

The photo shows a very spare environment.  Woolloomooloo, at the bottom of the Stairs, was a dockside slum district.  It is still home to relatively deprived people with a lot of house commission homes built in the 1970s and 80s, following the amazing green ban campaign and federal government intervention to save the area from the worst forms of rapacious Sydney property development.

I love these Stairs for their own sake.  But I also have loved them because of a small animal spirit who has occupied the Stairs for a very long time.

Over the years I have taken quite a few photos of this cat, even though it was not mine, it didn’t seem to belong to any person so much as to the place.  I had a real affection for her.  Here are some pictures, the ones I found on the phone anyway.

She frequently dozed in the sun on a broad sandstone rocky outcrop next to the Stairs and that is where her minder left her food and water.

And I was very sad to see today this little sign at her usual sunning place.  The woman in my photo above with the lilac shirt, was her minder, Hill, who had herself  lived on the streets a few times in her life.

It’s a clever photo, it even lines up the wires running along the wall behind her sunny spot on the sandstone.  And the cards and flowers were touching.  I did not know she had been living there as long as 15 years, no home, just her minder diligently feeding her on the street.

Farewell philosophical cat.


MG xx

Post #26 Saturday 6 May 2017 – Darlinghurst Gaol

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Saturday 6 May 2017

I went up to Oxford Street at lunch time today to see a good friend from the country who was down in Sydney for work. It was another glorious day.  I wish I had worn lighter clothing.   After work was done we strolled along the walkway shaded by trees and high sandstone walls next to the Art School that occupies the grounds of the old goal (the old East Sydney Tech). Then we stopped in at the cafe there which is tucked away inside the walled grounds.

It’s a secret spot.  Here’s the side entrance we used to duck in.

Today there was something unusual at the cafe.  The shiniest, proudest, most engaged with humanity crow I have ever seen.

He was actively mining the cafe environment for food and when there was none he got creatively destructive.  I mean, it was not enough to trash the miniature cactus pot plant decorating the cafe table by throwing it onto the floor, it also had to be stabbed a good number of times, back and front, with the beak first.

There was a crow commentary carried on throughout.  The noise was so varied and expressive.  At the end of a gravelly phrase when the bird seemed really put out by the food situation the voice would drop to a gurgling growling sometimes sing song series of notes.  This bird must have learnt to speak this way from interacting with a  human or human family. What a forceful presence!  Completely dominating his environment with noise and movement, constant enquiry  and fearless interaction with people.

My country friend observed maybe the crow was the ghost of some former inmate, a guy whose death had never been avenged, who had been knocked off by Roger Rogerson back in the day when Rogerson did time in Darlinghurst Goal.  So the crow persists.  Unweary cipher.

from the David Attenborough school of natural history, Darlinghurst division, MG
signing out for the evening,

stay lively  xx