imBinews:

... bought a washing machine!
Have been hand washing all year, loving the smell of me clothes
but decided amidst life bedlam that a machine might just let me paint more! Still not really into detergent, i like lavendular.

...am having exhibition at Raft ARt Gallery opening, October 9. Yay. HEck. Bloody Hell, shit, get painting sister.

Does anyone else have the problem that when they are about to have an exhibition life has a crazy way of turning on the amps and making it totally crazy and then you go into a frenzy, have show, drop then recover again to make more....

feel like the grass that is trying to grow out of concrete cracks, like n India's picture.

let it bleed

love it when the picnic table yields wonders
havn't been able to paint cos am in prison working
which is really painful
coa all i want to do is splash the syrup
scratch the brush
oil the rag
let it bleed.
so will have to just look at the travel tales
and dream of marks
and tracks

and look to streets for inspiration

darwin blah

sometimes in Darwin people go a bit nuts and drive off the edge of the harbour

other times they do silly things

even our politicians are nuts....

slightly edgy tales from the frontier town

that really is still weird

but lovely

we have a wave pool now...

but it seems so out of place

it needs a paint job and some scratching

some rust and mould to make it beautiful.

but i love paint. how it appears in all places.

even on the edge of the world....

bless the mangoes

which are rapidly getting fat.

lucky we have winds from everywhere

gotta paint big time, damn.

and jump off the harbour

into croc infested, stinger salty sea

damn twice. can't even swim there.

you must connect the dots...

very potato

today i make marks
very no good
keep talking wrong
sometimes black
sometimes grey
very no good
i very potato.

CLEANING OUT
VOLCANOES
IN MY HEART

it is lines

rain

tears

and leaving.

oh dear.

thankyou ginger for this heart country

oily rag philosophy

oily rags.....

I was thinking about something India posted; the discontented oily rag students.

When I remembered camping in the yurt by the river,

I made beautiful flags for my friend to put around the outside of his yurt. Then he ran away with the gypsys and i thought it was all over. Funny how tragedy pulls you together again, however, the point is all I have as a memory of this experience is a greasy, skanky piece of oily rag from the back of his car....which not long after he crashed and blood went every where.

So you see the oily rag is now, for me....way way more than a grease soaked grot cloth.

It tells a story.

As an object it doesn't really matter, becasue it is the process and experience behind it that makes this piece of seeming nothingness, to me very special. What is entwined in the fibres and being of this fabric goes beyond mere objectivity. It is not pretty or colourful, but full of the grit of struggle, pain, loss and leaving.

I'm not sure about the oily rag philosophy...yet I was out at Garma festival last week (another adeventure to catch up on...shizza), and artist Robyn Archer talked very powerfully about her thoery of artistic 'detritus'. Perhaps this is akin to the oily rag thinking; that as artists what we 'do' is essentially engage in a process; an unfolding of learning; a submergant experience. What we give to the world is therefore....the detritus of this process. What drives the art markets and auctions are the chucked out reamins, the oily rags of the artistic process.

Detritus : oily rag. Slave and pay over it. Artists have already moved on.

Thus, if you wanna make a pretty picture, a lovely 'thing', remember that it is all rubbish anyway and maybe you should be thinking more about how you got there, what is your story, what has infused itself into when you made it, what dirt is in your hands, did your bones quiver in that moment where pink blended into darkness????????

If you want a pretty picture, a perfect anything, you are boring, very very boring. If you can't see the incredible journey in the oily rag or broken spirit, the joy of doing....then go bloody sit with crack pot ronald in his plastic castle of fake reality, down some gherkin and pretend some more!!!

We artists will enjoy the planting, cooking, the taste of everything....and use are oily rags in the process!!!!

So there.

swine flu hill

apologies...i have a backlog of adventures to catch up on
still processing the nz flight
told you
here's some more pics.

andre....

sunlight winter on the hill

the walk up the hill

the great and illustrious frabb-u-lator

mad props

the boys don the masks and mirror

swine flu tattoo

told you they were hairy...

handy

me, sister starrlite and other hairy whanae had fun
we partied for a few days
and made our hands pretty (amongst other things)
midwinter matariki business
holed up on the hill
in Island Bay
more to follow
stay tuned.
the memories lasted at least two weeks.

(oh yeah we did some glam shots for starrlite's cuz - gypsym, who told us all we were a bunch of sad c--ts because we wanted to go to sleep and he just wanted to listen to hard core rap music at 5 am....this photo is our way of expressing thanks!!!)

button faeries and footfalls

well...let's start in wellington....
street installations and bits
was a bit tipsy and discovered in a hazy
beatles infused time warp these lovely panels
was all about love
i felt it
hard out
then there were wild horses...

and birds of freedom in homeless shelters

the wonders of wellington town

oh yeah and the random knit business

was founded everywhere

even in trees eh bro

oh then i went to the snow
and had fun fun cold fun

but amazed at that crunchy stuff

oh my first ice thing....

couldn't do a cheesy snowman

sorry kids!!!

mountain lightblinged out thermies with ants

this wild top end mustang goes into the deep snow...w for wicked

but before all of that was the button faerie of course.....

aka: meastro knuckles mama knuckles and the button faerie

we met a phoenix and her collection of paua and old rusty pirate knife

the colours were astounding....

the sentinals watch over it all

waiting by the sea

watching the light rise and fall

waiting to see if she will ever come back

calling

out from the long place

with moutains high

bless

aotearoa

p.s. didn't get to see colin.