Culcher Vulcher

Below are a few prints by Masuo Ikeda (February 23, 1934 - March 8, 1997). I picked up a book of his works while in Japan, lost them, then found them yesterday.

Below: works by Jeffrey Smart. (Adelaide, 1921 -)

Culcher Vulcher: Yang Fudong and Kohei Yoshiyuki

Still from No Snow on the Broken Bridge, a film in separate parts over 9-screens. Good for the attention-span deficit art lover.

His film for Prada. Not great, but has some nice moments.

Kohei Yoshiyuki is photographer/voyeur. He spent the 70's stalking people in Tokyo parks. The results are both touching (literally and figuratively) as well as creepy.

Maybe it's just the infra-red flash, but so many of the clothes looked like shiny-polyester numbers. So clingy/glamorous. Both of these artists are at the IMA Gallery,Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. Don't go during the week. In cruel daylight the Valley is overrun with junky-cowboys and scared looking tourists. Although considering some of the subject matter, it just might suit.

Culcher Vulcher: Sunday

Seeing as I don't work, as in "work" work, as in I don't go to an office, have to deal with passive aggressive emails re: who used my mug? My SPECIAL mug, or get paid, my weekends tend to lack the bitter-sweet joy that most peoples’ weekends do. Every Sunday afternoon someone will sigh, 'Oh I don't want to go to work tomorrow' and I'll just mumble and hope it sounds sympathetic. Otherwise someone will ask whether I've got a job yet—a real job— and I'll have do the whole demurring do-se-do of 'Well, the government pays me to study,’ which no-one buys, not even me. But then I start thinking about how I’d look in business pants and clunky Clarks-shoes, shudder, and feel fine again.

Culcher Vulcher: The White Rabbit Gallery

Sozzages for all the art, I have an absurd need to get through all of it before getting back to my usual blogs. I did see X-Men:First Class the other day, but I figure everyone in the whole world has seen it so my yay-or-nay will be even more redundant than usual. But I did love it.

Anyhoodly, here's some of my faves from The White Rabbit Gallery. It's just around the corner from my place in Sydney (I pretend I have a Sydney house, it's really just some kind boys I shamelessly impose myself on.) Anyway, here art be.

Chen Wei had some fantastic pictures on display. His intention is to make them look like highly stylised dreams. No people, just empty spaces. Very, dare-I-say-it - Murakami-esque? Shudder, but that's the gut reaction I got when looking at them. Especially this one, which reminded me of a scene from Kafka on the Shore.

Culcher Vulcher: Art Gallery of NSW

Too much to go into detail really, so I'll just upload some pics of my fave artists (not necessarily the pieces on display there, what I can I tell you, I'm lazy).

One my (few) inspirational (sort of) quotes.

"I do now know what I want, and perhaps I shall never know, but my only wish from every star will always be another star; and truly I am not afraid, she thought."

- From "Master Misery"  by Truman Capote.

Culcher Vulcher: Eikoh Hosoe

I've been Culcher Vulchering myself silly down here in Sydney. Asides from the quotidian pleasures of the endless alleys (one of which was ruled by cats, a sign told me so) I've been visiting some galleries too.

Plenty of little tid-bits will follow, but I'll start with the loser of the litter.

The Eikoh Hosoe; Theatre of Memory exhibition is tucked away in the back of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. When I went it was empty. There was a bevvy of schoolkids screaming outside, but I doubt they were there to see it. More likely the new addition to the museum, the John Kaldor Family Gallery downstairs. 

Which is a shame, since Eikoh Hosoe's work, while being a dark and strange, is magnificent in it's exploration of beauty in unexpected forms.

Eikoh Hosoe, Untitled, Tohoku, 1965. From the series Kamaitachi. 

Culcher Vulcher: Marlene Mocquet

Almost six months have passed and I'm still thinking about this artist. I suppose it means I should chuck her up on here for y'all to enjoy. Her name is Marlene Mocquet, she was born in France in 1979 and, if you look online, she is a little bit cute.

She was my favourite thing at the Shanghai Biennale. And before everyone starts on the 'ooooooh the Biennale how tres internationale of you!'  Please note I left it partway through to eat a McDonalds cheeseburger in the gardens outside. I did slurp loudly at staring passerbys.

Anyhow, here are some of her works in various sizes/qualities.

I like how it mixes the childish and the grotesque in a way I haven't seen before. Also the cartoonish eyes. She also had some great sculptures in a similar style. I remember them being plated in gold and violent, but it's all a bit of a haze now.

Culcher Vulcher: Miwa Yanagi

Artist website, with a great series on Grandmothers available here.

Culcher Vulcher: William Robinson

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

When my friend and I went to see the William Robinson exhibition at the Queensland University of Technology, the first thing she said was how much it looked like a Miyazaki film. More specifically she meant Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) . 

Presumably she meant in terms of appearance; Robinson is one of Australia’s greatest living landscape artists. His work is particularly centred on rainforests. Many of his works are of the Gold Coast hinterland. Nausicaa is a cartoon set in a mythical future wherein the forests have taken on gigantic proportions—there are insects the size of light planes. The comparison seems slight but it works; both are concerned with peoples awe in the face of nature’s dark grandeur, and of our place within it. 

Culcher Vulcher: Trash

Feeling blah after a hectic weekend of partying -blog to follow- for now, enjoy my new background and these pictures of trash.


I love trash, where everything and anything mish-mashes together and becomes brand new, while still being the same.

This is by Wang Jiuliang, a Chinese photographer. He's obsessed with the garbage that is collecting (in almost a perfectly circular pattern) on the outskirts of Beijing. I saw him at the White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney, a magnificent place for anything Chinese. More of Jiuliang's work can be seen here.

The Australian Centre of Photography did a great show about world issues around this time last year. I especially liked the work of Andrew Bell (above) who covered ship breakers in (I think) India. Really great photos (more here) and an interesting topic all around.

Finally, Teiyo Matsumoto is an amazing manga arist who throws anything and everything into his work. This image comes from Tekkonkinkreet, a fantastic graphic novel (and winner of the Will Eisner prize) . The story follows two street urchins battling for their city against a dubious "family friendly" company. In both imagery and style (Matsumoto draws in a style closer to French comics than Japanese) the artists work is completely one of a kind, a hectic over-the-top kaleidescope of images.

CULCHER VULCHER: Jun Chen

Jun Chen is a Brisbane based artist and co-owner of a Sushi Station (the one on Elizabeth Street, to be precise). I came across him at the Ray Hughes Gallery in Sydney. I love paintings with big, lusty smears of paint.

Untitled by Jun Chen. 2010.

Something about his work kept coming back to me. Especially when I went back to Brisbane. Perhaps it's all the deep greens. They remind me of leaves, and all the dead things I kept finding here: possums, rats, skinks, birds - you name it, I've nearly trodden on it. And smelt it, too.

Untitled by Jun Chen. 2010.

Both of these images were sourced from the Ray Hughes Gallery, here.

CULCHER VULCHER: Zhou Fan

Don't you love it when you find an artist who seems to have ripped an idea out of your brain and then made real, and a thousand times better? Somwhere in my basement there's a book of infantile scrawls that kind-of, sort-of, if you squint, if I whomp you with a jaffle iron, look like ugly versions of these. The arist is Zhou Fan, and his work can be found here.

CULCHER VULCHER: Ma Liang

Ma Liang Scend-hand tang poem，2007，Photography，90×7cm

My friend Jem and I found this artist at the Shanghai Duolun, China. Other works used headless dolls and toys, all in the same brooding, dreamy style. Fun stuff. More examples of his work can be found here.