ART WALK 11 Melbourne (Personal favourite so far)

Last week’s art walk was somewhat limited because I spent most of the night meeting and talking to artists and curator of my upcoming group show.

I came across Ian Strange: Suburban while I was waiting for the artist meet up, I remembered seeing the photograph of house painted black with a white circle on the internet somewhere, so I realised this was the real deal (see how credible internet is nowadays?!)

 

It’s interesting how these works are documented. The highlight of that is the three panels video installation. It’s slightly strange set up due to the way buildings were painted. I wonder what happens after the video were shot, were the houses taken apart or did someone live inside for a while? The three panels really scream for your attention, you get to experience varies details which you will normally only notice in naked eyes. It’s much closer to a personal experience where you attention is not linear. A quick glance at the edge of a roof, or a close look at the texture of concrete floor.

Parts of the buildings were brought into the gallery space. It makes the experience feel more real and reachable, however, Ian manged to convey the mood of “familiarly strange”.

Photography and videos are introduced perfectly to stage this event. It put street art into a well justified space into fine art. The painting (or burning of the buildings) becomes an event which can be documented in varies ways, put them in a container and ship to everywhere in the world. I think a lot of installation art can be done this way to get out of the boundary of location.

The show set up in a way that you can spend as little as 5 mins to as long as an hour in the gallery space. There were street style booklet and head phone provided video clips for you to spend as long as you like, something 2D artists should learn from?

Art is a story of what happened, and it can and should be staged base on the view of the artist.

I paid a visit to Craft Vic, they have a collection if intriguing objects on display, anything from mind bending folks to paper like dining set.

After dinner, I was on my way to the “Free sex and money” event. It was popular on Facebook with 800+ people RSVPed. And it was truly amazing!! See the full photo album here. Here is a little instagram video of when the live music started. Warning: it’s loud.

It seems like some warehouse, hidden in the middle of North Fitzroy. There were 3 rooms, maybe 4, it will take a while for you to navigate from the gate to the end. As you go deeper and deeper, you realize it’s getting more and more weird. It felt too much like a scene from velvet goldmine, where every gorgeous creatures just crawled out of no where to match the messy art on the wall.

 

Apparently police was involved later that night and someone was arrest for no apparent reason. I didn’t stay that long to witness it but I really hope nobody was hurt and this will happen again.