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HI _
by editor Jamie Hudson. 5
off the wall _
graffiti art and its barriers. 6
Bridezilla _
Frontwoman Holiday Carmen Sparks’ school of rock. 10
Black rebel motorcycle club _
Pete Hayes seperates BRMC fact from fiction. 15
Christina Kelly’s Made 590 celebrates the kitsch and cute. 30
I love my shop _ Go, gadget, go _
Get the latest techie stuff. 40
_ Jason Schwartzman Jason Schwartzman takes a trip to India in The Darjeeling Limited. 42
_ new crowned hope 10 years of Vienna festival. 50
_ Doin’ it for the kids Marieke Hardy sings the praises of the younger man. 54
_ Someone else’s reality What’s behind Oxfam’s Refugee Realities Project? 56
_ Fashion Photography by Julia Schauenberg. Pretty face by Lillie. 58 _ Oh my god, my friends are responsible What happens when your mates become upstanding citizens. 64
_ The project The boys behind the Black and Blue 302 gallery. 66
_ The writer’s piece Four writers describe the moment they realised they were adults. 68
_ new zealand Photography by Julia Schauenburg. Sweet recommendations by Sarah. 72 _ Emily Blunt Emily Blunt gets all bookish with The Jane Austen Book Club. 78
_ Lifting the veil What it’s like now for women in Afghanistan. 80
_ Starting point NZ designer Deborah Sweeney shares her inspirations. 82
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hi! Editor
Jamie Hudson
jade@thedwarf.com.au Contributors
Steph Maker, Shannon Ryan, Jarred Keane, Em Swann, Erin Crummy, Rich Vinci, Laurachel Ventus, Natalie Salvo, Kylie Cox, Bryno Pipskie Photographers
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march 2008 Recently, walking down the local high street, I saw an image reminiscent of my teenage years – the cover of KISS‘ seminal 1976 album Destroyer – staring at me in t-shirt form in the window of a popular chain store. The T-shirt was made to look as if it had been owned for years, loved and worn to within an inch of its life – despite the pristine nature of of its thread count and shape. A thought wormed its way into my head „Wow, so the next wave of Kissmania is on its way ... awesome... I can finally crack out one of my seven Kiss T-shirts again and be one of the cool kids“. That was until of course a second, darker and sadly more logocal thought stamped on the previous thought-worm „Hang about, this isn‘t a real Kiss T-shirt! It‘s either a faux credibility or worse still, an ironic Kiss T-shirt“.
Kim Eijdenberg, Laksahal Perere, Kylie Cox, Ryan Cooker, Richard Sharman, Dame Hoops, Sebastian Krawczyk, Pete Auswell, Andrew O‘consen, John Cainsen Design
Well, wearing a faux cred t-shirt tells the world that have experienced the hardships of being a soldier in the Kiss Army without having ever seen a day of warfare – it is plainly immoral to claim cred that you never earned.
Sebastian Krawczyk www.blockhuette.de printers the Franklin Press
Consequently, the ironic Kiss T-shirt, is all the more disrespectful and alarming. Put simply, the wearer of the ironic band t-shirt is stating to the real fan „Yeah, I know about your struggles and sacrifice – and I spit in your face, you are a misgueided squeally fool and I mock you... I mock you in cotton“.
Moonah, 7009 BULB (Brisbane) C/0 The Dwarf
So before you purchase that next faux cred/ironic band t-shirt, stop, think and remember, one day, chances are that your favourite band are going to be on faux cred/ironic t-shirt too.
PO Box 85 Flinders Lane QLD 4064 www.bulblight.com.au
yours in salutation, bulb-fictionarist Jamie Hudson
The vibrancy and cultural life of a city can certainly be judged by the writing on its walls. It‘s more than just a
signature
by Jason Dax Woodward
off
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„ the wall
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c o u r t ya r d o f r a d i o s ta i o n T r i p l e Z Z Z _ B r i s b a n e
>>>Travelling around a city like Sydney, MELBOURNE or New York
you can feel each city’s cultural climate. Posters instantly indicate the availability of cultural events and parties. Street Graffiti is a vital sign of artistic life and cultural resistance to homogenised culture.
Brisbane, if judged by its walls would have to be seen as sterile, corporate minded and obsessed with images of unrealistic, unblemished lingerie models. Most of the murals seen in the public eye are the ‘dumbed-down’ images of flowers and cutesy butterflies, as seen in the Roma Street Parklands, or the surreal images of koalas floating in space as seen on the M1 highway at Beenleigh. There are however, a number of local artists striving against draconian laws. Stencilling has never been more popular in Queensland than in the last two years. Artists from Queensland such as Guz, 1557 and Zodiac have been embracing the popularity that stencils have had over the last 3 years.
STI C K E R The difference with recent stencil work and traditional stencils is that this new wave is really stickers with stencils on them. The images are made at home and are actually pasted or stuck onto the walls. Either cheap paper or recycled vinyl sticker paper from sign writing companies is used. This method is preferred because the work can be controlled at home and several colours can be used and time can be taken in producing the work. The artist is much less likely to be caught in this process of postering. It only takes a few seconds of brushing some cheap wall paper glue onto the surface then sticking the poster onto it, rather than stencilling directly onto the public surface. If caught the artist can quickly remove the sticker and hence he offence. BAN K SY The most famous, influential and interesting of all these stencil artists is Banksy from England. Banksy originally began as a fairly average graffiti artist with a tendency to paint standard lettering styles with cliché ‘Save the world’ messages. He shifted to traditional stencil techniques over five years ago and he has not looked back. (I think) Banksy is better than his peers because he makes one and one equal three. He refuses to follow the usual choice of subject matter such as attractive female faces or scary images from mass media sources. He prefers to flip images of power such as British Beefeaters, or kissing English Bobbies. He actually credits the less well known Blak Le Rat from Paris, who began stencilling in the late sixties, as the stencil artist who has done it all first. Two books of interest: his own ‘Wall and piece’ (Random House) and for those interested in a history of stencilling is Paris Serigraphs (publisher unkown).
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brisbane Brisbane City Council has recently declared its desire to use Melbourne as a model for inner city living with its numerous back alley coffee shop and bars. I doubt however that the council intends to be as tolerant and sophisticated as Melbourne City Council with its numerous allocated areas for stencilling and mural work. Melbourne has just recently had a festival celebrating stencil work and a number of Brisbane artists like zodiac made their way down for it. Brisbane has a zero tolerance policy for street art and other non-commissioned public work ad has a 24-hour policy towards cleaning up what it perceives as vandalism. I only wish they has a zero tolerance policy towards bad architecture and the current trend of putting industrial I-Beams on the exterior of new public works and inner city units. The only metal work worse than Brisbane’s obsession with I-Beams on exterior facades, is the horrendous steel vines found on units at the Roma Street Parklands developments, which 2 years later still looks unfinished. Brisbane’s repressive approach has recently expressed its desires and nature with an attempt to introduce new laws, which would allow the council to paint over graffiti or public art on private property without having to get the owners permission. I have had two walls painted over by council workers without permission so I know how it feels.
look into studio of Triple ZZZ _ Brisbane
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murals Locally there has been a range of murals done on the highways barriers. These sound barriers, which have been erected without community consultation, are hideously reminiscent of those found throughout Los Angeles. The sound barriers are obviously targets for vandalism, and the council has largely ignored my advice (from 12 years ago) to plant trees or fast growing vines in front of them to prevent visual pollution. Some excellent and interesting public commissions have recently been created by Brisbane artist Simon De Groot. To be accepted for commissions at Milton Train Station and the bridge over the RNA showgrounds, Simon had to agree not to use spray paint - which is actually part of his normal practice. Simon’s work is a playful mix of spray paint and linear paintwork, often seen on power boxes throughout Brisbane. The Brisbane City Council power box projects require the artists to paint power boxes for $100 per box. A figure, which I feel, and I’m sure many would agree is an insult to the artists who paint them. Another major problem for the development of graffiti art in Queensland is the lack of permission walls for graffiti and stencil artists to paint. There are currently no council sanctified walls available in Brisbane. The current council believes that to have one would only encourage more graffiti artists, and subsequently more illegal graffiti art. Joe Morris from The Victorian Arts Youth Committee did some fascinating programs in the mid 90’s which proved with the support and statistics supplied by the Melbourne Railways Transport Authority that sanctified walls do not encourage more graffiti. In one year the VAYC gave way over $100,000 of paint for public street art murals. The cost of cleaning vandalism on trains decreased by $150,000.
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desire Logically if there are no legal walls to paint, street artists have no choice but to paint illegally. The evidence shows that the council current policies don’t work. The creative desire cannot be quashed, lock a person in a white room and they will dream of colours. This lack of legal space has sent Brisbane graffiti artists underground, literally. One of the most interesting recent trends in Brisbane graffiti culture is that artists are now searching out the underground tunnels of Brisbane to paint in/on. There are a small number of determined artists who paint in drainage systems using torches to see. Following the lead of Melbourne’s notorious Cave Clan, these artists are exploring and painting in pitch black and claustrophobic environments. The lack of fresh air combined with the toxic nature of the paint adds to the intense environment. Perhaps these tunnels will be time capsules of graffiti styles, one day to be regarded as cultural artefacts,
the ‘cave paintings’ of a generation.