Oh OK then
I didn’t post a picture of the piece going into the Explosive Expression show ’cause it’s not framed yet and photographing two different shiny materials is really freakin hard. But I just pulled these off the camera and they’re not too bad.
It was stitched with silver metallic embroidery thread on black satin and is very shiny!
I really don’t think I was able to capture the true look of it with these shots but you do get the idea. Hopefully once it’s framed and up nice on a wall there’ll be better ones to share with you all.
This was definitely a patience tester to stitch up as metallic thread is SUPER fragile. I think I threw away as much as I used due to all the broken bits. But the overall effect is very much worth the effort. I hope they can show the piece under lots of bright lights so it’s extra super duper shiny!
Extra special thanks to Groundswell Collective for providing the original image and the inspiration!
Badgeriffic
I’m getting super excited counting down to this years’ Melbourne Social Forum, which is on in just TWO WEEKS! If you’re never been to a social forum before, it’s kind of like a global economic summit but without the white guys in suits, massive military presence and counter-productive outcomes. The social forum movement arose as an alternative to the globalisation wave that was sweeping the planet at the end of the last millennium, based around the idea that ‘another world is possible’.
At social forums, grassroots activists who work in the fields of social, economic and environmental justice get together and update each other on campaigns, talk about their work and share skills and resources.
This Melbourne Social Forum there’s gonna be a pretty decent craft presence as the movement is really coming to grips with the idea that a big part of sustainability is making more of the things we use in our lives. The Craft Cartel is doing a workshop (details to come) about craftivism and some of the issues around the consumerisation of craft.
And of course, there’s gonna be a market at the social forum! There’s going to be heaps of different organisations with stalls so you can learn about all the campaigns going on and find out what you can do to support them. And there’s going to be a heap of local, handmade stuff on stalls. I borrowed a badge maker to make some more stuff to go on my stall and spent yesterday happily making mixed media badges. There’s some at the top of the post. Like? You better come to the Melbourne Social Forum!
Homes for all
Seriously inspirational art
Photographic artist JR has produced these giant photographic portraits of Kenyan women and used the images to create water resistant roofing materials for Kibera, one of the largest slums in Africa.
Now THIS is good art. Not only does it provide a useful visual function by literally putting a face to the sprawling slums. But it provides a useful function by improving the structure of the buildings themselves.
It must be far too easy for the wealthy to avoid the reality of slums. If you’re not poor you just don’t go anywhere near them. This installation brings the lives of the poor to the lives of the wealthy in a very clever way, by air. Of course planes must fly over these areas!
And what’s most effective is the images themselves. It’s not your stereotypical victimising wide eyed stare. These are images of vibrant, awesome and empowered women. It gives lie to the common perception (mostly perpetuated by neocolonial ‘aid’ agencies) that women living in poverty in Africa are passively accepting of the impacts of colonial economics on their lives. These images (well, to me anyway) show that these women are not only very aware of the causes of the poverty they experience but are also active participants in the saying ‘the whole world’s watching’. Pertinent given our current economic climate.
I really hope this work gets the attention it truly deserves.
props: Wooster Collective
Another piece of public art that I adored recently, in fact, had me in stitches, pissing my pants maybe?
Sick of men (mostly) pissing in public at night (do you guys know how much your piss stinks come day time? have you heard of disease?) Questionmarc installed these brilliant signs in Nottingham
Needless to say the local council has strenuously denied that it is acceptable to urinate in public.
Genius.
Privilege
I’ve been having a few conversations recently with people about privilege. Mostly about how people in our communities benefit from privilege yet refuse to acknowledge this or don’t know how. It’s not an easy thing to recognise that there’s stuff you don’t have to deal with if you’re non-Indigenous or male or able bodied or whatever. But when it really comes down to it we need to recognise and challenge this privilege if we want to make some decent changes within our communities.
And as often seems to happen when I have an issue popping up in conversation a lot, a really good article on the topic pops up in my RSS feeds!
I highly recommend you take five minutes and read this article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh. It is superbly written and is a real make you think-er.
I think it’s a really interesting exercise to go through for anyone wanting to question privilege and how it works on their own life. Especially for those of you out there wondering why we’ve managed to remove most of the overt legal forms of discrimination yet the statistics still show a massive bias towards the able bodied straight white guy. Our behaviours as humans are so habitual and discrimination and privilege are definitely creatures of habit!
I’d love to hear what anyone else thinks about this article.
Incidentally, I found this article on the Women’s Creative Collective blog which I recently came across and it’s fecking excellent, you should read it too!
Supply Side Solutions – My Ass
I bet you been hearing a whole lotta talk from the housing/building/development industry recently about how the reason housing is so expensive is ’cause there’s not enough houses. And – my favourite excuse – that the industry hasn’t got enough land to build on.
The politicians, of course lap this up. Given that the majority of them aren’t actually trained classical economists, and a fair amount of them get some pretty nifty donations from the industry and a decent percentage probably make a reasonable income from property investment. It all makes sense to them.
And land rezoning is about the easiest thing a politician can do. It doesn’t require any legislation and they get a cool photo op with a spade and a pretty yellow sun hat.
UNFORTUNATELY this is all a bunch of bollocks.
Thanks to Tohm Curtis and his recently released report commissioned by Earthsharing Australia, we can now quite conclusively demonstrate that the issue isn’t supply it’s speculation.
Any idiot can tell you that if you have a resource and you want to make it more valuable, you don’t sell it all at once, you drip feed it into the market. That is exactly the issue facing our housing market. Far from the real estate industry’s advertised vacancy rate of 0.7% in inner Melbourne, the actual vacancy rate is 7%. To put that in real terms that’s 2,317 properties empty in central Melbourne during Australia’s worst ever housing crisis.
This speculative vacancy is what’s really driving the housing crisis.
So while there’s over 200 Melbourne University students without a home, there is enough housing vacant in Carlton alone to house every single one of them. And it’s their parents’ generation that is doing it to them.
At the start of last year there were 38,000 existing residentially zoned blocks of land vacant in Melbourne being help by the six big developers. This year Brumby gave a massive handout to the development industry and rezoned another 90,000 blocks of land for residential purposes.
NINETY THOUSAND
So has anyone noticed the price of land drop this year? Didn’t think so.
Of course the majority of that land was already owned by the developers so the rezoning made them overnight bajillionaires. And no, they won’t be building affordable housing, they’re building more suburban mcmansion ghettos which will be drip fed into the market to ensure they can charge the maximum amount for each and every one of those houses.
Our generation has come aboard the space ship of planet earth but all the seats are taken and we are left squeezing in the aisles.
The time has come to get real angry about this. Not angry and irrational, but angry and organised. Anyone keen to help out with creative action on this issue (and there are so many fun, beautiful things we can do!) should get in touch. We’ll be getting together in the new year to plan what to do.
Poster Power
Power to the Poster is this ace new site that has heaps of fantastically designed posters on global issues that you can download for free and print in your hood. Heaps of them would make good stickers too.
And the best bit is that you can submit your own posters to the project. So you crazy conscious designers our there should go check out the submit section.
Yay for open source creativity!
We W.A.N.T. No More War
Sorry things have been a bit quiet round here of recent. I had this crazy election thing going on and then as soon as that was over we skipped over to Vanuatu to spend 10 days working with the local community on economic sustainability issues. More on that later when I’ve edited up video and photos! I have some serious craft loveliness from my trip to share!
We’ve also been pretty busy with the Craft Cartel summer market series. We had the first market (in the cold!) on Sunday at the Bicycle Film Festival B.est F.riends F.orever Street Party and it was an extreme amount of fun! Great to meet some new cartel members and awesome to see some mad bike fun going on. The Craft Cartel was sponsoring the market, Art Jam, the Bike Beauty Pageant (which I got to judge!) and the Bicycle Mating Project. Here’s some pics:
This is Dan from Nearly Road Kill with his best bad-ass face on. His belts made from old bike tyres were a serious hit with the BMX kids. This market was made for Dan!
My lovely wee stall set up on a plastic kids table which we grabbed from Savers on the way there!
They had Bike Polo too. It was mental. I actually thought it could be a bit more violent. But they tried their best. And I did admire the sticker on the bike in the foreground of this pic which read ‘One Less Horse’. Nice. If you find the thought of riding around on a bike while chasing a plastic ball to be your ultimate idea of thrillseeking, check their website for training and playing times.
(note the blue skies in that photo for all you who stayed home ’cause of the ‘rain’)
Some of the Craft Cartel crew have been busy over the last couple of weeks attaching gorgeous crafty valentines to bikes all over town. If you found one on your bike and also managed to find it’s matching pair, you could come claim a prize. These two bikes found each other and decided to come to the street party on a date. It got a bit risque…
There’s more pics on our Facewank group if you’re wanting more.
So while the cool kids of Melbourne have been celebrating all the different fossil fuel-free ways to get around and have fun, some crafty Iraq War vets have been bringing attention to the human costs of filling up your car. Called Operation W.A.N.T. (We Are Not Toys), this ace crew went and did an installation at their local gas station to show people just how many US soldiers have been buried during this state sponsored corporate resource grab.
Awesome pics by Jonas Lara
Props Groundswell
So now all my winter business has passed and my summer business is beginning I should be posting a lot more stuff on here. And we’ll be doing more work on the Craft Cartel site so you should get on the mailing list!
Four more sleeps!
For those of you people like me, living overseas, you probably should’ve voted by now. If you haven’t, get on to it quick smart!! I dare say it’s too late to post your vote and faxing is pretty damn expensive I hear. So you might want to check and find your closest voting place. All you aussie-based kiwis can get the voting locations here or check the elections website for the full list. I went and voted in Melbourne last week and I was in and out in less than 3 minutes.
And when all that fun stuff is out of the way, you can come party with us on Saturday at Horse Bazaar, featuring The Nomad! And the best news is that we’ve scrapped the door charge. So yes the rumours are true, this gig will be FREE.
Still not sure who to vote for?
FREE LEX WOTTON
National Day of Action – Emergency Rally
FREE LEX WOTTON!
Free all political prisoners!
Stop Aboriginal deaths in custody!
Jail Hurley and all killer cops!
Rally and March
12 noon
Saturday 1st November, 2008
Old GPO, Bourke St Mall
For more information:
Tel: 03 9388 0062
0419 53 84 25 or 0401 806 331
Initiated by the Indigenous Social Justice Association, Melbourne
If you don’t know about this case I urge you to visit the facebook camapign page and read more about these gross injustices.