I was drifting through Chapel Street Bazaar this weekend and saw the most beautiful collection of Art Deco lights…
bazaar lights
bazaar lights
I’m thinking of taking some home …
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Update [29th August 2013]: the Chapel Street website has changed, this is the new link to the Bazaar
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I’ve been meaning to visit Carbon Black Gallery in Prahran for so very long, I’m glad I made it to see this exhibition. ‘Excursion‘ is a group exhibition of artists based in South Australia.
piece by Annalisa Feleppa; photograph taken with gallery permission
I thought the above and below photographs by Annalisa Feleppa were just gorgeous! The colour is beautifully saturated, and the imagery nostalgic … the above piece wanted to come home with me…
pieces by Annalisa Feleppa; photograph taken with gallery permission
The other group of works I liked very much were pastels on maps by Laura Wills (regular readers know I just love maps). The artist has incorporated some of the original features of the maps to inform the finished artwork.
drawings by Laura Wills; photograph taken with gallery permission
All artists involved are (in alphabetical order):
Exhibition images below (from gallery website)…
‘Excursion‘ is at Carbon Black Gallery until 9th January 2011.
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Update (27th November): Annalisa’s images above are from ‘On the red carpet‘ series, and another group I spotted that I like is ‘The Reunion Series‘
Regular readers will know I have fond memories of RMIT … many of my own experiences, and actually quite a lot of the making of others’. Yesterday, as I travelled by tram along High Street in Prahran, I was reminded of a group of gorgeously coloured brooches made by Craig Spark in 2004 (my first year, his third year).
detail of image scanned from 'Look', the exhibition catalogue from the graduate show 2004; ISBN: 0864593368 RMIT University Press (design: Michael Fletcher)
I hear you ask two questions: (1) why?, and (2) tell me more about Craig’s work.
Craig had displayed a group of brooches in the hallway display cabinets at university (this ‘exhibition’ exercise was part of a third year subject). When I was trying to remember these brooches from memory; before finding the photograph in the graduate book, I initially wrote: “The pieces seemed to me to reference military medals in their shape, with a flat rectangular metal piece under what I think I remember to be a small fabric component (I remember stitching), which was attached to a pin – I wish I had an image of them! The most memorable feature was the highly coloured images printed on the sheet metal – one that particularly stays in my mind was one of man’s face which had been treated to a Warhol-esque colour explosion.”
Looking at the image from the Graduate Book 2004 from the RMIT graduate exhibition ‘Look‘ (which you can buy a PDF of on this site or through the Fine Arts department at RMIT) you can see I was pretty close, but memory can play little tricks; in my mind I thought there was hot pink somewhere, but it seems I made that up.
Printing on metal – there is the link between Craig and my High Street journey.
Dinkums used to print on metal until some time around the end of that year (I believe that is where Craig had his done), and I could no longer find a place that did such a service. Yesterday on High Street I noticed a shop with “Print2Metal” on their window. Hoorah I thought, at last!
The shop is called Photo Lab, and is one tram stop past Chapel Street (outbound). The linked Print2Metal site says that the image is printed on specially treated aluminium, and indicates that this service is Melbourne-based but can also be ordered online – fantastic indeed.
It must be said, I haven’t tried this yet, so cannot vouch for the quality etc … so I’d be keen to hear from anyone who has or does use it and wants others to know how it went. Also, I’m not suggesting this is the only place offering such a service, but it’s certainly exciting to me to find, as I really wanted to use this at the end of my second year and failed to find anything suitable – so if there are other places, please let me know so others can know too!
For more information on Craig: Pieces of Eight profile and blog story, The Vine story.
Update (24th June 2010): I’ve been reminded that Anna Davern also uses some kind of printing on metal: ‘sublimate printed steel‘. I don’t know much about this technique though… so went for a bit of an interwebs search, and found this NSW site, and they also have a training course
Saturday afternoon coffee at a little cafe Spoonful, High Street, Prahran – the paper-cut on the wall caught my eye. It contains the words for ‘spoonful’ in Spanish (cuchara or cucharada). It’s pretty.
Melbourne Jeweller 