Big Day at Camel Rock

Bob Georgeson, Big Day at Camel Rock, 2010, Photomontage, Private Collection

Sometimes you have to remember your roots, and this work was inspired by my love of, and obsession with surfing (when I was young enough to get out there!). It is also an acknowledgement of honesty when it comes to big swells, new technologies and the 'philosophy' of surfing, a point maybe lost on today's young guns who sometimes forget in their desire to get aerial that there is a serenity and balance in functional surfing that has at its heart being 'at one' with the forces of nature.

However on this day who needs Pipe when the Rock is pumping perfect lefts at 4 metres?


The crowd watched as a lone knee boarder entered the water...

The Quarrymen

Bob Georgeson, The Quarrymen, 2012. Installation view, Eaglehawk Quarry, Bendigo, Victoria.

In interview discussing I Am The Walrus, John Lennon said he was writing nonsense lyrics in response to a teacher getting students to analyze the words to Beatles songs. He also commented on Bob Dylan's lyrics saying he "was getting away with murder" and added "I can write that crap too". Of course Lennon was following his already established tradition of montaging phrases from a  wide variety of sources.

I often look through art magazines, shake my head in wonderment, and think I can make that crap too...

...and for John Lennon's final word on Bob Dylan: after Bob had gone all Christian on us Lennon did his piss take on Gotta Serve Somebody, called Serve Yourself...John at his acerbic best...

World's problems solved!

Spotted in Bendigo...Jesus of Nazareth Mongolia! 


This revelation raises all kinds of issues...no longer do we have to put up with Christians fighting Jews, Christians fighting Muslims, Christians fighting Christians. Move Israel to Outer Mongolia, free Palestine in the process and move the Vatican to North Korea. All sorted. Yin and Yang...

Fashion victim

OK, enough of the wholesome 'girl next door' stuff, time to get back to what we are really interested in...

Bob Georgeson, tighter baby tighter, 2009, Photomontage

How come so much of women's fashion is about constriction? A curious feminist contradiction: fashion as erotic weapon or victims of a cruel joke? Who knows...but it even pervades the wedding ensemble...

Grace Kelly


In Bendigo at the moment it is hard to avoid Grace peering at us over her shoulder. She is everywhere, and the exhibition Grace Kelly Style Icon at the Bendigo Art Gallery has been packed out since it opened. It seems her popularity never wanes, and yet who is, or who was, Grace Kelly? I have no idea...and the show reveals as little of her personality as her wardrobe reveals of her flesh. It is an interesting fashion journey from the tailored, almost matronly suits of the Fifties through to some attempts at modernity in the Seventies, and as such reflects the moral standards of the passing decades, but nowhere do we get any indication of what Grace thought or what her motivations were. Famous yet anonymous, and one wonders in today's tabloid and Murdoched world whether such a feat would be possible.

However we do get to see the great fashion designers at work for what must have been their most prestigious clothes horse. Yves St Laurent's tent dress inspired by the painting of Piet Mondrian is pure perfect Sixties, thankfully he didn't use Picasso as a point of departure! Edith Head's little black number from Rear Window is probably the closest we ever get to sexy, and Cartier's jewellery comes from a period when a rock looked like a rock...

Personally Grace is not my kind of gal, but I don't mind this photo that captures the undeniably classic beauty with the untouchable virginal princess...

Photo by Howell Conant

Threshold

Bit of a lag in posts recently while touring regional Victoria. This is the facade of Latrobe Universities Visual Art Centre in Bendigo...most annoyed when I saw it because I had a similar idea and she's beaten me to it!

Jenny Pollak, Threshold, 2011, Digital photos

Jenny says:
'On the margins of experience
at the edges of understanding
-right there at the periphery of perception-
there is a point of entry
a threshold...'

...and that's a nice intro to some future posts about arts in Victoria, where art is valued, nurtured and supported by Government, councils, communities and even business...

Night nurse


Well, you gotta start somewhere...first the blogosphere, next Bollywood, then Cannes and maybe even Fyshwick!