One of the attractions of Chinabrenner is its refreshing elusiveness when it comes to being categorised. Is it art, food or design? Is it an installation or somewhere good to eat? One catalogue calls what they do ‘artistic cooking events’, which is probably the closest I’ve read so far, to a reasonably concise descriptor.

Thomas Wrobel (the one who cooks) and Jo Zarth (the one who designs) spent some (a lot) of time in China researching the idea of  ‘street as kitchen’ then brought their findings back to Germany to become artistic cooking events in Leipzig, Berlin, Essen, Milan —and I suspect more places than this.

In essence what you see, hear, taste, smell, feel—is a traditional Chinese street kitchen, picked up, and transported to you by two people with a deep fascination for a particular culture. In the near future I hope to return to Leipzig and visit Thomas Wrobel’s new but as yet unopened restaurant.

More, in much more depth, on Chinabrenner soon. The ultimate aim is to publish on paper. Blogs don’t do it for some things.

Last 6 photographs courtesy of Chinabrenner and Zarthcore

Thomas Wrobel

Jo Zarth

Jo Zarth’s Small Business Reconstructed catalogue.
More catalogue pictures on the zarthcore site.


Last 3 photographs courtesy of Zarthcore

Dzine at Gestalten Space.

Outdoor screen.

The projection room.

The system.

Open air Kino, Spinnerei
Spinnerei Galleries
Spinnerei, from cotton to culture

Leipzig designer/photographer, Jo Zarth, kindly spent a day showing me around Leipzig, in particular, Plagwitz—the creative quarter of the city. He also gave me his spare bike.

A liking for chinoiserie shows up in much of his installation work — apart from King Size, the recent exhibition Small Business Reconstructed and collaborative work combining food, design, art and photography with Thomas Wrobel as Chinabrenner.

I visited Maria Volokhova’s studio in Berlin, near Alexanderplatz and on the Spree River (almost). More later.
There will be shots of final works soon. Meanwhile they can be seen on her site.

Happy Talk House opens Friday 23 September in Sydney’s Sandringham Gardens, Hyde Park North (diagonally opposite the Australian Museum). Happy Talk will have workshops and talks on Pacific Island culture as part of Art & About 2011.

Happy Talk = Heidi Dokulil, Liane Rossler, Beatrice Chew.
Broadsheet: Beatrice Chew and Heidi Dokulil.
Architect: Mano Ponnambalam.

Please visit the Happy Talk site for information and program.

In Sydney I bought a book on Gertrude Stein’s word portrait, Ada, by an artist known professionally as Atak, but also called Georg Barber. I looked him up and visited his studio in Prenzlauer Berg. The walls are covered with the most fascinating things.

As a kid—holding what looks like a toy AK-47.

He grew up in East Germany and took inspiration from Punk and music. I’m guessing that being a punk at that time and place would not have gone down so well with the people in power. He worked in a comic shop, then started a dark publication called Renate —the title being a piss-take on typical names of ‘womens interest’ magazines. Now he’s Professor of Illustration at the art academy Burg Giebichenstein in Halle.

Currently he’s working on a book on Mark Twain’s unfinished, last story.

More later.

An initiative to open up conversations between the creative industry and the wider community in Australia and across the Pacific.
Web site coming soon. Please bookmark the Happy Talk page.

Floral sculptor Tracey Deep’s studio in Sydney. I didn’t want to leave.

Moon.
Sculpture and installations.
To be launched by Fernanda Cardoso
13–18 September
The Depot Gallery
3/2 Danks Street, Waterloo, Sydney

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