Just out: a book I have been working on with managing editor Liisa Naar for UTS. Gehry in Sydney is about a recent UTS building project. The university commissioned US architect Frank Gehry (Guggenheim Museum Bilbao) to design the Dr Chau Chak Wing building for their business school in Ultimo, Sydney.

Most graphic designers of print are familiar with the anxiety attached to making decisions (other peoples’ more than theirs, I think) on what to put on the cover of a publication. So much risk—for some—seems to ride on the choice and positioning of the elements, and often what one finishes up with is a conceptually deficient, consensus-built assemblage that misses the mark in relation to all the writing and the image-making and the thinking that may be found inside. Cover photography is particularly vulnerable to the pressures applied to designers by these nervous guardians of the book’s public acceptability. Predictable images rule.

Working with a more enlightened client, I was delighted when this one turned out to be an exception. Many city buildings (some of them deservedly) become targets for the ‘icon shot’ style of documentation: dramatic, forced-perspective, hard-edged verticals thrusting up into the purest of blue skies suggesting… the predictable. To me, Gehry’s building embodies a less invasive, more personal type of seduction (if ‘seduction’ it is) and in this it has much going for it as a visual experience.

On walking around the site I found that the building’s beautiful shapes, textures and rhythms could be enjoyed from within a smaller frame of viewing and often, just square-on, or close to it, from a higher observation point with less perspective — such as the elevated walkway opposite. From there you can appreciate the pattern of the brickwork and its earthy textures, and the almost musical compositions of square, box-framed windows against those ‘impossible’ curves. Michael Nicholson’s crisp monochrome photographs capture this with quietness, and zero swagger: the visual poetry in brick that will live on, possibly beyond the career span of its world famous designer.

Gehry in Sydney
The Dr Chau Chak Wing Building, UTS
Edited by Liisa Naar and Stewart Clegg
Cover design and book concept design by Graeme Smith
Cover photography by Michael Nicholson

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Above: Vanessa Low

My two friends and work buddies, Heidi Dokulil and Beatrice Chew, are the producers for Pecha Kucha Night in Sydney. Pecha Kucha is the 20 seconds-per-image talk series that was born in Tokyo at SuperDeluxe—the Roppongi bar and venue that is ‘open most nights for thinking and drinking’.

The wall at one end of UNSW’s courtyard was a particularly good surface for the pictures. The theme for Pecha Kucha Night 25 was Collecting.

Only some of the speakers are represented here in images; next time I will take a decent camera!

Above: Vanessa Low

Above: Grace Turtle & Melissa Fuller, Three Farm

Above: Nick Rudenno & Miguel Sicari, Nowhere Famous

Above: Clinton Bradley

Speakers

Grace Turtle & Melissa Fuller, Three Farm
Describing herself as a Social Design Strategist, Grace believes that the role of designer has shifted to facilitator, therefore to be an effective designer you need to teach and provide the community with tools to learn. Grace is a graduate of COFA and the co-founder of Three Farm, a social design enterprise specialising in new manufacturing technology and processes that enhance social learning, design and sustainable practice. Melissa describes herself as the “maker of makers” and is a passionate advocate of social equality.

Nick Rudenno & Miguel Sicari, Nowhere Famous
Nowhere Famous tells stories through design, art direction, typography, illustration,vcreative direction & web with collective collaboration at the core of everything they do.

Vanessa Low
Vanessa Low is a UNSW Art & Design alumna, having finished her bachelor of Art Theory here last year. She is now a freelance arts writer, photographer and blogger who has contributed to Elle, Popsugar and Art & Australia. Her penchant for collecting is derived from her fear of forgetting and love of asking questions, documented on her blog The Monday Issue over the past 6 years.

Sacha Pantschenko
Sacha Pantschenko is a product designer living in Sydney. Working across many disciplines in the industry over the last 10 years, he is always looking to new and engaging ways to innovate and rethink how things work. Sacha has recently headed up one of the largest product design crowdfunding campaigns in Australia. He is easily distracted good burgers and craft beers.

Judith Torzillo and Victoria Cleland, Young Collectors
The Young Collectors are Judith Torzillo and Victoria Cleland. Emerging contemporary jewellers and collectors, Judith’s jewellery is focused on viewer engagement and exploring the physicalities of wearing and seeing. Victoria’s jewellery practice investigates notions of value, image and wealth. Together they host events that connect artists and collectors.

Clinton Bradley
Clinton Bradley likes art and dumplings. He collects art by a small group of artists that often feature animals [often in the most opaque of ways] and eats dumplings wherever he can find them. Clinton has collected from as far back as he can remember and counts house plants, crystals, Japanese scrubbing brushes, finger-nail clippings and taxidermy among the many things that have caught his attention over the years.

Text on speakers by Heidi Dokulil, Good Habitat

The wall.

Australia Day 2015 in Sydney. Low cloud and an all-day drizzle softened the colours and also toned down the red-white-and-blue flag-wagging nationalism that usually happens on the harbour at this time. As the clouds rolled over the houses on the opposite shore and the city buildings and the fibreglass hulls and the bridge and opera house you could almost imagine another January day on Milk Beach in similar weather, a few hundred years ago.

Café de France brings together the creative talents of restaurateur Rafaele Yon and designer Richard Peters, with writing, graphic style and Le Petit Journal produced by Good Habitat, a Sydney-based unit of writers, art directors and editors interested in things local.
(Good Habitat is a new working group founded by Heidi Dokulil, Beatrice Chew and myself.)
Please visit Café de France, 19 Havelock Avenue, Coogee. The food is wonderful!

My two friends and work buddies (pictured above) have produced some beautiful images for an arts magazine. The cover picture will appear soon with the publishers as models. Here Beatrice and Su-An test drive some of the elements that make up the constructions.
Mask making and styling, Beatrice Chew, researcher designer.
Photography, Su-An Ng, animation filmmaker.
General idea, GS.
Visit RealTime. Read the cover story.

Mircea Cantor
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, 2014.
19th Biennale of Sydney
Art Gallery of New South Wales

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The Redfern Biennale was a walk-around exhibition on the streets bounding a Redfern Housing Commission precinct. About 60 artists participated. It was organised by local gallery, Damien Minton, and ran for 7 hours on Saturday 8 March. An accompanying essay by Yellam Nre can be read on the gallery’s web site.

Above: Bronwyn Tuohy, Stuck Up

Bronwyn Tuohy

Jim Anderson, Better Red than Read

Jim Anderson

Jim Anderson

Liane Rossler, For the locals: Bird Bee Butterfly Biennale Buffet

Liane Rossler

Margaret Roberts, Polygon Landscape (Redfern)

Margaret Roberts

Margaret Roberts

Sara Givins, Tumbling Tumbleweeds

Sara Givins

Stephen Coburn, Boat Cave

Stephen Coburn

Blake Kendall, I remember she ironed

Blake Kendall

Lynne Barwick, Do Not Ignore It

Lynne Barwick

Unknown

Detail, local church.

Marrickville Open Studio Trail (MOST) was a mainly DIY tour program listing 45 artist-run initiatives and galleries on Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 March. It was presented by Marrickville Council as part of Art Month Sydney 2014.
Above: Vicki White, Tinpot Studio, St Peters.

In 2012 the British artist Robert Montgomery (in a work called Echoes of Voices in the High Towers) wrote some text for about 20 advertising billboards around Berlin and the old Tempelhof Airport. The subject of one of them was about place and memory and contained this line in white capitals:
<THIS IS WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH CITIES WHEN YOU LEARN THEM LIKE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS>
A picture of this billboard appears in this blog in 2 or 3 posts, suggesting I guess, that for me, it keeps hitting the right note. I like the idea of learning cities. Apart from the pleasure of looking at the artwork, I’m sure this is the appeal of programs like MOST: walk, look at buildings, check out shops, eat in a different cafe, ride a less familiar train line, see where people work, see what they make, talk to them about why they do it.

Jody Graham, May Street Studios, St Peters.

Jody Graham’s studio.

Jody Graham’s studio.

Vicki White, Tinpot Studio, Edith Street, St Peters.

Catherine White, Tinpot Studio

Jewellery by Catherine White

Bag by Catherine White. (Textile designer unknown).

Eric Lobbecke, Tinpot Studio.

Squarepeg Studios, Junction Street, Marrickville.

Squarepeg Studios.

Squarepeg Studios.

Matina Bourmas, Airspace Projects, Junction Street, Marrickville.
Matina Bourmas, Icy Pole, 2014.

Airspace Projects, Dawn-Joy Leong, Doodle Dreams, 2013.

Airspace Projects, Paula Dawson, Hyper object: Homeland, 2013.

Airspace Projects

SNO, Marrickville Road, Marrickville.
Susie Idiens, Passage, 2014

Susie Idiens, Passage, 2014

Susie Idiens, Passage, 2014

SNO, Kelley Stapleton, Two lines and a jump rope, 2013.

SNO, Sophia Egarchos, Step into You, 2014.

SNO, workroom.

SNO workroom; Kelly Stapleton talking to MOST visitor.

SNO, workroom.

SNO, street entry.

Tinpot Studio, street entry.

Tortuga Studios, backyard.

Stone Villa Studios, nice blank wall.

Must be doing something right.
Marrickville Pork Roll, Illawarra Road, Marrickville.

User Generated Architecture
Works by raumlaborberlin in collaboration with locals.
Curated by Joni Taylor
Tin Sheds Gallery, University of Sydney
until 15 November 2013
Stick on City
Wallpaper, timelapse videoloop 2013
The Generator
Mobile furniture made from plywood, recycled wood, cable-ties.
(Created as part of the raumlaborberlin Generator workshop, 13–14 October) 2013
Not shown here are their wonderful videos!

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Xu Zhen
For In Just a Blink of an Eye, 2005

Damien Hirst, 1992

Damien Hirst, 1992

Simon Fujiwara
Future Perfect, 2012

Simon Fujiwara
Future Perfect, 2012

Allora & Calzadilla
Revolving Door, 2011

Clark Beaumont
Coexisting, 2013

Laura Lima
Man=Flesh/Woman=Flesh–Flat, 1997

13 Rooms
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Klaus Biesenbach
11–21 April 2013
Pier 2/3, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay, Sydney