The Conga And The Whale

 

A child played in the second bedroom, perhaps writing in a diary or colouring in, being careful to keep between the lines. She was perched on top of a pile of old receipts and ledgers. Old like the dot matrix printers that spat out the future with every laboured grunt, as we gazed in amazement. She wore socks but no shoes.

 The kitchen had at some stage been converted to the master bedroom. The morning paper was open and the white sheet was casually strewn upon the bed.  Empty tins of sardines, the remnants of breakfast and as I looked out of the window I gazed upon a handsome woman, perhaps someone that had been loved right in this spot. Idyllic yet I thought the antichrist had been. At least, the right side up.  The wine had been drunk, good times and the light fell, just so, across the walls adorned with art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 And then I saw the sky and I could have been anywhere. In my childhood home, colouring between the lines. In my first flat drinking five buck plonk by scented candlelight and sparking up to a backdrop of good friends and eighties house before it was retro. Waking up in a strangers bed, the smell of nightclub on the clothes entwined beside me. Reading the paper on a Sunday, with the sound of someone in the shower and the smell of sex and coffee.

 

And as I stared at the sky that is above all of us I almost forgot I was a voyeur in a squatters world.  There but for the Grace of...

Thank you, props and shout outs at Tom Civil; Ryan McGennisken; Doctor; Be Free;
Suki; and Bon.

What Corki Sees

I took a guest photographer with me when I last went Flashin': Corki C (aka CJC).  Their brief was to point and shoot whatever interested them.  It was hard to walk past walls with nothing in my hand but I amused myself with the challenge. It forced me to appreciate the street as if I was not me, like I was just out there looking and thinking.  The images below are testament to my conclusion:  It is good to let a different soul tell you what makes Fitzroy.

Elementary

Elementary particles are what you are left with when you have stripped a substance bare. When you are up to your armpits in deconstruction and there is nothing left.  You would think at this point that all the bits would be tiny, but then you look up and it is you who is really small, surrounded by a huge pit of elementary...stuff, that is threatening to bury you.

I have have recently been deconstructing the Fitzroy streets until I couldn't see them anymore (hence no new posts).  I could only see occasional new tags, a handful of paste ups and some (admittedly brilliant) commissions.  There had been this intense period where the street was stopped in its tracks and heated debate was generated.  I believe it was a pivotal moment in the timeline of street art in Fitzroy.  It made everyone argue, reflect, and move on.  Fitzroy had been fumbling along in a pretty ordinary way and then suddenly, everything was up for critique, even the critique itself.

The Alimentari wall was one of the hot spots for all of this activity and certainly when I visited it at the time, I could only see the bits.  The obliterated beauty of it all.  Not obliterated by the caps, but by a steady process of decline. But it has come along since then, it's moved on.

I was walking past it the other day and a miracle occurred: there were no cars or garbage bins obscuring any of it from view.  The overcast sky dulled down the rising sun and when I paused at sufficient distance, I could see the black scrawl and white A4 becoming part of  the substrate.  The wall, in the sum of its parts, was breathtaking.