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2010-09-02
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Self-taught artist Stormie Mills' rise to international prominence has seen the West Australian take his work well beyond the traditional confines of the art gallery and the four corners of a canvas. Chris Connery catches up with Mills, whose exhibition 'Second Best' is actually first-rate, and now on at Richard Martin Art in Woollahra, Sydney.
"The true challenge we face as artists is not to become pedestrian or sheep that slave to a supposed school of thought," says Stormie Mills. "I like to think that a work on the street is for everybody while a piece in a collection is more private, but one always informs the other.
"Art has to challenge us more importantly than become sanitised and unquestioning. Going to New York in 1986, I was introduced to graffiti writers like Sharp and A-One, whose influence on me was profound in how they made characters like no one else. It was like they had no rules, which reverberated with me as I'd learnt to paint without adherence to any rules."
While Mills is well-known for his noiresque paintings and drawings, often featuring melancholic looking little subjects, his body of work also comprises a series of large murals at the 2002 Athens Olympics, a design of his own toy for the Japanese market, and the collaborative Ghostvillage Project where he and five international artists painted an abandoned village in Scotland.
"The village was built in the '70s to house oil rig workers but was abandoned before anyone could move in and has sat empty for 30 years," Mills explains. "As it's listed for demolition, they allowed us to go in and do what we wanted, so I had a perfect opportunity to roll out an idea I'd had for ages and paint characters all moving in the same direction to some imaginary place within the village without any unnecessary bureaucratic bullshit."
Mills says his Sydney show heralds "the downtrodden, the battlers, and the beauty amongst decay", perhaps in homage to his own beginnings as an artist. |
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Chris Honnery |
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2010-03-08
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With film titles such as 'Trash Humpers' and 'Life And Death Of A Porno Gang', that make you do a double take, the Sydney Underground Film festival is ready to push preconceived boundaries relating to film, culture, religion and society and uphold its mission to provide the cinematic avant-garde to film fanatics who dare to attend the movie theatre for something infinitely more stimulating than purely visual and escapist pleasures.
The festival boasts an intriguing array of alternative feature films and short films from around the globe that are guaranteed to make you laugh, cry, wince, gasp and wig out, all in the name of underground cinema.
Stefan Popescu, Festival Director and Head of Programming is fervent that the festival is staying true to its underground cinema ties: "You get to experience, that's the thing. You feel different things. It takes you in an odd direction and I like that. I love feeling like an explorer. For me, cinema is exploration; it takes me to places I would never, ever go to."
And exploration is evident in the festival program, in addition to the integral criterion of diversity. From 'Trash Humpers', a film that is said to be reminiscent of Peter Pan on LSD wandering through the capitalist post-apocalyptic landscapes of suburbia, a film which Popescu says "transcends criticism because it's an absolute masterpiece of cinema as art, but at the same time, it is one of the lowest forms of art and [director, Harmony Korine] has done that deliberately..." to 'Red White And Blue', an uncompromising revenge thriller and love story which conveys what Popescu believes is "an intriguing juxtaposition that is hero-less despite the points of view that call for a hero to be seen...", to Oliver Stone's controversial film, 'South Of The Border', an independent film which opens the festival and features Stone as a doco-journalist openly discussing US government coup attempts, CIA involvement, economic assassins, mass media control and IMF mafia standover techniques to acquire oil with contentious South American leaders such as Chavez, Morales and Castro.
And whilst you may wonder why mainstream Hollywood director Oliver Stone is headlining the festival with his independent film, it all comes down to rocking the boat, democracy, and judging a film for its content and execution. "Stone for me is hit and miss," Stefan says. "He's got that status in Hollywood, and that is the biggest thing. You need people with status to be rocking the boat, and when they do, other people feel the need to rock the boat too. There is value in that, and Stone always deals with mainstream controversies. He’s the mainstream provocateur in my mind. That's another thing about us, we try to be democratic, and we don't just have Stone and his independent production in the festival because of his name."
Rock the boat the 2010 film festival program does, after almost 800 submissions, the program has been culled to an impressive selection ready for consumption by young and alternative film fanatics alike. "We were appalled at what sort of films were coming out of Australia, we had the knowledge, we had the networks and we wanted to create a culture around underground cinema that was community-focussed. It is so easy for old people to just dismiss a film as not being informed, but it is young people that will entertain the controversial angle a lot more."
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Latoyah Forsyth |
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2010-09-01
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Sick of looking at that ugly lump of plastic stuck to your windscreen that is your GPS? Thankfully Garmin understand that navigation isn't all about getting from A to B, but also about bridging the gap between the practical and the aesthetically beautiful. The Garmin Nuvi series boasts the most stylish and aesthetically innovative driving accessories on the market. Not only are the sleek thin touchscreen designs a breakthrough in tech innovation, but each model includes traffic alerts, voice-activated navigation, city modelling, terrain view, real-view lane guidance, and a lifetime subscription to SUNA traffic channel (assisting in avoiding those nasty traffic jams). The implausible size combined with the accompanying leather case makes the Nuvi series transferable with ease. Just pop one in your handbag and off you go!
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Kaya Strehler |
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