Celebrating three years of dedication to the Australian design community, Design Federation is hosting its inaugural event on Friday the12th of February. In honour of the website’s dedicated readership and supporters from the local and web community, the Design Federation founders, Klaus and Craig, chose the theme of this Chinese New Year – the year of the Tiger – to capture the spirit of creativity, courage and tenacity.

Extending an open invitation to the followers of the site to contribute their artistic creations to an exhibition showing throughout the night, utilising the unique venue space of theclub nightclub in Sydney’s Kings Cross, in what the organisers have dubbed Friends of the Federation.

Calling out to readers for submissions of their designs, illustrations, art, graffiti, film & video, fashion, photography, industrial design, custom toys, animation or any other artistic contribution, the Design Federation have been overwhelmed in recent weeks by the tremendous outpouring of talent and generosity, making for a fascinating collection on show for one night only.

With Tiger Beer and Bogong Valley Estate Winery sponsoring drinks, be sure to arrive early so you don’t miss out. If the old worldly charm of the venue and the quirky crowd aren’t enough to peak your curiosity, Julie Doye, pop art portrait artist and newest contributor to Paris Hilton’s personal art collection will be in attendance from 7:30pm painting personal one minute portraits of guests.

Prizes and giveaways will feature throughout the night, with Design Federation’s corporate supporters Sweat-Shop Productions and iStockPhoto digging deep to make the event a fantastic occasion for all involved.

After a sell-out 2009 Sydney show, Andrew McIlroy’s forthcoming exhibition of 15 large oil paintings recall languid summer ocean waters and the techniques of the old masters.

Many of his works, notably Against the Tide and Azure Descent, are inspired by Tim Winton’s book Breath, as they hint at the promise of resurfacing to the familiar sounds of summer vacation and youthful exuberance. Partly autobiographical, McIlroy’s paintings recall long family summers, diving off the Portsea pier for hours, and of a familiar voice calling him home.

Andrew McIlroy creates these atmospheric works that investigate aquatic depths, with strong saturated colour and subtle tonal variations, imparting a dream-like quality and a sense of poetic mystery. On a deeper level that parallels Winton’s symbolism, McIlroy’s paintings also convey a sense of unease, with fear invoked by deep waters and the feeling of sinking into the abyss, a metaphor for anxieties which gripped the artist’s own childhood.

Andrew says, “I hope to make people pause for just a moment. My inspiration is simple. To create a beautiful contemporary painting which is familiar, tangible, and enduring. My struggle then is to capture ‘Australian-ness’ without reacting against European influences or composition”.

What: Andrew McIlroy’s Against the Tide

Line and colour shape a narrative to challenge and enthrall the viewer. Damien’s works are built up from many layered glazes creating veils of soft shadows masking forgotten images. Painted with assured delicacy his works have a lyrical quality allowing the decorative to blend with a profound figurative presence.

You can catch Damien Kamholtz and his works at the Arthouse Gallery up until the 14th November 2009.

Chalk Urban Art Festival is the largest Urban Art Festival in the Southern Hemisphere. Art is moving away from being showcased on the walls of the average white-cubed gallery, and is being reclaimed by the streets. In particular, by the footpaths.

Urban Art has been slowly separating itself from the street graffiti we find spray-painted or scribbled on public transport or empty alleyway walls. Instead, nowadays, it’s becoming accepted as a form of communication and even high art.

This colourful event has drawn crowds of more than 120,000 people in the past three years and is expected to draw a lot more this year. The individual artworks will become a part of a search for the Champion Pavement Artist for 2008, who will be awarded $5000 in prize money.

Passers by will also be given the opportunity to vote for the People’s Choice Award, so get down there and browse through some of the creative artwork that some of the artists have spent hours producing. For more information and to meet the artists click here .

When: 29th October to 1st November 2009
Where: Church Street, Parramatta
Theme: Climate Change
Cost: Free

Now, like a lot of senior designers I have been in the industry for many moons and seen fads come and go, but one thing that has puzzled me over the years is the amount of people in our industry with an enormously bloated sense of self. Well you may be saying, David, how would we know you aren’t exactly one of these people. Well you don’t, and wont, but it’s my article so let me finish it, thanks.

Anyhow, I’m sure you have all been to parties where all the cool, trendy people turn out to be designers, which is fine, we are a pretty trendy lot, but when said people start opening their mouths they seem to come across as someone who is performing life saving surgery every day, or someone who works for St Vincent’s helping the poor and underprivileged. There is nothing at all wrong with being proud of your work, that’s what should drive us, but let’s put this into perspective. The majority of us work (making ads, websites, commercials or movies etc) that have one aim, and that is to sell a product to people who generally wouldn’t want to buy it, have no need for it, and shouldn’t be spending money on it because they have a credit card that is maxed.

So I have always wondered what causes many of us to behave like prince poncy? Is it a societal thing were we are generally becoming ruder and more arrogant? Or has this always been the case, where, like most architects we are generally social wankers? (Hey, it’s not us wearing the square framed black glasses and polo necks)!

Whatever the reason be, I have a vip gallery opening to attend to later, so I must get out my craziest t-shirt and mess my hair up. Tootles.

Thanks to David Goldberg & Design Federation for the article.

The Hardware Gallery is not your typical inner west boutique art gallery. The Gallery is turning ten and if you haven’t been you are missing out! They feature a new exhibition about once a month with a focus on young and emerging artists.

In addition to there exhibitions, Hardware Gallery also offers a wide range of art services. With over ten years of experience servicing artists, collectors, businesses, students and the public, Hardware has expertise in a wide range of areas. From framing family photos, to handling and installing collectable artworks, Hardware’s Art Services Team is uniquely qualified, professional and friendly.

If you like music, in the custom-built Hardware Gallery Record Room, there are thousands of used vinyl records for sale. Specialising in dance, but a scattering of funk, jazz, pop, rock, R&B, classical and more, they have over 10,000 records with more coming in all the time.

What: Hardware Gallery
Where: 263 Enmore Road, Enmore
When: 11am to 5pm – Tuesday to Saturday
Contact:
Cost: Free

For the first time Art & About will include an Indigenous art program featuring a range of contemporary works by urban and rural artists; from traditional dot painting to stencil art, from shell art to sculptural weaving.

A large traditional Smoking Ceremony in Hyde Park will launch the program of exhibitions, workshops and talks.

“Art & About will bring beautiful Indigenous art and stories into the public domain, sharing and celebrating the contemporary culture of the first Australians,” Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP said.

Events NSW CEO Geoff Parmenter said that major events and tourism are an excellent way for the community and visitors to engage and explore our Indigenous culture and heritage. “The Indigenous arts program offers something new for the community to experience and enjoy and we are thrilled to be supporting this important part of Art & About this year,” he said.

NSW Aboriginal art will fly from street poles across the city in this year’s Open Gallery, with original works on display in the AMP foyer at Circular Quay.

Open Gallery curator Djon Mundine OAM said: “We paint the land is not a cliché, and it is appropriate that here and now we ‘paint’ Sydney.”

The City of Sydney produced arts festival brings stimulating and engaging art and events to Sydney residents and visitors from 1- 25 October 2009.

Art & About is part of Crave Sydney, a major celebration of Sydney’s unmatched way of life, offering 31 days of food, outdoor art and fun.

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Celebrate the creativity of some of the Pine Street community’s most talented students at the 2009 Annual Students’ Exhibition. The exhibition will feature an inspiring display of beautiful artworks from classes throughout the year including ceramics, printmaking, silver jewellery, sculpture, painting, drawing, stencil art and more.

During the exhibition launch, the Pine Street team will also be demonstrating the amazing art of Raku firing in the Centre’s outdoor kiln.

When: 21st to 29th September 2009
Where: Pine Street Gallery, 64 Pine Street, Chippendale.
Time: Monday to Friday 9.30am – 5.30pm, Saturday 11.00am – 4.00pm.
Cost: Free

SMC3 is experimenting with different colours and more abstract images and installation. Winged creatures, tattooed monsters and classic cartoon characters, holding their weapon of choice or his trademark bottle of poison…

This is SMC3’s first solo show since 2006. Since then, he has participated in over 2 dozen group shows in Sydney and Melbourne. SMC3 is also experimenting with the idea of repetition seen in the pop art movement, but now has become an important part of the identity of street art. The same characters repeated in the streets all over the city. Same marks, to help identify the author of those images, repeat, loop.

What: Vagabonds boneyard by SMC3
Where: Oh Really Gallery
Address: 55 Enmore Road, Newtown
When: 9th September to 16th September 2009

Watching The King of Kong recently, I was struck by how, in the independent mini-universes that people inhabit all over the world (in this case, the world of vintage video gaming with Donkey Kong the battleground of preference) there exists epic battles and monumental failures being slogged out with very healthy competitive spirit.

Particularly in the creative world, there is a compelling argument for the positive force of rivalry. Force  can seem more vigorous when placed alongside counterforce. Kind of like how ying needs yang to realise its… yinginess. It may sound like the stuff of Star Wars but it has cut and carved history since Noah was a boy… or at least since David and Goliath were.

Similar to the John Lennon/Paul McCartney dual (though probably less hostile at the end) that could be summed up by Lennon’s remark when asked in 1971 what McCartney would think of his new album “I think it’ll probably scare him, into doing something decent. And then he’ll scare me into doing something decent and I’ll scare him … like that” Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso both partook in a synergetic expression of one-upmanship across canvasses for decades.  From its beginning in Paris in 1906 to the period after Matisse’s death in 1954 where Picasso continued to pay tribute and reference Matisse in his work.

These two art giants were very different in nature, Matisse was reserved and respectable to Picasso’s bullish egomania but their influence on each other marked a huge contribution to 21st Century art. “No one has ever looked at Matisse’s painting more carefully than I; and no one has looked at mine more carefully than he.”

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