What do a bunch of old teatowels have to do with a week about cardboard we hear you ask? Well dear readers, it may be a tenuous link but given the show of the week is being held at the headquarters of the worlds only offical teatowelologist, we thought these vintage dryers were the perfect craft finds of the week. We must however include a spoiler warning for a couple of friends still waiting on their christmas booty... the lady rose and miss penpen look away NOW!
so yes it's an irish linen rose for a rose and a some puppies for miss penpen, and ladies we promise a delivery of the real thing by the end of this week .
Long time fans of Third Drawer Down were over the moon at the hot news that founder Abigail Crompton had opened a new gallery in the the heart of St Kilda. It can sometimes seem like an epic journey for us northerners to 'cross the river' but well worth it to catch the final week of Zara Wood's (aka Woody) show Works on Cardboard. This London based illustrator/artist has the enviable talent of combining raw material with absolute poetry creating scary little scenes that are at once playful and sinister. It's not to be missed. We're braving peak hour Punt Road to feel the salty sea breeze on our pasty faces and bask in the joy that is assemblage!
Back in the day Simon Wood sported a fetching mix of gazelles, vans and connies as he pumped out the student newspaper at RMIT engaging in dubious activities in the bromide room and as el presidente of the SRC championed the right to protest against HECS increases (yes in the dark ages we didn't pay to go to university it was FREE!!) Who could have guessed back then that young idealistic young man harboured a secret addiction that would soon consume him.
There are many peeps today who now boast large unwieldy collections of sneakers, started way back when they was shorties, and some big name hip-hoppers have been known to engage local builders to add whole annexes their homes in order to house said collections. It's a disease, we've all had it here at hml and can still be found waxing nostalgically about our first pair of onitsuka tigers or Adidas super modifieds with the big shell toe, even now the youngest member of hml is deliberating over the next addition to her collection of chucks. Simon (aka Woody)decided to marry his journalistic skills with his addiction and created SNEAKER FREAKER magazine, and let's face it every community needs a voice... What started as a small underground publication has grown into an international phenomenon sold in 25 countries and all this out of dodgy old smith street....
Sneakers:Classics to Customs
These high hair haridens have been drawn by beck... and remember, the bigger the hair, the closer to god.
Follow the link to Epicurious.com for some delightful petit fours recipes oooooh la la
It has taken quite a while for us to get there, but on the weekend we finally managed to get to what has been our most hotly anticipated release of 2006/07 so far... Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette.
You are all,no doubt, au fait with Coppola's contemporarising of the story via analogous comparisons made between the new hollywood brat pack (Paris, Lindsey, Britney etc) and the 18th Century French court. And, that Marie Antoinette represents the final chapter in a trilogy of films that includes The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation. You may also know that all the shoes (sans the controversial lilac chucks) were made by Manolo Blahnik.
What you may not know is that the film is funny, moving, subtley acted, intelligently scripted with restraint and maturity, is fantastically shot and includes a kickass soundtrack... any film that uses Adam and the Ants Kings of the Wild Frontier as the backing tape to a plein air make out session between the pompadored regent and her swedish lover gets our vote!
The costuming by veterean costume designer Milena Cononero (who designed Stanley Kubrik's Barry Lyndon another HML fave and the best work Ryan O'Neil ever did) exceeded even our expectations. But dont think (as perhaps we did) that the frocks, in all their splendour overshadow the unfolding story. Coppola knows that the dress can reflect the mood, when Marie asks "Do you prefer it with ruffles, or without?" we knew that she was seeking approval beyond the taffeta cloud she found herself in. When Marie demands something "simple" to wear in the garden we held our breath as she was at last, briefly, allowed to be herself.
Hands down the very best costuming in cinema. Marie Antoinette makes comparable costumy films - The Age of Innocence, Dangerous Liasons, Moulin Rouge - look crass by comparison. This is costume as language, landscape and lament for a dying era and a doomed girl.
Shot in the Palace at Versailles, production Designer KK Barrett (who also worked on Lost in Translation) used the claustrophobic rush of Rococo excess brilliantly, and Coppola's approach of filling the screen with these period details led to an optical overload that literally takes your breath away like a corset being pulled tight.
We did expect to absolutely love this film, but we didn't expect to be surprised by it. A fantastically delicate, refined and deliciously subtle feast of light. Please Ma'am can we have more?
One half of hml is running up hill trying to get her new card catalogue out in the next week or so. Faced with the challenge of doing a range of 'florals' and having no decent paints or canvas or flowers (water restrictions people!!!) meant that a little ingenuity was in order. It's kind of poor Margaret Preston meets second rate Rosalie Gascoigne meets year 11 high school art but looks swell when shrunk down onto a card. One image down, four more to go...
We wanted to find a website that would let you all make groovy calendars. so alot of googling was done using words like 'organise,plan, dates' and we stumbled across this amazing project by a mysterious chap by the name of Brian Collier who seems to have developed a passion for the classification of small objects.
The youngest member of the HML team has been at it again with that enviable trait that all people under the age of 13 seem to posess - the assumption that they can do anything anyone else can do if given the right equipment. For more than a year now the senior staffers have been banging on about learning Ceramics 101. We collect, admire, write about and adore the medium and it would be great to have a better understanding of process and finish. Meanwhile young Hope said "I'm taking ceramics classes after school" and this is what made it under the Christmas tree this year. It usually has a stack of chocolates on it - being the quintessential sweetie dish - but they all seem to have dissapeared sometime between midnight and 2am (must have been that late night screening of House of the Flying Daggers...)
is no show at all really. While half the team suns themselves in tropical North Queensland the other is holed up in the studio trying to get work done but really just ends up watching the cricket and reading back issues of Martha Stewart Living (more on that later in the week). So above is the pile of books that can be found in the staffroom at the moment. You can see from the artful stacking that not much work is being done...
