No Frills Art : Blog

This weekend I worked at Paper City zine fair at the town hall in Melbourne presented by Sticky Institute. The day saw over 100 tables all selling zines and small press books. It is kind of interesting to see so many people interested in such an alternate practice in one place at the one time. It was really cool to catch up with the regulars, see new audiences developing and starting their journey with zines. It is also always fun to sell and swap  a few publications with the public and other stall holders.

Below are a few pix from the day. The first one is of the whole set up from the balcony looking down.

While this one is of my table including my new book ‘ Your conversation may be monitored for quality control‘ in the foreground.

In other news I undertook a workshop cutting stencils for a local community center a week or two back. It was a fun day with the kids all being good to work with…and demonstrating some promising skills towards becoming the next generation of artists. However, It was the first time my participants had all been under about 12 or 13…eek! This meant that I had to do all the cutting of the designs due to the liability side of things, so for me it was like a small scale stencil sweatshop! However, the kids all enjoyed it, and I think they always seem to enjoy the spray painting part of it the most anyway.

I am still settling into my studio. I have been wanting to take a bit of a break from making art after the solo exhibition at the end of last year, so i have applied myself to doing less creative and more manual constructive tasks of late. I have always wanted an old wooded plan file, however i could never justify the expense…so I decided to build one. Not exactly is building things out of wood my strong point…but i am pretty happy with the end result.

And finally, I just received a copy of ‘Who is Ha Ha’ small press zine produced by Michael Fikaris of silent army in Melbourne. This is a compilation book that i was invited to take part in focusing on NZ/Aust. Artist Regan Tamanui. Below are a few pics of the book and my page on the right.

I think that is about it for now. Take it easy!

NF