rude flowers

.....this is the name of a weird show I'm curating at the moment. Its going to be "staged" at a new bar called Rue de Fleurs so the title is my bogan curatorial interpretation of this. This will be the the invite

                           

cute huh? I think this post is going to be mainly pictures.
Anyway my "curatorial premise" is an exhibition and salon of curious things which loosely respond to the title; erotica, botanica, a bit of both , one or the other, grotesqueries, love, sex, death, ephemera. It may also include surrealist ornament, object d'art, paintings, ceramics, macrame, old weird things lying round the house, artifacts, postcards. In their entirety they will make up a intriguing bouquet.  It's almost an anti curating experience but curiously also very controlled and orchestrated. I've been thinking about this a bit too much perhaps....

I've been thinking about macrame too and how i am both genuinely terrified and compelled by it . I think it might make a bit of a comeback, and not just to hold big orangey gourds. This anonymous photo probably most neatly describes my intention....I would love to meet its curator/ artist. It actually reminds me a little of an ex boyfriends family kitchen whose mother was a great gardener and artisan of sorts.

keeping the orangegy theme going... obvious sex motifs and flower /vagina metaphors

Charlotte Rampling, Photographer Unknown

Oh look some faded old photos and postcards when everything was dappled in glamorous lighting...jeez it's so harsh the lighting these days. Beautiful Charlotte flower descending the staircase......

hello rug.. I like you too

we should include backgammon sets as well ....especially ones that look as surreal and ugly and fantastic as this one. Its funny how when you pick a "theme" or strange trajectory it has so many interpretations and segues. Is everything everything? is nothing nothing?  just thought I'd incorporate some hippie philosophy I learnt in my youf.

Rude! Corpse flowers....Lets have a little snack break....but up the road a bit at my favourite

Nam Loong..who were shut down a few times for having cockroaches in the kitchen and stuff. I've remained loyal..they have the best duck and the best pork buns and Chinese sausage.....mmmmmm. 

up here a little..... trot trot

"arty" Chinese restaurant shot....orange theme still continuing

 Ahhhh all the beautiful rude flowers in our days and ones that have passed.... 

From Tim Walker Pictures first published 2008

Favourite flowers: roses, daphne, peonies, violets, magnolia and all the flowers and fruits of of the sea.

"Deep Throat TV" Aurel Schmidt, 2010

I think Aurel Schmidt understands my curatorial premise. Beautiful decay, fecundity, flowers and penises, abjection, decoration, fluids, juices, substances, ripe smells, burnt eyeballs, love, dissolution, donuts and streamers, joy, ecstasy, repulsion, swarming, heaving life...?!#@! Fuck yeah

Also by Aurel Schmidt but can't find date/title...if you know let me know

Photographer Steven Meisal for Italian Vogue, 2010

Oh Wow! See you at the show

fairytelling

in a dark dark wood, was a dark dark path and on that dark dark path was...oh you know, some creepy house with fey little orphans... perhaps a brother and sister who had some incestual thing going on and stumble on some craggy witch/ stepmother/ evil queen who does really neat spells which she always has to be punished for...when in those dark dark times she was probably getting rid of some hulking wood cutters child or making some herbal tincture... but anyway i dont want to do the revisionist feminist thing on fairytales, i just like them...the more magical and greusome the better....

"Round Midnight" Maurizio Anzeri, 2009

Did you know that in a different time and a different place..In a land faraway..Once pona time...I grew up in a circus and my family drove round in a double decker bus and performed magical tricks and did puppet shows?

8 Possible Beginnings or The Creation of African America, a movie picture" (Still) Kara Walker, 2005

Anyway this is one of Kara Walker's shadow puppet "shows". It's uses some fairytale motifs not in the"once upon a time" but in a specific historical era starting in the late 18th century and depicts plantation life of the U.S south when the slave trade was in full swing. In this heady tale, a kinda Gone with the Wind imploded into its ugly core, everything from lynching,gang rape, head jobs, forbidden sex, giant shitting Negresses and hokey distorted "Mammy" sterotypes are played out by these shadowy figures. It's mesmerising and unrelenting. Probably the most interesting aspect of Walker's work is her resistance in presenting a glib expose on racial stereotypes; something far more insidious and terrifying is presented. Everyone is indicted in this landscape of power and cruelty...oppression is the shared currency. But yes, we are still talking about fairytales... 

"Bluebeard" Dir: Catherine Breillat, 2009

This is probably one of my favourites and Breillat doesn't dissapoint in her film adaption. Like Walker, creulty, pain and oppression is a shared condition, so it's not just the (almost pitiful) Bluebeard who is the opressor (although he certainly has few "issues" with (sexualised?) women and he did tell his new wife not to use that key!). This film is very strange in both its pace and mise en scene, some scenes are very beautiful and romantic whilst others feel dull and awkward, but i think this is intentional. The scene where the horror room is discovered is gorgeous...the blood floor, bare feet dangling and when the lovers are on a castle high balcony and he really wants to slit her throat as she lies in his arms. It goes into a lot of almost Freudian terriority of "totem and taboo" and also asserts the compelling romantacism and latent sexiness of this tale.... It's also quite sad. 

Olive tree, Maurizio Cattelan, 1998

I could go down the psychological horror track with this theme and that might be fun and could probably "illuminate" contemporaneous issues about concealed historical pain and allow me to put some more gory pictures in. I did want to put Goya's "Saturn devouring his Sons"in for obvious reasons and also because I just think its cool that Goya had this in his dining room at home...but i don't know its all starting to feel a little morbid and dark and there's always the other side to fairytelling which is about shiney things and dashing princes and shapeshifters and duck shell blue palatial walls where old ancient olive trees grow and if you ingest them the next time you poo it will look like this!....(below) 

"oooooo"

"arrrrrr"

Tales where you go into the woods and meet woodsmen and wolves and mutter terrible incantations which change people into inanimate objects..haha

"look at this crazy thing pretending to be a chair..its actually a big smelly pink ogre who's into cross dressing in victoriana styles"

"No Comment", Idiots: Afke Goldstein & Floris Balcker, 2006

And being friends with all the animal creatures whose blood is actually made from rubies and finding your grandmother in the bellies of beasts.....

"Little Red Riding Hood", Miwi Yanagi, 2004

Detail "Crystal of Resistance" Venice Biennale, Thomas Hirschhorn, (photo Olivier Zahm from Purple Diary) 2011

And collecting smoky quartz cystals to give power and mojo to your quite brilliant and magical art installation which bewitches all who lay there eyes upon it.....

"Devoted to You", Jocksum Nostrum, 2003

wherein you gallop a horse up many a mountain peak in some platform shoes you found at Bendigo op shop to seek counsel from a wizard with a ship attached to his hat....and he offers you a cup of pungent fenugreek tea....

"Mackum Pikeys" Tony Briggs (date unknown but looks fairly contemporary)

And everyone lives happily ever after...well sorta.... 

Keep warm, look at the stars, goodnight little ones