Congratulations to the Australian film maker Jason van Genderen for winning the overall and people’s choice prize at the New York Tropfest – the worlds largest short film festival. 

“Mankind Is No Island” by Jason van Genderen is a film that makes a social comment on the plight of home less people in New York and Sydney. Shot entirely on the camera housed in your typical mobile phone, the text based dialogue told by vernacular street signing leads the viewer through a very moving journey.

Another example of communicating so much, with so little. It is wonderful to witness crude and available technology transcend their physical limitations to communicate with such clarity.

Designer and image maker David Lancashire puts his money where his mouth is and sticks it up to the people in the community’s far North that are doing far too much taking and not enough giving.

Lancashire’s graphic, awkward and compelling screen printed forms make good use of generous slabs of paper. Turn the lights down low and the images shift into overdrive as a layer of image awakens in an uneasy glow. Go see, go buy if you want, prints are available framed and unframed.

Until October 18th.

Dig ‘im up, use ‘im up
Posters by David Lancashire

Imp Exhibition Space
above Greville St Bookstore
145 Greville St
Prahran
Wed to Sun 12 to 5 pm

Visit imp here, visit Lancashire Design here

Not since Ross Barr and his passion for orienteering has the Australian design world had a world class champion in something other than graphic design. That was until Brett Phillips and his priceless gravity bike, became world champions at the latest International Gravity Sports Association meet this month at Mary Hills in the USA.

Gravity bike racing is madness – just a collection of riders, their bikes with no peddles and great big thumping brakes and a big hill somewhere. Brett was happy to report no major injuries happened at this meet – Just some guy crashed and got a compressed vertebrae… – oh well Brett, he could have ended up in body traction for two years.

Brett has to defend his world championship crown at Bathurst’s Mount Panorama 09 November 2009. Good luck and prayers are with you Brett, may your brakes always work and your grazes heal in a beautiful yet artful way.

Till 09 November 09 Brett, one will continue with butterfly collecting and making daisy chains, while you find another massive hill to conqueror.

See Brett’s bike cam in action…

For details about our Champion go here

What enriches the making process is the pursuit of discovering, following and assessing other makers in action. This article’s maker is Melbourne based floral artist – Joost (his work includes projects ranging from product design to events and back), Joost is a weekly visitor to Batch café, where he uses the café space as a backdrop to his seasonal journey in floral design – presenting plant life as artful objects. Every week patrons are introduced to what is in season, contrasted with materials, texture, and colour. This week we are treated to generous stands of tulips, fine budding twigs to native stumps presented on a backdrop of curious containers and rigs.

Please enjoy Joost’s latest installation photographed by Andrew.

Visit Joost here

Andrew spent a few days last week as one of the guest speakers at the Symposia conference held in Wagga Wagga in southern New South Wales. One of the other speakers at the conference was Tasmanian based artist Justy Phillips.

Phillips is a native of Great Britain now based in Hobart Tasmania, who lectures at the Design Faculty at the University of Tasmania. In 2006, along with artist James Newitt, Phillips dreamed up a unique community project – write/here. The project is a special event that combines conceptual thinking, research, writing, graphic design, along with fund raising, planning, the fine art of diplomacy and hundreds of hours of old fashioned persistence.

In April 2007, all the major advertising billboard sites in Hobart’s CBD, twenty seven spaces, were taken over by splashes of red with white type, dressed with the thoughts and impressions from residents of Hobart. The write/here project took Hobart by storm for 10 days, during the Ten Days on the Island festival. The event changed the way locals of thought about the community, divided and brought together public opinion and revealed the impact of advertising in the public space.

Phillips and Newitt has captured this extraordinary project in a splendid publication that documents the intent right through to the making. Visit write/here for your copy.