Sydney City Farm

Glover, the first community garden in Sydney is expanding to become a City Farm modelled on similar projects in NYC, London and the Collingwood Childrens' Farm in Melbourne. Situated at Callan Park, the rolling green parklands that have an amazing history housing convicts, psychiatric patients and art students has managed to remain un-privatised. The meeting this weekend is partly about ensuring the space is retained as a community site.

The vision for the City Garden is very clear and exciting. Read more about it here.

Rose Heart

In yogic philosophy it is believed that when we first grow our hearts as embryos the tissue unfurls like a blooming rose.

The GetUp Mob

Trees

The trees had no leaves. It was May. I thought of something I'd read about the impossible beauty of the landscape before the industrial revolution. Particularly the beauty of woodland, because an Oak tree takes 300 years to grow, 300 years to live and 300 years to die. Unless you have a chain saw. Or a bomb.

source: Jeanette Winterson's new novel "The Stone Gods" p200

photo: Ansell Adams

Not a Tree

Rather odd mini manhole covers inscribed with the word TREE dot the streets down at the Rocks in Sydney, presumably for access to tree roots for watering. I photographed some and added text and a tree shadow using photoshop.
With a nod to Magritte, who painted The Treachery of Images 1928 with text "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" translated to "This is Not a Pipe", I made this image as a protest about urban sprawl and deforestation of native bushland. Cities are often built on the most fertile, abundant soils with largest rainfall.

image: Talisa Tulip 2008

Fiona Hall

This birds nest was made by Fiona Hall as part of an installation titled Tender. There are dozens of fragile nests made with shredded American dollar notes precisely mimicking the nests of a variety of birds. The work provides commentary on the effects of modernisation, global markets, deforestation and the impact on natural wildlife habitats. We question the value of profit over diversity and wildness.

Fiona Hall is one of Australia's most prolific and most interesting artists. Born in Sydney (1953) and based in Adelaide, Hall began her career in photography but has extended into diverse media including sculpture, installation and garden design. Her work is characterised by its use of ordinary objects and materials which are transformed into complex and allusive objects.

Her work provides oppertunity for audiences to consider that which we have collectively accepted as 'normal' by causing a kind of double-take when we look at the objects she has made.

Human Nature

"The study of human nature may be thought of as an art with many tools at its disposal, an art closely related to all the other arts, and relevant to them all. In literature and poetry, particularly, this is especially significant. Its primary aim must be to broaden our knowledge of human beings, that is to say, it must enable us all to become better, fuller, and finer people." -- Alfred Adler

Sorry

Apology Speech by Kevin Rudd 13th February 2008 to the Stolen Generation.

Part 1. A little History

Part 2. Personal Interviews

Part 3. Footage from Australian supporters

Part 4. Apology Speech by Kevin Rudd

The Stolen Generation is a term used to describe the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, who were removed from their families by Australian government agencies and church missions, under various state acts of parliament, denying the rights of parents and making all Aboriginal children wards of the state, between approximately 1869 and 1969. The policy typically involved the removal of children into internment camps, orphanages and other institutions.

from rageunderground

Moo

A 2006 UN report entitled Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options."
found that 18 percent of global warming emissions come from raising cows, chickens, pigs, turkeys and other animals we eat. That's 40 percent more than all the world's cars, SUVs, airplanes, and other modes of fossil-based transportation, which combined account for 13 percent. For further comparison, every house, residential and office building in the world accounts for just 8 percent.

There's a trend in Europe called "Meat Reducers" where, along with recycling and not taking plastic bags, people are eating meat at least one day less a week. Become a "Meat Reducer." It is a simple thing everyone can do to lower their own carbon footprint.

StopGlobalWarming.org

Will Self

A few years ago, acclaimed British novelist and journalist Will Self started walking. Not just wandering around, but really walking. He began after he quit using drugs, after he was famously kicked off British Prime Minister John Major’s plane in 1997 for allegedly snorting heroin in the bathroom. After that, Self began walking 10 and 20 and even 100 miles at a stretch. As a student of psychogeography, he found a kind of fulfillment in these adventures that he could not find traveling in planes, trains or automobiles. It had something to do with the way the physical world and the mind intersect to create experience, and it’s the subject of his new book, Psychogeography, a collection of his essays about his walks around the world.

Seen on World Hum Travel Despatches from a Shrinking Planet

The Heart Garden

On a recent trip to Melbourne I visited the Heide Museum of Modern Art to see the current portrait exhibition and sculpture gardens. The museum is situated in the heritage listed grounds of the former home of heiress Sunday Reed.

Sunday created an amazing life at Heide in the where she and her husband John cultivated a vibrant community of modernist artists including Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Arthur Boyd and Sidney Nolan. The kitchen garden remains true to her original design and the grounds merge French formalism with Eucalypts. I sat for hours under a massive Oak tree reading 'The Heart Garden' the biography of Sunday Reed written by Janine Burke.

Sunday is inspirational for many reasons. She freed herself from the decorative role of upper class women in the 1930's to really engage her brilliance and passion by surrounding herself with people who fascinated her, greatly influencing Australia's Modernist art movement.

Those who made and those who saw. Portraits of the Heide circle exhibition catalogue
© Heide Museum of Modern Art

Lunar Eclipse

The most awesome display on earth hung in the sky enthralling my Japanese visitor and I. We lay on a blanket in the backyard completely entranced. Sugoi said she. Sugoi said I.

Vine Sculpture

A Stitch in Time

Chirugi, a Greek word that translates to 'suture' also meaning 'hand-work' is a series of art work created by Lindsay Obermeyer who says

"The voice speaking in my work is female. The embroiderer has practiced the traditional stitches of darning, but educates herself in the craft of surgery. She studies medical manuals. She records the patterns she sees under the microscope. She has no patience for sentimental hearts and flowers, but finds beauty in the body's interior landscape."

Leucocyte 2 2004, bead embroidery, 18" diameter

Sky Writing

Lisa Rienermann, a german student, decided to look up and found letters in the sky, created by the negative space in between buildings. The project is called Type the Sky, found here.

Galloping Goodness

Lady Godiva was more than a seminal performance artist. She was also a humanitarian and patron of the arts. When she doffed her clothes and rode a white horse through the English town of Coventry in 1057, her purpose was philanthropic. Her husband, the local assessor, had promised to abolish all taxes on the local folk if she did the daring deed.

Tulipa

'Tulipa' by Talisa

oil on canvas 60cm x 60cm

painted July 2007

PARK(ing)

Join artists, designers, and activists around the world who are peacefully demonstrating how to reduce congestion, clean the air, save energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and improve neighborhoods.

ReBar are having another PARK(ing) day on 21st September. Click here for details.

Shamrocks

How do you find a lucky 4 leafed clover? The Instructables website gives step by step instructions.

Tree Spirits

The TreeSpirit Project is a series of photos of naked people amidst trees. Enchanting.