Creativity
Wattle Day, a national experience?
Today is Wattle Day.
I was reminded of it as I traversed the Hume Highway from Melbourne to Sydney on Monday.
Driving through previously devastated bush fire areas of Victoria, great swathes of bushland were busy regenerating, but none so fast as the bushes crowned by the fluffy golden bloom, whose showy bracts of flowers were [...]
New Sydney Gallery of Grace and Style
On the verge of a temperate Sydney Spring, Martyn Cook (Antiques) and Thomas Hamel (Design) last night (August 31) gave family, friends and colleagues a real treat, a preview glimpse of the splendid new decorative arts gallery venture they have embarked on together, which will open to everyone very soon.
A line up of limousines blocked [...]
WHAT IS: Fashion, more than a Frock?
Fashionable costume encompasses all that we wear, including the previously unmentionable undergarments. They have been on show, in the past few decades, on a scale far beyond those who founded the world of fashionable couture could have possibly imagined. From skinny self sacrificing super models to those demanding the use of ‘real people’, costume accommodates a desire to be noticed. It is the look at me, look at me syndrome, which has been in play for thousands of years. Today it collectively reflects a western society in which privacy has been stripped completely bare. But is fashion about more than a frock?
WHAT IS: A Mirror, more than Glass?
The mirror, more than just glass, has occupied a unique place in his imagination as a site of the divine or demonic, of lucidity or madness. It is the ‘matrix of the symbolic’ and accompanies the human quest to know and understand our identity.
WHAT IS: Arts and Crafts
In England, during the second half of the nineteenth century, painter, writer, textile designer and social activist William Morris (1834-1896) became the spiritual leader of a revival in arts and crafts that encompassed all the visual arts, including architecture and interiors.
WHAT IS: Modernism
Modernism is a term the art and design community of the contemporary western world has adopted to describe a diverse range of architectural and interior decorative styles, as well as applied and graphic arts, which were created between 1880 and 1940 on an international scale.
Modernism demands that there is a distinction between interior architecture and [...]
Queensland Musical Talent in Spring
From Brisbane comes the results of the Q Song Music Awards 2010 in a vast variety of musical categories that are proof that musical talent is alive and well, especially in Queensland in Spring.
From Keith Urban to Powderfinger, from Jeffrey Black to Lisa Gasteen, Andre Rieu’s favourite, the lovely Mirusia, and up and comers like [...]
WHAT IS: Art Deco
Art Deco was the perfect expression of the salons at Paris during the 20’s to the 30’s. It embraced every area of design and the decorative arts including architecture, interiors, furniture, jewellery, painting and graphics, bookbinding, costume, glass and ceramics. Art Deco was about integrating contemporary living with art, and turning life into art, against those consciously working for the undoing of art and its purpose was enjoyment.
WHAT IS: Le Corbusier
Swiss born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (1887-1965) was 29 when he went to Paris. Soon after his arrival he adopted his maternal grandfather’s name, Le Corbusier, as a pseudonym. He changed his persona from Jeanneret the small-town architect to Le Corbusier the world’s next visionary artist. He expressed a view that architecture had lost its way. He was convinced the bold new industrial age dawning required an audacious style of architecture. Who better to design it than himself. “We must start again from zero,” he proclaimed.
Tiptoe Through The Tulips
“Come tulip come and take color from my cheek” said Eastern Philosopher Mevlana in the thirteenth century when shrubs, bulbs and flowers were flooding into Europe from the near East. They went wild for them, especially Holland, who would make the tulip that grew wild in Anatolia in western Turkey an integral part of both its culture and economy
