Calendyarrr Art Show

There's still Tshirts and Calendars available from the Yarrr Exhibition. They'll make great Xmas presents, and you'd be helping Micah cover the cost of creating the whole event.
What a champ.

http://www.yarrrclothing.blogspot.com/

Here's a picture of the one I drew

Calendyarrr Art Show

I'm in an art show on Friday night in Prahran. The details are on the flyer below. I'm looking forward to this one, I think it will be really good fun. Come along and check it out of you can. Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Nothing To Nobody

I was lucky enough to rate a mention on this awesome new Melbourne art website
NothingToNobody

Easey Street

I guess I should start this with a very brief look at the epic night that was Halloween. I was a bit stuck for a good plan this year so went with what I thought was going to be a kind of boring costume idea. It turned out way better than I expected and everyone seemed to love it. If fact I didn't pay for a single drink all night. Thanks to the friends and random strangers that supplied enough beer for me become extremely charming, attractive, wealthy and invincible once again. (And a big thanks but no thanks to the dude who tried to make out with me)






















As a side note, how awesome are the people who come to Halloween parties with out costumes and hassle the people who have made an effort to have fun? I wish I could be them.
Making stupid outfits of of cardboard is not the only thing that has been keeping me busy recently. I have also been painting a mural in the doorway of the new Easey Street Agencies building. Here are some progress shots.

As you can see it was dark when I finished. About 10.30pm to be exact. I still have a lot more to paint but i wanted to get it to a finished looking state for their opening party which was the next night. I wasn't there to enjoy the celebrations but I got to go to Sydney instead so I'm not too fussed about it.
On the week end just past, I was flown north by the kind folks at Element to be a part of this art show.
It was an amazing trip. Everyone else was working so the wonderful Lucy saved my ass by driving me to the airport. (Thanks again Lucy)
I was collected from Sydney airport by Troy Archer (A fantastic artist in his own right) and taken to our hotel. Through out that day I met or was reintroduced to a huge list of people, including these other Element advocates
Christian Halford
Beastman
Courtney Brimms
Kareena Zerefos
Brett Chan
and of course the supremely talented Sarah Larnach (who gave me a midnight tattoo in her lounge room)
I couldn't find much of Christian's stuff online but that link is definitely worth a look, as are all the others. There's some seriously talented people in this group, I felt a bit out of place. They're all quite attractive too, luckily I was there to keep everything grounded. I'll post some more pictures of that trip in the next day or two. Right now I need to catch up on some sleep.

Oh no, now wallaby gonna do about the car?

Its a dead heat. Yep after this weekend the scores are all tied and I'm not talking about the footy. Kangaroos -1 versus me, also on -1.
You know when something bad happens to you and you get a bit pissed off, and then something else bad happens and you get more pissed off, and then something else bad happens and you get more pissed off, and then something else bad happens and you get more pissed off, and then something else bad happens and you suddenly realise that everything is so fucked that it just becomes hilarious.
It all started with my genius idea of driving to Canberra for an art show that I was involved in. (I'll be referring to every idea that I've spawned over this week end as a genius idea so get used to it)
I thought I might have been able to talk some people into coming with me. Turns out Canberra doesn't hold too much appeal to pretty much every person in Melbourne. Not even to Nate who was also involved in the art show.
I decided not to ride my motorbike after the last disastrous Canberra mission, which involved riding from 4am to 1pm with hardly a rest stop in freezing cold conditions only to arrive just in time to make 20 runs in a cricket match, which we then ended up losing. Later that evening a drunk dude named Cons smashed my motorbike into the front door of a pub. So rather than risk that happening again I asked Mum if i could borrow her car. Instead of her car, I got to take my step Dad's car which has some "idiosyncrasies" as Mum put it. They include the driver's side door not shutting properly, the petrol pump not working properly, the lights having some weird operating code that I didn't have the time to decipher and the radio being a total piece of shit.
I didn't find out about these idiot-sync-fart-clouds until I was about to leave.
So after dinner with Mum, Grandma and some other uncles and aunties on Thursday night, I started my drive.
(I noticed these money boxes that my Mum had made for Grandma on the way out of the house)
















I drove as far as Holbrook which is a small town about an hour north of the border with a big submarine in the main street which I think is supposed to attract tourists or deter German and Japanese armies.
I was running low on gas so I decided this would be a good place to camp for the night. I pulled off the road and slept in the back of the car. I woke with plenty of time to get to Canberra, hang the art show and still hopefully have time for a skate before the opening. The sun was shining and things were looking up.... for about 1 minute.
Then that I discovered that the car had decided today was a good day to not work. I kept trying everything I could think of (not very much) to get it running until the battery died. Then after a few hours of phone calls to various parents and friends and a hearty truckers breakfast,
I decided to hitch hike the rest of the way. So I packed up all the art I could carry, which was mainly Nate's stuff, and started trudging along the side of the freeway with my thumb out. No luck at all. To my sheer amazement, not even the hot blonde girls in the wicked camper van stopped to help me. I gave up after more than an hour and walked back to the car.
I talked mum into joining the RACV and after a while a dude came to see if he could fix the problem. He had no luck either, so he called a tow truck.



















The tow truck driver took it around the corner to a mechanic, whilst trying to convince me to spend some time at the local naval museum. Now might be a good time to mention that Holbrook is hundreds of miles away from the sea. Why they have a naval museum and a huge submarine there is anyone's guess.
Some how the mechanics managed to get it going by spraying some crap into the motor and hitting the petrol tank with a rubber mallet. So I was back on the road with almost enough time to get to the show. As it turned out I ended up only being about 15 minutes late, which meant I had to hang our artwork with the room full of punters looking on, drinking free booze. It turned out to be pretty good all things considered and the other artwork there was really awesome. One of Nate's pics was sold only a few minutes after I hung it up.
There was even a picture of Scotty G there, taken by Nello.





















Obviously due the explicit nature of all things relating to Scotty it had to be displayed in a secretive booth






















I didn't take any decent photos of the show. Here's a crappy one with one of my pics on the left, Nello's photo of Dave Adair in the middle and a picture of Dustin Dollin as the mad hatter done by Jack Tarlington on the right.
















I ended up meeting some rad people and having a really fun night. Afterwards I got taken to some weird night club by Luke and Caroline which was probably the nail in the coffin as far as me not having a hangover the next day goes.
This bastard hangover really exceeded his mandate the next day. If there was a Coleman medal for hangovers he would have definitely won, not so much for his intensity but his sheer unbridalled determination to ruin my day. About an hour or two out of Canberra heading back to Melbourne I was beginning to feel quite unwell so pulled into a beautiful little rest stop area with weeping willows and a small stream running through it. There were people enjoying picnics and letting their dogs run around in the sun, the birds were singing.... then I drove in, opened the car door and puked all over my shoe.
At this point I decided driving would not be in my best interests so I climbed into the back of the car to have a snooze. I woke up a few hours later feeling marginally better, climbed into the drivers seat and discovered that I'd somehow been sleeping with the headlights on high beam. Needless to say the battery was flatter than a flat tire with a block of flats on top of it in the Bonneville Salt Flats. Stoked.
After more phone calls and an argument with the RACV who claimed they had no knowledge of our membership or the fact that they'd fixed the car only 24 hours earlier, eventually a dude came and got the car going again. By this stage I was beginning to wonder which witch had put a curse on me. The possibilities seemed endless so I stopped thinking about it. Fuck all y'all witches.
Okay, back on the road, I was fairly certain nothing else could possibly happen to me. WRONG. At about 8pm, going around 110kph, I ran straight into a fucking kangaroo. Actually it was probably a wallaby. Either way its dead now so I dont think it will care what I call it. It scared the shit out of me and fucked the car up. I'm lucky the little native treasure was bending down which meant I hit it with the front guard of the car and ran over it. If it was standing up it probably would have come through the windscreen and .... well I doubt I'd be sitting here typing this nonsense.

Dont Push Mong

Aloha,
I'm in this group art show in Canberra which starts on Friday night. It has kindly been organised by Luke Brown and Tim Clement.






















The art show that was in Sydney a few weeks ago was great fun. I flew up and stayed with Sean and Lyndall who got me drunk and made me fall over, and the next night I stayed up north of Sydney with the 2008 Brett Whitley art prize winner Amber Wallis of www.amberwallis.com fame. Hahaha she'll hate me for posting that.

The show in Sydney, called This Is How We Roll, was organised by J'aime Fazackerly and sponsored by Element Skateboards. Check www.skatetv.com.au to see a cool video that he put together of the opening night.
Below is my contribution to the show which is a drawing called Suicidal Pregnancies.






















If you don't get the joke then you've obviously never heard of these guys.
I have more shows in the near future in Sydney and Melbourne. Details for them will follow at a later date.
Speaking of Element, if you're at all interested in highly skilled drawing check out Troy Archer's blog. (he works at Element but in my opinion he should/could be a full time artist)

Art show - This Is How We Roll

I'm in this show tomorrow night in Sydney. Come by if you're in the area, it should be a good one.

Creative Aggression

Tim Hillier has put together an article about me and Mavie for Creative Aggression magazine. Its about a time when I was painting a mural in the foyer of Vans in Melbourne and during the same period Mavie was constucting a pirate skate obstacle. He also gave me a hand with the mural, along with my step dad Terry, my sister Ange and the very talented Nate Gamble.

Hoon Hoon Hoon

The new Hoon boards seem to be going down fairly well.

http://www.hoonskate.com/news/2010/7/4/new-gormet-series.html

http://clubmumble.com/2010/07/06/hoon-gormet-series/

http://www.lowcardmag.com/news/gormet-series/

For Hoon the bell tolls

I recently designed some graphics for Hoon Skateboards. The finished boards have just arrived in the country. This is the first board series that I've done and from the pictures that I've seen it looks like they turned out pretty good. I'll post some of my own photos when I receive my boards in the mail, or you can see them on the Hoon website right now.
I have also moved to a new studio in Easey Street, Collingwood. I'll post some pictures of the other projects that I've been working on when I get some spare time. Until then, support your local Hoon.

Banksy? Nah. Banksia

So last week some Melbourne city council worker painted over a little Banksy stencil in Hossier Lane and it some how made the front page of the paper. The so called "story" was also covered in so many other newspapers around the world you'd think that something important had happened. It was in every news bulletin on TV that night and was discussed on the radio all day. Here are some examples.
AUSTRALIA - http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/28/2884476.htm
USA - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/arts/design/29arts-ABANKSYRATIS_BRF.html
CANADA - http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2010/04/28/melbourne-banksy-street-art.html
UK - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1269215/Melbourne-Council-orders-Banksy-street-art-painted-mistake.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

What a lot of hullabaloo. Anyway I went down there last night and, with the help of Dave and Adrian, I painted something slightly more Australian. (That is a Banksia flower for those who aren't up to scratch on their Australian flora)

Loser Machine Helmet

My hilarious friend Leon asked me paint a motorcycle helmet for a brand called Loser Machine. He works for the company that is distributing them in Australia. There's some pictures of it on their blog here.

http://losermachine.com/blog/?p=1058

Motorbike trip - Fartzroy to Eden

On Thursday I left work at 1.30pm and decided to ride my 20 year old CB250 Honda to Eden in New South Wales. According to Google maps its 557kms.

View Larger Map

It was a pretty last minute decision. I basically grabbed a pair of shorts, a sleeping bag and my skateboard, strapped it all to the bike and left. I didn't really think too hard about it till I was about an hour into the ride and realised all the things that could possibly go wrong. As it was the only bad stuff that happened was one minor crash in Genoa (The front wheel locked up on the gravel and I skidded into a post and I ended up on my back in the middle of the road. Luckily I wasn't going very fast.) and I ran out of petrol once but had just enough in reserve to get me to a service station.

The first place that I stopped was my old primary school. Even though its a bit out of the way I wanted to check it out. I barely recognised it because all the buildings have been replaced. 

See that really tall tree behind my bike? I planted that in 1986. I keep meaning to carve my name into it. I actually had a pocket knife with me this time but there was some teacher peering out the window, probably getting all weird about me taking photos of a primary school, so I didn't press my luck.
My next stop was Mum's house in Warragul to steal a torch. Then I rode onto to Sale where I saw this skatepark and decided to have a roll.

The bowl was awesome but, just like every other small country town in the area, it had an appalling metal street course. Look at this quarterpipe that I saw in Cann River. I cant decide if its really good or an insult to the young local kids. 2 and a half feet high with a 2 and a half foot tranny.... I'm pretty sure Maunder would have been all over it.

I rode onto Bairnsdale and called Dad (who was staying in Eden) and he informed me that I wouldn't be able to get fuel after dark, past Bairnsdale. This was a problem because my tank only holds enough petrol to get me about 120kms which definitely wasn't far enough. At first I was going to just sleep under a bridge or a tree or something but it was getting really cold and looking like it might rain.


Eventually I came across this epic old pub in a tiny little town called Bruthen. (Speaking of which there are some brilliant town names in the area - Mossiface, Lucknow, Bumberrah, Boole Poole, Lake Bunga.... the list goes on.)
When I rolled up to this pub it was already dark, there were 5 or 6 really drunk people who, by the look of them, were all over the age of fifty. The oldest, and possibly the drunkest, was an old salt who asked if he could help me, as I approached the door. I told him I wanted a room for the night. He was amazing, he took me inside and looked at his bookings list and said that there was one room available. There was blatantly about 10 rooms available but I think he wanted me to feel lucky. He wrote down my first initial and last name and sent me down the hall way. I couldn't figure out what room he wanted me in so I asked him to show me. He escorted me to one of the rooms, and tried to switch the light on. When he realised the was no globe in it he muttered "Ah fuck some cunt from one of the other rooms has pinched the fucking globe. I'll try to find you another one." I never saw him again. I ended up reading the complimentary bible by torch light till I fell asleep. As a side note, isn't the bible a big pile of shit? Christianity is stupid.... see

I woke up at 6.30am feeling spiritually .... lightened would be more accurate than enlightened. I rode for a while then went scone hunting and came across a town that had a market type thing. Country people still sell tapes apparently.


They also sell booze at their petrol stations.


I eventually made it to Eden which is a rad little fishing village type thing. Even though Dad is only there for 6 weeks a year, he has the whole caravan park lifestyle on lockdown. He has a permanent site with an annex thing that he built around his caravan. And a decking with a shelter, etc, etc. He's even got a shed. He's built a bunch annexes for other people in the caravan park as well. He's creating an empire. And for some reason, everyone who stays there has leather sandle type things with sneaker soles and/or crocs. Dad had both obviously. I didn't get any photos of Dad's set up but I went with him to different caravan park to help him measure up another annex that he's gonna build for some other dude and saw this gnome haven near by. Its a really crappy photo but this guy had gone all out, keep in mind this is in a camping ground.

Some tourist photos




I talked Dad into to taking me fishing. He sucks at it. Next time I'm hoping one his friends will take me out on one of their boats.


By far the best thing in Eden is this mini ramp which is directly behind Dad's caravan. I heard some skate noise and asked Dad and he mentioned that there was a ramp so I went and had a look and my jaw went slack. This thing rules.


It was owned by a dude called Reese who was an absolute ripper and was also nice enough to let me have a roll. I was in a fair bit of pain due some mystery injury to my shoulder that only really bothered my greatly while I was in NSW, but I couldn't not have a quick ride on this thing. I love home made weird shit like this.



After spending a couple of very lazy days sightseeing and sudokuing and reading I started on the ride back which was awesome. The road between Eden and Bairnsdale is all windy and through the bush, so much fun. The only down side was that it was really cold and I'd lost my gloves on the way up. So i stopped at Cann River and bought some woolen gloves at a little general store and sat on a picnic bench to do the crossword. That's when a biker gang called the Fourth Reich rolled into town. There was easily over 100 of them, complete with swastika patches and what not. I decided it was time to get on my little Japanese bike and get out of town.


It started getting unbearably cold after that so I tried to keep my face warm with a Tshirt


By the time I'd gotten to Bairnsdale it had started raining a little so pulled over and called Dad. He was only about an hour behind me so I waited for him and we put the bike onto his trailer and I got a lift back to Drouin with him.


Once we were back at his house I checked the weather report. It said there was zero percent chance of more rain so I decided to head home before it got dark. I sat on the freeway for an hour trying to get home before the on coming clouds emptied on to me. Zero percent chance of rain my arse. With 10 minutes left to ride it pissed down. I had to stop under a bridge. Then I decided I was already so wet that it didn't matter so I just rode home anyway and arrived home vowing never to ride in the rain again. Next morning as i was riding to work it started raining again and I got to wear wet clothes at work all day. Rain can suck it.

Christmas has been and gone. Here's Mavie in his umbrella hat and sippy straw cup and our Auntie Bernie with a Duck shaped umbrella, both of which they recieved in our family Chris Kringle. I was in possession of a ShamWOW for a few minutes but due to some odd rules one of my cousins took it from me and I ended up with a bike seat.



Captain Manouvers got into the spirit of things.

After doing all the family stuff through out the day I came home and did this in Photoshop.

Then I spent the next hour or so laughing my head off.

Found this old photo on my computer. Halloween a few years ago. That was the year I was dynamite in the sack. Dont ask me what the others are. Apart from Noonan (Teenwolf maybe???) and Mari(Gilligan) in the back ground every one else is wearing their everyday gear.

Danny sent this picture to me the other day. He'd tattooed one of my drawings on some guy who's obviously a Mindsnare fan.


















In keeping with that theme, there's a dude in Queensland who has another drawing that I did for Mindsnare, tattooed on his leg. I met him at the Arthouse one day a few years ago.



















Okay back to trying to remember my life. According to the photos I went to see JK again down in Rosebud. I see this Bungower Road sign every time I go down there. The green electrical tape modification that has been made to it is genius... and i don't use that word lightly.


The steeds parked out the front of the shop


Latimer was up on the roof with me while I was painting and found a virtually unused G-string in the guttering. BINGO!


The sign currently looks like this. I'm hoping to finish it in the next week or so.




And as usual I got unexpectedly assaulted by sun rays. Check out this divine new fire belt that I refused to take off for a couple of weeks. I loved wearing it so much that it had to be peeled it off me.

There's some pretty weird shit for sale in the shop. Anyone need a stuffed lioness in attack stance?


Or a display dome full off real dead person?


I did some more sign work right in the heart of trendy land - Chapel Street. If you like sweaty meth heads coming out of Revolver at 3 in the afternoon munching their faces off looking only slightly healthier than the guy in the jar in the picture above, then you should head down there. You'll love it. One dude was hassling me so much that i had to pack up and leave. He thought I was some graffiti dude and kept asking me where i was from, who i knew and what crew I was in. He was fucking scary, I couldn't tell if he loved me or wanted to punch me so I decided to call it a day. And you Prahran wankers call Fitzroy the dirty side of town. Yes I'm talking to you Al, Niddy, Ralph, Cheese and who ever else lives over there. Yay for hair product. Chapel Street rules!




Ruth is still into food


I saw this Tshirt with some sweet piercings but didn't buy it. Must have been having an off day


Happy bike. Probably gets ridden by a hot girl I'd say.


Charlie Wilson


Arlo Maglaris


Nick Burton (NYE 2009/10)



Awesome.

I've recently drawn a poster up for the Belco Bowl Jam which is in a few weeks. After my first idea ended up on the cutting room floor


they decided to use my other drawing