Hundertwasser's loo...

...is causing a bit of a stink. I particularly like 'When the sun of culture is low, then dwarves create long shadows'!

Life on Mars?

Well, the presence of methane might be a clue.

Kind of funny

'The Model Vs. Photographer series was created during a period of modest desperation. I had nobody available who was willing to model, but I wanted to keep moving ahead with cranking out images. While sitting around pondering this, I was struck by the idea that it would be hilarious if I would mimic the poses of models I had shot previously.'

Check them out here.

Fascist bastards

No Right Turn has a link to this story. NZPols responded, and then No Right Turn responded right back. Those bloggers, eh?

There's something pretty Kafkaesque about this whole SIS thing - a shadowy bureaucracy that doesn't tell you what you're charged with or what their evidence is, but just takes your passport away. It's worth bearing in mind that this is just the latest in a string of legislation curtailing civil liberties in the wake of September 11.

What would have happened in the Aziz Choudry case if it had been now rather than the late 90s?

I did consider applying to the SIS when they were recruiting intelligence agents (as a bit of a joke), but decided against it. One of the problems with the SIS is its lack of a sense of humour. Well, apart from the evidence against Ahmed Zaoui being a joke that is.

Oh well, if you believe the alleged time traveller John Titor, the US will have a civil war this year and then it'll be all on.

Appropriation and copyright

New York painter Joy Garnett is faced with an interesting copyright issue over this painting. She's been getting a bit of solidarity.

Appropriation has a long and honourable history. Some people think it's a recent thing, but Renaissance artists quoted each other pretty liberally (though of course they didn't have copyright absurdities to deal with). Nowadays people sometimes make art specifically to break copyright.

Some more stuff to check out

Rob McLeod's website and Jo Russ's website.

I believe there's still a bit more building to be done for both of these, so check them out again in the next few days or so.

Well, there you go...

Noam Chomsky's got a blog.

Changes at home

Rose is moving her office home today. It's the end of an era and the start of a new one. We'll both be here all day every day. I wonder whether we'll drive each other nuts. She's just bought a swanky new laptop and loaded it up with all her rinky-dink designer software. I hope to use it to finally update my website (it'll be a lot easier using that than my computer). With any luck I'll be able to do that next week.

New buttons

Observant readers will have noticed the addition of new buttons at the bottom of the page. Well, they would've had they scrolled down to the bottom of the page anyway (and how likely is that?). This blog is now listed on Blogarama and in a whopping great queue to be listed on Blogwise. I'm not sure why really.

I suppose it's not that surprising that Blogarama's most popular blogs tend to be sex blogs.

Openings

Ben's opening was good. Lots of people showed up. He sold six, with options on three others. Got to love those little red dots. Rose bought a couple of Stuart Forsyth paintings (he's showing at the Bowen Gallery - they share the space).

The group show at Janne's was a much more low key affair. It's new work in stock, so I suppose people think the opening isn't such a big deal. Matt's work looked great. I also liked the Helm Ruifrok, which reminded me a lot of Leonardo's studies of Leda's head (the painting doesn't actually look anything like that - it's the elaborate hairstyle that reminded me of it I think). Another stand-out was Peter Ireland's 'Landscape Sampler', which was a circular oil on paper copy of a Fox painting with 'TANZA' written across it - a note next to it said that TANZA was the first NZ record company. It stands for 'To Assist New Zealand Artists'. I was very tempted by it.