Beat Up Decks

I got my hands on a phone that can take decent enough photos every now and then and that's a bit of an improvement from what I was using before, so I thought I'd upload the series of portraits I did on second hand decks of myself and some other dudes I know with facial injuries. These were for a show in July this year.. I did them really quickly, I think I want to add more to the blank parts of the decks still, just an emblem/symbol/item at the bottom of each deck about where the trucks would be.

From left to right with name and what happened is Casey with a cigarette burn to his lower lip, myself after i got my good friend Eddie to punch me in the eye for this project (thank you Ed, you did good), Marijn after a skating incident and Mikey after being hit in the face with a wet pool noodle during a fight. These are sort of shitty portraits, they don't look anything like the people do in real life. Realism ain't my forte.

In other news I've been working hard at the bar I work at, the Hula Bula Bar, which has been getting some recent write-ups in papers/mags etc and our menu is shifting to incorporate some fucking awesome cocktails, like the 1934 Donn the Beachcomber Zombie. I've also been listening to the latest cut of Injured Ninja's up-coming album, "vs. skylazer" which is epic, and the artwork for that is turning out to be alright so far.. sort of Hokusai on steroids.

Also I got this today trying to buy a lamp and got distracted. It was cheap, I'll buy a real one eventually.

Tiki carving, dismemberment, DIY... I feel like i can do anything now.

PS.so many opportunities for linkage, but it's late, and I cannae be arsed.

GOLDEN TOP MOUNTAIN JOURNEY

Injured Ninja are releasing a 7" single of one of the tracks from their upcoming album (which is fucking dope by the way, coming out next year, and is going to make you wet yourself in awe). The track is 'Golden Top Mountain Journey', a bizarre dubby mix of sound.. comforting and disturbing at the same time. I banged out a quick CD cover to accompany it to music magazines and radio stations to amp up hype about it's release, and it is a preview of sorts for the actual 7" Single cover which will be available for your purchase in the coming months.

It's also experimentation for the album artwork for when that is released, which will be epic, and bloody, and dirty.

KARAOKE SATAN MUSEUM-Part One

I have been busy lately, working weekends and trying to get art done on the few days between. At the moment I'm deep in the middle of an installation project about youth's relationship with satan/religion and it's re-appropriation in pop-culture and blah blah blah.. Over the course of a week 8 artists are coming together in the Mixtape Gallery space on William St, Northbridge, to create a Karaoke Satan Museum.. it's part installation, part exhibition, part skill-sharing workshop with a mentor artist flown over from Indonesia, Ican, who has a blog here.

It's been a few days of painting on the walls, listening to really loud metal/rock, and having people come in and out dropping off art and adding to the window displays. Pictures when I get them, I still don't have a camera or been bothered to borrow one for the decks I want to post here.

Friday at 3pm and saturday at 2pm things are happening at the KARAOKE SATAN MUSEUM that are worth dropping past for.

Art blog with no fucking art on it. FAIL.

Developments

The show at The Moon was well received, although I did not finish most of the work. In order to complete the series of 4 tiny boards (see previous post) I expanded it to 7, including the larger "test-piece" and got them to about 80% finished... then sold one, which means the series is short 1 part.. I'll finish the rest and screw the last one.

The organ series, which was going to be a big part of it, got painted up but I opted to finish the skate decks instead and leave the organs without lines etc.. so I still have those to finish for some upcoming shows with Last Chance Studios (moved in to this collaborative studio space last week), and have the finished decks here with me. I am pretty happy with the decks.

The other artists did very well indeed, and I was pretty stoked to be involved in a show with them. They are extremely talented bastards. Jenness Ray & THNK, I thank you.

I am temporarily incapable of taking even crappy phone photos to upload, so please be patient until I find a way to get images up. In the meantime, keep up to date with Last Chance & The Community for exciting art news.

That last part sounded really naff.

PS. too arsed to link to things.

JERK

The group exhibition coming up at The Moon Cafe is in a few days. I'm in my room surrounded by paint in coffee jar lids, with paintings all over my bed and desk, 4 decks on one easel, a shitload of dvds scattered beneath the tv and nothing is finished yet. I think it'll be ok.. I like to work under pressure and this is some pretty bitchin' pressure.

The amount of pieces I hope to get done for the show.. 9 in my organ series 30x30cm each, 4 15x15 pieces I didn't have a plan for but are turning out ok at this stage and 4 skate decks of beat-up faces. The faces are all drawn on, ink-washed and waiting to be painted but I don't know how to paint them yet.. I need thicker paint because some of the seal still remains on the decks even after sanding. Oh well.

The view from where I paint pretty much looks like this.. except the easel is pretty useless with pieces this small, it is just a good place to hold test-wood to make sure the colours I mix are gonna be ok.. and they usually aren't because I don't paint often enough. Because of this I think I'm going to lightly sand off the paint on the organ series before lining them up. I don't know if this will look good or bad.

This is the test wood I was using to test colours, the back of it anyway and then ran out of space and started to use the front. Some friends offered to help me out with deadlines and do some of the paintings for me, so I said I'd pencil one up of their design and they could finish it off for me. They suggested (because the show is titled "JERK") that they draw a guy jerkin it, and spunking knives. Turns out it looks pretty rad at the moment in a funny way, so I'm keeping it instead and finishing it for the show.

Hope I get it all done, The show is at the Moon Cafe this Sunday from about 6pm onwards, all are welcome.

Face Wasting & Zombie-babes on bikes.

So in the lead up to the group exhibition coming up June 13th at the Moon Cafe, I've gathered some photos from the past few weeks capturing exhibition preparation and photo shoots for illustration reference. The shots were taken by one of the rad dudes going on a skate deck for the exhibition, Casey, and here are some highlights.

The face-wasting first attempt failed, I didn't get hit hard enough which was my own fault.. I didn't know how hard would be hard enough. Second attempt (not pictured) was quicker and I think we nailed it on the first hit. See my previous post for why I got myself punched in the face.

These photos were mucking around on a Sunday arvo trying to get reference material for a logo I'm doing for a friend's business which restores and sells awesome old bikes and shit like that. It is going to be sort of gnarley, with zombies and babes and graveyard type imagery all through it. I can't wait. It turns out we got a bunch of photos I want to turn in to paintings from that day... excited.

On another note I'm having trouble getting in contact with the woman who got my image tattooed on her. I found a phone number but have had no reply as yet. I'll hunt it down, Perth is small *evil laugh*.

EXHIBITION AND ON AND ON AND ON

I'm still slack as your grandma's undies for updates, but rest assured this year is choc-full of delicious plong-morsels for y'all.

Good news first up: the exhibition I'm now involved in this July at The Moon Cafe with THNK and the talented Jenness Ray has been moved to a June 13th opening, which is a Sunday. The Moon has long been a favourite spot for student types who can score cheap wine and decent sized meals late at night when most places in dullsville have gone to bed. The show should feature all of our work, quite coincidentally a lot of which is on skate decks....

My beat-up deck series showcases the faces of some of my good friends after being mashed up, including talented Dutch designer Marijn Degenaar, local badass and photographer/artist alias Chris Walken and Mikey of soon to be Tombstone Recycles, makers and purveyors of sweet second-hand lowriders and other pushbikes. The last deck needs another facial injury and I am kindly putting my own eye forward to get blacked to complete the series (first attempt failed, will have to have another crack at it but there are some ripper photos which I'll post when I get a hold of them).

Running late for updates I was going to include so I'll do them later.

Pete

Oh. Just got a text from my tattooist friend (The amazing Lozza) who said she saw someone getting my Riding With Wolves piece, "Liberian Girl" tattooed on her thigh. Whoever you are, I hope you know what you're doing, and I'm incredibly flattered:D

oh wait, what's this? there's something here?!?

I have not updated in a very long time, my apologies but I have just been hammering away finishing uni and doing boring stuff that is not really fit for this blog. My uni project needs to be kept hush hush (off the internet at least) until it's ready to go, but it's a prototype board-game to be released hopefully in the next year. I won't say much but it is pirate themed and pretty epic.

I have been doing a fair amount of live art, and when I gather some decent photos of them all I will post them here, but you may have caught me at Beck's Music Box when Breakestra played Feb 6th and Calexico the 26th of Feb. I painted with Richard Healy (awesome painter, I will find his blog and link it soon) on both of those occassions and also at the Relative Apparel launch at Ezra Pound recently, and we scored a commission out of our collaborative piece at Calexico. I also painted at the Rosemount at the Jamboree for Jocelyn a few Sundays ago.

I moved house recently, now in Mount Lawley where all the cool indie kids are, and am setting my studio up in a corner of my bedroom, and hope to get VERY productive VERY soon. I have an idea for an exhibition I could bang out pretty easily with affordable pieces, just as a stepping stone to a more intense, ambitious debut exhibition later in the year. I figure unless I build up more work my career will die... pfft.

Anyway, there's stuff on the horizon for Injured Ninja coming up too, so don't give up on me yet, I'm only just getting started bitches.