AMILTON D E S I G N G L A S S The artwork of Jeffrey Hamilton

Outpost on Cockatoo Island

XX Mon. YYYY

For a start, Cockatoo Island has to be the grandest venue in the world for an arts festival. Set like a jewel in the middle of Sydney Harbour, the island is home to an industrial wasteland worthy of Mad Max #4. Enter the denizens of the streets, those artists who are reviled as vandals in the corridors of power yet weirdly in this case supported and indeed lauded by Maritime Services (Sydney Harbour Trust). Following hot on the heels of "Space Invaders" at the National Gallery in Canberra (now touring the country), and with Anthony Lister gracing the cover of the very final paper issue of Art and Australia Magazine, it could be said with some authority that street art, paste-up, graffiti, stickering, skate boarding, stencils, in short contemporary street culture, has moved centre stage. And a good thing too.

As well as Paste Modernism 3, there were many individual galleries on the island and dozens of boards erected around the cliff faces and outside the old warehouses featuring graf and artwork by many well known Australian artists. Numskull, Phibs and Beastman did a collaborative TeepeeTemple. There was also an enormous exhibition of screen-printed T-shirts dating back decades and of course lots of appropriately funky merchandise.

Out of all the amazing work on display at Outpost, what really inspired me, in fact blew me away, was Kid Zoom's installation. A Perth artist who moved over to Sydney and into Hibernian House for a time, Kid Zoom's career has skyrocketted and justifiably so. He is "possessed by a vision, by a madness, by a rage to live, by an all consuming fire to MAKE ART!" Ian Strange (AKA Kid Zoom) is so much more than a street artist: his multi-media installation Home on Cockatoo was worthy of a Biennale.

In the driveway to the house, which Ian built while living in the island, were the three vehicles which star in the video projected onto the inside wall of the house. With a deafening industrial soundtrack the piece was completely enthralling. The artist takes to the cars with a sledge hammer, jumping on them, pounding them with his feet... then begins overspraying them, with flames still leaping into the air and at one stage igniting the spray can: gripping stuff.

SUNDRY ITEMS OF INTEREST

XX Mon. YYYY

The St Jame's Catholic Church refurbishment project is now complete but it's been such a busy time for me, up and down scaffold each day, getting home exhausted, that I've neglected this blog somewhat.

I did manage to visit the opening of the SCA Grad Show at the Rozelle Campus Nov 15th, although I was really there for the painting and only had a very quick glance at the glass. Some stand out works by the painters included Taylor Coyne's timber and canvas construction, Emily Morris' delightfully whimsical watercolours of such prosaic objects as wheelie bins and old soldering irons, Saffae's beautifully rendered S & M portraits the fluorescent light constructions of Tai Yi Kwok.

Vastly different in scale from Morris' petite watercolours, the oil on canvas by Teunis Van Zanten, full of drama and movement, spoke to me on a visceral level.

Running parallel with the Street Art Festival that is Outpost on Cockatoo Island is a whole swag of solo shows arouind Sydney by some of the best proponents of stencil and street art. Ambush Gallery in Waterloo is hosting a fantastic show titled Surface Tension, featuring Shida from QLD and Victorian artist Elk among others. Each of the 6x artists has worked a large piece onto the gallery wall as a backdrop to the framed artworks, with generally excellent results.

Numskull has a show on at Kindof Gallery in Oxford Street (which I have yet to see); Andros was participating with I don't know how many artists in a live art exhibition at Tortuga Studios, St Peters last Saturday night

And while I'm on the topic of street art and contemporary movements I have to tell you about a new zine that's so stylish there should be hard copies available to keep: Knock Knock Magazine. I can't recommend this highly enough! And make sure you take time out to go to Cockatoo Island before Outpost finishes 11th December.