UglyBeautiful = Dilemma

Sometimes a thing is both ugly and attractive at the same time.  Sometimes you simply do not know whether you love a thing or hate it.  

The strange feeling of contradiction settles on all of us from time to time.

Op shops, second hand stores, antique markets are often where these feelings of confusion mostly arise.  

Do you love this odd object enough to pay good money it, even though you do not really like it, and yet you can not stop thinking about it.  

I bet you can recall one of those moments right now.

What we have here is an UGLY BEAUTIFUL dilemma.

Case in point is this tea set based on sea mollusks, both odd and charming, with a personality all of its own. 

The bright side of life

These images are from separate exhibitions staged this year in Australia. 

One was a part of the fabulous Future Fashion held at GOMA, Brisbane, Queensland, the other was from the Chuck Close Show held at the MCA, here in Sydney.  

Both were extraordinary shows. Both were must see experiences.

The cohesive theme between these two very different images is colour…the every present element that drives our psyches, and feeds our souls.  
Colour  is a encoded language that we are all capable of decoding, although many people are not aware of the knowledge they have buried deep inside. 
They just react and respond to colour from an intuitive place, never really consciously unpacking what any particular colour is saying to them.  

I guess it doesn’t matter as long as colour continues to trigger the emotions within us all.

Green is the future

Green glass was a big thing in the 1950s, but no one seems to want it anymore.

You cannot go to a local market or a church fete or a second hand store without being confronted with a vast selection of green glass objects for the home.  

Now you can walk past it…or you can start a collecting it.  

I fell in love with green glass when I first discovered Trisha Guild a long time ago.  

She designed a bedroom, which was all green, soft green, and all the tables and benches were full of green glass vases, bowls, objects of all shapes and sizes.  

It made me think of the sea and grass and nature in general. Since then every bedroom I have had has been a soft green, full of green glass.

Joylines

Tea towels are a necessity of domestic life. Exciting to buy new ones, all bright and crisp.

 Often they serve as reminders of a great holiday or outing.

They wipe and dry benches and hands. Get hung over kitchen nobs, oven handles or backs of kitchen doors.

Accidents happen to them all the time...burns, stains, cuts. 

They never complain. Always there when we need them and then thrown away when they don’t look so good after all that we put them through. 

I cannot throw mine away, just can’t. But can’t use them either. 

So they sit in a drawer all frayed and stained, tired and old. Just waiting for something to do...

until Joylines, an exercise in reinvention, by turning rags into symbols of joy. 

The Redfern Biennale was once again happening and the notion behind the art event is try and change the way people perceive what is regarded as rubbish, junk, trash in our society.  

Therefore, how perfect would it be to take old, stained tea towels and with a cut here and a stich there, a bit of string transform them into the symbols of celebratory anticipation. 

Joylines were born.

Then and Now

Old style flatwear, otherwise referred to as cutlery, is sadly a thing of the past in most ‘modern’ homes. 

Why have these beautiful pieces of silverware gone away? 

There is nothing nicer than the look and feel of these bone handled knives, the curved rat’s tailed forks and spoons.

Is it that people are just lazy, and don’t want to have to wash up these pieces by hand.  Really?? Is that true? 

Or does the aesthetic of these flatware sets simply not suit the digital world and all that populates it stylistically?

          

So, if you want to have a sense and connection to times past, go shopping in stores that recognise the joy of old things...Things that have a history.  

Things that were manufactured in times when built-in redundancy simply was not a possibility.

          

This type of flatware may cost a touch more, but maybe not. 

Go to the auction houses, as you will often find fantastic silver flatware sets from deceased estates looking for a new home.

Saturday markets are sometimes a successful places for these purchases. Even go on line. 

Save these items of another time, because dealers of silver are buying these flatware sets up and melting them down! Oh NO!

Remember, if a thing is useful and beautiful, it ain't junk.

Issue No. 14: Wallism