I’m in the process of renovating this here blog. Be back with a fresh new look, easy to navigate galleries and oh so much more. Watch this space. In the meantime, keep checking:
I am lucky enough to be performing in Fat Boy Dancing and we do not happen’s production of ‘The Light Box’ written by Natalia Savvides and directed by James Dalton. This is a brand spanking new Australian work which has previously shown at the Sydney Film Festival in the form of a mind blowing animation. The team as well as the script are untouchable. I am SO excited to be part of this production. There’s spoons and wee and beautiful moments and savage deaths. Quick read this:
The Light Box is a tale of the human need for love, the sacrifices made to achieve this and the often tragic price that must be paid long after such love is consummated.
When Ethel stabs talkative co-worker Annie with a spoon, she sets off a chain of events that will bring both women face to face with the past. Ethel’s mother Lesley left the family after a torrid affair with a toucan; her father never recovered. Now a grown woman.
Ethel’s violence lands her in an institution where she is watched over by The Man Made of Spoons, a genial if bumbling psychiatrist. While in confinement, Ethel receives regular visits from a cleaner, and as their tentative friendship blossoms to romance, she begins to understand why her mother may have sacrificed so much for love.
Meanwhile Annie tries to heal herself by rekindling an old relationship and forming a new one at the same time, but this risky endeavour will have fatal consequences for her. While Annie seems destined to repeat the mistakes of her past, will Ethel be able to escape the weight of her own history?
– From the Fat Boy Dancing Site
Incredible right? Well guess what. YOU CAN HELP US. The production has a Pozible campaign – we are $500 off our $2K goal. We have 16 days to go. Donate a little, donate a lot. Please donate. Your money will be going directly to the realisation of incredible costume and set designs and other important aesthetic necessities pertaining to this production. And we have prizes. Actual rewards – not just eternal thanks… although you get that too. Original art, serenading – you need to head to our page dig as deep as you can.
Our thanks really is eternal.
The details for the show as well as the beautiful trailer can be found below.
More soon.
Tom x
Fat Boy Dancing and we do not unhappen present The Light Box By Natalia Savvides
107 Projects, Redfern
10 – 28 July, 2013 www.fatboydancing.com/thelightbox
Photograph by Harvey House.
It’s been a while coming. To be honest with you I guess I’ve been waiting for the right moment to take me so I could do this post some sort of justice. It’s my day off. A rarity. I’m listening to old burnt mixed CD’s from Adelaide times with rough demos of Mariah Carey and Cypress Hill with vandalised ‘SMILE’ stickers and listening instructions. The time is now.
I shouldn’t have gone back to Adelaide. I sure as hell couldn’t afford it. A few weeks earlier I had spent a lot of weeks’ pay in order to stalk Sharon Needles around the country – we ended in Adelaide, at the Garden. I did so much screaming you’d think that I’d had my fill.
Wrong.
It was a good friend’s birthday party the weekend before FORMAT ALWAYS WINS. I was meant to go and surprise him as a dragged out, stubbly, chain-smoking ‘Ariel’ from ‘The Little Mermaid’. Life happened. The trip didn’t (see aforementioned financial issues). Halfway through the week I started noticing some pretty epic Facebook updates from old Adelaidians scattered across the country calling out to munt-bags to travel once more, back in time and space, to Peel Street – to wreck Format one more time. It was Kat Bot’s status about how if this event was in Melbourne, it would have sold out a bazillion times already, that acted as a hazy nucleus. Suddenly I was filled with South Australia pride. I needed to go leave my mark on Format. I needed to action dance and run around the West End because Format was leaving. I got me some tickets. My bank account choked and withered away like a Super Mario Brothers’ pipe-plant.
Now at this point, I’m gonna assume you know who Format are (you should, mate) and why the FORMAT ALWAYS WINS event happened. Essentially, they were kicked out of Peel Street. Having gone to events at the collective’s HQ since I was still at art school, and having exhibited within their walls during their last year with Alice Dolling, I felt like I had been a part of the story, albeit a small one. Which, was great because when I heard about why Format had been kicked out I was filled with A RAGE SO TERRIFYING AND BRUTAL THAT ONLY 8 – 12 HOURS OF POWER DANCING AND AWKWARD TOUCHING IN A SMALL DISCO CLOSET WAS GONNA MAKE IT RIGHT.
Cut to the Saturday night of FORMAT ALWAYS WINS. I had been a little too enthusiastic the night before (damn you QANTAS delays resulting in an open bar) and I wasn’t feeling so inspired. A big gang of gypsies started pre-drinking in Mile End. Alice donned Alaska Thunderfuck ‘Makeups in the dark’ paint and we all felt pretty ready actually. The party moved around the corner where we ate a big vegetarian dinner and made gin and tonics. When we arrived at Format, in the rain, I guess something clicked deep within us. We got angry-excited. Alice had already been booked to paint a UV mural covering the walls of the Format Toilets so we kinda felt like we owned the small space behind the bar (I should probably mention that Liz and Kaz Pratt, Zac Svendsen and myself also added some final flourishes to this masterpiece). In retrospect, something really special happens when you’re already feeling artistically righteous and then you see all your friends (ALL your friends, people who were in Year 2 with you. Year 2 – what EVEN WAS YEAR 2?!) and there’s cheap drinks and a bunch of great Adelaide bands.
Essentially our brains exploded.
Between live painting in the bathrooms (the mural, our faces, my pristine white jumper, other people, other people’s faces, other people’s clothes, the floor) and running into the small storage space under the stairs (where a strobe light, alfoil and VHS had been plastered to every surface) we initially didn’t do much live music listening. But holy hell we had a good time. I don’t need to go into specifics (you’d be disgusted) but it was like every montage from a John Hughes’ film and then that bit in Mermaids where Christina Ricci does little 60s singing with a healthy fistful of Natural Born Killers thrown in for good measure. Format had assembled an almighty team of artists, musicians, volunteers and special guests to see the collective out of Peel Street. There was so much Adelaide everywhere. It was great. I think I saw people playing handball at like 2.40am outside the front doors. That is the greatest thing ever. The collective atmosphere of the event was so perfect. It was sentimental and loose and hilarious.
And then this happened:
The night (the first one, anyway) ended how it should have. With us, ricocheting off the downstairs walls and dancing to the Spice Girls (real dirty like) til an absurd hour. If you missed out on FORMAT ALWAYS WIN you did actually miss out. The event (from what we recall, with help from iPhone photos and hearsay) was the perfect celebration of what Format had achieved, is achieving and will achieve. I mean, even VICE got interested. I woke up in a friend of a friend’s house, who was clearly an architecture student from the multitude of small model boxes fixed to the walls of his study. I missed seeing his parents, but I did walk for about 30 minutes down Magil Road in the opposite direction to town, attempting to get to town. Good times.
Format are now homeless BUT are still in operation. You should find out all about them and if you’re an artistic/musical/helping type by golly you should get alllll up in ’em. This is just my patchwork of 2 cents – I really just wanted to give Format some big ups and write a post that wasn’t strictly business. It’s not really a review, there was too much Gin for that. It’s just a little slice of what happened. Thank you Format. You win.
Just gonna be real quick – I’ve gotta let you know about two really amazing art projects I’m lucky enough to be a part of. ‘The Intimate Spaces‘ opens TONIGHT and ‘Coming Out’ opens next Wednesday. You can read about the Intimate Spaces project HERE. Check out our promo and stuff:
The ‘Coming Out’ exhibition will be really special. Over the past two weeks I have been working with GL@M – Gay and Lesbians of Manly, to create a body of photographic works which will go up next week at Hemmingway’s. These works are spectacular and you can only see them in public for 2 hours! Here’s the flyer:
Hope you can make it to one if not both of these projects – they are free, delicate and unique. Just like you, you little snowflake.
Here’s some Mardi Gras wrap up goodies you shouldn’t even miss. Check them out.
Tom x
Late Night Shopping is almost SOLD OUT @ Jurassic Lounge. So get on the link in the flyer to make sure you aren’t disappointed – the night is going to be SO MUCH FUN. We have live art, traditional art, video art. SO MUCH ART. Tuff ❤ details are below! Come support me, Soph and the Pete’s at our premier of this dance fight extravaganza. Check out the nifty promo Pete Mooney filmed for us too. It’s a cracker.
Tuff ❤ At The Dome, Mardigrasland From 12am – 2am (every half hour). Look for the pink bow ties.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 4,600 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 8 years to get that many views.
You’re my favourites. I’m going to do one final blog for 2012. It’s going to be like the bumper Xmas edition of Women’s Day. Except you won’t find any cross-stich patterns in there, friendship. Only questions, some doubt, $400 worth of watercolour pencils and a whole lot of amazing work with amazing people. I have lots of things to share.
Tom Christophersen 