this bold critter was rescued from his first attempt at a trans-Tasman crossing!

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Straight from the pages of the Whole Earth Catalogue, this fragile remnant of Roy Grounds’ South Coast hideaway at Penders has National Heritage listing. It’s a sacred site for students of 1960s architecture. Situated alongside his sod-roof “The Barn” (built in 1962), the geodesic dome was initially constructed in the late 60s/early 70s to provide a tropical garden environment, complete with drip irrigation. Marr Grounds is not certain that the project was ever completely finished. It is now very fragile, but then again how many geodesic domes from this era are still in existence anywhere?

It is constructed out of treated eucalyptus saplings which was an outcome of Grounds’ extensive experimental plantings on the property and the establishment of a treatment plan in an attempt to find a sustainable forest-based enterprise for the district. The hubs of the structure are the classic galvanised iron garbage tin lids (as recommended by the WEC).

The property, to the south of Bithry Inlet (Lake Wapengo) was owned jointly by the Grounds and Myer families, and will be gifted to the National Parks in 2011.

Grounds designed and built both The Barn and the Myer house from this round-wood log material. The sod-roof element of the Barn proved to be an ideal environment for all manner of native rats, possums, lizards and other furry and slippery creatures, and so it was soon replaced with a tin roof. The whole structure was saved several years ago and the nine 45 degree beams scarfed and replaced at the same time as the heritage listing process in 2001.

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Here’s a show for the summer! We want to see Bondi Jitterbug: George Caddy and his camera at the State Library of NSW until 22 February. Be sure to click the slideshow – and go to the Library Shop to see them all. This fabulously transgressive “beachobat”, (Roya Geale, Bondi Beach 1941) caught our eye in the press advertisements. If the date of this photograph really is 1941, it pushes back the history of the (illegal) two-piece a few more years… And, boy, this vernacular modernist makes Max Dupain look a bit sober…

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Here’s Rolf Harris (or is it Sir Rolf?) doing his thing for the National Portrait Gallery Festival of the Face which is drawing the crowds for the NPG’s first weekend, which follows the series of previews and openings which have been happening all this week.

At such events the National Portrait Gallery (designed by Richard Johnson of Johnson Pilton Walker) has been seen for the first time by the many enthusiastic visitors and the Canberrans who’ve been watching its progress over the past year or so. On Wednesday night the official opening by the Prime Minister was eloquently bracketed by Director Andrew Sayers and outgoing Chair Marilyn Darling. It was a symbolic changing of the guard. The new Patron is Ms Therese Rein. The previous Patron was Mrs Janette Howard. She and her husband Mr John mingled in the crowd of luminaries, artists and their subjects. It’s a tale of the two plaques: the foundation plaque outside with John Howard’s name, the opening plaque on the inside with Kevin Rudd engraved for posterity.

The building is a pleasure to experience. It has great proportions, beautiful use of materials, elegant spaces and vistas, and a modest lack of egotistical interference with the art. Its theme is vernacular modern, in that its wooden roof trusses are exposed in the foyer ceiling, and their forms are reflected in the plywood cladding of their exterior surfaces.

The shed metaphor is referenced by the giant “corrugated iron” roofing, which projects horizontally for some distance beyond the roof structure, and is the most assertive motif as you walk up the slope to the entrance. It’s cheeky, but engaging, and draws attention to the beautiful use of materials and building finishes throughout. Notice how the use of wood is assuming new symbolic significance and a contemporary value? These days, we see wood as a rare resource. In this context gives references both to the past (the vernacular, hand skills) and the future – natural resources, even carbon capture. It’s also warm, tactile, and engaging.

Like Johnson’s pavilion of Asian Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the forms, spaces, and materials of the building sit modestly in relation to the art on the walls, a perfect frame for its contemplation. It does what Gallery architecture should do – it creates the spaces for the kinds of aesthetic experiences that are its raison d’etre – but it also asserts itself as a sensuous bodily experience. It rivals the Lawrence Wilson Gallery at the University of WA as the best medium-sized gallery space in the country.

And Jaynie Anderson contributes the “portrait” of the day – celebs and luminaries don’t distract Daniel Thomas from a good book!  (And thanks to Jaynie for the shot of the new guard up on stage). We can report the coffee is good, but we declined the sausage rolls. Nevertheless, it’s a must-see. We’ll review the contents next week.

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Seems like art and architecture can complement each other! Thanks to Max for the following coverage: see this and other images at Nicolai Ouroussoff in the NYT; The Globe and Mail; Robert Fulford in the National Post; The NP blog; Torontoist; the WSJ, and a 360 degree spinaround…

And if you want more, enter Gehry in the search bar to the right, and see our earlier work in progress images and commentary.

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Go to ArtDaily to read the full story. Seems we might need a new category: “ArtWranglers wishes” or “ArtWranglers misses” (that is, public art like this). And boy, what a photograph (EFE / Hans Klaus Techt).

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EUPHEMISMS FOR THE INTIMATE ENEMY

Ruark Lewis and Rainer Linz

NUIT BLANCHE            7pm – 7am October 4-5

corner of Mowat Avenue & Liberty Street, Toronto

Euphemisms for The Intimate Enemy is a poetic intervention within a rapidly changing post-industrial environment: a wall of 550 brightly coloured oil drums. The prophetic inscription is a people’s poem that addresses our future on the planet. The poem cycle and the antiphonal sound work performs a kind of night airs in this concrete urban space – a soft rising falling pitch and gliding sound that cradles the spoken word, the intoned phrasing that dramatically reflects – a pathology of our times. This integrated sound work and concrete poem has been designed to slowly evolve during the 12 hour dusk-dawn cycle of the night.

Euphemisms for the Intimate Enemy is a collaborative work with sound composer Rainer Linz and language artist Ruark Lewis. The Intimate Enemy is inspired by the writings of the Indian post-colonial writer Ashis Nandy. We attempt to form a relationship of the ideas and thought in the form of a poem cycle in a sound environment that will play for the entire duration of the Nuit Blanche Festival. Curated by Haema Sivanesan

Ruark Lewis is a Sydney language artist and writer.

Rainer Linz is a Melbourne composer sound artist and publisher.

http://www.rainerlinz.net/

http://www.ruarklewis.com

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A readymade building with an Australian origin is first off the block at the MoMA’s Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling in New York, by Jeremy Edmiston and Douglas Gauthier: Burst*008 in New York is designed to be assembled on site from laser-cut pieces. The Burst house is a computer-designed remake of the typical prefabricated box. Working from a formula that automates on the computer the specific pieces needed to create the house desired, the project is based on a system that can be adapted to a changing set of criteria. The 2003 prototype of the Burst*003 project, built on Australia’s northeast coast, won the Royal Australian Institute of Architects 2006 Wilkinson award; Burst*008 is a prototype developed for MoMA. From ArtDaily.org

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Ruark Lewis is showing his latest installation at Chalk Horse: you’ve got until 2nd August to catch it.

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Most of the sculptures in the Jardin des Tuileries are what my colleagues used to call “plonk art” – sculptures located in formal garden-like settings as if they had dropped from the sky – and the Tuileries is the mother lode of this kind of public art. However in one corner there is a jungle which surrounds this most intriguing example of art which takes its inspiration from the environment, and which re-creates a wild park-like environment of an absolutely distinctive kind. This work, Arbre des voyelles by Giuseppe Pennone, (1999) takes its origin from the wind storm that swept this part of the world in the 90s which overturned thousands of ancient trees and forests across Europe. Thus the fallen tree in this part of the Tuileries is a bronze cast of an oak tree – one of the casualties of the storm – and at each extremity of its branches is planted a new tree, now all healthily reaching skywards. Magical. Click the thumnails below to see more. Or see how it looks in winter here…

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