Yuri Wiedenhofer, the inspired/inspiring ceramic artist who lives on a mountain behind Tanja, the man who milks death adders for a living, ran into some more mundane challenges when he tried to build his fire sculpture on the beach at Bermagui. This was to be the culmination of Sculpture on the Edge, but the censorious local intelligentsia got in the way. It was planned to be a much more ambitious affair, with bottles, sea grass, and offal, but the locals had apparently had enough of high culture for one week, and so his materials were edited during the night. Even so, the show went on, and thanks to Chris Polglase for the pics…

This is how it’s done in Canada. Details to come…

… but more scary? Here are the clues: it’s in hundred dollar bills, two pallets high, and the blurry dot on the left is a man…

Rose Montebello’s exhibition is open for this weekend only at ArtWranglers, 18 Morphett St, Dickson: 11.00 to 5.00, Saturday and Sunday.

…who made this painting on bark currently on display. So it’s on exhibition without a label! The National Museum of Australia has a long history of exhibiting copies and facsmilies without attribution, so this example is but a continuation of their curatorial standards (sic). Several experts agree that this representation of a Macassan Prau is most likely a copy produced and sold in the 60s or 70s in one of the Brisbane missionary societies, either the Central Methodist Mission, in Albert St, or the Anglican Church Mission, in Ann Street. A history yet to be told… These pictures were painted by Aboriginal people (probably), and there are many examples of this kind of “Brisbane bark paintings” floating around the secondary market. But what a pity that the NMA didn’t draw on its extensive holdings of authentic bark paintings from NE Arnhem Land to make their point? Here’s another example: signed “Tracey”, “Tracey Bull”, and “Kellie Bull” on verso.

See Maryam Rashidi’s post on TransitLane in response to an earlier post on ArtWranglers.

The view from the front windows at Marr Grounds’ house Narra Bukulla at Tanja is a carefully crafted landscape. The foreground is functional, the middle distance is a sculpted lake, and the distant hillside looks like a Fred Williams. If we have been acculturated to see the world in front of us as a series of “landscapes”, it means we see them like a picture waiting to be framed. And similarly, the “landscape” Marr sees every day, into which he places other people’s sculptures, is never complete. Now at last (and echoing an earlier work from 1981) vertical panes of glass march into the scene, and imaginatively draw us into the picture. It works. Beautifully.

P.S. type “Marr” into the search bar and you’ll be taken to earlier posts of the same site.

keep an eye on Charlie’s blog for the occasional surprise

Yes, ArtWranglers reviews the best gelati in the world!

You’ll forget your gold stocks, sell your metal detector, and cash in your Telstra chips to buy an Old Master when you read what’s happening at the Maastrict Art Fair (from Souren Melikan in the IHT, thanks to Breakfastpolitics for the lead). Or come to ArtWranglers this weekend and buy a New Mistress…