Bondi QA

This photo has a soundtrack - girls from southern UK

 blagging about the night before and the temporary week to come.

 I was mesmerised.

sometimes the camera

sometimes the camera is just too slow

but that's ok

Dear heads of medocrity...

Dear heads of mediocrity,

Thank you for following begborosteel.  

You are our first stranger. 

I am so excited that such an urbane, highres blog

 could be a little interested in hillbillies like us.  

I love your experiments in people, place and form. 

Back when I was your age (which I am guessing at) the only experiments I managed where based on body chemistry, boites des nuites and highways. 

The documentation is long lost.

Here's something for you, from the archive.  

500km northeast of Alice Springs, not so very long ago.

xx Charlotte

Mojo Neckpiece

I've been attempting to incorporate this little wonder into the clothing I've been working on, but it completely upstages everything I set it against. 

I found it on an otherwise disastrous trip to the Op Shop at the end of Clarendon Street in South Melbourne, just after being forced to relinquish my bundle of treasures to tend to a three year old who was determined to become, screaming, one with the pavement. For some reason I went back inside and saw this wooden poppet under the glass counter.  Scraped back sides, red soled feet, no arms.  What stories it could tell.  

Somebody said "hot chocolate" at Zappa, next to The Butterfly Club, and the three year old turned back into a perfectly sensible little man.

When I got back to the studio I tried pushing in the wooden dowel, thought it looked wrong, and then found that it refused to be drawn out. So I  felt compelled to continue forcing it through with hits from a meat tenderiser (hammer gone awol again), praying with every hit that the doll wouldn't split in two in the process.  

I wonder what our futures hold?

Auntie Sha Sha's Domestic Wish Box/Mother Creation

Auntie Sha Sha made big money back at the turn of the century, and she threw it around Surrey Hills and Glebe and the City.  She could be often be found window licking at Dimitri's Pizzeria, frittering afternoons away at The Cricketers Arms, diving off patent platforms, slapping her leather skirt around the NSW Rail Infrastructure Corporation, dragging hard garbage through Bondi, and performing for the 6am cleaners at The Pink Pussy Cat.  She made her first forays into mojo manipulative sculpture in the Matron's Flat behind Glebe Library. Now she's back.

From this Friday at 6.00pm, Auntie Sha's Sha's Domestic Wish Box may be visited at The Creator's Gallery, on  The  Lincoln Causeway in beautiful regional borderline Wodonga. Inspired by european and japanese house-hold shrines and god shelves, The Wish Box is a home for the ancestors, a place to stand and call for help, a meditation point, and somewhere to put the physical, spiritual, and mental clutter that all houses attract. Visiting domestic gods and goddesses are invited to record their wishes, hopes and secrets on the tags that surround the box.

The Wish Box is installed as part of the group show Mother Creation, an annual event that is much anticipated by mothers, artists and friends in The Border Region.  Last year's opening   night  attracted 120 folk to the tiny Creator's Gallery. This year, doors will be opened between the gallery and La Maison cafe and the opening event will merge with a contributing artist's birthday party.  Artists will be wearing an apron collection that spans 40 years, crafted over a lifetime by "Nan" Turner and kindly loaned by Ms Hillside.  And did I forget to mention the play corner and the legendary Champagne Sorbet cocktails?....all very over-exciting.

How the Hills

How the hills have been

lifting their skirts

to this gauzy can can

and sunlight blazes

streaks and streams

down through the clouds.

All is blue and gold and rimmed with silver.

Just one pink violent slash

and I go twisting

through the break neck moss

to the place that is

wet sister to our valley.

Fires burn by the side of the road,

creeping like feuds.

Dead gums gather and reach.

A round moon chases me in

up river.

A cattle dog runs me out.