blackmarket_news

London Dungeon

The Bratwurst of Times

For the last 5 weeks we’ve been ‘aving it large in the city of London. It was pretty much the most exciting and amazing time we’ve ever had. Whilst hanging out with the most incredible people, eating all the sausages, drinking all the ales, seeing all the bands and taking in all the exhibitions the city had to offer we also had the pleasure of showing a bunch of our posters in The Social.
BIIIIIIIIG thankyouse to the wonderful Danny, Carl and of course Robin for all their help. Basically we had so much fun I don’t even know how to explain it. But it was RAD. Massive thanks and love to everyone we got to spend time with especially Ads & Emma, Kaity & Nic, Nathan & Zara, Matt & Kellie, Darren & Softly… you all rule x 5000000000.

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Auction

Action

Get yr paddles out. Next Thursday (14th Ocober) we have a piece in the Project 5 Auction For Charity alongside Anthony Lister, Meggs and Ears. We’re all explained a bit better – here. Project 5 is curated by aMBUSH Gallery to support the arts through pop-up live art, music and auction events held each year.
Each Project 5 event commissions four (4) artists to paint large scale artworks in a pop-up live art and music event. The artworks are then auctioned in a high profile auction event to raise money for charity (the fifth member of Project 5).
100% of the proceeds are donated to charity to support creative programs for young people. It’s all for a very great cause – which you can read more about on the ICE site. There is also much more info here, and you can see a larger pic of the painting we made over three days at Cockle bay – here.
And if that’s not enough hammering for very good reasons we’ve also donated a piece to the FBI Still Life Auction at the NSW Art Gallery – more on that here – except we’ve got this one it (not the witchy shown).

blog_newWeb

Well Here's What We've Been Up To

... Lately

Its only taken 6 months but here we are – our new website!
There’s about 9 months worth of new work we’ve uploaded and JT (who built it good like – thanks JT) got all the info from our old site copied across – so there’s a fair bit to have a squizz at. You can even do a search if you like.

It seems there’s about 120 posters we’ve made – gah!
And we apparently quite like to make things in black and white – yup.

Some of the most recent work we’ve added is a new video for Daniel Lee Kendall , a poster for the GoFontUrself exhibition and the NoYears New Years Extravaganza in Brisbane.

We are going on a little break at the end of the month to catch our breath and stretch our legs.
We’ve got a few more things to finish before we go so look out for some more updates at the end of the month.

Drums etc

Blogging

A Dead Horse

Sooo….. continuing in the tradition of not actually updating our site with any new work we’ve done, yet rambling incoherently about exhibitions we’re taking part in…..

“I Used To Skate Once” – ! – annual Brisbanian exhibit of awesome extravaganza #6 – we are in this – opens at Nine Lives on June 24 and has a website here and is making us very happy to be involved again and stoked to be showing alongsides the HSITI team, BROE-SEPH, TC, MARX, and…. holy shit! Porous Walker (whom I love). (For things like this.)

Also we are very excited to be included in the new Go Font Urself show – details here – which starts in Brisbane July 22 and then moves on to Melbourne and Sydney.

Also the extremely excellent Graphic festival was announced today and amongst about a million crazy great things to see there – link link is us, having a chat, or “in conversation” as they say, with Rocco Fazzari, and our illustrious overlord / agent Jeremy Wortsman. We’re all getting “facilitated” by Dave Ladd (HSITI), and frankly I couldn’t think of a nicer person to be “facilitated” by. That’s on August 8, in the morning, and its free.

The image above is some new work we’ve done recently and will add here properly once we totally remake what “here” is. (ie “new site coming soon”.)

Show's Over

(at least for now)

Thanks to everyone who came along to China Heights last week. We were lucky enough to be in show with good friends and cohorts Dave Ladd & Stephanie Anderson, Joseph Allen Shea and Mark Drew, who all made beautiful / creepy / funny / stunning work. Which is just another reason all those people are so great. And big thanks to Ed Woodley and China heights for arranging / curating / facilitating / installing / selling our work / getting us drunk.

The exhibition came down yesterday but here’s some pics from the opening. We made the painted pink rogues gallery portraits (Dr. Molar and friends) and the Inspector Truncheon xeroxed maxi-mini-comic.

(We were lucky enough to see a great talk between Toby Martin and Robert Forster whilst finishing that one up so the Go-Betweens became the soundtrack.) In fact this whole comic strip sounds exactly like this (and yes we realise its a Grant song)

We managed to walk away from the week with a beautiful DL “Shit for Brains” felt pennant, which made us very happy indeed.

And then one last link back to our Mart show in March – Garry just blogged about it – and has some great pics plus some pics of our work that was at Ambush on the same night too!

And another last time to last back to that Fucked Up Screen Test Print show in Nebraska we were in – amazed we got to be in this – Young Monster were in it too. Truly. Thanks Michael for getting us in. Here’s some pics.

Old China

Mates at the Heights

Above left : Garry Trinh, invite image – China Heghts – NOW – Go look at this – its my favourite exhibition Ive seen in aaaaaaages. Its like the super villain version of the wonders you find on Garry’s blog See it! Believe it!

Just Heaps Surprised to be Alive – Garry Trinh / From Fri May 14 6-9pm / China HeightsGallery, Foster Street Surry Hills.

Above right: Group exhibition we’re in with good pals and super-talents: Dave Ladd, Stephanie Anderson, Joe Allen-Shea and live-via-sattelite-linkup – Mark Drew! What Dave said – here.

There’s Always A Last Time For Everything / Opens Fri May 21 6-9pm / China Heights Gallery, Foster Street Surry Hills.

And finally, going back in time at the Heights – we were in the last exhibition there – FAXHIBITION was a large group show where we all had to submit our work via fax. Got to show alongside some more friends who make work we drool over – Hens, James Jirat. The fact of life we decided to illustrate was “Wu Tang Clan Aint Nothin' To Fuck With”. This opened while we were in Melbourne so sadly we missed it but I’m sure there will be internet photos soon, and apparently there is a zine that can be purchased from Published Art.

Whooaaa

Website Update Fail

Have pretty much given up on updating our website till we build a new one – but wanted to add a quick MASSIVE THANKYOU to everyone and all at Agideas this year. We had an amazing time and it was pretty much my favourite week ever. Somehow we managed to speak infront of 2500 people sans spewing and fainting, and caught a bunch of amazing presentations across the 3 days. Eleni and Ken and Kristin – you rule! It was so good to hang out with Eamo and Monique all week too! And Pete and Murray and all the Committee Members who treated us so so well – we love you! (thats also Pete, Tim, Fiona, Nick, Nick, Vanessa…. everyone was so great) So that is my big fat outpouring of thanks – can’t thank everyone enough. And Cameron for holding down the WBYK fort and doing all our work while we luxuriated in Melbourne – thanks Cam!

LOOK HEAR! F*UP! BLACKMAIL!

The week just been

Last week we trained it up to Newcastle and spoke at Look Hear. Big thanks to Carl and all for inviting us and putting on such a stellar show. We were pretty nervous and a bit intimidated to speak in front of some designers we think are pretty ace so thanks to all for being so kind to us. We also had some work in the offshoot exhibition “Look See”. We liked the poster art for both these events very much – all done by Zookraft. Sonny dun a wallpainting for the show – here’s a crappy phone photo of it.

Image Alt Text

And another show we were stoked to be in last week was the F*up Screenprinting show in Nebraska. (We did not train it to Nebraska) More info here as well – and so we pretty much nearly fainted when we saw who else was in this – hold onto your hats ladies!!.

And finally we returned to Sydney to find our lovely friends Dave and Steph of HeSheItTheyI had their article on us published in The Blackmail. This is it!. We are so very flattered and honored they wrote such nice stuff about us – D & S are ridiculously talented and lovely to boot. Here’s an interview Tristan did with them on The Blackmail a wee while ago. And be on the look out for some exciting new projects from HeSheItTheyIThem to surface veeeery soooon.

BOOT

Bush

Thanks a big million to our friends who came out for our show “BOOTLEG” at Mart!! – we had a most enjoyable evening. And thanks to Nelson for supplying the beer! We enjoyed alot of it, responsibly. And thanks to Mel for having us. And Dave and Joe for collaborating with us on drawings on paper and/or walls. The exhibition is up until the 10th April, so if you find yourself wandering the Hills of Surry, pop in. ‘ave a sticky, if you like. More info here and also here on the Mart site, which also features a panoramic photo of the space. We’ll get some more images up here….. (we will). And on the very same night BOOTLEGS opened we also were in the Mixed Business exhibition, which was part of Semi-Permanent at Ambush Gallery – some pics on the Opening Hours site here. i wish I had got in there and got myself a Jumbo work or a Zap work… or a Mark Drew one… or a Mark Alsweiler one…. or a…. some really nice stuff was on those walls!

Dead Galaxy

at Mart Gallery

We are having a show at Mart Gallery soon (actually increeeeedibly soon) but right now the work hanging in there is by the very amazing Dead Galaxy. If you’re in Sydney and reading this on or before March 13 2010 – RUN. NOW. Go. Catch it. Its awesome. I made the stupid mistake of not buying the one i loved the most at the opening and now someone else has nabbed it. Have a look at Presser’s work here, but if you can possibly get to see these hand-cut collages in real life – you really, really should. Here's a bit of interview too.