Some pictures from my month. There are always a lot of things going on in January here – mostly a part of the Sydney Festival, but also plenty of other food, music, art and design events all around the city. I only wish we had more beach weather! The last image is my submission to the ACP gallery, it’s hanging up as part of the Term 4 Student Show until the 5th of Feb!

At first glance these intricate oil paintings of rock and mineral specimens by Canadian artist Carly Waito might be mistaken for photos, but they are painstakingly detailed renditions of these natural elements that have been photographed in macro. So beautiful!

Images via here.

These photographs from the series Aqueous Floureau by Australian photographer Mark Mawson are so mesmerizing! I am going to hazard a guess that they are coloured ink or pigment in oil or water; looking at them I can almost see the colours spreading slowly.. if you like these, have a look at his previous Aqueous and Aqueous II series – they are equally fascinating!

In my last ‘art’ post someone mentioned that some of the artwork would make great textile prints. When I saw these they actually reminded me of another Australian, Josh Goot’s AW09 collection – what do you think? ;)

Images via here.

Brooklyn artist Shane McAdams made these incredible abstract paintings out of pens – those bog standard ballpoint ones you can buy pretty much anywhere! The process is rather fascinating – he takes apart the pens, blows the ink through the tube cartridges onto these panels and if you’ve ever messed around with this as a kid (I did!) you’ll know that ballpoint pen ink is thick, viscous and sticky and blows out in these spider web-like strings which are highly pigmented and also quite hard to wash off your hands.. he then takes it to a tanning salon and exposes it to UV rays to fade the ink and these are a result of many hours of experimentation with different inks and techniques. Amazing!

Images via here.

Here are some pictures I took at The Outpost Project on Cockatoo Island. It’s one of the biggest urban art exhibitions I’ve been to and the abandoned warehouses and factory spaces on Cockatoo Island is the perfect place for it! The most exciting (for me) was an exhibition of a private collection called Oi You!, featuring 23 pieces by Banksy along with a few other street artists such as Swoon, Faile, David Choe and it’s the first time this collection is shown outside of New Zealand. I also enjoyed watching the live graffiti and the evolving art projects that included public contributions of chalk art on the concrete pavements, a recycling art project and Paste Modernism which is the largest collection of paste ups I’ve ever seen in one place!

The first Valentine Day’s card I got W was Banksy’s Kids on Guns and the first art piece he got me was Girl with Balloon which also by the same artist.. so it was really nice to be able to see a roomful of his artwork!

The Outpost Project Cockatoo Island, via ferry from Circular Quay.
4 November – 11 December, 2011 + Free entry!