Lifestyle "1983 Redux Zeitgeist Surf School"

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Rather partial to Alt Country. It's a creeping condition with maturity.
That song reminded me of this one. One for your chickens moginie
Loving This Town btw.


It's good isn't it?!

Let the chooks out into the yard for a run and a play yesterday afternoon and the two new girls went discovering and found themselves in our veggie patch on the northern side of the house. They had a lovely time and they were so pleased to see me when it was dinner time. They're so funny and very sweet.
 
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Teachers Strike Castlemaine Tech 1978
Influential and formative teachers.
I had to go along way back in the thread to find this photo to attach my post today.
My older Sister rang me yesterday with the news of Singo's demise.
Barry Singleton (Singo) with arms crossed and his back to us on the right, in the foreground.
He still has his arms crossed in the photo below which I have taken with the announcement from the Castlemaine Arts History group. A typical pose of Singo's.
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"Vale Barry Singleton (1938-7/6/24) ceramicist and teacher. Born in Ballarat, Barry trained in sculpture and painting at RMIT. He taught art, including ceramics, at Warrnambool and Castlemaine Technical Colleges. In 1967, Barry and his wife Bev (1938-2023) came to live in Castlemaine where Barry was head of the Art Department. He retired in 1993. In 1970, he established a studio (Kaweka Gallery) and held his first exhibition at the Castlemaine Art Gallery. Barry taught pottery night classes from 1971.
In 1976, Barry worked, studied and lived in Japan with master potter Katsu Yasu Ogawara. He made numerous trips to China and Japan where he also lectured, developing a Japanese aesthetic in porcelain and stoneware.
Barry’s work has been at the forefront of ceramics with numerous exhibitions in Melbourne, Adelaide and regional Victoria, with work represented in Bendigo, Castlemaine, Shepparton and Sale Art Galleries, the Victorian Ceramics Group Collection, the Myer Bicentennial Collection, and private collections in Australia and overseas." Ref. History of Castlemaine Arts.

Singo was head of the Art Dept at Castlemaine Tech and was instrumental in establishing both the Art Department and the TOP year which was one of the few regional ones at the time.
As you can see by the above he maintained a strong professsional career outside of teaching, aided by his wife Bev (deceased 10months ago) who was an Arts Administrator.
Both were very active in the community and were family friends.

Singo was pretty gruff in day to day dealings at school, he didn't suffer fools and there were a lot of those in classes, with many considering Art a jolly jape subject where they could bunk off.
He was in fact very kind and always interested in his students who were serious and very generous with professional knowlege as well as being an excellent educator of practical skills.
He was a fine leader in establishing and maintaining a well run Art Dept and staff at a point in historical change of the education system under the Whitlam Govt, which emphasised regional educational funding as well the value of the educational capital to our country.
During his time as my teacher a generational change was occurring, educational standards were being driven and directed by teachers with regard to policies and conditions as Singo's generation were highly politically activated and strong in numbers.
Recognition of maintaining autonomy in the classroom, professional recompense and work conditions were being fought for, with budget cuts and a whitling away of standards by beurocrats and State politicians at the time.
It was also an era when many teachers still had the space to develop professional lives outside of employment unencumbered by the onerous performance measuring that exists currently in the system.
I remember Singo being totally fired up when he came back from Japan, full of tales of lore and traditions of Japanese Art practises as well as stories of life there. He was the first person I ever knew that had been to Japan outside of WWII, his experience was inspirational and aspirational.
When the opportunity to exhibit in Japan came my way via an off the cuff conversation in Paris in 1996 I took it with both hands and made it happen. The seed having been planted by this fine teacher back in 1976 bore it's fruit 2 decades later.
Vale Sensei Singo.
 

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Starting the day with an upbeat groove.

The Cure’s Mr. Pink Eyes was on the b-side of the The Love Cats and it used to always find its way onto my mix tapes from ‘83 and ‘84. Still stands up.



If you are in Melbourne, stay dry.
 
Starting the day with an upbeat groove.

The Cure’s Mr. Pink Eyes was on the b-side of the The Love Cats and it used to always find its way onto my mix tapes from ‘83 and ‘84. Still stands up.



If you are in Melbourne, stay dry.

They've got some great B sides.
 
I’m into this news…but I won’t be in the country to see it.

Having known Chris quite well and known more about the background to where it all went wrong and the bitter fallout that often happens in bands, I will hold my tongue here.
The dead tell no tales and the past is dust.




 

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The Weathermen
marxist activist group.
'You don't need to be a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows' Bob Dylan Subterranean Homesick Blues.
The extreme faction of Students for a Democratic Society.
The SDS existed concurrently in Australia however the Weathermen were specifically in the USA.
SDS active in Australia in the mid 70's amongst university students on the eastern seaboard in particular.
I knew some of the players in the Victorian arm in the 1970's to early 80's.

Theweatherunderground.jpg





Medicine sans frontiers 1997.jpg
Medicine sans frontiers 1997 Charcoal & Pastel Drawing
Marx Series. Copyright of the Artist.
 
Morning all. Love the artwork Pamcake1. Full Marx.

I just put the finishing touches on a Psychedelic 80’s playlist. This features.



Great visual name check in the clip for another great Dunedin group and Flying Nun label mates, The Clean.
 
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Morning all. Love the artwork Pamcake1. Full Marx.

I just put the finishing touches on a Psychedelic 80’s playlist. This features.



Great visual name check in the clip for another great Dunedin group and Flying Nun label mates, The Clean.

I actually have this doll, I was given it by a friend, it is about 1/3 human size.
He came dressed in a dress and someone had put a Lenin badge as his belly button.
The friend who gave him to me had bought him on a whim at Camberwell market, he is an odd artifact.
For a while he was strapped into the backseat of the car and driven around town.

This series of drawings put Marx in feminine scenarios, dressed according to role and straight 'look and put' drawing of the 'mis en scene' created.
Marx had five daughters and no sons.
His theories were cast just prior to the epoch of the dawning of the suffragette movement.
His theories of capitalism, means of production and class warfare make no mention of women as a class.
Women's labour in the European patriarchial society that he was born into was not see by him or in the received opinions at the time as labour only as lot.
These works made up half of my exhibition in Bordeaux in 1999.
They were contrasted with the first assemblages as these were signifiers of capitalist consumerism, that set both in physicality but also in subject matter in conversation and paradox.
That particular drawing lives in Sth West France.
 
Also happening in France currently.
The NY Times is covering a lot of it.

 
I love that the ‘left’ have formed a Popular Front against the rising threat of the extreme right.
I'm relieved that they have.

Unity is strength. And that strength is required to defeat the threat of right wing popularism.
 
I'm relieved that they have.

Unity is strength. And that strength is required to defeat the threat of right wing popularism.
Lessons for the U.S. and even here.
 
I find this stuff facinating. The 're-discovery' of human capacity by science, I would call it. The quantitive validation that is the paradigm that the 'modern' world has been and still is. The one through road rather than looking at the landscape and seeing many paths. It annoys me a little that the writer of the article also continues the 'disbelief' in the way the piece is framed and the choice of words/phrases used. I do understand that this is done for the appeasement of perceived reading public's scepticism.


"Most diseases can be identified by methods more precise and ostensibly scientific than aroma, however, and we tend to treat odor in general as a sort of taboo. “A venerable intellectual tradition has associated olfaction with the primitive and the childish,” writes Mark Jenner, a professor of history at the University of York. Modern doctors are trained to diagnose by inspection, palpation, percussion and auscultation; “inhalation” is not on the list, and social norms would discourage it if it were."

 

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