Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Australia Part 1

I was asked by Semi-Permanent to come out and give a talk in Melbourne. I'd never been to Australia before, and was super excited. The flight over the Pacific was long, but I read a book (Sidhartha), read a couple magazines, slept, listened to some podcasts, wrote a little and before I knew it I was in OZ. My pal Martin McIntosh picked me up from the airport- very much appreciated after such a long flight!By the way, that Hulk Hogan poster was in an alley, apparently those guys are coming to Oz too!

My room was nice. They put up the speakers at the Urban Hotel in St. Kilda. Good lighting, which I put to good use later when I had some painting to do. The staff was cool. Do you know that people don't tip very often in Australia? When I got room service they would never accept my tips.

This was my view out the window. It was raining when I got there. After that initial rain it was clear until the last day.

The day cleared up, so I went for an afternoon walk after I took a nap. My hotel was right near the beach, but it was cold, very cold! Got some good and warm soup at the end of the St. Kilda pier.

Martin knew of my candy obsession so he got me a gift bag of sweets. Mmmm Pollywaffle's are nice. Looked like a huge turd at first, I hesitantly bit into it and was rewarded with sweet wafflecone and marshmallow heaven.

Australian money is cool too. I commented to someone that it's interesting that all the bills are different sizes, and they asked how blind people in the US can tell if they're getting ripped off. Hmmm, I don't know.

Gemma at Outre Gallery. Martin in the back. I met a lot of nice people in Australia.

Martin took me to a place called Cookie for lunch. Good and spicy! Martin hooked it up!


There is a graffiti alley out there called Hosier Lane. I was supposed to paint something in there but never found the time.

The organizer of Hosier Lane, Andy Mac, has a gallery called Until Never. They had a really cool show of James Callahan's screen prints. I think this was a collab with several artists, one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. Really made me wnt to do some prints and explore screenprinting..

This is the hub of Melbourne, Flinders Station. Kinda looks like Lego blocks to me.

Tara McPherson was also there to talk, throwing some gangsta signs with fans.

This was damn good. Chicken wrapped in bacon with a rice globe. Mmmm.


Stay tuned for part two...
Jeff

7 comments:

Aerial said...

Thats monster looks like Meggs. So cool.

Be safe.

JP said...

great trip report- that fish looks like he's fixing to get out of that bowl of soup though...

trista said...

Lovely travels Mr. Soto!

I also read Siddhartha on a plane once apon a time...

luvyatoo said...

There was a proposal made some years ago to redesign the US currency to include a braille strip & different sizes to be more accessible to blind people.

The precedent was that by not having these features, the US Treasury department was violating the Rehabilitation Act, a law that prohibits discrimination in government programs on the basis of disability.

But, people thought it'd cost too much dough to redesign the cheese.

Anway, rad bloggy!

Pj said...

Thanks for the mention on on our ACCLAIM Magazine X Obey X James Callahan Exhibition. We recently just dropped our most recent issue which features James work on the cover along with a 4 page feature plus other dope ish. You can check it out at www.acclaimmag.com

njmartella said...

I hate to say it, but apparently the Polly Waffles are no longer in production.

What I heard was the old machine that makes them broke down and it was too complicated/expensive to fix, so they just killed the Polly Waffle...

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/polly-waffle-choc-bar-being-axed-after-62-years/story-e6frf7l6-1225803116539

xenos said...

okay art is amazing, goes without saying, but hot damn-now i want to go to australia! thanks for that...