Art, Art, Fires, Cats

I'll work backwards over the last two weeks. I normally have preference to just give you pictures and you can make up the why's how's and where's but just for something completely out there, I'm going to fill in the blanks.


Ad and I went to the new Gallery of Modern Art today and met this joker along the way. He promised us dinner. I've now put that promise in a public forum so he cannot reneg. GOMA was pretty sweet - it launched with the Asia Pacific Triennial, which is always incredible. We walked for hours, my legs hurt so much, and we still only saw a fraction of the art. I watched a lot of Jackie Chan there though. Then we walked to the city to see Kate and get my Lawrence Arms tickets but they'd sold out. So I've missed them twice now. Not happy. Brisbane NEVER sells out shows. I can only guess that its payback for a flawless day - every light was green for us, the train went past (and traffic stopped) so we had a clear run across the road, we turned up at the train station and the train was there, the violent guy on the train punched someone else in the face and not us. Perfect day.

Sunday night. Illi cat jumps onto the bed all freaked out. Someone up the road is yelling out and knocking on people's door. Fire engines and cops turn up and park all over our lawn. I look out the window to this:

Then I look out the back window and see this.

Neighbour's back shed completely engulfed. Aparently someone heard a loud pop at 10pm but it didn't get out of control until 2am (when the firey's arrived). Needless to say Ches cat freaked out and ran away. He missed breakfast and dinner and we spent hours roaming the streets calling for him. I met some freaky people in my street. The girl who tried to console me by telling me that her cat went missing too - but then they found him dead on the side of the road so he wasn't missing all that long really. The lady who proudly told me about her pride and joy devonshire rex but that she'd never actually patted her in the twelve years she'd had her because she was totally allergic. I bought the girl who's cat died a box of chocolates with a note saying I was sorry her cat died and I was sorry that my cat beat up her cat so much. The next day she knocked on my door to sell me raffle tickets but I couldn't get out of her what they were for. I think I got played.

Okay, kinda out of order. That was Sunday/Monday and on Monday I had to hang my exhibition but the cat was missing and I didn't want to leave the house. But heartlessly I did and got the exhibition hung and went back home to see Ches cat slaunter up like nothing had happened. So then on Wednesday night we had our exhibition opening. It was great - all these people from my work turned up and I felt all loved for a bit. We had a group photo of the "artists". Adam (eyes closed), Aaron (being a bear), Alex (giving finger), me (always up for giving the finger in photographs) and Eilleen (also eyes closed). Front artists look sleepy, back artists all aggressive. I think the head in the foreground is Canadian Dave but I thought his hair was darker than that. So, no ideas really.

Last blog I had a photo of Chris bearing some skin. He was having a "before" moment. Here is the "after". He has one on each side.

Speaking on ink, this is Mit - who has created the majority of my tattoos - appreciating his fine work on Ad. I cannot believe how gnarly and angry Ad's leg looked. It was red raw. It must be such a weird job spending all day inflicting pain who are paying you to do it. Mit seems to like it fine enough.

Susie. About five shots in (I was pretending to be all incognito) getting over my photo taking. This is from the exhibition the previous week. Canadian Dave (amongst other fine people such as Susie and Carmela) were showing their painted postboxes. Art was great, company was great. My night was punctuated by spilling beer and completely putting my foot in my mouth (a great story, will respect my peers and not tell though).

Canadian Dave. The elusive artist.


And again. He's featuring quite highly on my blog this week.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the exhibition and everyone who put up with my telling and retelling the story of my cat going missing for less than 24hours.