SALMAGUNDI 2ND ANNIVERSARY :: Saturday 18 June, 6pm

AWARENESS OF OUR CRITICAL MUSCLE

We don't often post things about other exhibitions and events here (although we should, but we are time poor and lazy too). But one show that has caught our eye here is AWARENESS MUSCLE at the vanishing point in Newtown. A bunch of artists asked to keep a journal over a short period of time to respond to the mainstream or otherwise media. It's an enaging but simple format. And then of course there's the ladies who put it together Saha Jones and Nicole Dennis

Bring back the typewritter

We have a penchant for slow things here. Machines that interrupt the speed freak dial of twitterdeck and face book status updates; electronic mail and texting that frequently betrays HOW WE  REALLY FEEL Snail mail has a precious authentic aura that is so hard to salvage these days (these daze). Our librarium is a space for slow reading and cups of tea. And slowly but surely soon we will be calling out for interested peoples to join us in slow tagging as we introduce a new archiving program here to catalogue all our delightful small press publications. In the meantime, we put the kettle on and take solace in listening to Michael Winslow and this typewriting performance.

Where are you sleeping tonight?

Housing affordability in Sydney is a hot issue right now. For artists living in Sydney's ridiculously overpriced housing market it is slightly more tricky than your standard Aussie Dream.

We started Bill+George in 2007 after a year of searching for the right place, which we found through a dodgy real estate and his equally dodgy slumlandlord; a beautifully unkempt cheap warehouse space in close proximity to our previous locale (Chippendale) and public transport. Since then we have had our share of dramas, from 'unsavoury types' residing on one side of our warehouse to the conservative landed gentry on the other who regularly accuse us of being a 'disturbance to the local amenity' including one lady who told us she was 'sick and tired of picking up needles in the park' implying that we were a front for a heroin dealership. Sigh!

Yep, its been a roller coaster. But the space we built from scratch is a base for 14 artists who range across art forms, in particular performing artists who rely on large space to work collaboratively in. But our local artist habitat is disappearing. At a rate of one space a year. Actually that figure is made up, but if we were to collect the data that would be useful project. Since we collaborated on Gang Festival in 2005, most of the artist run spaces we used to host events and projects in, are gone. including the one everyone loves to romanticize about, Lan Franchis. But it was the live culture of Lan Franchis that everyone pegs their fond memories to.