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The Empire of the Primrose

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  The Empire of the Primrose - Station 1 Do you have recurring dreams? Travel Sketches by metamodernist artist JJFBbennett The cycle always resets at dusk, like waking inside the cold architecture of an unyielding, repetitive dream. I walk the wet, cobbled veins of an ancient European city, passing beneath stone arches hung with heavy, lifeless flags, heraldry drained of colour, damp cloth clinging to wooden poles like dead skin. There is no breath of wind, only the low, humming pressure of an era turning in its sleep. I reach into an iron sconce and tear loose a torch of roaring, ragged fire. The flame casts jittering amber shadows against the masonry as I plunge down the same discrepant corridor, a passage that bends against geometry, narrowing and widening like an inhaling throat. The Empire of the Primrose - Station 2 Past the broken gargoyles. Into the moss-eaten ruins of a seated angel whose stone wings have sheared away to jagged stubs. And onwards, deeper into the vaulted h...

Anzac Day supports our continual efforts of invasion.

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--> ANZAC Day has ceased to be a day where we commit to 'never again'. Anzac Day has become a shallow glorification of Australia's capacity to make war. It is a celebration of Australia's capacity of invasion. In contemporary multicultural Australia Anzac Day is appearing as the last stand of our mono-cultural past. ANZAC Day should be a remembrance for the futility of war and to support efforts towards a pacifist Australia. It should not be employed by sporting leagues as a selling point to enable blockbusting displays of digger fortitude and bravery. Anzac Day is a celebration of protection, but what did the Anzacs protected us from? Who would have invaded Australia had Australia. What would have changed in Australia if we had not sent our military to Europe to be slaughtered. Why doesn't the bombing of Darwin gain more attention if Anzac Day is about the brave who stands by his mate? Anzac Day has moved from the regret of war to a he...

Bill Henson is Innocence

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Bill Henson is innocence I recently received an Art Monthly (Australia) April 2009 edition as a present. Whilst in the past I collected and read such publications avidly I now read them only by chance. Interestingly in the edition there is an article by Paul Rapoport on a book by David Marr about Bill Henson the photographer. Bill Henson has been a controversial artist not because of any overt behavior but because of his subjects and how he portrays his subjects. The subjects are pubescent boys and girls and their portrayal is both sensual and interpreted sexuality. Bill Henson's photographs are well supported by the 'cultured elite' and by state and federally funded galleries. The issues are; Henson does poach his subjects from primary schools for a photo shoot and the Prime Minister described one of his nude pubescent girls as 'absolutely revolting'. The article defends both issues. The primary school poaching was dismissed as a 'fear-mongering fabricati...