Joseph Allen
Joseph Allen is jack-of-all-trades who hopes only to be reasonably-good-at-just-one before the time he becomes flower fertiliser. Always fascinated by the phrase 'mixed business' used by many Sydney convenience stores, Joseph Allen adopted this phrase as an umbrella term for his unrestricted commercial art making. In the last decade Joseph has spent most of his time in London designing skateboarding periodicals and record sleeves. Now back in his birth town, Sydney, he has established Izrock Mixed Business as an (in)convenience store for general art tom foolery. Currently his main focuses are being the gallerist at Monster Children Gallery, other curatorial work and running Izrock Pressings, a platform for independent small run artist books, zines and editioned art prints. (Portrait by Rhys Lee.)
Website — http://izrock.com
Latest Posts
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Batteries Not Included – Australian Centre for Photography – Thursday 29th Jan 2009
January 22nd 09, 15:19
The ACP opens a show next week that I curated with Malcolm Smith called
BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED.
Ben Barretto
Martin Bell
The Changes
Marley Dawson
Ross Manning
Spat + Loogie
Paul Winkler
& Jonathan ZawadaThe blurb reads:
Environments that encourage experimentation and risk-taking are often where the most interesting new ideas can be found. In these spaces, unlikely unions produce curious crossbreeds that defy easy classification.Batteries Not Included at the Australian Centre for Photography presents the work of 12 artists investigating the hybrid offspring of photomedia; splicing photography with performance, reanimating found images or mechanising the moving image.
With backgrounds and influences as diverse as fashion, street culture, education, new and old technologies and telemarketing, the artists in this exhibition come from the fringes of contemporary visual art practice. With their appetite for risk-taking, experimentalism and disregard of convention, this selection of artists combines the fresh and energetic work of emerging artists with the ground-breaking work of legendary avant guard filmmaker Paul Winkler.
Get down there on Thursday the 29th January from 6 – 8pm
Musical performances from:
Jeff Burch + Max Doyle
Ross ManningAustralian Centre for Photography
257 Oxford Street, Paddington NSW 2021 Sydney
www.acp.org.au
The Changes
Ben Barretto
Ross Manning
Jonathan Zawada
Paul Winkler
Spat + Loogie
Marley Dawson
Martin Bell
Here is the official invite with the other shows that will open the same night
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Todd James at Monster Children Gallery – Opens Tonight!
January 14th 09, 15:04
Then we went to spend some time with Tugi over at Graphic Art Mount.
Todd painted this dedication to Chris and Kelly’s new baby girl, Dylan Coco. Congrats to all the Searls!
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Todd James up and down the Australian East Coast
January 8th 09, 22:20
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Todd James on his way!
January 7th 09, 4:21
Todd James (a.k.a. REAS) is an internationally recognized artist who began his career as a child in the New York City subway system, and who remains one of graffiti’s best-known elder statesmen to this day. He is a co-creator of the seminal Street Market exhibition at Deitch Projects in New York, which was selected for the Venice Biennale in 2001. James’ work has also been shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the Tate Museum in Liverpool, the Parco gallery in Tokyo, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, V1 gallery in Copenhagen and Lazarides gallery in London amongst other venues. His recent subject matter—grinning aircraft carriers, lounging blondes, sneaky missiles, beleaguered tanks, and skulls wearing sailor suits— evokes a comic book sense of horror at the modern world and pity for those that live in it. Protest images marked out in cartoon outrage, filled with recycled advertising cast-offs and corrupted child scrawls, these large-scale works of gouache and graphite smash the distance between death and jokes and between the viewer and what he or she probably goes around trying not to know about the present state of things. James’ death-ink warplanes and battleships have a chunky authority that embed themselves permanently in the mind of the viewer, while his stealth bombers and cheering bikini models jostle for space with partying warships, creating a feverish mix of complex mayhem. Fires and floods of natural disaster are on every horizon, lets watch from a not- so-safe distance. These new works are psychologically and literally unstoppable: The situations they depict are in full swing and degenerating by the moment, and are deeply connected to the reality of our world today. Todd James lives and works in New York City.
He will also take another show to Don’t Come in Melbourne while he is in Australia.
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French – Altar of Invocation – Now for Sale at Izrock!!!
December 18th 08, 5:29
So we now have the French catalogue on this page for sale!!!
See here.This web press newspaper was published in conjunction with three show the UK based artist had during late 2008 on the east coast of Australia. Lord of Light in Melbourne, Hand of Glory in Brisbane and Funeral Fog in Sydney showed French’s dark imagery drawing the line between the beautiful and the grotesque. Death metal music and medieval knights, armour and beasts abound in this oversized catalogue.
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French and Funeral Fog at Monster Children Gallery – 27th November
November 24th 08, 1:28
Funeral Fog – an exhibition of new works by French
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Kill Pixie in BERLIN – opens 22nd November
November 18th 08, 17:03
A new series of work by Kill Pixie titled ‘ Super Systems’ opens at Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Berlin.
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Like Moles and the mining industry, if Skateboarding were ever to be banned… Well I reckon it would just go underground.
November 16th 08, 16:24
The aforementioned Panthers and Matt Brady organised a session at Rob’s (Concrete Skate Parks) personal and private pool under his house. Legend has it he only let’s people skate it about 4 times a year and it seemed noone had skated it more than once. We felt quite privileged as other illuminati were TNT and the Antihero team – I am afraid this Sydney lad was not really up to scratch on this kinda terrain, although our friend from Aldershot took to it like the pope in the woods. And everyone else killed it. We met Ben (properly, rather than the usual interpipe introduction) from Seven Skates / Absolute Wood who is a rad guy and rippa as well as Moon Dog, more Panthers, Cactus Pool Crew and even Keegan was there! Was rad to see him and had no idea he was even in the country.
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New Izrock Title – French’s ‘Altar of Invocation’ – Hot off the press!
November 16th 08, 14:48
French and I just published the catalogue to go with his east coast art tour that includes Melbourne, Brisbane and next – Sydney. The title is ‘Altar of Invocation’ as is the art tour (which we also made death metal inspired tour t-shirts for). It’s a tabloid format, black ink on newsprint in a run of 1000 only.
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Come to the shows to pick one up for $5 – they are going fast. Or if you can’t make it then buy them from izrock.com when they go up in the shop in December. -
French in Brisbane
November 12th 08, 22:22
Lachie is one of the 9 from Nine Lives, he is the “on it” guy, looking after us and picking us up from the airport and generally being a great host.
He also enjoys infectious disorders on his Ikea dogs.
French is weirdo – all kids agree.
http://i472.photobucket.com/albums/rr85/theeizrock/IMG_2043sml.jpg
We hit the gallery. It’s a real nice space – the guys have done a great job.
This will be their first solo show after opening a few weeks back.
The cockroaches are bigger in Brisbane.
Some of the works including the boar 3 colour silkscreen prints that hadn’t arrived for Melbourne.
We took dinner in Chinatown. French, I and the Nine Livers which ofcourse there is 9 of
French, Stu
Stu, Joel
Joel, the waitress, Jay (our gracious host), Matt
Tom, Chad
Sam (in background), Matt and Lachie!
This is Jay, he is a ruler and has put us up in his house having never previously met us. Thanks Jay.
And Matt – pretty much the mayor of Brisbane and the guy who made this happen for us.
He also does THIS
.
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