OPEN STREET ART - Art & About Sydney

"Art in unusual places" indeed. This is the motto of Art & About Sydney.

Earlier this week I walked through Darling Quarter and caught Bill and the team setting up a street art installation in the walkway between the North and South Commonwealth Bank towers.

OPEN STREET ART is yet another collaboration between aMBUSH Gallery and the Darling Quarter precinct. The first one being the playful illumination of the precinct's buildings at night.

Friday 21 September marks the launch of Art & About Sydney for the month long celebrations and events. It is also the day OPEN STREET ART officially opens and that this public walkway will be declared a permanent art exhibition/installation space.

It's a great idea and a long time coming for the Darling Quarter precinct, which opened in June 2011. Bordered by the Chinese Garden of Friendship in the far south corner, it adds another dimension to the fringe of the already vibrant Chinatown area. I've been lucky enough to work in one of the swanky, sleek buildings and see the precinct come alive as each brand spanking new cafe or restaurant opened. There seem to still be some commercial spaces available so eventually additional operators will open up, adding even more diversity to the area.

In the meantime there are plenty of cafes, bars, restaurants, ATM's, ping-pong tables (bring your own bats and balls) and a massive children's playground to enjoy. Some tapas, a tipple and frolicking in the sun. The area can be enjoyed by young and old. During nice weather, deck chairs magically appear on the patches of grass for the pleasure and enjoyment of anyone wanting to soak up some sunshine, or as in some cases I've seen, catch up on some much needed sleep.


I feel like a child entering a fair and discovering all the rides to go on. I can't wait to get out and about in Sydney during September and October to see what other installations are waiting to be discovered. Watch this space, Bill tells me there should be another installation exhibited here before the year is out.

Taste of Sydney Festival

Sydney delivered a gloriously warm and pleasant day yesterday to make sure the Taste of Sydney Festival went off without a hitch. Much needed after the rained out/cancelled opening night on Thursday.

The swivelling piggy promised a great night...

The deal is you pay for entry ($25 pre-purchased or $30 at the door), and this gets you entry and a complimentary copy of the Gourmet Traveller magazine. WHOOPEE. That's just free advertising for them anyway. Then you buy "crowns" which is the festival currency that you use to purchase food and drink with. I bought $30 worth of crowns (they come in lots of $10, $30 and $50). Already I'm $55 out of pocket; $4 of which went to buying an empty plastic wine glass. I wish I'd brought my own. Jipped.

I hadn't been to the Taste of Sydney Festival before. It looked really "white", clinical, synthetic. White tents encircling you everywhere with row after row of wine producer and the odd bakery or vegetable or condiment stall, with some food stalls shoved in between for good measure. I got the eerie sense that it was almost too well organised, like not enough chaos or pandemonium happening to make things interesting. Everything was so shiny and well groomed.

We tended to stick around the sustainability corner as it had the most colour and life in the place.

The colour it seems, came out as the night progressed. I found it in the detail of the food, the stains on my wine glass and the faces of the people that I spoke to. Of course knocking back some vino helped in making this colour stand out. It loosened up the stiffness of what was a really boring party which your friend dragged you along to, and you had arrived so early that you stood in the corner praying for more people to come so that you could blend in and then quietly and stealthily exit stage right or left or whatever got you the hell out of there, pronto.

The presence of A Tavola did make me happy though.

I got the pasta with ragu - delicious. I just wished that for $12 there was more of it. It was like a teenager not sure if they lost their virginity or not. Does putting in the tip of the penis count?

For a Sydney event, there was a friendly vibe which is mostly attributed to the few (country) producers willing to chat about what they're passionate about. Like this hottie that told us about his father's vineyard.


And our new mate Gavin that showed us different composting methods and his whizz-bang African beehive.

The rest seemed to have sales people at their stalls or were selling themselves, with good humour of course.

There were quite a few swanky bars and beat stations set up, but why the fuck didn't anyone dance? I guess they were too busy posing, or working, or both.

It seemed that everyone was so beaten down by their work week that they couldn't just let go and cut loose. Footloose. Instead they relapsed into their sedated Friday night limbo.

I feel slightly unsatisfied, discontent. Would I go again? Only if I snuck in a bottle of expensive red vino (for me) and acid trips or happy brownies for all the other fuckers in there.

Bring back the salad days, the messy days of the Norwood Food & Wine Festival spilling onto the streets of Adelaide. Now that was a food and wine festival. No entry fee, no fucking festival currency, no fencing, no gimmicks. Just awesome food, wine and music; with DJs cutting loose and people dancing the day away in the streets with a healthy dose of police intervention.


Lose the pretentiousness Sydney. It's boring.

Sydney Mardi Gras 2012

Happy Mardi Gras Sydney!!!
I could still hear the faint music of an after party in the background when I woke up yesterday. A lot of seedy people not having crawled into (their own) bed yet. We didn't dare venture down Oxford St to see the fall out.

We did brave the weather and crowds to attend the approximately 300K spectator strong parade on Saturday night though.

All the glitz, glitter, glamour and well...tackiness, did not disappoint. There were plenty of Kylie look-a-likes, celebrating the pop princess' 25 year music career and the fact that she was the headliner at the official after party held at the Entertainment Quarter. Oh yeah, plus she's like THE gay icon.

This year's theme was "infinite love". So it was no surprise that the crowd was generally well behaved, happy and insistent on volunteering to pose for photos.

The regular messaging prevailed and rightfully so, as well as this year's focus on marriage equality. I asked my gay couple friends that accompanied us what they think of Mardi Gras. They've been there, done that. What used to be a rally about human rights and equality, has now become a freedom parade, where all walks of life come together to express themselves.

Of course there were lots of pretty (and not so pretty) people to gawk at. These ladies went all out, they were just fabulous!

The following two were my muses. Shall we shag now, or shall we shag later?

There was even a little something something for the plush animal lovers out there.

And when you got hungry? Which was inevitable by the end of the night. You had the aptly delivered "chips on a stick" to satisfy and soak up all that alcohol.

Thank you for a colourful night Sydney, you rock! 

Keep spreading the infinite love and equal rights to every human being on this planet no matter what gender, religion, sexual preference, race, age or choice of shampoo.