Fartface

We thought the place had been infested with termites, this show was so fuckin' boring. Is there a less talented and drippy boring mormon than Denny the artist? We doubt it. This is his below, apparently. Everyone there wasn't afraid to say how dull and unexceptional the work was.

We took our mothers and 11 year old sisters. Mothers pointed to the stack of pillows and said it looked like somebody went to Farmers. But surely that's the point, we countered. "Give me a fuckin' break" She shrieked. The 11 year old sister summed it up best when she spread her hands wide and cried "WHERE IS THE ART?".
We'd like to know, 'cos someone must have it. Please deliver it to the gallery, asap.

A very Artspace National Drawing Awards Xmas party...

These two were very obviously by the same person, some mythology obsessed maori. You can only vote once right? (Yea, right) So why not put in two drawings? This is called cheating.

Apologies for the poor quality of this photo, but the drawing was of a pretty poor quality anyway. We think it was done by one of ManukaRoses' cronies.
In our unhumble opinions, this was the finest piece on display. Paper smeared with soot, and then the soot was etched into. Unfortunately some people who view art don't know when to keep their fingers to themselves and they have fucked this one right up. We at IS IT ART know when to touch a painting, it is when you are at the Jensen gallery and the painting is shitty and worth $50,000.

All in all, we got pissed and had an argument concerning whether or not photography and digital art should be allowed in the competition. As yet the issue is unresolved.

Art, politics, justice system

Tough-love doesn't work. Liam Ashley was murdered for stealing his parents car, in the back of a hermetically sealed security van on his way to prison. He was seventeen.

But really, who cares? Last night tv3 interviewed the idiotic family of this idiotic child who met an idiotic death in an ever increasing idiotic world.

IS IT ART is always on the lookout for bad art, and luckily we managed to spot one, that famous image in the background, re-rendered by some of Liams homies in spray-paint. Baseball cap, pathetic weaselly moustache, don't you think they could have come up with a less loaded image than the one that's been bandied about the media as a symbol for judicial incompetence? This is not a reminder to the parents of the son that they lost, it's more symbolic of how many times this family got on the telly and in the paper because of about 5 bad judgement calls.

Not just sick but stupid too.

Pavemant cracks

After thirteen years of almost porn and not-quite paedofile handbooks Pavement magazine is shutting down the presses. According to editor in chief Barney Mac, the move is not because of recent outrage about a 'photo essay' where you can see up the snatch of a ten year old girl and out of her mouth. It is for financial reasons.

"Advertisers are being harder to come by, all the magazines are suffering." Barney was loosely paraphrased as saying. We at IS IT ART don't see Home and Garden going out of business, but then again, we don't see objectionable material gracing their pages. The same goes for all the other fashion magazines.

So gee whizz, Barn. Ads are hard to come by? I wonder why... Maybe companies just don't want to advertise any more. Unlikely.

Fortunately, Pavement has an offspring- Grow Up magazine, which is like Vice magazine for teeny-boppers, if such a demographic exists. Now if you thought Pavement was rubbish, but found the pages to be too glossy to absorb rectal scrapings, then Grow Up might just be what you are looking for.

So what's next for Barney? Will he continue to fill his drawers with candid up-the-skirt-polaroids while wearing ladies undergarments stolen from the washing lines of top execs above the AK skyline? Sadly unavoidably, we will be watching.

"Hey, here's an idea- maybe the kids can save our sorry asses..."

Today, for no specific reason IS IT ART went to Kristin private school in Albany AK to see the exhibition by year six students (Who pay $1200 a term for the privelige of education). This years theme? POVERTY. Yes that dirty word made famous by such rich cunts as sir Bob Geldoff and U2 frontman Bongo. Poverty is now it seems, the new AIDS. The very word strikes fear into the heart of any upper middle class ten year old...This was the first to make an impression on us, walking around being followed by a train of young boys who weren't sure if we were real or not. It's of a little boy sweeping up rubbish see? He seems to be sweeping it into his house, but that's ok. If every little boy did that we could probably all retire.
OH THE DUALITY of it all. you can't see them, but I bet those who are with are in their skyscrapers schemeing away, puffing on big cigars just trying to think of ways for those without to live more miserable lives, possibly by making themselves feel really good at the same time...
Even ten year olds know George is a criminal... Somewhere here there is a picture of the space station (that's right folks, there's really one up there) Underneath is a plaque that reads 'America needs to forget about going into space until it has solved all the problems to do with poverty.' Possibly a bit optimistic, but oh well, in another 10-15 years the kid'll be as broken down by the world as any of us. And poor. And living on the moon. In a ghetto.
Keep hold of those sheets of rusted corrugated iron- they'll soon be the only thing between you and the toxic waste lapping at the shore. The shore that you (yes you, dear reader) fucked up in the firstplace. Cunt.
It was quite nice to see kids delving into the worlds miseries with such a positive outlook, and from such a positive and secure establishment. There was not a kid there that didn't have the face of an old person.

film review

this is a review of a film that we have yet to see, and probably never will see. The film in question is called "Children of Man". The premise? OK get this: There hasn't been a child born in 20 years due to infertility on the part of the females (this in itself sounds wrong and it would be better if all the men went sterile, which according to the latest studies is about to come true.) Anyhoo, of course the world goes crazy (Not sure why, they can still fuck can't they?) and of course there is an over bearing sence of doom...

But of course it all goes pear shaped when the hero (Clive Owen) discovers a pregnant woman and has to smuggle her thru the chaos to a kind of PETA for humans. This is where the dissappointment comes in. We at IS IT ART would much prefer to see a film whereupon society dealt with the problem they faced instead of the old "Preggers mole, 1inamillion".

We were excited to see this kind of film coming up until we saw the trailer.

The tagline is "No children. No future. No hope."

IS IT ART thinks it should be: "There is no hope...oh wait...there it is."

Quotes:
[from trailer]
Theodore Faron: I can't really remember when I last had any hope, and I certainly can't remember when anyone else did either. Because really, since women stopped being able to have babies, what's left to hope for?

What a fucking dipshit.

Elam shitshow

Well it is the end of the line for all those young art-school girls (oh yeah, boys go there too) so we went to check on them to see if there was any outstanding work. There wasn't. Nor was there any booze.

There may have been some worthwhile stuff, but we bypassed the ground floor and the second floor and just stuck to the first floor until the place filled up. As closet-claustrophobes the nerves began to rail us and we hurried to leave and find some chinese soup. Freaking out and struggling to get out past the crowd and into the line of the people who felt the same- we craned our necks to see what was coming in the other direction holding us up, and surprise surprise, it was an old comatose woman of about 80+ years in a wheel chair.

We liked Sophie Watsons' film about an ocean voyage, but as she is a friend of ours it doesn't count. But next to her video setup was some kind of sandy concrete castle 'art'. On the wall was a photograph of a large (superimposed) half submerged concrete building on a beach. Now the new wave of art school kids are ripping off John Radford. We cannot recall the name of the artist, but we are pretty sure it was by a young lady named Helen Stein.