Le rat, Kasino & Lister at Brisbane Powerhouse
For anyone currently in Brisbane you’ll know what I mean when I say I had to mentally will myself to get into the Powerhouse today. It was cold, grey and a Sunday to boot.
But I did it. I put on my Sunday best and got myself in there through sheer willpower. I knew it would be good.
And good it was.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about I am genuinely disappointed because I gave you prior warning, a couple of weeks ago, when I mentioned the upcoming Powerhouse 10th birthday celebrations.
Upcoming: a couple of weeks ago = happening: today.
The all too famous Blek le rat, Kasino and Anthony Lister took part, installing new graffiti/stencil art pieces onto the Powerhouse’s exposed brick exterior.
You could watch these street art greats from barely two metres away as they worked. It was a marvelous experience. Can I just say, there is nothing sexier than a man with a paintbrush/spray can. Anthony Lister, I’m looking at you.
Unprofessional?
I was particularly thrilled to see monsieur le rat, father of stencil art and precursor to Banksy. There were times, after he’d finished his piece, when he’d be standing not a metre away from me, engaging onlookers in conversation. I considered approaching him, however, the only thing I could think of to say involved identifying him as Blek le rat, and him nodding, and me nodding, and then me blushing and nodding, and then me walking away. I thought it was better not to put either of us through that.
Must work on improving general sociability.
Meanwhile, let’s get down to business.
Blek le rat
Monsieur le rat gave us two pieces on this wall, and another inside on the lower ground level. The two on the external wall shown below fit pretty squarely within the ambit of le rat’s usual French revolution imagery.
For example, this piece, above, is an image of ‘Liberty’. In post-revolution art, the notion of liberty was always depicted by a neo-classical woman, usually on horse back, freeing her people.
Le rat adds in an interesting caption for the work in the top right corner, which reads ‘All that has directly lived has moved away into representation’. I think by this he means that these images of revolution are merely images; representations passed down through centuries so that now, from where we stand, they are all we have to refer us to the reality of the past.
The second piece is a similar neo-classic representation of a woman, with a speech bubble that reads, ‘The spectacle says nothing more than “what appears is good, what is good appears”’. This is perhaps a self-deprecating statement about the arbitrariness of what is deemed ‘good’ art.
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Kasino
Kasino presented a piece comprised of two skulls. They were pretty cool.
I particularly liked the hundreds of tiny dots in spray paint, and the way they came together to create something really multi-dimensional. They guys’ hands were getting pretty sore by the time they were finished, though.
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Anthony Lister
This was my pick of the day. Lister did something a bit out of the ordinary and combined spray paint, stencil and paintbrush to create a work that really built upon the mediums individually. The overall work was both a little creepy and very beautiful.
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So all in all, I’m pretty darn glad I went. I also got to see Regurgitator for free. Not too shabby, Powerhouse. Not too shabby.
