voices fill the halls,
lost voices that know no better.

jazz makes its way,
whatever way it wants.

melbourne’s sky smiles grey,
electric fires burn not too hot to touch.

if we must live for the moment,
we live for the past and future equally.

-jw

Check out more of his work here: conradbizjak.org.

I’ve become increasingly interested with the idea of utilising the full spectrum of information my camera is capturing when I choose to open and close the shutter. Often, the limiting structures which digital photography exists within on the internet, facilitates a massive amount of data to be lost and not be displayed in the final product.

I garner some poetic pleasure from isolating parts of an image, pushing beyond its full resolution to manipulate the viewer’s experience. Highlighting nuances of a photograph that are often virtually invisible grants these elements a presence in the narrative they otherwise could not enjoy.

Embracing the lack of perceived perfection and pixelation these overtly aggressive crops create, is an interesting journey towards the essential breakdown of each pixel representing a single unit of a particular colour. Digital photography has become a mirage of conventional beauty; perfectly sharp, focussed, exposed, coloured and composed images – a completely inaccurate and misleading depiction of life. A money-laundering-fantasy that wantonly erodes people’s own perceptions of themselves and helps to undermine positive self-esteem and self-image.  I’d like to think the approach I’ve been experimenting with celebrates the uncomplimentary, the humour and the reality.

A trip into macro environments  teaches one to appreciate sublime minutiae. Lying on your stomach, in the grass, enamoured with this densely inhabited, microscopic world – or stopping to appreciate the beautiful skeletal architecture of a decomposing leaf, is an uplifting lesson in perception. An undertaking that illuminates anyone open to the experience, to how many miraculous, delicate intricacies we walk past and over every day, without so much as a fleeting thought.

It is armed with this ethos of observation I approach my own work. These images serve as a reminder, to myself if no one else, to notice, appreciate and understand that we, and all the moments of our lives, are made up from a virtually infinite amount of details – and it is the chaotic, simultaneous and random combination of all these influences that allows us, within each moment, to preserve our own uniqueness, personality, character and the corresponding feelings and energy we emanate.

-jw.

__________

Meet Rosemary. This friendly and unassuming woman is on her way back from the local Sunday market. She has just wandered past a tag that reads “herps” but remains oblivious to the somewhat distasteful nature of the etymology. There lies a profound difference in psyche between her and the delinquent who scrawled it on the street she has called home for the last thirty seven years.

Her shopping bag contains not-quite-ripe-pears (she prefers to let them sweeten over the course of a few days), bananas and an asian variety of leafy lettuce.  She’s been instructed by her dietician to eat healthily to her aid arthritis.

The first bite of her nectarine has led her to an abrupt halt. The presence of her slightly protruding tongue indicates she’s questioning the freshness and corresponding taste of what had appeared  to be a ripe, juicy nectarine.

The curl of her top lip and the upturned, slightly scrunched appearance of her nose, suggests  an enthusiastic, unabashed bite into the fruit that has now been deemed fit for consumption. Also of note, a beautiful deep-green jewelled emerald ring; a family heirloom sparkling with a rich family history, imbued with a priceless sentimental value.

A ring for every finger collected from many anniversaries and special occasions during her long and loving marriage to her late husband, Walter. She also wears his favourite watch in memory of the years they spent together, and ties a red bandana to her handle that was a gift from her first granddaughter, Emily.

Mismatched pink and salmon colour scheme.  She’s always taken some esoteric indulgent pleasure in not caring about wearing matching socks as it reminds her of a particularly free-spirited friend she had in her late teens who would always say “people care about the silliest things”.  Also, the presence of discoloured skin on her leg: a potential melanoma risk, age spots or benign birthmarks.

A long time watercolour enthusiast herself, Rosemary is  supporter of legal street art in her neighbourhood, and is happy to offer up a wave to a random photographer standing amongst a group of young men enthusiastically beautifying  a local wall.

Homeward bound, nectarine in hand. It’s a quarter past three in the afternoon. Grateful for the pram she has appropriated as a  grocery trolley to  lean on – she quickens her step every so slightly in order to get home in time to meet her friend Louise, who she has a tea date with every second Sunday.

Filed under: blog Tagged: art, life, melbourne, paste ups, photography, photos, street art ]]> http://ihavenoexpectations.com/2012/05/10/mr-happy/feed/ 0 jamesterencewatkins mr_happy mr_happy http://ihavenoexpectations.com/2012/05/10/shafts-of-light-falling-onto-leaves-1/ http://ihavenoexpectations.com/2012/05/10/shafts-of-light-falling-onto-leaves-1/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 23:48:58 +0000 jamesterencewatkins http://ihavenoexpectations.com/?p=2203 ]]>

check his blog here: collectingmelbourne.tumblr.com
 

music is a really interesting medium to create within and express yourself through. it stimulates a very specific part of the human psyche and can generate passionate, visceral reactions. the idea that an emotion or feeling can be conveyed simply through sounds, tones and notes is inherently fascinating. personally, music offers me something unique- something that visual or literary exploits simply cannot supply. the fusion of technical skill and the endless universes of possibilities allows such a liberated, paradoxically disconnected and connected feeling simultaneously – especially when playing with others – feeding off their energy, being pushed and pulled into new areas of improvisation and finding licks and tiny pieces of ephemeral synergy that makes it all worthwhile and most importantly, really fun.

in any art form, i am drawn to loose, gestural, raw and fearless work. it’s one thing to refine a skill to a point and replicate the same style transposed across various pieces. it’s another thing entirely to challenge yourself, study influences, consciously develop and endlessly experiment, embrace the random, to shut your eyes whilst falling through the unpredictable and celebrate all the serendipitous happy mistakes which come from operating with brave and insatiable creative principles. Principles which allow one to create without the anxiety of failure – because there is no failure when you understand the process is as important as the product.

i love work that challenges the accessible, pedestrian and formulaic conventions we’ve all become so accustomed to. Work which is full of thousands of instinctive micro decisions, a smudge of paint here…a suggestion of an eye there…a collection of notes in and out of key, obscure chord progressions and time signatures…malleable word play that tears holes in perceptions, poetry that disorientates and displays an imaginative approach to interpreting the ways in which we think about symbols, letters, words, images and the feelings they are all essentially metaphors for.

all this indulgent rhetoric brings me to the below video that a friend of mine fred cut together. his enthusiasm and passion for music is palpable. he literally lives to make music, to explore every possible sonic vibration from his treasured electric guitar and effects pedals. we’ve jammed a few times and it’s always a laugh. it’s really fun to play within a supportive environment devoid of judgement…where we’re not in competition but working together. where we can just sit around passing grooves back and forth..sometimes falling out of rhythm and key, getting bored with particular parts…then rediscovering ourselves back in sync…and sailing off into another musical conversation for another ten minutes or so.

fred does a really creative job of putting these edits together and embraces a particularly poetic, lo-fi can-do attitude. personally it’s taught me about letting go of the myth of perfection. To put footage of myself playing an instrument into someone else’s hands, who has the power of what to include and what to omit goes against all my programmed artistic ideals about ownership and creative control. I think it’s empowering and exposing to share works in progress, to understand that it’s a journey that never ends,  to see parts of my own playing i don’t like at all, but in turn to see parts that i love and had completely forgot about.

Below is two friends having a good time…I hadn’t played guitar for about a month and was grateful to be coaxed back into the fray.  fred has trained himself into quite a proficient lead guitarist and continues to improve every time i see him play. This is not technically perfect music but I think there’s a few interesting cinematic moments in there and definitely some progressions and grooves worth developing into songs, which makes the whole process worthwhile. essentially a jam session is just a brainstorming exercise, an enriching energy exchange and a revealing axis for any artistic friendship to pivot around.

-jw.

there is an obese black woman on the muted television wearing an azure moomoo.

i cannot think of the word moomoo without thinking of the simpsons episode when homer gets really fat.

jim morrison used the word azure often in his poetry, as did charles baudelaire.

there are three guitars in the room. one steel string acoustic, one nylon string acoustic and one auburn hollow-body ibanez electric. they are all fun to play.

i can hear the hum of the fridge keeping my freshly squeezed orange, apple and ginger juice cool.

i like him now but i didn’t much care for david letterman’s interview style in the 80′s. He seemed too smug and always slightly condescending.

my iphone screen is cracked. badly.

outside the window all i can see is black.

it’s twelve o eight am on tuesday the eighth of may two thousand and twelve.

i am editing a photograph i shot out the window of the car whilst driving through west hollywood.

people in LA call west hollywood Weho. similar to the way they named soho in NYC because it is south of houston.

a brown dog called charlie is twitching his ears, asleep next to me on a brown couch moaning and growling in his dreams. i love the idea of dogs exploring their subconscious whilst they sleep.

today i bought an aqua marine jumper. at the top it says “best friends” in pink then underneath the words it has two kittens. one of them has a pink bow around its neck, the other is in a basket which has a pink bow tied around its handle. underneath them is nine pink hearts – which is the same number of lives cats are supposed to have.

charlie just woke up and is licking his feet. his “doggy door” is blowing in the wind i think that might be an annoying noise during the night.

the next muted show may contain sexual references.

still listening to tom waits, i like the line:

“you are innocent when you dream”.

-jw.

Click here for all images.

a mirage is paradise if it
makes you believe.

answers don’t need
questions to survive.

i am invisible through
ignorant eyes.

-jw.

I shot this photograph last year at Electric Wire Hustle’s Melbourne gig and had forgot how much I liked it until they recently reblogged it on their new Tumblr page. EWH are one of my favourite New Zealand bands, if you haven’t heard their music before, check it: