Ruby Street

Tomorrow Annette leaves for regional Victoria (via Canberra), taking the long hot journey by car, so she can be around for the opening of her exhibition, The Romance of Death, at Horsham Regional Art Gallery . As well as 30 photographs which she took in Paris cemeteries between 2004 and 2007, the show will include some poems I wrote on the theme during that period. We have also made a chapbook to accompany the exhibition including a hand-printed photo on each cover, plus the text of the poems on the wall, and a number of others. Here's one poem. Works & Days These unexpected masterpieces statues and companions balconies of angels linked by cement and passions the falling autumn The lost genius of air still penetrates broken stones and other works As on any street the guarantee of beauty lies around the crystallised dust empty bottles dead chrysanthemums Mutability is no harder than stained marble a pile of petals Cimetière Montparnasse If anyone is around that area of the coun...

Annette has an new photography exhibition, Wallworx, currently in Newtown, if anyone is around and about until 19 August. Wallworx engages with the work of stencil street artists from urban centres around Australia between 2002 and 2005 and explores her interest in the visual dialogue that exists between artists and genres as well as the effects generated by street ephemera in Australian cities. The venue is the New View Gallery, 277 Australia Street, Newtown. Opening hours are Tuesdays and Thursday from 5pm-9pm, and Saturday and Sunday from 11am - 6pm. The gallery is about 50 metres from Newtown Station and is located next to the highly popular Oscillate Wildly restaurant (yes, named after The Smiths song) on one side and directly across from the local court and Newtown cop shop.

copyright, Annette Willis, 2007

You might be interested in seeing a portfolio of Annette's photographs (and more here ) featured on the London Photographic Association website. She has chosen a mixture of black and white and colour shots and at least two of them were taken in our local Marrickville area. There may be further additions but this is already a wide selection of her work.

As I said, I couldn't make it to the Picture Show launch last Friday night, unfortunately, as I was being Annette's handbag at the launch of Art & About . Annette has a photograph in the Sydney Life part of this public art thingie. Sydney Life consists of 29 photographs blown up onto canvas and strung up in the trees in Sydney's Hyde Park. You can see Annette's pic, 'Annette Willis: Niki and José, 2006' and others here . A good way to see Sydney Life, I believe, is to go to the night noodle markets, . Annette and I intend to do just that some time soon.

First, my partner, photographer Annette Willis has just won the Friends of Wollongong City Gallery Photographic Prize. Her photograph was a triptych portrait of our friend and fellow photographer William Yang. So we went down to the Gong last week and Annette received real prize money. Yay! I can't get hold of the image at the moment but I'll work on that. Annette will also have another work quite prominently displayed outdoors in Sydney in October. More news on that later. Also, this weekend there's been a bit of a poetry beano up in BrisVegas, the Queensland Poetry Festival , and this included the presenting of a couple of poetry awards. Poet/artist Angela Gardner , my friend and one-time collaborator and editor of that fine e-journal foam:e , has won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Award For An Unpublished Manuscript for her unpublished manuscript, Parts of Speech . And my friend Louise Waller was also runner-up in the Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award For Unpublis...