Monday 20 December 2010

'Pathos Flowers'- new paintings for sale

these are some paintings of mine for sale, although a few sold before i took the photos! prices are on application and paintings can be posted worldwide.
size of the canvases range from 15cmx50cm to 10cmx10cm.
contact: oubliette@hotmail.com
ta!

Sunday 19 December 2010

last two books to go up!



And here is the complete text to The Night Bird in a nice clean computer font!
mmm... computer font....

The Night Bird
E.Armanious
Night after night after night, I watched my lovers sleep. I watched them dream, the twitches and moans of the Everyman in his beautiful slumber. So I began to take notes on these strange creatures, so unlike their daylight brothers, the beasts of the night, huffing and puffing. I began to translate their speech, their jumbled monologues, their terrible cries, their solitary and infectious sighing. I compiled great forests of books, a wilderness of stolen dreams. There were mangroves of pleasure filled with lost lovers, unspeakably beautiful in their absences; rain forests, green and glowing with laughter and intoxication; and terrible, dark woods where even the trees were too frightening to name.
By day I would mask the scent of midnight with flowers, I would thread them through my tangled hair and hide them in my underwear and walk amongst the wakeful with a pretty smile. But by night I would crawl on hands and knees with bloodshot, sleepless eyes, in rags held together with pieces of red thread, ravenous for the dreams of the enchanting creatures. I wanted to be one of them, oh, to close my eyes and fall and fall and fall into that embrace.
My catalogues and forests of dreams only made me more desperate and I would write around between the pages of my books. I would smear myself in ink and tear out my hair, my body began to consume itself, revealing new angles and unseen structures, and one night I swallowed my tongue. And between my clenched jaws, blood drowned my cries.
So I became a mute, thinking only of cannibalism and castration. Then I heard it, softly and from a far off place in my forest. The call of the Night Bird

Saturday 18 December 2010

click click click

the camera ran out of batteries... i guess that is an good a time as any to take a break and watch some twilight zone...

Prelude

The Book of Darkness (Ex Libris: Septimus Rex 2010)

'The Book of Darkness' is dedicated to the people who told me they were my friends and then washed their hands of me and left me to die.
you know who you are, assholes.
E.




Ex Libris: Septimus Rex is an eclectic library of oddly shaped and mysterious books and objects collected by an imaginary king, Septimus Rex (full family tree found in Botany for Australian Students). The books and objects reside in an art form that utilizes and intertwines both visual art and literature referencing works such as Lorca’s writings on the nature of Duende and the mystical poetry and art of William Blake.
Each book is totally unique in format and materials and each completes the mythological conceits set up in the texts, which are of an autobiographical nature. Often dark but ultimately hopeful, the texts are heavily steeped in mysticism and symbolism, stories within stories, with text and illustration merging into one multilayered, intricate and intimate communication.
The materials used range from a wooden flower press to antique piano keys, from old bones and bird skulls to industrial graphite and rare black coral, not to mention books dating back to 1919 and have been collected throughout my travels of the last four years through India, Mexico and New York. Each piece is constructed and finished meticulously, utilizing techniques from jewellery making, gold smithing, sculpture, painting, sewing and bookbinding. Some books contain text and illustration, some contain only illustrations and others have been used more as sculptural material.
My hope is to complete the metaphor of an ethereal and mysterious library by increasing the volumes of books and objects and by creating an installation space where the reader/viewer can truly immerse themselves in both the intimacy of the minute detail of the work and the collective identity of the group as a whole.
A journey is chronicled in this library over books, techniques, material, art forms and metaphors because the nature of the storytelling requires that even the books themselves must become talismans and enchanted objects.