3.17 Ocean's Two

Transcript

Hey Matt, have you heard of Adonatology? Yeah, that’s where you’re studying mates that get put into raps. Nah, it’s actually a religion where followers worship big curvy women’s butts. Oh, I’m getting shown a picture of that. Yeah, I actually, I forgot, of course, yeah, Adonatology, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m actually in the church.

What about a profile review? What do you think of Jay? Jay, let’s have a look. I can’t see Jay without my, uh…

Look how short my mic cable is. Jay, all right, let’s look at this guy.

The dog on your back. Don’t let animals ride you.

We’re all non-hierarchical polycules in this app, but you do not want the dog to be superior. Letting that animal ride you. Okay, look, Jay’s probably gonna fuck, but his profile’s no good. Jay’s gonna fuck. Jay’s gonna fuck. All right. Are we putting all this online?

I don’t think we should. I think we should. I don’t think we should. I think we should. I don’t think we should. I don’t think we should. I think we’re going to. I really don’t. All right, so we just got back from, um…

What’s that movie called? Ocean’s Eleven. Ocean’s Two. And, uh… We, uh… We, uh… We didn’t really… On my end, I follow the maxim, nothing ventured, nothing gained. And on Aiden’s end, he follows the motto,

More money, more problems. Yeah, you gotta be in it to win it. And I was in everything today. He had a lot of fingers in pies. And we’re not gonna talk about it any further. Yeah. So, just… If you see him, don’t bring up the fact that he just lost 50 on Blackjack.

Take this out, dude.

It’s grey. It’s raining. It’s raining. Matt’s never been to the fish market. Okay, I’ve never been to the fish market before, but let’s tell it from the fish markets perspective. So, it’s like 11 on a Saturday, which is the time to go… No, it’s like 12 on a Saturday. No, dog. It’s like 1.30 on a Saturday. It’s 1.30 on a Saturday, which is the time to be at the Sydney fish markets,

before it gets turned into, like, another version of the star, but with fish in it. And, like, a car pulls up and two boys looking completely different. Like, one in basically a suit and the other one in, like… What do you wear? Like, gulp core kind of stuff. Everyone’s checking out Aiden’s shoes. People are respecting my shoes, but they’re not checking them out.

Are you gonna nod… Give me a nod for that or… Yeah, okay, I got the nod. And then we go in, we’re like, we’re like staring at all the cool fish. There’s like tanks full of strange creatures that we actually had never seen before, even as self-confessed foodies. Marron. Marron. Yeah, M-A-R-R-O-N. Yeah, that was basically like a yabby or something, right?

Like a lobster or some shit. And we were like, we need some fish and chips, right? Fish and chips, sea market, fish, seafood market. It makes complete sense. So we’re like, go to the first place that looks half decent. The worst fish and chips you can imagine. Like, really fucking bad fish and chips. Oh yeah, and calamari.

Just terrible. We took the biggest risk of our lives. That was a huge gamble. Again, theme of the day. The tarte was behind the counter. And so you couldn’t like get a close look at it. And we were like, fuck it. Like, let’s get four of the motherfuckers. $1.50 each. Six bucks worth of tarte. $1.50 is not crazy.

But the reasoning being like, if you’re gonna go and get fish and chips, like you’re, if you’re just like living your life on autopilot, you’re probably gonna end up with a really dry mouth and like, you’re gonna need to drink a 1.2 liter Coke to like wash it down. It’s a dry dish. Or something. You actually said before, you’re like, all I want is a good tarte.

That’s all I want. And it’s like, it really makes or breaks the whole meal, right? Like a nice, and keeps using the adjective tight, nice tight tarte. And you can’t fucking see through it or anything like that. It’s just like, very white. This one was just- Like nicely brushed teeth. Colgate smile. So cummy. Oh, so cummy.

It was disgusting. You know it’s the bad one when it has that kind of gray semi-translucent. It’s just the fucking worst. Yeah. It’s like kebab shop mayo. It’s really like the best condiment, but out of your house. Yeah. You’re, it’s a really dicey game. Playing with fire, yeah. So anyway, we’re like, we need to get lots, because you don’t want to end up with a dry mouth.

And so we’re like, can we have three of those little pots of tarte? And she’s like, you mean three? And she’s like, didn’t understand. She’s like, you want three, really? We get the three and a tomato sauce. And they were shocking. Just absolutely shocking. Just terrible. We’re just walk around, look for a table for ages. Somehow worse. Like every component of the meal was like worse than the preceding component.

Totally. Like the chips were awful. The fish was, I guess, okay, but pretty bad. Worse. Dare I say, I was like, this tastes like as good as the fish and chip shop in Stanmore. Yeah. But you were like, nah, it’s worse. And I agree with you. It’s worse. Yeah. It’s literally worse. Yeah. Please, fucking tell us where to get good fish and chips.

Yeah. I heard there’s a good one in Annandale. I know fucking fish butchery’s one is pretty good. Mm-hmm. But like, now we’re going to have that is going to be like, an unfulfilled desire. That question is unanswered. We’re going to need to get good fish and chips together. We’re going to beat the allegations. I was fucking feral, bro. Yeah. Okay. So close that chapter.

We’re like, the actual mission for today was we need to go and check out the Michael Reed art bar at the Star Casino, which just seemed like such a fun premise. We’re like, I’ve never been there before. Have you been there before to the casino? I’ve never been to the casino.

Good groups of high school friends. There are some great people there today. At the Star. Oh my God. Just like a whole cornucopia of different faces from different places, different walks of life. There’s no real dress code. We were like, Aiden just characteristically doesn’t carry ID on him because he doesn’t want to get tracked by the government or something.

He’s like Dorian Gray. If he sees his ID, he becomes 17 again and then he can’t get into the pub. So we’re like, I’m wearing like, yeah, fucking like almost a black trench coat, like leather jacket. If you know me, you know which jacket it is. And Aiden’s wearing like, what are you wearing? Like goppy stuff. You just asked this question and answered it in the same way.

Yeah. But I’m wearing like an oversized, Maroon Montbel fucking hiking jacket and then like a hiking gilet, like a vest. But it’s all looking like with the whole ensemble and hiking shoes, it does make me look a little bit security guard. Yeah. A little bit younger maybe. So we’re like, here’s what we do.

I give you the leather jacket. Yeah. Give Aiden an air of money about him. Decency. And a bit of decency. And Aiden gives me the gilet, which gives me an air of like programmer around. I, we both like come up to the escalator where they’re like definitely checking people’s IDs. There’s like a little cordoned off area.

And luckily two young boys are like having a little argument about what type of ID is cool to show with the security guards. And we just slide right past. Yeah. On the fucking casino floor. And I was cackling bro. I was just, I was loving it. Mm. The cast floor, something special. Cass.

No one calls it Cass. The Cass. Heaps of people call it the Cass. Oh, okay. You wouldn’t call it the Cass. And none of your friends have probably ever been to the Cass. I’m too polite to call it the Cass. Maybe it’s a Queensland thing to call it the Cass. Maybe. But like, it makes sense to me. Yeah. Like doing some like- It’s like the calf. Like imaginative like sociology, you know, I could pretty comfortably imagine people

calling it the Cass. Yeah. That’s that tracks with linguistic conventions as we know them. Maybe that’s classist, but I’m okay. I’m okay. We’ll leave that up to you to decide, listeners. Yeah. You guys, you tell me. Yeah. If anything you, if anything we say can be construed as classes, we want to know in the DMs. I’m actually impervious to claims of being classes because I’m so damn working class.

Historically. Historically. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So we’re actually telling this story out of order, right? I think we went to the art bar first.

This is just chaotic. Yeah. It’s okay. Let’s just reel it back. We need a holiday. We’re just going to reel it back. Let’s run that back.

We were going to go to cement fondue.

But we didn’t. But then we were like, I don’t know if we’re down for some like actual serious artwork. So I found like Michael Reed art bar and it looked fucking stupid online. And I’m like, it’s in the casino. And then we were like, let’s have a stupid day. Cause we’re both a bit fucking tired. And so this one, this gallery was alluring as like a, as a joke.

We were going to go and poke fun at it. Yeah. I literally don’t know who Michael Reed is. He just, he’s like a rich, really cliche looking like art. Art guy. But like, he’s like. He looks like a patron of the arts. Yeah. He looks like he enjoys hanging out and spending money and drinking champagne. Fuck yeah. Like in art establishments.

Who amongst us doesn’t enjoy doing those things? I don’t know. I don’t want to hang out with Michael Reed. Michael Reed. If you’re hearing this, send me a DM. Matt wants to hang out. We’re going to be it. Yeah. Whatever, bro. Just fucking share our podcast.

I’m going to take that part out.

Yeah. So it’s fucking. And like the whole sense of it looks so stupid. Art bar. Full name. Michael Reed art bar. Yeah. So they were like, let’s just have a stupid day. Yeah. We’re like, we’re like, we literally were like, we slapped our knees. Right. Breakfast is done. We’re going to go do a hit job. Yeah. Assassinate these motherfuckers.

Yeah. So that was, that was, what was going through our minds. Oceans two. We’re bust through the doors. Yeah. We’re like snapping pictures. We’re putting our hung up Instagram on the, on the iPads. And then poor, uh, what’s her name again? Colleen. Colleen’s going to go around and reset.

She’s like, boy, she took a really lovely photo of us. Like, I was like, you got a good eye, Colleen. Thank you. She was nice. She was French. Yeah. Uh, she’s French. She sounded French. Yeah. The poor French couple at the fish market. They were like, do you, where do you get the sauce from? Yeah. And they saw our dog shit tartare.

Yeah. And, uh, we like apologetically gave it to them. We’re like, sorry. Yeah. Like you can have it. Yeah. I was like. Did they even try it? No. They just left it. They didn’t trust us with the sauce. Uh, yeah. Yeah. They didn’t seem like overjoyed with the quality of the fish and chips. It got done dirty today, bro. Yeah. There was a real, we thought we were about to repair French Australian relations since this

whole submarine thing’s gone down. We’ve just set it all back by 30 years. They fucking invented mayonnaise, bro. Yeah. They fucking invented it and they come to our country in search of good food. They’re going to leave disappointed. We have the cum tartare. Cum tartare. So bad. The cum tartare is equivalent to like fountain tomato sauce in my book.

Ah, dude. Fountain tomato sauce is pretty like, it’s better than what we had today. I disagree. Okay. I think we just took some good European products and we just made them dog shit. Everyone at my house eats fountain and you know what I have to do? I have to go to Macca’s and like get ketchup packets and then I like store them.

Why can’t you just buy the bottle? I could buy a whole bottle of ketchup. Yeah. I’ll give you my bottle of ketchup. I don’t want your fucking bottle, bro. Yeah. It hasn’t, it hasn’t really lived a really peaceful life. It’s like, I can’t decide whether it goes in the fridge or not. It’s way better to just come down hard on one side of that argument.

Bro, it’s better in the cupboard. Okay. I don’t want to get into it, but like I have feelings both ways and I’m also kind of lazy sometimes when I’m finished cooking. I’m not going to put every single last thing away. Fair enough. Fair enough. Anyway. I guarantee you we were like some of the only punters, quote unquote punters. Maybe we’re not punters.

Maybe we’re, we’re industry, but like that would go to the start just for Michael Reed art bar. Yeah. Everything else was incidental. Yeah. There was a funny little like family that like walked through it kind of quickly. Yeah. Yeah. They were like, we’ve got to see some culture while we’re here. We can’t just spend all our money the whole time.

Yeah. So that was our kind of vibe. We were like taking the piss out of the Versace store and like trying to fucking steal champagne and complaining about the toilet and looking at rich people, some rich kids. Yeah. There was a couple of like characters that their AI didn’t load fully. Like people were stuck like in those booths.

Literally saw a couple who were like statuesque. Yeah. Oh yeah. Like just the outline of them was like quite normal, but like all of their features was just completely frozen. It was also giving like it’s Mass Effect has a similar hub world. That couple reminds me of them. It’s called the Citadel. Citadel. Yeah. It’s good.

I think the Knights of the Old Republic one is a similar name actually. There you go. I might put a screenshot of that up on the post. Yeah. Sounds good. That’s such a good game. It was too hard for me when I was a kid. RPG. I just couldn’t get through it. So on the art bar website, there’s two categories. The art, the bar.

I knew it. I fucking knew it.

Did you know that? Yeah. How did you know that? I fucking could have told you that. Fuck bro. It would be a cool place to like hang out. We were saying if it was in like Redfern. Yeah. I was like, it would actually be really fun to be able to just like have an art gallery that was a bar. Yeah. Art bar. Yeah. The only one I can think of is like the Gladdy.

Yeah. But it’s a pub. Yeah. And then there’s a gallery. Yeah. And it’s not like you have to be looking at the works. In fact, most people are like, do I have to? This was just one room that was just an art gallery and a bar. Art bar. It was an art. It was a Michael Reed art bar. New building unlocked the art bar.

Michael Reed art bar. Yeah. All right. Let me describe Sam Hodge’s whole installation, like from left to right. So starting from the left, there’s two big black pieces of cloth, which are rendered as notepad pages.

The letters are beads that have been sewn on actually in like a facsimile, literally like a fax of the original, which is quite cool. Yeah, exactly. It would have been like reworking those thoughts, like more intricately. Even down to the stroke. And also like with deleted words, he’s like, I’m going to scratch that word out.

And like, yeah, that’s cool. To bead them out. Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. And they’re like diary entries, very personal. And what else was it? It was like research, like art research stuff. Samuel has like got a lot of like queer themes in his work. And there was definitely like some aid stuff going on, right?

Talking about, I can’t think of sex as separate from disease. Yeah. Which was, you know, that’s kind of a certain intensity to what like from a distance feels like somewhat like a playful work. A playful work. Yeah. The whole thing was quite playful. So there’s four of these in total and they kind of sandwich this big like mood board of three

big works, three big digital artworks printed with like, I don’t know, a hundred smaller artworks, like let’s say six by four size or whatever that have been kind of cut to shapes and like messed with. And all of those works, including the diary pages, let’s call them, were pinned up by little

safety pin, not safety pin. We were talking about this earlier. Office pin, colorful pins. Push pins or something. Yeah. But like the type that you would see like on a notice board. How’s the Newtown notice board coming? Yeah. Any movement? Matt? I thought you were spearheading that. I was like, we should have one.

Yeah. Okay. I just said that at the pub. Okay. So that’s where we’re up to. All right. But we’re working on that. We’re working on it. We’re working on that. We were saying there should be like, just for the four people in the NOS that don’t want to have a phone anymore, we should get like a notice board. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.

Yeah. Really cool work. So it’s kind of got this like, I thought that was like a funny through line of like, of like, yeah, sex and love and intimacy, but also like intimacy in terms of one’s private life and then like blowing up private things. Like those were definitely pages from a notebook that let’s just guess that no one had seen

until they’re, they’re like exaggerated and like glammed up in the gallery. Um, do you, do you want to get into reading them a little bit or like, we’re not going to go that deep? I mean, we can read them a little. Um, I think I really like the idea of the birth of a work being when you start to write

a diary entry, its origin is not art. Like if it’s functioning like a normal journal. Um, and I love the idea that the words kind of start as private and end in public. Yeah. It’s very different to starting to write a poem with an audience in mind. True.

Um, but you know, it’s funny because one of the like common complaints of artwork is it’s like diaristic or it hasn’t for me anyway, it hasn’t like that is to say it hasn’t considered an audience. It’s only really interesting to you and like your mom. And so that’s a kind of a funny thing. But then by performing the like visual scale up and modification of it from like just a

pen in a, in a pad or whatever to this kind of, yeah, like you said, this 20 times larger than life. And then, yeah, that kind of becomes like a reference to the original diary, but it’s, or it’s now has like a life of its own, like a much more, a much bigger and more significant kind of life.

Especially cool on this, like truly international stage. Like people are flying in to stay at this hotel, right? Yes. And it’s like, there’s people from like all over the world who are like, you’re going to see like funny, like not funny maybe, but like notes that Sam had written down. Yeah. Probably not knowing that they, that they would be ending up there.

That is funny. Yeah. Cool. Some like moguls be running past you and talk about like his sex life. Yeah. Cool. But they, you kind of, it was interesting too, cause you kind of had to work a little to read the beads. Yeah. So actually I probably, I don’t think any like moguls that like. Oh yeah. They’re like, that’s nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Like how much is this? Yeah. Do I want? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. And then they read it at home when they’re like finally get it home. Maybe. They’re like, oh, cool. Maybe bro. Maybe. I was pretty successful. Like as a text work in my book. Yeah. It’s hard to do. It is hard to do. And like, I don’t think we’ve ever seen beads deployed as like a means for rendering letters.

Ever. Have you? Pretty cool idea. Text, but make it beads. Usually it’s neon. The art bar is in neon, but he, he had the restraint not to call it Michael Reed art bar in neon. That would have been cool. It’s cool. It’s cool. It’s cool. Yeah. Like you were, you were saying, I don’t know if you were like thinking along these lines, you were like, we unlocked a new building. It feels like you, yeah, you’ve kind of like unlocked a new, it’s like a Sims DLC,

like art world casino, like bundle. Yeah. A little, you get a little like a $5 steam purchase. When you like make a, like one of those buildings, like in the Sims or whatever, they have to have like a generic, like, you know, like reference to like what the building is. True. Like it can’t, it’s not like the name. It’s not like.

Yeah. Whatever. Okay. Yeah. I like where this is going. Wait, keep going. Oh, it’s not like, what was the fucking, I need like a pub name now, but it’s not like the pub. We were just driving through some funny pubs in the city, but it’s just like pub. Like it would just say pub in the Sims. When you build a pub, it would just say pub. Like that’s the name of the pub. Yeah.

And this one was just like art bar. And in like some ways it’s like supremely generic and infinite. I kind of like that. Yeah. It’s just art bar. Yeah. It’s art bar. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. Yeah. It kind of, when you were saying that earlier, I was getting excited because it kind of makes me think like, what if we had buildings that didn’t fall under a classification at

all? Like, isn’t that way more exciting than like, this is a supermarket. Yeah. This is a dentist. Like this building, it’s like I posted that thing on my story. Like I’m about to have a big can of, and it was just like a blank can. Oh, you didn’t see that? I’ll show you the photo. And it’s like, can’t we have buildings that do that too? It’s like an empty vessel for like whatever might happen in there.

Interesting. I love it. All right. Should we talk about the prints? Yeah. Let’s talk about the big prints. So the prints were all, I think I want to call it semi-gloss, which is exactly the default finish that you get from a Photoshop when you print your snaps of like, let’s say holiday with friends and like going to gigs and whatever.

Like that, just that finish and the way they were installed felt like a really intimate and like friendly, like bedroom wall kind of set up. Like we didn’t see any frames in this side of the gallery. There was some framed works at the other side, but we’re not really covering that. The little works, I think we’re going a long way to convey that atmosphere.

Yeah. Like we haven’t fully talked about them, but they’re, they were all different like shapes. Like you almost imagine they’d just been cut out with scissors and like, they were all soft and round. Like there was no jagged edges. All booba. But there was heaps of them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The fact that there was like heaps of them, like a hundred artworks, like you never see a hundred artworks. Whereas like if that space had just been left, like just with the four, three or four prints,

that would have, I think given them a lot more gravity. They would have felt more serious. It’s got that like sparse, minimalist, like art mode. Yeah. And we were kind of, we were wondering, we were like, are those for sale? Like the small ones. And it was like, Oh, I don’t know. We’ll have to check. That actually caused like a little rupture within like the context of like the market

and the like concept of like where the work started and ended. Yeah, exactly. When we brought that up. Yeah, exactly. And it’s like, it’s like, damn, if I bought the big first one, like I kind of want all 50 of its little surrounding planets, you know, as well as the star. And it’s like, it’s funny how, how much you kind of do have to sacrifice in presentation

when it comes to like taking an artwork home. And like, yeah, we’ve been like, this is a funny angle to take. Cause we’ve been like very, we’re obviously very pro by art from local artists. Like that’s the whole fucking mission. But, um, yeah, it is interesting to see like, you know, a very particular installation that just can’t really translate outside of a gallery.

Like I’m not going to set up a whole Sam Hodge wall at my apartment. Like I just don’t have the space or anyone for that matter. Yeah. I’ll set up my own little like conspiracy theory wall of all of my dark room experiments. But like, even that isn’t going to, I’m not going to let it get too out of hand. I don’t think, um, Hodge would, would be too upset if you took them out of their content.

It’s fine. Right. So, um, so yeah, we were, we were like kind of just as interested in the small works as we were in the big works. I would say like just visually, it’s like a whole field of interest and, and with these big breaks for the big works. Yeah. I think the smaller works feel more approachable. Yeah. They feel more like there were even some like memes in them.

Some of them were references to old photos that I’ve seen like on Sam’s Instagram and stuff or in person. Yeah. And that was interesting. Yeah. You like, I was like trying to, so basically there’s like, all of them were kind of bordered by these like different borders, but the one that kept coming was kind of like a watercolor kind of, what do you call that?

Yeah. Kind of like a swirl where you can like see, I guess it was probably, I don’t know whether it was digital or whatever, but you can like see the paper underneath. Like when you like do a brushstroke with like water. It looks like the kind of drawing that you stereotypically do when you want to make like a cloud. Yeah. It’s like these kind of loops that like go around and complete a circle.

And there’s a very softness and quite a like rosy, like a cold and rosy palette. Like there’s like limes and peach and lots of like cold purple and pink. Yeah. And that’s like across all of them. Like it’s, it’s kind of one like section or like a pretty like a consistent palette across the whole wall.

True. That makes it feel like quite consistent. We rarely talk about color that much on this show, but that palette was obviously a really well worked out. And it feels like, it’s funny, like you think just being a human, you get to like pick whatever color you want. But I really do believe that a lot of research can go into choosing a palette and like finding

colors that together express your distinct state of mind or personal viewpoint or personal philosophy. Like it’s not really as simple as picking colors. It’s never that simple. I mean, people obsess over, over it. Yeah. It’s like a whole job. Yeah. Like aggressive design. That’s not how you say it.

In a, in this version of hung up podcast, Matt likes to correct people a lot. If they say things incorrectly, this is, I’m on my, I’m on my grammar Nazi arc. Like, yeah, it’s actually pronounced.

I’m sorry, listener. I’m sorry for my co-host. Yeah. Like, yeah. And then there was also some like memes in the, where you call them portals, which I love. So it’s like, imagine listener, like a photograph and then it’s like watercolor kind of clouded

border. And then, so it creates, yeah, like this, everything’s being bought. There’s like sense of nostalgia in some of them. Like one that I really liked was like the back of like a scene. Like you could see like, I think like a woman’s head and like a few people in the distance, maybe they’re like swimming or something, but it was giving it this like additional framing,

which I really enjoyed. And then, yeah, one of the funny ones was a couple, oh yeah. And the images were repeated throughout. So you’d get like, there was like repetition going on. And then there was one moment that Sam seemed to enjoy was like the part in, like, isn’t it a pretty early season of the Simpsons?

Yeah. I want to say like four or six season, season four or six. Lisa like breaks up with Ralph and she’s like looking at him and his heart is breaking. Yeah. And then in that one, he’s like screwed it up. Yeah. We’ve like remixed the colors of that scene to like maybe a compliment or match or play with the colors in the palette of the show in general.

But yeah, there was a few go overs of that particular scene and like, fuck, like who hasn’t felt like each of those characters at some stage in their life, like good deployment of the Simpsons lore. Yeah. There’s a few other Simpsons episodes. That’s a, that’s a nice way of putting it though. So yeah, that was, that was a cool, like, I guess, like internet analog moment for those works.

Hmm. And then should we just like talk about like the content of the big ones, like maybe the content and the mood? Yeah. Digital painting is so interesting. I mean, it’s so like difficult to get a grasp on this stuff. The big, like, yeah. The Grecian, like tightly cropped portrait with the big, like orange dots on it.

Like it does look very painterly to me. For sure. That tight crop though is like, you don’t really see that kind of framing of a face in the old world, which is why it’s funny to see like ancient statue framed as like a modern, like press shot or like editorial shot or something.

He kind of looks sad too. He does look sad. Yeah. He’s got big empty eyes. True. I wonder if those eyes have been blacked out or if they kind of were like that already, but. It looks hollow. Yeah. They look hollow. And then these like big orange dots, like a pox covering his face, but it’s not a pox because it’s like, to me, it feels like it’s in addition to the statue.

I don’t think we’re saying these are on the statue. No, no. They look like they’re on another Photoshop layer. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then that layer has been messed with. It’s got a little, what’s the thing you do? It’s like you go, um, outer glow is the name of the, uh, the, there’s definitely, it feels like you’re getting a lot of like photo contemporary photo media.

Like I don’t want to be like, yeah. I don’t want to be mean like inside joke, but like a little bit. Yeah. That’s mean, but there’s like a bit of that going on. Like, yeah, I don’t know. Yeah. That becomes your world for a little bit. Like if you’re playing with contemporary photographs and digital painting and stuff, like, like I’ve seen like with a bunch of artists, like you just get obsessed.

You get a little bit lost in the sauce, but like in kind of a cool way, like you get obsessed with your tools. Yeah. Like your fucking door or whatever. Yeah. It feels like there’s a little bit of like Photoshop as practice. Yeah. We don’t want to be too like anorak-y about it and be like, oh yeah, that’s a 2B pencil for sure. You know, like who cares, but it is fun to spot that stuff.

But the fucking, what do you call it? It does become the, you know. The medium does become the message. The tools, the tools are the tools and the tools are big. That’s true. Yeah. I really like this one. The tools shape the music. So that, that idea of like, of overlaying dots on and like sort of like a, like a filter or a layer over the image.

Like we’re playing with that again and again and again in this, like, let me just zoom in on this one and show you like, in this case, the dots have kind of taken over really. And like now they’re the subject of that image. Is that just one of the little small ones? It’s one of the little ones. Yeah. And then on this one, the dots maybe, let’s say are threatening to take over. And it’s just kind of this like interesting play of foreground in a very like abstract and like distant sense.

It’s like this foreground in Photoshop or in, in my eye, in the print, in the gallery could be infinitely far away from, let’s just call him David’s face. Like the big statue. That idea that a foreground necessarily has to follow on to a middle ground and then follow on into the background, like it’s kind of broken here.

It’s like there is a foreground and, and there is a subject or a background or the content of a photograph, but there’s no kind of like nice metric distance between them, which I really love. And it kind of has this, this beautiful, like, it’s, it’s funny because spelling it out like that sounds like, makes it sound like there would be quite uncomfortable to look at.

But I think to have my eyes resting on these feels very comfortable. For sure. It was quite comfortable. Yeah. And like, if these are your mates, like in these photos, like you’re like remixing like lovers and friends, like a beautiful way to remember feelings and feelings about people and people in your life. Like to like mess with the photos and imprint a bit more of your personal experience of that relationship onto it.

Like we were talking about this with Hooky last week. We were saying, he’s like putting his own spin on history and like not telling the truth in inverted commas, but telling his version of it, which feels a lot more interesting and, and fruitful to me than just like reporting the facts. This was my friend from 2008 till 2018.

And then we had a falling out, like whatever, for example. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think it’s nice. And there’s also space there for you to like, if you’re that way inclined, like trouble or disturb or like, it doesn’t even have to be necessarily sweet if you don’t want it to be. Yes. You could be mean about it. A hundred percent. Um, yeah, for sure.

I agree. This was a very like inviting and interesting work. I think, um, the space is a bit of a problem.

I think the space got in the way of enjoying it a little bit, but that’s okay. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it’s funny. Like it’s, it feels like a victory because we kind of went there to poke fun and then we ended up like with an actual episode on our hands. Yeah. Don’t get me wrong this time. I don’t know whether I like this place or I hate it, but I definitely like, I kind of want to go back and see what it’s like on a Saturday night.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Catch us there next. No, tonight we’re going. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s go back tonight. Yeah. We’ll go back tonight. Salted. Salted. All right. Fuck yeah. Great. Well, I think that’s all we can say about Hodge. Can it. Can it. Yeah. Put a lid on it. Put a fork in it.

What do they say on Vanity Project? They’re like, seal it up with a loving kiss. I love that. You guys should have a beer with us. Vanity Project. If you’re listening to this, DM us. I don’t drink beer anymore. You can have a heaps normal with us. No. Have a heaps normal with him. I want like brandy. And have a tequila sex sunrise on the beach with Matt.

Tequila sex sunrise. I’ll have a fun drink. You have a dour drink. I’ll have. My favorite cocktail at the moment is from a lovely place in Redfern called. And they do a simply delicious Negroni. He’s like, this is a trap.

It’s a good bar. It is a good bar. Don’t blow up my spot, bro. That’s my favorite bar in Sydney. Don’t blow up my fucking spot, bro. Beep it, beep it, beep it, beep it. Yeah, true. All right. All right. Let’s talk about the casino and then let’s wrap it up. Yeah. So the casino. I was kind of expecting to be like upset by scenes of like enslavement to machine and

like rampant spending and buying and all that stuff. And there was a little bit of that. We’re going to be real with you. But like mostly it was kind of like jolly good old fun and like kind of sick like to see, you know, like I’m just, you know, I’m not really a big gambler. So I didn’t. Yeah. Like I said, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

People crowded around the baccarat, like the actual physical cards and stuff like that was chill. That was cool. But everything else I was like, I was in the first camp. I think I was only not overwhelmed by the like human sadness of it because we were there at three and it wasn’t so busy. True. And it was less depressing than like the ones in pubs.

But ultimately there was like an enslavement, I think. I mean, yeah. To machine. I have to admit that it was there. Like there was a bunch of like fucking old dudes like falling out of their chair, like pressing the digital pokies again and again and again. Yeah. The one part that was actually pretty funny though was the, that was like a big, it was called

like the big wheel and it was kind of like a roulette, but like standing up and it was huge. And what was it? So like it spins and then as it like, as it slows down and builds the tension toward like the winning number, it’s like, you know, it’s got these like digital, like, did it.

Yeah. It’s going to be playing a little three no melody. Yeah. But it starts out going.

We took a picture. Play the, play the, run the tape.

When it’s like, you’re about, it’s about to give it to you and like, just keeps on going.

Like it’s like, there’s about 10 like final dings and then there’s three people playing it and like, no one wins. And then everyone’s like, oh, oh, yeah. Like there was a guy playing, like there was actually a photo of this like new display by Samsung, which was like a big curve that goes up.

Like it like starts at normal monitor size, but then they’ve just stretched that up and towards the ceiling. So you have to arch your neck to look back. And there’s a guy, there’s one guy sitting there playing a game of Thrones version. They’re like the pokies industry is like, bro, we got you 10 years ago on this tech. Like there’s like, it’s like a full screen, but like in vertical. And like, that’s the height of my fridge.

And it’s like, you literally have to watch a mini game of Thrones episode when you’re like, after you’ve lost. I just lost 50 bucks on this thing. And it’s like Daenerys. It’s like looking at me now. Oh my God. It was like, choose your egg. Choose your dragon egg. There’s a one guy in a row of empty kids.

All right. I like the show. Yeah. Yeah, man. I don’t fucking know. Yeah. It’s pretty hard to be there. It’s pretty unpleasant. Everyone could tell that we like weren’t really there for the same reason. But also no one cared. No, no one cared. But they were just like curious, like, hmm. Did you? I wasn’t even looking at people. I was laughing. I was staring at everyone.

I was like, wow. Yeah, some digital stuff that was pretty funny. Like digital roulette with like sexy. Yeah. Busty ladies. Yeah, totally. Busty ladies. And there’s a couple of people like playing the digital roulette. And they had like mad, like card counting. Yeah. They had a fucking regimen going on. They had a fucking system. Motherfuckers were keeping track of what’s going on.

That game is pure chance. Like there’s no system to rule out. Yeah, totally. There really isn’t. Yeah, I know. Yeah. It just doesn’t work like that. And then on the screen, it’s like the last 50 games that they had a pie chart of like whether it was red or black. And it’s like, my friends, we can’t look at it that way. So funny. Yeah. I don’t know, man.

Yeah. But I did notice like one thing is like, we definitely have this kind of like small town capitalism. Like we don’t like our capitalism is like trying to do, you know, like its best version of like American capitalism. And like, I think like fundamentally aside from like healthcare and stuff, like it is the

same thing. It feels the same. Like we do have it softer. Like we actually get a holiday and we have to work 40 hours. We have like, yeah, the healthcare thing is kind of big. We got it better. The healthcare thing is huge. Yeah. Fuck America, man. One of the things I noticed like, like recently, like being overwhelmed by capitalism or whatever is like the restraint, like the necessary restraint of like how much smaller things are

here. Like even like our biggest, scariest supermarket or like the biggest Coke you can get at Macca’s or like the fucking casino. Like it wasn’t even, do you know what I mean? It was like, because it’s so much smaller, it wasn’t able to give me that, like whatever you would call like that shuddering, sublime, like fear of it.

Like we were able to keep like, I don’t know if you noticed this, but you had a like quite a lot of like irony or not irony, but it’s almost this, like you’ll make like a quip, like you’ll notice something that is like quite sad or like dark or whatever. And you’ll just like, you’ll just make the joke and tie it up. And that’s like, it’s a kind of a very like contemporary, simultaneously, like a, like

I see, I see your trick and also, but it’s like, I accept it. Like I’m not mad. Like I just have to laugh kind of thing. Yeah. Like if you can’t, whatever, if you can’t win, you have to laugh or some shit like that. Yeah. And you were doing that a bunch today. Yeah. Like, I don’t know whether you noticed, but like it was happening a lot. I fucking can’t help myself.

Yeah. I really can’t. And that feels like that’s like kind of a way of, I don’t know. It’s like a coping mechanism, I think. Yeah. I think it’s, I think it’s a pretty normal thing to do in the face of this stuff. Like what can we do but laugh? You know? Yeah. I just realized I put all of the stuff we thought we were putting on the hung up gram

on my personal gram. So I’m not going to redo all that. It’s not really the tone I wanted to take with my personal Instagram. You see, I’m like trying to stay, trying to lay low there at the moment. For certain reasons. I don’t know if you want to need some random content on there. Yeah. It sucks. It’s not good. And it’s too late to delete it now. So just delete it, dude. We just, we play.

Literally delete it. So let’s wrap this shit up. Come on. Let’s, let’s seal it up. Put a bow around it. He’s done. He’s already finished. All right. Last one out. Just close the door behind you. Hung up. Do you want to say anything in summary? Cause you were just like looking at your phone going, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah.

I was making my point. Yeah. It was a good point. Sorry. I fully accept that. You’re just going to accept it. Yeah. All right. Cool, man. So everyone go Michael Reed Art Bar. Literally the hottest new building unlocked. They’re like two months old. It’s a brand baby new building. It says bar now open.

Cool. That’s a problem. We, you know, we love to see that. Yeah. Me and my friends. We love bars. We guys love bars. We go drinking. We love bars. Are we going to take a break from the podcast now? Should we take one? I think. Yeah. They’re going to be, there’s going to be episodes coming out. Listen, this, your mother and I still love each other very much.

What are you talking about? But these things. You just said we’re not taking a break. But home life is just going to be a little bit different for the next couple of months. You just said we’re not taking a break. We’re not taking a break, but we’re going to be sleeping in different bedrooms. No, we’re fucking not. So your mother will do the Instagram stories and I will do the recap posts.

Come on. That was a pretty funny. Damn. Oh shit. I’m the mother. All right. I got some shit to do now. So you got a date. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, fuck. All right. See you later. Bye bye. All right. Speak to you guys soon. Bye bye.

Bye bye.

Show notes

This saturday, we woke up in a gambling mood but we had pod due. So we headed to the cass to try hit a two for one multi at Michael Reid Art Bar We found ourselves in an immersive show including great work by Samuel Hodge