12_07_2011
11:55 Spent a bit more time in Chelsea looking at gallery’s, the area is amazing in the quantity of spaces it has, the guide I picked up has over 100 gallery’s listed just in the Chelsea arts area which is only a small part of the suburb. And all of the work I saw was of a very high standard. But all of the spaces I have seen are all very commercial and dripping in money which doesn’t really float my boat. And all of the spaces that are more the Artist Run Space, not for profit are all closed or keeping strange hours because of the summer. Which has been a bit of a bummer, I certainly picked the wrong time of year to check out the gallery’s in NYC. But I did get to get a tour of ABC No Rio today thanks to connections that John made during his road trip across America. ABC No Rio was set up as a community arts and activism centre in 1980. The current building was amazing, ramshackle in disrepair and well lived in. The computer room was more like a museum of Apples with one pc. All systems that were donated or scavenged. The walls were covered with graffiti and art works that had been installed for years. And I believe that they had one payed worker at some stage. It hasn’t been sanitised yet, but that is very soon to change. It soon is to be demolished and rebuilt as the current building so run down that it wouldn’t be worth renovating. It is a real shame that they have to upgrade and clean up. But it also seems like a necessary evil as the current building and facilities are going to not last all that much longer. It made me wonder what Footscray Community Art Centre must have been like in its early days. I wonder if it was as down to earth and dirty as this place. I imagine there would have been fewer meetings. :) There was even a cat like at Footscray and Brun http://www.abcnorio.org/about/about.html
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AuthorArtist, curator, teacher. Archives
June 2012
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