Australian pop-art icon Ben Frost has teamed up with mate Gerard Cranney to launch an online art portal. Selling directly from the interwebs are some original artworks and a variety of other Stupid Krap that’ll make you wish you weren’t having a personal financial crisis.

Unfortunately much of the stock is sold out, however if you hop you your hyperlinks you can still grab some stupidly seks Ben Frost coasters and other artworks and merch by Australia’s coolsie-chat street-art scene-makers.

http://stupidkrap.com/

Ben Frost coasters set 2. AUD$65

'Stacks' by Mark Drew. AUD$85. Edition of 50.

Mexican Eagle. Beastman. AUD$70

The World Bank’s Alternate Reality Game (ARG) Evoke is a self professed “ten-week crash course in changing the world” designed to “help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems”.

What is interesting about Evoke is the World Bank’s choice of an online Blog for game play participation. It’s difficult to see how their target audience will be able to publish real ideas for saving the world, when even the wealthier African country of South Africa has only 10% internet penetration.

Invoke, it’s successor, is an amusing piss-take on Evoke, and the game play a lot more simple: “To play, post a comment explaining your Nobel-Prize-winning idea for how the World Bank can successfully whitewash its international public image.”

http://urgentinvoke.com/

3rd Ward is pretty much the coolest art project in the world. Based in Brooklyn New York, 3rd Ward offers extremely cheap artist studio memberships, which include access to a huge range of workshop facilities including woodworking, computers, metalworks, and tonnes more, plus a FREE BICYCLE, and new subscribers to the unlimited plan who sign up before the end of April will also get a FREE MAC BOOK!

3rd Ward

Incredible op artefacts by Alex Spremberg.

Alex is represented by Karen Woodbury Gallery in Melbourne, Australia.

Perceptual Objects #1 - 52 2008 mixed media, acrylic on papier mache and bronze dimensions variable

You Were In My Dream is a new interactive, stop-motion installation, made by Melbourne animation stars Vanessa Sowerwine and Isobel Knowles. The installation version can be seen at Experimenta’s Utopia Now exhibition, currently running at Black Box until March 14, 2010. However, you can also check out the beautiful animation work, in which you yourself can star, by loading the online version.

Everything Van and Isobel touches to gold, and You Were In My Dream is no exception.

http://www.youwereinmydream.com/

http://www.experimenta.org
http://www.vansowerwine.com/
http://www.isobelknowles.com/

While not as permanent as the recently announced impending closure of Gallery 101, Bus Gallery, a CBD-based Artist Run Initiative in Melbourne, Australia, will also be closing this year.

Having benefited for the last nine years from the generosity of landlords Wesley Mission’s massive 90% discounted rent, Bus has creatively adopted to choose a new method of exhibiting, which will still avoid the high rental of a normal fixed gallery space.

As of May, Bus Gallery will aptly be exhibiting from a Bus!

They are still on the lookout for a cheap fixed address, but in the meantime shows will appear at changing locations.

The last exhibitions at Bus on Little Lonsdale open March 2nd.

Bus Gallery on Artabase.

GRIT 03 from andrew garton on Vimeo.

Mesmerizing video art by Andrew Garton, with soundtrack performed with Tokyo-based guitarist and noise / grind core producer, Kelly Churko.

The visuals are composites based on signage photographed in Baguio (Philippines), Hong Kong and Seoul (South Korea).

Top Shop have been busted making money off copyright designs by independent artists, and so far they’re doing nothing to pay royalties which should legally go to the copyright owners.

The first image is Top Shop’s ripoff of a design by Melbourne Artist Simon MacEwan (second picture).

More info in this write-up in The Age.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/faking-it-turns-out-to-be-a-hard-subject-to-brooch-20100227-pa8y.html

Simon MacEwan’s Lost In The Woods jewellery.
http://www.jewelsinthewoods.blogspot.com/

The National Gallery of Victoria is going from strength to strength at the moment, with new record-breaking numbers at their key exhibitions, and the current Ron Mueck, on show at the St Kilda Road location, will be no exception.

This incredible exhibition brings together the largest collection of Mueck works seen in his homeland.

His disturbingly detailed representations of people in both large and small scale force an inspection of the human form most of us would normally balk at. Upon entering the show, which one could suggest is curated in a linear fashion to replicate the physical processes of life and existence upon which his works often focus, girl (2006) brings you within inches of a 30cm-long, new born’s vagina, and other pink bits, boldly proclaiming the realities of the human form which our think of the children, pedophobic, moral-panic culture would normally rush to censor.

Thrown out of the womb we are then taken on a journey through states of physical being, are brought up close to, and then also weighed down by, the gravity of aging, and these spooky realisms are then abruptly disjointed by abstract interlocutions, further intensifying the reality of our own physicality.

Mueck comes from a background in film prop making, and actually worked on the set of Labyrinth. Filmic hyperreality permeates his style. It’s unsettling, and provokes a new sense of corporeality. An unmissable exhibition you won’t forget.

Packed with images and information about many of his works, the catalogue, at only $40, is also definitely worth the purchase.

Ron Mueck on Artabase

Ron Mueck Born Australia 1958 - A girl 2006 polyester resin, fibreglass, silicone, synthetic hair, synthetic polymer paint, second edition, artist’s proof 110.0 x 501.0 x 134.5 cm Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh Purchased with assistance from The Art Fund, 2007 © Ron Mueck courtesy Anthony d’Offay, London Photo: Antonia Reeve

Ron Mueck Born Australia 1958 - Dead Dad 1996–97 (detail) silicone, polyurethane, styrene, synthetic hair, ed. 1/1 20.0 x 38.0 x 102.0 cm Stefan T. Edlis Collection, Chicago © Ron Mueck courtesy Anthony d’Offay, London Photo : Michael Tropea

Ron Mueck Born Australia 1958 - Dead Dad 1996–97 (detail) silicone, polyurethane, styrene, synthetic hair, ed. 1/1 20.0 x 38.0 x 102.0 cm Stefan T. Edlis Collection, Chicago © Ron Mueck courtesy Anthony d’Offay, London Photo : Michael Tropea

Ron Mueck Born Australia 1958 - Woman with sticks 2008 (detail) silicone, polyurethane, steel, wood, synthetic hair, ed. 1/1 (170.0 x 183.0 x 120.0 cm) Private collection © Ron Mueck courtesy Anthony d’Offay, London Photo : Mike Bruce

Ron Mueck Born Australia 1958 - Woman with sticks 2008 silicone, polyurethane, steel, wood, synthetic hair, ed. 1/1 (170.0 x 183.0 x 120.0 cm) Private collection © Ron Mueck courtesy Anthony d’Offay, London Photo : Mike Bruce

Ron Mueck Born Australia 1958 - Two women 2005 polyester resin, fibreglass, silicone, aluminium wire, steel, wool, cotton, nylon, synthetic hair, plastic, metal, ed. 1/1 82.6 x 48.7 x 41.5 cm (variable) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2007 © Ron Mueck courtesy Anthony d’Offay, London

Ron Mueck Born Australia 1958 - Wild man 2005 polyester resin, fibreglass, silicone, aluminium, wood, horse hair, synthetic hair, ed. 1/1 285.0 x 162.0 x 108.0 cm McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park, Langwarrin Purchased by the Elisabeth Murdoch Sculpture Foundation and The Balnaves Foundation, 2008 © Ron Mueck courtesy Anthony d’Offay, London Photo Mark Ashkanasy

Ron Mueck Born Australia 1958 - Wild man 2005 (detail) polyester resin, fibreglass, silicone, aluminium, wood, horse hair, synthetic hair, ed. 1/1 285.0 x 162.0 x 108.0 cm McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park, Langwarrin Purchased by the Elisabeth Murdoch Sculpture Foundation and The Balnaves Foundation, 2008 © Ron Mueck courtesy Anthony d’Offay, London Photo Mark Ashkanasy

Lamington Drive has a special exhibition on this month of photographic stills from the set of Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are, shot by skate photographer Mike O’Meally.

Acknowledged as one of the most notable photographers in his field, in December 2006 O’Meally was invited to join the set of Where The Wild Things Are for one week, to capture Spike Jonze at his most playful and enchanted. The results being a captivating series of stills, signed and printed at 30×40 inches and 30×30 inches on Museum grade Moab Anasazi Canvas, archival for 300 years. Seven exclusive ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ Board Graphic Series signed by Girl Skateboard team will also be on show and available for sale.

Where The Wild Things Are on Artabase