You are invited to the latest exhibition by Nik Kamvissis featuring his pop-up puppets brought back from Puppet Island where he has been holidaying for the last 42 years.

Left Coast Festival presents

RUBBING

Opening reception
Tuesday 22 June
6 – 8pm

Exhibition daily 22 to 26 June

“Rubbing the visual languages of abstraction, comics and minimalism till they breakdown and vomit a new life that never lived before, starring in Re-Animator, with a new soundtrack by Fleetwood Mac while the whole pile succumbs to the Rubbing virus, to create anew out of its mind, again and again.”

“Hey listen, man! Rubber thunder pencil coloured searching for an answer has brought about many tears on these empty nights so we say goodbye my friends so long au revoir leaving you with some warm sunshine.”

Nik also plays in Australian noise rock band Menstruation Sisters. With an international following including the likes of Thurston Moore, Menstruation Sisters are more of a natural phenomenon than a musical group. Owing more to the sound of ice melting and eggs hatching than strummed guitars and pounded drums, the Sisters keep one ear on the ground and the other towards the atmosphere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZRC5YSkYxs

A selection of his record art from the group’s releases by Nik will also be shown on the night.

Nik’s visual work is a fascinating departure or point of return from his sound with the Sisters, powerful imagery from imagined and real places inside of the one and only mind and body of Kamvissis.

LEFT COAST FESTIVAL presents
Renato Grome
‘SELF-DISCOVERY CHANNEL – anonymous secrets & collected self-portraits’

Opening Tuesday 8th June | 6 – 8pm
Exhibition – 8th to 14th June 2010

Online gallery at http://www.raphaelledezeque.com/sedition_syd

A photographic journey by Raphaelle Dezeque

Opening night: Tuesday 25 may 2010

Raphaëlle Dézèque was born in lille, france in 1978. She is a photographer and graphic artist living overseas since 2007.

This is the story of the modern Chinese man. A stunning visual journey through the life of the middle and lower class working men of Central China. A brief look at life after Mao, where traditionalism and Communism meet modernism and capitalism. A story of a thousand years vividly expressed on the face of everyone of Raphaëlle Dézèque’s subjects, through her unique eye.

It was a richly emotive, visually engaging and unforgettable show. Thankyou to the amazing collaborators and everyone who crammed into the tiny barber shop.

Flutter Lyon – creative direction, tattoo illustration inception and reception, vox
Rhys Gordon – incredible tattoo artist
Nhomea – experimental sound noise beauty
Harriet Birks – super sharp live feed video
Paul Goldman – D.O.P, captivation of the experience
David Morris-Oliveros – photographic stillness
Michael Flynn – mighty technical direction
Steve Flynn – mighty technical production
Carli Johnston – costume design magnificence
Timmy Savage – shoes with ferocity
Michael Joyce – Sedition

You can see the full range of performance and behind the scenes images here at http://talsit.org

Festival curators Robyn Wilson and Michael Joyce, with artist Rose Vickers and one of her photos behind them. Photo: Dallas Kilponen

IT’S a fine spot for a haircut and a chat, but now an unorthodox barbershop is giving new meaning to the term “fringe festival”. A procession of experimental performers will step into the Darlinghurst store Sedition during a 50-day blitz of offbeat creativity. Anything but the norm is promised in the Left Coast Festival’s evening program, which covers live hybrid music, performance, dance, video, photography and beyond.

“There’s nothing that an artist can do in the shop that will shock the customers,” says the barber and artist behind Sedition, Michael Joyce. That’s because his years of plastering the walls with the pictures, slogans and other art of his sometimes searing social commentary – targeting religion, sex, war, government – has made them ready for anything.

Sedition’s curious mix of hairdresser, eccentric art gallery, performance space and music shop has given Joyce a vehicle to steadily build a reputation under the mainstream radar as an urban-bohemian creative hub. For a decade he has regularly opened his store after hours to experimental music little seen elsewhere in town. Its first Difficult Music Festival, on experimental music. drew enthusiastic responses in January, with intimacy part of the appeal.

Musicians like how “the crowd are, like, sixinches from their faces”, Joyce says. The store starts feeling crowded with more than 20 people.

Robvn Wilson, a self-described audio-visual performer who is curating the Left Coast Festival with Joyce, says it is “about pushingthe boundaries of the institution-driven Sydney art scene and shaking things up”.

Wilson, 26, is putting her body on the line. Tomorrow, in a barber-chair performance under her stage name Flutter Lyon, she will get herfirst tattoo set to a music soundscape and filmed by director Paul Goldman, best known forAustraliaii Rules and Nick Cave’s music videos.

During the festival, exploring “institutionalised freedom”, performances run nightly from about 6 to 8pm until June 30. Entry is free but donations are welcome. On the program are Fourplay cellist Peter Hollo, artists Rose Vickers, Nik Kamvissis and Madeleine Preston, and members of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra.

Seditious distinctive look has changed in the lead-tip. Joyce, 45, took all his art commentary down and left only bare white walls, telling people: “Guys, I’ve moved on.”

Adam Fulton

Sydney Morning Herald
Friday 14/05/2010

We would also like to thank Throw Shapes and photographer Lucy Parakhina for coming and capturing this special event.

You can check out the full collection here on the Throw Shapes site

Here are just a few, so beautiful!

We celebrated a stunning launch official of the Left Coast Festival on Wednesday 12 May. The evening also saw the opening reception of Rose Vickers’ ‘Flohawk’ a magnificent body of photographic works by an emerging artistic talent.

The event featured a huge turn-out, with the barber shop bursting at the seams with a beautiful vibe and hoards of our guests arriving in RED. We enjoyed magical live improvised classically-informed music by The NOISE, James Eccles and Ollie Miller, with a cathartic moment happening at 7pm with the uprising of tam tam gong climax by Miller.

We would like to thankyou everyone who came and shared in the happening.

Enjoy these photographs by David Morris-Oliveros.
You can see the full collection of images here on his site
And you should check out more of his lovely photographic work at talsit.org