CASHMERE IF YOU CAN / SERIES-7

C.I.U.C. S-7

Gertrude Contemporary (Studio) 

200 Gertrude St,

Fitzroy, Victoria.

Dates: December 2013

Artists: 

JOHANNA NORDIN

ALANNA LORENZON

BENJAMIN WOODS

SARAH crowEST

KRISTEN PHILLIPS

FEDERICO JONI

JAMIE BOYS


After 7 years the CASHMERE IF YOU CAN project has come to an end. The last installment was recorded informally at Gertrude Contemporary in Sarah crowEST's studio. The structure of the Initiation Ceremony, (to welcome our last member JOHANNA NORDIN) pushed the limits of comfortable silence between familiar acquaintances and the awkward silence of strangers in a confined area getting to know one another. Abstract parallels and unified collectives were juxtaposed to create a spacial galaxy of hybrid nuances. Body geometrics were observed and recorded in order to investigate the Cosmological Principle. Origin, structure and development come in many forms and only when we began to reflect on our own evolution and the lessons learnt from a project such as this, we began to understand the attractive and repulsive forces of life on more subtle levels. The dynamics of comfort and tension were tested leaving everyone to contemplate the stronger and weaker electromagnetic systems that originate from the same fundamental force. This project started  with 1 and ended with 7, yet the 7 completed the project as 1. With completion comes the ethereal reflection of times past and things to come and the concept of time in relation to what has been created and what already exists.

CASHMERE IF YOU CAN / SERIES-6

C.I.U.C. S-6

C3 Contemporary Art Space

Abbotsford Convent,

1 St Heliers St,

Abbotsford, Victoria.

Dates: 29 Aug - 16 Sept 2012

Artists: 

ALANNA LORENZON

BENJAMIN WOODS

SARAH crowEST

KRISTEN PHILLIPS

FEDERICO JONI

JAMIE BOYS


With Marcin Wojcik leaving the group last year we had a double initiation to perform this year. We welcomed ALANNA LORENZON and BENJAMIN WOODS to the group and with the stage set in the dungeon-esk confines of C3 gallery. The initiation ceremony flowed with intensity.

This year we group focused on the 36-42 year old age groups.

Artworks explored, 
life expectancy, 
                           career expectancy, 
                                                            reflection on one's full potential, 
                                                                                                                   theft, 
                                                                                                                           stolen identity,
empires being destroyed,
                                            anarchy, 
                                                           sexual understanding,
                                                                                                  hope,
                                                                                                            and paranoia.
   

THE THOUSANDS / OSCAR SCHWARTZ / SEPTEMBER 2012

http://thethousands.com.au/melbourne/out/c3-august-openings/

BEAT MAGAZINE / TYSON WRAY / AUGUST 2012

CASHMERE IF YOU CAN / SERIES-5

C.I.U.C. S-5

SEVENTH Gallery

155 Gertrude St,

Fitzroy, Victoria.

Dates: 28 Sept - 15 Oct 2011

Artists: 

MARCIN WOJCIK

SARAH crowEST

KRISTEN PHILLIPS

FEDERICO JONI

JAMIE BOYS

The Cashmere group like to do things a little differently. Even though our main concept is based around featuring 7 artists, in 7 galleries, over 7 years and each year focusing on 7 year cycles of life, this year we presented the 5th series at SEVENTH Gallery.

This year we welcomed MARCIN WOJCIK to the group to up the ante and increase the competitive edge. The age group we explored this year was 29 - 35 year olds, a period for weddings, children, promotions and a chance to stake your claim on the world, however we will be taking it one step further exploring ALIEN CHANNELING, OCCULT BRAND WORSHIP, ORGIES, DIGITAL MOUNDS and ICE CLIMBING.

The bar has been raised, it's time to prove survival of the fittest.

Federico Joni, Interview with Gustav Trolldahl, Art and Text, 1999

THE THOUSANDS / SEPTEMBER 2011 / KATE MOSH

http://thethousands.com.au/melbourne/out/cashmere-if-you-can-s-5-opening/

CASHMERE IF YOU CAN / SERIES-4

C.I.U.C. S-4

TROCADERO Art Space

Level 1, 119 Hopkins St,

Footscray, Victoria.

Dates: 20 Oct - 6 Nov 2010

Artists:

SARAH crowEST

KRISTEN PHILLIPS

FEDERICO JONI

JAMIE BOYS

This year Sarah CrowEST was performatively initiated on opening night 23 October via the Cashmerie Sacred Initiation (C.S.I.) and thus became the fourth member of the group, joining her colleagues, Kristen Phillips, Federico Joni and Jamie Boys in contending for their own piece of success. C.I.U.C. S-4 (yrs 22-28) was bigger and better than previous shows – the opening night antics were pitched higher than before, the artworks were crasser, more desperate in tone, and more diverse. Channelling, debauched limousine rides, art fame/failure and a fragrance launch was all on offer. 

The Initiation Ceremony featured the electronic noise band KNOB, who played up a storm, developing a mysterious dramatic backdrop to the performance.

Electronic noise band KNOB

Sarah crowEST For this exhibition crowEST proposes to channel a successful, young, male, New York artist who she admires for his capacity to tread lightly upon the earth and probe the mystery and malleability of experience. Gedi Sibony has a talent for making materials levitate although sometimes, using peripheral vision works best. An artwork, seen out of the corner of an eye, can spark curiosity and raise suspicion. CrowEST cannot promise that her work will look anything like his because where he is poetic and spare, she is mute and lumpen and where his arrangements are barely there, hers are dense and almost always too much. We will see how far crowEST can drift in his direction. She has aspirations.

Kristen Phillips Art Drive: As a way to mark the “beginning of her artistic maturity”, emerging artist Kristen Phillips has filmed herself and her artist friends getting drunk in a stretch hummer limousine. In Art Drive, they set off into the sunset to enjoy their art star life, if only for 3 hours. Obscenity and excess is the main driver for this work, as is made evident in the gaudy interior of the H2 Hummer limo, which features a full bar, wireless Karaoke and a disco floor complete with twinkle lasers and strobe lights. Here we may feel we are entering the fantasy world of bling culture, but in a version where chunky gold medallions are replaced by mini versions of Marcel Duchamp’s iconic urinal readymade.

Phillips is interested in celebrating the actual or, indeed, readymade reality of your average struggling artist by humorously capturing them in the position of their antithesis; an art star rolling in the obscenity of an oil guzzler.

Federico Joni Is a project that artist Jonas Ropponen has been working on for the past four years. As a pseudonym, Federico Joni has provided an outlet for alternative artistic expression for the artist. The moniker is derived from a highly skilled and charismatic, Italian art forger from the early 20th century - Icilio Federico Joni, but the resemblance stops there. Ropponen’s Joni is an unwitting connoisseur of trash and bad art. Found objects, cut-outs from gossip magazines and bird droppings have been utilised over the past few years in making his work. This year Federico Joni presents some of the worst paintings you’ll ever encounter. Painting onto found corrugated cardboard with his left hand and using the cheapest of paints, the colour blind artist explores his profound insights into impending apocalypse, disappointments with Australian politics, the Death of God and general bitterness at the art world for non-recognition of his genius.

Jamie Boys This year sees the release of the long awaited cologne, ASPIRE by C.I.U.C. A fragrance created by Jamie Boys that aims at the discerning gentleman who has it all and wants more. Presented as a promotion stand with looping adverts and sample bottles, Boys explores the seductive powers and influential strategies of corporate logo branding used by advertising companies to market a way of life. By using the cinematic formula’s of well known fashion designers to create fragrance commercials, Boys examines the delusional perception of beauty and power associated with status.

THREE THOUSAND / 18th OCTOBER 2010 / KANE DANIEL

www.threethousand.com.au/out/cashmere-if-you-can-series-4-exhibition-opening/

ART MONTHLY / EDITION #234 / OCTOBER 2010 / Pg.61

CASHMERE IF YOU CAN / SERIES-3

C.I.U.C. S-3

BLINDSIDE

Level 7, Room 14, Nicholas Building,

37 Swanston Street,

Melbourne, Victoria.

Dates: 5 - 21 Nov 2009

Artists:

KRISTEN PHILLIPS

FEDERICO JONI

JAMIE BOYS

This year's exhibition looked at 15-21 year olds, where the offspring are coming of age, gaining independence and acquiring excessive amounts of wealth. The exhibition also looked at the parallel's associated with the pressures placed on artist's to "make it". Artist's are, of course, not alone on this journey - the pressure to 'be someone' is a major Western narrative and Progress is probably the single most influential idea to be fostered in the West 1. In many ways the journey of the artist is not dissimilar to any other career within a capitalistic context, parallel's the growth of a human from cradle to grave with the cultural initiations that are interspersed at various times throughout life.

Kristen Phillips used the history and significance of objects to form a commentary on familial and social pressures imposed on the young. Her small sculptures are three dimensional collages. Moulds were taken from family antiques as well as everyday objects such as balls and soft furnishings with the resultant wax impressions rearranged, melded and cast in bronze. The mysterious intent that is embedded in the raw physicality of these artful conglomerates is, therefore, not distinguished from that which inheres to the everyday objects we feel compelled to consume. Sitting on plinths like a teenager’s collection of sporting trophies, these pop-rococo works nod to the shifting value of an object and its associated memories over time.

Federico Joni describes his work, Easy Target, as collage installation yet not much gluing takes place and the installation factor is of a provisional kind. The work comprises of cut-outs of heads of celebrities sourced from magazines loosely placed on a shelf. Peppering the glossy surface of the cut-outs are droppings from his budgerigar. The images spent some time accruing their markings whilst in the form of cage litter tray lining, further bird shit embellishments were gleefully orchestrated by the artist. Easy Target can be seen as a meditation on the removed yet often passionate relationships that we form with celebrities and pets alike. Having undergone only slight alteration from being bird cage lining Joni’s work resonates with Massimillano Gioni’s insight that “Collage is a dirty medium, infected as it is by waste” and that it “appropriates residues and leftovers, trafficking with what is deemed to be valueless”2.

Jamie Boys is fascinated with the potential eccentric socialization of people who have inherited masses of wealth and luxurious lifestyles. Boys presented a large, seven sided, cut gem-like structure lined with fake-fur serving as an elaborate mounting device for seven manipulated photos of young people surrounded by a world of wealth in his installation Heir, Heir! The young heirs are depicted with their faces obscured by absurd mask-like compositional elements that allude to the fantasies of haute couture design. What are these fictional rich-kids hiding? Perhaps, their anxieties about being written out of the will or the pressure to remain anonymous in a world perpetually interested in the minutiae of their private lives. Maybe the masks are just blatant displays of excess. Above the main body of the installation a rotating spoon of the proverbial silver variety hangs and directs visual traffic around the contraption lending a low level hum of anxiety to Heir, Heir!

1 Nisbet, Robert. History of the Idea of Progress, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick NJ,1994. p.4.

2 Gioni Massimiliano, "It's Not the Glue That Makes the Collage," in Collage: The Unmonumental Picture, ed. New Museum, Merrell, NY, 2007. p.11.

* Information extracted from Jonas Ropponen's catalogue essay 2009.

THE AGE / 6th NOVEMBER 2009 / EG / THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE / ROHAN TROLLOPE / Pg.3

THE AGE / 6th NOVEMBER 2009 / EG /

THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE / ROHAN TROLLOPE / Pg.3

MELBOURNE'S CITY WEEKLY / 5th NOVEMBER 2009 /

DIARY - WHAT'S ON / GROWING PAINS / KATHRYN KERNOHAN / Pg.8

THE AGE / 4th NOVEMBER 2009 / THE ARTS -

SPACE VISUAL ARTS / PENNY MODRA / Pg.16

CASHMERE IF YOU CAN / SERIES-2

C.I.U.C. S-2

OFF THE KERB

66b Johnston St,

Collingwood, Victoria.

DATES: 12 Sept - 10 Oct 2008

Artists:

FEDERICO JONI

JAMIE BOYS

C.I.U.C. S-2 featured as part of the 2008 Melbourne Fringe Festival.

This year's exhibition explored the behavioral foundations of 8-14 year olds and the power of the new commercial market for "TWEENS" creating and satisfying their every desire. Boys presented affirming slogan t-shirts such as "I'M TOTALLY GORGEOUS" for ten year old girls, to images of Jean Bennet Ramsey, (the child model who's life came to an unjustly end) to extravagant gold chained skipping ropes. Joni on the other hand displayed a collection of make-shift musical instruments constructed from objects and rubbish found around the house such as a shovel, a spirit level, to kids toys, transformed into make-shift guitars. Joni also featured a series of collages depicting elaborate guitars constructed from images such as designer suitcases, security locks and pearls. This year saw the first "Cashmere Sacred Initiation" ceremony where Federico Joni was inducted into the Cashmere collective. (See video below)

MELBOURNE COMMUNITY VOICE / 17th SEPTEMBER /

ART MATTERS - CASHMERE IF YOU CAN S-2 / LUCY ELLIOT / Pg.18