Pop Up Shops, and Art Incubators: A New Way to Utilize Urban Space

Last year I had the chance to talk to Lawrence Gibbons, plus some other concerned inner-city cats, about the sad and sorry decline of Oxford Street, Sydney's original Golden Mile. I must have missed this story while I was away in my 10 years in Japan; when I left Sydney in 2000, Oxford Street was one of the trendiest parts of the city, and certainly one of the most colourful. Nearly every March I would cram in with the throngs on the side of the road, shirts off and hopping, as the Mardi Gras floats made their hectic way beneath the rainbow flags. Mardi Gras is still held every year, but it doesn't seem the subversive festival that it used to be... perhaps somehow it is a little tired? Or maybe I am the one who is tired of it! Furthermore, back in the day, Oxford Street was the place you picked up imported dance music, trance and techno, drum&bass; throbbing beats spilt up dark stairways, out of shopfronts on to the pavement, promising rare treasures. I am sure those record stores are still around, but surely they must be a little redundant now, in this age of the digital download? Who wants to spin vinyl these days, anyway, when there is a whole universe on your iPhone? Who buys clothes on Oxford Street, when the prices in Australia are so obscene? According to Lawrence Gibbons, president of the LOVE 2010 Business Partnership of local businesses, there has indeed been a retail flight from the Golden Mile, and a collapse in daytime trade. Oxford Street still rocks at night, perhaps even more so than ever... but it takes more than pubs and clubs to make a community, Gibbons reckons. Exacerbating the problem, the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) treated the Golden Mile like a thoroughfare, with cars and buses flying along it out of the city, to Bondi.

Oxford Street, Sydney's famous "Golden Mile" (Australia, 2005)

Sydney's Lord Mayor Clover Moore (the woman they should not ignore) agrees that Oxford Street is in a bad state, and said she sees art as being part of the solution. "It is a centre of intense night-time activity yet suffers from perceptions of a lack of daytime trade, imbalance in the business mix and safety issues," Moore said in a 2011 mayoral minute. "The intensity of daytime traffic, which includes more than 200 buses per hour, and exacerbated by RTA's removal of parking and creation of clearways, also severely impacts on Oxford Street as an attractive destination." Another mayoral minute put out in 2011 goes on to say: “Artists living and working in an area bring a vibrancy, diversity and bohemian feel. Due to the high cost of living, gentrification and increases in the rental market artists are being forced out of the City. The City of Sydney owns a number of buildings in the Oxford Street Cultural Quarter that may be appropriate for conversion into use for the creative industries as retail, studio and exhibition spaces.”

In line with this vision, the City has announced cheap rents for artists in 16 underused areas on Oxford Street. On top of that, enterprising creatives are colonising otherwise vacant spaces with a new style of retail, known as the "pop up shop". This year we have seen, springing up like beautiful weeds in a discarded parking lot, pop up cafes, pop up boutiques, a pop up Nike outlet, and now the most innovative of them all, a Pop-up indoor camp site. These shops and cafes and urban camping sites are not supposed to last forever; they are meant to be ephemeral.

There is something Hakim Beylike in this process of moving into the cracks and crevices, left empty by the retreat of High Capitalism, and creating something beautiful. Even especially if they are fleeting. Pop ups are transitory, nomadic, Vagabondist... just like me really! Now, I know a Nike outlet might not exactly satisfy Bey's vision of the Temporary Autonomous Zone, but I still think it is kind of cool. A lot cooler than parading around on Mardi Gras, anyway, pretending that you are changing the world!

Ayr, from the Air

The little town of Ayr and its distinctive peninsula, viewed from our Qantas flight yesterday home from Cairns, on the way to Sydney.

Ayr, from the Air (Australia, 2012)

Gravy Train

Flashy fast trains are not a feature of Australian life. Like the broadband speeds, or the service in the shops, trains are on the slow side here. Maybe that is the way they like things: clunky and oldschool. For some reason, Australians think you have to be poor to use public transport. This prejudice is reflected in the quality of the rolling stock, and the folks that roll upon them. In all of the Australia, the fastest and most prestigious passenger train is the XPT, which connects Sydney with the other eastern capitals, and attains a magnificent top speed of 160km per hour. Last month, I travelled with my Mum and Dad on the XPT to Maclean (return ticket: AUS$180), to attend the 60th birthday party of my "Auntie" Heather. Less than a year earlier, in the aftermath of the cataclysm there, we three had roamed northern Japan by shinkansen, and developed a taste for the finer aspects of rail travel. We have been spoiled, that is true, but we have been left with a reduced tolerance for excuses. And excuses, sadly, come all too often when travelling in Australia.



Not exactly a shinkansen, but it is the fastest train in this part of the world (Australia, 2012)

Maclean sits on a bend of the Clarence River, one of the numerous rivers of north-east New South Wales which cascade down from the volcanic plugs of the Great Dividing Range, to plunge into the frothy waters of the Pacific. To me the whole northern rivers region is a strange imposition of English rural idyll on a landscape which is borderline tropical, and ready to revolt. Maclean proudly promotes its Scottish colonial heritage, yet the town is ravaged by fruit bats. They hang from trees on the approaches to town, littering the streets with stinky sweet grind. If you could imagine what the United Kingdom would be like if it was overgrown with sugar cane and bananas, you would be on your way to understanding the NSW north coast. It is also, to be honest, one of my favourite places on Earth!

My parents enjoying the ride, on our way north (Australia, 2012)

Possibly due to the climate, the far north coast of NSW shelters a degenerate community of freaks, dropouts and IT geeks. Byron Bay is the capital of counter culture Australia, and marijuana is openly smoked on its streets. It is one of the magnets for the campervanloads of raucous young backpackers who ply the east coast every year, from Sydney all the way to Cairns, in the canefields of northern Queensland. On Woodford Island near Maclean there is a guy who lives in a tent on the hill and makes his own surfboards to sell. The whole vibe is chilled and famously laid back. Dependent on social security payments, and unable to afford their own cars, many folk rely on the XPT to get around. We were carrying quite a few of them as we rolled, wheeling through Wyee (33°10′55″S, 151°29′06″E), with its big Aboriginal reserve, Fassifern finding it as leafy as its name implied, and then right through the industrial heartland of the Hunter Valley, grassy and bare, steelworks and committee buildings adorned with signs like "Proud to be Union!"  Through Broadmeadow and its attendant rustbelt, coal trains ambling towards the sea, Taree (31°54′0″S, 152°27′0″E), Seftall and thence to Grafton. Or so the timetable inferred. You can never quite tell in Australia, however, there is always something to derail your plans. I settled back in my seat, and tried my hardest to relax. The couple seated behind me were in fine spirits, and from snippets of their conversation which carried forward, I was able to ascertain that they were on their way to Coffs Harbour, a large coastal resort renowned for its bananas. We used to go up there, when we was kids.

Paddock bashing, up the east coast! (Australia, 2012)

Sitting on trains in Australia, you are often privy to some colourful conversations, passengers are not at all afraid to hang their dirty laundry out. Teenage girls discuss their recent court appearance on mobile phones, without the merest hint of shame. Burglars plan their next heists.

There be critters up here! Wallaby, on Woodford Island, near Maclean (Australia, 2012)

We were all riding the gravy train together: deadbeats, dreadlocks, restless desperates, trailer trash, jailbirds and single mothers. Straying into a rare pocket of data connectivity close to the end of the trip, I was astounded to discover that daily AdSense earnings had surged, to a healthy ¥1647. Could this be a sign of the long-awaited recovery, I wondered. Was this because I added that canonical tag to Tamil Girls? I was unable to see whether it was a one-off fluke, or the result of an upswing in traffic. But it lifted me in a good mood, for the short vacation which was about to start!

How's Your Social Life? Notes Following Lotusphere 2012

Companies and organizations will be increasingly forced to embrace social business and import the 'wisdom of the crowd' into their internal operations after IBM's landmark Lotusphere 2012 conference, held last month, radically lowered the barriers to adopting collaborative technologies.

With "social media" the buzz term of the year, it makes sense that no enterprise can succeed socially unless it becomes a social business internally. A survey conducted by IBM last year found that, indeed, most companies were failing in their social media strategies. But as Gartner analysts have pointed out: "By 2014, refusing to communicate with customers via social channels will be as harmful as ignoring emails or phone calls is today." Failure is not an option for an enterprise that wants to survive, let alone to thrive. And despite the hype, media should be just one facet of an enterprise's social life; social business comprises the totality of its digital experiences, encompassing all the interactions between customers and staff. Social media is just the tip of the social business iceberg... (To read my complete report on how the social revolution can help your business, click here.)

Cattle Station Hopping, on Cape York Peninsula, Queensland

Last September I was privileged to visit Cape York peninsula, one of the world's last great wilderness areas at the very northern tip of Australia. I traveled there with my Dad, a keen birder who was on the hunt for some of the Cape's rare and endangered species, such as the golden-shouldered parrot and the red goshawk. I just went there because I thought it was a good place to explore, and because my Dad was footing the bill. We both got what we wanted: my dad saw his parrots and his goshawk, and I experienced life in a remnant of (Ab)Original Australia, the truest Outback of them all. One of the first things which struck me driving up the deteriorating road from Cairns, into the wild savannahs, was the peculiar pattern of land use here. In other parts of the world there are farms, forests, villages and cities; in Cape York there are cattle stations, Aboriginal reservations, national parks, and mines. In that order of frequency, with the odd tiny town or two thrown in, hundreds of kilometers apart. The cattle stations are as big as feudal principalities, and take hours to drive across. As in the American Deep South, land equals power, although the station owners don't really own the land, they merely lease it from the Government. For all intents and purposes, however, they act as owners, and you feel you are trespassers on their domains. At the center of every station sits the Big House, where dispossessed Aborigines (called the Bama up here) work as station hands or riding horses, which they are apparently very good at. Many stations have their own airstrip, making this one of the most propeller-happy parts of the planet (along with New Guinea, of course!)

Brahmin cow near the runway at Musgrave Roadhouse, on the Cape York Development Road (Australia, 2011)

Once a week (on Thursday) the mail plane takes off from the airport in Cairns, to visit 15 farflung Cape colonies. One of the properties it lands at is Violet Vale Station, near Lotusbird Lodge. Another property on the mail plane run is Strathburn Cattle Station, 550km from Cairns. There are also airstrips at Musgrave Roadhouse, Moreton Station, the Chuulangun Aboriginal community, Laura and Lakeland, and proper airports at Coen and Cooktown. SkyTrans flies from Cairns to Bamaga, Coen, Lockhart River, Edward River, Aurukun, Kowanyama, and other destinations in Australia and the south-west Pacific. I have heard that Bama can fly for free if they are attending land council meetings or family events or to get to a job up in the Cape, but I am not sure if that is true. I do know that locals can receive discounted tickets for AUS$99, which is significantly cheaper than the standard fare. If you are not a local, then it ain't that budget.

Cape York Birding: Day 1 (Gunning for the Golden-Shouldered Parrot)

Two months ago I flew to far-north Queensland with my father (pictured, directly below) to flee the southern winter and also spot some birds, which are his specialty and his big love in life. After hanging out in Cairns for a while we winged it further north up to Cape York, a vast peninsula riven by monsoonal rivers, saturated with tropical savannah, and timbered with millions of termite mounds, all of them artfully erected to avoid the blistering sun. Cape York teems, too, with birds: brolgas, jabirus, Papuan frogmouths are just some of the species to be found, palm cockatoos smart enough to use tools, and flocks of rainbow lorikeets so prodigious they literally blot out the whole sky. Of the 900 or so bird species that inhabit Australia, Dad and I identified more than 100 during the six days we spent up there, dodging the roadtrains, and crunching the corrugations. That was cool and all, but from the outset my father had his heart set on snaring two specimens which are rare, kind of endangered even: I'm speaking here of the red goshawk (Erythrotriorchis radiates), and the golden-shouldered parrot (Psephotus chrysopterygius). To hunt them we enlisted the aid of gregarious guide David (Chook) Crawford, of Close-Up Birding Adventures. Chook actually has a golden-shouldered parrot painted (second photo below) on his vehicle, and commands an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Cape. He knows its trails and creek beds like the lines of his hands, and he has plenty of entertaining yarns to tell (most of them custom-crafted for the campfire!) He is the original Crocodile Dundee, to be frank, and he did not disappoint us... he found us the parrots which were his emblem, and he found them fast enough (on the first day of our adventure to be precise!) That was the highlight of our Cape York birding expedition, day one: my father got his wish, well half of it; I meanwhile had the chance to explore a part of the world which is as exotic as it is isolated, and penetrate right up close to the northernmost tip of Australia. If we had gone just a little bit further, we would have reached New Guinea. Where, quite possibly, another Chook might have awaited us!

Dad watches brolgas fly over the Nifold Plain, on the Cape York peninsula (Australia, 2011)

Chook collected us early at the Bohemia Resort, which had become our base in Cairns. Despite my hangover I was excited to be getting out of town and traversing some fresh territory. Excited I was, but also apprehensive, as I have had enough panic attacks on the freeway in recent months to know that driving can be treacherous for me. We struck off across the verdant farmland north of Cairns, cutting through the canefields and lush country, heading for the nearby hills. I was seated in the back; my Dad, meanwhile, rode shotgun. I might not have known it at the time, but this was to be the first of many missions across the mountains, east to west, west to east, then east to west again, as the peninsula narrowed inexorably towards the tip. Chook confessed to being in something of a hurry, due to reports of bushfires in the vicinity of Musgrave Roadhouse, which was our beeline for the day. He wanted to get up there as fast as possible, in other words, in case the fire closed in. So, there wouldn't be much time for twitching on the way. We were immediately consoled with the promise of a healthy flock of golden-shouldered parrots flapping around in the bush near Musgrave. "He's up there right now," Chook said; "we'll find him." I wondered briefly why Chook had chosen to refer to the parrots as "he". They couldn't all possibly be males, could they? And even if they were, a flock of "he's" still constitutes a "they", surely?

Chook's Pajero, adorned with the endangered golden-shouldered parrot, sitting on a termite mound (Australia, 2011)

Ascending the Atherton Tableland towards Kuranda, Cairn's answer to Katoomba, I felt my anxiety climb... in direct proportion to our altitude. The reality of my plight had sunk in: this was to be a 1300km round trip all the way to the top of Australia and back, and the journey had only just begun. And there was no possible way I could pike out this late in the game! To take my mind off things I chatted to Chook, who turned out to be quite a captivating guy. He disclosed that he used to work as a guide at the nearby Mareeba Wetlands, then decided to start his own business chasing birds. He claimed that while birdwatching had something of a geeky reputation, he wanted to bring a bit of mystery and manliness into the equation, a bit of the Aussie larrikin spirit you might say. Glancing ahead at my Dad in his greygreen shorts and T-shirt and his goofy greygreen hat, I couldn't help but feel that the geeky birder stereotype might be here to stay, though, for a few more years at least. Best not to say so openly, I supposed... I might get shot down for blaspheming like that! So, I reclined in my seat, and tugged the handgrip by my shoulder, which for some reason soothed my spirits somewhat. Chook ploughed on, tearing up the Mulligan Highway through Kuranda to Mareeba (16°59′0″S, 145°25′0″E), where we paused to pick up some supplies and fuel. From the windows of the Pajero, Mareeba appeared to be a classic Outback Australian town, just pimped up with palms. While Chook filled the tank I wandered into the service station to buy a Coke or something like that, and maybe a bottle of water to hydrate myself. I would have loved to stay and have a look around, but that fire up north was moving in... there was no time to linger.

Just a quiet country street, in Mareeba (Australia, 2011)

So we rolled on, mauling Mt Molloy (population 273), Mt Carbine, Desailly, and finally landing on a prick on the map called Lakeland, where we halted for lunch. Somewhere along the way, my iPhone lost connectivity with the rest of the world, and the Internet died. I could no longer check my earnings from Google AdSense, or post updates to Twitter. I took plenty of photos though, of all the scenes that passed my window... most of them were blurred and rubbishy. My camera, nonetheless, was recording a more accurate depiction than my brain, which was clouded with fear, and _subpanic: derealization flattened my senses and my perceptions, rendering the world two-dimensional, like a screen. You might call it tunnel vision. I clutched the handgrip besides me, and tried my best to relax. Thankfully, traffic was light: a few grey nomads in their campervans, 4WDs coated with red dust, and the occasional piece of mining kit being hauled up to Weipa. Chook explained that campervans would be useless once we hit the corrugations; from that point on it was 4WD territory, 4WDs and road trains only LOL. Pineapple and peanut farms surged past along with the telegraph poles, and miles and miles of open bush. The sky was a euphoric blue.

Pausing to take in the view, on Route 81 (Australia, 2011)

Beyond the Cooktown turnoff, the road mounted a ridge, and presently we were presented a spectacular view of the surrounding country (16°46′0″S, 144°88′0″E). This was something worth stopping for, so Chook pulled up, and we all got out...

Dad checking his watch, in his goofy greygreen birding hat (Australia, 2011)

... to join a small scrum of sightseers. It was evidently a popular vantagepoint, and every conceivable surface (road, railings, cliff-face) was covered with graffiti. We paused to take in the view, which was righteous, nonetheless.

Across the canyon, looking east (Australia, 2011)

I was surprised how hot it was outside, in contrast to the air-con comfort of Chook's Pajero. It was something like 30°C (86°F), and getting hotter all the time.

Mysterious tree with yellow flowers, possibly a kapok, alongside an aluminium can (Australia, 2011)

Curiosity satiated, we repaired to the car, to resume our ride. The road raced on, across stony, bone-dry territory. Chook pointed out various birds as we sped, quite a few of them raptors. He declared that you could tell how interesting a raptor was by the way it flew... those with upturned wings were the ones worth watching. When we arrived at Lakeland Roadhouse, I noticed some kind of bird of prey was circling the plains below. Its wings, disappointingly, were lowered. "Probably a whistling kite," Chook remarked.

Welcome to Lakeland Roadhouse (Australia, 2011)

We sauntered inside and ordered lunch. Chook recommended the house hamburger. I was about to discover that dining on the Cape revolves around hamburgers, steak and toasted cheese sandwiches (which they serve with cute little pickles here.) My burger was good, though; I gobbled it down, then paced around the roadhouse for a while, trying to keep my anxiety at bay. Something about being trapped in a restaurant ramps my blood pressure up: it might be the acoustics, the loud voices, all the cutlery clanging together? Chairs being dragged over tiled floors don't help one bit.

The sign says $2 for a shower at Lakeland Roadhouse (Australia, 2011)

I took a note how much it cost to use the bathroom. One day when I am traveling across Australia on my own this information might be useful, as raw data in an algorithm (or a comparison chart). The bathroom reminded me of a dream I had sometime, somewhere... was that the dream I was over there in the Congo, fleeing with the refugees down that rust-red jungle highway? Yes, that might have been the one.

There was a small gifts shop inside the roadhouse (Australia, 2011) 

I explored the small giftshop, with its local paraphernalia...

On to the dirt (Australia, 2011)

... and then, gratefully, it was time to bail. Leaving Lakeland, we abandoned the Mulligan Highway, and picked up the gauntlet offered us by the Peninsula Development Highway. More a rut than a road, the highway tailgated what remained of the former telegraph line, built in colonial times to connect Brisbane with its farflung northern domains. Like the colonial telegraph, the highway was decaying, disintegrating, and returning to the bush; before too long bitumen dropped away, to be replaced by rutted corrugations. Right about this moment I realized: this is the real Outback, right here, this is what it is all about! Termite mounds lifted themselves from the earth, the first of them short and scrappylooking, spaced far apart, but as time flew by they grew larger and more confident, some of them fashioned like the smashed chimneys left behind by country housefires, others like miniature Ulurus. Roadtrains, those apex predators of the Australian road, emerged from the woodwork, dragging their own dust storms in their wake. Chook withdrew to the side of the road whenever one passed, allowing it plenty of room. "The road's all yours, big boy," he would said, or words to that effect. And I would ask myself, again: Why does everything up here get called a "he"?

Road etiquette of the North: the small give way to the large (Australia, 2011)

As Chook disclosed, this was the road etiquette of Cape York: the small give way to the large. And there are none larger out here than the roadtrain, 100 tonnes of torment, 22 wheels of whiplash and whiteout. Chook implored us all to wind up our windows as it barrelled towards us. The Pajero rocked, side to side, as the shockwave hit, and then we were splattered with sand and soil. Looking around, I noticed that all the roadside trees and bushes were smeared red with this kind of abuse.

Throwing out the anchor, and battening down the hatches (Australia, 2011)

We were entering a strange world, a Gulliverian domain where everything was larger than life: bugs, men, trucks, even the farms which carved up the land here. The farms, actually cattle stations, were the size of European principalities, and most of them boasted airstrips. One of the principalities was called Artemis Station, and it was on this sprawling property that Chook had last sighted golden-shouldered parrots. We dropped in at the homestead to see if they were still around. The station owners did a lot of work helping the local parrot population, Chook informed us. They monitored their movements, and their numbers, and reported it all to the relevant authorities.

Arriving at Artemis Station (Australia, 2011)

Inside the house, I felt like I had stepped back in time, into the rustic décor of my wheat belt youth. The lady of the house put a cuppa on and we talked to the Boss about various topics, most pressingly the bushfire at Musgrave. It was moving in fast, our host confided... in fact, it seemed to be gunning straight for the roadhouse herself! Alarming stuff, but the Boss had a piece of good news, too, something that lifted our spirits: the birds were here, he divulged, and naturally we could visit them right away. Bullseye! I thought. This is how the west was won! But first there was a coffee or a cup of tea to drink, a coffee or a cold beverage, and a biscuit or two to chew upon. I stood up the whole time, fighting the urge to panic, wishing we could all just get on with it, and stampede out the door. Standing up always renders me restless, for whatever reason... it gives me vertigo, not just the fear of heights kind, but the crazy headspin version too. I suppose I could have just sat down on the nearest chair, but that might not have been polite. And it would not have been the knightly thing to do, in this land of He-Men, and He-Women...



Looking for golden-shouldered parrots, on Artemis Station (Australia, 2011)

Eventually we were back outside roughroading across rugged terrain, the Lady of the House in her vehicle, us bringing up the rear in the Pajero. The spirit of the chase had finally gripped me, and I was fondling a pair of binoculars excitedly, in expectation of an imminent glimpse. The Lady screeched to a halt, so suddenly we nearly rammed her. This was evidently a significant vantagepoint, so we all scurried out... to join about a dozen golden-shouldered parrots frolicking in a clearing. Yatta! I rejoiced, lifting my binoculars for a closer look. We've found the birds. Only problem was, my Dad couldn't see them, not unaided anyway. By the time we pointed them out to him, and his atrophied brain had registered the  headings and coordinates, processed all this information, and relayed appropriate instructions to his eyes and limbs, the birds were gone, a puff of brilliant feathers, a burst of green on green. For a moment it seemed this whole expedition would be in vain, like Burke and Wills' quest for the Gulf of Carpentaria... doomed by a lack of vision. I could sense Chook's frustration: you can lead a horse to water, but how do you make him drink? Some kind of elegant solution was called for. Thankfully, Chook provided one. Retreating to the Pajero momentarily, he returned with a tripod-mounted scope, fitted with a video camera display. Now all he had to do was focus on the parrots, and my Dad could stand behind him, enjoying a close-up view on the screen, without needing to make any fiddly moves. Up close and personal, that's the way Chook rolls. My Dad, suffice to say, was in twitcher heaven.

Remnant of the old telegraph line, at Musgrave Roadhouse (Australia, 2011)

The day was dragging on, and the westering sun had turned the bush a peculiar shade of burnt sienna. I was looking forward to getting a beer, and putting my feet up. Fortunately it wasn't that much further to Musgrave Station (14°46'50"S, 143°30'14"E), our deadline for the day. Located halfway between Cairns and Weipa, 570km south of The Top, Musgrave Station sits atop the aforementioned telegraph line, remnants of which are still visible, as are other interesting relics...

Posting box, beneath the rafters at Musgrave Station (Australia, 2011)

... such as the grave of Samuel Thomas, a pioneer and local identity, lying in a dusty corner of the carpark.

The grave of Samuel Thomas, killed in 1919 (Australia, 2011)

As late as the 1930s there were Aborigines running around in the bush, Chook admitted. Musgrave served as a fort as well as a telegraph relay station in the frontier war. Thomas was apparently a victim in one of the skirmishes. A victim or a perpetrator, it is always hard to tell.

Waiting for a beer, and then maybe a steak or hamburger (Australia, 2011)

Finally, after a long day rushing around, clutching my handgrip, biting my tongue, etc, I could crack open a cold VB, and kick back. Watch some Imparja TV at the downstairs bar, as a harvest moon rose in the clear night sky... who could ask for more than that? A hot shower, and then the chance to fall asleep in a cabin with the air-con on, while wallabies jumped around in the dark outside.

Shine on harvest moon (Australia, 2011)

Only problem was that bushfire closing in just over the airstrip. We could see it after nightfall, an ominous orange glow on the horizon. And if we survived that, another day of gunning around the bush awaited me. Because while Dad could cross the golden-shouldered parrot off his bucket list, there was still one significant critter left to go. Whether he would be able to see it unaided or no, that was the question.

Pham Luc, North Vietnam's Soldier-Painter, and Living Legend

I received an email yesterday from a certain Mr Phuc (of Vietnam Pathfinder Travel) in Hà Nội which read: "I found your website and contact at Crowded World and would like to sell some paintings of Pham Luc Artists in my collection (at attached files). Pham Luc artist live in Hanoi, Vietnam. He is around 70years old now and some of my paintings bought from him that was painted during Vietnam war time (60-70)."

Nude with flowers, by Pham Luc (courtesy Vietnam Pathfinder Travel)

In a land which reveres patriots, Phạm Lực occupies a particularly hallowed position among the pantheon of heroes: he served in the North Vietnamese army as a painter-propagandist, using art not just as a witness, but as a weapon. That said, his paintings don't appear particularly militaristic: nudes, still lifes and pastoral idylls are among his most common motifs. While the Americans and other counter-revolutionary forces that he confronted brandished state-of-the-art cameras to record their side of the war, Phạm had to make do with good old-fashioned paint, canvas and brush. When canvas dried up, he reverted to painting on burlap rice sacks, as one foreigner who visited his home in Hà Nội remarked. "The paintings from the war are rat-eaten and shrapnel-ridden but embody an irrepressible spirit," the visitor wrote. "They are darker in composition and content than his later works, which are equally fine. The painting which I call Forbidden was painted in 1974 at the close of the war. This painting of a beautiful woman during wartime conditions was against socialist dictum of the time. Phạm Lực hid the work for over a decade before he could display it." (Note: this is not the nude painting depicted above, which I received from Mr Phuc, but there is doubtless some resemblance between the works. It all goes to show that despite being a nationalist and patriot, Phạm was no stooge. In his mind, perhaps, the revolution could never be curtailed by dogma, or realpolitik. As Trotsky famously proclaimed, the revolution should be eternal! But that is my take on the story, so it ought to be disclosed as such.)

Flowers with lamp, by Pham Luc (courtesy Vietnam Pathfinder Travel)

The picture above is a still life, one of the literally thousands of paintings Phạm Lực has produced over the years. If you are in Hà Nội and have the chance, you can visit the artist at his home, and perhaps even have your portrait painted by him. He has become something of a celebrity in the northern art scene, something of a living legend. Ambassadors from other countries own his works.

Pastoral landscape by Pham Luc (courtesy Vietnam Pathfinder Travel)

The landscape above has something of a pastoral dimension. As with the two other paintings featured on this page, it is available from Vietnam Pathfinder Travel in Hà Nội. If you represent an artist or gallery in Vietnam and would like to promote your works on this site, please let me know. Leave a comment below, contact me on Facebook or Soundcloud or YouTube or Quora or Twitter or whatever, or just send me an email. I am always keen to make new friends!