A Night At the Still Life Art Show

Jan

A Night At the Still Life Art Show

Words: Faith Thurnwald
Photos: Faith Thurnwald

I start the day a little dusty, I the victim of the $10 bottle of wine sitting in the recycling bin. Wine: the culprit and the cause of me cutting my finger while cooking dinner, and dying my hair dark. Sauvignon blanc, you’ve done it again. Saturday rolls around, with Friday nights headache hanging on. I take all the necessary measures to prepare for an art show; a shit load of eyeliner that I inevitably fuck up while drinking champagne.

The eyeliner is on, and an embarrassing amount of champagne is consumed, we’re ready! We catch an Uber to A2Z’s art show. It’s their third event together, and like the others, it doesn’t disappoint. We arrive to some smooth jazz, to compensate for the explosion of colours reverberating from their walls. The show is held at Aleja and Zaide’s (A2Z) humble abode. A genius combination: backyard bogan meets avant-garde art show. The art consist of still life duels between the hosts themselves, with painted pieces changing with the artist’s perception. Zaide paints in his signature style: a sunflower, or an apple, where once were still, now melt into his heavy heavenly world. The still is now surreal, an ecstatic escapism in motion.

Aleja’s art operates in polarity, her still life’s remain true to their nature; still. However they distill an emotive quality, a reality more real, more personal than the one we inhabit. Everyday objects; an ashtray or a vibrator (rabbit, of course) become something more; projecting a world where familiar comforts open an emotional discourse.

The night goes on as it always does. All the usual suspects are there: me, myself and my drunken alter ego. We work as a team, stealing ciggies and negging men as a form of flirtation, no wonder I don’t get laid. Now, I may not know how to flirt with men, but I do with the black out, I dare say we’ve even been to second base a few times, or was it third? I don’t remember. So the night gets a little blurry.

At the party’s peak Aleja and Zaide give a speech, it takes a minute to rally everyone clapping and yelling ‘oi’, eventually does the trick. To paraphrase the end of the speech poorly, it went a little like this…‘There’s an insane amount of alcohol, stay and fucking party, appreciate the art, appreciate each other, thank you so much’, or a quote from a little later when looking for a hat to draw the raffle from, Aleja eloquently screamed, ‘Where are all the fucking hats’? A question I find myself asking quite frequently.

Another successful art show for A2Z comes to an end. We pile into a maxi and head home. We attack our tickle trunk (dress up box) and for the rest of the night it’s card games, corsets and cowgirls.