For those who are interested here is the six month statistical breakdown for my blog. I've had 4,130 visits of which 2,393 are new visitors and 1,737 are returning. There have been 7,300 page views from people living in 80 countries. 52% of visitors to my blog came through Google, 17% came directly to my blog, 12% were from blogger.com and finally 10% of readers were from Facebook referrals, the remaining percentage unspecified, though I suspect that some come from academia.com, which is kind of like Facebook for academics, except no-one posts comments after your 'update'.
I'm happy that people have read writing that I never thought would be read, such as my Homage to Becket, which I wrote several years ago and was planning to turn into a performance piece under Steve Middleton's directorial skills. It didn't eventuate because the writing was written out of my memory of confused feelings about my long dead mother and I was too emotional in my delivery, also, and this is closer to the truth, I'm not an actress and couldn't really take direction from Steve, who, although more recently has worked on animations for Stelarc's robots, was, for many years an Australian film-maker and television director.
The piece on Visual Poetry and Mail Art was from an unsuccessful research proposal I made to the State Library of Victoria.
Although Murray McKeich asked me to write about his art, which I was happy to do, I was a little upset since, at that time Ashley Crawford had already published an excellent piece on Murray's work and the possibility of having my piece published was greatly reduced. Over 100 people have now read my review.
Likewise, the review I wrote of Juan Ford's exhibition was not accepted by a leading art magazine, but here, on the blog it has had many readers. Juan Ford has been shortlisted for the Basil Sellers Art Prize this year, which will be held at the Ian Potter Gallery from August to November. The other finalists are: Vernon Ah Kee, Eric Bridgeman, Phillip George, Tarryn Gill & Pilar Mata Dupont, Ponch Hawkes, Grant Hobson, David Jolly, Richard Lewer, Noel McKenna, Glenn Morgan, David Ray, Gareth Sansom and Tony Schwensen. That should be an interesting exhibition ~ art and sport!
My review of Domenico de Clario's Cathedral installation for the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award was read by half a dozen editors from leading art magazines ~ they all had great praise for the piece, but none would publish it. Ah! the politics of the art world ~ as Ripley said in Alien Resurrection 'Who do I have to fuck to get off this ship!'. Well, strangely enough, with this blog I don't have to get into bed with anyone ~ I can just write what I want, and I like that.
Having said all that, this blog was never intended to be only a publishing opportunity or ways around having to deal with the personalities and politics of the art world, quite the contrary. I was initially motivated (and still am) to create a space that could encompass aspects of my life that could be made into an artwork of sorts ~ a combination of texts and images ~ a fusion of the creative and academic ~ a hybrid form that draws the familiar and strange together, like soft fabric with loose threads ~ drawn inwards, upwards, sidewards to cradle ideas. Sometimes the connectors strong, at other times, the alliances break down into pure memory ~ mere trace. But it's all good. So, for the next six months there will be more of the same ~ but really, it's never the same ~ the text and images changing, the ideas flowing. Thanks to my readers, without you, this would be nothing, just keystrokes ~ cut and paste.
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