Gemma Ward impresses the critics and a new artist mate

the sunday telegraph

As a teenager Gemma Ward conquered the fashion world. Now 23, she is slowly making her mark in the film business, with her fourth film, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, due for release on May 20th. But how does she shape up as a theatre performer? Not too shabbily, according to reviews of her stage debut in The Perth Theatre Compay’s production of The Ugly One, which premiered on March 22nd. “Ward does well on her stage debut and, to her credit, is better as the 73-year-old reconstructed cougar Fanny than as Lette's younger wife” says The West Australian’s David Zampatti; “It's impossible to ignore her international celebrity as a beauty but, while this perhaps adds an unintended extra layer to Von Mayenburg's text, it does it no harm”.

Cartoon connection: MJ Bale's Jumbo Spring 2010 campaign

The fashion/art collaboration concept is nothing new. Dali and Schiaparelli, anyone? Far more recent collaborations have included Marc Jacobs with Stephen Sprouse and Takashi Murakami, Prada with illustrator James Jean and Stella McCartney with iconic Disney character Bambi. Now comes MJ Bale’s turn with Sydney artist (Andy) Jumbo. Here is an exclusive preview of the luxury Australian menswear brand’s Spring/Summer 2010/2011 campaign – which is fronted by a cast of cartoon models. Launched in late 2009, MJ Bale is the brainchild of Herringbone co-founder and wool scion, Matt Jensen. After the launch of the recent Orri Henrisson campaign, the ad creative for the Australian menswear sector is starting to look a little fresher than some of the efforts in the womenswear sector. UPDATE 07/10: Another Sydney menswear designer, Patrick Johnson, says he came up with the idea first.

Bluralism, finally a legit art movement

lindsay lohan by chrissy miller/nytimes.com

Many railed over the quality of images that were snapped by mobile phone and uploaded to Twitter at Sydney's Rosemount Australian Fashion Week in May. “Blurry”, “average” and “grainy” were terms used to slag the images off, with several parties asking the Twitterati to cease and desist. Some derided the phenomenon as “the failure of new media”. We, the new media douchebags, girded our loins and smartphones, dubbed the movement Bluralism and joked that we might one day stage an exhibition. Well, typically, New York has beaten us to it. On Wednesday, the Stephan Weiss Studio staged an exhibition of camera phone images taken by 14 artists including Cass Bird, Justin Giunta, Richard Kern, Danielle Levitt and Chrissy Miller, who were each given a Casio Exilim Mobile with which to document one week. Although one great big promo for Casio, photos taken using other mobile phone brands were also included. With New York Fashion Week eight weeks away and more and more fashion players piling onto Twitter, frockwriter wonders if any of the city's more social media-savvy types have considered aggregating the best images from the anticipated deluge of SM coverage.