Surely this is a joke? And yet it’s set up outside Wesley Church on William Street. In any case, worthy of being shown. By Simon B. Also sent in by Mars.
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The Worst of Perth 
Holy hell in a handbasket. This has got to be a joke TLA. Surely! Surely?
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Art project? But if so, surely the church would have it moved on? I don’t see goth one either.
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Interesting interpretation of Joseph.
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See? Mary was inseminated after all.
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What are you suggesting, E.V ?
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Photo opportunity indeed.
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And then some, WAtching. Those signs are a pretty good worst themselves, although if they’re mobile they could be fun to creatively relocate.
Woah. Just woah. Henk ?
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Steal the spirit
of a floating Bubby J?
I am frankincensed.
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Is news: see West online. Is art by agnostic.
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Oh my fucking God. That may be the weirdest thing I have ever seen.
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Great photo opportunity.
WOULD VIEW AGAIN AAA++++++++++++++
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Good King Westminster
night knifecrimed on William:
CCTV feast.
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The Baby Jesus says all “street artists” will go to hell for all time. Particularly after this effort.
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That is truly Worst.
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In the city? I’m so going in for a photo.
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In bizarro news , Hurben, an agnostic, said he was always “trying to make people question things”.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/8484264/church-photo-op-puts-spin-on-jesus/
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Apparently the next project is to feature a Joseph with animal horns. . . . .
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ooh, the West has got a poll
when asked ‘dya think Jesus Foetus in inappropriate?’ 73% of people said: ‘meh’
TWOP and The West running the same pic?
oh, the ignimony
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They were just chatting about this on 720 am. Apparently the Wesley flock have been “overwhelmed by the response”, meaning lots of young people have been sticking their heads into baby J and taking photos. Seems the congregation haven’t got the joke yet.
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I don’t get the joke either and I fail to understand what any of this has to do with Christmas FFS!
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i’m not sure i get the joke either shazz.
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Great name for a band
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Surprising no one thought of this before.
And yes I am writing, TLA.
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You know this may be a rare instance of actual honest to god vibrancy, right here in Perth.
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I’m deeply offended by that. I don’t care what your belief system – trying to tell people that Jesus rhymes with Foetus is just not on.
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It’s a Christian rhyme. Just be thankful the phrase ‘from the mountains to the valleys’ wasn’t used.
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Or from the nipple to the bottle
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Or I walk a fine line between temptation and the inducement to heaven …
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Oh Snuff. You just had to post that… again.
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Yes, Watching, I did. I guess we should be thankful I didn’t post this. Oh. Zap.
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Should’ve posted this…
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Since we’re scraping the bottom of the cringe barrel now, try this one.
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pete I think the words are supposed to be said gangsta rap style. Then they rhyme beautifully.
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Yo, shaz.
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Jesus Christ Snuff. It took me a week to get that song out of my head when Bento posted it last time. With all the xmas crap around there’s no way i’ll be able to clear it from my mind til after new years now.
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No more christian sidehug,
that’s just too dangerous,
cos a sidehug turned to a front hug turned to some cocaine turned to angel dust
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‘sent in by Simon B.’
Unemployed shock jock?
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Would those who stick their mugs in the hole for the photo op become Born Again Christians when they reach full term and pop out?
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Jokes aside, maybe the Wesley Church’s point they are trying to get across, albeit with dodgy graphic design combined with kitsch, of which unfortunately doesn’t quite come off and becoming a sideshow unto itself, is that we can be Jesus, rather than just Christians, of whom many can be insufferable bigots who completely lose the point in their earnestness of what it means to follow and identify with Christ.
In his iteration as DC Root in ROOT! (a.k.a. Damien Cowell or Humphrey B. Flaubert of TISM), as eloquent as ever in any aforementioned guise but with a hitherto now uncharacteristic sincerity, explains this message: a subtle, but vast, difference.
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tl;dr but it looks like you’re saying there’s some kind of connection to the rooting?
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ding dong
[the church doors open (slowly and a sliver of light falls etc..)]
Baby Jesus (sotto voce): yeeeeeeees?
Buff Jesus: oh, hi… ummm, it’s about the sign…
BJ: you mean the burning bush
BJ: ….that’s such an old gag…
BJ: sorry
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I genuinely think this is fantastic.
Well done Hurben, and amazingly, the church has commissioned probably the most cutting edge artwork that has been seen, anywhere in 2010.
For the record, I am 100% atheist, and I have problems believing there even was a “jesus”. But this, is fucking greatness.
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It’s about as cutting edge as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Putting aside, for a moment, the reason it’s out there in the first place (benign community outreach … believe it at your peril), teh execution is just plain shitty.
To start with, the panel on the right is totally redundant. We know it’s Joseph and Mary, it’s right outside a Church at Christmas ffs so we know who the foetus is too. Even were this not the case, the best place for an explanatory panel would be under the first one, elevating it by a foot or so – it’s a question of demography. As it stands, this is an excellent ‘photo opportunity’ for dwarfs, very young children and pets. Everyone else is excluded, unless you plan to grovel on the floor.
Obviously the lettering is beyond reproach, moving on-
How are we to understand this work? Certainly, there is a suggestion of some pretty edgy themes – JESUS FOETUS? Sounds pretty sophisticated. Like, Jesus was a foetus (must’ve been, as Mary was pregnant before He was born so it stands to reason), and, y’know, like TOPICAL! Do foetuses have rights? Does Jesus speak for the foetuses? Pretty big questions and perhaps an arena in which the Church has a unique contribution to make… I mean they’ve already got the ball rolling with this awesome thought-provoking installation at a time when everyone else is festooned with empty consumerism… some questions need to be answered, not just from what’s in our heads, but from what’s in our hearts…. Etc.
But as far as the work functions – how are we to interact with it? We are invited to stick our face in the hole, to place our self in the Jesus foetus and have a photo taken. To reiterate – we put our face on a foetal Jesus a month before Christmas. It’s a symbolic act – symbolic of rebirth in Christ Jesus which is exactly what Christmas is all about. It’s recorded on your camera, it’s become a fun memory to recall while you’re on your Christmas break, and the seed is sown. It’s about as subversive as anything else the Church puts out, the appearance of meaning, the allure of nebulous possibilities, all of which resolve neatly into a conversion if you can only be persuaded to attend a few sermons – or conversation groups – or rock concerts. The only difference between this and your standard ‘People and Dinosaurs – teh Hidden Truth’ seminar is that this one looks like art.
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a figurative rebirth, kneeling before the church, yet facing away and presenting the head to commerce and arse to the priest
the act of moving toward the hole, the descent down the birth canal, merconium substituted with Boag’s semi digested, yet the hole is not the welcoming glove of the vagina, the uterus is missing, we are left with no impetus to be reborn, despite our own desire it cannot be resolved, we are fodder for the hypervisual texture of the city, camera phones are ubiquitous, ignorance and meh’dom abounds.
My knees hurt, the priest is considering a retreat, I’m not reborn and for some reason I have “Space Oddity” going round my brain.
Much prefer this
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Thanks, Orbs. I’ve just now discovered that some kind soul has finally uploaded this old favourite, which was discussed here. Crank it up to 11.
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What a load of wank.
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Yeah I suppose you’re right. Reading too much into things, I guess. Art really should be appraised on a pass/fail basis, perhaps using our impressions of how great or cutting edge it is to decide whether we approve of it or not. You just can’t get bogged down in all that tedious detail – a thing is either totes rad or it’s not and that’s all there is to it. We should just be grateful people are making the effort to put out such fantastic amazing work right there on the street where everyone can enjoy it for free.
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Firstly, so refreshing that you didn’t take my comment as a personal insult. As for your most recent comment, I 100% agree.
Professionally, I am a gallery manager, so trust me, I speak art-wank fluently when required!
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Art really should be appraised on a pass/fail basis, perhaps using our impressions of how great or cutting edge it is to decide whether we approve of it or not…. a thing is either totes rad or it’s not and that’s all there is to it.
NVL: You agree with this comment 100%, and you is a gallery manager? Actually, that does make a lot of sense.
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I admire gallery owners for taking 45% of the sale after the artist has paid for framing and then serves up squares of coon and glasses of goon for the opening night. It all seems so right.
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oh, you go to the posh openings then.
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I enjoy shouting to waiters, “Oi Cunt. Coon me.”
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It’s a living.. someone has to serve free alcohol to attractive people (and get paid for it).
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Or alternatively, “who do you have to sleep with to get a square of Coon round here?”
Figurative you say? Is that code for goggly eyed gum nuts?
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I’d guess it’s code for those Balinese “oil” paintings.
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Out of stock on the gum nuts. Would a hand glazed made in Toledo (by the original designers) range of 1960’s Tiki Mugs suffice? They whipped up a batch exclusively for us, for the first time since the great Spanish Tiki Bar craze of the 60’s and 70’s. ?
Outré!
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Yes. I dig art that doesn’t require a whole lot of interpretation. Our gallery is really successful, we don’t do abstract works, we stick to figurative most of the time. I like it that way, people can come in, like something for their own reasons, and take it home. The whole process is simple, and non-wankery. I wouldn’t work in a “traditional”gallery, it would do my head in.
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I knows what I likes, eh?
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TLA, you should pop in. Anyone who thinks art needs to be wank, pop in as well. Can I name the gallery, TLA? I will give you a great deal on one of our Tiki Mugs, or maybe one of our 1950’s Kristian Vedel designed, made in Denmark wooden birds (great gift), perhaps an Australian mid-century Gus McLaren, or maybe one of our framed prints or original works designed by the worlds finest pop surrealist/lowbrow artists?
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Name away.
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Pop in to Outré Gallery, 260 William Street, Northbridge, Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, or Crown Street, Surrey Hills. Christmas is almost here, tis the season to spend cash on cool shit.
Remember that name “Outré Gallery”. It’s french for cheese, I think.
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Saw outré In melbourne but didn’t see its wares.
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Oh no you di… So, will you be stocking Hurbens then?
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was looking at your tiki ware the other day, vair cool.
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Non-wankery, or a shallow, cutesy, hipster, neo-retro, burlesque, faux-surrealist, deviantART circle-jerk?
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Totally confused writes : our art is completely wank free and figurative, our nudes are wholesome and clean and our brown paper
carry bags are gratis.
No Picasso lady bits art here.
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It’s only because he has problems believing there was a Joetus.
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it may be art, but it still looks like shit
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I’ve looked at thsi several times, and I can’t shake the uneasy feeling that this is some sort of subtle pro-life message. Any time churches (or Jesus) and foetuses are on the same sign… it isn’t a pro choice combo.
The bestest worstest bumper sticker I’ve ever seen has Mary and Bubby J and the words “If Mary had been pro choice, there would be no Christmas.
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re bumper sticker – pro choice does not mean compulsory termination
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You try explaining that to the religious nutters.
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Maybe not, but if she didn’t know who the father was…
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Jesus was a right bastard
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I really hope next week we can have some actors come along and argue about the importance and purity of acting.
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I hope we have a bunch of boring old fucks discussing the importance of am radio.
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Fair bump. Play on.
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“Firstly, so refreshing that you didn’t take my comment as a personal insult. ”
Secondly, I don’t feel you’ve done yourself any favours in the discussion above…
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WAtching, the umpire has already called “fair bump play on”. Come on sport, lets not get all cunty about it.
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My point precisely.
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Bento is the umpire? No wonder this is a spectator sport.
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it may be art, but it still looks like piss
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That is just stupid and Bento has been acting strange.
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Hold the front page.
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