Walking through Taylor Square on Sunday afternoon, we noticed this.

Denise Litchfield, of Newtown, had descended on the old below-ground toilet the night before with a cast of “lavatory assistants, urban knitters and crocheters.”

It’s Sydney’s last surviving underground toilet (not including those in train stations) – it’s a convenience that’s not that convenient, because it’s not open – though it gets a last gasp every now and again via an art project like this.

Denise, who also blogs here, knitted this as part of Sydney Design 09.

Galleries getting more confident. Latest issue of Art World has an advert for Bill Henson on the back. This edit, spotted in Darlinghurst in November, suggests someone’s not sure.

(via Bim Bam Boom)

Woman’s Day circa ’99/last year’s Harpers are fine for most surgeries, but East Sydney Doctors, across the road from the National Art School on Burton Street in Darlinghurst, takes a different approach.

The current show’s by Emerald Fitzgerald and Andy Hopkins. Adam Cullen and Cash Brown have shown here, too, among others.

They blog too.

I walk past a building on the corner of Craigend Street and Kirketon Road in Darlinghurst most days. It has an intricate facade, and a seemingly perfect location overlooking Kings Cross and the city.

Yet it’s played host to a string of bars and restaurants, including the lamented Global Burgers. You might see a shadow of old vomit too.

Haunted, cursed, bad feng shui?

In the buzz following Clover Moore’s liquor licensing changes, a DA went through to open ‘Lotus Wine Bar’ downstairs. Seems like such a cool location. It was going to be a seven day a week, 11am to 3am place. But less than two months later, in August, the $75,000 proposal was withdrawn.

Background 10/12/08

Prompted by Scot’s comment below, I checked out the background for Dale Jones-Evans’s intriguing (and, in 2004, award winning) building. It’s all here.

As the architect and developer I imagined a precious, gritty little building exploding out of this tiny, Tokyo-like, 7 x 15 metre, forgotten site. A commercial redevelopment appeared more suitable to the intense nodal semiology of the Kings Cross circus, William Street Boulevard, the corner condition; the urbanity of traffic-tunnel-signage and the general prevalence of human lunacy.

I think the Emily Kame Kngwarreye work’s gone though. Anyone know when/where?

Can Sydney council put on a public art show big enough for big city expectations, yet still creative, representing local artists, relevant to the local community?

Art & About is underway until October 24 at various sites in Hyde Park North, Erskineville Road, George Street laneways, Oxford Street and Danks Street, as well as banners along various city streets, including William Street and Kings Cross Road.

I can see Paddy Bedford’s bright yellow banner from my balcony. If you didn’t know it was part of this show, you might think it was… an oblique promo for some new festival? a summery splash of colour?

(Louise Hearman’s fascinating, odd banners featuring a dog’s head on a black background are up the street near Hyde Park)

Newtown’s 2042: Art on the Street seems to have got locals involved, for something pretty enjoyable.

Not sure if Sydney council’s done it, or even if it’d see that as something to aspire to?