Hit parade

These days you can’t visit a city in the world and not come across artist painted cows, giraffes, horses or (put your own animal name here).  In fact attach a charity and you can pretty much get artists to paint anything, Damien Hirst’s painted AK47 being a perfect example. At OTN though it takes more than a decorated assault rifle or a patterned cow to turn our heads. Ping Pong paddles on the other hand and we’re like Linda Blair in bed. With the help of a regular reader (thanks G) we can direct you to the site that offers enough painted ping pong paddles to last a lifetime. No, seriously, it’s a pleasure.

Images: top to bottom, left to right. Camille Walala, Daniel Frost, Bold and Noble, Al Murphy and Rosie Nicholas

Ping

The ghost of the Wellington art space On the table will be raised again this Saturday. OK, On the table may have had only five or six exhibitions but one of them was The estate of l budd and featured a table tennis tournament with l budd prizes. In the current spirit of re-presenting important exhibitions the tournament will be restaged at Michael Lett’s new gallery in Auckland. For the record the trophy winners of the first event were overall winner Chris Bleakley and runner ups Michael Baker and Karl Fritsch.
Images: Clockwise from the left Chris, Michael and Karl with their trophies

... and on the table

From the stream.(thanks to you all)

The ping and the pong of it

You say painting machine. We say robot table tennis.

The ping and the pong of it.

Artists Doug Fridlund and Mikael Alcock got to be Youtube celebs just by making their art. And their art it turns out involves putting ping-pong balls in their mouths and standing next to famous paintings in high end museums like the Tate. No sooner do they start a ping-pong-performance than the cameras are out and the images start piling up on Twitter and Facebook. Ping Pong, art and photographing in art museums. It all adds up to an OTN Saturday movie time special.

Square up and play

Ping Pong and art, gotta be OTN. Here's Mondrian pong via wactbprot. See it in animated action here.

To Di for

Princess Di playing ping pong in heaven. What great artist would come up with something incredible like that? For the full catastrophe check out OTN Stuff.
Thanks M.

Table stakes

In spite of repeated warnings we still get a lot of pics of artists and famous people playing table tennis sent into OTN. This time we are happy to point you to the Narrows Table Tennis Tournament. Why? Because artist and regular NZ exhibitor Marco Fusinato kicked fellow artist Callum Morton’s butt. Videos, skite pics and weird commentary here.
Images: Trophy by Giblett Sports Memorabilia, winners jacket with hand tickering by Jacobs Embroidery, Princes Hill, winner Marco Fusinato front, Callum Morton back.

OTN Social pages

Table tennis and art. Art and table tennis. You say Relational Aesthetics, we say an activity that needs more than one person. Now the game that has too long lived in the shadows of the art world gets its just recognition: a big spread in the Artforum diary. Movie stars, artists and curators all trying to keep it over the net and on the table.
Left: Brad and Brandon Belle. (Photo: Douglas Ljungkvist/Nyehaus) Right: Susan Sarandon with Nyehaus's Tim Nye. (Photo: David Velasco)

A reflective post on table tennis

From the Relational Aesthetics adviser to the Ping Pong heads of Europe, Rirkrit Tiravanija's Untitled (The Future will be Chrome) 2008. Thanks again P, thanks again.

Perfect storm

It’s ping pong, it’s Bruce Lee playing the game with nunchuck, it’s CGI, you’re on OTN. What more could you ask for?

Lifestyle section

Over The Net is proud to work with Nike to bring you pictures of these cool table tennis shoes for discerning players.

You say artist we say artiste

This post has nothing about art, and everything to do with Ping Pong. Australian Tim Tyler, in the role of Mr P.P, “delivers a variety of astonishing feats, including his world famous oral ping pong ball juggling.” Anyone who can equal (or beat) Tim’s three-in-the-mouth record, just has to send us a pic, and we’ll send you a cap, if your an artist, we'll send you two.