laura_seabrook | Entries tagged with zine fair

Went to the Zine and Art Fair run by This is Not Art (T.I.N.A.) today.

This is about the only TINA event I'm going to this year. More than half of TINA has already gone by and: this year around uni didn't finish a week earlier (so going to Thursday and Friday's events just wasn't on); When the Octapod got a new server I dropped off all the mailing lists; and quite frankly, this year I just couldn't be bothered.

Last year my experience wasn't all that good, including a huge panic attack. Anyway, this year I decided to just take money, not try and sell or trade anything, and go home when done. As turned out, I almost achieved that end.

The first annoyance was my car not starting, despite an eight hour charge last night. Rather than call the NRMA, I caught a bus/train instead. the train was 20 minutes late, but that was OK. I tried to find a local ATM to Civic but the nearest was in the Hunter St Mall. I got insulted by a check out person in the Go-Lo there and that put me in a bad mood.

Rather than go straight to the Fair, I had something to eat in Civic Park and visited the Newcastle Region Art Gallery first. That was a good move, as I got to check out the Experimenta Vanishing Point exhibition, which took up the whole 1st floor. There's some cool stuff at this, including Train No. 8, Shy Painting and Pedestrians. I could sit down in a dark air-conditioned room and enjoy myself - normally a good thing!

Anyway, after that I checked out the Fair. I bought $70 worth of stuff including a $30 copy of Rebel Visions : the underground comix revolution : 1963-1975. Nice book but a heavy tome. I did trade a couple of zines, but only once. Otherwise, despite feeling generally tired, and having my back and right knee hurting, it was OK. Bumped into two or three uni students I know, and some guy who remembered me (but not my name) from 2002. Went home about 3pm via train/bus with a little bit of food and shopping at Glendale.

I think I did the right thing by limiting my involvement this year. Despite initially feeling stressed out, I didn't have any panic attacks and got home at a decent hour. Who knows, next year I might even have something new to sell.