Invurt wouldn’t be anything without the rest of the web and arts community – we spend at least an hour or two every day going through a wide range of feeds and sites, checking for news and seeing what’s happening. Probably half the event stuff we post up is composed of things we find through either gallery blogs or these ones, the other half is stuff we get mailed to us. That said, irrespective of the news they contain, we read these sites because they generally have a great mix of awesome to them, and we can get our fix of art-goodness from reading them all – and, if we see something relevant, we post it up as well. Link-backs are a hard and fast rule, if we see it on a site, we link back to them and give back a bit of support – if we can help drive even just a bit more traffic back to them, or get a few more people to a show that they’ve posted up, then we’re happy.

We wont call it a top 10 of 2010, theres more than that – and, also,  there are other blogs out there that are just as great that we’ll get to in the next part. I haven’t included galleries, and I haven’t included sites that cross too many different categories  with their posts (like the larger magazines etc), and, no international sites. We also think that the term “blog” in reference to a lot of these sites is a little outdated, many of them are so much more than what such a simple connotation presents – we probably wouldn’t even call Invurt a blog, we guess its more of a webzine, or whatever the hell you want to call it.

Anyways – these are just a portion of the blogs that we love – and this is a bit of a thanks to all of them for their hard work in providing us with a great read throughout the week …

Dont Sleep Mag – To be honest, I still kind of often miss the photography boat a little. There are a thousand blogs out there with people posting DSLR photos, and not much really catches my eye – I’m learning more every day, however, thanks to sites like Dont Sleep. The magazine is fantastic, but the blog is also great – a lot more raw, and for sure, out take-ish, but still, this is the kind of blog that makes someone who doesn’t understand photography as an artform at a high level start taking a bit more notice – and, I mean, shit, theres lots of photos of spray cans and other urban goodness, who can go past that? We talked to the editor, Chico, earlier this year about the mag, and it was a pretty cool chat.

Melbourne Art & Culture Critic – updated fairly regularly, and its been going for some time now – Mark Holsworth is a really nice guy, and has a lot of history in the area of writing about art, as well as creating it himself. His articles span the gamut of Melbourne art, but he does have a particular penchant for urban and street art related stuff – and, agree with his opinion or not, his posts are insightful, thought provoking and often also carry a bit of historical information along with them, which I love.

Nothing To Nobody – we talked to Jo Jette from Nothing To Nobody not long ago, and we think what they’re doing with their magazine is great – but, they also have a great blog up and running which covers a whole bunch of different cultural related stuff – not just art – and has some cool info on board.

Everfresh – what can we say about Everfresh? Prolific, talented and dedicated. Their blog spans the gamut of their activities, as well as news and info on what their friends are up to. I particularly enjoy it for their posts while any of them are travelling, as well as all the work they’re doing out in the streets.

Nice Produce – Nice things for nice people; thats their motto – and Nice Produce is chock full of nice things. They have a bunch of artists contributing blog entries to the site, and also cover a lot of events that they or their friends are involved with – they’re also a great online store that you can get a range of different artwork and related products as well. Its a really cool collective, and its another religious read for us – props.

Kompound – when we started out Invurt, we wanted to keep it simple, there are far too many “all over the place” blogs online that just didn’t really have an aim – then we saw Kompound, and liked what we saw. Theres a bunch of candid photography, a bit of events and music, a lot of street art, a  few videos – all those things we sometimes dislike about other blogs are all the things that we love about Kompound – it just works.

Just Another Agency – The girls at the agency are pretty cool, and are doing some cool things to help promote a whole slew of talent, but, their site doesn’t just go into the whole agency aspect of things – they also have an awesome blog attached to it that often has a lot of great info, cool little articles and its a really worthwhile read for both local and international artist info.

ArtistsWA – this site has been around for a few years and was started by a couple of friends of mine. It went through a bit of a quiet period for a while there, but its being updated much more frequently these days by Perth artist Flaunt – lots of new artist information going up, as well as events of a like-minded nature from back at my Westralian homeland.

Images to Live By – for a little more cerebral read into street art – this is noted Melbourne street art writer and researcher Alisons Youngs blog. She’s a pretty busy lady, so the blog isn’t updated every day, but when it is you can always be assured that the content will pique your interest and give your brain something to think about – and you should read through the archives for some great articles.

This Life – another example of an all-rounder that is pretty cool. This Life is a fun read, and with a few people posting on it the content is varied, but not too over the top in terms of the whole “Lookit this youtube video I saw and this one and this one!” nah – its chilled, laid back, and it also has some great interviews on it – notably, we love the interviews with tattooists/artists they’ve been doing lately.

Design Federation – supportive, funky, fun and informative – all attributes that DF excel at, and which has made their site one of the stopping points for Oz creatives. It covers a wide range of design news, from mainstream to the more underground, and its a great.

We Make Stuff Good – Its been a little quieter than usual on the WMSG front in the last few months, but from what we hear it may just be the calm before the storm. One of the coolest sites that looks at the creative subculture in Melbourne, there are some really great articles and interviews in its archives – and, hopefully, many more to come in the future.

weAREtheIMAGEmakers – we’ve sung praise for WATIM before, for good reason. Beastman started WATIM way back in 2005, the news section has a great listing of coming events, and every issue released just builds on each one before. There is an amazing archive of work and artist interviews throughout all 23 parts of this ongoing zine, and as soon as we read one, we cant wait for the next.

Special Mentions

Street Arse – we’re hopefully looking at  NZ events and artists come early next year, and this is one of my favourite NZ blogs right now (Askew Ones blog is also rather awesome). Street Arse has been going for quite some time, and gives a really good over view of things and artwork thats happening around NZ. Check it out.

Io9 – okay. So its not local. I lied when I sad there were no international sites. Its not even art (though it does have an amazing art category) – but io9, Gizmodo and Lifehacker we read religiously. It has some amazing fkn articles, its eclectic, and its one of our favourite sites on the web – everyone should read it – and this is my post, so like, its listed. What-thafuk-ever =P

If you have any other suggestions for great blogs we can check out, just drop us a note in the comments – we’d love to check them out – if we haven’t seen them already and they aren’t going to be in the next part, that is …