Different exhibition review

This is a review of a different exhibition with work by Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe at the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney

LACE

After my week in Melbourne I spent a couple of days at home before flying down to Sydney for a few days. On Thursday we went to the Powerhouse Museum show "LoveLace" which is truly fabulous...



Cecilia Heffer and Burt Bongers




Joyce Fleming






Joep Verhoeven




Jenny Pollack






Janie Matthews








Ingrid Morley







Lenka Suchanek





Michele Eastwood






Rui Kikuchi






Tania Spencer





















Tomy Ka Chun Leung

Cheap trip to Sydney

My birthday present this year was a trip to Sydney to see the First Emperor exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales before it closes in a couple of weeks' time. As we're on a very tight budget at the moment a trip was almost out of the question until we realised we could take advantage of dearest husband's 'points'. Because he travels with his job (sometimes) he racks up the points and this time they proved very useful! We got the hotel free and the flights free (including taxes), and as the hotel couldn't give us the grade of room appropriate to husband's membership status we were compensated with free breakfasts for all three of us. Additionally, we were able to use our 'Country' membership of the Art Gallery of New South Wales to get two free tickets to the exhibition, saving another $30... so all we really had to find was food, and we ate very cheaply in Chinatown to save money.

It all worked out really well, apart from our visit to the trendy eco-cafe Greenhouse by Joost up at the Rocks, which was disappointing to say the least. I've been a fan of Joost since reading an article about his own home near Melbourne in one of the many house-building magazines we subscribed to while designing our own home. It was interesting, then to see that he'd taken his engaging personality, love of networking, passion for recycling and sustainable development and ability to get people to work together and had put together an eco-cafe down in Melbourne and now another one in Sydney. Anna, friend and wife of our architect, alerted us to the Greenhouse and so we made a special trip for what we'd hoped would be a good coffee as well as a nose at some very hip and happening design. Well we got a look at the architecture but sadly no refreshments: our achingly hip waiter clearly didn't think we were desirable clients, which perhaps wasn't surprising given how UN-hip we are... The gay couple who arrived after us and ordered after us got their food, ate it, paid and left. The uber-cool MCA maven who flirted with our waiter got her food, ate it and flirted some more. Darling daughter and I had enough time to draw AND paint the interior of the cafe before I managed to catch the guy's eye and ask when our drinks and food might be arriving. Nothing happened, so after well over 45 minutes we walked out. In passing I managed to catch the attention of the tall, blond, cool dude who was clearly "in charge" (Joost, was that you...? Looking at your website, it turns out it WAS you!) and said we had to leave. He expressed his horror at the time taken to (not) fulfil our order, but we had to go as dearest husband had to be somewhere for a meeting. And that was that. Big shame, since we're clear fans of sustainable design and would have loved the chance to swap stories about solar power, recycling and whatever else with you. So I can't recommend ordering anything from the cafe, but the concept is very interesting!

Anyway, enough of the chatting, here are the photos: the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park, (love that Art Deco architecture!) cheeky cockatoos in the Botanic Garden, dressing the part in the Chinese Friendship Garden in Darling Harbour, avarious city scapes (sorry, I'm a sucker for a good reflection) and the Turbine Room at Cockatoo Island, in no particular order. There's even a photo of me in my Indiana Jones "Tilley" hat. What more could you ask for?














































































































































































































































a

I hates those mices to pieces

It's the third week of the school holidays and we're on the downward slope, heading towards the start of Term 3 next Tuesday. My current preoccupation is with mice, and not in a good way. Living on a rural block mice are something of an inevitability but where I draw the line is having them in the house! Having spent a couple of evenings noticing a distinct nibbling sound in the corner where our food is stored in our temporary "studio-based" accommodation we were not best pleased to find a very sprightly mouse in a box. Nor was I thrilled to witness a mass rampage in and around the guinea-pigs' cage at 4am the other morning. Action was required, and several traps and a lot of peanut butter later I am pleased to report an uninterrupted night's sleep yesterday. However, I haven't forgiven them for managing to get into several layers of wrappings INSIDE a box and munching on my etching blankets, or the chewed patches on M's bath towel...

Mice aside, we had a good time in Sydney the other week, when I went down to a schools conference entitled "Governance, Leadership and Management" or "GLaM" for short. I had a fun two days listening to plenary sessions on "Financial Benchmarking" and "The Watershed Model - Employee Relations", among others, while dearest husband and darling daughter enjoyed themselves around the town.

One of several destinations I was able to join-in on was the Australian Museum just off Hyde Park, to which we had never been in the dozen years or so that we've been visiting Sydney. What a mad place!



































































Other highlights of the trip included being able to buy some decent children's footwear (our usual aim when we go to Sydney), and a visit to the sales for new bedlinen and a new set of saucepans, destined for our new kitchen. We are SO close now to the end of the build! Warren reckons that it could be 3-4 weeks before we can move in. I've posted various pictures of the developing kitchen on Lookout31, and it's very exciting. We're saving up several new things for the house: towels, bits and pieces of kitchen equipment, new sheets. Silly really, but fun!





















This bizarre stuffed kangaroo was, for me, one of the highlights of the Australian Museum... looks like he's about to step on the stage of a vaudeville show!

Breath

At last I'm at home, taking a breath after a busy, busy week.





















First stop was Mackay, staying with Dinamow overnight so that I could attend the opening of the Libris Awards. I've spent a week thinking what to say about my experience up there because it really wasn't what I had expected. Perhaps it's because I've spent a lot of time not being an artist and working in business that I get really frustrated with arts administration... but before anyone jumps down my throat I should say that I am trying to deal with my sense of frustration and generally calm down, and also that I'm not pointing at anyone specific here! However, it was deeply disappointing to arrive at the opening to find my book relegated to the shadowy lower back corner of a locked glass cabinet.

Yes, I really do know how difficult it is to please participating artists about the way in which their work is displayed (I have curated several group shows) and yes, I also appreciate that there aren't enough open shelves to go around. But what was the point of asking for display instructions to be included with the work and enquiring whether or not it could be handled only to lock it away in a box where no-one could see it? I'm not just imagining that no-one looked at it: I spent quite a lot of time observing how visitors to the exhibition approached the cabinet and the truth is that they had a brief look at the works that were clearly lit on the upper shelf and I didn't catch a single person looking below at my piece. Not one.

Things weren't helped by the complete lack of any printed information about the show, the participating artists or the work apart from the labels: no catalogue, not even a scrappy piece of photocopied A4 with a list of exhibited works, despite the fact that everything was numbered. I don't know what other people do but I make a point of picking up the catalogue (or scrappy A4 sheet for that matter!) and I use it to make notes about pieces or artists I particularly like, I use it to navigate my way around the show, and I also look up particular artists to see where their work is displayed. Nothing like that here, unfortunately. I thought the choice of winners was, for once, spot-on but I found my overall experience of the show disappointing. I wasn't able to stay for the forum on artists' books which I imagine was very interesting.

It is possible that my overall mood was affected by the significant amount of pain I experienced due to the infection in my jaw after the tooth extraction a few days previously, I don't deny it! I was on whopping antibiotic tablets and mega-pain killers and I felt LOUSY. Luckily for me what made the whole thing worthwhile was the chance to meet people. Diane was absolutely lovely: she picked me up from the airport, gave me a whistle-stop tour of the beachside scenery around Mackay, put me up in a very comfortable bed, and after the opening she and her husband Peter took me out to dinner with their friends! It was absolutely lovely, and so kind. And in addition to being spoiled rotten by Diane and Peter I also got to meet up again with Sue Anderson, Gwen Harrison, Christina Cordeiro, Julie Barratt, dear Duck and was introduced again to Noreen Graham of Graham Galleries and Editions in Brisbane. Wonderful!
















I came back from Mackay feeling absolutely flattened but had great fun last Sunday at the annual Rotary Club book sale in Coffs Harbour. Now at first glance you wouldn't say the local population hides a sophisticated readership but apparently the book sale raises about $40,000 a year so perhaps I'm being a little unfair! I came away with a bag of books destined to be experimented upon, remade and possibly even read, for the grand sum of $35. Marvellous. And once I'd got through that I was able to come home and pack up ready to go to Sydney on Monday.






















Not brilliant photos of the new arrival, but he is SO CUTE! Couldn't get any closer because of the throng which is why these are slightly out of focus, but you get the idea...





















The reason for our trip was that dearest husband had to go and see clients in Sydney but at such short notice that the available flights were around $600 return! So we decided that as we haven't been away at all since our big European trip last year we were entitled to take a few days to drive down, have some fun and drive back - all for much less than the cost of a single plane ticket and we had free hotel accommodation at the Crowne Plaza on Darling Harbour. So darling daughter and I whiled away the time shopping and sightseeing while the other half worked, and in between times we managed to catch up with friends and sample Chinese, Japanese and Korean cuisine. OK, perhaps it is more accurate to say that we spent more money than we would have done if DH had flown down on his own, but I swear I needed a jacket and a new pair of shoes, and darling daughter certainly needed new shoes and there are no children's shoe shops in Coffs Harbour! That's my excuse, anyway.