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The Drums of Love
May. 19th, 2013 07:23 pmThis entry is pretty much going to be Things I've Seen This Weekend.
I had to go to a meeting in Melbourne on Friday. It finished early, giving me a couple of hours to kill waiting for my train, so I went to the National Gallery's winter exhibition, which is called Monet's Garden. More waterlilies than you can poke a stick at, if you were allowed to take sticks into the gallery, which I suspect you're not. I spent a delightful couple of hours wandering about, picking which painting I'd take home with me (another thing I suspect you're not allowed to do). I think in the end I decided on this one of roses, just to be different.
As a companion to that exhibition, the gallery has a temporary installation in the main foyer, called clinamen by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. It's a large blue pond, filled with white bowls that float on an unseen current, chiming when they bump into each other. It's surrounded by wooden seats, so there were people sitting all around it, as though it was a real pond. It was lovely.
( Oh, look, here's a similar work on YouTube )
At the very entrance to the gallery was a new acquisition called Pix-Cell Red Deer by Kohei Nawa, which I liked very much. I thought it was a full-size deer made of glass bubbles, like a giant Christmas tree decoration, but I've only just realised that it's a real, taxidermed deer covered in bubbles.
Saturday, my mother called and said she was taking her elderly neighbour, Jan, to the Warrnambool Floral Art Show and would I like to come? So that was educational. I did not know there were so many ways to use dried lentils in a flower arrangement. Also, you can cover foam shapes with leaves pinned down to look like feathers. One arrangement had these interesting chunky orange beads hanging from it, which closer inspection revealed to be peeled carrots. You know, the stubby little ones. So that was fine, until my mother said, 'Oh, you could make a necklace out of them, with a parsnip as the centrepiece,' and poor Jan got the giggles and some of the floral art ladies glared at her. Don't laugh at the carrot beads, f-list. That's something else I learnt. Oh, also, that there is a place called Dunmunkle. I don't know where it is, but it has its own floral art club, so there's that.
One of the categories in the floral art competition was called Two Seasons, in which pairs of floral artists had to do a matching arrangement in which each represented one season. So someone did summer and her partner did winter, that sort of thing. I was standing behind two women looking at one arrangement. One of them was obviously one of the judges, because she was saying to the other one, 'And this one we didn't award at all because it was clearly two autumn scenes.' She was so angry about it. (To be fair, it did look like two autumn scenes.)
We arrived just as the mayor finished awarding the prizes. The mayor! On a Saturday afternoon, the mayor put on a very nice suit and rocked up to a church hall to hand out gift certificates for flower arrangements. I've never been terribly impressed with our mayor, but I've got to give him points for dedication there.
I had to go to a meeting in Melbourne on Friday. It finished early, giving me a couple of hours to kill waiting for my train, so I went to the National Gallery's winter exhibition, which is called Monet's Garden. More waterlilies than you can poke a stick at, if you were allowed to take sticks into the gallery, which I suspect you're not. I spent a delightful couple of hours wandering about, picking which painting I'd take home with me (another thing I suspect you're not allowed to do). I think in the end I decided on this one of roses, just to be different.
As a companion to that exhibition, the gallery has a temporary installation in the main foyer, called clinamen by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. It's a large blue pond, filled with white bowls that float on an unseen current, chiming when they bump into each other. It's surrounded by wooden seats, so there were people sitting all around it, as though it was a real pond. It was lovely.
( Oh, look, here's a similar work on YouTube )
At the very entrance to the gallery was a new acquisition called Pix-Cell Red Deer by Kohei Nawa, which I liked very much. I thought it was a full-size deer made of glass bubbles, like a giant Christmas tree decoration, but I've only just realised that it's a real, taxidermed deer covered in bubbles.
Saturday, my mother called and said she was taking her elderly neighbour, Jan, to the Warrnambool Floral Art Show and would I like to come? So that was educational. I did not know there were so many ways to use dried lentils in a flower arrangement. Also, you can cover foam shapes with leaves pinned down to look like feathers. One arrangement had these interesting chunky orange beads hanging from it, which closer inspection revealed to be peeled carrots. You know, the stubby little ones. So that was fine, until my mother said, 'Oh, you could make a necklace out of them, with a parsnip as the centrepiece,' and poor Jan got the giggles and some of the floral art ladies glared at her. Don't laugh at the carrot beads, f-list. That's something else I learnt. Oh, also, that there is a place called Dunmunkle. I don't know where it is, but it has its own floral art club, so there's that.
One of the categories in the floral art competition was called Two Seasons, in which pairs of floral artists had to do a matching arrangement in which each represented one season. So someone did summer and her partner did winter, that sort of thing. I was standing behind two women looking at one arrangement. One of them was obviously one of the judges, because she was saying to the other one, 'And this one we didn't award at all because it was clearly two autumn scenes.' She was so angry about it. (To be fair, it did look like two autumn scenes.)
We arrived just as the mayor finished awarding the prizes. The mayor! On a Saturday afternoon, the mayor put on a very nice suit and rocked up to a church hall to hand out gift certificates for flower arrangements. I've never been terribly impressed with our mayor, but I've got to give him points for dedication there.