shopping then art

frozen foodsToday is one of those very long days of hanging out with Ma... very, very, very long in fact...

About 14 or so hours worth what with shopping, and the other kind of shopping, and looking at things, and dinner, and then our first Cabaret Festival thing...

Good job we like each other!

Anyway, Ma was running late this morning, which is probably a good thing given all the day we had in front of us, but it didn't really throws things out too much.

The morning's Supermarket Safari proceeded as usual... although I did realise that since that because Monday is a public holiday I'll be able to slow cook something for hours and hours and hours... and so got the appropriate makings to invent something.

Then we took a stroll around Red Circle Boutique... and I had a look at jeans (black and kinda chubby hipster style... not that I would ever wear them that tight or that low), yet another shirt with those roll up shirt tabs and epaulettes (grey) and a soft, soft, soft scarf (dark grey). I never quite got the whole scarf thing I have to admit, but I'm wearing it right now and it's actually very very warm! Essentially I bought a whole new outfit... thank you 30% off sale!

I also did something I swore I'd never, ever do... I seriously considered a pair of those flat, slip on canvas shoes the kids wear these days with their skinny jeans and stupid hair... and if they'd had a pair in my size with the houndstooth pattern on it, well I might actually have bought them. Scary!

Anyway, we came back here, unpacked, lazed around a bit... well, in theory anyway... we didn't rush out the door like we did last week. And I saw a very, very cool yet completely over the top version of Single Ladies done by a band called The Pigs... and had to look it up on iTunes and download it. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when somebody first played their version for Beyonce...

Once we were done with all that we decided to head into town and look around since we haven't done that properly for a while.

First stop was Smiggle... Hello cute gay Smiggle salesboy! And a bucketload of their very cute animal bookends (giraffes and rhinos and elephants, oh my)... which even if they're not used at the end of a row of books are pretty funky since they stick out... but damn they were heavy on mass!

We also called into JB and we both played around with iPads... I probably wouldn't have done, but Ma wanted to. And I have to say... m'eh. It's just a big iPhone... not really seeing why everyone is getting their fanboy panties in a bunch about them.

The rest of shopping was a lot of "looking at things" really... little here, little there... and we stopped off at Cocolate for hot chocolate and crepes (yummy) then we dropped the bags off at the car and wandered off to the Art Gallery.

Our main reason for going was to see the Candid Camera exhibition (Australian documentary photography from the 1950s to the 1970s). And there was some really awesome stuff in the exhibition too... some photos I instantly recognised, but most of it was great stuff that I'd never even heard of before. All presented in black and white too... and we know how I love monochrome!

The only downside was the two chattering women, one of whom may have been a professional artist, but who was definitely a professional pain in the ass. I hate hearing self proclaimed experts spouting random dribble about art. Urgh.

big mother - patricia piccininiThe other piece that I'd kinda forgotten about until we went into the Gallery was Patricia Piccinini's Big Mother...

Now, I've seen Patricia's work before and loved it... but Big Mother is just... wow!

And the Gallery has positioned it perfectly... it's in the third room of a series of connected galleries, but she stands, surrounded by black and lit perfectly, staring out down the corridor that connects the galleries, and you can't NOT go and see her up close.

I actually gave myself the heebie-jeebies a little bit too... standing right in front of her, her face is at eye level for me and I was staring into her eyes... and you just expect her to breathe... or blink... or make a sound... or something. Big Mother is disturbingly realistic.

Seriously, if Patricia could work out how to make one of these statues that appeared to breathe and occasionally blinked, I think she'd scare the crap out of people.

And it's one of those works that makes you think... Big Mother is incredibly sad... but is she sad because she's lost her own baby and has to take care of this human baby or is she sad because she knows this baby will be taken away from her too? Personally I think it's the former, because she's not really connected with the baby, she's holding it and feeding it, but she's somewhere else.

Anyway, I highly recommend people go and see her... she's definitely worth it!

Once we were finished at the Gallery we wandered back to the car, came back to my place and have essentially been dicking around on our respective computers for the past couple of hours... gotta love family togetherness!

And now it's about time to get ready to go out to dinner before Tom Sharah...

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting artist, I've never heard of her before. I think the Big Mother is sad because her purpose in life is to be a wet nurse, and when that's done, she'll be discarded and passed along to the next family.