Australian Art and the Theatre

Tuesday March 12 was cloudy all day with a high of around 19C.

We had our morning coffee at Industry Beans, rated highly by a number of sources.  It was a minimalist, very clean looking café about 5 minutes from our apartment.  Excellent coffee and Alain had a chat with a couple of the baristas.

Industry beans

Alain and his morning flat white

Chatting with the baristas

We then walked to the Queen Victoria Market to pick up some food for our next dinner.   We wandered into a row of stores at one edge of the market and discovered Wendy Voon knits, a lovely store of beautiful linen and wool knits along with some clothes and jewellery from other local designers.  I ended up buying a lovely grey/eggplant linen knitted top.

Packaging my top

Signage for Wendy Voon knits

In the store with my purchase

There was a great view of some of the new buildings and construction from the market.

New buildings going up (taken from row of shops beside Market)

Wonderful shapes and colours

We took the free tram back to the apartment, had a light lunch, and headed out to The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia to see a few exhibits.  There are two National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) buildings-- the International gallery where we have visited twice (right next to the Arts Centre) and the NGV: Australia featuring Australian art, which is located in Federation Square.

We first checked out the statue of Mathew Flinders, the explorer and navigator that stands in front of St. Paul's Cathedral across from Federation Square.

The Ian Potter building is clad in the same way as the other Federation Square buildings.  The inside is very modern and there is lots of space to explore the art.  It was not very busy on a Tuesday early afternoon.

Outside of the NGV: Australia

The main exhibit we went to see was called From Bark to Neon: Indigenous Art from the NGV Collection.  It is a celebration of Indigenous art in Australia.  It was a wonderful exhibit featuring major Aboriginal artists who have shaped the indigenous art scene in Australia-- "creating new forms of expression, while maintaining and regenerating customary cultural practices and iconography".

Brook Andrew (b. 1970) Sexy and Dangerous 1996 (the artist re-purposes a 19th century photograph by Charles Kerry of an unidentified Aboriginal man)

Alec Mingelmanganu Wanjina 1980

Paddy Bedford (1922-2007) Joowarringayin-Devil Dreaming 2000

Naata Nungurrayi (born c.1932) Designs associated with the rock hole site of Marrapinti 1998

Wall of paintings

Naata Nungurrayi Designs associated with Yumari 2003 - another rock hole site in Western Australia

Emily Kam Kngwarray (c. 1910-1996) Big yam Dreaming 1995- the bold white lines derive from women's striped body paintings.  It celebrates the growth of a yam-- the linear design resembles the veins, sinews and contours of the ground seen from above.   The artist painted this in two days using one continuous line.

Thunduyingathi Bijarrb May Moodoonuthi (1929-2008) Burrunda 2008 - representing markings made on senior Kaiadilit people in pre-contact times.

Charlotte Phillipus Napurrula (b. 1959) Kalipinypa 2018  - story of rain and hail-making ceremonies.  Forms represent the sandhills making waves across the desert, but also symbolise waterways and ceremonial body paint.

Patju Preseley (born c. 1945) Markurapiti 2015-- representing a sacred site

Wally Brim (b. 1976) Yumbi' 2018 (multipurpose container)

Brook Andrew (b. 1970) dhalaay yuulayn (passionate skin) 2014 -- a neon emu--backdrop is the Union Jack and the blinking acronym USA falls from its beak. The yellow centre of the emu and the black and red halves of the work's frame create a covert Aboriginal flag. 

Mick Wallangkarri Tjakamarra (c. 1905-1990) Old Man's Dreaming on death or destiny 1972

Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi (c. 1920-87) Waterhole in a cave 1972-- this has a landscape dimension.

Paintings on hollow logs

Kumantjayi Tjapaljarri (c. 1957-2017) Designs associated with the rock hole site of Kurikurta 2002-- circles represent waterholes and lines are the tracks taken by Tingarri men.

Robert Campbell Junior (1944-93). Dorrigo Falls 1989 - focus on roads cutting into the mountains to service the logging of native forests.

Michael Cook (b. 1968) Invasion, kangaroo 2018. A contemporary re-imagining and inversion of the 'arrival' of Europeans in Australia.  Cook shows the moment of encounter as an experience of imminent danger and terror.  He recast the invaders as oversized Australian animals, and the invaded as contemporary residents on the streets of London.

Boxer Milner Tjampitjin (1934-2009) Purkitji, Sturt Creek 2004 - represents the flooding of Sturt Creek.

The exhibit was a great survey of modern Aboriginal art in Australia.  The designs, colours, patterning and stories are fascinating.  A very different art form than aboriginal art in Canada.

As we left the gallery, I took a picture of the dismantling of the ferris wheel that had been part of a carnival which took place on the weekend.

Half a Ferris wheel

Another photo of the gallery as we were leaving

We then wandered through some laneways as we headed uptown.

Alain and a big rabbit

Street art happening on Hosier Lane

We stopped at an interesting woman's clothing store - Alistair Trung.  He is a Vietnamese-Australian designer from Sydney. Wonderful drapey minimalist looks, complex in structure but simple in appearance.

Window at Alistair Trung

New arrivals

We continued our walk-- loved these two signs at a Pho restaurant.

Twenty. Pho. Seven

This is the sign you have been looking Pho... (reflection of sign inside the restaurant)

One of our destinations was Gallery Funaki, a gallery promoting contemporary jewellery since 1995.  We had seen some of the work of Mari Funaki (1950-2010) at the NGV International and knew that she had started a gallery that was still open.  She was born in Japan and moved to Melbourne in 1979 where she was a jeweller, sculptor and gallerist until her death in 2010.  It was a lovely small gallery and Alain bought a beautiful ring made by Marian Hosking (b. 1948) a friend of Funakis with a very impressive cv.  She was a senior lecturer at Monash University, Melbourne from 1997-2014 and has had a number of solo and group exhibitions.

Alain making his purchase

We went around the corner and had a wonderful home-cooked bowl of minestrone at Pellegrini Espresso, where we had been the other day.  It reminded us of some of the older Italian restaurants in San Francisco's North Beach area.

Minestrone at Pellingrini's

We wandered back to the apartment for a short rest and then headed out to the world premiere of Arbus & West, written by Australian playwright Stephen Sewell and directed by Sarah Goodes, Associate Artistic Director of the Melbourne Theatre Company.  It is an imagined account of the infamous, real-life meeting that took place between Arbus and West in Mae West's LA apartment in 1964, when Diane Arbus came to take her portrait.  Two clashing views of how to achieve their artistic ambitions--- a master of illusion meeting a master of truth.  The production, acting and script were excellent.  Mae West was 71 when Arbus, 41 took the photographs.  Arbus committed suicide in 1971 at 48 and Mae West (b. 1893-1980) lived to be 87.

Poster for the show

I managed to get a photo of the fabulous set just after intermission

National Arts Centre where we saw the play -- lit up at night

Then it was back to the apartment for a late fish dinner.