Eastern Suburbs Art Group

I met up with Virginia to go along to this show down in Enmore, it was a fine day with plenty of sunshine though afterwards it got a little chill in the wind. The opening was well patronised so there were lots of people there. There was a stark difference between Sharkey’s ‘Beauty of Impermanence’ show with photos of peonies in close-up, and Gill’s ‘One Story Ends Another Begins’ which is made up of large abstract canvases with a muted palette.  The speech was given by a woman who knows both artists and who worked at Stills Gallery. I mentioned a project that I did recently while talking with Gill, a man Virginia knows. My story was a bit unhinged and incoherent so I wanted here to put it down in more detail. In 2008 in the winter I was struggling with my mental health and in order not to stay at home I would go out. One day I got on the train and went into the city taking photos on the way. I went to an opening at Stills Gallery and took blurred photos, inside it was dark (see bel...

Our fifth gallery visit on 5 Oct took Yianni and I to the Hollywood Hotel, where, in the upstairs space, we saw the paintings of David Art Wales. Funky is probably the best word to use to describe this oeuvre, with dripping paint and Day-Glo colours. People were taking selfies in xthe "living room" and talking in the kitchen, just like a share house party in the 80s. It took me back to my misspent youth! We bumped into photographer Catherine Hourihan and had a short chat, then toddled down the stairs and back out intoi the night.

On Thurs 5 Oct the fourth show I saw with Yianni was at Piermarq in Surry Hills, the big colourful canvases of Galina Munroe. I really like the decorative feel of the paintings with their understated approach to contemporary gender politics. The paintings have something about them of the air of children's book illustrations, perhaps a first primer on the body. Some of the canvases show flowers, too, just tht I didn't specifically target them. The works are very large.

 On Thursday last week third show for the evening for Yianni and I was at N. Smith Gallery in Paddington. The paintings are atmospheric and calm, featuring lovely striations of blurred light. It’s as if a photo of a city were taken during the night and the camera had been moved at the moment of snapping the shutter. The paintings are all similar however, and while this allows you to get a better idea of what the artist needs to communicate, it reduces the show to a simple style. The notes given out at the door badly needed proofreading, they were full of errors. I read through the notes hoping to find inspiration but the text is not highly sophisticated, or else it’s TOO sophisticated to be properly understood.

After seeing the Make Award on Thursday last week Yianni and I scooted along to Australian Galleries in Paddington to see the Colin Lanceley show, which was sumptuous. It’s not every day that you get to see a major retrospective of works by a big name artist. The gallery wasn’t really that crowded though (see pic below) and we had plenty of room to mooch around looking at the art. Some of the works on display were very large and expensive, this one priced at $80,000 (see below). There were also smaller works, including lithographs and screenprints (see below). Unlike his paintings with their stuck-on bits, these whimsical works were very appealing to me.

On Thursday I went with Yianni to see this show, we drove in his car and parked on Burke Street. It was a lovely warm evening with no rain. The Make Award exhibition was wonderful, with a range of different materials and subjects. It was a smorgasbord of design and as you can see the crowd was good. Make Award, Australian Design Centre There was also another show in the same space in the room next door, so two-for-one We wandered around fosr about 30 minutes marvelling at the craftsmanship. Some amazing works of art on display. Angela Valamaneshi, Once I Was A Teardrop (2023) Csongvay Blackwood, Walk the Line - Version Seven (2022) Jessica Murtagh, Self-checkout of Sisyphus (2023) Nick Mount: Golden delicious: A Still Life (2023) Sherrie Knipe, Recliner (2023) Vipoo Srivilasa, Diverse Dominion Deities (2023) This wasn't the order in which I snapped them, I just organised them randomly on my hard disk like this. I think it's alphabetical order by first name or something, I alway...