Eastern Suburbs Art Group

I took the show down this week, it had been up for about 10 days. I sat the gallery probably for half that time but I am not counting. The show created different reacions in different people, but the Tree Veneration Society tapestry was the drawcard. It's on the right hand wall in the photo. Made by visitors to Rising Tide in November, the tapestry was a collective effort. As one person noted however the poems displayed across the room were more personal. The contrast between the two was interesting, she said. You can see the sonnets pasted to the wall opposite the tapestry in the above photo. I also included collages from 2022 or thereabouts, I don't remember all the details of each individual painting I don't have time. Cars feature in Road Trips, and the show preamble (also pasted to the wall) talked about how even though the road is always there it feels when you are driving between cities that somehow you are creating the road. A paradox perhaps but I don't ask too...

Yesterday I spent a few hours sitting this show in the Civic Hall. Two of us on the front desk. Some items sold, lots of good conversations. In total I had 7 items in the show. It was my first show of this kind so a learning experience. One of my oils in the nabove photo (bottom left). The order of the hang was eclectic to say the least, there didn't seem to be any logic to it, but the nquality of the art was often very good. Two watercolours (above right bottom) of mine. All of the works of mine in the show were plein air studies done in Victoria. The trips were in January and February.  The show ends Sunday.

It was a decent turn out. For me it was supporting a colleague from Tree Veneration Society. But behind the nice words, the careful epithets, the studied agreement with ideas artworks always try to embody, there was a stubborn fact in that some of Watanabe's works have perishable components. Other aspects of Watanabe's work struggle in this sort of environment, but the backlit items are simply going to fail one day. I wonder what is the point. Maybe late last year I discussed this aspect of some contemporary work with another practitioner. At that time the solution didn't present itself. With Watanabe's work it's a sort of category error that fights against the lightness of the design, the execution. But of course not all the works contain electric lights, which the gallery had carefully wired up in straight lines and with polity 90-degree curves. The framed works (see above) are also carefully finished, These frames being specially constructed again with curves. Th...

We hear a lot of stories about laneways in Melbourne. Some are covered (like this one). Some are nice, some are dirty. In Sydney laneways like these wre digested by the amalgamation of titles after WWII when the vast number of skyscrapers went up. An era of cheap oil, huge capitall influxes, and a burgeoning professional class trained in increasing number of tertiary education institutions. Of course this is not art with a capital "A" approved by the culture industry, it is commerical. But it is very strange and so I took a series of photos. The TV screen in the back diplaying I think fashion promotion images were especially intriguing. Not possible to say if the display is still there, these photos were taken some months ago. Maybe if someone goes to the city centre they can report back with news. Very strange sort of weitd cartoon character. Possibly frightening for some, even adults.