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...

My old neighbour Adam Courtenay was talking about his new book at the Maritime Museum. It’s called ‘Three Sheets to the Wind’ but it’s not about drunkenness it’s about an historical trek made by a band of sailors who’d come from India to Sydney. Some of them made it to Sydney from Ninety-mile Beach in what is now known as Victoria. The year was 1797. Adam used to work as a journalist so I’m sure the book will be entertaining and the tale it’s based on is certainly remarkable. As he pointed out during the hour we spent in the same room, if this was the United States William Clark would be part of folklore. This is New South Wales as understood by the British at the time, with Tasmania connected to the mainland. Clark was the first European to understand that the island is in fact an island. After the event I caught the light rail to Central then the train to Kings Cross, did shopping and had a haircut and a cup of coffee, then walked down to Rushcutters Bay to see the late-opening galle...

With Anthony on Thursday I went to have a look at Billy Connolly’s exhibition of prints at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Darling Harbour, the works are whimsical and charming. Anthony did most of the talking with the event organiser and we found out that the prints’re mostly in runs of 295. The price for some of them is around $1500 unframed so they’re quite dear. Afterward I made my way to the Rocks and had some food because I’d skipped lunch, then waited in the antechamber of the State Library ahead of a talk involving Michelle Cahill and Bri Lee who would talk about Michelle’s recently-published novel ‘Daisy and Woolf’. It just so happened that it was the day the novel was being released in the UK. The conversation between the two authors was lively and informative, covering a range of topical issues.

It was a full day starting with the ‘Captivate’ show at the National Art School where the exhibition is in different sections. The talk by Vivienne Webb took us through the part of the show about the prison (it’s 200 years since the walls began to be constructed) and into sections of the show that chronicle the art school’s life (it’s 100 years since it started to be conducted on the site). Camera used to photograph prisoners in Darlinghurst Gaol After the tour I did errands before returning to Paddington to see Richard Tipping’s show at Australian Galleries. ‘With God on Our Side’ is a small sculpture I also popped into Arthouse Gallery to see Jo Bertini’s large canvases in bright colours. ‘Salt Creep Telling Stories’ is vivacious and skilfully made Off to Defiance Gallery where the Paddington Art Prize winner was announced, it is an amazing show of landscape paintings and the proceedings were opened by Blak Douglas. We went to see a show of work by Bernard Greaves at Darlinghurst Roa...

All three panelists at the talk have a Chinese origin (Dadang Christanto was born in Indonesia) and the general consensus was that Australia is still the lucky country. Shen Jiawei said it’s Marx’s workingman’s ideal. L to r: Dadang Christanto, Xiao Luin, Shen Jiawei, Linda Jaivin Linda Jaivin led the conversation, having also Mandarin to call on (as she did when Xiao asked about some words for translation). Xiao said that art is about expressing herself, though she admitted that sometimes that means talking about politics. Her history with art goes back to events of 1989. Formative for Christanto and Shen were the events in Indonesia in the 1960s when Communists and people of Chinese ancestry were set upon and massacred in a killing spree for which there seems to be no accurate total. In the background the Aboriginal paintings of Emily Kame Kngwarreye – which I had become accustomed to on an earlier visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, having sat in a nearby seat admiring thei...