High art and ….. not quite as high art.

Hey guys! So I’m back from my trip to Thailand, and Grant and I are quickly approaching the end of our first semester here in Sydney.  All we have left is the final barrage of papers to grade and then we fly back to the states for a very quick trip.  We’re really enjoying life here, and are feeling especially lucky about the neighborhood we ended up in.  We’re about a two minute walk away from this place called the “Carriage Works” which houses a weekly farmer’s market and other fun events. Two months ago there was a huge record sale and a few weeks ago a very upscale art show/sale.  We couldn’t resist either, but more pictures got taken of the latter. Here we go!

We were greeted by this taxidermied calf with blood jewels running out of its throat and into a milk bottle. You know, ART!   Here are some non bled-out works Grant and I both agreed we would want in our home (if that home belonged to bizarro-world bajillion-aire versions of ourselves who could just go off and buy some William Kentridge stuff for our bathroom on a lark).

There were some really cool video/painting works in which there was a painting combined with a gif-like moving image.  The effect is hard to show in photos, obviously, but it was quite fun and impressive:

What else? Oh – the one work I was really obsessed with and would probably have actually bought (it was already sold) was this oval-framed painting of Michael Jordan.  (upper middle)

I don’t know, maybe it was the inner card club kid in me (yes, I belonged to Coach Palmer’s after-school sports card trading club, and had the most awesome extra large cutaway Jason Kidd and Dennis Rodman cards EVER, what?!)

So like I mentioned, everything was for sale (it was really more of a gallery promotion / sale than the art show Grant and I treated it like) and there were some heavy hitters:

Kruger!

Gilbert and George!

Hirst!

And the aforementioned William Kentridge works.

After having our fill of art viewing, we walked a few blocks over to ….. see more art! There was an arts festival in Chippendale called “The Beams” and it was full of spray-painting and weird obnoxious performance art and really good music and hip hop dancing (mostly by adorable, adorable children):

The entrance was a bridge of plastic cups, oooooh street-art.

Music!

Wine!

Eating in the street!

Beat boxing! (I seem to have lost my adorable child photos)

Cute Dogs!

Spray Painting!

So yes, a great day of art viewing.  We also learned that Grant fits right in with the art-elite of Sydney with his Freitag bag and that even the worst pieces of video art can be saved by adding David Bowie songs to it.  Coming soon to the blog: evil ibis, Manchester memories and Bangkok stories!

~ by gakather on October 27, 2013.