Melbourne does not suffer from crane envy. It has almost as many as Seattle. The City appears to be booming and those from Melbourne are very proud of their city. At the Ningaloo Park site where we spent two nights, Melbourne guests kept dissing Perth every time we mentioned the place. Most Aussies are descendants of convicts so I am not sure why the disrespect for fellow citizens since all are from the stock or stockade as the case may be.
Now one thing in Melbourne’s favor is that they seem to have preserved some of the old architecture as they have built up like crazy.
Across from the station, we entered the Ian Potter NGV to view two shows of photography by women- Petrina Hicks: Bleached Gothic show and Olympia: Photographs by Polixeni Papatetrou.
Olympia, the daughter of the late Polixeni Papapetrou, and the model in the two photographs above, was present for the first day of the show. We noticed a certain fixation on the Alice In Wonderland story by several modern Australian artists. Maybe, being Down Under in the land of marsupials and prehistoric birds, people feel they are often down the rabbit hole surrounded by Stranger Things.
Among the work by indigenous artists, it was notable that several artists were seeing the world differently and using new medium of neon and graffiti:
[Brook Andrew: Buuga-Buuga, and Reko Rennie: Initiation]
Across the river and we had just enough time for a visit to NGV International for the Terra-cotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality, Cali Guo-Qiang: The Transient Landscape exhibit:
Throughout the Terra-cotta Warriors exhibit, Cali Guo-Qiang has suspended 10,000 porcelain birds portraying the calligraphic drawing of the sacred Mount Li, the site of the tomb of China’s first emperor, Qin Shihuang, and his terracotta warriors.
We missed the KAWS: Companionship in the Age of Loneliness show, but below is an example of Brian Donnelly’s work in the main hall. Comic Pieta maybe?
Meals in Melbourne were in two very different worlds also: Chin Chin for lunch and Entrecôte for dinner:
A gentleman at the next table at Entrecôte cut his hand on a broken wine glass, and I pulled out a bandaid from one of my many jacket pockets and came to the rescue. The second time having a bandaid was of assistance. (Last time was on the light rail from Adelaide to Largs and a teen cut his hand.) The Boy Scout in me survives…even though I never achieved Eagle status.
Whittoons 