Roads Scholar
Jun. 11th, 2019 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Back to work after a week off... doing family stuff, travelling around, celebrating my 52nd birthday... never seem to have a holiday where everything stops... so back to work for life at a more relaxed pace...
A drive out to country New South Wales, where Winter actually happens!! Poor old OBluV8 felt the cold so much in the Canberra early-morning frost, that the engine was literally screaming from cold in the Motel car park. A panicked inspection under the hood showed nothing really wrong, but the drive belt wasn't enjoying being spun around quite so quickly at such a low temperature & was the main culprit doing all the screaming. Fortunately, it warmed up after a couple of kilometres & we proceeded through the Nation's Capital at a peaceful volume
Art Galleries were the main order of the day... though it turned out that the National Portrait Gallery was closed for renovations 'til July & we were a day early at the National Gallery for the Monet Exhibition... without a Press pass, all we could do was look at the security guard at the entrance. There is, of course, plenty more to see at the NGA, including the building's own architecture which, like a lot of Canberra's public buildings, owes quite a lot to the mid C20 Brutalism movement - lots of concrete slabs, sharp angles, drab colours... all of which serve to make the artworks inside come that much more to life in stark contrast to the, well... starkness of the Gallery itself...

Behind the art...

Windows Of Colour

Culture...
There was a new piece by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, recently purchased & installed, titled The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended Into the Heavens, which is a large yellow room, with a reflective chamber at its heart...

Many Hands...
... which lent itself to one of the stranger selfie opportunities too good to pass up...

There was also the Sky Space - a kind of architectural installation, accessible by a tunnel which brings you into a quiet space with a reflective pool & daylight wandering through. Difficult to photograph the whole thing, but great for abstract shots...


I was feeling quite Modernist by the time we left...
A drive out to country New South Wales, where Winter actually happens!! Poor old OBluV8 felt the cold so much in the Canberra early-morning frost, that the engine was literally screaming from cold in the Motel car park. A panicked inspection under the hood showed nothing really wrong, but the drive belt wasn't enjoying being spun around quite so quickly at such a low temperature & was the main culprit doing all the screaming. Fortunately, it warmed up after a couple of kilometres & we proceeded through the Nation's Capital at a peaceful volume
Art Galleries were the main order of the day... though it turned out that the National Portrait Gallery was closed for renovations 'til July & we were a day early at the National Gallery for the Monet Exhibition... without a Press pass, all we could do was look at the security guard at the entrance. There is, of course, plenty more to see at the NGA, including the building's own architecture which, like a lot of Canberra's public buildings, owes quite a lot to the mid C20 Brutalism movement - lots of concrete slabs, sharp angles, drab colours... all of which serve to make the artworks inside come that much more to life in stark contrast to the, well... starkness of the Gallery itself...

Behind the art...

Windows Of Colour

Culture...
There was a new piece by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, recently purchased & installed, titled The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended Into the Heavens, which is a large yellow room, with a reflective chamber at its heart...

Many Hands...
... which lent itself to one of the stranger selfie opportunities too good to pass up...

There was also the Sky Space - a kind of architectural installation, accessible by a tunnel which brings you into a quiet space with a reflective pool & daylight wandering through. Difficult to photograph the whole thing, but great for abstract shots...


I was feeling quite Modernist by the time we left...