I finally, FINALLY managed to get to the Ian Potter Art Gallery, found in downtown Melbourne. I've been trying to get there for the past three weeks. First I was exhausted from all my touring in Tasmania. The I was sick. Then I went downtown to the art gallery and was refused entry because I was carrying a backpack. I tried going again yesterday, carrying my satchel this time, to discover that the gallery is closed on Mondays. AGRH. But I finally got in today. Ironically, after all that, I didn't have enough time to go through all the exhibits, but what I did see was definitely worthwhile. Fortunately the gallery is free admission so at some point later on this year I'll be able to go back and see what I missed today.Although I spent a good amount of time wandering through the various rooms and looking at the paintings, I was really captivated by this particular sculpture. Perhaps it's because of the juxtaposition of the organic and the mechanic. Perhaps it's because the "mom" and "baby" scooters are just so cute! But for whatever reason, I kept wandering back past this sculpture (it was situated prominently in one of the foyers). Finally I decided I should pull out my camera and take a picture of it. I wasn't at all sure if I was even allowed to take pictures in the art gallery (considering all the grief I had just getting here, I didn't really want to be asked to leave - again...), so I kinda did it on the sly.
This led me to wandering back through the galleries and taking stealthy pics of the other artworks that I really liked. The best of these pics are now found in my Melbourne album on Facebook. They're not the best photos I've ever taken, but since I was doing it rather sneakily when I was pretty sure nobody was looking, I think they turned out pretty good.
I also really liked some of the landscape paintings in the gallery. They have a whole wing dedicated to showcasing artwork by Australian artists who were living in the colonies here when the country was just starting out. Some of them did their best to record on canvas the way life truly was at the time, others painted idealized scenes of pastoral harmony - which are a far cry from the reality of the day. It was really interesting reading some of the blurbs by the paintings. This is one of the few art galleries I've been to where the blurbs do more than just describe who painted each piece and what materials they used. Beside many of the historical paintings especially, the gallery included information on how historically accurate the images were, a bit of history about the people or the events portrayed, or even a little bit about what inspired the artist to paint what they did.
I met up with Jen down by Flinders station at the end of the afternoon. She was working at a tough school again today. In fact, she's becoming concerned that this school likes her, and that they're going to keep calling her back, when she'd much rather work pretty much anywhere else! So I met her at the station with a Boost juice (see? told you I was becoming addicted!) and we finished shopping for our outfits for the Melbourne Cup next week. Now we're all outfitted with hats, dresses, blouses, etc. etc. All we need to do now is find a glue gun so we can add the feathers and other decorations to our hats! That'll likely be a project for next Monday, once we return from Sydney.
