Art History Cheat Sheet.

Awesome. From here.

Queen : The Unseen Archive

I'm really looking forward to the Art Gallery of Ballarat's Queen : The Unseen Archive exhibition, opening 20th of February. I've been very lucky to be involved in some of the design process of this exhibition, and after the success of the John Lennon : Imagine! Exhibition, I can't wait to see the finished product. Expect more theatrics, more stage props, costumes and memorabilia and more of a concert-like experience. A very exciting time.

From the Art Gallery's website :

The Art Gallery of Ballarat presents an exceptional world premiere exhibition showcasing a fascinating blend of photographs and memorabilia of legendary English rock band Queen. Queen - the Unseen Archive will feature both iconic and unseen images of the group taken by close friend Peter Hince, providing personal insight into one of the world's greatest rock bands.

Sat 20 Feb - Sun 11 April 2010.

Get along to see it if you can!

- Sophie

Ooooooooohhh

Lou is talented and makes nice things. Check it out. x

This weekend.

Things to do in Ballarat this weekend (apart from just snuggling up out of the cold...) :

SATURDAY :


Great Collections
A Museum and Galleries NSW Touring Exhibition
Art Gallery of Ballarat, Free Entry.


SATURDAY NIGHT :



Ratstock : Ballarat musicians showcase
Peter Lalor Hotel, Corner Mair/Armstrong St, Ballarat
6pm onwards / $12

IMMACULATA / CHASE NATION / VITAMIN K / X’s & O’s / MONTH OF SUNDAYS / PATRICK MC CABE / MICK DOG


SUNDAY :

Pleasant St Markets
10 am - 2pm, Pleasant St Primary School, Lake Wendouree, Ballarat.

Selling a diverse range of unique art, craft, fresh produce and fantastic food... live music... live art....workshops for kids...face painting...circus performance and community groups. They have snack food, sausage sizzle, Indian food and Dutch pancakes.
There is a playground and jumping castle for the kids. The market has been running for 20 years. Home made, home grown, home sewn. Over 130 market stalls, raising money for school improvements.

-----

Sure to be a lovely weekend.

Busy Bee.

My life is pretty erratic at the moment. One week of no work followed by a week of 9-5 all day and nights at Her Majesty's. The good thing about this is that I get an intense rush of craziness followed by a rest / catchup week. And tonight is the first night of my catchup... good meal with my boyfriend, Masterchef on TV, Freelance work and hopefully a good nights sleep.

Oh, and updating my badly neglected blog.

The best thing about my jobs (I'm working for City of Ballarat in three different places) is that they're all in pretty rad places. I'm very lucky to work at Art Gallery of Ballarat, Eureka Centre, and Her Majesty's Theatre. All are pretty cruisy work overall, with fantastic people. It also means that I get to see a lot of cool things while I'm at work, and get paid for it!




First up is the fantastic Hans Heysen exhibition at the Art Gallery. Beautiful landscapes mostly, with impressive depictions of the Australian bush and gums. I'm not a huge fan of Heysen's work, but I can appreciate the beauty, espeically in his depictions of light shining through the trees or reflecting in water. It's an impressive exhibition - and for the price of a gold coin entry, well worth a visit.

While you're there, have a look at the pretty cool Urban Art Agenda exhibition, with a focus on stencil graffiti.

From the Art Gallery website :
Inspired by New York graffiti of the 1980s, stencil art is a form of street art, or urban art as it is often called, which has sprung up all over the globe in the last two decades. Now a respected art movement and refined art-form, it has long moved off the streets and into galleries and art spaces.Urban Art Agenda brings together some of the most prolific artists from around the world in a unique showcase. Featured are David Soukup (Chicago), Kenji Nakayama (Boston), Skran (Lisboa), M-City (Warsaw), XOOOOX (Berlin), Jana and JS (Salzburg), Jef Aerosol (Lille), Ozi (São Paulo), Kostar (Liège), Orticanoodles (Milan), Mandarina Brausewetter (Vienna), Penny (London), El Moocho (Melbourne), ELK (Canberra), KidZoom (Sydney).

It's a really cool thing that in our one gallery you walk through this exhbition on graffiti art to a very traditional exhibition like the Heysen.

Looking foward to the Great Collections exhibtion, starting on July 25th, amazing huge travelling exhibition from Museums & Galleries NSW. Had a sneaky peak at two Brett Whiteley works that are being hung at the moment, going to be brilliant!


I also worked two shows at Her Majesty's Theatre this week : The Dancer's Company Ballet - ushering and getting to watch beautiful ballerinas all night - and The Kursk, a fantastic drama about a Russian submarine tragedy.



The Dancer's Company is The Australian Ballet's regional touring group, comprising guest artists of The Australian Ballet alongside graduating students from The Australian Ballet School, and was pretty amazing. Three acts, with the final act from The Nutcracker (The Gift of A Dream, Act Two).



Act One was by far my favourite, costumes and dance from the 1920's. Beautiful. From The Australian Ballet website:

Choreographer Robert Ray, inspired by several poems of Sir John Betjeman, has created a translation of the spoken word into beautiful dance. Set in England in the 1920s, Ray's work is one of graceful ballet, of wit and uncluttered style that suits both the period and sentiment of the poems.

I'm pretty lucky to be involved in such magnificent performances and exhibitions. Makes work worth going to.

And now for my week of rest and catching up... Freelance and Thaw design mostly!

Catch-ups

Ok, so I've been useless with the blog lately, so thought I'd do a massive catch-up post of what i've been upto the past two weeks.

First up : my boyfriend and I spent a lovely weekend in Bendigo, and saw the Archibald exhibition at their gallery (which, in my biased opinion, is not as good as my Ballarat gallery... hehe).


Vincent Fantauzzo
Brandon
Archibald Prize entrant 2009

It was an interesting exhibition : I'm always interested to see what artworks are chosen in terms of technical skill and artistic merit, and ones which may have been chosen with the subject of the portrait in mind. I guess it would be hard to find balance, and an immense task to undertake putting the exhibition together. I don't like to compare year to year this exhibition, as it is so unique, but I just don't know if I was impacted as much by this collection as the previous year's entrants.



The Cherry Hood portrait of David Helfgott (pictured above) was one of my favourites, huge and confronting, but with lovely soft paint dripping and forming a lovely painting. Hood is a favourite artist of mine, her paintings of children are beautiful and haunting. I'm looking forward to seeing David Helfgott play at Her Majesty's Theatre in Ballarat soon.

We also managed to catch the 'A Camera On The Somme' exhibiton (which had lovely WWI photgraphs, highly recommended) and have some of the always-delicious woodfire pizza from GPO, yum! Funny, I never went there when I was living in Bendigo, but everytime we are in Bendigo now it's almost a tradition that we go there.

Topped off by a purchase of night in with scrabble challenges, all round a fantastic day.

Cute Clip.

New song from Sarah Blasko, with illustrations and animation by Melbourne based artist Celeste Potter. Sweet.

Got the Blues.

Chills, Cold and Comfort.

To my dearest...

My lovely Nanna, who lives in South Australia, has recently moved from her family home and into a nursing home, and I have been lucky enough to be given some treasures from her house. Among some of the beautiful old bits and pieces are an amazing collection of postcards and old family photographs.

This cigarette tin and album are full of the most beautiful, delicate notecards and photographs, the detail in them are amazing. I'm fascinated by the precise handwriting and illustrations, and the fact that this was the way that people kept in contact.

They're so precious, I feel so lucky to be looking after them. What a wonderful source of inspiration.

Sunday Wanderings.

Melbourne : Ok, so not so sunny.

Yesterday I had the lovely opportunity to spend the day wandering around Melbourne by myself in the sunshine. I had such a wonderful day, visiting a few galleries and generally soaking up all as much inspiration as possible in one day.

First up (after an epic train/bus/tram trek from my friend's house, and coffee and croissants on the way) was a look at a free exhibition at the State Library of Victoria


24 April 2009 - 25 October 2009

The Independent Type: Books and Writing in Victoria is a free exhibition that celebrates Victoria's rich and diverse written culture, highlighting the stories, the voices and the spirit of independence that have made our literature unique.

The exhibition examines a diversity of 'literatures' – the printed book, electronic media, the spoken word and even a possum-skin cloak. It looks into Victoria's thriving literary niches, including poetry, theatre, literary journals and 'zines, and children's literature from I Can Jump Puddles to Animalia. It explores every aspect of the world of books and writing, from booksellers and publishers to literary awards and festivals. It tells the stories of passionate and enterprising figures such as State Library founder Sir Redmond Barry, the eccentric EW Cole and his Book Arcade, independent publishers McPhee Gribble, and Lonely Planet founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler.

Fantastic exhibition, well worth it, and I really recommend doing the free ipod tour (either download off the website, or hire when you are there). I had fun trying to listen in to an education group going through (in a non-creepy way), cute kids talking about art and literature. Definitely what I want to be doing - how much fun would it be being an education officer/guide at a gallery or library?


ENGLAND, Dress c. 1816 (detail), cotton muslin, metal
145.0 cm (centre back); 80.0 cm (sleeve length)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, The Schofield Collection
Purchased with the assistance of a special grant from the Government of Victoria, 1974

After the state library it was off to NGV International... I had every intention of going to see the Dali exhibition, but as the line was about an hour and a half long (opening weekend and all) I thought I'd save it for another day. Went and visited some of my favourite works, and spent a lot of time in the exhibition - beautiful dresses!


John Brack , Australia 1920–1999
Latin American Grand Final 1969
oil on canvas, 167.5 x 205.0 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Purchased, 1981 © Helen Brack

After a bit of a wander around Federation Square and the Design Markets, I made my way to NGV Australia - The Ian Potter Gallery, and saw the Top Arts VCE exhibition (really impressive works from year 12 kids!) and the John Brack exhibition, which I had really been looking forward to. Well worth the price of admission, I didn't realise that his later works were such a deviation from his earlier style, and how extensive the retrospective would be. I tagged around with a tour group for a while, which was really informative, but as the space was so busy, I did my own thing for a while and tried to avoid the crowds.

All in all a fantastic, inspiring day. I've got to get down to galleries more often! Lucky that I work at one, so at least I get to see art on a regular basis, but days like yesterday make me wish that I had the opportunity to see exhibitions more often.

Coco and Pearls.

I'm seeing a little bit of a theme here... French inspired, much?



I can't wait for the Coco Chanel biopic to be released soon, the fashion alone will be worth it, not to mention one of my favourite actresses - Audrey Tautou - is playing Miss Chanel herself. Watch the trailer below (no subtitles.. but amazing style and cinematography).



Audrey has recently starred in a beautiful Chanel No5 Perfume advertisement, that makes me want to spritz a beautiful fragrance at the nape of my neck, and ride a vintage train.



And some photos of Coco Chanel's endlessly beautiful style, couresty of this site.






I really need to get out of my jeans and into a beautiful dress....

MM.

Photos of Marilyn Monroe in the LIFE Magazine archives. Never published and before she was famous. Beautiful...








Yesterday would have been Norma Jeane Baker’s 83rd birthday.
(1 June 1926 - 5 August 1962).

Artist Love.

Audrey Kawasaki is one of my favourite illustrators. Her beautiful, etheral and very sensual illustrations of girls are amazing, and her new work for an upcoming solo show in Japan are, as always, quite beautiful.




Images thanks to Bec Winnel, who is quite a fantastic artist in her own right. Her drawings are obviously influenced by Kawasaki's, delicate and fragile images of young girls.

My beloved Apple Macbook Pro Laptop, which is pretty much the most valuable and useful thing that I own, has been pimped up by an Audrey Kawasaki vinyl, which I scored from Gela Skins, which have a great selection of vinyls to decorate any mac product (my ipod really needs some loving).



I've had a lot of comments about my precious laptop, and I still love this print after having it on there for over a year - quite the feat seeing as I get sick of graphics so quickly! It's so lovely and soft, and quite sensual really, and fits in really nicely with the silver laptop. Love.

Trash and Tea.

Bits and Bobbins, Grace and Garbage, Fashion and Fakes.

Arty Farty Tea Party

Come along and have a cup of tea and a wander around the Art Gallery of Ballarat!

This Thursday 28th May
10 - 11.30 am
Art Gallery of Ballarat, Lydiard St Sth.

Morning Tea to raise money for Cancer research and support in Victoria

- REAL COFFEE from the BEAN BARN
- $4.oo entry
- loads of door prizes
- moring tea, coffee, oj
- have a look around the gallery
- donations of $10 or more go into the draw to win $5000 worth of holidays vouchers to be used in Australia

Will be a lovely morning, hope to see you there.

Apparitions

Petra Nevistic Apparitions (detail) Image © of the artist

Apparitions: Recent works on paper by Petra Nevistic

I think I've got one of the best jobs in Ballarat.

The Art Gallery of Ballarat, on Lydiard Street, is in my (slightly biased) opinion one of the finest regional galleries in Australia. And I'm lucky enough to work there. Along with our fantastic, extensive permanent collection, at the moment there are some fantastic exhibitions on at the Gallery.

Apparitions, by local artist Petra Nevistic, is a fantastic illustration exhibiton, all fine lines and delicate imagery. From the Art Gallery of Ballarat website :

Obsessive fine lines (produced with a single paint brush hair) are intertwined with symbolic imagery, primarily from the natural world, that have been fragmented and then re-ordered into surreal re-inventions of body and nature.

Check it out while you have the chance, it finishes on May 24th.


Paul Signac, Fishing Boats at Lomalo (detail) 1923, watercolour, black crayon, touches of gouache. Gift of Col. the Hon. R.A. Crouch, 1944

Also on at the moment is a brilliant exhibition of rarely seen work from our collection, and recent acquisitions. Some amazing pieces there, really lovely illustration work, paintings, prints and one of the most diverse collections I've seen in a while.