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Saturday morning with the Arts

On Saturday I went to see Andy Warhol at GOMA. I was really looking forward to it. I had the audio tour on my iriver. I was really looking forward to it. At the ticket counter I was very seriously thinking about buying a season ticket but my desire to save every last cent now that I am unemployed and looking for a job won over and I bought a single pass. I am so glad I did as I was really unfussed about the whole exhibit.

The audio tour was good, how it was implemented in the gallery though I felt was poor. There were signs up all over the place telling you to download it on to your mp3 player. Once you got to the exhibit though it was a big game of hide and seek finding the next piece. There were little headphone signs with a number inside it on the wall captions however there was no map showing you where each of them was. Some of them were easy as you knew by the name what you were looking for but overall I had to keep pressing pause whilst I went to look for the next number.

There were things I liked such as the time capsules. I liked them a lot. I liked seeing his early whimsical illustrations of shoes and cakes. The rest though, I guess because you have seen so much of his work in the media that when you see it in real life it has lost that magic feeling you get when you see a fantastic piece of work in real life for the first time. Also perhaps there was too many works. I don’t know, it is good to be able to say that I have seen such and such a piece but overall I would feel hard pressed to recommend it.

After looking at some of the other stuff at GOMA I went across to QAG and was blown away by this exhibit – Protest: Australian Political Posters 1972–92. This was everything I wanted the Andy Warhol exhibit to be and more. There were union posters, Triple Zed posters, Joh posters, all sorts of posters. It was everything I wanted in an exhibit and more. Whilst Mum and I were going up to Mackay last June, we had listened to a radio documentary on Radio National on The Sheds at Sydney Uni and the Earthworks Poster Collective, I had loved every word of that doco. I guess that background knowledge helped me enjoy the QAG exhibit even more. I will be going back to look at those posters again.

I took some photos as well.
QAG 11/366those balls at QAGLooking outVictoria BridgeRiverside ExpresswayThose steamer balls

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Saturday Arvos

Nothing quite like a Saturday or more exact a Saturday Arvo. Spent the arvo picking Basil leaves for “normal” Genovese pesto and Lemon Basil leaves which I think will become a pesto with a bite to it, in the way of chillies and a decent dash of lemon juice. mmm just thinking about the idea now, I can just see a bowl of rice noodles with a bit of the pesto, some cashews and perhaps some steamed Asian greens.

Saturday arvos are also about sitting on a milk crate in the back yard listening to some fine Australian music, chopping up tomatoes and capsicums to go in the dehydrator. In a day or two we will have the most gorgeous semi-dried tomatoes. Some of which will get used to make a tomato pesto. Gee do you think I might like pesto? Really though how can you not. Just a handful of ingredients, a bit of love and tasting and you end up with the most flavoursome “sauce/paste” that can be used in/on just about anything.

Saturday arvos are also about mowing the lawn. Which I did this arvo.

Saturday arvos are also about sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, cutting out snippets for books or exhibitions that we want to check out. Speaking of exhibitions to be checked out, it is only 22 more sleeps till the Andy Warhol retrospective opens at GOMA and to say I am excited would be an understatement :). The even cooler thing? Andy Warhol or more precisely 300 of his works are only coming to Brisbane, they are not going to those two cities down south who always talk about their capital C Culture. Yay for GOMA :D. I am so looking forward to the Andy Warhol retrospective and I have a good feeling that it won’t disappoint me as much as the Guggenheim in Melbourne did. 22 sleeps also till the big opening bash which is going to feature some of Brisbane’s finest artists including Robert Forster, Adele Pickvance & Dylan McCormack doing a bunch of Velvet Underground songs. The even better part? tickets are only $25. They go on sale on Monday – I am getting some for sure 😀

I have just finished my last run through my photos from the De Jah Groove/Cool Calm Collective/Heavyweight Champions/The Colour gig last night (which was a pretty darn decent night) before I send them off to the marvellous batcher. I started using Lightroom a month or so ago and it has sped up my processing so much. I dump the photos, walk away and let it import them/render previews (takes a while on my beast), come back flick through and mark my rejects and give a rating to the photos I have narrowed down, flick through to make sure they all look ok and then off to the batcher they go. Lightroom is nice.

For a change I am also listening to 4MBS Classic FM at the moment and the most delightful piece has has just finished playing (Brahm’s Hungarian Dancers 1-10) everything else has also been quite delightful.