Got no mind for worry, so I idled down to the National Gallery as I am wont to do. It's often a sole experience, but somewhat different this day. First up was the latest Know my name exhibition, subtitled Making it modern, featuring works by six significant Australian women artists from ~1930: Ethel Spowers and Eveline Syme, Margaret Preston, Grace Cossington Smith, Clarice Beckett and Olive Cotton. Linocuts, woodcuts and such prints were a major part of the production, seemingly a modern movement at the time, and also Olive Cotton's photos. To finish there was a videostream being made of a drawing workshop. All very busy with several people off set controlling it all, and a surreptitious guitarist. I say surreptitious because his music was unintrusive, all sparsely spaced guitar chords with a swelling volume pedal. It seemed so apt for this purpose, to fill audio space around drawing being observed. Sam Andrews is a local, involved with studio and backing work around Canberra. Greeting to Sam! Then off through some New York photography from 1980s by Nan Goldin, recording friends and experiences, friends and lovers, falling in and out of love, having children, violence, bar and club life: her "public diary". The title was The Ballad of sexual dependency. Then working back, I joined a tour group near its end. Close to the final work was Lucien Freud After Cezanne. Interestingly, it references a work with the same theme from Cezanne. I asked where that work it: NGA! I remember it now: Paul Cezanne L'Après-midi à Naples. Then a fascinating visit to the Aboriginal Memorial (with no discussion of the Voice: NGA policy) and some final chatter. Our host was Sally who had a US background. We got on to Taylor Swift, somehow, and she spoke of TS buying a $17m mansion in a town Sally has connection to. I've now investigated: it's the Holiday House in Rhode Island. Despite guards on the property, locals apparently speak well of TS independently visiting local shops, relaxed and conversing. So then off. A short but interesting and chatty visit. Oh, and that red pic, it's Audrey Flack Jolie madame: oil on canvas but nothing like any oils I've seen before. How did she get it so soft and hazy. Perhaps it's sprayed?
Sally is a guide at the National Gallery of Australia. Sam Andrews was playing guitar to accompany a video drawing workshop.
The Pots > https://thepots1.bandcamp.com/
Musica da Camera > https://musicadacameracanberra.bandcamp.com/
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