Melbourne Trip

While Tom was away at Pilchuck, I had to pack some work for inclusion in the Melbourne Art Fair and sort out what we needed for the installation.

This was done by multiple emails and skype conversations over a really bad internet connection on both ends. This was one of the reasons I didn’t keep up with the blog, I was so annoyed at how slow and unreliable the internet was that, and I spent so many hours on the phone trying to figure out what the problems were with the technicians that I couldn’t bear to spend anymore time on the computer. I finally found out that it was a physical fault with a broken line and weird connections at the exchange, but I feel that that experience has scarred me in terms of loving technology, or alternatively I have been thinking that I could possibly become a phone tech support myself……..

Anyway, back to the show!

We sent everything across earlier for a preview at Helen Gory Galerie so we just had to take ourselves across with Tom’s outfit for the opening party.

The idea was to set up the installation, and then have some time together to wander Melbs. The reality was that at 8am when we rocked up to the Melbourne Royal Exhibition Building we were told that no children were allowed (under 16) and so I would have to go… We know now to double check if we can drag Xi with us, but as he’s already been part of three installations, I didn’t even think that it would be a problem. However, we are finding out that the more official and fancy an event or exhibition, the more rules and procedures there are!

This was Tom's wall of work.

So, we did try and sneak in, and succeeded for a while, until I’d just hidden the pram behind the wall set up, and was emerging with Xi on my back in a sling and ran face to face into the same guard that wouldn’t let us into the building.

I got escorted off the premises, and wasn’t allowed to bring baby back until it was open to the public. First time that’s happened to me.

We wandered around the area for a while until it started raining (and it was cold in August as well) and then hid out in the museum café reading until Tom was finished.

But on Wednesday, our free day, we got to go to the Tim Burton show (that DC went to as well),

It was great!!! That's us underneath a big sad balloon.

And then Tom went to the opening party (I did the stay home with baby gig) and on the Thursday we got to check out the MAF in all it’s multiple galleried glory. The building it was in is amazing, it was derelict for years, and then restored, and as they were restoring it, they found all these paintings had been covered up, so they restored the paintings, and now it’s a totally glorious example of 1890’s art deco interior grand hall symbolistic design with LOTS of swirls everywhere.

So we cruised all the stalls.

This is a photorealistic, yet distorted perspective supersized sculpture that messed with your head. ......I can not remember the name of the artist (bad bad me!)