I made a mistake. On the previous post where I talked about the dark room with the light in it was NOT at the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art - it was at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
The artist is Anthony McCall.
I probably can't say enough about the Art Gallery NSW. I love the place. We visited 3 times. Yep. 3.
I have a wonderful patient and supportive family. The museum is free, which is always a bonus. However they had a fabulous Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera exhibition that was special and we needed to purchase timed tickets. I am not a big Kahlo fan, but my daughter is and it was a wonderful opportunity to see works that we
had only seen in books before, plus some rare film footage of them. These aren't great photos, I know that - but I really liked them and I like the reflections too. Not sure why...
The museum has no problem with photography. And they don't seem very uptight about how close you get to the work either. I loved the place!
We went to The Museum of Contemporary Art. Ummm...not my thing. You can see some of the better work that was on display (my personal assessment) here if you are curious. There wasn't anybody doing acrobatics on the suspended ladder things - just ladder thingy's hanging from the ceiling. Boring.
However, there was one exhibit that was absolutely fascinating and nothing I post here will come close to the experience, feeling or visuals we experienced. We spent a good amount of time in there.
It was a totally blacked out dark room. It was actually a bit scary and intimidating to walk into because it was so, so dark. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face - nothing. We walked slowly and carefully not knowing what we were walking into. There was another couple of people in there. We never saw them, couldn't see them, but heard them whispering and speaking very low and quiet.
And yet there was a light in there - being projected through a slit, onto a wall. It then had some kind of mist that was released from the light source every once in while that moved around in this beam of light like ethereal mystical clouds. Awesome.
This will give a little bit of an idea of the light projection - it would change the shape and placement of the lines projected onto the wall every once in a while, but not often.
We took it in for a bit, then got our courage up, it is a museum after all - it felt like touching a valuable painting at first, like a security guard would appear out of the darkness and chastise us. We got over it and walked in and out of the light and fooled around in there, very interesting. These photos really don't do it justice. The more time we spent in there, the more spiritual it seemed. The darkness took on a look, and almost a feel, of really deep, dense, plush velvet. So lush I wanted to touch it but it was intangible, of course. It was a sensual look and feel and very enticing. The light began to feel sharp and piercing like a blade - almost intimidating. A very purposeful and efficient light, no waste, no superfluous overflow, leaking, or extra. Just an extremely sharp and intentional focus and purpose. Exact. Small but extremely powerful, even with the mist swirling gently around - which appeared to stay in the light only. This really was an "I wish you could have been there" experience.
Not sure what went wrong but I see that the videos didn't show up. So here is try number two. Hoping this works...
Why is it that the thing we call life keeps getting in the way of my plans and preventing me from doing what I want to do, which is create? Is it life, really? or is it just complicated busy-ness. Nonsense that social and cultural paradigms and customs require? I don't have an answer, but I suspect its a little bit of everything.
My intent was to get back to blogging (and painting) on a regular basis, which obviously hasn't happened. At least not the way I want. I have some catching up to do.
I think I left off in Australia, which is my new favorite country. Such awesome, friendly people! It was a wonderful visit. We started in Sydney. I have the obligatory city-scape, bridge and opera house photos - but really who cares about that stuff?
We went to Bondi beach. No real beach when we were there - and no seaweed or shells or surfers. It was absolutely freezing cold and super windy. There was a sculpture walk all along the trail but it was just too darn cold to enjoy much of it. But I did enjoy this, and I think there is a glimpse of one of the sculptures in there somewhere. The sculpture I did see were not to my personal taste and I wasn't very impressed. But I love the idea of the sculpture walk - and so did a lot of other people - in spite of the freezing windy and sometimes rainy weather - the trail was busy - almost crowded.
And this my friends is why I should never be in charge of family vacation photos! LOL - Oh, but the colors and textures...!!!
