(K)Nighted - The White Night experience

Mixed feelings about White Night.

Seems to be a confusion about what the event is about.

Illuminations re-interpreting Melbourne's architectural & inner city landscape

or

a stay open all night extravaganza for cultural institutions.

It was an incredible experience being swept along with ½ million chilled & delighted people.

Rachmaninoff Live @ Hamer Hall was a wacky ironic treat.

(unbeknownst to us, the composers work had been recorded on pianola roll, this was played by an attendant, who earnestly introduced the event to a packed house, without a microphone then disappeared into a secret hole to the side of stage. He appeared moments later to replay the role and over and over again)

The facades NGV International boasted the bodies of the tattooed population both as decoration and figurative expression.

The stately madame Flinders Street Station was jazzed up with brilliant coloured projections.

Wanted to see so much more, too crowded, too much.

Those who waited the hours and hours for entries, you deserve a knighthood.

thanks Herald Sun for this shot

Melbourne Now - hands on with Vipoo

Spent an afternoon playing with air drying modelling clay, blue coloured junk & Vipoo Srivilasa’s for his two-hour Bleach workshop, in the Melbourne Now Community Hall. 
The public were having a ball, but I can't help imagining what Vipoo could have done with a major space for the entire length of Melbourne Now.

  

Melbourne Now - Participate Now

NGV's makeover as a new public-friendly, youthful, cool & open gallery is exemplified by the collaborative and participatory nature of many of the galleries.
Brand NGV encompasses everything as Melbourne Now spreads it's message throughout the two institutions at St Kilda Rd & Federations Square demanding to participate now!

'Gone are the days of the ‘moribund’ gallery. Now, in a gesture of direct democracy and horizontal structure, the institution is seeking to ‘let go of some of the control’, calling upon the public to ‘collaborate’ with them, and ‘participate’ in the ‘conversation’. 
Aodan Madden & Beth Rose Caird UN MAGAZINE 7.1

UN MAGAZINE 7.1 critique of the NGV's new direction is further fleshed out here in full:
Quote from this critical read: http://unprojects.org.au/magazine/issues/issue-7-1/the-whore-s-hustler-and-the-hustler-s-whore-a-speculative-review-of-melbourne-now/


Here are some of my family's favourite installations:

 Trugo - a game devised by rail workers in the inner city and unique to Melbourne. 
Designed by Tim Fleming & Phooey:

Such fun sitting in Meredith Turnbull's modernist sculpture and make a necklace:

Can't beat a chance to chuck things in a gallery:

Melbourne Now - painters using pottery

My first experience of Michelle's Ussher's work, this haunting sculpture was a treat. 

 Painter Angela Brennan takes her exquisite colouring to earthenware vessels.

Melbourne Now - a few of my favourite things

#1

Pound's investigation into the tangible record of "air" using found objects and the NGV collection is endlessly enthralling. I have visited three times and plan another.

#2

Jeweller Julia DeVille combines her taxidermy & objects from the NGV baroque collection, disturbingly entitled Degustation. She also shared this space with a ripper Patricia Puccini & sensitive portraits of elderly migrant women by Georgia Metaxas 

David Waldelton's milk bars make me unashamedly sentimental for simple childhood pleasures. 

20 cents of mixed lollies please...and can i choose each one.

Melbourne Now - ceramics +

From a surprising amount of ceramic sculpture, the stand-outs are Penny Byrne’s iProtest, a wall of small porcelain figurines symbolic of global protest movements; and Alan Constable’s table-top display of ceramic cameras, which turn machines designed to capture action into a form of still life.

 - See more at: http://johnmcdonald.net.au/2014/melbourne-now/#sthash.4qkMXQ6M.dpuf

Alan Constable's work looks fantastic under the natural light falling from the central courtyard at NGV:I.

Penny Byrne's iProtest (detail)

Ceramics Now @ Melbourne Now

Prue Venables’ strainers appear as precious and magical reliquaries arranged within a velvet-covered niche alongside the permanent decorative arts collection.

Brendan Huntley’s raw, whimsical totems.

Stephen Benwell’s series of sensual male sculptures continue his fascination for Greco-Roman statuary.

Janet Beckhouse’s large sculptural grotesques stand in public sentinel in the foyer of the 2nd floor at NGV Fed Square. 

Ricado Idagi’s self-portraits and Raymond Young’s spiritedly made shields have a strong, expressive presence.

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