Gerry Wedd @ Basil Sellers

Art Nite 

Staying out all night, wandering around chilly, beautiful Melbourne, looking at art, architecture & creative spaces including:

Gerry Wedd's work in Basil Sellers Art Prize at the Ian Potter Gallery, Carlton.

Have been watching these fellas being decorated for months on Gerry's Facebook listing. It was great to meet them in person.

Brilliant work Gerry.

A thing for the past - Underground Cinema & Kryal Castle

Night of nights at Underground Cinema. Theme: LaGuerre, 1940s. Secret movie: Casablanca.

Brilliant!

Almost snowing at Kryal Castle, Ballarat.
Theme: Medieval life. Secret: Torturing offspring.

Porcelain + Jewellery = Julie Holmes

Jeweller Julie Holmes has been sensitive to the timeless, earthy qualities of clay and the making possibilities inherent in the material.

Her porcelain creations are treated as 'found' objects but one is very aware that they have been 'made' by Julie to be a consistent and beautiful material that seems precious and rare.

These 'found' remnants have a sense of being uncovered in archaeological digs, collected along a beach or skeletal remains. 

This porcelain exploits the ease of creating texture & imprint and the ability to create holes for attachment & wearing. 

It's a shame there are no images of the fittings for these brooches as they are incredible.

Give it up for Margaret - an astounding collection of contemporary ceramics

 Chapter House Gallery

1-31 May 2015

Stumbled upon a new-ish public art space Chapter House Gallery off Flinders Lane.

A wonderful 'Melbourne-lanes' experience to see a selection of the very wonderful Margaret Lawrence's ceramics collection. 

Read here about Margaret's generous, philanthropic life being celebrated in a program of events created by VCA called Give it Up For Margaret

Also this in The Age. 

The exhibition has been sensitively curated by Tina Lee and spans across three windows giving a sense of Margaret's breadth of collection and a feeling of how her home might have felt with shelves jam-packed with work.

Vessel a Ceramics Victoria Exhibition @ Herring Island

The punt across the Yarra River

It’s always a treat to make the pilgrimage across water to Herring Island Environmental Sculpture Park, a 3.2 hectare artificial island constructed in the Yarra River adjacent to South Yarra and Richmond. https://www.onlymelbourne.com.au/melbourne_details.php?id=17877#.Uy-Ip9wkXqA

The location makes this year’s Ceramics Victoria members’ exhibition even more appropriate. Entitled Vessel, Ceramics Victoria member works fall into three loose categories:

 1. The vessel which looks at the formal qualities of volume, weight, balance between foot & rim.

Maria Pribaz, Pilbara - Contemplation
The eloquent combination of simple vessel and decoration.

Lene Kuhl Jakobsen, Allusive Landscape,
a tranquil grouping.

David Kerr, Bowls of Thought
A geometric balancing act with a delightful row of throw cups across the back of this sculpture.

2. The vessel as a hollow container, one that has a long history linked to domestic ceramics use.

Sandra Bowkett, Shards From Latitude-37.117035, longitude 145.133412
Here remnant and recovered vessels and assembled in categories encourages us to ponder on their long lost utility and form.

Amanda Christians, Treading Water
This earthy vessel recalls functional indigenous water carriers
Amanda has won the 2014 Herring Island Summer Arts Festival Prize
http://www.herringislandfestival.org.au

3. The vessel as means of transporting and travelling on water

Ann Ferguson, Vessel@doc.com
 This freighter is laden metaphorical possibilities, from Australia's reliance on imported goods to the MV Tampa rescue of Hazara refugees in 2001

Hedley Potts, Seven Dawns Swarmed at Sea
is a poetic interpretation of people at sea

John O'Loughlin, Vessel for Hope? What Makes It Go Series Has a sensitive empathy for and the trepidation of refugees and migration

(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.