...failed painter

                                                                                                              ‘Pushkar Barber’© L.M.Noonan 2011 

Our youngest son Oliver is 17 today. Above is the image I printed on the cover of our birthday card to him.
His father is having the full treatment while Oliver waits and watches.

Last week, Fong and I visited the ‘White Rabbit’ gallery in Sydney…we are still digesting the incredible quality of the artworks and the vision of the collector. Afterwards and following a splendid pub lunch at the Broadway Lounge we dutifully started to take in parts of the Sydney Biennale…but I’m afraid we had been spoiled and expected at the very least a similar quality. The works were by contrast dull and done to death.

A note from the Director of White Rabbit Gallery

“Many people associate the name White Rabbit with serendipity and surprise. And the White Rabbit Collection did arise from a series of chance encounters. The first was in 1999, when I came across a wall sculpture by Wang Zhiyuan in the storeroom of a Sydney art gallery. It showed whimsical fusions of humans, animals and angels, and I was immediately struck by the artist’s inventiveness and technical mastery.

That discovery led to a meeting with Wang Zhiyuan, who became a family friend and regaled us with news of the exciting changes taking place in the Chinese art world. A few years later, as a surprise present, I took my younger daughter to China. We met up with Wang Zhiyuan, who had moved to Beijing and opened a studio.

That led to perhaps the biggest surprise of all—seeing the extraordinary art he had been raving about. The best of it had all the qualities that had made his work leap out at me. It was bursting with ideas and energy, vibrant, often humorous, imaginative, technically superb and utterly compelling. I was hooked, and wanted to start collecting at once.

The name for the White Rabbit Gallery, which the Neilson Foundation started building in 2008, popped into my head one day and just stuck. The establishment of the Gallery, though, was very deliberate. We wanted to share with Australians and the world the best of Chinese contemporary art since 2000—a turning point that I think of as the Big Bang. I hope all visitors to the Gallery will experience the surprise, delight and fascination that the White Rabbit Collection’s artists and their works have given the Neilson family.”

Judith Neilson, 2010

The annual ICE exhibition is up and running on again at the Real Tart Gallery in New Plymouth.The image ‘errata’ above is one of the thirteen (13) I sent for inclusion this year.Like most Australians; I’ve travelled to some very far flung destinations…sometimes taking days to do so and yet I’ve never flown the few hours it takes to reach New Zealand.
Every year I keep saying that we should flydrive the length and breadth of both islands and every year something else comes up.
Perhaps I have a subconscious notion that I will fall deeply in love with this fabled land and feel compelled to pull up roots and move.
You can have stickybeak at the photos the indefatigable Dale Copeland—artist and organiser; has posted on her blog.
The gallery space looks interesting doesn't it?
As some of you may have noticed; I am redecorating again.
Why…you might be wondering? Methinks it’s rather like when start shifting things around in my studio…I have to clear away the clutter in order to start working again.

the sculpture
their response
their ferocity
their sheer viscerality
the body politic
the attacks
the support
the descriptions
the rhetorical skirmish
the public gaze

ahistorical
asocial
atypical
response
repartee
ranting

before the sagging relief of scuttling retirement
and
annulment of the defacto marriage of art + aspiration