"Meeting a Dream: Albert Tucker in Paris 1948-1952", "Imagine...The Creativity Shaping Our Culture", "Living in Landscape: Heide and Houses by McGlashan and Everist" & "It Ain't Necessarily So...Mike Brown and the Imitation Realists"
McClelland gallery was yesterday, and this was today (the former, along with today's sunshine and the desire to be outdoors for it, probably providing some of the trigger for my suggesting Heide as today's outing) - first visit since it was reopened (not that I've ever been a regular - given that, in relative terms, it's pretty much in my backyard, I've always felt that I should go a lot more than I actually do) and it has to be said, the sheet metal cows are still the best thing about Heide.
Reunion with them aside, the rest of what was on offer was a pleasant enough way to spend an afternoon, but none too inspiring for me. I quite liked the Tuckers, but felt that I would have been much more drawn to their murky browns, maroons, nocturnal blues and occasional lamp-lit splashes of colour and general demi-mondismes in high school than I could be now; also, they were kind of samey. The pieces in the "Imagine" space were variously put on by ten current Australian artists, with no particular unifying theme, and while they're an interesting cross-section, none particularly grabbed me (though a brief animation showing a couple of stick finger protagonists making their way through some iconic works of Australian art - a Nolan "Kelly", "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (complete with the Saints' "I'm Stranded" as soundtrack and re-enactment of dialogue), "Blue Poles" - appealed). The architecture one wasn't really my thing, especially given that I'm not really up with the whole 'major significance of the Heide I and II houses' story, though it was kinda cool to be able to wander through the house; and similarly (though in a different way) the Mike Brown, which was all collages and counter-culture and you know, blah blah blah (significant and interesting at the time - probably so, I'll believe what they tell me. But particularly engaging now? No).
