I. At a party on Friday, talking in a group with Tamara, Jarrod, Maree, Bec P and Cassie - ie, more or less the kind of people with whom I'm likely to be talking at a party - I mentioned my disappointment with My December and was surprised by the amount of Kelly Clarkson love then expressed by the others, someone else even going so far as to describe Breakaway as the best break-up album ever. Very pleasing!
II. There's a nice exhibition on at that little "city gallery" in the Town Hall - "Urban Arboreal: The Tree in the Grid". Photographs, prints, drawings, sculptures and one painting directly onto wall and window, reflecting on "the place and shape of nature in the urban environment" (according to the excellent curatorial notes by David Hansen) - modest but interesting. I especially like the twinned "Regeneration" pieces by Julie Gough (a standing eucalypt branch with embedded bronze leaves, and a photo of a large quartz-etched gum leaf marked out on the ground) and the mysterious garden paintings of Kristin Headlam.
III. Had another look at parts of the Guggenheim exhibition - I realised that generally, the more recently done ones have faded on further inspection (they're still cool, but don't seem to have all that much to say on revisiting), whereas those which I liked in the first room ("...Whose Name Was Writ in Water" and Soulages' "Peinture, 195 x 130 cm, mai 1953" in particular) have only become better and deeper.
