First, I like both the idea and the execution of "Melbourne Now", a wide-ranging survey - exhibition - of contemporary Melbourne art and design, dispersed across the two arms of the NGV.
Anyway, today I spent a couple of hours down in the International (last Sunday - opening weekend - Jade and I took a quick look around the bits in the Potter but didn't have enough time to properly take it in) and enjoyed it, from the 'Community Hall' at the entrance, the flags suspended from the ceiling of the great hall, Caleb Shea's colourful, playful steel sculpture series "What are you looking at Balzac" on the terrace out back, Laith McGregor's "OK/KO" in the ground floor comprised of two table tennis tables with pen/pencil portraits of the artist drawn on their surface (both tables were being enthusiastically used as I passed through), and onwards.
Some that appealed:
* Juan Ford - "You, Me and the Flock". Large curved wall, the vast majority of its height sky, horizon-line a few centimetres above ground, and the invitation to add some birds to the wall yourself (my empty sticker sheet photographed above, along with the page from my notebook to which one've them escaped).
* Daniel Crooks - "An embroidery of voids". A video work, moving through a spliced series of inner Melbourne laneways; I only specifically recognised one (from the cbd), but the sense of general recognition, particularly from my North Fitzroy days, was strong and piercing.
* Siri Hayes - "Plein air explorers" and "Wanderer above a sea of images" (below), a pair of large, compositionally similar backlit photos. I've seen these before, though I can't remember exactly where; her work has struck me before.
* Tomislav Nikolic - "enter this sublime corrosion" and "3: we all have a dream of a place we belong", both colour paintings.
* Raafat Ishak - "Half a proposition for a banner march and a black cube hot air balloon". A series of abstract, geometric, somewhat Frank Lloyd Wright-esque paintings of room interiors - of the NGV itself, though I wouldn't have known without the explanatory plaque.
* Also, one whose name I didn't take down, but which was basically a room-size installation of lights and speakers which, once you'd been there for long enough, emitted a terrifyingly loud industrial blare (and flashing of lights), like the room was shouting at you.
Anyway, today I spent a couple of hours down in the International (last Sunday - opening weekend - Jade and I took a quick look around the bits in the Potter but didn't have enough time to properly take it in) and enjoyed it, from the 'Community Hall' at the entrance, the flags suspended from the ceiling of the great hall, Caleb Shea's colourful, playful steel sculpture series "What are you looking at Balzac" on the terrace out back, Laith McGregor's "OK/KO" in the ground floor comprised of two table tennis tables with pen/pencil portraits of the artist drawn on their surface (both tables were being enthusiastically used as I passed through), and onwards.
Some that appealed:
* Juan Ford - "You, Me and the Flock". Large curved wall, the vast majority of its height sky, horizon-line a few centimetres above ground, and the invitation to add some birds to the wall yourself (my empty sticker sheet photographed above, along with the page from my notebook to which one've them escaped).
* Daniel Crooks - "An embroidery of voids". A video work, moving through a spliced series of inner Melbourne laneways; I only specifically recognised one (from the cbd), but the sense of general recognition, particularly from my North Fitzroy days, was strong and piercing.
* Siri Hayes - "Plein air explorers" and "Wanderer above a sea of images" (below), a pair of large, compositionally similar backlit photos. I've seen these before, though I can't remember exactly where; her work has struck me before.
* Tomislav Nikolic - "enter this sublime corrosion" and "3: we all have a dream of a place we belong", both colour paintings.
* Raafat Ishak - "Half a proposition for a banner march and a black cube hot air balloon". A series of abstract, geometric, somewhat Frank Lloyd Wright-esque paintings of room interiors - of the NGV itself, though I wouldn't have known without the explanatory plaque.
* Also, one whose name I didn't take down, but which was basically a room-size installation of lights and speakers which, once you'd been there for long enough, emitted a terrifyingly loud industrial blare (and flashing of lights), like the room was shouting at you.
