Meditation, music and museums...

clinamen, an acoustic installation by Celeste Boursier-Mougenot

School holidays are rapidly drawing to a close and usually, by this stage, I've secretly started to look forward to an orderly return to the school/work schedule. These holidays, however, have been different. I've been meditating every morning and there has been no holiday program for the kids just a mixture of work and days off for me and outings and days spent with friends for the kids. Time has had an elastic quality. Over the past two weeks we've managed to squeeze in visits to Luna Park, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Hollywood Costume exhibition at ACMI and I've watched in awe as colleagues raced to the finish line with the truly remarkable exhibition, The Extraordinary Shapes of Geoffrey Rush.

Another definite highlight was the wonderful day I spent in the city with Henry. I took him to Thomas', a very special fine music store in Melbourne, so he could spend a gift voucher his grandmother had given him. Henry's passion is classical music (especially early twentieth century French!) so of course the staff took a shine to him right away and we left with five CDs including one they gave him for free. He was in seventh heaven. To complete the top of Bourke Street tour I wanted to take him to Pellegrini's but, alas, it was too crowded so I got to try somewhere new too when we ended up at Self Preservation where we shared a delicious slice of Lemon Pound Cake with our coffee and blood orange juice. Of course we couldn't walk past The Paperback Bookshop or The Hill Of Content without some serious browsing and the acquisition of at least one book, Oliver Jeffers and Drew Daywalt's new children's title, The Day The Crayons Quit.

We then walked back to the car through the dappled sunshine of the Fitzroy Gardens, past Ola Cohn's intricately carved Fairy Tree and the model Tudor Village given to the City of Melbourne in appreciation of the food parcels sent to Britain during World War II. With time still on our hands we motored down to the National Gallery of Victoria where we sat before Celine Boursier-Mougenot's beautiful acoustic installation which chimed so nicely (both literally and figuratively) with my new meditation regime.

Time seemed so inconsequential that day. I could have sat there forever.

Image via

I hope you all had a lovely time watching the royal wedding (or successfully dodging it that's more your thing). After such a terrible start to the year for so many people globally it was nice to see so many people gathered (safely) in joyful celebration rather than in protest, revolt, panic or despair. I'm no monarchist but they do put on a good show don't they and I do like traditions such as leaving the bridal bouquet on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Here's a few other things that caught my eye this week...

• This remarkable Pulp Fashion: The Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave exhibition in San Francisco. Belgian artist de Borchgrave uses historical costumes from great European paintings and museum collection as inspiration for creating amazing three-dimensional responses in paper. Hard to explain but click on the link above and check out the photostream and video - well worth as look.



• This short but sweet post about fashion designer Jean Patou on Colette Patterns, which also features some great retro-inspired sewing patterns.



• These mouth-watering cake recipes posted by the Malthouse Theatre to coincide with their production of Porn.Cake
  
  Hope you're enjoying your Sunday. Masterchef starts again tonight so you know where I'll be...

Am I reading too much into it?

Images courtesy of the ever-inspiring Maybe Next Week

School holidays are finally over so last week we spent some time ticking a few things off our 'oh, we should do that on the holidays' list. On Saturday we braved the heat and made for the cool confines of the truly amazing State Library of Victoria. It's hard to remember a time when I didn't know and love the Library. When I was small the building was shared by the Museum of Victoria and the Planetarium two of the most wonderful places on earth to a small child fascinated by history and the natural world. When I was a uni student I spent countless hours in the Library's magnificent Reading Room devouring books on everything from Etruscan archaeology to World War II in Melbourne.

I've been waiting until my own children were old enough to experience the 'wow' factor provided by the Library and the Look! The Art of Australian Picture Books Today exhibition gave me just the pretext I needed (here are just some of the 100 or so lovely images in the show). Once the kids had finished admiring the illustrations from their favourite books we strolled across the foyer for a quick browse in the Readings bookshop before indulging in a delicious brunch at Mr Tulk, the Library's very cool cafe.

Now the Reading Room was beckoning... As so often happens in life the Room was not at all as I had remembered it. It was a bright, hot day so the Room was flooded with natural light bouncing off the pristine white walls. It was spectacular in its own way, of course, but for some reason it seemed so much more clinical than I'd remembered it. When I got back home I 'googled' the Library and was reminded that before the recent renovations the dome was actually covered with copper sheets. That explained it all! The Room used to be quite dark with the green reading lights glowing softly throughout the Room. It was always crowded and you always felt a sense of history sitting at those amazing 1850s desks.

Sadly, on that bright, sunny day there were only three people there while in the Information Centre below (with no natural light and lots of computers) the place was jumping. Maybe things are different during the week and, of course, all the uni students are still on holiday but I had that strange melancholy feeling you get when you feel you may well be witnessing the end of an era...

Dreams Come True...

Disney Studio Artist, Sleeping Beauty, 1959 'Briar Rose Dancing with the Animals' (reproduction).
Dreams Come True: The Art of Disney's Classic Fairy Tales, Australian Centre of the Moving Image, Melbourne


This week we've been in Disney-overload. It's school holidays so going to the movies is mandatory in our household. Yesterday we saw the new Disney offering, Tangled and, wow, that step-mother is a quite a piece of work - manipulative, emotionally abusive, vain and just down right nasty. Tom and I cried several time during the movie while the kids gave us embrassed, slightly worried sideways glances. We've always been suckers for a great animated kid flick and used to go to them even before we had kids -there's just something about a universal story and the knowledge that good will always triumph over evil that I find incredibly comforting.

Earlier in the week I took the kids to see, Dreams Come True: The Art of Disney's Classic Fairy Tales, at ACMI and what a wonderful experience that was. This beautifully curated exhibition explores the development of seven of Disney's groundbreaking fairy tales including Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), the first feature-length cel-animated film; Sleeping Beauty (1959) made in Technirama 70mm format; The Little Mermaid (1989), the last Disney film made using hand-painted cels and Tangled (2010) with its digital animation of 27 metres of hair!

While there's been lots of huff and puff about Disney's depiction of women, the exhibition actually focuses on the artistry and technology behind each film. Over 600 sketches, paintings, storyboards, maquettes, and original fim cels from the Walt Disney Animation Research Library are used to glorious effect to explore the journey of each film from concept to finished design. While it would be tempting to go overboard in the use of film excerpts in such an exhibition the footage has been carefully curated and placed at the end of each section after you have seen all the preliminary design work and read about the many design influences and challenges that led to the final product.

What I found most interesting was reading about the enormous range of influences the designers drew on - from the broad sweep of early European storybook illustrations, Persian, Arabic, Medieval, Baroque, Roccoco, 19th century French and Japanese art to individual designers such Erte (one of my favourite deco designers).

To round off our Disney journey we watched Snow White in all its digitally enhanced glory on DVD this morning. The comparison between the ultra-flat Snow White and super-3D Blythe doll-like Rapunzel from Tangled was stark but you know what? The kids still loved it and so did I...

PS: If you'd like to see some of the concept development behind Tangled you can go here or if you'd like to read something more serious about the world of fairy tales and their tellers Marina Warner's fascinating, From the Beast to the Blonde is a great if hefty read.

Australian Made

Evening gown 1954 by Hall Ludlow, Melbourne

silk, Vilene, acetate, nylon, polyester, metal, cotton
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Gift of Mrs Adrian Lowe, 2005

Yesterday we finally made it to Australian Made: One Hundred Years of Fashion at the NGV. The hundred years in question are the 1850s to 1950s and although that is quite a timespan the exhibition is quite modest in scale. That being said every outfit, hat and shoe deserves its place in the show. The earliest example comes from 1855 (at the height of the Victorian goldrush) and is made from cotton, silk, metal, mother-of-pearl and baleen (whale bone). Incredibly, it was sewn entirely by hand by an unknown maker predating the general use of sewing machines. At the other end of the timescale is a beautiful ruched and pleated strapless evening gown by Melbourne designer Hall Ludlow (pictured above).

Dress, c1855. Maker unknown, Australia.

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Gift of Mrs Micheal Parker, 1983

It was the shorter evening gowns from the 1920s, however, that really caught my attention, initially on purely aesthetic grounds but then by a personal connection. Four of the items on display were donated by a wonderful woman I first met when I was just starting my career and she was just finishing hers. Her name was Irene Mitchell. Renee was an actor, director, teacher, head-honcho at St Martin's Theatre and mentor to literally thousands of theatre professionals in Melbourne and by extension Australia. She was an icon on the local scene from the 1940s to the 1990s and even in advanced age she was still a force to be reckoned with. She still had an amazingly rich, rounded voice that projected to the back of the room and she commanded great respect form all those who knew her. She wore wonderfully over-sized jewellery and carried herself with great dignity - a true grande dame of the theatre. You can find a lovely photo of her here and more information about her career here).

Pictured above is one of the gowns she donated to the Gallery in 1975. It was made in 1919/20 by Hicks, Atkinson & Sons Pty Ltd in Collins Street, a retailer with an 'elegant European atmosphere'. It is described by the curator as being made of 'black silk with an overlay of net draped into soft panniers at the hips and decorated with iridescent sequins' and tiny glass beads.

If you are in Melbourne you really should go and take a look at this show. It may not be as big as some of the 'Winter Masterpiece' exhibitions but every piece in it is a jewel.



PS: You may remember that I was tagged recently by Style Wilderness. In turn I've tagged Debby at Cooking Up A Storm In A Teacup and Estelle at Curbside Style so why don't you go and have a look at their funny, witty, interesting answers?

Of Love & War

A Kiss Interrupts the March, Melbourne, 31 March 1943. Uploaded to Flickr Commons on October 19, 2009by Australian War Memorial collection

I have always had a fascination with the 1930s and 1940s. I think it started while watching classic Hollywood movies on TV with Mum when I was quite young. Both my Nanas were also 30s women in a way. Nana Stoner loved the glamour and celebrity of the Hollywood stars while Nana Laffan had more of the 'make do and mend' mentality having lived on the land through the Depression and the War.

My interest in this area has continued to grow over the years so when I came to choose my Masters topic I naturally chose something that would let me immerse myself in the era. For two years I researched the impact that the stationing of American soldiers in Melbourne had on the music and dance styles of the time. The more I researched and interviewed people the more I came to realise just how different life on the wartime homefront was from the period preceding it. Youth was honoured over age, working women became as highly valued as home-makers and public life and duty stole the limelight from life centred around the home. There was also an ever-present tension between the need for public control and the heightened private desires fuelled by the romance of the ballrooms.

One of the things that has peaked my interest in this area again is two new exhibitions about the period. The first is Of Love and War at the Australian War Memorial which looks at the impact of war on relationships and 'the ways in which Australians incorporated affairs of the heart into their wartime lives'. You might like to checkout the photostream on Flickr Commons.

The other exhibition was curated by my thesis supervisor and is called Over-Paid, Over-Sexed & Over-Here?. This exhibition explores the myths surrounding the American marines stationed in Melbourne during 1943 the same peiod I researched and I'm hoping to see it next week.

So what's your secret fascination? What things do you clip out of the newspaper, read about, collect? Do you have a special area of interest that you keep a little secret?

Caz

Call of the Wild

Maybe it is the after-effect of reading 'Colours' and realising how little I know about the natural world but this week I have been curiously attracted to finding out more about the animal kingdom. I've been reading Gerald Durrell's charming 'My Family and Other Animals' and earlier in the week we went to see Museum Victoria's new permanent exhibition, 'Wild: Amazing Animals in a Changing World'. Talk about bio-diversity! Over 170 mammals, reptiles and birds from all over the world all displayed from floor to ceiling in one big room.

The exhibition works on a number of levels the most obvious being scale. This mass display of animals does more than any book or television show ever could to give you a real-life sense of scale. Where else are you going to see a yak next to a bear next to a wolf next to a squirrel? There is also a certain poignancy about the exhibition with each animal labelled as extinct, endangered, vulnerable, or secure. For me the most powerful examples of this were the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger so beautifully preserved and the Thai dwarf (?) rhinoceros which has been in the museum's collection since 1884. There are now only 50 known adults in the wild. If you get the chance go and see it and be amazed.