Category Archive: TRAVEL
Queensland Museum
November 2021 TVC loves V & A style museums, the ones that pile-up objects, so that stuffed animals lie cheek by jowl with ancient graves, next to planes, trains and automobiles, and so on. (For example, Edinburgh). Housed in a repulsive building after the New Brutalism style of architecture (main image), near to the Queensland Art Gallery’s quaint homage to the Louvre pyramid, the Queensland Museum was opened by then Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen (it’s a wonder the current Premier’s myrmidons haven’t covered-up the plaque). It was a welcome respite from the heat after a brief stop at the Gallery of Modern…
Continue Reading →Gallery of Modern Art
Brisbane, November 2021 TVC ploughed through the liquid heat, on Southbank along Gray Street, only to be told that most of the Gallery of Modern Art (that we’d been dreading anyway) was closed for some weeks to prepare a new exhibition based on the effects on art of colonization of Japan and Malaysia (we were tempted to ask the guard if any good effects might be featured – a depiction, say, of Madame Butterfly, or pieces of Chinese porcelain) but we let it drop. We liked Karam Shrestha’s “unhearing” (2020), (above), reminiscent of a Da Vinci sketch. There were some…
Continue Reading →Stuffing One’s Face in Brisbane
November 2021 The Varnished Culture spent a (very) warm week in Brisbane sampling, inter alia, some of the very nice eateries. From restaurant to cafe, Brisbane serves good food in elegant settings and a relaxed mode. Here’s a sample. Otto (Shop 1, River Quay, Sidon St, Brisbane, Qld) Very posh. A short walk through the steamy riverbank gardens and then seats in the bar with delicious cocktails (a “Sicilian Sunset” – Vodka, Limoncello, Lemon sorbet, Vanilla and soda; and an “Arancia Sour” – Johnnie Walker Black, Lemon, a Chinotto reduction and whites). Then in to lunch. There we encountered some…
Continue Reading →Queensland Art Gallery – The Ugly
November 2021 In liquid heat TVC hit the street and made their way to the Art Array. We are pleased to report there is much good to be found here (of which more in a forthcoming post) but there is also a selection of work that can be kindly called comic (except by Queensland taxpayers). A sample below: The above work, signed by Ian Di-Jirus, c/- ‘The Lucky Country’, invites the Chairman of the People’s Republic of China to enter into a Treaty. But before treaties, first we have to have a war… One recalls Peter Garrett‘s comment: “[much] contemporary…
Continue Reading →Thorngrove Manor
(January, 2021) Sometimes in this crazy epoch, you feel like heading for the hills. Fortunately, if you live in or come to Adelaide, the hills are 10 minutes away. And you don’t have to sequester yourself in some hut like Ted Kaczynski’s cabin: instead, take the M1 Freeway from town to Thorngrove, between Stirling/Aldgate and Mt. Lofty and the townlet of Crafers. The Manor is a Gothic Revival dream – a kind of Strawberry Hill – but with its own bespoke design features that make guests feel they are King and Queen of the castle. The angels are in the…
Continue Reading →