Biennale of Sydney: adventure #2

We visited the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) biennale offering today. We had a great time and enjoyed the works more than those we saw at the Museum of Contemporary Art a couple of weeks back. There is more installation, video and sculptural pieces at the AGNSW. Works we liked were large scale, recontextualised the everyday, and imbued a materiality and execution of intrigue. O really got into exploring the works, asking lots of questions.

Pictured is one of O's fave works. Small Business Karoke by Jun Shi, 2009. Reading the artwork info, we learnt that it's from the White Rabbit Gallery Collection too.

We drove into the City and parked at our fave little car park, Interpark Domain Car Park for a day flat rate of $10. Took a packed lunch for the boys and ate at the extra bench tables the AGNSW have placed alongside their cafe, recently. All good.

Lots of Lego & White Rabbit Gallery

We always leave our visits to White Rabbit Gallery exhibitions to the last minute, today we went to see Down The Rabbit Hole (which ends tomorrow). I find the shows here consistently good and we always find new works which we love. White Rabbit Gallery showcases contemporary Chinese art, is privately owned and receives no public funding and entry is free. The gallery is easy to get to (in Chippendale) and it's a good size for the kids (not too big): 3 floors, all accessible by a lift. O loves exploring the art... This work of the pristine garbage truck's rear protruding from the wall was O's absolute fave today! We spoke about it at length, viewed it from above in the lift...scrutinised it's every detail, we did.

After the gallery we popped over to Sydney University to see the Lego Colosseum in the Nicholson Museum. We learnt that the Nicholson Museum has the largest collection of antiquities in the Southern Hemisphere, wow! Entry is also free. The Lego Colosseum was cool, but somehow I had visions that it was going to be larger. O loved it though; there was life outside the arena (stalls, people milling about) and then the amphitheatre... I had to soften some of my stories - some Lego bears and crocodiles were suggestive of gruesome colosseum goings on. Then we spent some time letting O run about Sydney University and its grounds.

18th Biennale of Sydney

Wow, I've just looked at the date of my last post and its been a month to the day - 22nd June - since I last blogged. We've all been so sick with a catalogue of illness this past month - I know lots of folks who have been caught in the feedback loop of colds - it seems to have been a more virulent winter this year.

Today we had our first taste of the 18th Biennale of Sydney. It's on at several locations (Cockatoo Island is always a fave, with a ferry trip to get there, the kids love the adventure), we ticked off the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). It's on Level 1 and 3. There are some works I really enjoyed and O had his faves too - like this one pictured. Although a darkened and brooding room - he loved the horse man and strange characters created... There are a few biennale family days too - though a friend went to one at Cockatoo Island and said it was extra super busy. I think we are going to skip the family days this year - probably better if your kids are bit older when they can endure queuing a bit more patiently! Oh, and the biennale is free.

It was also my first visit to the MCA since it's refurbishment. So we checked out the building as much as the biennale. I worked at the MCA for a short while (after art school) as a gallery attendent, and seeing the gallery refurb several months after it opened made me realise how local my life has really become. Well, this year anyway with new bub and toddler.

Ooh, and my little tip for mum's taking kids to the gallery... I took photos of the artwork title/descriptions (the works which I really liked) as I did not have time to read them in situ. I'll have a flick through them tonight when the kids are in bed having their own horse-man-head dreams.