09 May 2007

The urge to purge

It's that spring cleaning thing; brings on the need to dive under the beds and see what's there, and what can be disposed of. These things made me smile with pleasure. First of all, pleasure at Australian memories:Great logo, isn't it? And that's a fabulous museum. We saw the carpet-weaving machine at work, with all its spools of thread, and the patient man who was operating it taught us how to tie a weaver's knot -- when he did it, it was invisible!
These woodcuts by Helen Ogilvie come from the fine art gallery at Ballarat. I didn't get to the garden centre, but loved their flier.
Ah yes, gardens ... there's never enough time to visit enough gardens! Just look at that lavender....
Aboriginal art - I went to several galleries and picked up lots of leaflets. This pic is by Mitjili Naparrula - "if Matisse had visited Australia..."Jewellry by Helen Britton, from a booklet given to me by Linda, fabulous jewellry designer:
And now some non-Australian things - the January pic from a Gardener's World calendar I can't bring myself to throw away -A quilted bottro from eastern India, made of old saris and string, on a publicity card for Joss Graham's gallery (which doesn't have a website but is a wonderful place, as my chequebook knows all too well) --
Abbas Kiarostami had an installation at the V&A in 2005, Forest without Leaves - he's an Iranian filmmaker, artist, photographer and poet.
From the sublime to the ridiculou -- an old notebook, with painted islamic patterns - first you have to draw them, and there are "systems" for that!
You can never have too many postcards? Degas; Owusu-Ankomah; and Clarice Beckett, an Australian who lived with her parents and never had a studio (the father was dismissive of her painting) but accumulated a huge stack of canvases over the years.

1 comment:

The WestCountryBuddha said...

Hope you're not disposing of too much stuff Margaret. I find I always need the thing I've recently thrown away!