(top l-r) Damo & Ginger after the Dara awards ceremony, two of Stephen Harrison’s works and (above) Van Thanh Rudd’s Painting of an extremist.
We’re going to interrupt the last fortnight’s retrospective with yesterday’s cultural sortie, if only to give the lag a bit of a shake-up…
But we really ought to get our priorities right - early in the day the Gang attended the Daramalan Year 12 Graduation Award and Farewell ceremony with Ginger, our most significant ongoing work-in-progress (now that Sammy Jo is, to all intents and purposes, a fairly resolved piece!) And we were very proud indeed to find that, in addition to her Year 12 certificate, she picked up two medals for excellence, in Design & Technology and General Maths. What a dear little treasure she is!! Good on ya, darling! (And with only a week leading up to her formal school dinner dance, this naturally brings the Gang tantalisingly close to the fulfillment of our obligations here in the national capital…be still my beating heart!!)
Ginger’s in for another important rite-of-passage in a week’s time; her first opportunity to vote in a General Election. Which segues rather nicely into the reportage of the first stop on our Friday evening gallery hop…
Who would have thought that Kevin Rudd would have an artist nephew showing socio-political work of a provocative nature, here in Canberra, a week before the Federal election? The Gang loves that!! Of course anybody in the arts game will be only too aware that forward gallery programming necessarily dictates the scheduling of exhibitions well in advance (years even) of nebulous future electoral possibilities. And indeed Van Thanh Rudd’s show had been organised way before Kevin Rudd showed any sign whatsoever of taking up the mantle of Leader of the Opposition – but why let facts get in the way of a good story!!
How absolutely delicious that Van should be exhibiting at The Belconnen Community Art Gallery at this specific juncture in time – and showing work with a radical bent (so refreshing in this pervasively conservative age - one rarely sees protestation in the arts anymore…) The work’s actually a continuation of his ‘Carrier Project’; in accordance with which he’ll liberate the painting from the formality of the gallery space and take it for ‘walkies’ around public areas over the next couple of days. Today he was lugging it around the Belconnen Mall, tomorrow he’ll do the environs of Civic. Jan Wawrzynczak (the community Arts and Culture officer at Belco) spent several hours following Van around photographing his progress – and indeed has loaded it onto the Art Gallery’s website already…
http://www.bcsact.com/art/carriersbelmall/index.html
For more background info on Van and his practicing philosophies you might like to explore his own website at…
http://www.van-thanh-rudd.net/
But meanwhile we mustn’t forget the stablemate in this double-banger show – local artist Stephen Harrison runs a pretty serious line in social commentary himself. All in all it’s a cool exhibition - and what a fantastic gallery space! And what an amazingly vibrant program Jan and Anni Doyle run over there! And how ashamed are we to confess that we’ve never been out there before…Very bad form indeed. We need a good spanking.
For a rollcall of the more enlightened gallery faithful, check out…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/glasscentralcanberra/sets/72157603213696228/
The show runs until the 29th November,
Megs,
You done good with those kids. You should be proud.
Love to you.
Tim.