Big Day Out #3 in Adelaide

Above, happiness is a family bevie at the Birkenhead.

Ah…at last the Gang’s had time to post the final act of the Adelaide trip. (Ma’s been in town with some pals for a week so we’ve been otherwise engaged, giving them the full Canberra cultural tour…the poo being a certified highlight, of course.)

Anyhoo, the overriding reason for the jaunt to Adelaide was to catch up with the Debster and check out the set-up at Gate 8. The Gang, of course, is on the verge of moving back to Wyndham (by year’s end, yes!!) and consequently we’re on a mission to sniff around as many studios as possible before settling down to tackle our own. Nothing like some good old-fashioned industrial espionage, we reckon (there’s no point, after all, rushing out to buy equipment that (a) won’t do the job, (b) is superfluous to one’s needs, and/or (c) is a living nightmare to service…)

Not that Deb and Jess have made any mistakes, quite the contrary – they are the consummate professionals. So their studio, naturally, was on top of our ‘must-see workshops’ list. We loved the glass wall in the cold room – it’s not only practical but a perfect aesthetic solution given the historic nature of the building. In fact the ambience of the whole joint struck a seriously deep chord – we’re not into slick-modern, truth be told – and it was all a great joy to behold. 

But of course there’s no such thing as a free lunch and as luck might(!) have it the Gang managed to turn up on the very weekend of a pre-planned working-bee. The main action was scheduled for the day we were leaving, so we rolled up our sleeves to do our bit (digging and preparation) the day before. Now we must confess that it’s been some time since we’ve had to put in a day of hard labour (no photos were taken, by request – it wasn’t a pretty sight) and by the end of the arvo we were so completely pooped that we had to take ourselves off to the Birkenhead for some bitterly colds and a restorative view.

The rest of the evening was Semaphore-centric; a walk to the Largs Pier Hotel (where ladies can watch the trots in the dunny, and we spied possibly the silliest decorative conceit we’ve ever seen) and then back along the beach to the sleepy main drag. Noice.

But there was yet one last treat before we were homeward bound – an early morning trip to the Port Market, set on a wharf and hemmed in by mangrove-fringed industrial wasteland. Loved it, and even sourced some top specimens for Nige’s pelican-oil-futures enterprise…no sign of Scuba Man, but you can’t have everything.

The last snaps of the roll were taken at the hairy port. Don’t know about you but the Gang has always found the similarity between a plane and a fish’s bum ‘ole ridiculously entertaining…enjoy…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/glasscentralcanberra/sets/72157602094279616/

Craft’s newest Hallowed Hall…

Yesterday, after catching the sparrow’s fart flight out of Canberra, the Gang had the best day out and about in Adelaide with the Leader of the Free Glass World, Debster Jones. From the hairy-port we beat a hasty track to Semaphore to drop off the bags and then walk along the beach to catch some brekky before taking in a quick tour of the local industrial highlights. 

And then… we were off to the real object of the whole exercise, Deb and Jess Loughlin’s mind-bogglingly fabulous new studio, Gate 8 – aka the church. Omigod!! Still in its final stages of revamp, this is one seriously drop-dead gorgeous workshop. It stands squarely at the godly end of industrial chic, and it’s guaranteed to set the creative spirits soaring. (We can feel a liturgical movement coming on just thinking about it…) Even the dunny’s first class (as in train carriage!!) and you can swing both the cat and a censer to your hearts content in this reassuringly solid, roomy and vaulted space. We’re coming back for a bit of a working bee on Saturday (we packed our shit-kickers specially), so we’ll get time to admire it even further then.

And then…we wandered over to ‘The Wheat’ for a quick ale before making our way to the Jam where we caught up with darling Netty Blair and gave her studio the quick once over before wandering down to oggle Dave, Jess and the-one-and-only Tom Moore doing their hot-shop thing.

The gallery was  still setting up for Klausie’s exhibition, but the foyer offering is in place – a classically fuggly Stephen Skillitzi show, almost impossible to describe (though we’ll give it a go in a coupla days.) We took photos of course, but we’ve had so much trouble processing them through the uploading hoopla for the blog that we’ll have to save most of the trip for a mammoth retrospective post once we get back home. Meanwhile suffice to say that the Skillitzi oeuvre is in screaming juxtaposition to Moje’s – and that’s an understatement. It’s hard to imagine a more bemusing curatorial coupling…

And then…we were off again – this time to the city market to gather superior tucker for dinner at home with Joe, Tom & Rosie, Netster, Michelle and Jacqu. Joe and Megsie got down to some dedicated dual risotto action while Tom and Rosie kept the pink cocktails coming and the girls whipped up a lovely lemon delicious for pudd. Perfeck.

We’re looking forward to the next coupla days, which are chocka-block with plentiful entertainments.  A bit of naff weather blew in from Canberra behind us, but we shan’t let it spoil our stay…   

We’ve finally been able to organise a snappy journal of the day…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/glasscentralcanberra/sets/72157602038463000/