landartfarm 2

My last post looked at the lovely venue for an amazing art exhibition scattered across a typical rural landscape. Today I present some of the works we saw, along with the 'studio' used by the artist. You will witness innumerable flights of fancy, but also some extraordinary creativity. I forgot to mention last time that the displays we observed had no entry fee ... we were simply the guests of the artist ... and, to make things better, she even delivered a delicious afternoon tea at the end of our two-hour walk!

This sculpture - and especially the array of empty milk containers at the back seem to owe their inspiration to Mondrian, Dali and Warhol.

This collection of rocks was designated 'Art Rocks'. Each exhibit had the branch of a tree laid in front describing the exhibit.

And this sculpture, comprising the painted bones of local wildlife - such as kangaroos - was called West and Wild.

This sculpture was assembled from the debris of a fallen tree.

'Dam Works' has found a new use for ancient CDs ... and as you've probably gathered a lot of the artworks comprised recycled material often augmented by colour.

This one was called, appropriately, 'Bush Telegraph'. It was constructed from lots of wires and cables.

And 'Wasted Land' comprises elegantly strewn garbage and its containers!

Fallen branches from trees constitute the 'Black and White Boutique'

And this work called 'Unchain my Trees' has coloured chains draped from branches.

A self-explanatory exhibit!

'Hanging Rocks'. There are several locations around Australia called 'hanging rock' and decades ago a famous film was made - 'Picnic at Hanging Rock'. Unlike the others, this exhibit had been carefully arranged by its human creator.

'Trellis in the Paddock' - you can make out two white-painted wooden structures in the distance.

'Pink Horizon'. If you look carefully you can see that the tree trunks have been painted pink up the point where the ridge meets the sky.

'Yellow Stick Art'!

'Roadside Wires' - A sculpture made from discarded wire used for fencing in livestock - some of it barbed.

I loved this one: 'Progression to the Tip'. The structure is a ramp used for loading cattle and sheep onto trucks. Now the ramp is being used as a way-station for discarded electrical and other gear.

This one was called 'Nimbin'. This little town in the rural hinterland of the NSW North Coast is part of the rainbow region - hence the rainbow colour of the branches. It's home to alternative lifestylers - people who've dropped out of conventional society, grow hemp, ramble around wearing little or nothing, and so on.

'Piping in Places'. I suggested to the artist that the lower portions of the pipes might be painted like 'kilts' to accentuate the Scottish flavour of the work.

And, finally, 'YA Literati', where YA is 'young adult'. This exhibit had a lot of corrugated iron panels inscribed with poetry lamenting the difficulty of growing up and integrating into the modern world for many young people.

Our route back to the house for afternoon tea took us past the artist's studio with this inscription. Inside, the walls were festooned with heaps of unlikely items for future sculptures or 'pictures'. One of the panels was festooned with 'mice' and that forced me to reconsider what I do with my expired computer mice in the future. Maybe I should save them up and use them to decorate the garden!

I've only showed a few of the many works and, if you pay us a visit some time in  the future we could arrange another viewing.

AS

landartfarm 1

Yesterday, I and five other ladies - including Dot - were invited out to a farm owned by Dr Sandra Welsman to view one of the world's most original art galleries. I've been to many of the world's great galleries, including the Uffizi, the Louvre, the Hermitage (in St Petersburg), the Guggenheim and, of course, many in London. But in many respects this 'trumped' them ... excuse the pun ... because the art-works were mostly quite bizarre, though perhaps less so than the US President!

This is the first of two blog posts, and it deals with the property and its surrounds. The second deals with the 'art' works we saw. Interestingly, the farm no longer raises cattle and sheep, though it has a large array of native wildlife that inspected us a we walked around the farm. Sandra has now retired, the family has left home, and she's dedicated to the domain of 'landart'. Perhaps you might like to visit www.frontiers.net.au/landartfarm/ . She spends a lot of time creating new art-works and maintaining the old so that the collection now has over 50 items, all outdoors.

Here's the homestead, one with lovely views of the surrounding countryside

In this view southwards one could, on the ground, pick out Armidale's airport buildings and the earth-satellite tracking station just north of Uralla (about 35 km away!). The town itself is hidden by a ridge about 12 km away. The chairs and table are a a form of artwork!

And here's our party about to walk for two hours around the outdoor gallery in fabulous early Spring weather. The temperature was, by the way, about 20 degrees C (68 F) despite an altitude of about 1,200 m (3,900 feet). I got one of the party to capture a picture of my, suitably attired for the occasion. The third photo shows us at the furthermost point of our walk.

The countryside was typical of New England - rolling grasslands dotted with woodland, which is perhaps why the region was called New England by the early settlers in the 1840s. Of course, being early Spring, the district's wattles are in full yellow bloom.

As I remarked earlier, our progress was observed with interest by the native wild-life. Here we have three of them: two wallabies and a kangaroo. 

And here's a typical farm dam found abundantly on just about local properties.

 As you can see this is a lovely setting for an out-door art gallery! My next post will display some of the eye-catching exhibits!

AS

Amazing Win

Something most would think incredible happened today. Australia beat Brazil 2-1 in a soccer match played in Sydney amidst much rejoicing! We are going up in the world!

Ahem! There's just one drawback. It wasn't the blokes who performed this miracle, but rather the Sheilas ... aka the Matildas. It was was a women's game. Still the women's game is taking off big-time and the Matildas announced their arrival on the world stage a short while ago by beating the USA - one of the global leaders in the sport.

Talking of amazing wins, I wish could add my name to the list of elected Councillors for the new Armidale Regional Council. Alas it was not to be. When the final scores were tallied yesterday I missed out by a large margin.

AS

Administrator's Gift

As you may have already gleaned from my posts, the State Government decided to amalgamate Armidale - Dumaresq and Guyra local government area to form the Armidale Regional Council (ARM). The former councillors were dismissed and replaced by an interim Administrator, Dr Ian Tiley, who was already a friend of mine on LinkedIn. He then guided the new council through its initial reorganisation and I was invited to participate in several issues. These included the establishment of a maker lab in the new public library, re-badging the ARM image with a new logo and slogan, critiquing consultants' reports on local development action, and other things.

After this level of participation, I was invited by a former Councillor, Margaret O'Connor, to join her team for the recent council election, whose results are still pending. Let's just say I don't think I will get in because of the large number of candidates (48), for the 11 elected positions. I was only third on Margaret's ticket, although she romped in. Anyway, our administrator decided to stand for election and he was first candidate to fall over the line.

So, a couple of days ago I was invited to a ceremony at our prestigious art gallery to commend Ian for his contribution to Armidale and the termination of his contract as administrator now that the new Council will shortly take over. I and several other colleagues including senior Council staff whom I know quite well, were approached to fund a gift for Ian and when we arrived for nibbles and the ceremony itself, we detected that we had bought two art-works with Ian's name attached, but which would be retained for exhibition by the library. Here's Ian on the left and the second picture shows the two leaders of the ceremony in the middle: Peter Dennis, the general manager, and the director of the gallery.

Here are the art-works in question, both impressionist landscapes

The audience lapped up the proceedings and Ian was very pleased to be commended for his work as administrator. He is now pitching to become the new mayor and the result will become known next week. As I said, I think that I will not be part of that process as I'll fall short of the required quota of votes needed to become a Councillor after the distribution of preferences.

Oh well, I'm going to so many places around the world in the next 12 months so I wouldn't make many Council meetings anyway!

AS

Yet Another Orchestral Concert

Our little town certainly mixes it with the major cities when it comes to staging high quality orchestral concerts, and last week we were privy to yet another spectacularly successful event staged by the Australian Chamber Orchestra. This was a small group of mainly young and highly talented musicians - 17 in all, several of whom are shown in this picture. They played brilliantly and were subject to rapturous applause at the end of each work performed.

There were three very different pieces on the program: Mozart's Divertimento  in D Major (K 136); Bartok's Divertimento for Stings (BB 118); and Brahms' Clarinet Quintet in B Major (Op. 115). The first of these was exquisitely and very energetically played, with perfect synchronisation and tone.

The whole event was led by Pekka Kuusisto who 'conducted' while playing his Stradivarius violin. He's played with many different leading orchestras around the world, organises international music festivals, and likes to introduce new music into the repertoire. Perhaps one of the most bizarre events occurred at the end of the concert when, after thunderous applause from the audience, we thought we were going to get an encore! Well, in one respect we did. But in all other respects it was unusual, to put it mildly. With the orchestra standing, Pekka raised his violin and performed a solo work. But he didn't use a bow. Instead, he plucked the violin and sang what I gathered to be a Finnish folk song.

All up it was a wonderful evening.

AS

I'm Standing for Election

This is my 1000th blog post and it focuses on a topic I've never mentioned before. I'm standing for election as a councillor for the new Armidale Regional Council. This new local government authority emerged a couple of years ago as the result of the merger of the Armidale - Dumaresq and Guyra councils. It is still small by the standards of many countries, with a total population of about 30,000 people. Eleven positions are up for grabs and 48 candidates have put their names forward.

I'm standing with 6 other candidates on an 'Independent' ticket and the three other groupings are Country Labor (a branch of the Australian Labor Party), the Greens, and the New England Futures Group. The last named comprises four young tech-oriented business people led by my friend David Levingstone who works in IT. The Independents I'm associated with are mostly involved in private business. We're led by a former Councillor, Margaret O'Connor, whose background is in farming and law, but we've also got an engineer, an agricultural machinery dealer, a hairdresser, and interestingly an Aboriginal elder, Mavis Ahoy. We're also multicultural and have a strong gender balance. I'm third on our ticket, which me more or less makes me unelectable, but I don't mind that. By the way the four groups mentioned above are considerably out-numbered by the free-standing independents.

Yesterday evening Dot and I attended a 'meet the candidates' forum in the auditorium of the local Bowling Club. Each free-standing (i.e. ungrouped) candidate spoke for 3 minutes and then fielded questions for the next few minutes. In the case of the four formal groups, only the leader spoke and fielded questions, so I was there to appraise the competition. Alas, most of the candidates either (a) talked about their past achievements and provided no vision for the future; or (b) promised to do this that or the other rhetorically, but failed to explain the strategies / approaches involved. Margaret, to her credit tried to explain both her intentions and the role of Council in reaching those goals. Mind you, I'll take some credit for this as we've discussed at length such issues over several years. Moreover, as an advisor to the 'House of Representatives Select Committee on Regional Development and Decentralisation', I know far better than most in this country about the task of local development and how to achieve it.

I managed some pictures of the gathering on my mobile phone:

Here's Margaret in the second row awaiting her turn to speak.

Quite a large audience participating.

Spot Dot?

Margaret making her pitch.

 And here I'm standing with Margaret and Amber Fernandez. The latter went to Duval High School at about the time Emily and Rebecca were there.

Wish me luck on 9th September, Election Day. Mind you, if I get elected I could miss a few council meetings when I'm travelling widely in Australia and Overseas in the next 12 months. Five trips are already planned, only one of which is here in Australia! Psst! Keep this quiet for the next 10 days!

AS

Lego Towers

Whilst we were in Canberra a little over a week ago, we went to see an unusual exhibition at the National Museum of Australia. This excellent museum celebrates Australian and Aboriginal history and does that well, but the exhibit we saw appeared disconnected from the other exhibits. However, it was great to see in its own right.

One of Australia's leading Lego masters had been hired to construct, from standard Lego blocks, models of some of the world's most famous tall structures. And visitors could also play with piles of Lego pieces to construct their own urban utopias or dystopias, some thing that exercised Max's attention for most of the visit to display. A sign on the wall provided the name of the guy who constructed the buildings and his description as a certified professional.

The following pictures show some of the most famous structures. What do you think they are? The first is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai - the world's tallest structure for the moment until it is overtaken by the Kingdom Tower in Jedda (Saudi Arabia). I once glimpsed from a plane!

Anyone been to Kuala Lumpur recently? If so, you'll recognise the Petronas Towers.

Can anyone enlighten me on this cluster of geographically disconnected structures? But I know that the one after is to be found in Shanghai.

And I once attended a reception on the top floor of the next building, which can be found on Australia's Gold Coast. Quite how it's still standing I don't know because the ground underneath is, I understand, pure sand! If the Gold Coast receives a substantial earthquake, which is admittedly unlikely, the could be an almighty crash!

And here, finally, is the Empire State Building in New York with Max and Rob seated next to it working with Lego blocks:

And what did Max build? Well it looks like the world's most unlikely structure. These pictures show the base and the curved and snaking tower above it. Since no lift system could operate in it, the poor residents would have to climb a large number of stairs.

Shortly after taking these picture the exhibition closed for the day and Max's tower came crashing down. Fortunately the remainder were left standing, sparing Ryan McNaught from the laborious job of reconstructing them all.

This blog post number 999. In a week or so I will reach the milestone of 1000!!

AS