Impressionism The Aussie Way

Let me start with the obligatory apology for posting so infrequently over the past month. The reason is three-fold, and then you get a lovely paper swan!

Now, I'll get into it, typing onehandedly.

Once upon a time, long long ago, I went to the opening of the NGV's latest mega-exhibition, Australian Impressionism. It was an affair crammed to capacity with Victoria's well-preserved elite. In between scoffing down mini pie floaters and quaffing red, we listened to countless speakers paying their respects to the Kulin Nation, despite the fact that if they'd shown up they'd have been turned away at the glass doors.

The endless speeches had one theme: we're so good, nobody refused us a lend of their paintings. (Though that begs the question - why didn't anyone ask to borrow McCubbin's triptych, 'The Pioneers'?)

At least they were telling the truth. The exhibition is impressive and exhaustively covers the careers of McCubbin, Roberts, Condor, Streeton and some token female whose worth they've "discovered".



Walking through the exhibition, the nation building nature of the happy little band of plein-air painters, who were to become known as The Australian Impressionists, is seen in every brush stroke. These images, especially the huge canvases in the final hall are burnt into our consciousness as richly as any mythology.



But it is the quieter, less obviously considered works that shine in this exhibition, the works from around Mentone and the notorious 9x5 panels, the largest collection to be shown since the notorious exhibition.



Go, see for yourself. Can't type anymore... hand tired.

Eyes, Lies and Illusions @ ACMI

After such praise from Richard, and having an afternoon dangling, I visited ACMI for their latest exhibition. Eyes, Lies and Illusions promised to deliver a cavalcade of mind-bending illusions from the pre-cinematic age. And it did, but I’d seen most of it before so I left feeling less than whelmed.

It is a clever little exhibition, well curated, quirkily set out, but it is much more hands off than it needed to be. Part of the fun of these illusions it their ability to animate with the tug of a string or the flick of a finger and the countless “hands off” signs made it abundantly clear that the powers that be weren’t very amenable to that.

What does manage to shine through from behind the Perspex is the ingenuity of the human mind when it comes to creating diversions and the charming naivity of the human mind for being diverted so fully by such things.

Check it out but try to sneak in because it isn’t really worth the entry fee – you’re not living in the 18th century, you’re not going to be stunned.