Shards of Oz

Circular Quay
Ferries
Gallery M (art sale)
Nurses walk
Crystal Galleries
Museum of Sydney
Bridge street
Edge of the trees
Sculpture
Janet Laurence
Conservatoire of Music
A White castle with battlements (a child's idea of a castle)
Botanic garden
Orchids and carnivorous plants
Sex and death
Noisy bats (flying foxes)
Trains (double decker)
Liverpool to Central
The back of the train seats swing over to change direction of seating.
Auburn
Mosque
Olympic track
Lido
Lidcombe
gamblinghangover.nsw.gov.au
lewisham
stanmore
China town
Darling Harbour
Chinese Garden
Pagoda
Pretend train
Tumbalong Park
Fountain
Ibis
Exhibition centre
Maritime museum
Wildlife World
Aqaurium
King Street Wharf
Newcastle Steam ship company
Sydney Showboat
SYDNEY MARATHON Sunday September 21 2008
WWW.Barangaroo.com
Hickson road
Sydney theatre
Dance company
Philharmonic choir
Roundabout instelation
Large Ford Car crushed by a huge boulder
(Jimmie Durham, still life with stone and car)
Walsh bay
Sculpture walk
Metcalfe Arcade
Satchi Satchi
seargent Major Row
Museum of contemporary art
Circular Quay RS
Sydney Opera House
Stanmore
Man takes his ferret for a walk
Butcher Bird whacked me on the head
Feeding minor birds mince
Mossvale
Brigadoon in Bundanoon
Mittagong
Southern Highlands
Shale Mining
Wine region
I am possessed with possessions
Don Bradman
Bradman foundation
didyabringabearalong
Ned Kelly
Featherdale
Gal Crescent
MacMillan Park
Ernie Smith Reserve
Anzac Creek
Bush regeration
Skate boarding
Lewins bridge
Georges river
Custom house
plastic floor
3d version of Sydney
Platform 2 Circular Quay amazing view of Sydney Bridge and Opera House
Museum station (looks as if it fell out of the London Underground)
Walter Berry Griffith
Frank Loyd Wright
War Memorial
John Simpson Kirkpatrick
Gallipoli
Anzac Cove
Gervais Koffi
Yanick Koffi 9 yrs old
brilliant talent
bass player and keyboard
Aussibum
wonderful people

want to go back for good
xxx

Bonnie Greer

The audience and Bonnie Greer were the best parts of this Question Time. She showed intelligence and was a clear example of why the BNP are so intrinsically wrong, Griffin was a mess. I am sure if he became elected to the House of Commons, which could happen, he would be eaten alive by the real politicians in the house. He seemed incapable of honestly stating his party’s policies or is his party in shock since it now has to stop being a whites only and gay hating party? As the skin of the snake fell off the serpent that was the National Front and became the serpent of the BNP is the BNP being forced into a new metamorphosis? Or is it the end for the BNP? Will there be a schism? Who knows

Granny had a Humanist Funeral says News Quiz

News Quiz cracked me up with this quote; "Roasted and Ground like a Winsiet clad coffee bean at the municipal dump of the dead."

St Alfege

Its good to be off work for even just one day. It is cold, but the sun is beating down. I wandered around Lewisham and ended up in Greenwich. The dwellings of the locals strikingly change from mundane late Victorian terraces into Georgian villas. Their shape and characteristic of classical depth seems more pleasing. Mind you I am not a great lover of Paladian architecture as it turns every building into a Greek temple. Would the Greeks in their ancient periods have dreamt that by their hard labours building so many columned structures to their gods that three millennia later the Brits would be aping their architectural styles not to keep the gods happy but to express the wealth and power of a new secular age? Of course the church aped the styles of this retro building tendency. Hence the style of St Alphage, a neo Greek temple, but thankfully not a Parthenon, it has the feeling of a more harmonious mixture of English style with a few Greek bits thrown on to give it a fashionable twist. I went inside and is often the case I fell upon a free concert. Kyoko Murai an exquisite Japanese soprano was accompanied by Taro Takeuchi a lutenist and baroque guitar player. They were performing music from the 17th century and how beautifully they performed. Purcell, who was born 350 years ago, seemed to sit perfectly within the accoustic of this lovely church. She sang excerpts from The Indian Queen, the History of Dioclesian and parts from the evening music. Her voice is pure and without vibrato which sits so perfectly for this type of music. I was moved by her rendition of I attempt from Love's sickness, which hit the correct balance between contemplative control and emotional integrity. Taro accompanied her with a Theorba which is long necked guitar like instrument, its accompaniment gave a true feeling of authenticity many lesser recitals would have used a piano. Taro played with such a wonderful intuitive accompanying weight. Some accompanists would over shadow their partner but he held the singer up with a delicacy and depth their interactions were well attuned producing a wonderful experience in music. I was so sad when they eventually finished as I could have sat in the church all afternoon experiencing their music making. Taro also performed using a baroque guitar; it is smaller than a modern guitar and has a sweeter tone. He played two pieces Matteis's air for guitar and Corbetta's Ciaconne. Taro has done a few recordings so I know what I will be spending all my ill gotten gains on. When I witness music performed so well it fills me with the eagerness to be a better performer their passion, veracity and humour inspires me. Hail bright Cecilia...

Morphing into what?

It was lovely and sunny today but the autumn has brought a chilling breeze. Brrrrr, I wandered around Lewisham and sauntered into the Pound Shop. It has a magnetic pull and as far as any attempt I make not to go into these sub pound places their pull is stronger than my desire to stay away. Like the Innovation catalogue that falls out of the Sunday paper they are brimmed full of things that I do not want but since they are so cheap I think well it wont hurt if I have it. I end up spending £20 on twenty things I hide in the kitchen cupboard that go in the category, could be useful in the future, but they never are. Time comes when I decide to do a bit of spring cleaning. Suddenly I eventually come across the accumulation of these Pound shop purchases and like Tony Robinson in Time Team I spend far too much time wondering over these bits of sub pound detritus. Its like a Squirrel and its nuts. Talking about nuts while I was browsing the multitude of bits and pieces, a family were acting out lets shout at each other at the top of our voices. Suddenly the mother of this vocal tribe started screaming at what appeared to be her eldest son and began franticly hitting him. She stormed out of the shop. The Pound shop spell had been broken. I looked at the boy and he had gone from naughty mirth to a lost boy crying. Luckily his siblings surrounded him swearing blue murder about their mother. For once I did not buy anything. I was amazed at how many people were wandering around today and were all around the places I wanted to be. This became an annoyance.. I think the older I get I dislike crowds or rather being in crowds. I wonder why? Is it because they walk so slowly or is it because I am morphing into an old git?

Sadness at the end

In time,
No one will remember our work
Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud
And be scattered like
Mist that is chased by the
Rays of the sun
For our time is the passing of a shadow
And our lives will run like
Sparks through the stubble. I place a delphinium, Blue, upon your grave

Derek Jarman 1993 Blue

The fourth Plinth

My dear friend Neil invited me to Trafalgar Square where we observed the participants of the 4th plinth. The fourth plinth is 150 odd years old and like an invitation to an artist has never had anything permanent upon it. It may be a singular world of exploration where an empty space is given a form of expression in some way it echoes the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, but the plinth seems to fail more often than not. We noticed that those taking part seemed not to take full advantage of what is given. They seem to make the wonderful space given much smaller than it is, its as if they are scared and are psychologically confined. They used it like a cliff edge a point of vantage ignoring the people sitting around. I dreamed last night, for some odd and short moment, that the plinth had a bridge crossing it. May be that's the point of the 4th plinth or any plinth that its not meant for a loud self indulgent theatrical performance. I shy away from a soldier on a horse bestriding the plinth it seems so lame and week addition to this monument.

I watched ages ago Andy Warhol films of people moving very slowly. The films at first seemed boring and and self indulgent but once you get into the rhythm of the art it became like animated sculpture. If I had the opportunity of filling that space I would have a large piece of sculpture that slowly changed in a polymorphic fashion. May be a dancing sculpture of Samuel Becket.