I have a love / hate relationship with Sundays. I love that Sunday usually means relaxing, pottering and doing nothing in particular. I hate that Sundays also mark the end of the weekend and the dreaded working week will begin again. Though I’m sure if there was no dreaded working week ahead, maybe I won’t love Sundays as much… Nahhhhhhh.
Last Sunday, a stroll was taken to the National Gallery of Victoria (International), not to see the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces Vienna: Art & Design that is on till 9 October 2011, but to see the free stuff, which to me, was quite impressive.
ManStyle on level 2, presents a broad survey of menswear from around 1740 to the present. I enjoyed checking out the punk style era and the creations of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren. I also liked some of the interviews with the likes of Mat Preston (from MasterChef) and Grant Pearce (Editor of GQ and former Creative Director of LMFF) about their sense of style.
A pit stop at the Gallery Kitchen was needed for some fuel.
Back upstairs, where we stumbled upon Deep Water, a photographic exhibition about… water. Water has presented an endlessly fascinating subject for photographers and obviously viewers alike.
My favourite bit? The contemporary collection of chairs on level 3. If you’re a regular reader, you may have noticed I gravitate towards chairs (you can read about them here and here) and this exhibition was… just awesome! The only thing that would have made it better was if I could touch and sit on the actual chairs and if they had an Egg chair by Arne Jacobsen. But amazing to see most of the iconic chairs in one spot, including Marc Newson’s Lockheed Lounge once used in a Madonna’s video and launched his career internationally. It was sold in May 2009 for a cool £1.1 million, an auction record for a piece of contemporary design art.
Left: Lockheed Lounge | Right: Still from the videoclip Rain, by Madonna
Have you been to see some free art lately? Or the National Gallery of Victoria? What did you think?
images: Man of the house; mydeco blog
The Amilia Affair 