Cultuvorians unite!

This afternoon J, S and I decided to mark the Australia Day holiday with a cultural round up.

First stop was The National Museum of Australia (where we bumped into Nigel Sutton as we came in which was very weird - he was saying stuff and all I was hearing was "burble burble burble DORA burble" as I was in shock at the weirdness of entering the museum at the exact same moment he was leaving. I'm sure he thought I was a loon...).

Oh yeah - where was I? National Museum. Papunya Paintings. A fitting way to spend the Australia Day holiday I thought, and a nice way to follow up from this documentary. Then there was coffee (for S) and icecreams (for J and I) and more Australianisation as we checked out Behind the Lines 2007: The Year's Best Cartoons. Luckily I had J on had to translate some of them ("Who's the woman with the pointy nose and the orange hair? Who's the chap wrapped up? Why is there humble pie?")

Then we headed across the lake to The National Archives and the Max Dupain exhibition. Where there were some odd resonances. Like seeing the exact same design CSR sugar bag we'd seen used in a video back at the Pupanya exhibition rolling off the assembly line in a photo taken by Max Dupain. And seeing vintage pictures of skiing on Kosciuszko, just up the road from where I was last weekend...There were some odd sugar marketing pictures (sorry about the light reflections). Would you trust this man to sell you sugar (or any other white powdered substance)?How about this family shot with a table laden with sugary goodness? ("Here darling. Have a coronary and leave us in peace")Once all the serious stuff got all too much for us we played a giant sized vintage parlour game called Courtship and Marriage: a fascinating game for 2,3 or 4 players (yeah we found that last bit a bit odd too...)
(ahh... that's why I've never gotten married. I stopped playing croquet when I was a kid!)

After such a lot of excitement (and education) we ended the day at Tilleys with cider and ginger beer.Followed by a fine Thai meal. A good mix of cultures which is pretty typical of Australia.

Patterns

The theme for the weekend so far (apart from stinking heat) seems to be patterns. There appears to be a pattern developing of all my social plans morphing at the last minute - dinner last night with friends was moved to next week because they were sick and tired (not of me. I hope...)Lunch with another friend today was cancelled because she needed to help someone buy a bike helmet and water bottle and tonight's picknit with Taph and Happy Spider has become dinner Chez Happy Spider (or should that be Hoppy Spider?)because there's a 70% chance of rain this evening...Helmet buying friend and I did manage to catch up and escape to oppressive heat by heading to The National Museum to watch Mr Patterns, a documentary about Geoff Bardon, the person who triggered the Western Desert art movement of the Papunya community which is described as "one of the most significant art movements of the 20th century." And have a coffee. And (of course) take some pictures.