Today we headed downtown to take advantage of the fact that, on Sundays, you can use your Opal (public transport debit) card and pay only $2.50 to ride anywhere all day. We also took advantage of some free attractions and packed snacks and bottled water, so our grande total for the day was $5! Woot!
Our first stop was Rozelle Markets, where we uncovered a veritable treasure trove of crap...
Among these treasures, however, we did find a few very cool pieces of (what I would consider) art, like this carved wooden mask from Japan and a seriously sweet large fabric print of Hokusai's "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" framed in reclaimed wood...
After the markets, we wandered around Circular Quay a bit to catch some didgeridoo music by aboriginal performers and take in the sights before heading to the Museum of Contemporary Art...
There were some interesting pieces, like this chandelier that collected humidity in the room and froze it, and check out that last shot of the merchild sculpture on the terrace in front of the view of the Harbour Bridge ...very cool stuff...
But there were also some items (many of which I did not bother to snap a pic) that I would place much further down the crap<-->art continuum than what we encountered at the markets. Take, for example, this piece where the artist carved the items in the cardboard boxes out of yellow soap and stacked them around a photograph of her (mostly) naked father draped in a cloth she wove out of shredded Coca-Cola cans (note: the original work was not censored...you're welcome.)
I have to question why the creepy doll from the market is in a garage sale junk heap and this Spiderman + creepy man doll face has been on display in the museum for at least 2 years (I remember these two from my visit a couple summers ago...hard face to forget. And dat booty...)
The question of why I found the beautiful Hokusai print amongst the junk at the market and this superhero vs. hairy-mannequin-thigh-with-a-face staring contest depiction at the museum continues to both amuse and perplex me, but there was one piece in particular that spoke to me while pondering my observations...
-Jamison Lorraine
*Please Note: The Pickle has expressed that he is not on board with my use of the word "crap" in this post, as he did, in fact, find beauty in both the marketplace wares and the museum "art" <--he is also not OK with my use of quotes around the word "art". For the record, however, he was ready to bounce well before I was from the museum. ...just sayin'.