Kings Park

Kings Park (this is how the official website spells it!) was renamed from Perth Park when King Edward VII acceded the throne in 1901. I would add an apostrophe as it was only one king!. It was originally gazetted a park in 1872 (175 ha). Of course for 40,000 years it had been home to the Nyoongar Aboriginal people until the invasion of the British (of whom I am a descendent, with a quite a bit of Irish in there too).

I spent my last day in Perth wandering around these wonderful gardens, beginning with a free ‘History of the Gardens’ guided tour.

A view of the War Memorial and through to the Swan River:

Our tour leader was very informative and also made the effort to find out and cater to our individual interests. She was very patient when I kept interrupting her history talk to ask the names of plants. It is well worth taking one of these tours which are held twice a day on different topics of interest. 

After the tour I had a delicious roast pumpkin salad lunch at the cafe before meandering through the botanic garden section of the park. The botanic garden consists mostly of indigenous WA plants , a major aspect of Kings Park being the conservation and propagation of endangered native flora.

Not being a native WA (who regard them as commonplace), I am fascinated by the sculptural form of the grass trees which have become a sought after landscape plant over here in the south east.

But wait, there is more!!

I won’t post any more of my 100 photos of grass trees!!!

This is the glass bridge which gives an elevated view at the end of the treetop walkway.

Also very sculptural are the boab trees. There are many young trees throughout the gardens:

And this ancient specimen, which has just been moved from a development site in the north of WA. It will be two years before they know whether it will survive the move.

The water garden incorporates the Pioneer women’s memorial water fountain and a large sandstone wall sculpture.

The Banksia garden included these wonderful serpentine benches and mosaics:

Being wintertime the acacia garden was at its flowering best:

I returned to the cafe for some sustenance, coffee and cake, as well as browsing through the Aboriginal gallery and Kings Park Shop. This is a lovely bandana I bought from the Gallery, a printing of artist Karen Walker’s ‘On Walkabout” design.

As well as the Botanic Gardens there is a native bush walks area, picnic areas and playgrounds. I jumped into the hire car for a drive around the rest of the park. The Synergy Park was a very imaginative play area based on the dinosaur era. I loved this island playground and the metal sculptural elements incorporated. Claudia would have had a great time here.

 

Despite spending 5 hours in the gardens I only experienced a fraction of the sights, activities and areas (it is a huge park). If you are going I recommend allocating at least a full day to fully enjoy all there is on offer.

Cheers

The Workshop

Prequel:

At the fair on Friday I had also met up with another ‘cyber’ friend, Doreen from Canberra. Doreen is a prolific and talented textile artist and blogger and it was wonderful to meet up at last. We had lunch together and then Doreen went off to a workshop to make this sensational little needlecase. Her stitching is just beautiful.

A very interesting exhibit at the fair encompassed works from all the branches of the Embroiderer’s Guilds of WA in celebration of 40 years. Linda Stokes, another talented textile artist and blogger from WA had a beautiful book on display. I didn’t ask Linda’s permission to photograph it but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me showing the cover. I spent at least fifteen minutes enjoying the beautiful pages within (with gloves on of course).

After whetting our appetite at the fair, Linda, Doreen and I, along with 17 other enthusiastic ladies gathered on the Tuesday for some personal tuition from the ‘master’ of textile art, Maggie Grey.

I was lucky enough to be loaned a new Janome by Wendy Gager’s Janome sewing Centres.

It was a dream to sew with after the clunking of my 25 year old Janome!!

Maggie taught her techniques with massive doses of inspiration, thoughtfulness and clarity and with her help we all created some lovely pieces. I will blog a picture when I have finished putting it together!

This piece of Maggie’s shows how it should look.

Here is a photo of the two “Grey’s” : Doreen and Maggie.

A photo of the ladies hard at work, except for Linda enjoying a cuppa there on the right!!!

That is also Dorothy on the right, another “Holey Moley“.

And a photo of Maggie showing us one of her amazing examples as she explains a technique:

Thankyou Maggie for a wonderful time, and thankyou Dale for your fantastic organisation.

Final instalment, at a later date, will be my great final day in Perth, spent at King’s Park, surely the best public park in Australia.

Cheers.

Darling Harbour and The Rocks

After the Powerhouse Museum I walked across to Darling Harbour, which was buzzing, with people everywhere as it was school holidays in NSW.

Feeling the need for some centering and contemplation (and food) I went to the Chinese Friendship Garden first. This garden is just beautiful and a wonderful place of tranquility in the midst of such a busy city. I again took loads of photos which will be of interest to the Holey Moleys.

Lots of holey windows

Some beautiful vistas including holes:

After a lovely lunch in the tearooms I walked on to the Harbourside shopping centre. Nothing very exciting there (one shopping centre is pretty much the same as another) until I came across this wonderful Baboushka shop full of Russian Baboushka dolls of every size and variety.

The old lady figure sitting in the doorway reminds me of Mags adventures in sculpture.

I then followed the foreshore walking path to The Rocks, passing some amazing buildings, some of which are literally built on the rocks.

 

 

Rather than walking all the way around to Sydney Harbour Bridge I took a ’short cut’ up the rocks (about 150 steps) to Observatory Park, the site of the Historic Sydney Observatory. From this wonderful vantage point I took these photos (again lots of holes/apertures for the Holey Moleys.

The lovely Moreton Bay fig:

And of course the Sydney Harbour Bridge:

In The Rocks itself there is of course plenty to see in terms of history and historical buildings, shopping, and galleries. I’ll just mention a couple. After a lovely moccha coffee and friand I came across a sensational button shop stocking all manner of vintage and new buttons. I just bought a few little green leaves and a gorgeous little pocket watch button.

My next wonderful stop was the Museum of Contemporary Art which had some amazing exhibitions currently showing. The first was documentary photographer, Ricky Maynard. Very much a thought provoking exhibition. I managed to get one photo of some wise words from Ricky Maynard painted on the wall of the gallery.

As some of the photos were of indigenous people who have died, it is not appropriate for me to display them here on the blog.

The second exhibition was of the Moving Image art form, a series of rooms displaying moving images sometimes simultaneously on 5 or 6 large screens. This exhibition was a collaboration with the MCA, San Diego, California. I would love to show it to my youngest son who is very much into movie making.

I’ll be back to textile art next weekend.

Cheers

 

 

Information Overload

Last night I returned from the International Drama Education Research Institute’s (IDIERI) triennial conference in Sydney (hmmm, the next one is in Limerick!!). The conference took place over the full week, but I flew up early Thursday morning for the last few days,which were just sensational. So many inspirational people from all over the world and Australia.

The Friday was a networking day, but with information overload, I decided to take a cultural break (shopping and exhibitions).

Firstly I went to the Powerhouse Museum.

On the walk from Glebe I walked along an archetypical Sydney street full of terrace houses:

And came across this wonderful street grate:

Woops, upside down!

Unfortunately I was a bit early for the 13th International Design festival beginning on August 1st, but there was still plenty to enjoy. I firstly spent an hour and a half in the ‘Inspired Design Across Time’ exhibition where I took loads of photos. The exhibition covers all types of design from the early 1700’s to the present, and includes ceramics, wood, metal jewellery, fashion, furniture etc. There is a good representation of textiles, especially fashion, through the years, though not a great deal of embroidery. There was a good selection of various types of teapots and a retrospective of Florence Broadhurst designs. Also featured was an outfit made from the new release of her designs on fabric.

Some glass teapot/goblets by Richard Marquis (1994)

Zandra Rhodes evening dress(1982). You can tell it’s 80’s by all the puff!

This ‘Oz Frock’ (EastonPearson, 2005) was interesting, commissioned by the Weekend Australian Magazine. It is fabric printed with actual copies of the newspaper overlaid with sprigs of wattle and embelliahed with swarvski crystals. Stunning!

I loved the quirkiness of this Peter Chang (2004) plastic bracelet:

I also loved this Tiwi Designs (Bathhurst Island Northern Territory, 1996) screenprinted cloth and ‘Forest Settle’ (Michael Gill, Christine Payne, 1980’s) with it’s design based on the Arts and Crafts Movement. 

(Good examples of holes and circles here Holey Moley’s.)

While at the powerhouse I also had a look at the Contemporary Japanese Fashion Exhibition.

I loved the origami bags:

And the display of intricately carved Chinese toggles.

This ivory toggle represents a slice of a lotus root:

This one represents the ‘three friends of winter’, the bamboo, pine and prunus branches being courage, perseverence, longevity and integrity. (More holey Moleys)

I also called into the Lace Study group Centre and spoke with the very helpful guide about caring for my Grandmother’s lace wedding dress. She said they are in the process of setting up a register of important historical lace items, one of which could be this dress. This centre is situated in a quite small room, but provides a wonderful resource for those interested in all types of lace and their historical backgrounds.

 

I have so many more photos, showing all the design phases throughout history. If you can get to Sydney do go and see this exhibition.

To be continued……

Time Goes By (not slowly)

I don’t know how anyone can sing a song about time going by ..so ….slowly, certainly not me, it seems to fly and another week is over. We are already  at the end of the first week of the mid year holidays and I don’t seem to have made much of a dent in the list of things to do.

Last weekend, however,  I zipped up to Melbourne on the train and managed to do everything intended. First stop was the Melbourne Museum for the teacher preview of the Pompeii exhibition. It was fascinating and the artwork from that period is truly inspiring. We have a shed at school that could do with a garden frescoe or two!!

Then it was onto the free city circle tram and a short walk to Craft Victoria. They had a couple of interesting exhibitions: ’small things’, from which I bought this lovely beaded ipod case as a gift for a friend’s birthday and a really interesting knitted fibre exhibition.

 

Then it was on to a new fabric shop in Flinders Lane, just a little down from Craft Victoria, Tessuti. This is situated in the heart of the design district in a fabulous huge room up from street level. All the absolutely gorgeous fabrics are arranged by colour. If you are sewing something special or looking for fabric in a special colour this is the place to go. I resisted temptation very well and only bought some organza for the sea angels and some reduced fabric that was the perfect colour for some cushions. But I will be back.

Around the corner and down a block and I was at Federation Square. Cutting through to St Kilda Rd next stop was the Arts Centre where they had a display of the gorgeous costumes of Ballet Russes:

Final stop, just a hop, skip and jump to the National Gallery Victoria,where I had a look at all the free exhibitions, and there are lots of them: Persuasion fashions in the age of Jane Austen was an interesting look at the fashions of the late 18th century, unfortunately Mr Darcy wasn’t in his suit at the time!! ‘Light Years’ was another interesting exhibition of photos taken during space exploration in the 60’s & 70’s, which sparked off a few ideas for the Galaxy challenge/exhibition being held later this year by the Victorian Embroiderer’s Guild. I will have to go back another day for the special Salvador Dali exhibition and I’d also like to see the exhibition ‘Shared Sky’ at Federation Square, works by indigenous and non-indigenous artists based on the Southern night sky. Both these exhibitions include children’s activities so I may take Claudia up next week, she loves a trip to Melbourne on the train.

Stand by tomorrow night for installment two of holidays week 1, which includes some textile art fun. I’m off to bed

Cheers