Excursions in Art

Or: where to drink cheaply on a Thursday night

As I've said before, it's a rare Thursday that doesn't find me in a gallery in the city, somewhere, trying hard not to notice the art around me and swapping bitchy asides with either JZ or Lisel. This Thursday the theme was "so broke right now" which meant that L. and I started at Westspace where you had to pay three whole dollars for a glass of red wine and ended up at Spacement where the booze was free and the people... much prettier.

We weren't the only ones completing the circuit. Half the people at the rather sparsely populated Westspace opening headed back to the more convival side of town ... and the free booze... of spacement. And I'm sure I wasn't the only one who read the invite to westspace and saw pictures like this:



and this:



and was slightly confounded upon walking into the gallery at seeing a giant twig lit up by a lamp in one room and a shopping trolley all twisted up and shoved up the top of a pillar in the other.

Apparently the shopping trolley was meant to convey "the difference [which] is becoming more difficult to define. This installation is an exploration of the anxiety which surrounds prosthetic dependence in the wake of human frailty, whilst stiving to overcome it." Ahhh, my frail desire to convey my groceries home in a shopping cart. Thwarted and violently overcome by my amazing abilities with a blowtorch.

In no way do two of the photos on westspace's page match up with the work on display there last night. Wtf?

Luckily Spacement was like it always is - over heated, over crowded and over supplied (can one be oversupplied?) with free booze.

Panadarosa's work took up the backwall of the main gallery. Iuen and JZ mocked my love of their work by declaring me a lover of graphic design boys with skinny pants who stuck vinyl on walls. I think Panadosa is a bunch of girls actually but that aside - how did JZ & Iuen know? Damnit!