A SATURDAY URBAN WALKABOUT

Last Saturday, after our usual breakfast with friends at Cullen’s Bakery in Moonah, Irene and I went on a long prowl of shops and galleries in downtown Hobart. We began near the Art School, looking at fine jewellery and some fabulous wooden furniture, and then spending time in Art Mob (www.artmob.com.au), a gallery that specializes in Aboriginal Art. There’s a gorgeous show hanging at the moment, work by Dennis Nona, plus stacks of paintings not hung, and small items like Christmas ornaments and notecards, painted boxes and small trays. I bought a few small gifts, all the while wishing fiercely I had the money for a painting for myself. We had a brief chat with Euan Hills, the director, and he showed us photographs of an astonishing and large bronze canoe by Nona, called Two Brothers, now installed in Saudi Arabia. It would be fun to put that canoe beside Bill Reid’s, installed at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC.

Staying in the Hunter Street area, we went on to the Art School’s gallery to see the show (Silent Witnesses I think it was called—where was my field notebook?) by Frances Watson. The work, several installations, was done to complete her degree and is both brilliant and mordantly funny. She examines the weight of domestic objects within and on lives and families, while at the same time ambling among various conventions of the still life. I liked the show enormously, found it moving and exciting, and was delighted that Frances herself was there so I could tell her so.

Next stop on our ramble was the Carnegie Gallery, to see Light and Shade, featuring the work of Lorraine Biggs and Chantale Delrue. Both these artists make very beautiful images, and it’s also interesting to note the contrasts between them. Delrue is anchored in fine details, using dyes derived from natural materials to make precise images of butterflies and plants, all found on Mount Welllington. Biggs has focused on the hill as a shape, and her paintings explore repetitions of this large landscape form—in all instances depicted so the light emanates from behind the hill with a rich gold tone and the sky is luminous. Both artists address the body—Delrue by creating pieces that use the lungs and the heart as containers of growth (vases for branches and plants), Biggs by the velvety echo of a breast, sometimes nippled, in her hills.

From gallery to market—we strolled through the Salamanca Market, checking out jewellery, lovely scarves, handbags, gorgeous fountain pens, threading our way through the crowd. We stopped at Say Cheese and shared a cheese plate for lunch, stepped into the Handmark Gallery to look at more paintings by Delrue and photos by Christl Berg. Then it was up the Kelly Steps to Hamden Road and Sandy Bay to paw through secondhand books at Rapid Eye and Kookaburra. Irene and I each found irresistible things of course, and with our bags laden, called an end to the walk and went home.

Repetition marked the day—our repeated steps from place to place, the repetitive patterns of aboriginal art, repeated images and objects in the work of the 3 women artists, and then in the plethora of bird books we discovered in the shops. Watson had a quote from Gilles Deleuze written on one of her pieces: “If we die of repletion we are also healed by it.”