Opening
We went last night into deepest Paddington, Sydney’s trendiest suburb, the kind of area where fashion rules, but tastefully, except along Oxford Street, where the shops are that they put out for the people who come to the neighborhood to obtain the haute couture they read about in the papers, because that way they can keep the riff-raff out of the interior areas where they keep the good stuff. (That’s any city, isn’t it?) Mixed in among the restored terrace homes are the art galleries, and last night’s show for Astrid Spielman was held in one of them, a strange, white block that juts up from its Sutherland Street location. It was a double-header, although I didn’t think much of the other artist exhibiting there (an overdone variation on Joseph Cornell is putting it kindly). Astrid is a performance artist who has expanded into video and digital forms. Her pieces last night were travel-themed, examining airports as decorated interiors and the effect they have, or fail to, in a reassessment of public space and personal interaction; an exploration of their juxtaposition of familiar and strange, which is what a lot of good art does and what triggers that sense of the uncanny you get looking at it. Pretty, too. We really want to have one of the prints from the exhibition, but it will take some serious budgetary manoeuvres to accomplish it, I think.