Today Engogirl and I went to the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane (GOMA) to see their excellent current “Optimism” exhibition. Apparently I wasn’t supposed to take any photos because of copyright issues but because I didn’t realise that was the case, I did take a few of works that caught my eye, until a security guard had a few words to me.

Patricia Piccinini’s work based on Vespa motor scooters was hilariously playful.

Kathy Temin’s, “Bringing it all back home”, was like walking through a fake fur covered Dr Seuss landscape.

We also checked out the rest of the gallery and we came across Ron Mueck’s “In bed”.

It was absolutely mind blowing how realistic his sculpture was and I included Engogirl in the shot so you can see how big it is. There was a security guard sitting right next to it and I asked her if many people tried to touch the sculpture; to which she replied, “all the time”.  I wasn’t surprised, as it seemed to be almost begging to be touched. It just looked so soft and lifelike.

The photo below was taken yesterday afternoon at North Pine Dam just north of Brisbane at about 4:20 in the afternoon.

 About 30 minutes later I was in a large motor coach heading into Brisbane as a storm began. It was the worst storm that has hit south east Queensland for 25 years and it was amazing to see so much rain fall in such a short time. Many of the roads in low lying areas that we passed through were flooded.

The north west of Brisbane around The Gap received the brunt of the storm with a large amount of houses being damaged and many millions of dollars damage being caused. Sadly there was one death as a young man was swept to his death photographing a flooded stormwater drain.