Mai Long is an artist friend of mine whose work I love so much that I’ve bought 4 of her works over the last couple of years. I also designed Mai’s website and I’m her webmaster, as such, I do all the updates. Below is an artist’s statement about an exhibition that Mai had in Perth, Western Australia in late May this year, that Mai sent me yesterday to put up on her website.
Due to the sensitivities of the organisation ‘Vietnamese Community in Western Australia’, the Phở Dog installation has been covered.
Here is an explanation by Mai Long (the artist of the work)
Phở Dog is an installation of 12 mythical mongrels named Phở Dog. Part of my artist statement printed in the I love Phở catalogue (p. 44) explains Phở Dog as a ‘character that contemplates difference and tries to understand it in the broader context of human nature and complex political histories – a tribute to the idea that things will never fit into neat little boxes’ … and also… ‘Eating Phở in Australia as an Australian reminds (me) of the unhealed wounds of the Vietnamese
diaspora’ … in addition … ‘This work embodies my wish for a healing, and a search for hope and humour’.
Cuong Phu Le, curator of I Love Pho, informed me of a sensitive response to the Phở Dog ‘Keala’ at the opening night of the exhibition. Keala, a dog interweaving a number of flags and symbols from parts of flags from various countries, was seen to be problematic by the Vietnamese community, due to the five pointed yellow star on red background and the three red stripes on yellow background.
Over the past weeks, increasingly steady pressure regarding the problematic work - threatening ‘boycott’ / requesting ‘removal, or ‘covering the work’ - and negative media generated nationally throughout the Vietnamese community has taken it’s toll. It has been the personal criticisms directed at the curator that have been particularly damaging. Following many in-depth conversations with Cuong Phu Le, I made the decision to cover the entire Phở Dog installation. During our discussions, the curator had also expressed concern over my personal safety as I am scheduled to arrive in Perth 23rd May to run a weekend workshop.
It is with great sadness that I have decided to cover the entire installation of Phở Dogs with a black sheet, as if a shrouding, a mourning, a death-ness, a frustrated silence with mysterious and alien bumps. This is a gesture to acknowledge the suffering of the Vietnamese Community concerned, and at the same time the suffering of all peoples who cannot speak out in the world, and who are censored in their own societies.
I considered just removing or covering Keala, but to censor one would be to treat that mongrel differently to the next, which in essence goes against the grain of the entire concept of the installation. The mongrels need to be seen in context as well as individually. Individually and as a group they illustrate and talk to the whole idea of complexity and the problem of us all progressing equally together, as a healthy cohesive society.
Phở Dog tries to look at complex issues in a humorous light, with a main inspiration being selfmockery as I slot myself into a supposedly derogatory mongrel label (as a half-breed). Selfmockery is a mechanism I have used previously in my art to alleviate the weight of pain and seriousness I have placed on issues that seem so unfair and irreconcilable that you just don’t know where to turn or who or how to communicate them with. In this sense, sadly and ironically, this “blackout” of the Phở Dog installation seems eerily natural. However, I will need some more time to better digest what has occurred here.
Mai Long
27th of May 2008
Phở Dog installation – by Mai Long 2006 –Casula Powerhouse Collection
Phở Dog Blackout – 23 May 2008 –Breadbox Gallery, Perth
Apparently there are people in the Vietnamese community here in Australia who feel that the current flag of Vietnam is as potent a symbol of oppression and hate to them as the nazi flag is to Jews. It would seem that 33 years after the war in Vietnam ended, feelings still run high. I find it ironic that some people would have us believe that behaving in a non-democratic and fascist manner is somehow better than the way how the Vietnamese government behaves. To such people I have this to say:
Guys, you’re here in Australia now (a country that recognises the current Vietnamese government) and those sort of bullying tactics are not what this country is about. You live here because you enjoy your freedoms. By all means express your opinions but that doesn’t give you the right to curtail the freedoms of others to express themselves.
Over the weekend, my wife and I went down to Canberra to see an exhibition of landscapes at the National Art Gallery. The exhibition was called “From Turner to Monet”. I was kind of surprised to see that an exhibition of landscapes would draw such a large crowd. Not only were there tourist coaches outside the art gallery, the whole parking lot was completely full.
My wife and I made the mistake of hiring those audio commentary machines in the hope of gaining some better understanding of the historical context that the paintings were created in. Alas, the only commentary we had was describing the bleeding obvious of what we were looking at. As an example, the commentary for Turner’s “Crossing the Brook” expounded on such inanities as ” the girl about to cross the brook is taking off her shoes”. A word of advice if you are going to that exhibition don’t bother with the audio commentary as it is a waste of the money that they ask.
Hermann Hesse in one of his short essays, had mentioned that once he had gone up into the mountains to paint what he thought would be the perfect landscape. In this perfect landscape, he was going to put the perfect sky; the perfect mountains; the perfect chalet; the perfect foreground etc. The result was the sort of thing that one would see on the top of a box of cheap assorted chocolates. I’m not really a fan of romantic landscapes, as I find them overly sentimental and tacky. To my taste, landscapes from the late 1700s and early 1800s are to painting what sunsets are to photography, nowadays.
On reflection I think that many of those romantic landscapes were included in the exhibition to show what a genius Turner really was and how far ahead he was of his contemporaries. When one looks at Turner’s work in the context of other people’s work from the same era it’s quite startling to see how different he was. It’s almost like Turner came from another planet. The same can be said of the Van Gogh.
We don’t get very many significant works from the Masters here in Australia. We just don’t have the population to support the acquisition of such great works. Van Gogh is such a giant, and his work commands such large amounts of money, that is quite rare to see one of his originals here, never mind a significant work of his. The same could be said for this exhibition in that it had only a small minor work by Van Gogh, called “Trees in the grass“. Although it wasn’t one of van Gogh’s most famous paintings, it shone like a jewel amongst all the other drab grey little efforts. Even Monet’s giant picture of lilies just looked like a messy little smudge in comparison. Vincent’s colour was so vibrant and lush. It was as though each colour was fresh from the tube and it hadn’t been mixed with another at all. It’s hard to believe that Gauguin saw himself as Van Gogh’s mentor, when it seems so obvious that Vincent was the one who had the real genius.
It was interesting to see that an Australian painter from the Heidelberg group called Arthur Streeton, stood up very well among some of the giants from the Impressionist era. Streeton’s painting “Fires on“ yodelled in a room full of insipid whispers. Pissarro’s bleak little daubs and Georges-Pierre Seurat’s intellectual exercises looked dry and all shrivelled up in a room with a giant Streeton, gleaming with bright Australian light.
What surprised me about some of the salon style, come ‘chocolate box top” type of landscape painting, was the fact that they were idealised notions of nature, and as such, they tended to be painted without any sign of human life. An Arcadian vision, if you will. There were some paintings of Yosemite that looked like they could have been painted yesterday. When I saw the paintings of Yosemite, I found myself thinking about how there was no indicator, other than the romantic style of the painting, when it was painted. This got me thinking about people and human artefacts within a landscape and how they can give a sense of a historical context.
As I was thinking about people within landscapes and historical contexts, I began to examine mine own tastes in regard to landscapes and I came to a couple of conclusions.
The first was I don’t like to see realistic landscapes painted in an almost photographic way, unless there are people in the landscape that can give me a feeling that I’m looking at a slice of life from a far gone time, such as Tom Robert’s “Allegro con brio: Bourke Street west“. When I looked at Tom Roberts work I just loved the way how it captured a major street in Melbourne in the late 1800s. It made me feel as though I was there, observing the scene through a high hotel window.
The second was if a landscape doesn’t have people in it and it therefore isn’t referencing a historical time, I would much prefer that it was more expressive and abstract.
Looking at all the landscapes got me thinking about my own photography, and in particular, the shots I took in the early 70s, I was in Cambodia. I only took about four rolls of film in the six months that I lived in Cambodia during a very significant time of that country’s history. I could really kick myself that I didn’t take more photographs of people within the landscape. The pictures that I took of people in Cambodia have travelled much better into the future than photographs I took without people in them. Like many people who are just starting out in photography I was very keen to take shots of interesting textures and shapes, and as a result, half the photographs that I took in Cambodia could have been taken anywhere in the world as they give no idea of where they are from.
Now when I take photographs, I try to make a point of trying to capture some sense of time, historically, when the photograph was taken. I’m not suggesting that all people should take photographs within some kind of historical context (we all do anyhow), but I am saying that I think that people in the future, who will inherit the images that we produce will appreciate captured slices of life from our time, more than some textural tone poem.
By the way I was at my in-law’s holiday home this weekend and saw this texture and couldn’t help myself.
There are sometimes that I feel so disassociated from the rest of the society that I live in. Like one of the androids in Blade Runner once said, “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe” and I feel some of those things that I have seen, separate me from most other people in the way how I cope with stuff that doesn’t go my way.
I am constantly amazed at the whingeing that I hear in this prosperous and fat first world country that I live in. It seems to me that some people are living in some sort of antiseptic bubble that insulates them from the rest of the world. It blows me away to think that some people (here in Australia) think that it’s acceptable to complain about water restrictions, and the fact they can’t wash their cars in the time of a drought. Or that it’s okay to harp on about not getting financial assistance from the government in the form of the baby bonus when you’re earning over $150,000 a year.
“HARDEN THE FUCK UP!”
I’ve also noticed that a lot of Bloggs, that I’ve been reading lately have been discussing idiosyncratic eating habits. It just goes to show what prosperous lives many of us lead in that we can be so choosy about what we eat. There was a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald about people who falsely claim to have allergies to foods. Apparently real food allergies are very rare and can be life-threatening, but it would seem that some people like to claim they have allergies as it is an attention seeking ploy that sets them apart from the mainstream.
“HARDEN THE FUCK UP!”
I’m hardly without sin in this area myself as I hate and won’t eat pumpkin, cucumber, watermelon, or any offal. I’ve been thinking that on an evolutionary level it’s not a very smart strategy to be a picky eater. We’ve spent millions of years developing a taste for eating just about anything that ever lived.
“HARDEN THE FUCK UP!”
My stepfather (Manfred), who was in Germany during the Second World War as a teenager, and in the Hitler youth, always likes to say “you can shit on my plate and I’ll eat around it”. Manfred has told me stories about the deprivations that he and his family went through at the end of the Second World War, when they were forced by the occupying Russians to leave what was once the German part of Prussia known as Upper Silesia (now a part of Poland) and walk to Berlin with no supplies. When I was a teenager and I used to peevishly complain what was for dinner, Manfred used to remind me about how he and his family had to live on grass soup for two weeks and that I should be just grateful for what I have in front of me.
“HARDEN THE FUCK UP!”
My mother who grew up in post-war England during the time of rationing had very little patience for any sign of picky eating. My mother’s standard response to any question about what was in a meal was “Shit with sugar on it!” “What do you think this is a restaurant?” “Shut up and eat it!”
“HARDEN THE FUCK UP!”
The woman in the picture above is a beggar that I saw in 1974 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia during the war. There were so many pathetic beggars in Phnom Penh at that time. It was a regular freak show of maimed soldiers; orphaned children; refugees, lepers and war widows, not attractive enough to become prostitutes. In short, people with REAL problems.
I saw the woman in the photograph nearly every day, and one day I saw her on her hands and knees vomiting onto the sidewalk. Her whole body just convulsed with spasms as she retched up what little food she had in her stomach. When she had stopped being sick she scooped up the vomit and re-ate it. She obviously was too poor to be able to waste food by leaving her vomit on the footpath.
This brings me to the whole concept of contrast. Chiaroscuro is an Italian word describing light and shade. It’s a term that one will see quite often in books about art and in particular, the Renaissance era. By varying the tone of a drawing by simulating highlight and shadow, an artist can create the illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface. A bit of contrast makes things in general, more…….. “real”.
As I go through life and get older, I’ve come to realise that the old adage “whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”, has a lot of of truth to it. I think that the bad things that have happened to me in my life have helped me appreciate to a greater degree, the good things that happen to me. I also think that because I’ve had such an extreme range of highs and lows that I am better able to deal with life’s little disappointments. A little chiaroscuro serves me well.
To lighten the mood of this rant, I’ve put in this little video, titled “Harden the fuck up” by Ronnie Johns (an Australian comedian), impersonating a famous Australian criminal and murderer called Chopper Reid (the subject of the excellent movie “Chopper” starring Eric Banna).
I haven’t posted for the last little while, because my sister (Penny) and her friend (Jennie) came to visit me all the way from Canada. Jennie is in the catering industry and won an all expenses paid trip to Thailand for her and a friend, through her job. Because Jennie is associated with a large hotel chain their stay in Thailand was very luxurious. From what I was told, their time in Thailand was a blur of company organised cultural events and feasts.
Since Penny was in the general area, she came to visit me here in Sydney. We don’t get to see each other, very often, because we live so far apart, and the last time I saw her was about two years ago, when I was working in Vancouver, Canada.
Penny and Jennie arrived on Sunday morning a week ago, and I organised a large welcome lunch with some of my friends.
I cooked a Sicilian lemon chicken dish for the main course and for the desert I made a panpepato (sort of like a rich brownie made with figs and raisins that have been soaked in marsala and mixed with cinnamon, roasted walnuts and cocoa), with a tangy lime, mint and pineapple sorbet over it and topped off with a jelly of blood orange juice and Campari with a garnish of dark chocolate and mint.
Our welcome lunch went well on into the evening, and much wine was drunk.
During their stay in Thailand penny and Jennie took some Thai cooking lessons so last Thursday they cooked my wife, her parents and I a delicious meal.
Since we were having Thai food, I thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce my sister to the excellent sauvignon blanc’s that come from the Marlborough region in New Zealand. So in the name of wine education we went through five different bottles of delicious Kiwi wine.
Most of the artworks that I own are way too expensive for me to actually buy and the only way that I can afford to own them is to do work for artists and receive their work as payment. Since my sister has been very generous to me in the past I wanted to return the favour by giving her a painting by Mai Long. Mai owed me two paintings as payment for some work I’d done for her a couple years ago, so on Saturday (the day before my sister was to go back home), we went around to Mai’s place and my sister and I picked out two paintings. Penny selected a work from 2000 called “Mateship” for herself and I picked out a painting called “Water sports”, from 2003 for my wife and I.
I thought it would be a good thing for my sister as a tourist to Australia to meet Mai, who was featured in the “Lonely Planet”, DVD (Lonely Planet Six Degrees Series 1: Sydney)of Sydney. Mai has been very busy producing work for her next exhibition of “Aquamutt and Dag Girl”, and her apartment was absolutely stuffed with unfinished colourful papier-mâché dogs and mutant girls. In the photo below you can see the painting “Mateship” on the floor to the left and up on the wall behind Mai’s head is a painting by Reg Mombassa of Mambo fame.
Since Saturday night was the girls last evening in Sydney I cooked up some roast lamb on the barbecue, and we got stuck into some very nice Shiraz. As the night wore on, and more wine was drunk, the music got louder and my wife and I’s collection of silly costumes came out. It wasn’t very long before nearly everybody was nearly wetting themselves with laughter.
Penny and Jennie’s trip ended on a really nice high note, and the only real drag was that we had to get up at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning so they could catch their flight back home.
My wife and I’ve had a very sociable weekend that started off with a dinner at my friend Peter’s place on Saturday and finished with a birthday party at another friend, Tim’s place on Sunday.
Dinner at Peter’s place is always a joy as he is a good cook, an excellent conversationalist and to top it all off he collects wines and enjoys sharing them with his friends. Normally I am not a fan of lamb, and when Peter said that he was cooking lamb shanks my heart sank a little, but needless to say, the meal due to Peter’s skill in the kitchen was fantastic. Peter slow roasted the lamb shanks in wine, and the meat just fell off the bone, it was really excellent. The standout wine of the evening that Peter shared with us was a bottle of 1990 Penfolds Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz. It was a beautifully smooth, full flavoured (as one expects from Australian warm climate Shiraz) wine that perfectly complemented our meal. If you think you might want to try this wine here are some tasting notes for it (that I lifted from an on-line wine catalogue):
“Deep red in colour, 1990 has established itself as a classic Penfolds vintage. There are intense dark chocolate and sweet berry aromas, complex, revealing many characters in the glass - raspberry, prune, fruitcake, exotic spices and roasted chestnuts. Spice and demi-glace secondary notes add to the aromatic interest, flashes of liquorice, white chocolate and cinnamon arise with a swirl. Medium-bodied and mouth filling, plummy, berried fruits mesh with dark chocolate, mocha and spice notes.”
Due to Peter’s love of wine, and his generosity with it, we always find ourselves staying up late into the evening whenever we go over to his place, sampling the various delicious treasures from Peter’s cellar. Of course, due to the amount of wine that we drink in an evening at Peter’s we always sleep over so we don’t have to drive back home.
After a quick breakfast at the cafe near Peter’s, we headed up to the Blue Mountains (100 km west of Sydney) to have an extended lunch with our friend Tim and his wife Em with a bunch of their other friends to celebrate his birthday. Tim’s wife Em is a vegetarian, so instead of the normal meat fest that passes for Australian cuisine, there were quite a few delicious salads that were the perfect antidote to the previous night’s dinner. The highlight of the afternoons repast was a delicious beer cake with a saffron mascarpone filling covered with a raspberry icing made by Tim’s cousin, Kristin.
It was really a great weekend, with fantastic company and excellent food. When we arrived home, I checked my e-mails to find that Kent Davis who has made contact with me through this blog and I have spoken to over the telephone, had a very lucky escape on the 17th. Thanks to a smoke alarm, Kent and his wife Pa were woken up just in time to get out of their house, with nothing but what they were wearing as their house quickly burnt down.
In his e-mail to me, Kent had this to say:
“We have lost absolutely everything but our lives. We are wearing clothes from the neighbours now. Our good friend next door has an apartment and has given us a place to stay. The other neighbours have clothes for us. Life is good! Being alive is even better! (-: The important thing to know is that we are alive, in love, and that we are very, very lucky.”
Later in his e-mail, Kent said this:
“Typing is slow because my eyes are filled with tears… Before the fire was out our neighbours gave us so many generous commitments for food, shelter and clothing that we truly never felt “homeless” for a moment. As dawn arrived more food, clothing, help and housing offers came. As the day went on, dozens and dozens more friends came to help.”
Epicurus said that all we really need to be happy is freedom, food, friends, shelter and a life free from pain. Although Kent and Pa lost their shelter and many things of sentimental value, I suspect that they are so rich in friends that they will be back on their feet in no time.
I truly feel that our lives are defined and enriched by our friends. Therefore it’s very important to cherish and maintain our friendships as they bring far more joy and strength into our lives than any material possessions.
Mai Long (a friend of mine) entered the Wynne Prize (which is part of the Archibald prize) for best landscape painting of Australian scenery, or figure sculpture this year. Although Mai didn’t get into the main exhibition she was invited into the “Salon des Refuses” for the work below.
Here’s Mai’s artist statement that goes with the work:
Pondering the discovery of a baby in a box outside the local supermarket, Aqua Mutt is beginning to doubt Dag Girl’s robotic rhetoric about immaculate conception.
How much is really known about this baby in the box? And who the bloody hell is Pho dog?
If you want to know a bit more about Aqua Mutt and Dag Girl click here and if you would like to know who the bloody hell is Pho dog? click here
If you would like to see the Mai Long paintings that I own click here
About 50kms northeast of Mexico City are the amazing pyramids of Teotihuacán.
I didn’t visit Teotihuacán back in 1983 when I first went to Mexico because in my mind I thought they’d just be some kind of lame tourist trap. I used to have an elitist head space back then about travelling. I used to make a distinction between “tourism’ and “travelling”. In short I thought that tourism was for weak-minded lightweights and that travelling was somehow purer. Ah… the arrogance of youth. Now that I’m older, I see all travelling that’s not done for business, visiting family or to get to safety, as essentially tourism. Just going to places to have a look see.
I now wince when I hear someone declare with emphasis that are travellers.
Au contraire!
I “travelled” for 11 years straight which included probably over a 100, 000 kilometres hitch hiking and sleeping rough and when I look back I don’t feel that it could be described as anything more than tourism. I just didn’t have enough money most of the time to make it comfortable and that fact doesn’t turn it into “travelling”.
As a matter of fact, I’ve stopped staying at backpackers hostels when I do go abroad because I know it’s socially unacceptable to maim people bragging about what legends they are because have been “travelling” for a whole six months. I also feel it’s better for everyone that I remove myself from the temptation of perpetrating a little ultra violence when I hear some wanker ask a fellow backpacker, “how long have you been travelling for?”, so they can establish some kind of “I’ve been travelling longer than you” hierarchy. It’s a good thing that I didn’t meet myself when I was younger or I might not be writing this post.
Now with my little rant over, I will tell you a little about Teotihuacán. My wife and I took one of the cheap local buses from the Terminal Norte in Mexico City which turned out to be a good thing because it stopped at various little towns along the way and musicians would get on a play for tips. It was very atmospheric and muy sympatico.
If you ever go to Teotihuacán make sure you take a hat, some sun screen and water. There is very little shade and it can get very hot.
As you walk along the main avenue of the ruins, the charmingly named Calzada de los Muertos (road of the dead) you will see one small pyramid type platform after the other on either side in a row leading to the big pyramids at the end.
It wasn’t until I had visited Teotihuacán that I found out that the largest pyramid in the world (Cheops) might be in Egypt but the next two largest ones were in Mexico. Even though I’ve been to Mexico twice now, it still amazes me how many big pyramids there are in that country. I almost think that fact is being kept from the world, but then I realize it’s just my own ignorance.
At the end of the Calzada de los Muertos the second largest pyramid at Teotihuacán known as the “Pyramid of the Moon”
and to it’s left is the larger (third largest in the world) pyramid, the Pyramid of the Sun. My wife and walked up the stairs to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun.
It was pretty steep (not as steep as Tikal but much longer) and long but the view at the top is wonderful.
On the Pyramid of the Moon’s right is the Placio de los Jaguares which is quite different to the rest of the complex. It’s a nice place to sit a while in the shade and get some respite from the hawkers.
The Placio de los Jaguares is one of the few places in the whole complex where you can still see some of the old painted decoration.
It must’ve been an amazingly colourful place. Almost psychedelic.
Not much is known about the people who built Teotihuacán as it is thought that it was started in the first century AD and abandoned by the eigth century.
Remember if you go there, that the hawkers are probably the descendents of the people who built the place and they have a right to be there and to eek out a living somehow. Don’t get annoyed at their constant attentions, just say no, thanking them politely (no gracias) and walk away if you don’t want to buy anything from them.
During our Vietnam trip last year my wife and bought a bronze statue of a Qilin in Hoi An.
Hoi An is an old port town with a large ethnic Chinese population. When I travel I like to buy some local artworks but in Vietnam that was a bit difficult because most of the stuff on offer seems to fall into roughly six categories.
Cheap and very nasty. As in real junk.
Bland decorative, of the kind one sees in hotel chains (now I know where they buy their stuff).
Antiques that if they are real, you can’t take out of the country.
Art with real merit but way out of my price range.
Bad copies of anything in an art history book.
Traditional items for local consumption.
We opted for category six.
The Qilin is a Chinese mythical creature with the head of a dragon and the body of a horse covered in scales and fire. They are considered good omens and the Japanese call them Kirin and the Vietnamese call them Kỳ lân.
Qilins are associated with the arrival of sages and the one we bought has a child holding books, riding on it’s back. Legend has it that the mother of Confucius saw a Qilin before she gave birth to him. Statues such the one above are placed in homes with the hope that a child will grow up to be a great person of learning.
We chose this particular piece because it was far and away the best realized bronze we saw in the two weeks we stayed in Vietnam. I love the stance as it reminds me of how the old Tang Dynasty artists posed their ceramic horses. Of course the statue lacks the svelte and graceful lines of the Tang era and it’s stockiness is more reminiscent of the Ming era. Don’t think for a minute that I think that this statue comes from those times. I know it was made recently in a town, not far from Hoi An called Phuoc Kew (no, I’m not kidding).
The bronze weighs 5.5kg (about 12lbs); stands 28cm (about 11″) high and it is 34cm (about 13″) long.
If I were to compare Sydney and Melbourne to people, I’d say that Sydney is one of those naturally beautiful but vacuous people who just sits there expecting everyone to adore them just for how they look and Melbourne is one of those plain looking people, who has been forced to develop an interesting personality to attract people.
I not only live in Sydney, I love Sydney, but I also have to say that during my recent visit to Melbourne, I was left with the feeling that Sydney is somewhat lacking. Sydney just seems to be relying on its natural beauty, which comes from being located on a spectacular harbour. Although Sydney has the world-famous Opera house, and the clunky Sydney Harbour Bridge, it’s not a particularly nice city, to walk around. Once one gets away from the harbour, most of Sydney is merely functional rather than beautiful.
There have been articles in the Sydney Morning Herald describing a recent visit by a Danish urban planner, Jan Gehl and his comments about Sydney. Gehl was quoted as saying that Sydney “is a doughnut, because it has nothing in the centre.” I couldn’t agree more.
Melbourne on the other hand has instituted changes suggested by Prof Gehl after studies his team conducted in 1994 and 2004, that have completely transformed that city into a much more liveable place.
Melbourne has many kilometres of cycleways that encourage people to get exercise, and reduce the amount of cars on the road. There is also much more public art in Melbourne. I really enjoyed seeing Duncan Stemler’s “Blowhole”,
a 15 metre (50ft) high wind powered sculpture set in a children’s playground, and John Kelly’s joyously quirky “Cow up a tree”, not only put a smile on my face, it brightened up the rest of my day.
As a matter of fact, many public structures in Melbourne exhibit beauty in their design, more than mere functionality.
When I told my friend that I was going to Melbourne, she recommended that my wife and I take our bicycles. Luckily, I took that advice and spent a few days cycling around Melbourne’s beautiful art filled streets. We’ll be going back to Melbourne again, we loved the place.
As for Sydney… get your act together, Melbourne’s kicking our collective butts!
of Sydney. Mai has been very busy producing work for her next exhibition of “Aquamutt and Dag Girl”, and her apartment was absolutely stuffed with unfinished colourful papier-mâché dogs and mutant girls. In the photo below you can see the painting “Mateship” on the floor to the left and up on the wall behind Mai’s head is a painting by 
