I love maps, my last 2 blogs were about my love of the new MCA so I decided to add the two together. I admire the planning in exhibitions, working out where to hang what but even better are maps to explain. I think my all time favourite was the room map of the William Kentridge exhibition that was held at the MCA in 2004. It was an inspirational exhibition and the large room map was just as impressive. Coincidently Annandale Galleries has a current exhibition on his work that I should make an effort to see.
I tend to keep ephemera, room pamphlets, newspaper clippings and always a postcard. I think of myself somewhere between obsessive, hoardish and knowledgeable. I also think most artists tend to do the same, collect, exhibitionalia.
So when I started putting this blog piece together (God help me! Am I now blogging about blogging?) I went on the search for the mother of all room pamphlets for that exhibition in 2004. Prior to blogging, I was a sketchbook scribbler so I thought this shouldn’t be too difficult as the sketchbooks are in some semblance of order. A3,A4, A5, A6, Hardbound, leather, unusual, trains, travels and moleskin – then years. Unfortunately the ladder was obscuring the bottom of the bookshelf where the A5 2004’s lived.
My next avenue was the Kentridge books, I have a small collection and I sometimes keep noteworthy pieces of paper in there. Damn! Anne-Marie has borrowed those. Aah! Yet another avenue – the postcards. Yes, now there are the large and small, indigenous Australian, Australian, International, freebies and gifts -all in little white boxes. I took a punt and went the large international (plus it was on the bottom shelf). So I have this….. a postcard from 2004 with my thoughts at that time and my current postcard from last weekend-a view of the harbour by Eugene Von Geurard and yet another postcard commemorating the opening-a special scratchie edition by TMOD (funnily enough these have been my birthday cards of choice between my daughter and myself and I have a collection of these).
And as a result I was so happy to read the back. It wasn’t the room catalogue but it was enough to jog the memory maps. In the meantime I clutched at an old sketchbook, wrong year but conveniently placed between the ladder rungs and a quick flick showed the early rumblings of my current lake series. Mmm -that’s going to be useful for later.
I would love to design a room brochure for my internal workings.
Paint later, a painter's blog. 